Almost All About Eva, historically researched and written by Kim (Handgen) Sandstrom, is based on the life of Eva Lewis, a real woman born in the midst of the US Civil War in an Underground Railroad town, Adrian, Michigan. The vibrant Eva is brought to life on stage as the audience travels across nearly fifty years of Eva’s lived experience. The play explores Eva’s personal awakening and self-authentication: her recognition of herself as different, independent, and her drive for an education. Her story is set against the rigid social constraints of a time when women had little voice or agency in the basic decisions of their lives. By intertwining historical record, inherited memory, and theatrical imagination, Almost All About Eva examines how a woman’s identity can be both shaped by her era and quietly resistant to it—and how reclaiming that identity generations later becomes an act of recognition and restoration.
Part of The Fertile Ground Festival of New Works. A citywide, multi-week performing arts festival taking place in venues throughout Portland, Oregon and the surrounding areas.