February Staged Reading: W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well and Dreaming of the Bones

When: Friday, February 3, 8:00pm

Where: Augustana Lutheran Church

This February our staged reading will consist of two short plays by William Butler Yeats, At the Hawk’s Well (1916) and The Dreaming of the Bones (1919). Both plays were inspired by Yeats’s encounter with the Japanese No theater, an art form that synthesizes drama, music, and dance. Yeats drew on what he knew (or thought he knew) about No to create a stripped-down, minimalist verse drama in which music and dance played a central role. At the Hawk’s Well, a “prequel” to Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand, is both an episode in the life of the legendary Irish hero Cuchulain and a parable about the paradoxical nature of human desire. The Dreaming of the Bones turns a medieval ghost story into a poignant dramatization of the difficulty of finding forgiveness in a starkly divided nation. The performance will take about an hour in total, and there will be a post-show discussion.

Directed by Susan Harris, with original music by Bill Hohnke.

Cast: Paul Baker, Anthony Brown, Leslie Browne

Singers: Kate Carter, Leslie Halverson, Amelia Snoblin

Musicians: Jenny Harr, Bill Hohnke, Andrea Holliday