Designed as a showcase for playwrights, directors, and actors of the “over forty” set, The Silver Theater Project continues its Salon Play staged reading series with Vivienne at The Glitterbox Theater on December 8thand 9th.
Vivienne is set in 1953, at the Sainte-Lucie convent-hospital in Chamonix, France, Sister Marie-Hélène Rivet is assigned to save the life of Vivienne Privernay, a severely ill woman. Marie-Hélène (Heather Clark) clashes with both Sister Élise, who distrusts her, and her own heart, as her relationship with Vivienne carries her back to wartime London and to Christian Locke, a man whom the two women knew long ago and who will very soon re-enter their lives. The play weaves between France in 1953 and London in the early 1940s as Marie-Hélène struggles to come to terms with her fondness for Vivienne, her passion for the Englishman, Christian Locke, and her sense of loneliness and homelessness.
Vivienne is directed by Silver Theater founder Michael McGovern and was written by local area playwright and Slipper Rock University instructor Timothy Ruppert. “It’s one of the most beautiful plays I’ve ever read,” McGovern says of the play, which will be performed in the style of chamber theater with actors at podiums and musical accompaniment by Suzanne Levinson.
Michael McGovern and Timothy Ruppert
I asked Tim Rupert about the story. “While the play is fictional, the idea began with research that I conducted about eighteen years ago on the great French intellectual, Albert Camus, who was tubercular. I drew on Herbert R. Lottman’s magisterial biography of Camus for historical context and medical details and then recast these as elements in what is now the romance Vivienne. Beyond having moved and entertained its audiences, I hope that Vivienne persuades people to consider the ways in which a past world can offer us an index of our lives today. I hope that this historical romance reminds us of what we have never quite forgotten: that the human soul, despite all the crises of time, cannot be crushed when there are those who will not accept the soul’s devastation; that compassion cannot be disavowed when there are those whose love and courage affirm and reaffirm humaneness.”
The title role of Vivienne will be played by Lucia Metrailler, Marie-Helene by Heather Clark. The cast also includes renowned local actress Tracey D. Turner as the Reverend Mother Superior, Stacy Lyn DiPasquale as Sister Elise, and Brian Czarniecki as Christian Locke, with Warren Ashburn providing narration and voice-overs.
Performances are Saturday, December 8th at 8 pm, and Sunday, December 9th, at 7 pm. Tickets are $10at the door of the Glitterbox Theatre, 460 Melwood Avenue, Pittsburgh 15213
George Hoover got his start in theatre in Miami when his family ran the Coconut Grove Playhouse. His career encompasses a variety of work in both the design and technical side of motion pictures, live theatre, and television. George is a three-time Emmy Award winner, member of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame, Broadcasting & Cable Technology Leadership Award winner, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers Life Fellow, and most importantly a passionate theatre person and generally handy guy.
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