A symposium, “Illusions and Second Chances,” is scheduled to be presented by the Westport Country Playhouse on Sunday, July 10, at 5:30 p.m. following the afternoon performance of “Dear Brutus.”
The whimsical play by J. M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan.” is about second chances and paths not taken. A second performance is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. that day.
Free and open to the public, the symposium features Toni Dorfman, director of undergraduate theater studies and associate professor of theater studies at Yale University, and Lois Spivak, Ph.D, a psychologist and sex therapist with a private practice in Woodbridge.
They plan to discuss Shakespearean illusions and references in “Dear Brutus,” and how second chances in relationships work out in the real world. The play’s title, “Dear Brutus,” comes from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.”
“Dear Brutus” is set on Midsummer’s Eve, when a group of strangers is invited to an isolated English country manor. They question why have they been invited, who is their strange, childlike host, and what they have in common.
The answers lie in the mysterious woods that appear for just one night each year.
The second production in the Playhouse’s 75th Anniversary Season, “Dear Brutus” is scheduled to run from Thursday through July 24.
It is directed by Gregory Boyd, artistic director of the Alley Theatre in Houston, and winner of a 2005 Connecticut Critics Circle Award for his direction of “Travesties” at Long Wharf Theatre.
For ticket information, call (203) 227-4177, or purchase online at http://www.westportplayhouse.org
