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The Arts

World Premiere Play at Kirkwood, April 9-11

By March 31, 2010November 16th, 2018No Comments

Story of newlyweds Herbert and Lou Hoover sheds light on “little-known” side of history

World events of 110 years ago that still echo today will come into focus with a new theatrical production at Kirkwood Community College. The world premiere of Besieged!: Herbert and Lou Hoover in China’s Boxer Rebellion will be performed in Ballantyne Theater Friday through Sunday, April 9-11. Friday and Saturday performances are 7:30 p.m. with a 2:30 p.m. Sunday matinee.

Rick Anderson is director of the play, with stage and lighting design by Doug Anderson and costume design by Annee Noah. The play was created by Kirkwood staffer and veteran writer/journalist Pamela Edwards. She says she has been interested in the historic events behind the production for some time.

“I started researching the connections a young Herbert Hoover and his new bride Lou had to the events in 2004. The newly married couple found themselves facing death, disease and non-stop shelling in northern China. The Boxer Rebellion was in 1900, but I found it as topical as a newscast on CNN. The idea of Westerners trapped by foreign rebels is familiar to everyone today,” Edwards said.

The newly married Hoovers went to China to develop coal mines and seaport facilities soon after they graduated from Stanford University. Chinese officials urged the young mining engineer to find gold, and do it quickly. They equipped Herbert Hoover and his team with equipment and capital, sending them to the northern mining region of Tientsin. The next months would put them in the midst of armed conflict and a siege of their outpost.

The story line of Besieged! captures events on the historic scale of the Boxer Rebellion, contrasting with the daily adventures of the young Hoovers bravely facing danger while forging their new marriage bond in tempestuous times. Director Rick Anderson says the world premiere play is a rare chance to tell “an amazing but true story” with rich teaching potential.

“For a college cast and crew to work on a brand new play with the author at rehearsals is nearly pretty rare,” Anderson said. “It is has been a wonderful opportunity that gives our students the feel of doing not only an important story but real, professional theatre. The task of telling the story is all getting created by us, here and now. The students have learned a great deal of history and information along the way.”

Playwright Edwards adds that the future American president and his young wife lived his own share of real-life heroic adventures more than a century ago.

“I came to look at this young transplanted Iowan and his new wife as real action heroes. At the age of 26 Herbert stops a lynch mob and leads U.S. Marines in relief of their Chinese city. Lou Hoover carried a .38 pistol with her around the city of Tientsin. Herbert tried to talk her into heading back to America at the first signs of danger. She refused to leave him. This is a tough and tender story, more amazing because it’s true,” Edwards said.

Rick Anderson also observed that the larger story has a lot to say about modern lives in the U.S. “I see this play much like newlywed Lou Henry Hoover came to see it– as an ‘Adventure,’ capital A. It’s that adventurous part of the American culture that I feel has been either lost or at least dormant for quite some time. This story gives us that adventure once again,” Anderson added.

The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch contributed much to the writing and production of the new play. Photographs, artifacts and research materials informed the sets, costumes and story of the play itself.

Tickets for the Kirkwood Community College production of Besieged! Herbert & Lou Hoover in China’s Boxer Rebellion are $8 for adults and $5 for seniors and students with current ID. Kirkwood faculty, staff and students are admitted free. Tickets are available by calling the Kirkwood Theatre box office, (319) 398-7662.