by Blake Herzog, Photos courtesy of Sharlot Hall Museum
Jody Drake stepped into the role of Sharlot Hall 33 years ago to portray the trailblazing Prescott woman, an author, poet, historian and activist who worked in the early 20th century to create the local history museum eventually named after her. She’s made countless appearances as Hall on and off the museum grounds in plays and other events, usually writing her own scripts. She knows the role.
Yet she’s intimidated by an upcoming performance set for 3 p.m., Jan. 17, at the Elks Theatre, 119 years and two days after Hall hosted the first fundraiser for her museum, Hassayampers’ Evening, on the same stage. Drake’s mission: to re-create that program of music and poetry, all of the latter from Hall herself.
“It’s completely different from anything that you have today,” Drake says. “There’s no hype, there’s no punchlines. It’s pure poetry, fine music and an elegant evening of intellectual conversations. In some ways when I first looked at this, I thought it was terrifying. How do I present this to the public and have them not run out screaming in the first 10 minutes?”
She has been considering some updates to the production, such as video projections to accompany her recitation of several of Hall’s poems, but generally intends to preserve as much of the spirit of that long-ago staging.
“This is a re-creation of the actual evening. We have the program from the actual evening with an exact description of how the evening went down.”
The idea for this re-enactment was sparked when Deputy Director for Museum Program Paul Fees, PhD, ran across the program in the museum’s files, along with a 1978 article about it that ran in the Journal of Arizona History. He said events featuring theatrical performances and public speakers were popular forms of entertainment in Prescott at the time, and Hall would have been a particular draw.
“From the second half of the 19th century public lectures and performances like this were, as entertainment, ranked right up there with horse racing and shooting competitions. And that’s something Sharlot excelled at,” Fees says.
By 1907 the poet and author was a major draw on the speaker’s circuit in Arizona and California, and in 1911 her poetry collection Cactus and Pine: Songs of the Southwest was published, earning a favorable review from The New York Times, he says.
The first Hassayampers’ Evening (taking a name given to the earliest Hassayampa River gold miners and their tales of wondrous fortune) interspersed Southwestern-themed music performed on piano and violin with Hall’s introduction about the museum plan and recitations of six of her poems.
Despite the details from the program and other accounts, there are some gaps in knowledge of the event — what time it was held, the cost of tickets and the amount of money it raised. No known photos exist.
Drake is producing and directing the show, and some of the people she’s approached about taking part agree the prospect of reviving this show is daunting.
“The actors I’ve talked to have looked at it and said ‘This looks terrifying, how are we going to present this? … But we’re going to create a portal of time,” she says.
Museum Development Director Sally Jackson says January’s event also will be a fundraiser: “She did this 21 years before the museum existed, bringing out her vision and her goals, and we want to convey her vision is still alive, and fundraising is important to keep it going.”
Despite her uncertainty, Drake expects her show will carry a relevance spanning the almost 120 years since its inspiration. “It’s a literary evening of socializing, discussing intellectual matters. And that in itself makes it really beautiful, because how often do we do that?”
Tickets for Hassayampers’ Evening: Echoes of Time are $47 for general admission, $92 for VIP seating and
$102 for box seats. A reception featuring Drake and all other performers for VIP and box seat holders will be held across the street at the Hassayampa Inn.
For additional information visit www.sharlothallmuseum.org or call 928.445.3122.
