NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Women's Voices From Union Square , an original musical play about the 14th Street square's role in American labor history, will be performed in New York City, May 1-12, in honor of Labor History Month. The play's author is Dorothy Fennell, a Cornell University labor historian, and its producer is the New York City extension office of Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR).

Performances, which feature several off-Broadway actors, begin May Day (May 1) at the Tenement Museum's Theater on Orchard Street in Lower Manhattan and continue there and at other venues in New York City through Mother's Day (May 12).

Fennell, who is director of special projects for unions at the ILR School extension division in New York City, said she wrote the play and lyrics because she was fascinated with the square's lively history. "In the era of the-1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, it was the gathering place for feisty soapbox orators, anti-lynching activists, bluestocking suffragists, labor agitators and birth control advocates, who all raised their voices as part of the public debate over the big political issues of the day," she said.

The musical begins when an assortment of once-celebrated, but now largely forgotten, women activists climb out of the dustbin of history into present-day Union Square, said Fennell. At the center of the play is Rose Schneiderman, a Polish-Jewish garment worker and organizer. "She and other early 20th century labor activists, among them Mary Dreier and Leonora O'Reilly, time travel forward and discover that while much has changed for the better for women in the work force, many of the problems they confronted nearly a century ago have yet to be resolved," said Fennell. "Past grievances find new targets as the women tackle some unfinished business."

Fennell used words from the actual letters and speeches of the activists, who were Union Square regulars. The play also includes characters based on historical figures Mary Talbert, an African American activist and suffragist, Margaret Sanger, a founder of the birth control movement, and W.E.B. DuBois, civil rights leader and public intellectual. "The story comes from their very real, often heroic, efforts to organize women working in New York's sweatshops, to secure factory safety legislation, to win the vote, to gain access to birth control and to join forces with African American women activists in the NAACP who were campaigning for a federal anti-lynching law," said Fennell. "These causes took them over and over again to Union Square, where they defined the terms of the debate about women's rights and roles."

Following the performances, audiences will be invited to discuss the tradition of women's activism with members of the cast, who will respond to questions while remaining in character. "The goal of the performance workshops is to share this often-neglected history with a wide and diverse audience and to continue the civic dialogue begun in Union Square generations ago," said Fennell.

Women's Voices features a set that incorporates a multimedia program of historical photographs and images of Union Square and its dissidents, collected from archives across the country. Volunteers from UNITE Local 23-25 stitched replicas of historical banners for the set and costumes for the actors. The cast of five includes Arthur French, an OBIE Award-winner actor, and Rashmi, who recently was nominated for an Audelco award. All the actors and the stage manager are members of Actors' Equity. The play is supported by grants from the New York Council for the Humanities and the Puffin Foundation as well as the Amalgamated Bank and several trade unions.

Women's Voices is the second of four short musical plays in the Union Square series, two still in development, that tell the history of labor activism centered on Union Square over several generations. It will be performed in New York City at the Tenement Theater, 97 Orchard St., May 1-4, and at the New York Historical Society, 2 West 77th St., May 5, at 2 p.m. Following the May 5 performance, members of the audience will be asked to recount their stories about going to Union Square to participate in political rallies and labor parades. During the week of May 6, the show will be performed three times at the Center for Worker Education before returning to the Tenement Theater. For details or to support the Union Square series of performance workshops, contact Dorothy Fennell at (212) 340-2817.

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