Lucy Joseph is an original performance by Farm Arts Collective 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 features Jess Beveridge, Doug Rogers, Pam Arnold & John Roth.

Notes from the Director:
The historical figure at the center of our play, Lucy Ann/Joseph Israel Lobdell is very close to my heart and I know many people in our community feel the same way. I first heard about the Female Hunter of Long Eddy more than twenty years ago when LGBTQ historian Jonathan Ned Katz referred me to an article in his anthology Gay American History. I had the simple and pleasant feeling that someone not unlike me lived here on the Delaware River a very long time ago. Now, after years of research and reading, this feeling is not so simple.

During Lobdell’s well-documented years, the amount of colorful labels attached to them in newspaper articles, histories, and medical journals was as much of a shock to me as the fact that so many people cared enough to come up with them. It seems as though everyone had an inventive and frequently insulting term for this person raised as a girl who, by 30 years of age, clearly preferred to live their life as a man. This speaks volumes to the cultural shifts squeezing through so much religious and political turmoil during the nineteenth century.

It would be impossible to catalog all of the changes the United States went through during Lobdell’s lifespan. In 1829, the year they were born, there were only 24 states, slavery was legal in 15 of them, and indigenous tribes still had sovereignty over significant North American territory. After the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the War of the Rebellion (1861-1865), and the rapid rise of industrialized capitalism, the country was nearly unrecognizable as the purple mountain majesties we sing about today. Scientific revolutions centered around Darwin’s theories, as well as gender and class struggles, were exploding into the political sphere. In fact, the notion of X and Y chromosomes was only articulated a few years before Lobdell’s death in 1912. Was Joseph ever allowed to rest in a stable understanding of who and what he was? There really is no way we will ever know.  

Now, nearly two centuries later, one would think we as a society might have progressed in our thinking about these issues, relegating the harms done to Lobdell to our past. Yet, there are still powerful and influential people who insist that our genetic markings at birth remain forever the essential truth of who we are. So much so, in fact, that the current Supreme Court will almost certainly allow states to make accessible medical treatment to young people differently based on the sex they were assigned at birth. I would argue that progress has been made in many realms during these centuries. Yet, Lobdell’s life stands as a beacon of exactly how much more work still needs to be done in order for all of us to have the freedom to determine, for ourselves, our own gender identities and our own personal truths. 

All photos below are by Robin Michals at the International Human Rights Art Festival at The Tank in NYC, December 2024.