Minnesotans To Meet: The Girls Behind The Guthrie's Scout Finch
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - The Pulitzer Prize winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" has been mentioned a lot the last few months.
That's because author Harper Lee's sequel "Go Set a Watchman" was published in July.
Right now, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, you can see "To Kill a Mockingbird" on stage. The play takes place in 1935 in Maycomb, Ala. The story is told through the eyes of Scout, the daughter of Atticus Finch. He is a lawyer representing an African-American man accused of raping a white woman.
The two actresses who play Scout are quite young - middle schoolers, in fact. When Mary Bair and Isadora Swann learned they landed the leading role of Scout, they knew getting into character didn't just include memorizing lines, but also pulling off the right look.
Looking like Scout, a "tom boyish" young girl, includes a short bob haircut. While a wig at the Guthrie would have been no problem, the two decided to sport Scout's short do.
Izzy and Mary -- or should we say Scout -- are this week's Minnesotans to Meet.
"I didn't know I had that long of hair," said Mary, while her hair was being cut. "It was exciting. When I woke up, I was like, Oh-boy here's the day."
"It was really cool, because I had never had my hair that short since I was 4-years-old," Izzy said.
Their hair is now playing a part for Julie Lind, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.
The girls heard through a Guthrie employee that she was in need of a new haircut. That's when they decided their locks needed to serve a different purpose.
"The fact that they're so young and they were willing to do that, and they haven't met me," Julie said. "They just heard that I needed a wig and they volunteered to give up their hair. That's just an amazing gift for them to give me."
A WCCO-TV camera crew joined Julie for her first fitting.
"Oh it's beautiful, gorgeous," Julie said. "Breast cancer takes so much from women. It could take your hair, possibly take your breasts, your ovaries."
Izzy and Mary were happy their hair could serve a purpose.
"When I learned I would have this customized, handmade, loved wig to wear, it took away some of that pain of losing my own hair," Julie said.
Laura Adams, the head wigmaster for the Guthrie and the person who made Julie's wig, praised Izzy and Mary for their thoughtfulness.
"Any child who can bring themselves out of their own head and think about others is pretty special," she said.
And what would Scout say about donating hair?
"She'd be kind of happy, but maybe confused why someone would want to wear her hair," Izzy said.
"I think, overall, she would understand it has meaning to the person, and it's a good," Mary said. "That giving up your hair is nice thing to do."