ASHLAND — Opening night for Ashland Chautauqua’s annual week of evening performances and daytime workshops is fast approaching.
This year’s theme, “America’s Stories,” celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation. The theme’s five representative characters span chronologically from Thomas Paine, an influential “Founding Father,” to Coretta Scott King, a civil rights leader who lived into the 21st century.
The first of five evening presentations, on Tuesday, July 21, begins with a brief “teaser” performance by each scholar who will perform during the week. In that way, audience members get a preview of the upcoming performances.
Then the first character to take the stage at Guy C. Myers Memorial Band Shell in Brookside Park will be Erma Bombeck, a syndicated humor columnist in the mid-to-late 20th century.
She looked at the foibles of family daily life and described them with such clever compassion that everyone living in an American family could feel she was validating the heart of their own lives.
Erma Bombeck will be portrayed by Susan Marie Frontczak, a long-time Chautauqua scholar, performer, teacher and coach. She has written training handbooks for Youth Chautauqua scholars and, in 2022, taught in The Chautauqua Training Institute, sponsored by North Dakota Humanities, which prepared 12 new Chautauqua scholars for the national circuit.
She has previously appeared in Ashland as Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie.
The following night, Wednesday, July 22, introduces a new scholar to the national Chautauqua circuit. He is Martin Lahman, a junior at Metropolitan State University of Denver majoring in political science. Lahman joined the High Plains (Greeley, Colorado) Youth Chautauqua in the third grade, a year earlier than the minimum requirement for the program.
“Martin was ready from Day 1,” said Thelma Bear Edgerton, retired director of Greeley’s Youth Chautauqua program. “He’s a very serious scholar. He does the research, he loves performing, he knows his character.”
In 2024 he gave the closing youth performance at High Plains Chautauqua, portraying J. Edgar Hoover, the controversial director of the FBI in the mid-20th century.
Lahman will portray Thomas Paine, a British subject who believed the American colonies should be free from British rule. He communicated by way of pamphlets, perhaps his best known being “Common Sense,” in which he eloquently spelled out the case for a people’s right to self-governance.
His writings stirred the American spirit for independence and bolstered it during its darkest days in the Revolutionary War. The rest of the week will include scholar Becky Stone portraying Mary Fields, a freed slave who ended up in Montana Territory known as Stagecoach Mary, delivering the U.S. Mail.
Fields’ portrayal is Thursday evening. On Friday, John Dennis Anderson, a perennial favorite at Ashland Chautauqua, will portray Washington Irving, best known as the writer of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.”
The week ends with Saturday’s portrayal of Coretta Scott King, a civil rights leader and (in today’s terminology) a major influencer and support person for Martin Luther King, Jr. She will be portrayed by Rebecca Marks Jimerson, a newcomer to Ashland Chautauqua.
For more information about Ashland Chautauqua, including the characters, the scholars and a schedule for opening musical acts, workshops and Coffee with the Scholars, see ashlandchautauqua.org.
All Ashland Chautauqua activities and performances are free to the public. Ashland Chautauqua is supported by the Ohio Arts Council, the City of Ashland’s Parks and Recreation Department, Explore Ashland, local businesses and organizations and by local residents who want to see this vibrant celebration of history thrive in this community.
Ashland Main Street is the fiscal agent. Ashland Chautauqua programming is planned and implemented by a committee of local citizen volunteers.