Writer in Residence Farewell Event
Join us for the culmination of Berni Stapleton's residency at Memorial University. Berni will be reading from her stage play Dolly and will be joined by two prodigiously talented St. John's playwrights, Marie Jones and Sharon King-Campbell. Marie will read from her screenplay Sweet Spot and Sharon will read from her stage play Original.
Stapleton's Dolly tells the story of the one-time famous groupie of The Rolling Stones, the original Dolly-Bird. She's a waitress at the London Underground Cafe, about to age out of a job while still waiting for Mick Jagger to turn up and rekindle their friendship. It's by turns funny and heartbreaking. And the moral? It's never too late to drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in your hair.
In Sweet Spot, Jones tells the story of Aaron, damply and destructively failing at plumbing - and seemingly unable to unclog a better-suited life path for himself. When master plumber Chaturi is forced to fire him on the job, the myriad of life’s self-imposed blockages start to present possibilities instead.
Reaching through history from creation to right now, King-Campbell's Original explores what it is to be a woman. Eve wants justice in the face of a God that set her up to fail and then abandoned her. Pandora wants to protect the world from the secret evil she carries with her everywhere. Embla wants the end of the world and a new beginning – one that, this time, doesn't include her.
The event will begin at 8 pm on Thursday, February 13, in the Suncor Energy Hall at the Music Building on the St. John's campus of Memorial University. Parking is available in Lot 15B. The reading is free and open to the public and all are most welcome.