"Going to Extremes in King Lear" Free Talk tonight!

John Klause, Professor Emeritus of English at Hofstra University, will be giving a talk on Shakespeare’s King Lear on Tuesday, July 22 in conjunction with ARTFARM’s Shakespeare in the Grove production of the play this month.

The talk will be held at 7 pm in Founder’s Hall at Middlesex Community College, 100 Training Hill Road in Middletown. The event is free and the public is invited to attend.

The talk, “Going to Extremes in King Lear”, will offer suggestions about how the local meanings in the text (notably those established by “extremes” of thought, feeling, action, imagination, and spectacle) contribute to questions about the “meaning of life” that are raised in the play. It will relate Shakespeare the playwright to Shakespeare the philosopher. The talk will take place in an informal atmosphere in MxCC’s student lounge, with time for questions and discussion.

John Klause, Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University, received his PhD in English Literature at Stanford University—after spending some time as a high school instructor in Louisiana. He taught for ten years at Harvard, and served as dean of one of Harvard’s residential colleges. He has published books on Shakespeare (Shakespeare, the Earl, and the Jesuit and an edition of the play Measure for Measure), on Renaissance Latin Drama (an edition of the seventeenth-century academic play Andronicus Comnenus), and on the seventeenth-century English poet and political writer Andrew Marvell (The Unfortunate Fall: Theodicy and the Moral Imagination of Andrew Marvell). He has published an array of articles on other writers of the early modern period, often emphasizing the connections of literature to the politics and religion of the time.

ARTFARM is presenting King Lear for its ninth season of Shakespeare in the Grove on the Middlesex Community College campus. Performances will take place at 7 pm on July 17 – 20 and 24 – 27. Live music precedes each night’s performance of King Lear at 6 pm; audience members are encouraged to bring blankets, lawn chairs, and a picnic and enjoy live music and professional Shakespeare in a gorgeous outdoor setting overlooking the Connecticut River Valley. In case of rain the performance will be held indoors in Chapman Hall on the campus.

Tickets for King Lear are $20 for adults, $10 for students. They may be purchased at the door or by going to ARTFARM’s website: www.art-farm.org.

Additional free public events around the King Lear production include a pre-show Trail Walk with CT Forest & Park Association on July 20, “Talk Back” with the cast and director on July 25, and a Forum on “Arts and Aging” that will be held in October. For more info, contact info@art-farm.org or go to the ARTFARM website.

ARTFARM’s Shakespeare in the Grove is co-sponsored by Middlesex Community College, Division of Humanities and Arts. Additional support is provided by the CT Department of Economic and Community Development/Office of the Arts, the Middletown Commission on the Arts, Pratt and Whitney, and the Community Health Center.

King Lear production photos below by Bill Dekine. 1. John Basinger as King Lear; 2. Ken O'Brien as the blinded Gloucester led by Michael Hinton as his son Edgar; 3. Marcella Trowbridge as Cordelia with Ethan Sachs as the King of France.