Venue: Palmers Cafe (starts)
Anna Carlisle’s ground-breaking new play, Joan Eardley: A Private View, arrives at Reading Museum on June 8. It celebrates a gifted life stopped in its prime and will give audiences an opportunity to spend time in the company of a great painter as she makes her way through a life of joys, frustrations, disappointments and triumphs.
In this compelling and moving promenade production, audiences will come to understand what it was that fired Joan Eardley: they will hear the voices of her cherished Samson children of Glasgow and the sounds of the Catterline storms. And she will not be alone: as well as having the audiences alongside her, she will have with her artist friends. When, tragically, Joan Eardley died in 1963 she left behind not only an extraordinary body of work but this steadfast body of people who loved her and never left her till the very last day of her life.
The Heroica Theatre production has been developed in conjunction with the current Joan Eardley retrospective at the Scottish National Museum of Modern Art and incorporates a painting by Joan Eardley from Reading Museum’s collection. The performance starts in the Museum café and as it moves through the galleries Joan’s great paintings of the sea and the land will bowl you over – as they did her on occasions!
For more information and images of the production and the company go to The Heroica Theatre Company website.
Thursday 8 June, two 75 minute performances, 2.30pm and 6pm
Suitable for ages 16+, £12 or £10 concessions
Portable stools will be available
Book from the Reading Arts website or call the Box Office on 0118 960 6060
