AUSTIN, Texas —The Center for Women’s Studies at The University of Texas at Austin presents Lynn C. Miller in a special performance of her one-woman show “Gertrude Stein as Gertrude Stein” Friday Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. in the Utopia Theatre, Social Work Building, 1925 San Jacinto.
Miller, a writer and playwright who teaches in the communication studies department of UT Austin, has performed this show at Chautauquas, book festivals, museums and theaters across the country.
Stein (1874-1946) was one of the most innovative and controversial writers and thinkers of the 20th Century. A graduate of Radcliffe and a favorite pupil of psychologist William James, Stein moved to Paris in 1903 and became the center of Left Bank bohemian society. At 27 rue de Fleurus, she and Alice B. Toklas displayed their collection of Fauvist and Cubist art and introduced their friends Picasso, Gris and Matisse to visiting American writers and artists.
In 1934-35, Stein toured the United States on a celebrated lecture tour following the great success of her autobiography of Toklas. In Texas, she spoke at the Hockaday School in Dallas, where Toklas, a renowned cook, took away a recipe for what Stein considered the only digestible corn bread she had ever eaten.
In “Gertrude Stein as Gertrude Stein,” Miller presents this eccentric modernist writer as she might speak to audiences in 2000. The first part of the performance, a monologue in Stein’s voice, acquaints the audience with Stein’s life, writing, and artistic interests. The second half allows the audience to question “Miss Stein” and then to direct questions to Miller as a scholar of Stein.
Miller’s latest play, “Passenger on the Ship of Fools,” written with Austin writer Laura Furman, is about the Texas-born writer Katherine Anne Porter.
Miller can be reached at 471-1930.
