The story of industrialization in New England begins with the rapid proliferation of textile mills in the early 19th century.  The mills transformed the landscape and lives.......

.....of ordinary citizens by creating new towns and drawing workers off the farm, and later bringing in large numbers of European immigrants. The impact was swift and dramatic and its legacy is still felt today, long after the decline and closing of most of the mills.  That legacy includes not only the buildings and machinery left behind, but also a strong interest in preserving and celebrating the rich history of New England's textile mill workers.

Pontine's Co-Artistic Directors, M. Marguerite Mathews and Greg Gathers, first became interested in this subject because its resident theatre is located along the "industrial corridor" of Portsmouth NH. Research into the surrounding neighborhood led to a larger interest in the experiences of New England textile workers.

DEARLY EARNED is an original, full-length play, which brings to life the realities of working in a 19th century mill town. The text for DEARLY EARNED is drawn entirely from historical sources: letters, diaries, and newspaper articles of the period. The piece includes the correspondence of Amy Galusha to her family in Berkshire, VT, and a collection of letters written by the immigrant Hollingworth brothers, who worked in Massachusetts and Connecticut, to their uncle in England. These letters express the hopes and fears of the writers and reveal the difficulties of their working lives in the mills of New England.

DEARLY EARNED is a collage of both public and private reflections on early industry. The staging conventions used reflect several 19th century entertainments. The history of the mills is told through a compilation of contemporary newspaper articles which accompany a panorama composed of period illustrations and photographs.

19th century audiences delighted in the spectacle of panoramas depicting historical events, literature, etc. Painted canvases would be unrolled across the stage to the accompaniment of music and dramatic oratory. Pontine's miniature version of this convention was inspired by seeing an exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art of a panorama of The Pilgrim's Progress which had recently been discovered at the historical society in Saco ME.

Another group of historic photos, screened onto muslin, are used to illustrate a collection of news stories which tell the human experience of working in the mills. Some of these stories are amusing anecdotes, many tell of gruesome accidents which occurred in the mills, or the terrible consequences of poverty and alcoholism for the workers and their families.

Other scenes in DEARLY EARNED make use of a 19th century parlor entertainment called Toy Theatre. Using pasteboard illustrations, children would reenact their favorite scenes from popular melodramas for friends and family. Pontine1s production uses these cut-out illustrations to accompany the Galusha and Hollingworth letters and the day book of a mill manager, which outlines the daily activities of a mill and its workers.

DEARLY EARNED is designed to fit easily into a variety of performance sites, including libraries, museums, town halls and schools, as well as theaters. Related workshops and residency activities are also available. For more information, visit Pontine's dedicated website: www.dearlyearned.org