Precious Memories has one act, 84 minutes long. I wrote the script but not the songs, which are by Sarah Ogan Gunning (“I Hate the Capitalist System”); her brother Jim Garland (“I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister,” the real point of which is that we do); and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson (“I Am A Union Woman”), plus two traditional ballads and excerpts from three gospel songs.
THE PLAY: Part memory play, part eulogy, part concert, this one-woman show written by legendary folk singer and community organizer Si Kahn traces the life of Sarah Ogan Gunning, an unsung hero of American folk/labor music history. The play finds Sarah alone in her Detroit basement apartment on the evening after her sister Aunt Molly Jackson’s funeral, as she attempts to set the record straight and say goodbye. Although Sarah Ogan Gunning is a name almost unknown to us today, her powerful songs about the coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930’s were an influence on Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and other famous folk singers of her day.
Si Kahn <sikahn36@gmail.com
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 