‘Gertrude Stein Has Arrived’

Betty Jean Steinshouer as Gertrude Stein. [Photo courtesy of the artist]

Since 1989, Betty Jean Steinshouer has presented Chautauqua-style programs of authors Willa Cather, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Gertrude Stein, Sarah Orne Jewett, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 44 states and Canada. She chose the outspoken Stein to be developed for the avant-garde Fringe Theater Festivals in Orlando and Tampa.

That show, “Gertrude Stein Has Arrived,” will preview at the Rainbow Springs Art in Dunnellon gallery at 5 p.m. June 6, with 50% of ticket sales donated to the gallery.

The show will have a five-performance run at the 10^th annual Tampa Fringe Theatre Festival from June 11-21.  

Steinshouer will be available for a discussion after her 60-minute presentation in Dunnellon on June 6, which includes radio broadcasts of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower from the battlefields of Normandy, before and after D-Day, and of Stein’s radio speech at the end of the war, requested by a young reporter named Eric Sevareid, who had tracked down where Stein and her longtime partner Alice B. Toklas were living in exile during the Nazi occupation of France, the news release noted.

“Gertrude Stein Has Arrived” got its title from a speaking tour of the United States made by Stein in 1934-35, 30 years after she had left Baltimore to live in Paris. When she and Toklas sailed into New York on the SS Champlain, Times Square signs said, “GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED,” “GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED,” “GERTRUDE STEIN HAS ARRIVED,” according to the release.

Traveling from the East Coast to the West, the two visited 37 cities in 23 states over seven months. They had tea with Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House and the First Lady asked Stein’s advice on how to get good publicity, the release stated.  

As a humanities scholar, Steinshouer had been accustomed to years of research on her characters. With Stein, it was difficult.

“So much of her work had not been published, or had only been printed in small, limited editions. It was only when I focused on the war years that a wealth of information came though, and it’s very current for what we are facing today, regarding what she had to say about allies and the United Nations, and what it all means, especially to Americans living far away from home,” Steinshouer said in the release.

The gallery is located at 20826 Walnut St., Dunnellon. The phone is (352) 763-4048.

Tickets for “Gertrude Stein Has Arrived” are $10 at the gallery and at rainbowspringsart.com