Celebrate Women’s History Month with us!
American women won the vote in 1920, following a 72-year battle against—not only male—but female Anti-Suffragists. Today, as we continue to expand the reach of the 19th Amendment, it’s astonishing—and hilarious—to rediscover women’s arguments AGAINST the vote.
Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire crazily recaps those historic arguments. “Woman suffrage is the reform against nature,” declares its unlikely, but irresistibly likeable, heroine. “Ladies, get what you want. Pound pillows. Make a scene. Make home a hell on earth—but do it in a womanly way! That is so much more dignified and refined than walking up to a ballot box and dropping in a piece of paper!”
Funded by a generous gift to the AWPL Foundation by Glenn P. and Susan D. Dickes
Following its “wicked” and “side-splitting” debut, Someone Must Wash the Dishes has delighted nearly 300 audiences nationwide, from Connecticut to Texas to Washington State.
The show is based on Marie Jenney Howe’s 1912 An Anti-Suffrage Monologue, a sharp satire of early 20th-century arguments against women’s rights. Howe’s fictional “Anti” clings earnestly—and absurdly—to the belief that being a “womanly woman” will preserve the Home and save the Nation. Professional actress Michèle LaRue portrays the character as charming, obsessed, and hilariously muddled. LaRue tours nationally with her acclaimed repertoire 30 Tales Well Told, performing stories from America’s Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Her work has been sponsored by over 600 organizations, including libraries, universities, women’s clubs, and historical societies. In 2021, she premiered a recorded Someone Must Wash the Dishes for the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, NY.
Marie Jenney Howe (1870–1934), a Unitarian minister and leading suffragist, was a founder of the influential Heterodoxy club and a central figure in Progressive Era reform. Her Anti-Suffrage Monologue was widely performed at suffrage meetings across the country.
The production was directed by Warren Kliewer, founder of The East Lynne Company, dedicated to reviving forgotten American plays and literature. Kliewer’s legacy as a writer, director, and scholar continues through his published works and ongoing performances of his poetry.