"A Voice of Her Own"

As Shakers may know, I'm spending this week at the 28th annual William Inge Theatre Festival in Independence, Kansas, which is a small town about 70 miles north of Tulsa, Oklahoma. (This Independence is not to be confused with the other Independence, Missouri, a large suburb of Kansas City, Missouri.) The reason the festival is held here is because this was the birthplace of Inge, the author of Picnic, Bus Stop, Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Come Back, Little Sheba. This is my 19th visit to the festival, and it's like a family reunion for me.

We have a lot of great workshops with our guest artists, and yesterday I attended a session where Barbara Dana -- actor, writer, and gentle soul -- spoke about her ten-year mission to write a novel about the early life of Emily Dickinson. I bought the book -- A Voice of Her Own -- and I'm thoroughly enthralled by it after reading only thirty pages of it. Ms. Dana will be taking the stage as Emily Dickinson later this summer at the University of Regina in a production of The Belle of Amherst, the play based on the life of Dickinson made famous by the astounding performance of Julie Harris in the original Broadway production.

I love Emily Dickinson's poetry and I love Barbara Dana. What a joy to have them together.