The Peculiarly Salubrious, Singular and Curious, Mildly Outrageous and Sometimes Lugubrious History of a Natural Spring and the Community That Grew Up Around It
Presented by
Antioch Area Theatre
and the Yellow Springs Historical Society

July 17, 18, 19 2003


Louise Smith wrote and directed this outdoor summer theatrical and dance experience as part of the festivities for the bicentennial of both state and village with the help of villagers, Antioch students, high school students and children. The complexity of the 14 scenes reflected the complexity of the village history, with water as a unifying theme.

Choreography and co-direction by Jill Becker, scenography by Helen Richardson, technical direction by Adrian Davidson, costume design by Lisa Hunt, puppet design by Beth Holyoke, video sequences by Travis Tips, stage management by Corrie Baumgardner and music by Beth Berkholder/Mitzy Manny/Ken Simon.

Cast: Valerie Blackwell Truitt, Aurelia Blake, Rebecca Burrell, Courtney Combs, Jude Logan Demers, Nancy Eppling, Keiffer Erdman, Athena Franklin, Belle Pilar Fleming, Jacqueling Huan, Judith Hempfling, Flo Lorenz, Janell Martin, Shirley Martin, Christ Mortimer, Sharon Perry, Glenn Reed, Dylan Reiff, Carrie Rosenberger, Hyacinth Wallace, Scott Sanders, Erin Silvert Noftle, Howard Shook, Vicki Walters.


A note about the play from the director:

By its design, this kind of project is incomplete. There is no way to tell 200 years of history in under two hours and get it all right. People and events were chosen based on research, talking to friends, and the generous knowledge of the Historical Society and Antiochiana. What was collected was funneled through the subjective filters of the artists. There is much more to say and explore about our town and college. We just couldn't fit it all in. The chronology stops in the 70's because anything more recent feels like it's still happening. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this celebration of our 200 years as a town and our 150 years as a college.
It took a village...to make a show.

Louise Smith


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Getting ready: Cast preparation with director, stage left and stage right painted backdrop, a a small army of chairs used as set pieces and musicians




Prologue: "Peculiarly Salubrious" and many of the other words in the song are quotes from a newspaper article about the Springs in the early 1800's.


Scene 1: 1803 to c. 1827: First white settlement around the Yellow Spring. Lewis Davis opens a tavern there that passes into the hands of Elisha Mills in 1827. The settlement is extremely small and centered in the Glen. The site of the present village is so thickly wooded, one early account suggested, "can't see it for the trees."


Scene 2: 1827 to 1852: After a brief period of operation in the 1820s by utopian socialists called Owenites, Elisha Mills buys the hotel at the Yellow Spring and expands the business. He deeds the site of the present village to his son William, a small-town guy with big ideas. Though fewer than 150 people liv there, William influences the Little Miami RR to route through the town he lays out, and land begins to sell. The RR fosters a local limestone quarrying industry, and fortunes are made as the population swells. Mills builds himself a grand home in the center of town and then attracts a new coeducational college called Antioch. By the time YS is incorporated in 1856, it has a population of 1500. Kay Reimers wrote the part about Clifton and the railroad.




Scene 3: 1853 to c. 1921: Antioch College's first 75 years are marked with great aspirations and numbing fiscal realities. Famed educator Horace Mann is appointed first president. He sets high standards for both academics and morals, but labors under terrible financial problems and dies in office. The college survives bankruptcy and three suspensions before Arthur Morgan is named president. By introducing work and study into the curriculum and fostering a climate of invention on campus, he ultimately revitalizes the sagging institution.

Scene 4: A humorous and romantic scene written by Kay Reimers. It features Marion Ross as the suitor.
Scene 5: 1863 ot 1895: The village becomes home to a group of former slaves freed here by Rev. Moncure Conway. Yellow Springs is plagued by devastating fires in the 1890s, and a volunteer fire department is formed.


Scene 6: 1894 to 1924: Wheeling Gaunt, a former slave, is one of Yellow Springs' wealthiest landowners at his death in 1894. He deeded nine acres (today Gaunt Park) to the village provided the revenues go toward flour (and later sugar) to the widows of Yellow Springs, a practice observed for nearly a century. The daughter of 1869 Antioch dropout Hugh Taylor Birch dies in 1924. The song is a poem she wrote, set to music.

(Continue to Act II)

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