92nd Y. to Present Rare St. Vincent Millay Piece

On Monday, January 22, at 8:00 p.m., the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre will offer a presentation of Edna St. Vincent Millay's dramatic poem, Conversation at Midnight, originally published in 1937. 

Actor Paul Hecht, who has performed in several Poets' Theatre productions, produced by the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, directs this dramatic reading. The cast includes Roscoe Lee Browne; Larry Pine; Peter Francis James; Michael Stuhlbarg; Quentin Mare; Ken Marks and Hecht. The event is part of the 2006/07 season of literary programs presented by the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center.

Conversation at Midnight is "a multi-character conversational poem, imagining the after-dinner discussion of seven men from diverse backgrounds as they hold sway over a number of topics, including politics, shooting, horse racing, poetry, love and war," according to press notes.

"Millay wrote the play in 1936 and only kept one copy," said program curator David Yezzi, a former 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center director who is now editor of The New Criterion. Millay took the manuscript with her on a vacation to Sanibel Island, leaving it in the hotel room before taking a walk on the beach. That same day, the hotel caught fire, and everything inside, including the manuscript, was destroyed. Yezzi added, "She chose to reconstruct the entire piece from memory, which shows how special it was to her." Although Millay's passion for this particular work is evident from her painstaking efforts to replicate it after the accident, the play was not performed on-stage until long after Millay's death in 1950, with a short-lived 1964 Broadway production.  The text went out of print shortly after and remained a hidden literary gem until Paul Hecht discovered it in 2004.

Since Dylan Thomas' legendary reading of his play for voices Under Milk Wood at the 92nd Street Y in 1953, the Y has presented verse dramas, plays and theatrical adaptations of literary texts.  Over the years, these performances have evolved into the 92nd Street Y Poets' Theatre, a series of dramas that emphasize language and the aural experience of theater.  The Poets' Theatre is a series of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, which is part of the 92nd Street Y Tisch Center for the Arts. 

Tickets are $18 and can be purchased at www.92Y.org/poetry and 212.415.5500.