A course, theatre, radio and music. All Brontë

1. A course in Portland, ME:

The Senior College program at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College
“The Brontë Sisters Revisited”:
The centerpiece of the course will be three of the 19th century’s most memorable novels. The class will read and discuss Charlotte Brontë’s "Jane Eyre" (1847), Emily Brontë’s "Wuthering Heights" (1847) and Anne Brontë’s "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" (1848).
Classes are scheduled from 1 to 3 p.m. eight Fridays, Sept. 23 to Nov. 18; no class Nov. 11.
Instructor Lincoln Ladd has taught English at North Carolina University, the University of North Carolina at Glassboro and the University of Maine at Farmington and Augusta. (Sun Journal)

2. In Toronto, the Canadian Premiere of After Mrs. Rochester by Polly Teale (press release):

Alumnae Theatre Company
After Mrs. Rochester
“If you had had the choice between being a writer and being happy, what would you have chosen?” “To be happy, of course. To be happy.”
Alumnae Theatre, Toronto
Opening Night: Friday September 23, 2011
Performance Dates: Friday September 23 - Saturday October 8, 2011
Schedule: Wednesday - Saturday 8:00pm; Sunday matinee at 2:00pm
(Talkback following matinée, Sun Oct 2)
Directed by Laura Roald
Susan Q Wilson as Jean Rhys,
Jessica Rose as Ella (her younger self), with Julie Burris, Keriece Harris, Laura Jabalee, Tabitha Keast,
Tina McCulloch and Laine Newman

Jean Rhys (1890 – 1979) was a troubled, Caribbean-born chorus girl turned writer who strongly identified with a fictional counterpart - Mr. Rochester’s mad first wife in Charlotte Brontë’s classic 1847 novel Jane Eyre. In 1966, after decades of silence, Jean Rhys produced her masterpiece, a Jane Eyre prequel titled Wide Sargasso Sea told from the perspective of Rochester’s unhappy West Indian bride. British playwright Polly Teale’s labyrinthine drama interweaves the demons haunting Jean with her fictional obsession to explore their toll on the writer’s stormy life.
Laura Roald, who directed Closer for Alumnae Theatre in 2008, looks at the play After Mrs. Rochester as the story of Jean Rhys “ripping the novel Wide Sargasso Sea from her very skin”. Roald notes that “working with an all-female cast allows the production to explore the hauntings from a personal perspective - Jean Rhys wrote with a deeply personal voice, and each emotional echo is an aspect of her own experiences. Cross-gendering the roles allow us to maintain that voice while still examining the raw pain of her life journey.”
The set design, conceived by the director, suggests outlines of mountains and doors, pulling together the disparate worlds of the lush landscape of Dominica and the stuffy cloister of Jean’s little writing room. A single space transforms to dozens of locations, and still remains a closed attic room. Paul Hardy’s lighting incorporates the rich and sensual as well as the humid and shadowy. Megan Benjafield’s atmospheric soundscape weaves throughout the fluid time shifts.

3. In Sanford, ME:

Sanford Main Stage Theatre
Olyde Tyme Radio Show presents Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. 
Come and see some of your favorite local actors tell you the story of love, hate, revenge, jealousy, death and strange phenomenon. Set in England in the late 1870’s on the dark and mysterious moors………
Performances will be part of the Sanford HARVEST DAZE on September 23, 24 at 7:00 pm in Gowen’s Park at the Gazebo. Donations accepted.
This show will also be performed at our theatre, 1 Hilltop Lane in Springvale on Sunday, September 25th at 2:00 pm. 

4. In Tallahassee, FL, a Carlisle Floyd celebration. We don't know if music from his opera Wuthering Heights will be played, but we rather hope so:

FSU’s College of Music presents
“A Celebration of Carlisle Floyd”
Saturday, Sept. 24, in Ruby Diamond Concert Hall.
Beginning at 7:30 p.m.
The performance will feature College of Music alumni, faculty and student performers who will showcase a number of selections from Floyd’s operas.  The concert serves as a means of recognizing the recently created Carlisle Floyd Endowment for Opera at Florida State. Floyd, one of the foremost composers and librettists of opera in the United States, hopes the fund will help students benefit from the offerings of FSU’s College of Music and keep its opera program thriving. In addition to establishing the fund, Floyd donated the original manuscripts of his operas “Wuthering Heights” and “Susannah,” the latter of which premiered at FSU in 1955, to the university’s Warren D. Allen Music Library.

Categories: Audio-Radio, Music, Opera, Theatre, Wuthering Heights