Live Theatre Broadcasts Debut in Memorial Hall

National Theatre of London Coming to Shelburne Falls

(9/23/09) Historic Memorial Hall in Shelburne Falls will soon be filled with the echos from Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well and other theatrical performances brodcast live from the National Theatre of London. The series, broadcast in high definition directly from London England, will fill the stage-sized screen in Memorial Hall beginning on Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 7:00pm.

In All's Well That Ends Well, the feisty but lowly Helena falls in love with Bertram, a haughty count. To gain his hand she is set a string of impossible tasks. Even if accomplished, they can hardly guarantee his love. He refuses to bed her and yet says he'll only be hers if she bears his child; and he lusts after another. Nevertheless, our heroine, whether wisely or no, refuses to give him up. Set against a background of sexism, snobbery and a battle between the generations, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well turns fairytale logic on its head. A wondrous, bittersweet story.

The series continues on Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 2:00pm with the play Nation, based on Terry Pratchett's novel in which a parallel world, (1860) two teenagers are thrown together by a tsunami that has destroyed Mau's village and left Daphne shipwrecked on his South Pacific island, thousands of miles from home. One wears next to nothing, the other a long white dress; neither speaks the other's language; somehow they must learn to survive. As starving refugees gather, Daphne delivers a baby, milks a pig, brews beer and does battle with a mutineer. Mau fights cannibal Raiders, discovers the world is round and questions the reality of his tribe's fiercely patriarchal gods. Together they come of age, overseen by a foul-mouthed parrot, as they discard old doctrine to forge a new Nation.

The third play of the season is The Habit of Art, a new play by Alan Bennet to be broadcast live on Thursday, April 22nd,2010 at 7:00pm.

Auden often said that metre and rhyme led him down unexpected paths to thoughts he wouldn't otherwise have had, and in this respect versification and fornication are not so different.

In this play, Benjamin Britten, sailing uncomfortably close to the wind with his new opera, Death in Venice, seeks advice from his former collaborator and friend, W H Auden. During this imagined meeting, their first for twenty-five years, they are observed and interrupted by, amongst others, their future biographer and a young man from the local bus station.

You are a rent boy. I am a poet. Over the wall lives the Dean of Christ Church. We all have our parts to play.
Alan Bennett's new play is as much about the theatre as it is about poetry or music. It looks at the unsettling desires of two difficult men, and at the ethics of biography. It reflects on growing old, on creativity and inspiration, and on persisting when all passion's spent: ultimately, on the habit of art.

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For more information and to purchase tickes for these performances, visit the Memorial Hall Website, phone: 413-625-3052  or email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it