By Joe Contreras, Latin Life Denver Media

For this one, you need to transport yourself back to 1857. You’re in New York City, immigrants are pouring in from Europe. Women have little if any rights, police are rioting amongst themselves, leaving the door open for further lawlessness. More than 1000 members of The Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys gangs have engaged in all out warfare leaving Manhattan further terrorized.

It’s the morning of July 5, 1857 fireworks have been going off all night, windows are broken fire hydrants activated and chaos seems to be everywhere. Someone has been murdered.

In the midst of all this a group of women and one man are organizing a secret meeting to discuss the emerging women’s suffrage movement and how they will participate as the East Coast Suffragists. When one of the women, Lauralee, who had been sent out to inform others of the meeting goes missing and presumed dead, the tenants of the boarding house where she lives are suspected of murder.

So how is all of this supposed to be funny? I’m not sure, but it is. The audience on opening night roared with laughter. There was not an empty seat in the theatre and the standing ovation for this world premier proved why it is was a runaway favorite at the 2023 Colorado New Play Summit. The play continues through March 9, 2025.

Alma Mayhew (Megan Hill), her husband, Albert (Matthew Boston), and some of the tenants of their boarding house are making plans for a clandestine meeting. The meeting is being held in the parlor of a lower east side Manhattan home under the guise of a seance just in case the local constable finds out and has them all arrested. When the constable, investigating the murder comes knocking, suspecting everyone in the household of the deed, they are all left covering their tracks each trying to confuse the constable from suspecting them. As a result they are forced to carry on with the charade of a seance.

What follows is a series of twists and turns of who done it, a murder mystery. The tenants are from various backgrounds hoping to find their place in America. There’s Mr. Albright (Rowan Vickers), a newly arrived Irishman immigrant who can’t bear women having any rights other than cooking, cleaning and having babies. Mr. Jennings (Curtis Wiley), is an elegant Black inventor who mostly keeps to himself. Then there is Mr. Orton (Gareth Saxe), who sits quietly in the shadow of the stairway. But who is this guy, really. Something about him doesn’t seem right. Mrs. Adams (Linda Mugleston) and her daughter, Mable (Annie Abramczyk), have come to New York so that Miss Adams could have her out-of-wedlock baby.

So who did it? Did anyone do it? Is Lauralee really dead. Maybe the constable did it. Is he really a constable? And what about the guy who hides out under the staircase, what’s his story?

Beyond being hilarious, The Suffragette’s Murder, makes the audience reflect on how far and how long it has taken women to achieve political, social and civil rights not just in America but across the globe only to have decades of long hard for rights threatened once again.

The term “suffragette” was used as a derogatory term by the press to describe women fighting for the right to vote. The term was originally intended to belittle the women’s efforts. However, some women embraced the term as a way to reclaim it from its original derogatory use.

In 1890, the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) became the largest woman suffrage organization in the country and led much of the struggle for the vote through 1920, when the 19th Amendment was ratified.

In London, the Suffragettes targeted the government by petitioning Downing Street, chaining themselves to government buildings. Suffragettes also damaged London landmarks and works of art, smashed windows and bombed and burned buildings. Over a thousand Suffragettes were sent to prison.

In 1913, Ida B. Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club of Chicago, the nation’s first Black women’s club focused specifically on suffrage. After the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920, Black women supposedly voted in elections and held political offices. It wasn’t until 1965 that Black people as a whole with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 were allowed to vote.

The Suffragett’s Murder plays the Kilstrom Theatre Feb 7 – Mar 9, 2025 in the Denver Center’s Helen Bonfils Theatre Complex, 14th and Curtis streets.

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