Barn Theatre, Dartington Hall

2009

Theatre Of Angels

Pomegranate Press (April 24, 2009)

978-0-9559006-8-6

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Play/Drama

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1

doubling

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What kind of legacy is it to be born into one of the richest families in the world, but lose your mother and father before you are seventeen years old? What if you then fall in love, only to lose your husband in the First World War? Despite this inner world of profound tragedy, Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst created an outer world of extraordinary creativity, optimism and spiritual searching, co-founding the creative community at Dartington Hall and forming friendships with Mahatma Gandhi, Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Graham, Cecil Beaton, Henry Moore, Benjamin Britten and Aldous Huxley along the way. Following several heart attacks Dorothy comes to the Bahamas to write her memoirs, but the appearance of a mysterious stranger leads her to confront much more than she'd expected. What secrets of the past is he hoping to uncover? And how does he know her future? The play's conceit is to work across timeframes, both historical and contemporary. The audience are invited to playfully engage with the twinned realities - Is Dorothy imagining the stranger/biographer or is the stranger/biographer conjuring an imaginary conversation with the subject of his book: Dorothy Whitney Elmhirst.