TOM STOPPARD ON STAGE AT THE WILMA: SYMPOSIUM DECEMBER 4, MODERATED BY ARTISTIC DIRECTOR BLANKA ZIZKA
For Immediate Release: October 19,
1999
Contact: Damian J. Sinclair, 215.893.9456 x107
Philadelphia, PA - October 19 - Award-winning
playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard will take center stage at The
Wilma Theater on Saturday, December 4 for a public Symposium. Moderated
by Artistic Director Blanka Zizka, who will direct the East Coast premiere
of Stoppard's The Invention of Love at the Wilma in February 2000,
the Symposium is slated for 11:00 AM (read
the transcript). Tickets are priced at $25, with discounts for Wilma
Theater subscribers. A limited number of tickets are available at $100,
which includes a brunch following the Symposium with Mr. Stoppard, as
a benefit for the Wilma. The Wilma Theater has a longstanding
relationship with Tom Stoppard, whose play Arcadia opened the new
Wilma Theater space on the Avenue of the Arts in 1996. The Wilma has also
presented Mr. Stoppard's plays Travesties and On the Razzle,
to great critical and audience acclaim. The Invention of Love,
slated as the third play in the Wilma's 20th Anniversary Season,
will play from February 9 though March 12, 2000. Mr. Stoppard has won
an Academy Award for his screenplay of Shakespeare in Love and
received a nomination for his work on Brazil. The Invention of Love focuses
on the turbulent life of poet and scholar A.E. Housman. As he is ferried
across the river Styx upon his death in 1936, Housman reaches into his
rich tapestry of memories and re-lives his formative years at Oxford,
where he studied with notable classmates Moses Jackson and Oscar Wilde.
Equating Hades with the Oxford of Housman's youth, Stoppard peers into
a time when high Victorian morality was under siege from the Aesthetic
movement. Tickets to the Symposium and the
play are available at The Wilma Theater box office, 215/546-7824, or online
at www.wilmatheater.org. ### 