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ECHO THEATRE PRESENTS

VITA AND VIRGINIA, SELECTED LETTERS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF AND VITA SACKVILLE-WEST

Edited by Eileen Atkins
Directed by Pam Myers-Morgan
Featuring Kristina Baker as Vita Sackville-West and Ellen Locy as Virginia Woolf

Love, lust and literature! Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West met in 1922 and began a nearly 20-year correspondence which today bears witness to their instant attraction and lifelong relationship. Their adventure was filled with love and expectation, their letters with excitement, hope and verbal caress. Hints of wounded affection and injured pride give way to loving appeasement, and we sense the strange alchemy of love mixed with uncertainty, and of compulsion mingled with restraint.

Virginia and Vita first met when they were aged forty and thirty, respectively. Through the course of the next twenty years, until Virginia's suicide in 1941, the extraordinary relationship between them was charted in their letters to one another, providing a remarkable insight into their love affair. While Vita revered Virginia's genius, Virginia was dismissive at times of Vita's literary skills but admired her as the aristocratic, mature, confident image of womanhood.

Presented as a performance reading in the tradition of LOVE LETTERS and 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD, VITA AND VIRGINIA is a lyrical, bittersweet celebration of language with its power to both reveal and conceal the intricacies of love and longing. This play was originally performed at The Chichester Festival in England during 1992 and later in London and New York, and was compiled by Dame Eileen Atkins from letters and diary entries, with the cooperation of Vita's son, Nigel Nicolson and Virginia's niece and nephew, Olivia and Quentin Bell.

As Virginia herself wrote, "Let us go then, exploring...."

ECHO Theatre's mission is to unearth the power of the female theatrical voice by presenting a wide array of works written by women for the stage. For years, theatre seasons at all levels of production have been programmed primarily with works by male playwrights, often resulting in an absence of the female voice. Integrating exciting design concepts and exceptional acting with material, which probes gender identity and social structures, Echo Theatre exists to shift that balance.

About the Author: (Dame) Eileen Atkins is a veteran of over four decades as an actress in film, television, and theatre. A British national treasure, she was appointed a CBE in 1990 and a DBE in June, 2001. Ms. Atkins has made indelible impressions in dozens of films, including such well-known works as WIT for HBO, MADAME BOVARY, DAVID COPPERFIELD, COLD COMFORT FARM, EQUUS, The Dresser, and GOSFORD PARK. In addition to her theatrical work in London, she starred on Broadway in 1995's INDISCRETIONS, with Kathleen Turner and Jude Law.
She was Co-creator (with actress Jean Marsh) of the classic British drama series "Upstairs, Downstairs." Ms. Atkins is known as the preeminent interpreter of the works of Virginia Woolf, having recorded many of her works for 'books on tape' and was awarded the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Screenplay for the 1997 film, MRS. DALLOWAY.

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