Animal Engine Theatre Company presents "Henrietta Solway"

In 2021, the National Willa Cather Center commissioned Animal Engine Theatre Company to create Henrietta Solway, a brand-new work for the stage that combines the short fiction and serialized novels of Willa Cather into one epic story. 

When a tomboy growing up in a small Midwestern town is befriended by a glamorous opera singer with tales of art and culture in the big city, her restless passion is given purpose and the direction of her life is forever changed. Cather works such as “The Treasure of Far Island,” “Tommy the Unsentimental,” “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional,” and novels A Lost Lady, The Professor’s House, and Lucy Gayheart are woven together and reimagined to tell a story of ambition, sacrifice, and reconciliation. 

Co-creator Karim Muasher and the education staff of the National Willa Cather Center created this zine to accompany the performance. The zine provides insights into the work of adapting fiction for the stage and takes a deep dive into bicycle culture during Cather's early years. It includes the full text of "Tommy, the Unsentimental."