Ida Rauh
| Ida Rauh | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 7, 1877 New York City |
| Died | February 28, 1970 (aged 92) New York City |
| Occupation | Feminist, actress, sculptor, poet |
| Spouse(s) | Max Eastman (1883–1969) |
| Children | Daniel Eastman (1913–1969) |
| Parent(s) | Samuel and Rosa Rauh |
Ida Rauh (March 7, 1877 – February 28, 1970) was a lawyer, suffragist, actress, sculptor, and poet who helped found the Provincetown Players in 1915. The players, including Susan Glaspell, George Cram Cook, John Reed, Hutchins Hapgood, Eugene O'Neill, and others, first performed in a structure owned by Mary Heaton Vorse in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Later, the group moved to a theater on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. In Provincetown, Rauh directed the first production of O'Neill's one-act play "Where the Cross Is Made", and in the Village she became known for her intensely emotional acting.
Rauh graduated from the New York University law school in 1902, "with little hope of practicing law, so closed was the profession to her sex." She became involved with the Women's Trade Union League, including efforts to assist in the shirtwaist-makers strike in New York in 1909. Soon after, she traveled to England to join other militant women in the fight for women's suffrage. Returning to New York, she helped Mabel Dodge organize her Village salon and became active in the feminist group Heterodoxy, formed in 1912.
After her marriage to writer and editor Max Eastman in New York in 1911, Rauh made a point of keeping her maiden name. In some places, such as Eastman's home town of Elmira, this was considered scandalous, the "first step on a slippery slope that led to feckless wives of loose morals, easy divorce, and free love". Eastman, who edited the left-wing journals The Masses and The Liberator with the help of his older sister Crystal in the second decade of the 20th century, credited Rauh with introducing him to socialism.
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