Open to Public
When Poetry Visits
Free Event
Sat, May 18.2024
A book event celebrating and honoring Laura Rothenberg and her posthumously published volume of poems, When Poetry Visits, featuring live readings by actors Taylor Schilling (Orange is the New Black, Dear Edward), Debra Winger(Terms of Endearment, Rachel Getting Married), Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket, Mank), and Babe Howard (Lapsis, With/In).
The poems in this new collection are a meditation on themes such as illness, friendship, family, death, lost innocence, survivor’s guilt, and transcendence by a talented young poet who experienced and endured more in her short life than most people do by old age.
Laura Rothenberg (1981-2003) was born in New York City. At three days old, she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disease that impacts the lungs, pancreas, and other organs. In spite of many physical difficulties, she lived selflessly and courageously, always helping friends and people she met, often putting their needs before her own. In her posthumously-published memoir Breathing for a Living, Laura depicted her journey to receive the double-lung transplant, as well as the difficult road that followed it. An avid writer of poetry for much of her life, Laura’s final wish was for her poems to be published one day. When Poetry Visits fulfills Laura's wish, revealing new dimensions of her writing, and showing how vigorously and passionately she lived, examined, and expressed her life in the face of her impending death.
Learn more about and purchase Laura Rothenberg's book, When Poetry Visits: https://www.codhill.com/product/when-poetry-visits/
Cast Members
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Taylor Schilling
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Debra Winger
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Arliss Howard
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Babe Howard
Explore Projects
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Consent & Sexual ViolenceTapeTape has been developed as a sexual assault awareness and prevention training program that uses dramatic readings of Stephen Belber’s 1999 play to ignite powerful discussions about consent, sexual assault, rape, and power dynamics.
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Pandemic & Climate CrisisThe Oedipus ProjectThe Oedipus Project presents acclaimed actors reading scenes from Sophocles’ Oedipus the King as a catalyst for powerful, constructive, global conversations about the climate crisis, ecological disaster, environmental justice, and healing online conversations about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon diverse communities throughout the world. Sophocles’ ancient play, first performed in 429 BC, just after the first wave of a plague that killed nearly one-third of the Athenian population, is a story of arrogant leadership, ignored prophecy, intergenerational curses, and a pestilence and ecological collapse that ravages the archaic city of Thebes. Seen through this lens, Oedipus the King appears to have been a powerful tool for helping Athenians communalize trauma and loss, while interrogating their own complicit role in the suffering, not just of those around them but of generations to come.
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Domestic ViolencePatient and Impatient GriseldaTheater of War Productions and Margaret Atwood return to the Toronto International Festival of Authors with an exciting new collaboration exploring power and control, domestic violence, and family dynamics by way of two versions of the same story, one written by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1348 during the bubonic plague and the other by Atwood in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Bocaccio’s version, a woman named Griselda remains in an abusive and controlling relationship, showing great patience and forbearance in the face of her husband’s sadism and cruelty. In Atwood’s version, Griselda takes matters in her own hands and, with the help of her sister, turns the tables on her husband.
This free, public event featured a live, dramatic reading of the “Patient Griselda” story from Boccaccio's Decameron by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network, Fleishman is in Trouble), Maev Beaty (Beau is Afraid, Mouthpiece), and Araya Mengesha (Tiny Pretty Things, Nobody). Then, in response, Margaret Atwood performed “Impatient Grisleda,” a story that is narrated to a group of humans in quarantine by an alien that looks like an octopus. The readings of both texts was followed by immediate responses by community panelists and culminated in a guided audience discussion, facilitated by Bryan Doerries (Artistic Director, Theater of War Productions).
Co-presented by Theater of War Productions and Toronto International Festival of Authors.
This hybrid presentation took place in person at the Toronto Harbourfront Centre Theatre and on Zoom Webinar on September 30, 2023.