WOMEN HAVE THEIR SAY AT LITERARY FUNDRAISER
Role-play helps focus on import of historic figures
Karen Christina Jones, founder of Albany’s Callaloo Theater Company, was a young woman when she first saw the documentary “Eyes on the Prize” and learned about civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who has been an inspiration for her ever since.
“She taught me that if I’m going to change things, I can’t wait, I have to get up and do it on my own,” said Jones, who is a member of the African American Cultural Center of the Capital Region and recipient of five awards from the Theater Association of New York State for her work.
On Sunday, she will be embodying Hamer at the Famous Ladies’ Tea organized by the Literacy Volunteers of Rensselaer County. Jones will deliver the speech Hamer gave at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, where she spoke her most famous words: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
“This is a very emotional piece,” Jones said. “It’s incredible that she was able to have the strength to keep her composure so her words were really heard. I hope that I do justice to it. I want the words to carry on through me as a black woman in 2021, when the struggles we are going through now are just the same as they were 50, 60, 70 years ago.”
Hamer is one of 10 notable women who will be brought to life on Sunday at the Famous Ladies Tea, ranging from household names like Doris Day and Shirley Temple Black to lesser-known figures like the American author and ecologist Anne Lebastille. The annual event raises funds and awareness for the work of the Literacy Volunteers, which has recently expanded into Albany County. Founded in 1968 and based on the model created by Literacy Volunteers of America, the organization recruits and trains volunteers as tutors to help adults build basic literacy or learn English as a second language. (The next tutor training begins April 8.)
With a staff of four paid employees and 70 volunteers, Literacy Volunteers serves more than 200 adult students annually. That’s just a fraction, however, of the 30,000 people in Rensselaer County who struggle with reading and writing, says Executive Director Judith Smith, who calls this “a huge, quiet issue.”
In addition to one-on-one and smallgroup tutoring, volunteers also provide instruction in the workplace for participating companies (including Blasch Precision Ceramics in Menands and the Hilton Garden Inn in Troy), teach civics and financial literacy classes, and are matched with elementary school children for in-school reading hours, known as the Everybody Wins! Power Lunch.
“The program builds enthusiasm about reading that can really impact the quality of the children’s lives and their success in life beyond the classroom time,” Smith said.
Since last spring, reading mentors have been recording stories for the kids, and tutors have continued their work as much as possible via phone, Facetime and Zoom. Literacy Volunteers recently received a Troy Savings Bank Charitable Foundation grant to buy 12 more laptops for students without computers.
The Famous Ladies Tea was started in 2013 and has become the second-largest fundraiser for the organization (after the Literacy 5K Run/walk, scheduled for May 2 this year). It typically takes place
at the Hilton, with the actors delivering a short monologue and staying in character throughout the luncheon. This year, they will be taking turns on the screen, and a link to the event will be sent to registered guests.
While it will certainly be a different experience, the limitations of the format can actually work in an actor’s favor, Jones said. “What actors are doing now with Zoom is allowing their physicality to come out in their shoulders, face, gestures,” she said. “It’s a wonderful way to be personal with our audience.”
The actors will be pulling out wigs, costumes, trademark glasses and, in Stephanie Weiss’s case, a judicial collar. A trained literary tutor and volunteer, Weiss has been a regular at the Tea for the past seven years, in roles including Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States; women’s suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt; and American abolitionist Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. Immediately after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg last fall, Weiss contacted Smith to claim the role of the late Supreme Court judge.
Another Ladies Tea regular, Myrna Bernstein of Albany, has portrayed Florence Nightingale, Nellie Bly, Hedy Lamarr, Edith Wilson (Woodrow’s second wife) and Alice Roosevelt Longworth (Teddy’s daughter). This year, she’ll be Rachel Louise Carson, author of the environmental manifesto “Silent Spring.” In researching the conservationist, Bernstein learned that she was quiet and introverted, spent her childhood years roaming her family’s 65-acre farm, and started out as an English major at Pennsylvania College for Women before switching to biology.
“That’s what I love about doing this,” Bernstein said. “A lot of these women fall under the radar, and it’s a wonderful experience to learn so much about them and the obstacles they had to overcome, and to realize their strength and commitment.”