Dave Read

Barrington Stage Company’s 2009 schedule has been updated with the announcement of casting for Anthony Shaffer’s Sleuth and the world premiere of Mark St. Germain’s Freud’s Last Session.

Emmy Award-winner Charles Shaughnessy (TV’s “The Nanny” and Broadway’s Urinetown) and Jeremy Bobb (Og in Encores! Finian’s Rainbow and BSC’s Thief River) will star in Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning thriller Sleuth. Directed by Jesse Berger (NYC’s Red Bull Theater, Artistic Director), Sleuth runs July 16 through August 1. The press opening is Sunday, July 19 at 5pm.

Mark H. Dold, returns to BSC (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Private Lives) to star as C.S. Lewis opposite Martin Rayner (Star Trek: Voyager, Broadway’s The Invention of Love and Off-Broadway’s Travels With My Aunt) as Sigmund Freud in the world premiere of Freud’s Last Session on BSC’s Stage 2. Freud will be playwright Mark St. Germain’s (Camping With Henry and Tom) third play and world premiere at Barrington Stage Company (Ears On a Beatle and The God Committee). Directed by Tyler Marchant (BSC’s A Picasso), Freud’s Last Session runs from June 10 – 28, with a press opening on Sunday, June 14 at 7:30pm.

Complete casting for BSC’s 15th Anniversary Season, Glen Berger’s Underneath the Lintel and Rob Broadhurst and Brent Black’s new musical I’ll Be Damned in BSC’s Musical Theatre Lab, will be announced in the coming weeks.

For FlexPass subscriptions and single tickets visit www.barringtonstageco.org or call the BSC Box office at 413-236-8888.

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Judy Loest lives in Knoxville and, like many fine Appalachian writers, her poems have a welcoming conversational style, rooted in that region’s storytelling tradition. How gracefully she sweeps us into the landscape and the scene!

Faith

Leaves drift from the cemetery oaks onto late grass,
Sun-singed, smelling like straw, the insides of old barns.
The stone angel’s prayer is uninterrupted by the sleeping
Vagrant at her feet, the lone squirrel, furtive amid the litter.

Someone once said my great-grandmother, on the day she died,
rose from her bed where she had lain, paralyzed and mute
For two years following a stroke, and dressed herself–the good
Sunday dress of black crepe, cotton stockings, sensible, lace-up shoes.

I imagine her coiling her long white braid in the silent house,
Lying back down on top of the quilt and folding her hands,
Satisfied. I imagine her born-again daughters, brought up
In that tent-revival religion, called in from kitchens and fields
To stand dismayed by her bed like the sisters of Lazarus,
Waiting for her to breathe, to rise again and tell them what to do.

Here, no cross escapes the erosion of age, no voice breaks
The silence; the only certainty in the crow’s flight
Or the sun’s measured descent is the coming of winter.
Even the angel’s outstretched arms offer only a formulated
Grace, her blind blessings as indiscriminate as acorns,
Falling on each of us, the departed and the leaving.

American Life in Poetry: Column 216 – made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c)2007 by Judy Loest. Poem reprinted from “After Appalachia,” Finishing Line Press, 2007, by permission of Judy Loest and the publisher. Introduction copyright (c)2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Shakespeare and Co. in Lenox, MA has announced that four company members have been recognized for various achievements in the theatre world.

Company Founder and Artistic Director Tina Packer recently received the American Shakespeare Center’s Burbage Award for her lifetime of work in the international Shakespeare community, and is also receiving an honorary degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass.

Elizabeth Aspenlieder is nominated for a 2009 Eliot Norton Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her performance in Bad Dates at Shakespeare & Company and Merrimack Repertory Company.

Annette Miller is nominated for Outstanding Actress at a small or midsize theatre company for her performance in Martha Mitchell Calling at the Nora Theatre Company, in a role she originated in the play’s world premiere at S&Co. in 2006.

Company Founder and Director of Education Kevin G. Coleman earned the prestigious Distinguished Arts Educator Award in the field of theatre, bestowed annually by the Massachusetts Arts Education Collaborative.

Norman Corwin’s play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, The Rivalry, will be presented at Westfield State College, at 7PM, May 12 in Parenzo Hall. The performance, in Celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday and directed by Vincent Dowling, dramatizes the famous 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, as told through the eyes of Douglas’s wife Adele.

The star-studded cast includes Christian Kauffmann as Abraham Lincoln; Peter Cormican, who plays The ‘Little Giant’-Stephen Douglas, and Mary Linda Rapelye, who plays the role of Adele Douglas, Stephen Douglas’ beautiful young wife.

The Vincent Dowling Theatre Company in collaboration with The Academy at Charlemont will have a limited number of seats for this production available. This production is being presented by the Hampden County Bar Association for their members. There will be an opportunity to discuss the play with Massachusetts Supreme Court Judge John Greaney (retired) and members of the Bar Association, and actors at a reception after the play.

Following this performance in Westfield, we transfer our production to The Irish Repertory Theatre, one of the most respected OFF BROADWAY theatres in New York. This is a chance to see The Rivalry before it travels to New York.

For tickets please contact: The Vincent Dowling Theatre Company at 413-667-3906. Tickets: $25 adults; $20 Seniors and groups over 10; $15 for students.