Lucy Joseph, A Staged Reading

A new Farm Arts Collective performance based on the life of a 19th century gender non-conforming pioneer Lucy Ann Joseph Israel Lobdell. Directed by Mimi McGurl with contributed story and texts from the Farm Arts Collective Ensemble, author William Klaber, and historical texts by L.A. Lobdell and others. The original musical performance is in development with Jess Beveridge, Tannis Kowalchuk, Doug Rogers, Pam Arnold, Annie Hat, John Roth & Mark Dunau.

Lucy Ann Joseph Israel Lobdell lived an extraordinary life by any measure.  In 1855, Lobdell published a personal narrative as The Female Hunter of Delaware and Sullivan Counties. In this depiction of an unconventional life, Lobdell struggles to fit in as a daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Ultimately, they challenge the rigid expectations of what it meant to be a man or a woman in this era. We know from the historical record that Lobdell lived much of their life as a man, facing classic frontier hardships, witnessing the violent displacement of Native Americans, and feeling the consequences of a brutal Civil War. Traveling from the Catskills to Pennsylvania, and as far as the Minnesota Territories, they were run out of town more than once, jailed for vagrancy, and even tried in court unsuccessfully for impersonating a man. We also know Lobdell found love and a sense of spirituality, living for several years as a Reverend and as the husband of Marie Perry. In 1879, Lobdell’s brother successfully filed for guardianship of his sister’s estate and had her declared a lunatic. Now committed to the Willard Asylum for the Insane, in one of the earliest case studies on “Sexual Perversion,” Lobdell describes themself as “a man in all that the name implies.” Debates on what this means have continued ever since.