Roll out the red carpet! Turn on the klieg lights! Wednesday, September 28th is opening night of the 2022-2023 Season of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson -- Drama!!!
Our premier will be held at Joanna's open-air theater, and there has been a change to your programs. This week we will be reading Act I of Top Girls by Caryl Churchill, compliments of Christine. Barbara will present on Moliere at our next meeting. Doors open at 12:30 pm. Curtain goes up at 1pm.
For those unable to make it in person, Sharon, aka tech crew, would be happy to make the reading available on Zoom. Just let us know if you would like to attend virtually, and she will provide a link and the time it will be live.
Let's get on with the show!!!
Christine's Minutes: Ten members of the Literature Club gathered dramatically in Joanna’s lovely sunlit garden for the first and exceptionally dramatic meeting of our 2022-2023 season, in which our topic will no doubt be Drama.We missed our esteemed President Connie Stewart, but she was off in Scotland making sure Great Birnam Wood was still moving with deep drama towards Dunsinane Hill.
Our esteemed corresponding secretary, Jacquie, sprinted across highways, through backyards and forests in order to retrieve The Bell, so that Vice-President Joanna, acting as President, could most dramatically call the meeting to order.
The minutes of our May 18th meeting were read and accepted, most undramatically.
Our treasurer reported that the coffers are full with $394.50. There was a brief but dramatic discussion of our donation to the Hastings Library, but it was decided to await the return of our president.
Laura Rice said that the Hudson Valley Music Club, of which she is a member, will be performing on Mondays at 1 pm, at the Irvington Presbyterian Church. The first program on October 24th will feature works by women composers.
Because of scheduling changes there was no official program, which is also why there will be no official minutes.
In lieu of said officiousness, Props-person and Stage Manager Christine arrived with a kimono, a cowboy hat, a papal miter, and a Bruegelian helmet (tea cozies), and several highlighted copies of the first scene of Caryl Churchill’s 1982 play, Top Girls. The first American production was presented at the Public Theatre in 1982, and featured Linda Hunt as Pope Joan.
The casting was done arbitrarily, that is, in alphabetical order, so that anyone whose part did not include costumery should not feel personally neglected. But it will be noted that such a slight will never happen again.
Absent any rehearsal, members read their parts brilliantly: Marlene, the newly appointed Managing Director of the Top Girls Agency; Isabella Bell, the intrepid traveler, naturalist, and explorer; Pope Joan, who inhabited the chair of Saint Peter from 854-856 CE, and ended rather badly; Lady Nijo, a Japanese courtesan and later a Buddhist nun; Dull Gret, also known as Mad Meg, who streaks across the eponymous painting by Bruegel leading a crowd of women through Hell; and Patient Griselda, the pathologically obedient wife we know from Chaucer’s “Clerk’s Tale”. All these women came alive, most dramatically, in our bucolic circle in Joanna’s backyard.
Lee Strasberg would have been proud. The neighbors would have been stunned had they known what shady characters were cavorting in their midst.
Although the casting was in fact done arbitrarily, if dramatically, Linda announced that the fact of her being cast for the role of (the possibly apocryphal) Pope Joan was serendipitous indeed. It turns out that her great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather was the one and only Jewish King of Poland.
The meeting was adjourned at 3 pm.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner
Recording Secretary
Below, photos from the meeting. Top to bottom, left to right: Christine hands out props and costumes; seated left to right, Linda, Laura, Sharon, Jacquie, Lori; Joanna studies her part (second Lady Nijo); Jacquie and Lori, as Dull Gret and Patient Griselda; Carol; Carla; Laura practicing (first Lady Nijo); Sharon slightly miffed she didn't get the kimono (but was over it in 3 minutes); Linda, Laura and a more cheerful Sharon
