KENT TRUMBULL Readings are stories about local women's lives

The play shows the importance of family to Appalachian women.
By L. CROW
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
CHAMPION -- Kent Trumbull theater department will present a work by a local playwright.
"Our Work, Our Worlds: Women's Stories" was written by Patti Swartz, associate professor of English at the Kent East Liverpool campus. She is also the campus English coordinator and Writing Center director.
This readers theater-style piece is a condensed version of a larger work that was presented at East Liverpool in 2004 and also for the Portage County and Kent historical societies. It is a compilation of stories of local women, originally collected by Swartz's students for a class project.
It is one of four plays Swartz has written as part of the Kent State East Liverpool Historical Society Oral History Project, which received grants from the Ohio Arts Council.
"These are stories of women's lives and work: the kinds of work women have done and about crises they have experienced," said Swartz. "The women are all local, from the Ohio River Valley, Columbiana and Jefferson counties, Lisbon, Salem, Steubenville, Wheeling and even some from Pennsylvania. And though these regions are all part of Appalachia, their stories are not much different from global women. They are about newspaper reporters, teachers, doctors, dentists and public relations workers. Some are women who chose to stay at home with their children. Others worked in pottery, which is a little more unique to this region."
Family's importance
But Swartz also said that the importance and closeness of family is a particular value of Appalachian women, and that aspect really shines through in many of the stories.
Three women: Swartz, Roxanne Burns and Karen Koturba, will be reading the scripts. There will be guitar music performed by Doug Smith between the readings. Smith also composed one original song for this play.
Swartz said the readings cover the gamut of emotions from humorous to poignant to very serious. Many are written by older women, looking back on their lives.
"One woman told about being a little child and taking a huge doll with her inside a dog house," said Swartz. "She got stuck, and the roof had to be removed to get her out. Another told of going into labor. When she got to the hospital, her husband left to pick up another family member, and she was terrified of having the baby on her own. But her husband returned in time. It is actually a very funny story. She was able to look back on it and laugh."
But some of the stories evoke terror. "Another is about a newspaper reporter who covered a number of murder trials," Swartz continued. "During one investigation, before a murderer had been caught, the woman was sent away on assignment. She later realized the murderer was standing outside her home, while her 15-year-old son was there alone."
Others are about personal struggles, like the woman who chose not to have an abortion after she was told her baby had Down's syndrome. Another was by a woman whose husband left her. She was determined to make a better life for her children, so she went on to become a nurse, earning the Ohio Nurse of the Year award.
Swartz said she is grateful that the Trumbull campus has given her the opportunity to perform this work. It has been performed at several other organizations, including the Women of Appalachia Studies Conference in North Carolina and the Ohio Academy of History at Heidelberg College in Tiffin. There is another shorter version of the play, created for performance in nursing homes.
The reading will be Wednesday at 8 p.m. For more information, call (330) 847-8700.