When it comes to theater productions, not often does the public get to converse simultaneously with actor, playwright and director. Now audiences will have that opportunity. On Wednesday, July 8, 2015 actor and playwright Leslie Harrell Dillen will present a 20-minute segment of “The Passions of Mabel Dodge Luhan.” Following the performance, director Kent Kirkpatrick joins Leslie to discuss the creative process of writing, acting and staging a one-person show.

In the first part of the program, Leslie as Mabel conducts one of her famous “Evenings” with the audience. This performance centers on her December 1918 arrival in Taos. The piece continues with Mabel meeting Tony Lujan at Taos Pueblo, and ends with the beginning of their relationship. For the second half Dillen talks about the research and writing that led to performing her play. She first encountered Mabel at Yale’s Beinecke Library twenty years ago.

In February 2015 the Mabel Dodge Luhan House website got a new look. In April new staff came on board. Julie Keefe, General Manager, and I, in the newly created Community Engagement position, agreed to co-host a new blog. Julie will cover the day-to-day happenings at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. I’m charged with Mabel. That may sound simple but is actually as complex as the woman herself.

Who was Mabel Dodge Luhan? She was one of the early 20th century’s most significant and under-recognized cultural figures. And she’s about to get her due. She is key to Mabel Dodge Luhan & Company: American Moderns and The West, a travelling exhibition that opens in Taos at the Harwood Museum of Art in May 2016. The exhibition shows Mabel’s long reach. She was a “political, social and cultural visionary, salon hostess, and collector of genius in almost every field of modern endeavor.”