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Boxcar Bertha

by Kerry Reid in collaboration with Christina Augello and John Warren

part of DIVAfest 2004

review in the SF Bay Guardian May 26, 2004 (Robert Avila)
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The Exit Theatre and DIVAfest present the depression-era career of anarchist hobo "Boxcar" Bertha Thompson in a new stage adaptation by Kerry Reid, in collaboration with Exit artistic director Christina Augello and director John Warren. In this simply staged yet evocative 60-minute monologue, Augello assumes the role of Bertha, here supposedly reclaiming her own story from the largely fictionalized narrative published as her "autobiography" by Emma Goldman's old flame Ben Reitman, the once semi-legendary hobo doctor to the underclass. To the wonderfully atmospheric accompaniment of Jack "Applejack" Walworth's mellifluous acoustic guitar (a cool mix of original material with standard and period tunes), Augello's genial and compassionate heroine recounts her wandering years from the age of 15 among the poor and working classes in (another) age of naked class warfare. Her tour of the country has her working variously as a grifter, prostitute, and labor agitator, all the while balancing her indignation on behalf of the oppressed and her prescriptions for a better world with a strong sense of the humor and beauty in human relations.

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