A Special Dark Week Project Announced at Portland Stage
This winter, Portland Stage unveils the Dark Week Project, three staged readings of beloved playwright Sarah Ruhl's Dear Elizabeth while the Mainstage is 'dark', a technical term to signify that the theater is in a transition week between regularly scheduled productions. Dear Elizabeth will be performed by a rotating cast of Portland Stage Affiliate Artists and is directed by Todd Brian Backus.
BWW Reviews: Novelist Debuts as Playwright
Portland Stage closes its season with the world premiere of award-winning Maine novelist, Monica Wood's touching first play, Papermaker. Set during the papermill strike of 1989 in the fictional town of Abbott Falls, Maine, the work probes the perceptions, conflicts, and interactions of individuals on both sides of the painful controversy. Handling material already familiar to her readers from her memoir, When We Were the Kennedys, Wood brings to the stage a compassionate grasp of character, a poetic sense of metaphor, and just enough sharp wit and turn of phrase to add spice to this all-too-human drama about ordinary folks whose lives and identities are turned upside down by the bitter labor dispute.