Elizabeth Marvel and Bill Camp to Lead DEAR ELIZABETH Reading to Benefit Henry Miller Memorial Library

The acclaimed actors Elizabeth Marvel (Homeland, Other Desert Cities) and Bill Camp (The Night Of, The Crucible) will perform a reading of Sarah Ruhl's critically acclaimed play Dear Elizabeth, on Sunday, Nov. 19th, 7:30 p.m. at Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn.

The event will raise funds for the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, CA., an enchanting and renowned nonprofit arts center, grappling with severe financial challenges after ravaging storms, massive landslides and a bridge collapse forced a 7-month emergency closure. Tickets are on sale at www.henrymiller.org.

Through Dear Elizabeth the furtive, creative minds and private lives of Pulitzer Prize-winning 20th Century poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop come to sparkling life. Cultivated through 400 letters over a 30-year span (1947-1977), Bishop and Lowell's warm yet distant friendship amidst extraordinary and troubled lives was chronicled through these letters, in Words in Air (2007).

After Ruhl became engrossed with the trove, the Pulitzer-finalist and Tony-nominated playwright was inspired to write Dear Elizabeth, which she constructed using only Bishop and Lowell's revealing letters and riveting poetry. Dear Elizabeth premiered at The Women's Project in 2015, garnering outstanding reviews.

Like Marvel and Camp, the reading's director Jonathan Mann also studied theater at Juilliard. Mann has produced on Broadway (A Time To Kill) and directed readings at Circle in the Square where he developed and managed a number of special projects. In earlier years Mann was a performer, appearing on Broadway and in regional theaters.

Henry Miller grew up in Williamsburg, and Henry Miller Memorial Library's director Magnus Torén appreciates the synergies at play.

"Henry would surely be pleased to see this brilliant collaboration spanning his bi-coastal homes of Brooklyn and Big Sur. The Library is honored to partner with Jonathan, Elizabeth and Bill in presenting Ms. Ruhl's fascinating work, at such an intimate and gorgeous theatre - and all for a good cause!" said Torén.

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