East Lynne Theater Company Helps The Food Closet

As usual, the Equity professional, award-winning East Lynne Theater Company is accepting items for the Food Closet during the run of its holiday show. What is needed most are cereal, soup, bar soap, tuna, peanut butter, and dry spaghetti. For monetary donations, makes checks payable to The Community Food Closet of Cape May.

There are five performances remaining of "Louisa May Alcott's Christmas:" Sunday, December 3, Thursday through Saturday, December 7-9 at 8:00p.m., plus 2:00p.m. on December 9. The theater is in residence at the historic First Presbyterian Church of Cape May, 500 Hughes Street. Tickets are $27; $17 for students and military (active/retired/veteran). Ages twelve and under are free.

With 20 plus roles to perform, "Louisa May Alcott's Christmas" is a one-woman tour-de-force for ELTC's artistic director, Gayle Stahlhuth, resulting in a production not seen anywhere else. These are not readings, but fully memorized and staged performances.

Tales include the opening of Alcott's classic "Little Women" as well as "Tessa's Surprises," about a little girl who wants to put presents in her sibling's stockings for Christmas, and "What the Bells Saw and Said" in which the spirits of bells ringing above city streets, discuss mankind below. All involve the love, laughter, and hope of the holidays.

Stahlhuth is no stranger to writing and performing one-person shows. Her first one was "Lou: The Remarkable Miss Alcott," which premiered at St. Leo University in Florida in 1981. She performed both two-act and one-act versions throughout the country in various theaters, museums (including several times at Alcott's Orchard House in Concord, MA), and schools, obtaining gigs through her own endeavors and through Arthur Shafman Artists International. The last time she performed "Lou" was in 2007 as part of ELTC's Mainstage Season.

Other one-person shows have been based on Catharine Beecher and Edna Ferber, Kate Chopin's "The Awakening," the writings of Mark Twain, and her own autobiographical "Goin' Home."

Season tickets for the 2018 Mainstage Productions are available and make a great gift. The price is only $90 if purchased by March 31, and the packet-of-four-shows may be used in a variety of ways. There are six exciting productions for 2018: "A Year in the Trenches" and "Sherlock Holmes Adventure of the Speckled Band" return, "On the Sunny Side of the Street" celebrating the lyrics of Dorothy Fields, "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Silent Sky" about real-life astronomer Henrietta Leavitt, and "O. Henry's Christmas Tales."

For information and reservations, call East Lynne Theater Company at 609-884-5898 or visit www.eastlynnetheater.org. East Lynne's season would not be possible without the support of Curran Investment Management, Aleathea's Restaurant, The Henry Sawyer Inn, and The Washington Inn, the NJ State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the NJ Dept. of State, Division of Travel and Tourism; and the generosity of many patrons.