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The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society is proud to present the following performances this fall and winter.
All events are free and held at the Lewes Public Library (111 Adams Avenue, Lewes) unless indicated otherwise.
Registration is required and each individual attending must register.
In celebration of Banned Books Week, the Lewes Public Library welcomes Delaware Shakespeare.
Libraries in every state are facing an unprecedented number of attempts to ban books. The American Library Association (ALA) found challenges of unique titles surged 65% in 2023 compared to 2022 numbers, reaching the highest level ever documented by ALA. Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92% over the previous year, accounting for about 46% of all book challenges in 2023; school libraries saw an 11% increase over 2022 numbers.
When books are banned, the voices of the author and the characters are silenced and readers are closed off to people, places, and perspectives. By standing up for stories, the power that lies inside every book is unleashed, and the array of voices that need to be heard and the scenes that need to be seen are liberated.
Join us in the library or online for a performance featuring three actors reading moving selections from some of the most popular—and most censored—books in America. They will also bring to life the authors’ own words about the harm in censoring the authors’ and others’ works.
Delaware Shakespeare is based in Wilmington and envisions a Delaware where people from all walks of life celebrate and explore their shared humanity through the lens of Shakespearean works. Inspired by Shakespeare’s creative vision and the broad societal mix of audiences of his era, Delaware Shakespeare brings the community together for vibrant theatre and learning experiences.
The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society welcomes Delaware Shakespeare, which will present Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, their 2024 Community Tour offering.
The Winter’s Tale is a unique play dealing with themes of betrayal, forgiveness, and acceptance. Leontes and Hermione are living a fairytale life until a wave of unfounded jealousy tears apart their marriage and treasured friendships. Sixteen years later, can the love of their exiled daughter heal the damage her father brought upon their families? With clowns, shepherds, and the most famous bear in all of theater, The Winter’s Tale weaves an intergenerational story of family and forgiveness.
Delaware Shakespeare launched its Community Tour in Fall 2016. The productions travel throughout the state bringing thrilling, professional Shakespeare to audiences who may not have easy access to professional arts experiences. Community Tour productions play in non-theatrical settings and the production values are scaled for those spaces, with live music, minimal sets, and whatever lighting is available. The productions are performed with a cast of six actors and a musician.
Celebrating its twenty-second season, Delaware Shakespeare creates year-round professional theatre and educational programs for residents and friends of the State of Delaware. At Del Shakes, people from all walks of life celebrate and explore their shared humanity through the lens of Shakespearean work.
The performance runs 2 hours with a 15 minute intermission.
As part of the Halloween season, Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society presents a lecture by Kristen Matulewicz, Victorian specialist and Curator of Rockwood Park and Museum.
In 1888 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted a scene of mass murder so sensual that its topic is often overlooked. Inspired by a depiction written in the Augustan Histories, Alma-Tadema pairs literature, archeology, and Victorian aesthetics to create a beautiful scene of death that is unlike any of its contemporaries. Deep dive into the changing fashions regarding death in the Victorian period and navigate the Victorian Art Movements through a visual analysis of literature-inspired deaths.
Kristen Matulewicz is a seasoned presenter with over 15 years of public speaking experience who effortlessly guides her audience through the challenging art of visual analysis. Recipient of the Delaware Art Educators Association’s prestigious M.U.S.E Educator of the Year award for 2022, Kristen’s innovative education approaches have garnered widespread acclaim. Her insights have been featured in top media outlets, including the Delaware State News, Delaware News Journal, and on WDDE Radio, WRDE Coast TV, The 302, and Delmarva Life. As a sought-after guest presenter, Kristen is skilled at unraveling the secrets and splendors of the visual world with expertise and charm. She has spoken at public schools, museums, expos, and universities, captivating audiences of all ages with her personable presentations. With her engaging style and boundless enthusiasm, she brings the Victorian era to life like never before.
The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society presents Gerald Dickens performing Sikes and Nancy and The Tale of Captain Murderer.
Gerald Dickens’ recreation of Sikes and Nancy is Victorian theatre at its most dramatic. Throughout the 1860s Charles Dickens gave a series of readings from his novels and his repertoire featured performances that involved safe, well-known, and often comic passages from his novels, but in 1869 he introduced Sikes and Nancy to his program. When Dickens performed what he called The Murder he judged the success of the evening by the number of ladies who had fainted with horror. Today it has lost none of its horrific power.
Where did Charles get his love for the macabre? Possibly it was from the lips of his childhood nurse who would regale him with the gruesome tale of The Tale of Captain Murderer. At the age of only 6 years, little Charles delighted in the awful and bloodthirsty tale, and in 2024 Gerald brings the story to life once more.
Gerald Dickens is an actor, director, and producer, and the great-great-grandson of the author Charles Dickens. In 1993 he created his first one-man show, a theatrical performance of A Christmas Carol inspired by Charles Dickens’ own energetic readings of the 1860s. A fascination with the life and works of Charles led him to write and direct further one-man shows including Mr. Dickens is Coming!, Nicholas Nickleby and Sketches by Boz. Dickens regularly performs in major theatres and arts centres, arts and literary festivals in the UK, as well as at hotels, stately homes, and on cruise ships.
Note: these stories are intended for adults due to thematic material and language.
Thank you to Byers’ Choice Ltd. for bringing Gerald Dickens to the United States.
Celebrating the haunting thrill of the Halloween season, artists from Delaware Shakespeare Artistic Squad and the Delaware Symphony Orchestra team up to bring you an evening of spooky stories and enchanting music. This will be a night of immortal texts and musical masterpieces delivered by the region’s finest performing artists. Sophisticated yet appropriate for all audiences.
Unique to Delaware Shakespeare, the DelShakes Artistic Squad is a creative and organizational component of the company. A rotating, two-term collective, the Artistic Squad brings ever-evolving points of view to the organization and allows more artists to contribute to the long-term growth of DelShakes. Artistic Squad members work as performers, creative artists, and teachers in a wide array of artistic projects throughout the year. This year, the Artistic Squad is Eric Mills and Izzy Sazak.
This program is co-sponsored by the Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society and Coastal Concerts.
NOTE: this event is in the Lewes Elementary School auditorium (820 Savannah Road, Lewes).
The Lewes Public Library’s Spoken Word Society presents Robert Frost’s work in an engaging evening of reader’s theatre. “I have been” Frost wrote, “one acquainted with the night.” He understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit. Robert Frost coupled poetry and power; for he saw poetry as the means of saving power from itself. When power leads men towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
The reader’s theatre troupe, made up of local talent, is a new component of the LPLSWS program. Join us for a compelling evening of the beauty of Frost’s work in our inaugural performance.
The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society presents Suzanne Savoy and Jack Herholdt in a live reading of The Thanksgiving Visitor by Truman Capote. Savoy and Herboldt first performed this piece online at the library in 2020 and are here again to share their remarkable gifts of story-telling to kick off the holiday season.
Nine-year-old Buddy has a problem. Every day, he gets stopped on the way to school by Odd Henderson, who calls Buddy a sissy, pins him to the ground and rubs burrs into his head. Miss Sook, Buddy’s older cousin and best friend, invites Odd to her big Thanksgiving dinner, where important lessons await both Odd and Buddy.
The Thanksgiving Visitor was first published in McCall’s Magazine in 1967, and is a companion piece to A Christmas Memory, which will Savoy and Herboldt will perform at the Library on Friday, December 6, 2024.
Suzanne and Jack are familiar presences on the stage in New York City and in television, film, and video. Suzanne appeared regularly in Cinemax’s The Knick and in Better Call Saul (AMC), House of Cards (HBO) and For Life (AMC), and she tours nationally in her one-woman original show Je Christine. Jack was in the award-winning video series Celebrity Ghost Stories and in the television series It’s Quarantine with Vanessa Charbonne. Both Suzanne and Jack hail originally from Delaware.
The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society presents Suzanne Savoy and Jack Herholdt in a live reading of A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote. Savoy and Herboldt first performed this piece in-person at the library in 2019. They return this year to share their remarkable gifts of story-telling just in time for the holiday season.
Capote’s mostly autobiographical short story first published in 1965. It takes place in the 1930s and follows the period in the lives of the seven-year-old narrator, Buddy, and an elderly woman, Miss Sook, who is his distant cousin and best friend. The evocative narrative focuses on country life, friendship, and the joy of giving during the Christmas season, and also gently yet poignantly touches on loneliness and loss. It is a companion piece to The Thanksgiving Visitor, which will Savoy and Herboldt will perform at the Library on Saturday, November 30, 2024.
Suzanne and Jack are familiar presences on the stage in New York City and in television, film, and video. Suzanne appeared regularly in Cinemax’s The Knick and in Better Call Saul (AMC), House of Cards (HBO) and For Life (AMC), and she tours nationally in her one-woman original show Je Christine. Jack was in the award-winning video series Celebrity Ghost Stories and in the television series It’s Quarantine with Vanessa Charbonne. Both Suzanne and Jack hail originally from Delaware.
No Christmas season is complete without Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. From Muppets to classic retellings, this story regularly haunts the silver screen, but what is it about this one Victorian tale that calls to filmmakers for resurrection? A Disney version of this piece, directed by Robert Zemeckis and featuring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, and Colin Firth opened in 2009. Although the reviews were mixed, an in-depth analysis demonstrates the film’s use of sound, lighting, and mise en scene brings to the fore that A Christmas Carol is a ghost story in the Victorian tradition. In this lecture, we explore the Victorian practice of telling ghost stories at Christmas and reevaluate Disney’s A Christmas Carol as the seasonal horror story it was meant to be.
This lecture includes showing excerpts of the film. The film will be screened in its entirety on Wednesday, December 11 at 5:00 PM.
Kristen Matulewicz is a seasoned presenter with over 15 years of public speaking experience who effortlessly guides her audience through the challenging art of visual analysis. Recipient of the Delaware Art Educators Association’s prestigious M.U.S.E Educator of the Year award for 2022, Kristen’s innovative education approaches have garnered widespread acclaim. Her insights have been featured in top media outlets, including the Delaware State News, Delaware News Journal, and on WDDE Radio, WRDE Coast TV, The 302, and Delmarva Life. As a sought-after guest presenter, Kristen is skilled at unraveling the secrets and splendors of the visual world with expertise and charm. She has spoken at public schools, museums, expos, and universities, captivating audiences of all ages with her personable presentations. With her engaging style and boundless enthusiasm, she brings the Victorian era to life like never before.
In the spirit of the holiday season, the Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society invites one and all to a film screening of Disney’s A Christmas Carol.
This 2009 version by Disney is an animated retelling of Charles Dickens’ classic novel. Though London awaits the joyful arrival of Christmas, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey) thinks it’s all humbug, berating his faithful clerk and cheerful nephew for their view. Later, Scrooge encounters the ghost of his late business partner, who warns that three spirits will visit him this night. The ghosts take Scrooge on a journey through his past, present and future in the hope of transforming his bitterness.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, who also wrote the screenplay from the classic tale by Charles Dickens. Starring Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, and Colin Firth.
This film is rated PG (for scary Sequences and scary images).
A lecture on this film, “Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it”: Where Victorian Ghost Stories and Film Analysis Meet, is on Monday, December 9 at 5:00 PM.
The Lewes Public Library Spoken Word Society presents A Christmas Carol, performed by Gerald Dickens.
Gerald Dickens’ performance of A Christmas Carol has received standing ovations all over the world. Using his own adaptation of Charles Dickens’ classic Christmas tale, Gerald Dickens plays over 30 characters using vocal and physical talents to bring each scene vividly to life.
Gerald Dickens is an actor, director, and producer, and the great-great-grandson of the author Charles Dickens. In 1993 he created his first one-man show, a theatrical performance of A Christmas Carol inspired by Charles Dickens’ own energetic readings of the 1860s. A fascination with the life and works of Charles led him to write and direct further one-man shows including Mr. Dickens is Coming!, Nicholas Nickleby and Sketches by Boz. Dickens regularly performs in major theatres and arts centres, arts and literary festivals in the UK, as well as at hotels, stately homes, and on cruise ships.
NOTE: this event is in the Cape Henlopen High School Theatre (1250 Kings Highway, Lewes, DE).
Thank you to Byers’ Choice Ltd. for bringing Gerald Dickens to the United States.
These programs are brought to you by the library’s Spoken Word Society, which celebrates the tradition and artistry of oral storytelling through lectures, performances, discussions, demonstrations, and other publicly-shared experiences.
The LSWS is partially funded by the generous support of the Freedom to Read Foundation, Browseabout Books, Cape Henlopen Lodge #2540, John and Sally Freeman Foundation, Sussex County Department of Libraries, M & T Charitable Foundation, Rotary Club of Lewes-Rehoboth Beach, Sussex County Council, and the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on DelawareScene.com.