This program is virtual, on Zoom
Co-sponsored by California Shakespeare Theater & The Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning
Word has come. Care-bent King Lear is dead, driven mad and betrayed. His three daughters too, broken in battle. But someone has survived: Lear's queen. Exiled to a nunnery years ago, written out of history, her name forgotten. Now she can tell her story.
Though her grief and rage may threaten to crack the earth open, she knows she must seek answers. Why was she sent away in shame and disgrace? What has happened to Kent, her oldest friend and ally? And what will become of her now, in this place of women? To find peace she must reckon with her past and make a terrible choice - one upon which her destiny, and that of the entire abbey, rests.
Giving unforgettable voice to a woman whose absence has been a tantalizing mystery, Learwife is a breathtaking novel of loss, renewal, and how history bleeds into the present.
J.R. Thorp is a writer, lyricist and librettist. She won the London Short Story Award in 2011 and was shortlisted for the BBC Opening Lines Prize, and has had work published in the Cambridge Literary Review, Manchester Review, antiTHESIS, Wave Composition and elsewhere. She wrote the libretto for the highly acclaimed modern opera Dear Marie Stopes and has had works commissioned by the Arts Council, the Wellcome Trust and St Paul's Cathedral. She has a PhD from the University of Manchester and was a Clarendon Scholar at Oxford, where she completed her Masters. Born in Australia, she now lives in Cork, Ireland. (Photo credit: Tristan Hutchinson)
Philippa Kelly (PhD Shakespeare) is Resident Dramaturg for the California Shakespeare Theater. She has published 11 books and 98 articles , her latest edited book being Diversity, Inclusion and Representation in Contemporary Dramaturgy: Case Studies From the Field. She is proud to lead a year-round community theater group entitled Berkeley Theater Explorations, the purpose of which is to make dramaturgy foundational to community theater appreciation – in other words, to make theater-going an active practice rather than a passive form of consumption.
Join California Shakespeare Theater’s Resident Dramaturg Philippa Kelly for Shakespeare In-Depth—a virtual lecture series exploring the vital question: what makes Shakespeare’s plays so potent for the moment we’re living in right now? For more information, click on the link: Shakespeare in Depth
Buy books online at: Alexanderbook.com
Mechanics' Institute Members and cosponsors Free
Public sliding scale, $5 to $10
Meet the Author(s)
