| EASTYLE
Harriett Logan
Residence: Cleveland
Age: 30
Family: Single
Occupation: Owner,
Loganberry Books, 12633 Larchmere Blvd., Cleveland, and free-lance director
Favorite movie: "Harold
and Maude"
Last book read: "Wings
of Courage" by George Sand
Dream: "To own a
bookstore that has a performance space and folk music area."
Favorite sport to watch:
Soccer
The best part of my job
is: "Playing with the books." |
By Kymberli Hagelberg
Staff Writer
Harriett Logan is happy leading a double life
-- owner of a bookstore by day and director of theater by night.
When it came time for college, Logan's practical
parents urged her to become a technical writer. To please them, she
compromised with a double major in theater history and English. But
from the moment that Logan cast her first look at the University of Illinois'
"black box theater," her twin goals were set.
"Theater was a learned passion that came later.
I really didn't love it until I went to school and got a chance to see
how the black box worked, where everything from the lights to the seating
was molded for a specific performance. In that, I could see opportunity.
Before, all I knew were the big, glossy musicals. That's what I thought
theater was, and I wasn't a fan," Logan explained.
Three years ago, after a series of temp jobs
and lots of hiking in Seattle, Logan came home to Cleveland and began looking
for a way to make a living.
A lifelong love of words drove her to open
an used book store. In January 1995 she started working on the Shaker
Square storefront that would become Loganberry Books. In March the
store opened, with lots of help from Logan's mother.
Logan, a committed book hound, said she was
"really just happy I found a job nearby that paid."
Loganberry Books is holding its own, even
at a time when smaller stores are being gobbled up by the megachains.
The store specializes in children's literature, fine and performing arts
books and women's history and literature. Among Logan's treasures
are first edition works by feminist writers in the 1920s.
Logan's newest obsession satisfies her love
of literature and the theater. She will direct Red Hen Theater Co.'s
production of "Theodora: An Unathorized Biography," which opens tonight
at Pilgrim Congregational Church, 2592 W. 14th St., Tremont.
"Theodora" is based on the life and times
of sixth century empress who decided she'd rather rule rather than stay
home and bake cookies. Needless to say, that ambition brought the
empress her share of bad press.
Though the play is set thousands of years
ago, Logan sees the empress Theodora as a timeless feminist figure--a powerful,
feared women who was skewered by scribes for being uppity and ambitious.
One of the only records of Theodora's reign
was written by a rival. The secretary of an army commander had penned
a "secret history" that painted the empress as everything from a cruel
despot to a brazen jezebel.
Red Hen's production sets that account against
the recollections of five historians and the empress herself in a funny,
fast-paced debate.
Logan said, "The secret history was passed-down
lies that became truths in other people's history. The play tries
to sort things out using historians from throughout time and one woman,
who is Theodora's lone defender."
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