T H E AT E R
BY KELSEY ANNE RANKIN
A STITCH IN TIME
THE CAST OF COTTAGE
THEATRE’S QUILTERS
Pioneer women overcome obstacles in
Cottage Theatre’s musical Quilters
F
rom the moment you take your seat at Cottage
Theatre, waiting for the lights to dim, Quilters
transports you into a quaint, home-lovin’ kind of
feeling. Opening with old-time music with a heck
of a lotta twang, the women of the musical burst in
running and laughing — yee-haws and all — giving you a
slight pause to ask: “What have I gotten myself into?”
Set in the early 1800s in the midst of European
immigrants trailblazing across the vast expanse of the
United States, Quilters — directed by Eliza Roaring
Springs — focuses on pioneer women’s history and, well,
quilts.
The musical begins when Sarah, the 75-year-old mother
(played by Springs), announces to her eight daughters that
she’s beginning a new, and final, quilt before she passes
away. From that point on, we’re taken through a multitude
of stories that flow like a needle skating through cloth.
You’re strung through lighthearted tales of child’s play
with quilts; at one point, one of the daughters (played by
Amber Brower) flashes back to the time, in an act of
youthful vengeance, she turned the ever-cherished Sun
Bonnet Sue quilting pattern into “The Demise of Sun
Bonnet Sue.”
A thin thread of storyline, difficult to follow at times,
eventually tucks you under layers of quilting, exposing the
immense cultural riches the craft had for these women in
all stages of their lives — in ways big and small,
sometimes oddly shaped, and stitched across generations.
The women take you into the blunt reality of their
hardships and how quilts played a necessary role in
overcoming the harshest of obstacles. Whether women
were being forced into oppressive roles, facing losses of
loved ones and children or standing in the face of
devastating natural disaster, the quilts were always there.
The play, written by Molly Newman and Barbara
Damashek, leaves out more than a handful of major details
of the period, such as the racial dynamics of the era. And
yet, despite its extremely limited gaze on this chunk of
history, it also opens up the experiences of the women who
were a part of it and who created and transmitted an
enormous amount of culture that is slowly being lost.
For a history lesson and an awkwardly wonderful
afternoon learning about quilts, Quilters does its job and
then some.
Quilters runs through Aug. 30 at the Cottage Theatre in Cottage Grove; $19-$24.
258 EAST 13TH, EUGENE
541.342.7975
EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • A UGUST 20, 2015
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