Staged Reading - The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat

By Rudyard Kipling, adapted by Vicki Siegel
A Staged Reading
Directed by Vicki Siegel, assisted by Matthew Surrence
August, 17th, 2010 -  8 p.m.
ONE NIGHT ONLY

Three newspaper men, an MP and a theater entrepreneur who have run into a speed trap in the village of Huckley enact a very amusing revenge.  Some might call it justice – perhaps too much justice.

“By the grace of God, Master Ridley, I mean to have it so that when Huckley turns over in its sleep, Reuters and the Press Association jump out of bed to cable.”

 

Cast:

Narrator                                                                                                 Stanley Spenger

Olyett                                                                                                     Craig Eychner

Woodhouse                                                                                            Daniel Wexler

Pallant, proprietor of inn, La Fone                                                        Joseph O’Loughlin

Bat Masquerier                                                                                      Alan Badger

Dal Benzaguen, reporter                                                                        Lisa Drostova

Ingell, Rector, Sexton, Lawyer                                                              Matthew Surrence

Winnie, waiter, correspondent, editor, Gubby dancer                            Nayla El-Haber

Police, Speaker of House, manager, Gubby dancer                               Morgan Brown

Lawyer, doctor, whip, Irish MP, curator, film guy Gubby dancer        Colin Johnson

Woman of Flat Earth Society                                                                Vicki Siegel

Musical accompaniment                                                                        Debbie Messersmith

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A Little More Info:

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, British India.  He is best known for his works of fiction including The Jungle Book and Kim, short stories and poems such as The Man Who Would Be King, Gunga Din and If.  In 1907, Kipling was the first English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1913, when The Village…was written, Kipling was living in Sussex.  At the end of the Edwardian era in England, just before World War I,  there were great changes in the political and social life of England.  The new mass media decried the injustice of class divisions and the great gap between wealthy and poor.  Kipling, the “great interpreter of Empire” also had something worth saying about the corruption of the upper class and its institutions, and the power of the media, with all its flaws,  to redress the imbalance.

Vicki Siegel is an actress, writer of A Hot Day in Ephesus, the musical based on A Comedy of Errors which was produced by the Curtain Theatre in Mill Valley in 2009.  She has appeared as the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet at the Curtain; Mrs. Candour in School for Scandal, San Francisco Free Civic Theater; Lady Plymdale in Lady Windermere’s Fan, Masquers Playhouse and several Subterranean Shakespeare readings.

Matthew Surrence directed "Dido, Queen of Carthage" (Christopher Marlowe, Subterranean Shakespeare) and appeared in several of the Subterranean Shakespeare readings. He wrote "06: A Not Entirely Untrue Tale of San Francisco," a vaudeville melodrama about the 1906 earthquake, and "The Agony of the Leaves"  (with Janet Silver Ghent), produced at Playhouse West, Walnut Creek. His article "What's in a Name?"  appears in the Summer 2010 issue of The Sondheim Review.

Watch for the Actors Ensemble production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, directed by Jeremy Cole, opening Oct 21, and our Winter Staged Reading Series beginning in October and  November