John Farrell, co-founder of Figures of Speech Theatre in Freeport, will recite from memory “Four Quartets”, by T.S. Eliot, at the Blue Hill Public Library on Wednesday August 22nd at 7:00 PM. The performance, part of a 2018 Maine Library Tour by Figures of Speech Theatre, will be followed by an informal conversation with John Farrell.
First undertaken in 2011 with permission — rarely granted — from Eliot’s estate, Farrell’s recitation of “Four Quartets” affords audiences an opportunity to immerse themselves in 1,000 lines of poetry, a summation of T.S. Eliot’s views on poetry and art, on mystical experience, and on humankind’s relationship to history and time. Eliot completed “Four Quartets” in 1941, as Britain slid into the abyss of World War II, and he feared that civilization itself might perish in the coming years.
“Unlike encountering the poems in a book,” Farrell says, “hearing them recited out loud gives people a chance to absorb a complex and nuanced work in a very direct way. At the same time, I bring an actor’s sensibility to the text and a commitment to delivering the poems in a way that allows the poetry to speak for itself.”
The tour of “Four Quartets” is generously supported by the Maine Theater Fund of the Maine Community Foundation, in addition to an Arts & Humanities grant from the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine Arts Commission, a statewide nonprofit supported by the National Endowment for the Arts. This program is sponsored by the library and Borealis Press, and is free and open to everyone. For more information call the library at 374-5515.
