Original Heard Carriage House
By Jen Barraza
Maie Bartlett Heard and Dwight B. Heard
The fight for women’s right to vote has a surprising connection to The Phoenix Theatre Company. One of the women helping move the suffrage movement forward in Arizona would later help build the theatre we know today. Her name was Maie Bartlett Heard.
Heard was one of the civic leaders who helped shape early Phoenix, she was co-founder of the Heard Museum with her husband, Dwight, and she played an important role in the beginnings of The Phoenix Theatre Company.
Before all of this Maie was helping Arizona women win the vote. She served as treasurer of the Phoenix Civic League, an organization involved in Arizona’s women’s suffrage campaign. Alongside other local leaders, she helped support the movement in Maricopa County during the push that ultimately led Arizona voters to approve women’s suffrage in 1912, eight years before the 19th Amendment was ratified nationally.
Aside from this, Heard helped bring books to children living on remote Arizona ranches, supported the growth of Phoenix’s early library, championed charitable organizations and eventually dedicated decades to the museum that still bears her family’s name.
She also had another passion: theatre.
In 1920, Heard joined Harry Behn and Katherine Wisner McCluskey in establishing the Phoenix Players. Records from the theatre’s earliest seasons show her directing productions alongside Behn during the 1922/1923 season.
In 1924, the Heards offered the Phoenix Players their old coach house near Central Avenue and McDowell Road. The building was transformed into a roughly 167-seat performance space affectionately known as “The Old Coach House.” Audiences sat on backless wooden benches. Haylofts became dressing rooms. And the swamp cooler was apparently so loud that it could only be turned on before the performance and during intermission.
That little coach house became part of the foundation of an organization that, more than a century later, has grown into The Phoenix Theatre Company.
That history gives our upcoming production of Suffs a special connection to this campus.
While the battles for the vote were unfolding nationally, women here in Arizona were doing the same work. And Maie Bartlett Heard was among them.
Suffs runs October 14th through November 29th on the Hormel stage at The Phoenix Theatre Company.
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