Avant-garde writer & Huntington Resident back on Stage; Long Island’s only National Endowment for the Arts award-winning Theatre presents: Barnes Raising, An Evening of One-Acts by Djuna Barnes; ONE NIGHT ONLY. limited seating Monday, March 31, at 7pm
(HUNTINGTON, NY) Airmid Theatre Company celebrates women’s history month through its on-going ALL SHE WROTE concert-style performance series with a staged reading of theatrical works of avant-garde writer and former Huntington resident Djuna Barnes. BARNES RAISING, AN EVENING OF ONE-ACTS BY DJUNA BARNES on March 31 at 7 PM. Three short plays, KURSY OF THE SEA, THE DOVE, and TO THE DOGS show Barnes’ wide variety of writing styles and genres-comedies and dramas; realism and surrealism, as well as her fondness for Irish writers like JM Synge whom she herself revered and sometimes imitated.
Called everything from a genius to incomprehensible, Djuna Barnes’ works explore the very heart of humanity: love; sensuality and family. In BARNES RAISING, AN EVENING OF ONE-ACTS BY DJUNA BARNES, three plays take different looks at what makes us human and how we all deal with who we are and who we want to be. A member of the early Provincetown Players, Barnes is today seen as one of the most important writers working in Greenwich Village in the teens and 20’s, and of the thriving Paris literary scene of the 30’s. Barnes plays strike at the heart of who we are today. They will make you laugh, will challenge you, and make you wonder.
The evening will be directed by founder and artistic director Tricia McDermott, with dramaturgy by Airmid literary manager, Elizabeth Bojsza. The cast will feature members of Airmid Theatre Artists’ Circle, classically trained professional actors from across Long Island and Manhattan. The performance will take place at Cinema Arts Center Café, 423 Park Ave, Huntington, NY 11743.
The evening will begin with a short contextual presentation by poet and historical journalist, George Wallace, first poet laureate of Suffolk County, who will discuss the family’s ties to Long Island–the Huntington area in particular—and the life that she shared as part of an experimental and possibly polygamous extended family. This will be followed by a concert-style performance of her three plays. The evening will conclude with an informal discussion among the audience and artists’ company.
DJUNA BARNES (1892 – 1982).
ABOUT THE PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHT
DJUNA BARNES (1892 – 1982). Journalist, illustrator, theatre critic, and avant-garde author was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, but moved to Huntington, Long Island where she lived for many of her formative years. In her early 20’s the family split up and Barnes and her mother and brothers moved to Brooklyn. Barnes studied art at the Pratt Institute, and at the Art Students’ League of New York. Over the years, Barnes wrote and illustrated for various papers and magazines including Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York Morning Telegraph, the New York Press, the New York Sun, Vanity Fair, McCall’s, Charm, Smart Set, and Theatre Guild Magazine. She was a member of the bohemian artistic set in Greenwich Village, and lived and worked in England and Paris, France for twenty years. A number of Barnes short works were produced by the Provincetown Players in 1919 and 1920. Her verse play The Antiphon (1958), was produced in Sweden in 1961 in a version co-translated by United Nations’ secretary Dag Hammarskjöld. Nightwood (1936), considered by her masterpiece, was written under the patronage of Peggy Guggenheim and championed by T. S. Eliot, Barnes’s editor at Faber and Faber. Barnes died in New York City on June 18, 1982, at the age of ninety.
ABOUT AIRMID THEATRE COMPANY
Long Island’s only National Endowment for the Arts awardee, the Airmid Theatre Company, was founded in 2000 to produce classic works by women. With these plays at the heart of its mission, the company creates a safe home for women theatre artists, and ignites broad public recognition of the essential contribution women have made to the worlds of theatre, dramatic literature, and society. By establishing the history of playwriting by women and professionally producing their work, we open the door to broader discussion on women’s roles today, and in the future. For more information about Airmid Theatre Company, please visit www.airmidtheatre.org.
Barnes Raising, An Evening of One-Acts by Djuna Barnes
Produced by Airmid Theatre Company
March 31, 2014, 7 pm; Free Admission
Cinema Arts Center Café, 423 Park Ave, Huntington, NY 11743
- Reservations required. 631-704-2888 or email: info@airmidtheatre.org
The ALL SHE WROTE Reading and Discussion series is presented with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and Bethpage Federal Credit Union.
