Pod Save Us From Another Man as President

One hundred-plus women have run for POTUS, but only one podcast-performance project seeks to dramatize them all

Kate MacCluggage as Margaret Chase Smith. Photo by Buck Lewis

Don’t know if you noticed, but America has trouble electing a woman President. In the past decade, two very qualified female pols applied for the job, and instead voters went with a leaky plastic bucket of radioactive wastewater, rat anuses, and botulism.

Nevertheless, American history has no shortage of women who ran for the Oval Office. To date, more than a hundred have sought the U.S. presidency—most as third-party or independent candidates, a few on big-party tickets. Want to hear some of their stories?

Creator-producer Jocelyn Kuritsky and a veritable village of theater and audio artists hope you do. Season two of A Simple Herstory is currently being written, developed, and workshopped. As you may guess from the tongue-in-cheek title, this hybrid podcast-performance dramatizes the twisty ways various women have tried to win the hearts and minds of the American electorate. Do not expect a tidy morality tale of an idealistic underdog going up against misogyny and big money. It’s complicated.

Each of the series’ subjects is complicated, too. The first season chronicled the rise and fall of Victoria Woodhull. Newspaper editor, stockbroker, “magnetic healer,” and onetime advocate of free love, Woodhull was a 19th-century original who rose from poverty to live nine lives and run for President in 1872, despite widespread mockery and libel. Was she a suffragist pioneer? A serial con artist? A deeply eccentric person demanding freedom in an impossible world? Through eight episodes, the program leapt beyond the bounds of history lesson (and podcast recording booth) to embrace all the messiness that ensues when politics meets a woman who persists. Scripted with Stoppardian brio by Jonathan Goldberg and featuring a wildly talented cast— Kara Young, Florencia Lozano, Carmelita Tropicana, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Tonya Pinkins, Rachel Crowl and more—the series is a marvel of audio dramaturgy and reaped a handful of awards.

The current season charts the political fortunes of Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith (1897-1995) who stood up to Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare and sought the Republican nomination for President in 1964 (losing to Barry Goldwater). Smith bridged two world wars and the birth of civil rights and modern feminism. She was a New England conservative who reminded the nation that freedom of speech is inviolable and McCarthy was a creep. She was the first woman to campaign for a major political party’s nomination. But what really, the Simple Herstorians ask, did Smith stand for? What power did she crave behind the Resolute desk? You’ll have to listen to A Simple Herstory to find out.

And you’ll have a chance soon. Sections from the genre-blurring project will be shared as a live radio drama Sunday, June 7 at 3pm at The Tank (within the curated event roster of Tribeca Festival, turning 25 years old this year).

As usual, producer Kuritsky has assembled only the best to tell Smith’s story; each episode is conceived and performed in the style of a classic Hollywood film: screwball comedy, film noir, and so forth. Voice talent for June 7 includes Kate MacCluggage (brilliant in Irish Rep’s recent The Approach), Cecil Baldwin (the voice of Welcome to Night Vale), Jake Hart (Big George), and Colleen Werthmann (Emmy Award-winning writer and actor with Elevator Repair Service). The event is co-directed by Meghan Finn and Donya K. Washington, with additional conception and consultation by Jenny Turner Hall. Tickets are available here.