Miss Lulu  Bett by Portage Author, Zona Gale--May, 2022 Encore Performance at the Museum at the Portage, August 20, 2022 in honor of Zona Gale's birthday

Miss Lulu Bett is a 1920 novel by American writer Zona Gale and was a bestseller at the time of its initial publication. Over the course of eight days, Zona Gale later adapted it into a play that premiered on Broadway at the Belmont Theater on December 27, 1920 and closed on June 18, 1921 after 198 performances.  The play won Gale the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the first by a woman. In the foreword to the script, Robert C. Benchley wrote: "Miss Gale has violated many sacred dramatic rules. She has given us characters who talk as people really talk and who therefore are dull... The result of such adherence to uninspiring reality might well have been expected to be a failure in its appeal to an uninspiring nation of theater-goers. But Miss Gale took the chance. She wrote the play, as she had written the book, without compromise, and was rewarded by an enthusiastic public."

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