Virginia Tanner

Carolyn Virginia Tanner Green (November 24, 1881 – August 7, 1950) was an American dancer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who wrote and directed plays and pageants, and participated in the women's suffrage movement.

Early life and education Green was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of John Alexander Tanner and Caroline Maria Littlefield Tanner. Her father was a physician. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1905, and earned a master's degree from Radcliffe in 1906.

Career

Green was an active suffragist and civic pageant organizer in the 1910s. She demonstrated "ancient" dances at a lecture in Boston in 1910. She worked with the Children's Playground Association in Baltimore on a 1912 pageant. She performed as a dancer and directed a pageant for the annual fête in Rockport in 1913. In 1914 she directed a historical procession in Stonington, Connecticut, and the dance segments of the Brooklyn Historical Pageant. In 1915, she portrayed "Victory" Boston suffrage parade, and wrote, directed, and starred in a Greek-inspired pageant in Maine. She staged Gluck's Orpheus in 1916, to raise funds for Radcliffe's Choral Society Scholarship Fund.

In 1922 Green directed Dear Jane, a romantic comedy about Jane Austen, written by Eleanor Holmes Hinkley. She wrote and directed "The Pageant of Portsmouth", a 1923 event with a cast of hundreds, marking the New Hampshire city's tercentenary. She directed a pageant at Bennington's sesquicentennial celebration in 1927. In 1928 she wrote a pageant to dedicate the Carlton Bridge in Bath, Maine. In 1930 she directed a musical comedy, The Sky Scrapers, at Radcliffe College. She was elected commissioner of the Cambridge Girl Scouts in 1931.

Green was a member of the Drama League of America, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Zonta International, the New England History Society, and the Cambridge Historical Society. Green died in 1950, at the age of 68, in New Castle, New Hampshire.