Ellen McLaughlin to stage Penelope Feb. 17
Ellen McLaughlin on stage
Award-winning actor and playwright Ellen McLaughlin will present her one‐woman theater piece, Penelope, at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 17, in the Janet Kinghorn Bernhard Theater at Skidmore College.Based on the story of the patient wife of Odysseus, who knitted while waiting for her husband to return from the Trojan War, Penelope is the story of a woman whose ex‐husband appears at her door after an absence of 20 years, suffering from brain damage. The veteran of a modern war, he doesn't know who he is and she doesn't know who he has become. While they wait together for his return to himself, she reads him The Odyssey and in the journey of that book, she finds a way into her former husband's memory and the terror and trauma of war.
For reservations, call the Skidmore Theater Box Office at (518) 580‐5439 or email the box office. Tickets are $10 general admission and $5 for students and senior citizens.
McLaughlin, known for originating the role of the Angel in Tony Kushner's Angels in America, has also appeared as the Homebody in Homebody/Kabul (Intiman Theater); Pirate Jenny in Threepenny Opera (Trinity Rep, Elliot Norton Award); Mrs. Alving in Ghosts (Berkeley Rep); and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream (McCarter and the Paper Mill Playhouse). Her plays include Ajax in Iraq (which will be presented this spring , Days and Nights Within, A Narrow Bed, Infinity's House, Iphigenia and Other Daughters,Tongue of a Bird, Helen, The Trojan Women, The Persians and Oedipus.
Her awards and honors include grants from the Fund for New American Plays and the National Endowment for the Arts, first prize in the Great American Play Contest, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the writer's award from the Lila Wallace‐Reader's Digest Fund.
McLaughlin has taught playwriting in numerous venues, including Yale School of Drama and Princeton University and has been teaching at Barnard since 1995. She is a member of New Dramatists and served on the board of T.C.G. for many years.
Skidmore's Theater Department and Department of Classics are sponsors of McLaughlin's production. For more information, please click here.
