DonataCucinotta(left),soprano,asEvangeline,and KaitlynCostello(right),mezzo-soprano,asGabriel, withmembersofTheLongfellowChorusinthe 2016revivalof EdwardE.Rice’smusical Evangeline,orTheBelleof Acadia. N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 7 6 5 L’Esprit de L’Escalier The LoNgfeLLow Chorus aNd orChesTra, CharLes KaufmaNN, arTisTiC direCTor, apriL 2 & 3, 2016, JohN ford TheaTre, porTLaNd, maiNe - phoTo by ToNee harberT Evangeline, The Original Beat Icon By Rhea Côté RoBBins Take a journey with Longfellow’s Evangeline, whose story is evergreen. M ost are familiar with the ubiquity of Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, or at least with her creator, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He was her Pygmalion; she was his Acadian version of My Fair Lady. What everyone is not as familiar with is how Evangeline Bellefontaine, feminist before feminism, was the original on-the-road Beat who beat the Beats at being Beat before they were Beats. Yeah, say that three times very fast. In my literary criticism of the poem Evangeline, I see the eponymous protago- nist as a figure searching for her lost home. I ask her, “Who are you,” and she replies, “I’m the ever-searching, never-finding, never-arriving. I am the Acadian Mo- ses not gone home.” Take “E” on the road. She’s the woman protagonist looking for her lost love, Gabriel. She’s Acadia’s heart– a stand-in and metaphor for the deported Acadians–and Gabe is the long-lost, land- of-no-return metaphor of a home never to be reclaimed. Evangeline is on the road to self-discovery at a time when women of the world didn’t journey as she does. She is brave and free. Evangeline, ever the one to be on the move, created the mold for the future Beats on the road, those poets and dreamers searching for the elusive ‘oth- er’. She’s no stay-at-home girl, pining away for the good old days, but a thoroughly modern woman seeking her life and love. Gabriel is found eventually, but like the Moses story, Evangeline never reclaims the promised land of her dreams. Today, Evangeline still speaks to the many refu- gees who are lost without their home and cannot return. n RheaCôtéRobbinsistheauthorof‘downthePlains,’and editorofHeliotrope–FrenchHeritageWomenCreate. Wanttogetcloser?StepintoGabriel’sshoesandtake yourown21stcenturyquestwithEvangeline,a narrativevideogamereleasedearlierthisyear.