Sonoma Arts Live presents "The Belle of Amherst"

Sat, June 1, 2019, 7:30 pm

THE BELLE OF AMHERST, a one-woman show with award-winning Theater Artist and Professor of Theater at Napa Valley College Jennifer King as poet Emily Dickinson. This is the fifth play in the TOAST TO THE CLASSICS series, running on the Rotary Stage in Andrews Hall in the historic Sonoma Community Center. The show runs two weekends only, Thursday-Sunday, May 23-June 2. Showtimes are 7:30 Thursday-Friday evenings and 2:00 pm matinees on Sunday. This classic play about the life of the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson is directed by Sharon Winegar.

“Emily Dickinson was little known in her lifetime but has since become an iconic voice of her generation,” says Executive Artistic Director Jaime Love. This one-woman show requires an actress to portray 15 different characters, and who better to do this than Jennifer King, whom you’ll no doubt remember from our sold-out run of Bad Dates.”

Set in Dickinson’s Amherst, Massachusetts, home, this play makes use of her poems, diaries, and letters – recollecting encounters with the significant people in her life.

Director Sharon Winegar shares her insights on directing this solo play: “In approaching this production of THE BELLE OF AMHERST, I wanted to break with tradition and do something a bit more unconventional, even a bit ‘meta.’ I’ve worked with several British directors who have staged a ‘pre-show’ for their productions – a device to set the scene and to comment on the theatricality of the imminent play. According to the Urban Dictionary (such a useful tool!), ‘meta’ is ‘a term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential.’ Meta means about the thing itself. In other words, we are acknowledging the fact that this is a play, not reality.”

View on Website Add to Google Calendar

Sonoma Community Center

276 E Napa Street - Sonoma