Written by Emma Ayres & Brianna Sloane with design by Elizabeth PangburnDates: July 15th-August 2, 2015, Wednesdays – Sundays
Time: 8pm
Location: The Emily Dickinson Museum Homestead
Tickets: Tickets are available for reservation and will also be available at the door. Reserve spots early; only 15 audience-members per night. Read more
Date: June 27, 2015
Time: 5 pm
Location: Amherst College Alumni House, 75 Churchill Street
Suggested donation: $10 per person/ $5 for museum members and studentsRead more
Dates: June 4-8, 2015
Take part in one of Emily Dickinson’s favorite pastimes—gardening! Join us for our annual effort to prepare the Museum’s historic grounds for summer. Volunteers with all levels of experience are welcome to plant, weed, and beautify under the direction of landscape historian, Marta McDowell, author of Emily Dickinson’s Gardens.Read more
Date: May 30, 2015
Location: The Emily Dickinson Museum
280 Main Street, Amherst
Time: 6:30 pm
Admission: $10, $5 for Museum members
Da Camera Singers
Death gets deep, lyrical and energetic treatment in the choral settings by composer Alice Parker of seven poems by Emily Dickinson, which will have their world premiere in performances May 29-31 by Da Camera Singers.Read more
Time: 11:30 am
Location: Amherst College Alumni House, 75 Churchill Street
For Museum members
Time: 1 pm
Location: Begins at the Emily Dickinson Museum
Fee: FreeRead more
DATE: Monday, April 13
TIME: 7:30 pm (Doors will open at 7:00 pm)
LOCATION: Kirby Theater, Amherst College
COST: FreeRead more
Date: April 2, 2015
Time: 5-8 pm
Location: The Homestead
Fee: Free
Starting on Thursday, April 2, the Emily Dickinson Museum will be joining the monthly Amherst Art Walk.
The Art Walk is held on the first Thursday of every month from 5 to 8 pm, with participating venues hosting gallery openings, concerts, lectures, and other creative events. The Museum will offer free “express” tours of Emily Dickinson’s bedroom and light refreshments from 5 to 7 pm. Poetry readings will be held in the Homestead parlor starting at 6:45 pm.Read more
DATE: March 8, 2015
TIME: 3 pm
LOCATION: Amherst Woman’s Club, 35 Triangle Street, Amherst, MA
COST: Free
The Emily Dickinson Museum and the Amherst Woman’s Club are pleased to welcome novelist and screenwriter William Nicholson for a conversation about his new novel, Amherst,on Sunday, March 8, at 3 pm.
Nicholson will be joined in the conversation by Polly Longsworth, author of Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair and Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd, and moderator Christopher Benfey. It will be held at the Amherst Woman’s Club at 35 Triangle Street, across the street from the Emily Dickinson Museum. The conversation is free and open to the public.
Amherst is a reflection on life and love seen through the historical lives of Emily Dickinson, her brother Austin, and his lover Mabel Loomis Todd and the fictional moderns Alice, Jack, and Nick. Nicholson’s story takes place in the Homestead and the Evergreens (now both part of the Emily Dickinson Museum), and the former Alice Maud Hill house, now the home of the Amherst Woman’s Club.
“William Nicholson’s visit is a wonderful opportunity for cooperation between the modern day organizations occupying the houses that play such large parts in the book,” said Amherst Woman’s Club President Cathryn Lombardi.
Emily Dickinson Museum Executive Director Jane Wald agreed. “William Nicholson’s Amherst is a delightful blend of lively imagination and deeply researched historical detail. We hope his novel sparks new interest in the Dickinson family and their dramatic stories among his readers.”
INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM NICHOLSON ABOUT AMHERST
In addition to reading excerpts from Amherst, Nicholson will speak with Longsworth and Benfey about the inspiration, research, and experience of writing the novel.
“It’s in some ways my love letter to the poet Emily Dickinson, who I first encountered over forty years ago,” Nicholson wrote on his blog. “Her poems shock and thrill me as much today as they did then.”
He credits Longsworth’s Austin and Mabel for deepening his interest in the Dickinson family, especially the adulterous relationship between Austin and Todd, who would go on to play an essential role in the publication of Dickinson’s poetry and letters (and who was influential in founding the Amherst Woman’s Club, among other organizations).
“Austin Dickinson’s passion for Mabel Todd is fascinating because it was so defiant of all convention,” wrote Nicholson.
Amherst will be available for purchase during the event from Odyssey Books. For more information about the reading, call 413-542-2034, email edmprograms@EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org or visit our website.
About William Nicholson
William Nicholson was born in 1948, and grew up in Sussex and Gloucestershire. He was educated at Downside School and Christ’s College, Cambridge, and then joined BBC Television, where he worked as a documentary filmmaker. There his ambition to write, directed first into novels, was channeled into television drama. His plays for television include Shadowlands and Life Story, both of which won the BAFTA Best Television Drama award in their year. In 1988 he received the Royal Television Society’s Writer’s Award. His first play, an adaptation of Shadowlands for the stage, was Evening Standard Best Play of 1990, and went on to a Tony Award winning run on Broadway. He was nominated for an Oscar for the screenplay of the film version, which was directed by Richard Attenborough and starred Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.
Since then his film credits include: Sarafina; Nell; First Knight; Grey Owl; Gladiator (as co-writer, for which he received a second Oscar nomination); Elizabeth: the Golden Age; Les Miserables; Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom; Unbroken; and Everest. He has written and directed his own film, Firelight, and four further stage plays: Map of the Heart; Katherine Howard; The Retreat from Moscow (which ran for five months on Broadway and received three Tony Award nominations); and Crash.
His novels include The Society of Others (2004); The Trial of True Love (2005); The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life (2009); All the Hopeful Lovers (2010); The Golden Hour (2011); Motherland (2013); and Reckless (2014).
His fantasy novel for older children, The Wind Singer, won the Smarties Prize Gold Award on publication in 2000, and the Blue Peter Book of the Year Award in 2001. Its sequel, Slaves of the Mastery, was published in 2001, and the final volume in the trilogy, Firesong, in 2002. His second sequence of fantasy novels is called The Noble Warriors, and includes Seeker (2005); Jango (2006); and Noman (2007). A novel for teens, Rich and Mad, was published in 2010.
About Polly Longsworth
In addition to Austin and Mabel, Polly Longsworth is the author of The World of Emily Dickinson: A Pictorial Biography. She has published numerous seminal articles about Emily Dickinson and has lectured widely on the subject. She is currently working on a major biography of the poet. Longsworth has been a member of the Emily Dickinson Museum Board of Governors since its establishment in 2003 and was its founding chair. “Replenishing the Shelves,” a project to recreate the Dickinson family libraries, was initiated by the board in honor of her many contributions to the creation and well-being of the Emily Dickinson Museum.
About Christopher Benfey
Christopher Benfey is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English and Acting Dean of Faculty at Mount Holyoke College. A well known scholar of Emily Dickinson, Benfey is the author of four highly regarded books about the American Gilded Age: A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade (2009); The Double Life of Stephen Crane (1992); Degas in New Orleans (1997); and The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan (2003).
DATE: February 5, 2015
TIME: 7 pm
LOCATION: Amherst Regional High School, 21 Mattoon Street, Amherst, MA
COST: Free
The Emily Dickinson Museum is pleased to present “In my native Town,” a conversation between 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-winner Annie Baker and 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist Madeleine George on Thursday, February 5, at 7 pm at the Amherst Regional High School library.
Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for her play The Flick, while George was nominated for The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence. Both were raised in Amherst and are graduates of Amherst Regional High School. The conversation, moderated by Amherst educator and Emily Dickinson Museum Board of Governors member Wendy Kohler, will focus on their ties to Amherst and its influence on their work, the role of place in writing, issues of identity, and, of course, the influence of Emily Dickinson as the most famous literary figure to come from their hometown.
For more information, call 413-542-2034, email edmprograms[at]EmilyDickinsonMuseum.org.
Annie Baker
Annie Baker’s full-length plays include The Flick (Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Susan Smith Blackburn Award, Obie Award for Playwriting), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best New American Play), The Aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Obie Award for Best New American Play), Body Awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep, Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival), for which she also designed the costumes.
Her plays have been produced at over 150 theaters throughout the U.S., and have been produced internationally in over a dozen countries. Other recent honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, New York Drama Critics Circle Award, Lilly Award, and Time Warner Storytelling Fellowship. A published anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, is available from TCG.
Madeleine George
Madeleine George’s plays include The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Pulitzer Prize finalist; Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award), Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England (Susan Smith Blackburn finalist), Precious Little, and The Zero Hour (Jane Chambers Award, Lambda Literary Award finalist).They’ve made their way to the stage through workshops at Berkeley Rep, Soho Rep, New York Theatre Workshop, Manhattan Theatre Club, About Face Theater, and the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, and have been performed for the viewing public at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, 13P, Shotgun Players in Berkeley, City Theatre in Pittsburgh, Theater Wit in Chicago, Perseverance Theatre in Alaska, and Two River Theater Company in New Jersey, among many other places.
Madeleine has been a Princess Grace Playwriting Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a two-time writer-in-residence at Hedgebrook. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, was a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights’ collective 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.), and for seven years served as director of the Bard College satellite campus at Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan.
“A unique, phenomenal, and deeply treasured experience.”
– Len Berkman, Smith College Professor of Theater
It took eight years of correspondence before Thomas Wentworth Higginson arrived in Amherst to meet his elusive advisee, Emily Dickinson. Before You Became Improbable reimagines the day of that meeting, offering audience members an encounter with her words and poems in a remarkably personal theatrical experience. This immersive journey returns to the Emily Dickinson Museum in October after sold-out productions in 2014 and 2015.Read more