Theater in English…Word for Word!

Theater in English…Word for Word! | 17/03/2017 | 2:00 pm-3:30 pm

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Aunt Penny (Margo Hall), Miss Agatha (Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe) and Bertha (Velina Brown) pay a visit. Photo by Julie Schuchard.

WORD FOR WORD, the theater company from San Francisco which transforms short stories into great theater will be presenting ”All Aunt Hagar’s Children” by Edward P. Jones directed by Stephanie Hunt with the assistant Director Margo Hall.
Set in 1950s Washington, D.C., this Noir tale spotlights a young Korean War vet who sets out to solve a murder and becomes entangled in a web of family history. Along the way, he is unsettled by another death—a young woman whose last words haunt him and his investigation. Edward P. Jones evokes a neighborhood of vivid characters, telling a story about the strength of family and the choices that shape our lives.
Edward Paul Jones was born in 1950, in Arlington, Virginia. The only son of an illiterate hotel maid and kitchen worker, Jones grew up in his mother’s sphere because his father had drifted out of his life when he was a preschooler. His interest in literature was sparked early, yet it was some time before he realized that African Americans, like their white counterparts, were writing works of literary merit. For more than a decade Jones worked full time as a freelance columnist and proofreader for Tax Notes. It was tedious work and thus left room for his imagination to wander to other topics. Finally Jones let his imagination run free and started mentally plotting in intricate detail the story of Henry Townsend, a Virginia slave who buys his freedom and then becomes a slave owner himself. However, this novel, told in omniscient point of view and in a nonlinear form, is more than the tale of Townsend. Townsend is the pivotal character around which the stories of myriad other characters revolve. In 2004, The Known World won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. He has been an instructor of fiction writing at a range of universities. He lives in Washington, D.C. His second collection of short stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children, was awarded “Favorite Fiction in 2006” by the Los Angeles Times. “Jones’ everyday tales …capture so beautifully the passion and fragility of ordinary life….Taken together they give us a portrait of black life in Washington, D.C….that compares well with James Joyce’s Irish in The Dubliners.” – San Francisco Chronicle.
Shows are on Thursday, March 16th at 8 pm & Friday, March 17th at either 2 or 8 pm at the “Quart’Ney” 5/9 rue E.E. Duboys in Angers.
Limited seating available so we highly recommend that you reserve early. To reserve, simply send an email by clicking here or give the library a call at 02.41.24.97.07. Donations will be accepted at the door.
Word for Word’s mission is to “tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction”. Made possible by the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation.


Location: Quart'Ney