Take two determined women.

Mix in all the ways they are opposite.

Place them in a coach on a bumpy ride through the backlands of Idaho in 1896.

Add the passion and determination of a nation full of women denied the right to vote and you’ve got “Barnstorming,” a one-act play that premieres tonight at WICA.

“Barnstorming” circles around two very different but similarly motivated women — Abigail Scott Duniway and May Arkwright Hutton — who, in 1896, took a stagecoach ride through Idaho to “barnstorm the boondocks” and get the word out in rural areas for the women’s right to vote.

The WICA performance will be the premiere for this play that is both a chronicle of adventure and a story of friendship that lasted long after the votes were counted.

“Barnstorming” is written and directed by Coupeville resident Tim Rarick who directed last season’s “Sylvia.”

Rarick was the drama department chair at North Idaho College for 17 years before moving to Whidbey. He also has experience writing, directing and composing for community theater in the North Idaho and Eastern Washington areas during the 1980s.

“Barnstorming” grew out of Rarick’s passion for intertwining history in his production writing, and also from a full-length musical about May Hutton that he wrote in 1985.

“The more I read into her story, the more intrigued I became by these two women who decided to take a 350-mile stagecoach ride,” he said.

Rarick sees historically based projects such as his as an opportunity to remind people of the history they might have forgotten.

“The notion that this began so long ago, the struggle to get women the right to vote, and that when it finally was successful it wasn’t that long ago, is eye opening to think about,” Rarick said.

In Rarick’s director’s notes for the program he states: “This is a work of my imagination. It is, however, a play which is deeply rooted in historic fact.”

To find the historic roots he turned his research to books by such historians as James Montgomery, who wrote “Liberated Woman: The Life of May Arkwright Hutton.” Rarick visited museums, scoured historical society resources and the Internet to learn about Duniway and Hutton.

The play begins with the two women writing letters to each other near the end of their lives, just as they had done for countless years following that famed stagecoach ride.

“Years of a documented, close relationship is chronicled in the newspapers of the time in Spokane, Portland and Seattle,” Rarick said.

The sources of letters and other correspondence May Hutton sent to Abigail Duniway was lost in a fire in the basement of the Hutton Building in downtown Spokane where the Huttons once lived, Rarick said.

Through “Barnstorming” and documented history, the duo’s story lives on.

Hutton — who was born in Ohio and didn’t move to Idaho until she was 33 — was a woman known for her size, something that often circled around 300 pounds.

“She wasn’t particularly educated, was considered rough and forceful, but she had confidence in voting, the women’s right to vote and their ability to be good voters,” Rarick said.

Duniway, on the other hand, was an Oregon woman, slight in size and double the age of Hutton when the two met.

“She was self-educated, sophisticated and a learned thinker,” Rarick said.

Bringing the women to life will be Jill Johnson as Hutton and Gail Liston as Duniway.

It will be the two leading ladies’ job to bring forth the powerful determination of the suffrage pioneers.

Johnson is known most recently for her work as a storyteller. She has a master’s degree in theater from the University of Oregon, and for the last nine years has performed around Whidbey, the greater Puget Sound area and Pacific Northwest.

Her original one-woman show “Little, But Oh My,” about Washington’s first woman ferry captain premiered at WICA in March 2003 and has gone on to receive accolades such as inclusion in Humanities Washington’s Inquiring Minds series.

“May was a survivor for life who became so representative of the image of pioneer women we’ve all come to learn,” Johnson said. “It’s amazing to imagine a trip such as this, the long hours they spent and how it molded their friendship.”

Liston holds a master of fine arts in theater from Cal State Fullerton. She has been performing and directing in community theater for the last 20 years. Her most recent local stage acting credits include Rarick’s “Sylvia,” “The Laramie Project” and “Noises Off.”

“It’s amazing how committed these women had to have been to take a trip such as this, in the harsh weather of fall, by stagecoach,” Liston said. “But they are part of a handful of tough women who changed things for all of us.”

Abigail was tough, single-minded, with a clear goal and dedication to a life cause, Liston said.

“I could relate to her and to the friendship that these two women had,” Liston said.

“I couldn’t have asked for two people who have committed themselves to this project the way they have,” Rarick said.

In addition to Johnson and Liston filling the laced-up boots of Hutton and Duniway, the cast includes Mark Therien as the ladies’ stagecoach driver Bert.

“I wanted to add a male character who was always in the shadows, always listening,” Rarick said.

Even after they secured Idaho’s vote, the duo’s pressed for support for the female vote in other states, for which Johnson said the nation owes a debt of gratitude.

“They had a plan of attack. After Idaho they were going to go after Washington,” Rarick said. “They both died before they saw the end product of their work, a federal amendment that gave women the right to vote nationally.”

The play documents the hardships the women faced on their journey through rural Idaho to the state’s capital. It addresses the political opposition, challenges from churches, and even women who were against women’s right to vote.

“This was no easy trip for them. The conditions were tough and the opposition they faced at times was even tougher,” Rarick said.

“But it took women like these two going out of their way, visiting these hayloft places, asking people why shouldn’t women be given the right to vote for the ‘no’ answers to begin to listen.”