Phantom Collective Presents LAST THOUGHTS OF MARY STUART An Equity Staged Reading with Music

Last Thoughts of Mary Stuart by June Sawyers is a dramatic reading about the final hours before Mary, Queen of Scots, was executed in 1587 at age 44. The reading will be preceded by a concert of music associated with or about Mary. Reading runs about 90 minutes without intermission.

Thursday, April 18, 2019, 7 p.m.. Celtic Knot Public House, 626 Church Street, Evanston, IL, 847-864-1679, street parking, Davis Street Purple Line EL stop

TICKETS: FREE (suggested $15 donation at the door)

ARTISTS: Amy Montgomery (Mary, Queen of Scots)

Erica Bittner, Kathy Cowan, Justine Serino,and Melissa Van Kersen (the Four Marys)

Bittner will also sing Fotheringay, about Mary's last hours

Tim MacDonald (fiddler) and Andrew Calhoun (singer)

Karin McKie (director)

Mary Stuart has long been a topic of fascination across mediums, most recently in the 2018 biopic starring Saoirse Ronan as Mary and Margot Robbie as Elizabeth. Last Thoughts of Mary Stuart explores the final hours of Mary, Queen of Scots, before her execution at Fotheringay Castle, England, on February 8, 1587. After 19 years of imprisonment in various castles and manor houses throughout England for conspiring to assassinate the Protestant Elizabeth I, the Catholic Mary is suddenly told the night before she will face the chopping block the next morning. With her four loyal ladies in waiting the famous Four Marys of legend who serve as a Greek chorus and as the hours tick away, Mary looks back at her life as a monarch and as a woman living in a world dominated by powerful men. Was she a conniving villain, as some have portrayed her, or a victim of the sexist times in which she lived?

Inspired by pub theater,The Phantom Collective is a grassroots group that sponsors theater and music programs around Chicagoland, mostly but not exclusively, from the North American and Anglo-Celtic-Nordic traditions.