Background
Vida Ravenscroft Sutton was born in Oakland, California and raised in Helena, Montana, the daughter of David M. Sutton and Mary Ravenscroft.
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Vida Sutton
Edit ProfileEducation
She studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1903.
Career
She wrote plays and pageants with mainly historical and biblical settings, intended for church and community groups. Later in life she directed plays, and was the organizer and director of the small Onteora Playhouse at Tannersville, New New York From 1929 to 1937, Sutton was director and presenter of the National Broadcasting Company radio program "The Magic of Speech," and spoke on gender and broadcasting.
She wrote a book of the same name, The Magic of Speech: Studies in Spoken English (1936), and another on similar themes, Seeing and Hearing America: Studies in Spoken English and Group Speaking (1936).
She also taught speech and diction to National Broadcasting Company on-air personnel in the 1930s. She was also head of the drama and speech department at the Finch School in New York for many years.
In 1936, she was chair of the Radio Council for American Speech, which collaborated with the National Council of Teachers of English on public education programs. She wrote at least one suffrage play, Winning the Voter.
Vida Ravenscroft Sutton died in July 1956, age 77.
Membership
Vida Ravenscroft Sutton was a member of the New Theatre Company in New York City beginning in 1910, and performed as an actress and singer as a young woman. Sutton was active on behalf of suffrage and a member of Heterodoxy, a women"s debating club based in Greenwich Village.
