The Acting Company Presents Jane Eyre at the Fisher Center on April 18

The acclaimed The Acting Company presents a performance of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, directed by Davis McCallum and adapted by Polly Teale, at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on Wednesday, April 18. Recognized as a masterpiece when it was published in 1847, Jane Eyre remains a startlingly modern blend of passion, romance and suspense. The program, sponsored by Bard Theater, begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Sosnoff Theater. Tickets are $30 and $15. “Jane Eyre, to me, is a story of containment and release, as Jane struggles from the imprisonment of her childhood toward an almost unthinkable goal of mature freedom,” says director McCallum. “I think this is what led Polly Teale to twin Jane and Bertha [Mr. Rochester’s mad wife] in her adaptation. In effect, Jane is two people. One is composed, quiet, appropriate, conventional, frozen; the other is wild, violent, rebellious, engulfed in flame. Jane is always fighting to control this devouring force within her, because she’s afraid if she unleashes it, it may destroy her.” Polly Teale’s adaptation of Jane Eyre was originally performed in 1997 by Shared Experience Theatre Company at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich, England. Hannah Cabell appears as Jane Eyre and Christopher Oden as Mr. Rochester and John Reed. The cast includes Jeffrey M. Bender as Mr. Brocklehurst, Mr. Rochester’s Horse, and Richard Mason; Kelley Curran as Abigail, Helen Burns, Adele, and Mary Rivers; Mina Friedman as Cellist; Carie Kawa as Bertha; Amy Landon as Bessie, Grace Poole, Ingram, and Woman; Liv Rooth as Mrs. Reed, Mrs. Fairfax, Diana Rivers; and Matt Steiner as Pilot the Dog, Lord Ingram. St. John Rivers. The production team includes Neil Patel, scenic design; Christal Weatherly, costume design; Michael Chybowski, lighting design; Michael Freeman and Fitz Patton, music and sound. Davis McCallum was director of the acclaimed production of The Acting Company’s The Turn of the Screw (New York and national tour). In New York City he directed the Culture Project’s production of Quiara Hudes’s Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue; House of Blue Leaves; Landscape of the Body; and the New York premiere of Chuck Mee’s A Perfect Wedding for New York University’s Graduate Acting Program. He directed Unbound: The Journals of Fanny Kemble and The Belle’s Stratagem for the Prospect Theater Company and Noah Haidle’s The Dakota Project and Women & Criminals for HERE. In regional theater, McCallum directed The Belle’s Stratagem and Adam Bock’s The Thugs for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival; Sarah Ruhl’s The Clean House for the Cleveland Play House; McCallum’s own adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac for Georgia Shakespeare; Twelfth Night at the American Shakespeare Center; As You Like It for Shakespeare Theater/ACA; and for Princeton University’s McCarter Theater productions of Big Love, A Long History of Neglect, and Melancholy Play. He was a Phil Killian Fellow at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2003, a Drama League Directing Fellow in 2001. Davis trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art and studied at Princeton and Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Founded by John Houseman and Margot Harley in 1972, The Acting Company has been honored by the TONYs for Excellence in Theater and has won an Obie Award, Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, Citibank’s Excellence in Education Award, and two Audelco Awards. Hundreds of extraordinary actors—including Kevin Kline, Frances Conroy, Jesse L. Martin, Patti LuPone, David Ogden Stiers, Harriet Harris, David Schramm, Jeffrey Wright, Tom Hewett, Henry Stram, Keith David, and Rainn Wilson—began their careers touring with The Acting Company, which has brought 127 productions to millions of people in 48 states and nine foreign countries. For further information and to purchase tickets, call or visit fishercenter.bard.edu.

This event was last updated on 04-19-2007

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