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Wednesday, Thursday, December 17, 18, 6pm
Teatro Santa Ana, Relox 50A
$100, tickets sold only at the door
It’s the jazz age, and the writer TS Eliot is experimenting with the rhythms and cadence that will make him famous. He’s already published the book Prufrock and other Observations backed financially by Ezra Pound’s wife, Dorothy, but it hasn’t sold very well and he’s wondering if he can ever pull it off again. He’s struggling with the stanzas that will eventually become The Waste Land and establish him as the foremost poet of his generation.
At 32, his marriage is in tatters; he’s overworked and underpaid. He’s a man who is desperately looking for something new and different when he meets the fabulously wealthy Marie Lloyd, a star of the music hall, whom he has admired for years, at her 50th birthday celebration. They are as different as chalk and cheese and yet they have the same sexual sensibilities and the same need for the bizarre, the violent, and the outrageous. Perhaps nothing can come of it: “on Margate Sands / I can connect / nothing with nothing…” Eliot wrote in 1921. Marie has been at the top of her profession for many years, but it’s all beginning to crumble: she’s becoming dated and out of touch. She’s still got the spark that made her famous, but as she ages, her confidence dwindles, and her younger husband is abusive and inattentive. She is definitely in need of a stimulant.
When Marilyn Bullivant read the eulogy that Eliot wrote in the literary journal The Criterion for Lloyd when she died, she knew that they must have met; so she set about introducing them in her play.
Marilyn and her husband Rick Davey recreate Lloyd and Eliot in this work that explores artistic anxiety, the demands of creativity, and passion for what you are, what you do, and who you share it with.
Performance dates are Wednesday, December 17 and Thursday, December 18 at the Santa Ana Theater at the Biblioteca Pública, Calle Relox 50A. Tickets sold only at the door for $100 pesos. First come, first served. House opens at 5:30pm; showtime 6pm.
SM Playreaders invites you to celebrate December with this very special play.
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