Ogunquit News
Wells-Ogunquit Adult Community Education presents Amelia Earhart
Jessa Piaia, pictured here, will bring Amelia Earhart to life in a special Women's History Month program scheduled for Wednesday, March 21.
Courtesy photo
The performance will be held at the Wells Public Library on Wednesday, March 21, at 6:30 p.m., with a snow date of March 28.
Piaia is returning for her second season in Wells after a very popular portrayal of Clara Barton in March of 2006.
The program is set in October 1936, when Earhart was a popular speaker on the national circuit.
Acclaimed as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932, she was previously part of the 1928 "Friendship" flight, departing from East Boston Harbor on its historic trans-Atlantic journey.
Inspired at an early age by the suffragist movement, Earhart identified with the generation of "the new woman" who had won the right to vote in 1920. At the time of the "Friendship" flight, Earhart was also a social worker at the Denison House in downtown Boston.
She served as a role model while pursuing activities that ranged from being a guidance counselor at Purdue University and an aviation writer and author of three books to designing luggage and a line of clothes for "women who live actively."
Sponsored by Wells-Ogunquit Adult Community Education, the Wells Public Library, the Friends of the Wells Public Library and the Wells-Ogunquit Historical Society, the March 21 program will run 50 minutes in length with an informal question-and-answer session and refreshments to follow. The program is appropriate for audience members ages 10 through adult.
Clad in basic aviator gear and bearing a striking resemblance to the subject of her character portrayal, Piaia uses drama to reveal the accomplishments, struggles and contributions of women to American history.
Piaia is acclaimed for "recreating history in the fullest sense," and for using "solid research, compelling writing, and artistry to bring off a one-woman show, perhaps the most difficult kind of acting challenge." She performs at educational institutions, museums, libraries, worship services and historical organizations.
Piaia studied performance at London's Oval House Theatre and graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She currently works in the Anthropology Department at Harvard University.
Research for this program began in 1992 and was conducted in the Amelia Earhart Collection at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, Mass.; the Microtext Department at the Boston Public Library, and the Earhart Archives at the Medford, Mass., Public Library. Piaia performs at educational and cultural settings throughout New England and also performed at the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Presidents' Day Weekend of 2004.
For more information and to register, please call the Wells Public Library at 646-8181.
