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GUMPTION (a musical inspired by a true story)

Synopsis

In, 1916 New York, two young society women are bored, very bored, with their tedious, confining lives. Ros Underwood and Dorothy Woodruff both long for adventure.

 At the same time, clear across the country, homesteading bachelors of Elkhead also have a problem: There are no women of marrying age in the rugged, remote area of the northern Colorado mountains.

 What to do? Harvard-educated rancher Ferry Carpenter persuades the community to build an extraordinarily modern school, both to educate the children and to attract cultured, educated young female teachers as prospective brides. The school board decides that the women must have the “gumption” to stick it out in the harsh climate for at least a year—and, even more important to some of the school board members, they must be attractive. Photos are required with all applications.

Hearing about the job through a friend, Ros and Dorothy apply. When the school board hears from a contact that they were the “prettiest and liveliest” in their Brown University class, they are hired. The “society girls” defy their families and head west.

Ros and Dorothy encounter a world unlike anything they have known in their pampered lives. They experience the grueling hardships of a brutal “three-wire winter” with snow so deep it hides the top of barbed wire fences. They struggle to learn how to teach children who have had little or no experience with schooling—some so poor they don’t have warm clothing and must eat wild “skunk” cabbage to survive. As they learn to make their way, Ros and Dorothy draw inspiration from the strong women around them.

Soon Ros must sort out her feelings for two men who both fall in love with her. When one of them, the son of a mining magnate, is kidnapped, the incident makes headlines across the country.

Ros and Dorothy discover strengths they never knew they had as they bring the outside world to Elkhead. At the same time, the world they find in Elkhead changes their own lives forever.

The show is filled with humor and romance. And the best part? Ros marries one of the two bachelors vying for her attention and then, forty years later, she marries the other one!