Following two sold-out November performances at the Ridgefield Theater Barn, Eccentric Women of Ridgefield will be staged at The Meetinghouse in Ridgefield, 605 Ridgebury Road, on Sunday, Jan. 29, at 2 p.m.

Featuring Sheri Rak as Sarah Bishop, Charlotte Hampden as Mary Louise Beatrice Olcott, Benna Strober as Jacqueline Seligmann, and Emily Vopintesta as Carmela Sabilia, the play is based on narratives created by Dr. Darla Shaw, adapted for the stage by Stephen Robbins and directed by Linda Seay. Ridgefield’s poet laureate Barbara Jennes makes a special appearance.

The production spotlights Sarah Bishop, the hermit who lived in a “cave” on West Mountain Road during the period following the Revolutionary War;  Mary Louise Beatrice Olcott, who took over her father’s palatial estate, Casagmo, on Main Street in the early 1900s, and worked diligently to improve Ridgefield and “helped to advance the cause of suffragists across the nation”; Jacqueline Seligmann, a French heiress in the 1940s who came to live on Barrack Hill then “fell from grace,” fame, and fortune to a life filled with hundreds of cats as her only companions; and Carmela Sabilia, an immigrant from Italy who came to Georgetown in 1898, and in the 1920s and 1930s she became known as the Peanut Lady of Branchville Road. 

The play is co-presented with the Ridgefield Theater Barn and the Ridgefield Historical Society and will be followed by a talk-back and a reception at Shields Hall. Tickets are $25; for reservations, visit meetinghouse.life.