Young Chautauqua Monologues
Written & Performed by
Jessica Perry & Liesl Jensen

Sponsored by:
Bishop Hill Heritage Association

Followed by a Q & A discussion about performing living history as a student and how Young Chautauqua training as living history scholars influenced their respective professions in the performing arts as adults.
Young Chautauqua Presentations: Through short monologues, suffragists Julia Ward Howe and Caroline Nichols Churchill share their story and how they each, in different eras, uniquely contributed to the eventual passage of the 19th Amendment granting U.S. women the right to vote. Monologues are excerpted from Mosaic: Voices of Women's Suffrage, a living history play. The video clips were produced/directed by Jen Myronuk.
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    Host, Scholar & Performer
    Brian "Fox" Ellis has created more than a dozen one
    man shows, several of which have received funding from the Illinois,
    Indiana, Iowa and Missouri Humanities Councils. He is the author of more
    than 20 books including three books of poetry, and two books on Whitman,
    Song of Myself and Walt Whitman’s Lincoln. He teaches creative writing
    across the curriculum with an emphasis on using poetry to bring history
    and ecology to life. He has also launched a new podcast, Fox Tales
    International, and will soon host and produce two new television series
    for PBS, Fox Tales Folklore and History…In Person!
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    Presenter
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    Writer & Performer
    Jessica Perry grew up being toted around in a rock climbing rucksack, carried to mountain tops and across continents. The intrepid attitude rubbed off from her parents and she followed her passion and inquisitive instinct to circus arts.

    Jessica began with flying trapeze and aerial acrobatics in Colorado as a teenager. When the time came, she was accepted to the Bachelor’s degree program for circus at the National Centre for Circus Arts in London where she also performed with Stufish Productions in SOHO and CIRCA in Depart. Since her graduation, she has been traveling around Europe and Australia, and working with AIDA Cruise Productions, Creactive by Cirque du Soleil, and Emerald City Trapeze Arts.

    Recklessly inquisitive about the mundane and the extraordinary, Jessica has always been fascinated by the stories behind the obvious. At 13, she helped write a play about the women's suffrage movement, titled Mosaic, and performed it at the National Women’s Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony in Seneca Falls, New York. These experiences in her teenage-hood have informed the creative process for her work as an artist today.
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    Actor, Shakespearean & Writer
    Liesl first found her passion when as a shy seven-year old she was introduced to The Winter’s Tale, and fell head over heels in love. So, at eight she became the assistant dramaturg for The Tempest at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, known around the offices as the “Tiny ‘Turg”. From an early, but much lauded turn as Stephano the drunken butler in The Tempest, to a later and more nuanced performance as Queen Katherine in Henry VIII, it was through Shakespeare that she discovered acting. In 2016 she finished a twelve year quest to watch every play in the Shakespeare cannon – now her goal is to act in all of them.

    Her journey into acting has led her to wide ranging experiences including playing God as part of the International Festival of New Work, devising an adaptation of Three Sisters that involved a dragon, East 15’s notorious living history project, and collaborating with Simon Stephens on the first UK revival of his play Three Kingdoms.

    When it comes to Shakespeare, Liesl has performed on a historic proscenium stage where Mozart stood; in an ensemble directed, lights up, in the round production; on an enormous outdoor stage at a castle, and at an intimate pop-up performance at a brewery; for school children, Shakespeare experts, and foreign language audiences; from audiences of 4 people, to audiences of 800; and trained with some of the foremost Shakespeareans in the world.