Directed By Jerry Tracy
Sunday, May 26, 2024 @ 6:30 PM
WORDS MATTER: They have the power to hurt, to heal – to create beliefs, and to destroy those beliefs. The words of Poet Ezra Pound made him a rock star before there was rock, a media sensation when the media was newspapers and radios. Pound was a literary lion.
But he was also a ferocious anti-Semite, charged with treason during WWII for supporting fascism. Found mentally incompetent in lieu of a very public criminal trial that the US government would find embarrassing, he spent 12 years at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.
As the play begins in 1958, 73-year-old Pound has settled into a comfortable role as ‘elder statesman‘ on the ward, but now faces the terrifying prospect of being released back into the world. Help arrives in Ann Polley, a young psychiatrist who aspires to help the man who has been labeled “incurable.” But her words may also help or hurt, create, or destroy.
Join us for POUND Sunday, May 26th at 6:30 p.m. as this gripping play explores whether words can be as powerful as actions, whether revenge can be just, and whether sanity is possible when we’re made to see the world as it is and not as we would have it.
And stay for the talk back with cast and director, who also performed this play for the patients at St Elizabeth’s! Seating is general admission, but we recommend buying tickets in advance as some of our Readers’ Theatres have sold out. Admission for WLT Members is free, $5 for everyone else.
Tickets: