Carrelli Directs THE BELLE OF AMHERST This November

Longtime theater collaborators Melissa Carrelli and Caroline Davis are back at work, preparing a revival of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst - the acclaimed theatrical exploration of the private life of American poet Emily Dickinson - that debuts November 6 for nine performances at Demetria Kalodimas' The Filming Station in downtown Nashville. Running through November 22, The Belle of Amherst is a joint production of Carelli's In Another Life and producer Scott Orr's Maverick Entertainment Group, in association with Kalodimas' Genuine Human.

The Belle of Amherst, with Davis portraying the poet, will play three weekends: November 6-8, 13-15 and 20-22. Friday and Saturday evening performances are at 7:30 p.m.; Sunday matinees begin at 2:30 p.m.

A true nonconformist, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is recognized as one of the finest, most influential and singular voices in the English language. Drawing from her poems, diaries and letters, playwright Luce's one-character show (which premiered in 1976) brings Dickinson to life by using a stream-of-conscious flow of prose and verse.

Age 53 at the beginning of the play, the notoriously reclusive Dickinson welcomes the audience to her home in Amherst, Massachusetts, and reveals her longing to become a famous poet, shares recipes and small-town gossip, and paints lyrical portraits of her family. The twists and turns of her narrative include childhood flights of fancy, reactions to literary criticism, her naturalist view of the infinite Universe, and, ultimately, her acceptance of Immortality.

As Dickinson wrote in one of her many letters, "Pardon my sanity. Pardon my jubilation in Nature, my terror of midnight, my childlike wonder at love, my white renunciation. Nothing more do I ask than to share with you the ecstasy and sacrament of my life."

Directed by Carrelli and staged in the Filming Station's intimate theatre, the production stars Caroline Davis as Emily Dickinson. Scott Orr is producer and Daryl Pike is stage manager. The creative team collaborated on last fall's Nashville premiere production of Twain and Shaw Do Lunch at the same venue. Previously, Stevens' play was presented in a staged reading during 2013 First Night Honors' events in Nashville.

Carrelli and Davis have previously teamed for such diverse productions as Lady Frederick, Enchanted April, Lady Windermere's Fan and O Jerusalem, among others.

Tickets are $25 (includes secure parking next to the venue) and are available through Eventbrite links available via producer's www.maverickentertainmentpartners.com, or www.TheBelleofAmherst.wordpress.com. Seating is limited and advance reservations are encouraged.

The Filming Station is located on the Downtown Roundabout (just south of the Music City Center) at 501 8th Avenue South. Using reclaimed brick from a nearby demolition, found materials, recycled supplies and ingenuity, the venue is the resurrection of an historic 1935 gas station that serviced the city for generations, and now includes performance, screening, production and special event spaces. For more information, visit www.TheFilmingStation.com.

More about Emily Dickinson Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is easily one of the greatest American poets of the 19th century-or indeed of any century. In addition to her literary fame, most readers will know at least one other reputation for her, that of eccentric recluse. While this characterization of Dickinson as a white-clad, poetry-mumbling, erotically suppressed spinster has been robustly challenged, it remains true that Dickinson stayed very close to her New England home: she only left the state once, her hometown of Amherst rarely, and, after 1872, she barely left the confines of her family's property, dying (perhaps of Bright's Disease, or a stroke) in the house where she was born. In her 55 years, Dickson produced nearly 1800 poems in manuscript; only seven were published during her lifetime. Both her life and her art were deliberate and deceptively simple: as she herself famously wrote, "The Soul selects her own Society." Her relationships with the Society of men are likely her best known, among them her father, Edward; her brother, Austin; the Reverend Charles Wadsworth; and the critic Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Eschewing the conventional burdens of nineteenth-century female life - the consuming duties of wife, mother and hostess - Dickinson instead chose to confine herself, both figuratively and largely literally-to the private role of poet. Although she can seem to have more in common with the English Metaphysicals and Romantic visionaries than with her own compatriots, Dickinson is nevertheless a perennially "modern" poet with countless appreciators and literary descendants. As a person and as a poet, Dickinson still astonishes readers with the unapologetic freshness of her life choices and the formal austerity of her art-her surgical diction, her uncanny metaphors, and her unflinching view of human experience.

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