Queer Longings: A Performative Lecture on Anna Elizabeth Dickinson’s Failed Theatrical Career
In this work in progress, solo performer Elizabeth Whitney explores the career of Anna Elizabeth Dickinson–a provocative abolitionist and suffragist who enjoyed national fame on the lyceum circuit, was shunned by critics as a playwright and actor in late 1800s New York City, and eventually institutionalized. This new project uses Dickinson’s championed form of the lecture as performance to look at themes of madness, failure, and obscurity in the life of a queer artist.