Lula Naff was the general manager of the Ryman Auditorium from 1920-1950 and she single-handedly turned the Auditorium into a performing arts venue that attracted national touring shows. She began working in Nashville at about the same time that women won the right to vote. She fiercely battled censorship of shows, including winning a lawsuit against the Nashville Board of Censors for the play Tobacco Road.
In 1914, she helped the Ryman to host the National Woman’s Suffrage Association. She maintained ties between the Ryman and Fisk University Jubilee Singers, who had first appeared onstage at the Ryman in 1892, and again in 1915. For more on Naff’s career, click here.
By the end of Naff’s career in 1950, women had begun entering the professional workforce. As American men fought in World War II from 1941-1945, many women worked in jobs that were usually reserved for men. A popular image from this time, Rosie the Riveter, symbolizes these working women. However, after the war was over and male soldiers had begun returning home, women were encouraged to leave their jobs and go back to domestic life. Magazines and television after the war often showed images of women cooking or cleaning their homes. What kinds of barriers do you think Lula C. Naff came up against as a businesswoman during these years?
Performance: Macbeth at the Ryman
One of the performances that Naff brought to the Ryman was a national touring production of Macbeth, directed by Margret Webster, in January of 1949.
Macbeth is known for a strong female character named Lady Macbeth who is very ambitious. In a famous scene, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from her husband to say that three witches have prophesied that he will one day become king. Lady Macbeth knows that will only be possible if her husband kills the current king. She worries that her husband is too compassionate to betray his king, so she calls on dark spirits to take away her feminine softness and prepare her to help her husband to success by any means necessary.
Check out the performance below. As you listen, notice any words that she uses to describe herself that are usually associated with masculinity. What words does she use to ask the spirits to take away her femininity? Why do you think she doesn’t want to be a woman anymore?
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry “Hold, hold!”
—Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5
Margaret Webster was one of the most nationally renowned directors of Shakespeare in the early 20th century. Her production of Macbeth also featured a strong female actor, Carol Goodner. Read through the announcement from a January 1949 edition of The Nashville Banner to the left, and notice how the announcement foregrounds Goodner as an important actor in the show. Other announcements that ran in the same edition call Margaret Webster “one of the stage’s foremost authorities on the works of Shakespeare.”
Finally, look at the playbill for the performance below. Before the 20th century, women were always listed last on playbills, no matter how important their role in the play was. In this play, Macbeth is considered the starring role. Who is listed first on the front page of the playbill? Why do you think that is?
Look at the interior of the playbill. How does the playbill highlight the role of the play’s director, Margaret Webster?
Lula Naff was the general manager of the Ryman Auditorium from 1920-1950 and she single-handedly turned the Auditorium into a performing arts venue that attracted national touring shows. She began working in Nashville at about the same time that women won the right to vote. She fiercely battled censorship of shows, including winning a lawsuit against the Nashville Board of Censors for the play Tobacco Road.
By the end of Naff’s career in 1950, women had begun entering the professional workforce. As American men fought in World War II from 1941-1945, many women worked in jobs that were usually reserved for men. A popular image from this time, Rosie the Riveter, symbolizes these working women. However, after the war was over and male soldiers had begun returning home, women were encouraged to leave their jobs and go back to domestic life. Magazines and television after the war often showed images of women cooking or cleaning their homes. What kinds of barriers do you think Lula C. Naff came up against as a businesswoman during these years? 
Margaret Webster was one of the most nationally renowned directors of Shakespeare in the early 20th century. Her production of Macbeth also featured a strong female actor, Carol Goodner. Read through the announcement from a January 1949 edition of The Nashville Banner to the left, and notice how the announcement foregrounds Goodner as an important actor in the show. Other announcements that ran in the same edition call Margaret Webster “one of the stage’s foremost authorities on the works of Shakespeare.”
