Dear Rhoda

Description

A Play in 2 Acts

By Donna Russell and David Ranney
Charles H. Kerr Publishing

In chaotic bohemian Chicago of the 1920s, a powerful love affair is threatened by illness, a “red” scare and anti-Semitic hatred. Confined to a tuberculosis sanitarium, Rhoda corresponds with Jerry, a left-wing Jewish bookseller. Their letters reveal that the challenges and hatred they face are countered by their mutual love for each other, their love of literature, poetry and music and the left wing political causes they fight for. Their struggles come to life in the counter culture of Chicago’s Dil Pickle Club, which is frequented by Rhoda, Jerry, and their friends like poet Carl Sandburg, lawyer Clarence Darrow, labor leader Jack Jones, hobo and left-wing debater Lizzie Davis, and feminist “Red” Martha Biegler. The discovery of the letters nearly a century later in an abandoned trunk offers a message of hope by linking their past to the present.