Our neighbor, the Princeton Smith Club, is hosting an exciting theater event on March 13th – please read on:
The Smith Club of Princeton extends an invitation to our fellow Smithies in Philadelphia to our evening at McCarter Theater!
Once again, we have a gala event planned, with a private pre-show reception with wine, soda and snacks, a discussion about the play with a member of the McCarter Theater staff – and tickets to the opening night performance.
This year, our show is “Travesties” – the Tony-award winning play by Tom Stoppard, who is famous for his writing for both the stage and the screen.
Date: Tuesday March 13, 2012
Location: Princeton University’s McCarter Theater
Play: “Travesties” by Tom Stoppard
Includes: A private pre-show wine & cheese reception, and a discussion about the play with a member of the McCarter Theater staff
Time: Reception at 6:00 pm; Talk at 6:45 pm; Performance at 7:30 pm
Cost: $45.00/per person, inclusive. Regular ticket prices for the main floor run around $50 to $60 just for the play, so we have a good deal!
RSVP: Elisa Maselli, elisa_maselli@mac.com
Note: Guests and spouses welcome!!
To guarantee our group discount, please send your check, made out to PASCC, by March 1 to:
Carol Morrison
6 Riverside Drive
Princeton, NJ 08549
carol.morrison76@gmail.com
609-423-4118
About the play:
TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard
“Zurich, 1917: Take one part Wilde, a touch of Lenin, a dash of Dada, a pinch of Joyce and you’ve got Tom Stoppard’s absurdly hilarious Travesties. Prepare to be delighted as Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Shakespeare in Love) spins you into a dazzling medley of philosophy, politics, literature, and history. The wildest revolutionary minds of the 20th century come alive in this romantic and achingly funny modern masterpiece.”
Tom Stoppard is an award-winning British playwright who has written for the stage as well as movies, radio and television. Themes of human rights, censorship and political freedom pervade his works. He won a Tony Award for “Travesties” – and three other Tonys, as well as an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love” (starring Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth I, Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth). He is also well-known as the author of the Tony-Award winning play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.”
“Travesties” is set in Zurich during the First World War, when three important and unlikely personalities were there – the author James Joyce, the revolutionary Lenin, and the founder of the Dada movement, Tristan Tzara. Stoppard uses a production of “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde as a framework to explore themes of art, the war and revolution.
This kind of layering – using a play in a play – is typical of Stoppard’s work, in my view. One of the things I loved about “Shakespeare in Love” is that it is the story of a woman, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who desperately wants to act. She poses as a man to get roles as a woman on stage – back in Elizabethan England, when women were not allowed to act. So Gwyneth plays a woman, playing a man so that she can play a woman! My favorite line from the movie is by Judi Dench, who won an Oscar for her role as Queen Elizabeth – she has figured out the ruse, and tells Gwyneth’s character, “I know something of a woman in a man’s profession. Yes, by God, I do know about that.”
I don’t know much about this play, but I have a deep appreciation for Tom Stoppard’s smart use of language, brilliant and literary humor, and ability to tell a story with complex and surprising layers!
I hope you will join us for this event!
Best,
Elisa Maselli
President
Smith College Club of Princeton
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