Edith Wharton’s Lost Play: A Reading and Talkback with Ghostlight Ensemble
@ Richard H. Driehaus Museum
40 E Erie St, Chicago, IL 60611
Opening Wednesday, March 8th, from 6:30PM - 8:30PM
Buy Tickets General Audience: $40 || Members: $35 || Students: $20
https://46316.blackbaudhosting.com/46316/Edith-Wharton-The-Shadow-of-a-Doubt
“She has had no experience of the world, no education, no advantages. Her whole life has been one long struggle against poverty…You know me too well to fancy that I think the worse of for her for that; but it’s hardly the training for a future Cabinet Minister’s wife!”
Edith Wharton’s lost play, The Shadow of a Doubt, tells the story of Kate Tredennis, a nurse who marries John Derwent, a socialite and widower of one of Kate’s former patients and friends. Elevated into society through her marriage, Kate is a model wife and stepmother, but she feels uneasy with her new position and faces constant scrutiny for her less-than background. Soon, her unease is manifested when a man from her past casts suspicion on Kate and accuses her in Mrs. Derwent’s death. Replete with Wharton’s trademark wit and skewering of Gilded Age manners, this play is also a dark story that touches on the ethics of euthanasia.
The play was set to premiere in 1901 but was cancelled for unknown reasons before any performance and then, it was lost to time. In 2016, researchers rediscovered it in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Ghostlight Ensemble will perform a reading of the play and then engage in a talkback.
This event will be held in the Nickerson Ballroom. The reading is expected to last 100 minutes, followed by a talkback, and there will be an intermission.
About Ghostlight Ensemble
Ghostlight Ensemble Theatre Company is a Chicago-based 501c3 theatre company with a mission to ask questions that challenge the status quo through timeless stories, immersive environments, and unconventional staging. Ghostlight Ensemble was founded in 2016 and has a current ensemble of 15 artists, with a number of regular collaborators and partners throughout Chicago.
Ghostlight Producing Director Holly Robison will direct the The Shadow of a Doubt reading. For Ghostlight, Holly has directed mainstage productions of An Ideal Husband and Picasso at the Lapin Agile, as well as directed a reading of Miss Elizabeth Bennet for the Jane Austen Society of North America’s Annual Meeting.
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Tags: Chicago, Ghostlight Ensemble, Near North Side, Richard H. Driehaus Museum
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