(Second in a series about the Malakoff Garden Club, the Bartlett House, and O’Keeffe!)
By Loretta Humble/Around The Town
I’m spending today sending out press releases for “O’Keeffe!” So this is a good time to use some of that same material to tell you about this outstanding play, and the equally outstanding actress the Malakoff Garden Club and the Malakoff Historical Society are bringing here to raise funds to help restore the Bartlett House Property. It’s happening at the Malakoff Community Center, April 12, the evening of the Cornbread Festival.
But first I want to once more put in my own personal testimony. And I guarantee you my friends Jo Ann Surls and John Walker who saw it with me in Tyler, feel just as strongly as I do. We loved it! This is Broadway quality. Carolyn Wickwire is marvelous. She becomes Georgia O’Keeffe. Take my word for it. You do not want to miss this.
And here are a couple of tidbits about Carolyn. She is 77 years old, but you would never guess it. On her 75th birthday she parachuted from a plane. She and her partner, Dennis West, are relative newly-weds and obviously enjoy one another a lot. They have been immensely helpful as we try to get the word out about the play. There are so few of us active members of the Garden Club, we probably couldn’t have done it without them.
We hope, with Dennis’ help, to bring some sort of similar evenings to Malakoff in the future. However, I’m thinking it will be hard to find anything else this good.
Now, to give you some quick details about both Carolyn and Georgia, I’m going to cheat. I took the following straight off the press release, because I think it gives you more information in fewer words than I can
Ms. Wickwire is a Dallas-based actor who works in theatre, film, and television. She has won awards for her work in Beauty Queen of Leenane at Quad C Theatre and in The Woman at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. She was acclaimed for her recent performances in Superior Donuts at Theatre Too and The Grapes of Wrath at WaterTower Theatre. Some of her recent plays include Equus (Uptown Players), The Royal Family at Theatre Three, and the world premiere of The Blue Moon Dancing at Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. Her most recent film roles were in Manglehorn (with Al Pacino and Holly Hunter) and in Phobia. She also had a recurring role in the TV drama Prison Break and has appeared in Plain Sight. She is represented by the Kim Dawson Agency. She began her professional acting career after the age of 50, and quickly became established on the local acting scene. In 2008, while making her first foray into regional theatre in Tennessee, she met Dennis West, who became he husband as well as her producing partner in this venture.
About Georgia O’Keeffe:
As a young woman in the early 20th Century, Georgia O’Keeffe struggled to maintain her independence as a woman and as an artist. She studied art, but feeling stymied by traditional methods and forced to earn her living, she quit painting for several years. When she began to paint again, a friend sent some of her drawings to Alfred Stieglitz. His reaction to her drawings was overwhelming, stating “At last, a woman on paper!” When he exhibited her drawings without her permission, she demanded that he take them down. He refused. She relented. Thus began “Stieglitz and O’Keeffe.” In 1923, Stieglitz held a major exhibit of O’Keeffe’s work at the Anderson Galleries. The following year, Stieglitz and his wife of 31 years divorced and he and Georgia married. That year she painted the flower series for which she would become famous. Years later, suffocated by his large and demanding family, she traveled to New Mexico, and found a spiritual and artistic home. She returned every summer until 1946, when her husband died. Only then did she move from New York and permanently reside in New Mexico. She died, March 6, 1986, at the age of 98. Her body was cremated and her ashes were scattered over her beloved ‘Faraway.’
Friends, I wouldn’t lie to you—you do not want to miss this. And if you don’t watch out, you just might. Tickets are going fast.