Cesear's Forum to Present Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING

An adaptation of the award- winning, bestselling memoir, Cesear's Forum is offering Joan Didion's candid drama THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, in a limited six-week November/December engagement, at Kennedy's Down Under, Playhouse Square, Cleveland, Ohio.

Transforming the sudden and unexpected loss of her husband and their only daughter into a stunning and powerful one-woman play, the role of Ms. Didion, considered by many to be an iconic American novelist and essayist, will be undertaken by veteran Cleveland Actress Julia Kolibab. Employing a cadence of language that reflects disorientation, the telling is deeply personal, yet inclusive, a changing of the rules or perception of the world by which you have lived your life. In this time of pandemic, the individual battle with conjecture, instinct and changing circumstances couldn't be more relevant, giving the work about coping additional resonance.

Joan Didion (born December 5, 1932) is an American writer in the style known as New Journalism, described as creative nonfiction. Didion graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1956 and then worked for Vogue magazine from 1956 to 1963, first as a copywriter and later as an editor. Column writing would become essay collections such as Slouching Towards Bethlehem. Incisive prose storytelling and analysis extend into her novels and later screenplays, an example of both is Play It as It Lays. She has been described as a "disaffected insider." Other works include: The White Album, After Henry, Book of Common Prayer, Salvador and The Last Thing He Wanted. In 2013, she was awarded a National Medal of Arts and Humanities by President Obama.

Cesear's Forum, a small theatre collective that produces intermittently, continues its mission of interpreting unusual or lesser known plays and sharing those perceptions regionally. The company has been both criticized and praised for the scope of its work within a minimalist imprimatur, works that offer "political, social, and cultural awareness."

THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING premiered on Broadway in 2007 with Vanessa Redgrave. The Cleveland production with Julia Kolibab will be staged by Artistic Director Greg Cesear, with a setting by Michael Larochelle, lighting by Andrew Kaletta and costumes by Inda Blatch-Geib. The production is sponsored, in part, by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Bonne Bell Family Foundation and Scene Magazine.

Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING: November 5th through December 11th, Friday and Saturday at 8pm. Two Sunday Matinees at 3 pm on November 14th and December 21st , Kennedy's Down Under, Playhouse Square, 1501 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio. Call 216-241-6000 or visit www.playhousesquare.org. Ticket price is: $18

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