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Woolf Salon Project No. 24: On Wonder set for April 28

Posted in events, International Virginia Woolf Society, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Sunday 26 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

Save Friday, April 28, at 3 p.m. ET for the Woolf Salon Project No. 24: On Wonder.

Organizers from the International Virginia Woolf Society say, “Grab your favorite unicorn horn, your box of grubs, your strange silks and seabeasts, your astrolabe and ambergris, your magic glasses full of emerald light and blue mystery as we join guest hosts Angela Harris and Eret Talviste for a discussion of two Woolf essays, “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” (1925) and “Sir Thomas Browne” (1923).”

Where to find the readings

  • “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” appears in the First Common Reader and is available online.You can also find it in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 4: 1925-1928, pp. 53–61.
  • “Sir Thomas Browne”—originally published in the Times Literary Supplement —appears in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3: 1919-1924, on pp. 368–72. It is also available via Dropbox.

Check your time zone

Time Zone conversions:

12 p.m. PT (Los Angeles)
3 p.m. ET (New York)
4 p.m. Brasilia
8 p.m. BST (London)
9 p.m. CEST (Paris)
5 a.m. AEST Saturday 4/29 (Sydney)

Salons typically run about two hours, and the event will be recorded for later viewing for members of the International Virginia Woolf Society.

How to join

Anyone can join the group, which usually meets on one Friday of each month via Zoom and focuses on a single topic or text. Just contact woolfsalonproject@gmail.com to sign up for the email list and receive the Zoom link.

Background on the Salon

The Salon Conspirators — Benjamin Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Amy Smith, and Drew Shannon — began the Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Watch Met Opera’s “The Hours” at home, thanks to PBS

Posted in events, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, theater, tagged , , , , on Thursday 16 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you missed the Metropolitan Opera’s live performances of “The Hours” and didn’t catch it when it was shown live or recorded at your local theater, you still have a chance to watch it — right in the comfort of your own living room.

The much-lauded new opera will be the premiere episode of the 17th season of Great Performances at the Met on PBS. The first airing will be Friday, March 17, at 9 p.m. ET. In my area, it will also air Sunday, March 19, at 5 p.m. and Tuesday, March 21, at 8 p.m. All times are Eastern Standard.

Viewers in the U.S.A. can check local listings for the broadcast schedule of their PBS affiliate in their area.

The sold-out opera event of the year

“The Hours” played to sold-out audiences during its run at New York’s Lincoln Center from Nov. 22 through Dec. 15, 2022.

PBS Newshour called it, “The opera event of the year.” A Variety review claimed, “it’s Woolf who’ll make you swoon.”

Composer Kevin Puts adapted the opera from Michael Cunningham’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and the 2002 Academy Award-winning film by librettist Greg Pierce.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), it stars Renée Fleming alongside Tony winner Kelli O’Hara and opera star Joyce DiDonato. Phelim McDermott directs the production with Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting. Christine Baranski hosts.

Get ready with reviews, synopsis, program

The opera uses Woolf’s and Cunningham’s prose as a departure point from which to explore the novels’ ambiguities and fluidities that are heightened further by musical expression, according to the PBS website.

You can read more rave reviews from critics, prepare for the performance by reading a synopsis, and download a program.

 

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Learning about Vita from her cousin

Posted in events, Orlando, Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, tagged , , , , on Monday 6 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

If you will be in New York City on March 15, you can learn about Vita Sackville-West from her cousin. Yes, I’m serious.

Sponsored by the Royal Oak Foundation, the first talk in an in-person lecture series will be given by Robert Sackville-West, 7th Baron Sackville on March 15 at 6 p.m. (ET) at 20 W. 44th Street, between 5th and 6th avenues. A reception and book signing will follow the lecture, which is titled “Vita Sackville-West and A Sense of Place.”

Information about the event, which I learned about from a press release, is a bit sketchy. The release did not include any information regarding cost, and the appropriate page on the Royal Oak Foundation website is not updated to include the lecture series focused on Vita. However, I did find this email address, which might be helpful for obtaining more information: lectures@royal-oak.org

About the lecture series

The lecture series will describe Vita Sackville-West’s life and illustrate the places important to Virginia Woolf’s friend and lover.

One of these places was Knole, the 365-room house in which she grew up but which she was not able to inherit due to her sex. Woolf immortalized Vita’s feelings about Knole in her 1928 novel, Orlando.

In his lectures, Sackville-West will discuss Vita’s connections to Knole, as well as Sissinghurst, a nearby castle ruin and tumbledown farm that is considered Vita’s greatest creation and most enduring legacy. Both Knole and Sissinghurst are now owned by Britain’s National Trust.

About Robert Sackville-West

Robert Sackville-West, the 13th generation of the family to live at Knole, studied history at Oxford University and went on to work in publishing. He now chairs Knole Estates, the property and investment company that, in parallel with the National Trust, runs the Sackville family’s interests at Knole.

Knole House, originally built as an archbishop’s palace but given to the Sackville family in 1603.

Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens

 

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Reading Virginia Woolf during Women’s History Month 2023

Posted in A Room of One's Own, events, tagged , on Wednesday 1 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

Today is the first day of Women’s History Month. And Virginia Woolf should be on every book list, right? But she is not.

She is included, rightfully, on a list of “30 Books That Every Woman Should Read“ from Refinery 29. The must-read book by Woolf is her 1929 polemic, A Room of One’s Own. No surprise there.

Woolf on — and off – the list

Woolf is listed as a “Classic Female Author” on the Penguin Random House Women’s History Month Reading Challenge and her 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway is on the list.

Simon and Schuster ignored her, as did CNN. But Powell’s Books includes Woolf on a list of “Twenty-Five Women to Read Before You Die.”

The New York Public Library left her out of their “31 Books for March” list but included lots of other interesting women authors. And they did include her in a more extensive list. Orlando (1928) is on their longer list of “365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women’s Day All Year.”

The NYPL has also put together a Woolf reading list that aligns with their Virginia Woolf: A Modern Mind exhibit, which ends March 5. You can view it online.

Take a look back

Last year, Anne Fernald, a professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Issues at Fordham University, discussed how feminist writers and scholars think through Woolf today. You can find more information and watch the video of her 2022 presentation sponsored by the South Orange Public Library.

Submit your info

If you sight Woolf in any information related to Women’s History Month this year, please add the details in the comments section below.

 

 

 

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New work by Woolf playwright McLaughlin on NY stage

Posted in events, play, tagged , , on Sunday 5 February 2023| Leave a Comment »

Playwright and actor Ellen McLaughlin with Cecil Woolf, publisher and nephew of Leonard and Virginia, after the staging of Septimus and Clarissa at the 2015 Woolf conference.

Playwright and actor Ellen McLaughlin, who is well known among Virginia Woolf readers and scholars, has a new play on stage in New York City. Kissing the Floor, a radical retelling of the Antigone myth that is set in Depression Era America, is playing Feb. 23-March 12.

About McLaughlin and Woolf

I was first introduced to McLaughlin’s work when I attended her play Septimus and Clarissa at New York’s Baruch Performing Arts Center back in 2011 and wrote a review for this blog.

Since then, she staged Septimus and Clarissa at the 25th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf in 2015, gave a plenary talk at the 2019 conference, and staged Woolf-related works at other Woolf conferences.

One of these was The Party—a one-woman play she wrote in collaboration with Kathleen Chalfant for the 2020 Woolf conference. It wove together three stories Woolf wrote while working on Mrs. Dalloway –- “The New Dress,” “Together and Apart,” and “A Summing Up.”

About Kissing the Floor

McLaughlin’s new play investigates the relationships among a set of siblings, all survivors of their family’s agonized, infamous legacy. Annie and her disturbed and disturbing brother, Paul, are knotted together by fate and a tortured love as their sister Izzy and their brother Eddie look on with dismay and all too much understanding.

It addresses these questions: Can one extricate oneself from a terrible past? What do we owe those who share our blood, however tainted?

How to book

Kissing the Floor is on stage at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42nd St. Tickets are priced at $42.50 and $57.50 and can be booked online. Use Code: EARLYBIRD to get tickets for $32.50, inclusive of all fees. Offer valid for all purchases before Feb. 15.

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