A FIRST reading AND DISCUSSION of
The English Understand Wool
a SCRIPT IN PROGRESS by Tony Estrella
ADAPTED from the novella by Helen DeWitt
Nov. 17 at 7:30pm at The Gamm Theatre
All tickets: $20 general admission seating
Get your tickets now! Limited to 75 seats.
This adaptation launches The Gamm's new play development program, made possible by a generous founding gift from philanthropist and Broadway producer Elizabeth Armstrong. Read the press release for exciting details!
SYNOPSIS
Marguerite, a young woman of 17, has been raised by Maman and Daddy to expect and demand only the best. Above all to avoid mauvais ton (“bad taste” almost -- of course, like all things, it loses something in translation). In her world, one should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: They must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad. One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris. Marguerite has led a rarefied, intercontinental life where to truly understand anything -- domestic crafts, the fine arts, sport, cards, business negotiation -- necessitates the most exacting standards. When a sudden reversal of fortune shatters her hermetic existence, Marguerite is forced to fend for herself against forces that play by a very different set of rules.
ABOUT HELEN DEWITT
Helen DeWitt was born in a suburb of Washington, DC. Daughter of American diplomats, she grew up mainly in Latin America, living in Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador. She went to Oxford to study classics for a BA and D.Phil. She left academia to try to write a novel, moving eventually to London and acquiring UK citizenship. She had some 100 fragments of novels when she began work in 1995 on the novel that was published as The Last Samurai in 2000. The book caused a sensation at the Frankfurt Bookfair 1999 and was translated into 20 languages. Its reissue in 2016 was hailed by Vulture Magazine as The Best Book of the Century. She is also the author of Lightning Rods, a Mel Brooksian satire on sexual harassment, and Some Trick, a collection of stories. Her just released book titled Your Name Here and billed as a “collaborative novel” with Ilya Gridneff, has received early acclaim. DeWitt has been based in Berlin since 2004, but also spends time at a cottage in the woods of Vermont.
