3:00 pm,
Sunday,
March 26, 2006
Umble Center
Spring mainstage play - After Mrs. Rochester by Polly Teale
The Goshen College Theater Department presents the midwestern U.S. premiere
of After Mrs. Rochester by Polly Teale, directed by Dr. Doug Liechty Caskey. The
play interweaves fiction with historical fact in its exploration of the turbulent life
of Jean Rhys, author of Wide Sargasso Sea (1957), a novel that invents the
childhood and early life of Mrs. Rochester, the insane and violent wife of
Rochester in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre. Polly Teales play is a potent testimony
to the power of literature how fictional characters can take over our
consciousness and in some way cleanse it. It is also a witness to the compulsion
of writing and how this can transform the most broken of emotional lives.
The play opens in a locked room in a remote cottage in the English countryside
where Jean Rhys is attempting to write a novel, until a disruptive knock at the
door sends her on an emotional journey (reliving her childhood and eventual
young adult experiences) that will finally enable her to write the novel she
struggles to compose. At one point, an editor/publisher says to Jean: We are all
of us adrift. All of us alone and afraid and searching for meaning. That is why we
read. Why we write. Why we talk to one another. We are hoping to bridge that
great chasm between ourselves and others. To find ourselves in a story. The GC
production of After Mrs. Rochester attempts to explore that social chasm,
potentially extending a story, a bridge for the audience to traverse.
This play contains mature themes and is not recommended for pre-teens.
The spring mainstage production is scheduled for March 17, 18, 24, 25 at 8 p.m. and March 19, 26 at 3 p.m. in Umble Center.
Tickets cost $8 for general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens. They can be reserved by calling the Welcome Center at (574) 535-7566 or e- mailing welcomecenter@goshen.edu.
Contact: Goshen College Welcome Center, phone (574) 535-7566, email welcomecenter@goshen.edu
See also: Play press release