The Clearing

What happens when justice isn’t just? This passionate, poignant and powerful historical drama tells the story of an English aristocrat and his Irish wife whose love is challenged, loyalties tested and lives forever changed by the divisive politics and long held prejudices of their time. Set in Ireland during “the curse of Cromwell,” Edmundson uses a historical lens to capture the horror of today’s ethnic cleansing and forced transplantation. Full of treachery and treason, The Clearing adeptly funnels an intimate love story into a national tragedy presenting a political and moral dilemma that still resonates today.

Donations of non-perishable food items will be collected at each performance for local charities

Appropriate for ages 12+
Contains mature themes and sexual violence

For more information please visit our webpage at www.hubtheatreboston.org

Independent Film Festival Boston: Nothing is Truer Than Truth, A Documentary about Shakespeare

NOTHING IS TRUER THAN TRUTH will premiere at the Independent Film Festival Boston. Please help us celebrate at the historic Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square on SUNDAY APRIL 29TH at 1:00 P.M. There will be a post-screening Q&A session with director Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, and cast and crew from the film, followed by a reception. Festival badges and tickets are available at IFFB.org.

NOTHING IS TRUER THAN TRUTH introduces Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, A-list party boy on the continental circuit, who spent a year and a half in Venice and traveling in Italy, learning about commedia dell’arte and collecting the experiences that would become known as the works of Shakespeare. Filmed in Venice, Verona, Mantua, Padua, and Brenta, the film ventures to actual sites De Vere visited in 1575-76, including the settings for The Merchant of Venice, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, and Two Gentlemen of Verona. The film features renowned Shakespeare scholars, actors, and directors, including Sir Derek Jacobi, Mark Rylance, Tina Packer, and Diane Paulus, and argues that De Vere’s bisexuality is the reason for the pseudonym “Shake-speare.”

Grub Street instructor and screenwriting consultant Cheryl Eagan-Donovan’s debut feature All Kindsa Girls screened at film festivals and art house theaters in London, Toronto and the U.S., was short-listed for the PBS series POV, and is featured in Paul Sherman’s book Big Screen Boston. She served on the Board of Directors of Women in Film & Video New England, The Next Door Theater, and The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. She teaches writing, literature, and filmmaking and has published articles on Shakespeare and film.

“Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award” at the Boston Public Library

The Associates of the Boston Public Library cordially invite you to their Hundred-Year Retroactive Book Award, a competition that weighs the enduring literary merits of three bestsellers, all published in 1917. Contenders for the prize are T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock and Other Observations, Mohandas Gandhi’s Third Class in Indian Railways, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s His Last Bow: An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes. The books will be defended by poet and author Charles Coe, Michael Patrick MacDonald, memoirist, and suspense author Jacquelyn Mitchard respectively. Author Stona Fitch will moderate the irreverent debate, after which the audience will vote to determine the winner. A reception with the panelists will follow.

Insider Tour of the Historic Omni Parker House

Where did Charles Dickens practice his reading of “A Christmas Carol” before speaking in front of an American audience? Where did the Transcendentalists hang out on the last Saturday of every month? Where did Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X work before they were Ho Chi Minh and Malcolm X?

House historian Susan Wilson is back by popular demand to uncover the rich literary history of the Omni Parker House. Don’t miss this private talk and tour of the hotel, retracing the steps of renowned writers, including those of the “Golden Age of American Literature” like Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Longfellow as well as Mark Twain, Willa Cather, and Britain’s Charles Dickens.

This event is limited to the first 15 registrants. (Note: this event always sells out.) Once registered via Eventbrite, please meet up at Parker’s Bar at the appointed day and time, a half flight up from the 60 School Street entrance to the hotel.

Book Release Party: Boston 1945-2015

Russ Lopez will read selections from and sign copies of his new book, Boston 1945-2015: The Decline and Rebirth of a Great World City. Published by Shawmut Peninsula Press, this book traces the path of the city from its decades of economic depression that marked it as one of the most distressed urban areas in the country to its current prosperity that is the envy of cities around the world. This story includes the new residents of the city who are creating and benefiting from this turn around and those others who have been pushed out and closed off from the new economy powering Boston.

This event is free and open to the public.

 

 

“Black Orators: By Word and By Pen” at the Museum of African American History

The Museum of African American History is pleased to host an evening of history, poetry and music dedicated to the unwavering persistence shared in three literary giants:  MARIA STEWART (1803-1879), DAVID WALKER (c.1797-1830) and SAMUEL ALLEN (1917-2015).

MARIA STEWART was the first woman to speak to a mixed-gender audience in public to address political topics. DAVID WALKER wrote and published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.  As orators and publishers, both contributed to the African American literary canon. Maria Stewart and David Walker were good friends and neighbors on Joy Street.  After David died, Maria often quoted him and his efforts to unite black people.

SAMUEL ALLEN, whose pen name was Paul Vesey, began his literary career in Europe where he was a contemporary of Richard Wright and James Baldwin.  First recognized in Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s, his reputation spread to the U.S. in the 1960s.  His poetry books include Ivory Tusks and Other Poems and Paul Vesey’s Ledger.  Allen served on the Board of the Museum of African American History for over ten years.

L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Education, Museum of African American History will provide historical context.  Castle of Our Skins musicians will perform the work of black composers including String Quartets by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Spoken word artist, Regie Gibson, will recite original poetry and select readings from the pens of Stewart, Walker and Allen.

SCHEDULE

6:00 pm     Maria Stewart and David Walker

History Talk by L’Merchie Frazier, Director of Education & Interpretation, Museum of African American History

81 Joy Street, Beacon Hill

6:15 pm     Reception

African Meeting House, 46 Joy Street

7:00 pm     The Music of Black Composers, Castle of Our Skins

Tribute to Black Orators, Regie Gibson

African Meeting House, 46 Joy Street

This program is made possible with support from the National Parks of Boston “Art on the Trails to Freedom” initiative, the National Park Service Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program, and the New England Foundation for the Arts.

ROSALYN ELDER on Massachusetts’ African American Heritage

The Boston Public Library welcomes author ROSALYN ELDER for an exploration of African American Heritage in Massachusetts. This combination tourist guide and history book explores the contributions of African Americans to the history of Massachusetts through 742 sites around the state.  Ignorance about these contributions have blinded many to the vision, faith, and determination that allowed these ancestors to persevere and accomplish so much in the face of overwhelming obstacles.

Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today

Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution.

Husband-and-wife team CYNTHIA and SANFORD LEVINSON join Porter Square Books with their nonfiction book Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today.

They take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these features in our system for granted. But they came about through haggling in an overheated room in 1787, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications.

This event is free and open to the public.

The Suffragents: the hidden history of the men behind the struggle for women’s suffrage

Porter Square Books is pleased to welcome NYU journalism professor BROOKE KROEGER for a reading and discussion of The Suffragents.

The Suffragents is the untold story of how some of New York’s most powerful men formed the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage, which grew between 1909 and 1917 from 150 founding members into a force of thousands across thirty-five states. KROEGER explores the formation of the League and the men who instigated it to involve themselves with the suffrage campaign, what they did at the behest of the movement’s female leadership, and why. Led by such luminaries as Oswald Garrison Villard, John Dewey, Max Eastman, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and George Foster Peabody, members of the League worked the streets, the stage, the press, and the legislative and executive branches of government. In the process, they helped convince waffling politicians, a dismissive public, and a largely hostile press to support the women’s demand. Together, they swayed the course of history.

This event is free and open to the public.