Meet Ruth Giordano

by Claudia Dalton

Ruth Landowne Giordano, who joined us in February, is a theater and radio artist who resides in Williamstown, MA. Many of us will recall first meeting her in February, 2019, when she led a play-reading of a 1914 suffragist parlor play at our branch meeting at the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House.

Then, in December 2020, with Covid preventing our usual holiday gathering, Ruth hosted a Read-Around of an abridged version of Dickens’ “A  Christmas Carol” on Zoom.  As one of the readers, I can say it was a heartening experience that helped restore spirits dampened by the pandemic.

Ruth has been hosting monthly Read-Arounds of one-act plays and short stories in Williamstown since March 2019. She credits Julie Mackaman and Deb Burns with encouraging and supporting her in this endeavor. And now thanks to Ruth our branch has a new special interest group, the Read-Around group, which started on January 7.

The performing arts have been a constant in Ruth’s life since childhood.  She was born in Baltimore, MD, and as a young girl attended ballet and tap dance classes every Saturday. These classes were offered through a Creative Arts Workshop, an initiative for inner city children. She also took art classes and performed in a play, “The King and I.”

When she was ten years old, Ruth’s family moved to the Boston area.  Her summers as a teen were spent at Brown Ledge Camp on Lake Champlain, just south of Burlington.  There she was active in the theatre arts program, which produced three one-act plays every week and a Broadway musical at the end of the summer.

Ruth moved to Williamstown in 1991, when her husband, Peter, was employed as a coordinator at William College’s Sawyer Library. She was involved for many years by the Children’s Theatre Company in Williamstown as a costumer for productions such as “Hansel and Gretel” and “Alice in Wonderland”

Ruth is committed to doing her part to preserve the classic stories we all grew up with for future generations.  Her first adaptation was “The Wind in the Willows” in 2000; she is currently working on “The Pied Piper of Hamlin.”  Ruth has also written her own children’s plays, and is a member of an online writers’ group, Drama Notebook, which provides royalty-free scripts for school productions.

Most notably, Ruth has written “A Tree Called Aesop,” an adaptation of ten Aesop fables.  It was well received and has been performed in schools across the country and even abroad.   This past December, it was performed on Zoom by the Prague Youth Theatre in the Czech Republic.

Ruth is also involved in writing and directing radio drama, which she credits her husband for getting her started on.  In addition, she is collaborating with Dawn Rodrigues to develop workshops for middle school students at the Bennington Performing Arts Center (Oldcastle Theatre Company and Bennington Community Theater).

Ruth has two adult children.  Her daughter lives in Boston and is involved in theater production. Her son is an ESL instructor living in Taipei, Taiwan.  Her husband is currently library director at the Berkshire School in Sheffield, MA, and the couple has a second residence there.

An old movie buff who enjoys watching films from the 1940s, in particular “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek,” Ruth’s list of favorite actors includes the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and David Niven.

She also likes reading the classics; her favorite authors are Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, and Louisa May Alcott.

In addition, Ruth enjoys doing jigsaw puzzles, which bring back good childhood memories for her.  As the youngest child in her family, her four siblings were already out of the house while she was growing up.  When they came home for holidays, they would all do jigsaw puzzles together.  Other pastimes include cooking and taking walks.

We are pleased to welcome Ruth—and we thank her for the admirable contribution she has already made to our branch.