Saturday January 30 at 7:30pm
Sunday January 31 at 2:00pm
Lynne Kaufman’s
Divine Madness
Written by Lynne Kaufman
Performed by Julia McNeal and Charles Shaw Robinson
Divine Madness finds the divorced couple, writer Elizabeth Hardwick and poet Robert Lowell, weighing the possibility of reuniting. Lowell, following a frequent bout of manic-depression, left Hardwick seven years earlier to marry an English heiress. He documented that affair in a volume of poetry, The Dolphin, that scandalized the literary world and won him the Pulitzer prize.
Divine Madness explores the questions: Is art worth that much? Can love survive madness and betrayal?
Performances will be LIVE only
(not archived for later viewing)
Trailer
About the Playwright
Lynne Kaufman is the author of twenty full length plays, three novels and a dozen short stories. Within the last four years, she had had three plays produced at The Marsh SF: “Acid Test”, “Two Minds” and “Who Killed Sylvia Plath”. Unscripted Theatre in S.F. produced her play ”Sex Scandal”. “William Blake in Hollywood,” was produced by the Neil Simon Festival Theatre as the winner of its Best New Comedy Competition. Her play “Daisy in the Dreamtime” was premiered by The Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles , won The Rella Lossy Playwright’s Award, and was published in Women Playwrights: Best New Plays and by Dramatic Publishing. She was the recipient of The Otis Guernsey Outstanding New Voice in American Theatre Award from The William Inge Theatre Festival. “Shooting Simone” premiered at Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival and received six subsequent regional productions. It was published by Dramatic Publishing. Four of her plays premiered at The Magic Theatre including “The Couch”, which won The Glickman Award for Best New Play in San Francisco and “Speaking in Tongues”, which won a Kennedy Center/NEA/ Fund for New American Plays Award. Her play “Our Lady of the Desert” won Theatreworks ‘Best New Play in California Award”
About the Actors
“Two of the Bay Area’s most perceptive and penetrating actors, Julia McNeal and Charles Shaw Robinson, star as the sometime lovers as they measure the chasm between them and take stock of whether they might bridge it.” — Lily Janiak, SF Chronicle Datebook
Julia McNeal’s Bay Area credits include: Magic Theatre: Escaped Alone, Visible from Four States, The Eva Trilogy, Fred’s Diner, and A Lie of the Mind. A.C.T.: Top Girls; Shotgun Players: The Events; Aurora Theatre: Gidion’s Knot (extension). She has also appeared at SF Playhouse, Marin Theatre Company, Porchlight Theatre, TheatreFirst, Center Reperatory Company, Pacific Alliance Theatre, Actors Theatre of SF, First Person Singular, and is a PlayGround company member. Film and TV credits include: The Unbelievable Truth; Flesh and Bone; Law and Order and Law & Order: SVU. Julia was a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning Cucaracha Theatre in New York and the Echo in Los Angeles. She’s a Guest Artist at Tamalpais High School’s internationally acclaimed CTE program and the creator of the Five Ways In to Character technique for solo performers and writers. Julia is a proud member of the newly born A.R.C., online actors collective. juliamcnealarts.com
Charles Shaw Robinson His work for BRT includes the roles of the Father in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice and Milton in Tony Kushner’s Homebody/Kabul. Other favorite roles include Leonard in Seminar and Sorn in Stupid F**king Bird (both for the San Francisco Playhouse); Shag in Equivocation (Marin Theatre Company); Iago in Othello (California Shakespeare Theatre); and Henri in Magic Fire, directed by Jack O’Brien (Berkeley Repertory Theatre/Old Globe). Regional Theatre credits include the title roles in Hamlet (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park), Pericles (Centerstage, Baltimore) Scaramouche (The Empty Space Theatre, Seattle), and Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Word for Word, San Francisco). He was last seen in New York in the American premiere of Frank McGuinness’s Gates of Gold at 59E59 Theaters. He was honored to be a part of Public Enemy: Flint (Unicorn Theatre) for and with the residents of Flint, Michigan. He trained at Juilliard.
We wish to express our gratitude to the Performers’ Unions:
ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION
AMERICAN GUILD OF MUSICAL ARTISTS
AMERICAN GUILD OF VARIETY ARTISTS
SAG-AFTRA
through Theatre Authority, Inc. for their cooperation in permitting the Artists to appear on this program.
Back to Solo Performer Spotlight