The Great Age reading on 7/12/12 @7pm in Philadelphia

THE GREAT AGE play reading on 7/12/12 @7pm. I’m thrilled to invite you to Philadelphia’s first public reading of Jeffrey Stanley’s unproduced play The Great Age, a ribald sex comedy about 19th century poet Emily Dickinson.

The Belle of Amherst
Judge Lord

I’m thrilled to invite you to Philadelphia’s first public reading of my unproduced play The Great Age, a racy romantic  comedy — about Emily Dickinson.  Set in Amherst, MA, the play is a time-jumping, supernatural romp about Amherst College undergrad Leah, an Emily-obsessed young writer and idealistic Wiccan who’s having an affair with her married English professor, Michael.

When she and her classmate Ashiq, a young Saudi prince, steal Emily’s famed white dress from the Dickinson Homestead and hold a seance to contact Emily’s ghost they they stir up a heap of multidimensional trouble and incur the wrath of junior English department faculty, Mary Beth.

Mabel Loomis Todd

The reading of this work-in-progress is connected to my current PDC @Plays & Players Artists Residency.  It’s directed by the amazing Mark Kennedy and features an incredible cast including–

Austin Dickinson

Laurel Hostak, outgoing president of the Drexel University Players, as the brazen young Leah

Anthony Adair as Leah’s friend Ashiq

Kaki Burns, most recently seen in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties at Plays & Players, as Emily Dickinson

David Todd

Kevin Bergen as Emily’s randy brother Austin Dickinson

Mike Hagan is Emily’s long-distance lover Judge Otis Lord

Bethany Ditnes as 19th century social climber and Dickinson family groupie Mabel Loomis Todd

Eric Wunsch, last seen as Dadaism founder Tristan Tzara in Travesties, as Mabel’s swinging husband Prof. David Todd

Sarah Schol as the frustrated and desperate-to-land-a-husband-before-she-gets-any-older Prof. Mary Beth Hodder

Tina Brock, artistic director of Philadlphia’s premiere absurdist theatre the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (They Bring Good Nothingness to Life) in a variety of madcap roles.

Don’t miss it! Q&A of this work-in-progress afterward with myself, the director, and much of the cast.

WHEN:  Thursday, July 12 @7:00pm

WHERE:  the 1st floor main stage of Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey Place, Philadelphia, PA

COST: FREE

See you there.

[images via poetryfoundation.org and massreports.com]

 

Travesties

Thrilled to be attending Tom Stoppard’s mind-bending Travesties on opening night this Thursday 6/7/12 at 8pm at Play & Players. Drinks in Quig’s afterward. See you there. Tickets just 15 bucks. Not bad at all for a professional quality production of a terrific play.

Thrilled to be attending Tom Stoppard’s mind-bending Travesties on opening night this Thursday 6/7 at 8pm at Play & Players.  Drinks in Quig’s afterward. See you there. Tickets just 15 bucks. Not bad at all for a professional quality production of a terrific play.

With Cathy Mostek, Jim Ludovici, Bob Stineman, Andrew Carroll, Kaki Burns, Eric Wunsch, Kristen Norine and Tim Rinehart. Directed by Candace Cihocki.

James Joyce

Travesties takes you on a stylistic joy ride through an imagined meeting between James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Dadaist Tristan Tzara who all lived in Zurich during World War I.

Vladimir Lenin

When Joyce casts British consular official Henry Carr in a performance of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnestin the lead role of Algernon, Carr finds himself immersed in a wacky and wonderful world of Wildean wit, Joycean limericks, Leninist ideology, and sheer Dada anarchy.

Tristan Tzara

 

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The Plays & Players organization began in 1911 as a social club devoted to expanding and developing new theater experiences for and by its membership. The first President, Maud Durbin Skinner, was the wife of the famed American actor Otis Skinner.  What is now the Plays & Players building at 17th and Delancey, originally called the “Little Theatre of Philadelphia,” first opened its doors in 1913 to produce “American plays of ideas,” an underrepresented genre at the time.  The building later became  the official home of Play & Players.