Original one-woman play focuses on Betty and Will Rogers’ letters

 

Will Rogers was a prolific letter writer. Letters to his father. Letters to his sisters. And especially letters to Betty Blake, who became Mrs. Will Rogers.

Laurette Willis, actor, playwright, composer and producer, has written and will perform “Letters from the Heart: Betty and Will Rogers,”  a one-woman multi-media show using Will’s letters to Betty, primarily from their courtship period 1900-1908. Will and Betty Blake met at the Oologah train station, where she was helping her sister and brother-in-law. Much of their friendship and courtship was through letters. After nearly a decade, they were married in Rogers, Ark., on Nov. 25, 1908.

The play covers the period from their first meeting through Will’s Wild West Shows, his trek around the world and his hits on the Vaudeville circuit. Find out how the “Cherokee Cowboy” wooed and won the belle from Arkansas in “Letters from the Heart.”

Willis, who produced and starred in “Under the Cherokee Moon,” presented last year at the Cherokee Heritage Center Outdoor Theatre and a special presentation at Will Rogers Memorial Museum.

“Letters from the Heart: Betty and Will Rogers” at Will Rogers Memorial Museum Theatre at 7 p.m., Fridays, July 8, 15, 22, 29, and August 5.

“As always,” Willis said, “ there will be lots of audience interaction with fun for the whole family.”

Tickets are $10 each and can be purchased at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum Store or call 918-343-8115, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. daily.

Original songs by Willis will be enhanced by videos of vintage photos, newsreel footage, movies and rope tricks from “Ropin’ Fool,” produced by Will Rogers.

Will words will evolve in song and words. Will’s letters will be read in his own voice (Will Rogers Memorial Museum Will Rogers interpreter Andy Hogan).

Star of more than 70 movies, Will Rogers was the nation’s most popular political wit, radio commentator and newspaper columnist and leading movie star at the time of his death in 1935.

Willis, who lives near Tahlequah, has been entertaining and speaking more than 25 years to such diverse groups as the U.S. Armed Forces with the U.S.O., students and administrators and teachers as a certified instructor for the Great Expectations Program at Northeastern State University. Since 2007 she has directed and performed in the Cherokee summer outdoors drama. She has written two books and produced 10 DVDs and two television fitness shows.