Modernists Back From Grave

“It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said, or for something very wise that was done.”

-Virginia Woolf

The Friends of the Lakewood Public Library magnanimously invite you to ditch whatever banal obligations you may have been suckered into on Sunday, October 12th and instead join us in a dizzying display of thespian talent at 2 p.m. in the Main Library Auditorium. WordStage, a local collective of theatrical artists dedicated to historical and literary recreations, will resurrect that famously informal assembly of aesthetes and thinkers: the Bloomsbury group. Described by Leonard Woolf as “a largely imaginary group of persons with largely imaginary objects and characteristics”, the Bloomsbury group was an ever-changing who’s who of British Modernists, including: Virginia and Leonard Woolf, the economist John Keynes, whose economic theories enjoy frequent mention – if not comprehension– in popular political discourse, artist Roger Fry, novelist E.M. Forster, and critic Clive Bell, among others. In addition to their crucial place in the aesthetic avant-garde of the early 20th century, the Bloomsbury group was also distinguished by their then-radical politics: their embrace of feminism, pacifism, homosexuality, and the Epicurean pursuit of pleasure.

This Sunday with the Friends performance is set in the stately Garsington Manor, site of many Bloomsbury gatherings, which was owned by Lady Ottoline and Phillip Morrell; these two are joined by feminist icon Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf. The foursome engages in a dialogue concerning the usual Platonic suspects: truth, beauty, and goodness, and the possibility of maintaining these idealistic concerns in the midst of the Great War.

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Volume 10, Issue 20, Posted 2:16 PM, 09.30.2014