On May 18 I chauffeured a bonafide local celebrity, my friend Randy Lewis, to the third and final year of “Unsettled” presented by Dangerous Women at the Snowy Owl Theater in Leavenworth. For the last three years, the female creative collaborative Dangerous Women has been bringing regional women’s history to life on stage. I was invited to the show last year but couldn’t make it, so I made it a point to catch the last show before the creators of the project go on hiatus for a couple of years.
And I took my audio recorder along because I wanted to try something relatively new for me – audio storytelling.
The episode above is the result of that journalistic experiment. I hope that you find it does justice to the beautiful, heart-wrenching, endearing and galvanizing selection of stories the creators of this show wrote and performed.
The director of the show, Rhona Baron, said she doesn’t think there’s a similar show anywhere else in the US, and she’s probably right. It’s a unique and powerful way to tell true stories from our region’s history in a more dynamic and personally touching way than a history book or museum exhibit can.
And that was evidenced by the fact that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the end of the story titled “The Moccasins,” which tells the story of a white settler woman and a native woman who formed a friendship over a pair of handmade moccasins and a shared love of babies. That piece was written and performed by Marile Sexson Kunkle and Stacy Coronado and the source material came from Kunkle’s grandmother’s diary.
I’d like to thank the women who took the time to do interviews with me as they prepped for a show, who are (in order) Stacy Coronado, Mary Big Bull Lewis, Marile Sexson Kunkle, Becky Fishburn, Norma Ramirez, and Rhona Baron.
There were more stories showcased that, unfortunately, I wasn’t able to touch on in this episode due to a limitation in time (and my own talent). So I encourage everyone to visit the Unsettled website here and look for a forthcoming video of the show.
And please let me know if you want to hear more podcast-style stories in the future.
"Unsettled" by Dangerous Women Brings PNW Women's History to Life