Summer Stage Closes July With a Sarah Ruhl Gem

TheatreXP has expanded its seventh season of Summer Stage to include the works of other Key West theater companies. This is the culmination of a long-held vision for collaboration among local theaters, in an effort to build the reach of the theater arts in Key West. This Festival of Stage Arts, as this year’s Key West Summer Stage is subtitled, includes The Studios of Key West, the Key West Theater, and Fringe Theatre Key West.

Fringe Theater is showcased as the final mainstage production of Key West Summer Stage. This roving theater company stages productions in venues that have varied from churches to bars to art galleries. “It’s exciting for us to perform in a venue that’s actually a theater!” says Rebecca Tomlinson, Fringe’s Artistic Director and director of Dear Elizabeth.

Dear Elizabeth, presented at the Red Barn Theater July 26-29 at 8pm, is the provocative story of poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Their friendship spanned 30 years and their letters, on which the play is based, reveals the professional conflicts and personal intimacies that compelled them toward and away from each other. Both poets were Pulitzer Prize winners and very well known in their time. Both poets struggled with personal addictions – Bishop was an alcoholic and Lowell would probably be diagnosed as bi-polar today.

Despite their struggles, they each regarded their friendship as the key element to sustaining them as they each navigated very troubled lives. “I was first drawn to the idea of the script because Elizabeth Bishop once lived in Key West. And I love presenting letters of well-known writers.” Tomlinson has written and directed several evenings of Tennessee Williams letters for the Tennessee Williams in Key West Birthday Celebration.

It is the words between poets that is eventually the star of Dear Elizabeth, which is written by multi-award winning playwright Sara Ruhl. It is the precision of communication and the heartbreak of – in the end – words not being enough.

Dear Elizabeth features Key West theater newcomers Andrew D. Cannady and Paula Cabot. Both actors were active in theater in earlier versions of their lives, and both are delighted to be back on the stage. Tomlinson is once again incorporating live music into the performance, this time featuring local cellist Denise Nathanson.

Tickets for Dear Elizabeth are $25 and are available online by going to the Red Barn Theatre or Fringe Theater websites. To purchase tickets by phone, call 305-296-9911. Dear Elizabeth runs four nights only, July 26-29 at 8pm. For more information on Dear Elizabeth, email [email protected].

Key West Summer Stage is sponsored in part by Royal Furniture, Blue Heaven, The Grand Café, Design Group Key West, Digital Island Media, KONKLife, and the Monroe County Tourist Development Council. For more information on Summer Stage events, visit keywestsummerstage.com or call TheatreXP at 302-540-6102.

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