The Oneida Public Library Players will premier the readers theater production of “The Game of Life: The Great Peterboro Baseball Story” in a free performance on September 22 at 7:00 p.m. in the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro.

The performance in the National Abolition Hall of Fame, located upstairs at the Smithfield Center, is also the kick-off for NAHOF’s special weekend called Ballots, Bloomers and Marmalade, a celebration of the centennial of women’s suffrage in New York State.

The play, directed by Virginia Drake with the assistance of Ken Drake, is a comedy inspired by the first recorded baseball game played by girls that occurred in Peterboro in August 1868. Playwright Tom Murray based major characters on historical figures: Gerrit Smith and his wife Ann, their granddaughter Nannie Miller and Smith’s famous cousin, the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton. With poetic license, the play adds to the mix of suffragettes and abolitionists some residents of Peterboro’s Home for Destitute Children, a charitable home founded by Gerrit Smith in 1871.

The play features Ken Drake as Gerrit Smith, Virginia Drake as Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Kathy Brodeur as the Village Busybody, Sarah Davies Hasegawa as Ann Smith and Tom Lemery as Mr. Blakeman, the Keeper of the Children’s Home.

As for the children, Anna Zamperetti portrays Nannie Miller, Kate Bassin is the maid Bridgit and Ryan Paul plays Nannie’s nemesis Freddie Hoops. The “destitute children” from the home are played by Addie Davies (Nellie Case), Mack Davies (Earl Moshier), Anna Hasegawa (Flossie Frisbie), Jonathan Litwak (Charlie Butler), Casey Sullivan (Albert Abbott) and Elizabeth Tooker (Maude Hughes).

Music and songs of the period, including suffragette anthems, will be provided by members of the Craobh Dugan Irish musicians: Mike Carrol on flute, concertina and bones; Bill Fahy on guitar and banjo; Kelly Fahy-Ciotti on vocals; Mike Hoke on fiddle; and Skip Mansur on guitar and mandolin.

Admission is free and open to the public. The production is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the New York Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and administered by CNY Arts.

The OPL Players will reprise their performance at Madison Hall on State Rt. 20 in Morrisville on Friday, October 20, at 7:00 p.m. and at the Oneida Community Mansion House at 170 Kenwood Ave. in Oneida on Sunday, November 5, at 2:00 p.m.

For further information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call (315) 363-3050.

By martha

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