Mother Jones In Heaven - a musical by Si Kahn is on tour nationwide, reminding audiences of how powerful one person can be in service to the betterment of others. The topic is as relevant today as it was when Mother Jones was organizing the working class at the turn of the last century.
Vivian Nesbitt (Breaking Bad, The Night Shift, Longmire, Law and Order SVU, Off-Broadway and more) portrays Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, with musical accompaniment by John Dillon (Art of the Song Radio) in this rousing musical about the infamous labor organizer who lead the charge for better working conditions and fair pay for miners, mill workers and child laborers. Mother Jones was dubbed The Most Dangerous Woman in America because, said a West Virginia prosecutor, “at the crook of her little finger, she could get 8000 men to walk out on strike.” Feared, revered and lauded in song and story, Mother Jones was “the grandmother of all agitators” during the late 19th and early 20th century.
This one-woman performance with 12 songs has one foot in the folk tradition of storytelling and acoustic guitars, and the other in the true American art of musical theater. The show opens as Mother Jones arrives in heaven to discover that Heaven is identical to her favorite Irish Pub. Over the course of the 90-minute performance Mother Jones looks back over her life, sifting through her storied past, balancing the scales. On the one hand, her methods and practices, on the other, her reputation and results. Moments of profound insight are woven with hilarious tales of a hellion in her prime.
Author Si Kahn has worked for over fifty years as a professional civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician, touring and recording with such artists as Pete Seeger. The seven musicals for which he wrote the songs and/or script have had full productions at the Berkeley, Milwaukee and Tennessee Repertory Theatres; the Goodspeed Opera House’s Norma Terris Theatre; Piccolo Spoleto Fringe in Charleston, SC; Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, AK; Central Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA; the Warehouse Performing Arts Center in Cornelius, NC; the Subversive Theatre Collective in Buffalo, NY; and Main Stage West in Sebastopol, CA.