One-woman show performed before Princeton Community Democratic Organization
By: Marjorie Censer
Though members of the Princeton Community Democratic Organization typically gather to talk current events, at Sunday’s meeting they instead took a long look back.
Linda Kenyon performed a one-woman show called "A Life of My Own: Meeting Eleanor Roosevelt." Dressed as Mrs. Roosevelt in a flowered dress and jacket, pearls, sturdy shoes, an overcoat and fur stole Ms. Kenyon adapted her voice and mannerisms, as well.
The play was set on a train, and the character of Mrs. Roosevelt told an imagined fellow passenger about her life particularly focusing on certain instances.
She remembered when she was chosen to play center forward on the field hockey team jumping up and down in excitement and her confrontation with her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when she learned he had been having an affair.
The play spent a significant portion of time on Mrs. Roosevelt’s relationship with her husband. Much of Mrs. Roosevelt’s focus was on finding a life of her own and crawling out of the one ready-made for her.
"Living according to one’s own preferences it was a way of life I could never have imagined," Ms. Kenyon said.
She recounted a story in which she traveled to a small town in Quebec. There, the mayor asked her, "Are you related to Theodore Roosevelt?"
Though well-aware she was married to the more prominent current President Roosevelt, she was happy to ignore that and tell the mayor she was, indeed, the niece of the former President Roosevelt.
The character of Mrs. Roosevelt saved her most damning words for Lucy Mercer the woman with whom President Roosevelt had the affair saying she was the one person never to be forgiven.
She called the liaison "a crushing blow." But it provided the chance for Mrs. Roosevelt to step out of her husband’s shadow. When confronting him about the affair, she told him that if he chose not to divorce, she would remain his wife, but she would have her own commitments.
"Your life has absorbed both of us up to now," Ms. Kenyon’s character told an imagined President Roosevelt. She returned to telling her story to her passenger: "We made a new bargain, struck a new agreement."
In the conclusion of the play, Mrs. Roosevelt recalled her feelings of fear and excitement upon her husband’s death.
"For the first time in over 40 years, I would be on my own," she said.
She finished the play by affirming her commitment to improving the world.
"I always thought to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves," Ms. Kenyon, as Mrs. Roosevelt, said. "It’s not right not to fight as long as the world is not right."
Ms. Kenyon performed in front of a full house and asked audience members to share their own memories of Mrs. Roosevelt.
Esther Dresner dressed in an Eleanor Roosevelt T-shirt said she first met Mrs. Roosevelt in 1947, when Ms. Dresner was a 17-year-old student at the Encampment for Citizenship, a six-week program in New York City. She met her again when in her 20s at the West Side Democratic Club.
"She’s been my heroine," Ms. Dresner told the crowd.
Ms. Kenyon posed a question to the audience.
"I’m just wondering what she would be thinking now if she were alive," she said to murmurs and jeers.
The play represented a departure from PCDO’s regular meetings, said PCDO President Scott Carver. He said he was pleased by the turnout and would consider a similar event in the future.
"It brought out a little different audience than we typically attract," he said.
The play was written by Stephen LaRocque and directed by Ed Starr.

