This week in our Ideas Matter segment, we feature MASS Humanities and are joined by Harley Erdman, Professor of Theater at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her new play, Nobody's Girl, will have its premiere at the Academy of Music Theatre in Northampton, MA on October 17th and is based on real events that occurred at the Academy of Music in the early 1940s.
The story is inspired by the life of Mildred E. Walker, the first woman to be appointed Manager at the Academy of Music, whose promotion spawned outrage from the theater's lessees and resulted in a front-page court case.
