| SUSAN G. BUTRUILLE: AUTHOR, SPEAKER AND BONNE VIVANTE Learn history the fun way Contact Susan to present one of her unique programs for your convention, library, historical society or educational group. Selected venues include:
|  Photo by Sue Triplett. |
Speaking and Performance Topics:
Five Ways to Celebrate the 2020 U.S. Suffrage Centennial:
With narrative, stories, recipes, song, and audience participation, Susan Butruille recreates scenes, both humorous and piognant, from suffrage history.- Recipe for Justice! Susan invites audience members to help recreate scenes from her rollicking, poignant suffrage play. Through narrative, stories, recipes, and period music, Butruille shares the dramatic tale of Washington equal suffrage from territorial beginnings through finally winning permanent voting rights in 1910 and inspiring the final campaign for national suffrage in 1920.
- Tea, True Womanhood and Uppity Women. Watch out for tea parties! That’s where many women have started thinking about their lives, their own freedom, and other radical notions, including the basic right to vote. Through journals, stories, songs, and readings, Susan Butruille explores dynamics designed to keep women in their places, and tell about some women who defied convention and turned toward freedom. Tea, anyone?
- It Seems That I Was Inspired: Abigail Scott Duniway, Northwest Suffragist. A one-act solo play. Oregon Trail emigrant Abigail Scott Duniway defies Victorian convention and starts her own newspaper as a tool to win rights for women in the Northwest. Duniway was instrumental in winning the vote for women in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. “A low-key yet dramatic performance with liberal dashes of humor.” -- Oregon Press Women.
- How the West Won the Vote First. Beginning with Wyoming, then Utah, Colorado and Idaho, western women won the vote before the turn of the 20th century. Early western suffrage pioneers include: Oregon's Abigail Scott Duniway, a teenager who vowed on the Oregon Trail to start a women's revolution some day; Charley Parkhurst, a stage coach driver dressed as a man, and the first known non-indigenous woman to vote; and Sarah Winnemucca, whose Paiute Nation's culture allowed women power, fought to win back the land and rights stolen from her people.
- Suffrage Backlash! After American women won suffrage in 1920, many believed that the power of their vote would gain more rights for themselves. It worked for a while. But the same forces that had opposed suffrage came together to oppose Progressive reforms. Those "antis" invented the Red Smear Attack, which linked prominent women’s organizations with the Bolsheviks and “International Socialism."
- Westward Bound! Oregon Trail author Susan Butruille recreates stories from the Oregon Trail through narrative, songs, poetry, and audience participation.
- The Other Pinchot: Cornelia Bryce Pinchot, Feminist and Activist. A lively, emotional solo play featuring a leading activist of the early twentieth century who pays tribute to her husband, Gifford Pinchot, founder and first Chief of the US Forest Service.
- Uppity Women of the West. A roundup of women from the West, with stories, songs, and recipes, telling of women who defied custom and tradition with a “Yes, I can!” attitude. Emigrants, pioneers, cowgirls, ranchers, entrepreneurs, activists, and adventurers. “Super! Made the Old West come alive!”
- Magical Travels to Sacred Places. Stories, poems, songs, and recipes from Susan's journeys to discover ancient hidden female spirituality from the American West to such places as Australia, Greece, Turkey, and France.
- Workshop: A Writer’s Journey Into the Wilderness. Take a hero’s journey into the labyrinth of your uncultivated and wild self, where your power and your truth lie. “What a memorable, useful workshop! I especially enjoyed your sharing your own journey through your journal, and I will use what came out of the workshop exercises.” -- Oregon Writers Colony.
