Jonathan Bank, Producing Artistic DirectorSherri Kotimsky, Finance & Production

by GITHA SOWERBY

OPENING NIGHT FEBRUARY 27TH, 2012

by Patricia Riley

John, Githa's grandfather, opens the huge Ellison Glass Works on the banks of the River Tyne in the north of England. He raises his two sons to take over the glassworks, and arranges marriages for his four daughters that will benefit the business financially and socially. The Ellison Glass Works becomes market leader, dominating the European and American markets for mass-produced glassware.

John's eldest son John George (Githa's father) takes over the glassworks.

In 1872 John George Sowerby marries Amy Hewison and they have six chil-dren, including Githa, born 1876.

Record sales are achieved, but the board forces Githa's father to resign. He returns as a salaried worker.

Githa's brother, Lawrence enters the glassworks as a manager but leaves and refuses to return, emigrating to Canada in 1912.

Githa's father severs his connection with the glassworks. Building on his previous hobbies of landscape paint-ing and illustrating children's books, he becomes a full-time artist.

Githa moves to London with her sister Millicent, earns her living writing chil-dren's books which Millicent illustrates. They take on the care of their disabled sister, Marjory. In 1905, Githa becomes a socialist and joins the Fabian Society.

is a smash hit at London's Royal Court Theatre. She be-comes engaged to poet and dramatist John Kaye Kendall after knowing him only three weeks, and marries him two months later.

Githa gives birth to a daughter, Joan, whose memoirs account for much of the material in the book

Child.

Feeble, ineffective, careless, ir-responsible.

Upland stretch of open country; moor; barren or stony hill. Fell racing is a popular sport in the area.

A girdle is a flat circular iron plate with handle, used on an open fire. Americans might call it a griddle. Girdle cakes are similar to pancakes. The cake in Act I seems to be a large one. Usually there would be several small ones.

Githa Sowerby’s fictional name for Gateshead, the Tyneside town that sits across the river from Newcastle, in roughly the same relationship as Brooklyn to Manhattan.

Literally, keep your si-lence; generally, shut up.

Flogged.

(pronounced hyem): Home.

Boy or man.

Girl or woman; but also, a sweet-heart. means my sweetheart.

A lear (usually spelled leer or lehr) is an annealing oven or anneal-ing furnace. (To anneal is to temper glassware by controlled, gradual cooling promptly after manufacture).

Willow wren or linnet. : No stronger than a wren.

Glassmaking term for the basic glass mixture, particularly when molten.

: ordinary clear glass.

Small oven for bringing enameled or gilded glass to the heat needed for melting the decoration, thus permanently attaching it to the glass body. The Ruth-erford factory, like the Sowerby factory on which it is based, produces molded and pressed glass, such as vases and elegant tableware: “art glass for the millions.”

Fireclay crucible used for founding or melting of glass.

Small mountain lake. The Tarn Cot-tage is a small lakeside house.

Our, ours, my (sometimes we). He was Our John.

To worry; by extension, a worrier.