The Inception
Infused with a curiosity about women, performance, and power, A Simple Herstory was ideated several years ago by actor and producer, Jocelyn Kuritsky. She thought...Victoria Woodhull, Shirley Chisholm, Hillary Clinton...but surely, there had to have been more women who'd tried to become President, right? Right! 100+ more. Kuritsky called her good friend (and playwright and history buff) Jonathan A. Goldberg. They met in a coffee shop and started talking. The rest is herstory. It is extraordinary to think that so many women have attempted to run for President of the United States. Who were they? Who do we imagine they were? What do we know about them? What don't we know about them? What did they say? How did they say it?
The Plan
A Simple Herstory is a theatrical and high concept podcast series about the women who have run for President of the United States. Over a hundred women have made a run for it, but their stories are rarely heard. This podcast series features the lives of the women who aggressively, voraciously, and passionately sought to assume the highest office in the land — and lost. Each season will shift tonally from one candidate to the next. Executed with a commitment to experimentation and structural narrative deviations, the series bends our expectations; not just of content, but of form.
The first season is about the first woman to make a bid for the presidency — Victoria Woodhull. She ran in 1872, before women had the right to vote. She was a suffragist, a labor advocate, a newspaper publisher, a stock broker, an actress, a con artist, and a spiritualist medium. The series is not just about bringing to light the fact that women have run for a long time (or that over 100 women have made a run for the Presidency) — it's about the fact that complex, flawed, ambitious women have never stopped running. A Simple Herstory is an investigation of how we receive women's voices, the association of politics and theatrics, and ultimately how one can accrue influence. It's about the deeply human need for power, an assessment of how we define power, and how a seemingly lonely compulsion can become the unrelenting pursuit of the collective. The project is a warts and all look at the women, their ambitions, their drives, their ascents, their plummets. Contextualizing and deconstructing our history, and looking back at the women who have attempted to run will provide audiences with thoughtful examinations of these candidates and their search for authority over the highest office. The Muse Project — dedicated to centering the literal and metaphorical voices of women actors, and The Tank — dedicated to championing new ideas and forms of expression, partner for a slice of herstory.
The first season is about the first woman to make a bid for the presidency — Victoria Woodhull. She ran in 1872, before women had the right to vote. She was a suffragist, a labor advocate, a newspaper publisher, a stock broker, an actress, a con artist, and a spiritualist medium. The series is not just about bringing to light the fact that women have run for a long time (or that over 100 women have made a run for the Presidency) — it's about the fact that complex, flawed, ambitious women have never stopped running. A Simple Herstory is an investigation of how we receive women's voices, the association of politics and theatrics, and ultimately how one can accrue influence. It's about the deeply human need for power, an assessment of how we define power, and how a seemingly lonely compulsion can become the unrelenting pursuit of the collective. The project is a warts and all look at the women, their ambitions, their drives, their ascents, their plummets. Contextualizing and deconstructing our history, and looking back at the women who have attempted to run will provide audiences with thoughtful examinations of these candidates and their search for authority over the highest office. The Muse Project — dedicated to centering the literal and metaphorical voices of women actors, and The Tank — dedicated to championing new ideas and forms of expression, partner for a slice of herstory.
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Special thanks to Jennifer Allen, Vanessa Aspillaga, Taylor Barfield, Sara Barker, Andrés Bartos, Ben Beckley, Teddy Bergman, Pepper Binkley, Havilah Brewster, Rora Brodwin, Oliver Butler, Jaime Carrillo, Luis Castro, Jess Chayes, Naveen Bahar Choudhury, Jody Christopherson, Alek Deva, Jay Dintaman, Maria Dizzia, Amanda Duarte, Dianna Edgil, Matt Fidler, Kellie Fitzgerald, Joe Flippin, Meg Flippin, Beth Gittleman, Robert A.K. Gonyo, Abe Greenwald, Rebecca Gushin, Jessica Hansen, Jan Leslie Harding, Jake Hart, Chisa Hutchinson, Bob Jaffe, Kendra Jain, Landen Jones, Zac Kline, Portia Krieger, Jenny Lawton, Robert Emmet Lunney, Melissa Lusk, Kate MacCluggage, Rami Margron, Kate Marks, Rebecca Louise Miller, Winter Miller, Brian Miskell, Carol Monda, Zainab Musa, Lila Neugebauer, Carol Ostrow, Emily Louise Perkins, Jessica Pohly, Kevin Ramsay, Katrin Redfern, Tlaloc Rivas, Stephanie Emma Roberts, Heidi Rodewald, Nina Roy, Parris Sarter, Duncan Sheik, David Shih, Christopher Silveri, Wayne Shulmister, Leigh Silverman, Ciji Singletary, David Skeist, Rachel Sussman, Jennifer Joan Thompson, Paco Tolson, Joe Wang, Sandra Wilcox, Lanie Zipoy, Jennifer H. Zoble for their early support of this project.
