Showing results by author "E. Thomalen" in All Categories

Shakespeare in the Time of Plague is a play that takes place in England during a period of frequent episodes of bubonic plague, which greatly affected London for long stretches of time. No one was immune to the misery and death the plague produced, particularly in the poorer parishes of London. Daniel Defoe described the great plague in London of 1665 from survivor accounts, but much of the response to that plague was based upon laws and regulations laid down by King James I during the plague visitation of 1603-1609.

Quarantine is an adaptation for the theater by E. Thomalen of Albert Camus' The Plague translated by Stuart Gilbert. It is a play in four acts and begins with the observation of rats dying, ending with "freedom" because of the lifting of the quarantine. Not everyone finds freedom to his liking. The characters capture the angst, boredom, grief, heroism, spiritual questioning, villainy, courage and longing brought on by the quarantine and the plague.

The Quarrel in Arles dramatizes the relationships between Vincent Van Gogh, his brother Theo Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, and Johanna Bonger during the period between May 1, 1888 and December 24, 1888, a time of great personal turmoil but artistic achievement for Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin and the fulfillment of romantic desires for Theo Van Gogh and Johanna Bonger. Vincent’s impulsive move to Arles, his decision to rent the Yellow House, conflict with Gauguin, final rupture with Gauguin and psychotic self-injury are part of the story.

Dances of Life - and Death is adapted from Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. Poe wrote the Masque as a sort of horror story. This play frames the story as a morality play, set in the time of the Plagues and the Renaissance. Though set in the past it is, also, about the present. The plague, here, is a metaphor for life in Syria, Iraq, Columbia, Guatemala, Nigeria, and Somalia, etc. leading desperate refugees to flee from violence and war. But the reaction of those in safer countries is to withdraw behind their walls.

This is a dramatic adaptation of the boat trip on the Thames river of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carrol), with a colleague, and the Liddell sisters, one of whom was Alice, that was attributed by the principals to have been the time when Dodgson hit upon the idea of having his hero go down a rabbit hole. He describes how the three sisters whose ages were seven, 10, and 13 responded to his story, and the play is a fictional rendering of it.