Glastonbury West Productions invites you to two staged readings of Carroll Bishop’s new play, A NECESSARY PLEASURE, in a salon setting. They will take place on Sunday, August 19th at 1 pm and 5 pm in the Party Room of 95 Prince Arthur Avenue [Huron 1 block N. of Bloor].
A NECESSARY PLEASURE is a play in letters about love and the serious rift between men and women based on Carroll Bishop’s letters to Judy Downs, her oldest living friend. They met at the University of Chicago in 1942. Judy was known for her fabulous parties where you ran into people like Leadbelly and Katherine Dunham. The play is a tapestry of the lives of two extraordinary women at their best and worst - marriages, divorces, aging and hemorrhoids, the magic lives and breathes and takes you into a sacred and sensual world.
CARROLL BISHOP – A strong opinionated writer with a dry wit, Bishop comes from a family of writers. Her parents, Richard and Florence Atwater, wrote the best selling children’s classic MR. POPPER’S PENGUINS (Little Brown 1938, a Newbury award-winner).
Bishop now 82, entered the theatre world at 76, directing a staged reading of Fiona Macleod’s Celtic Revival ritual play THE IMMORTAL HOUR, which Glastonbury West presented in the nervous period just after 9/11. She co-produced a few modern Irish plays and produced her first play, Between Us GODDESSES, in 2004 and Schnitzler’s ANATOL in 2005. She also directed an experimental lecture series by Professor Christopher Innes of York University on the British stage designer and visionary Gordon Craig.
A NECESSARY PLEASURE is a rare mix of reality, fantasy and a sexy imagination which emerged naturally from the contents of a box of letters - a correspondence which took place over a five-year period. The play stars the raunchy Elley Ray Hennessy and the passionate Lorna Wilson and will be directed by Stratford Festival Alumna Mary Durkan.
Reservations email: gwreservations@aol.com and media enquiries email: nataliecapone@sympatico.ca. For play information, contact Carroll Bishop (416)923-4183.
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