New Theatre Work Premieres In Boone Drama Based on Eudora Welty Short Story Special to The Mountain Times Boone, NC - An Appalachian Summer Festival will present the world premiere of He Felt…, an exciting new dramatic work based on Eudora Welty’s short story, “Music From Spain,” on Thursday, July 29th at 8 pm in Valborg Theatre, on the campus of Appalachian State University. The production is presented in association with New York’s 92nd Street Y. Adapted and set to muisic by director David Kaplan, the production stars Obie Award-winning actress Brenda Currin (who grew up in Oxford, North Carolina), with pianist Evan Megaro. Eudora Welty, author of the original story, was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1909. What she saw and understood in that city and state inspired her life’s remarkable contribution to world literature. Eudora Welty wrote five novels, many famous short stories, many wise essays. She took remarkable photographs. She amassed a body of work simultaneously strong and supple, delicate and refined, personal and universal. In the summer of 2001 she passed away, honored as one of America’s treasures. In her lifetime Miss Welty’s writing was grouped with other Southerners, with other women, with other Americans. Now, seen as a whole, the body of her work emerges, like Chekhov’s, like Jane Austen’s, specific to its time and place: timeless in its resonance. Mississippi writer Eudora Welty’s short story “Music from Spain” has been transformed into the theatrical work “He Felt...” The drama will have its world premiere this week during An Appalachian Summer Festival in Boone. Welty’s writing, which can be “laugh out-loud funny,” bears witness to the rapture of the commonplace: a plate with bread, the love between a husband and wife, a school bus, Her confrontations with the great issues of her time and place - poverty, racism, ignorance - were subtle and indirect, and controversial for their subtlety. She took photographs while traveling throughout Mississippi on assignment for the WPA. Her portraits bear witness that faced with hardship the human spirit is irrepressibly hopeful, saucy and proud. So, too, were the characters and stories she created. Actress Brenda Currin won an Obie for My Sister in This House at the Second Stage Theater in New York. While still in college, she played the daughter in the film of In Cold Blood. Other films: Reds, Taps, The World According to Garp (Pooh), Life With Mikey, and the cult classic, C.H.U.D. Other plays produced in New York include: Threepenny Opera, The Art of Dining; Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You; and Impossible Marriage, by Beth Henley. Currin’s regional theater work includes The Cherry Orchard (Anya), The Ghost Sonata (Hyacinth Girl), Arms and the Man (Catherine). She played leads in two world premieres: The Envoi Messages and Voice of the Prairie, and she created the role of Ruth in Eve Ensler’s Conviction. Pianist Evan Megaro is a lifelong resident of New Jersey, has studied the piano since he was a child. As a student at New Jersey City University, Evan had the chance to study abroad at Kingston University, London, England. While living in London, Evan performed nightly at the Pierre Victoire Bistro in Soho. Returning to the United States, Evan began performing in New Jersey and playing in Master Classes with Dick Hyman and Charles McPherson in addition to performing onstage with Benny Golson and the New York Voices. Adaptor and director David Kaplan stages plays around the world, most recently Tennessee Williams’ The Eccentricities of a Nightingale, in Cantonese, at the Hong Kong Repertory Theater. Seasons past include: King Lear in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, performed in the Uzbek language; Genet’s The Maids in Ulan Baator, Mongolia, performed in Mongolian; A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Buddhist Buryatia, performed in the Buryat language. In Russia, and in the Russian language, Mr. Kaplan staged the first production of the American comic classic Auntie Mame at the 200-year-old Penza Theater, the first Russian production of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer (the subject of a TASS documentary), as well as Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Plays directed by Mr. Kaplan have appeared in 40 of the 50 United States. Also a professor of acting, he is the author of the Five Approaches to Acting, a text used in colleges throughout the United States, and published in Italian in 2003. In 1979, actress Brenda Currin and director David Kaplan began to adapt the words of Eudora Welty for the stage. First performed at midnight on the Off-Broadway set of “Vanities,” the adaptation, then titled Sister and Miss Lexie, opened in June 1980. Five years later the performance was revived at The Second Stage in New York. Soon after, a twenty-city tour of the United States began. In 1999, Broadway producer Edwin W. Schloss began recording a compact disc version of the Welty adaptation, now titled June Recital. In the process of recording, a “concert version” emerged, which was first seen at the American Literature Association conference in Long Beach, California, in May 2000. This version went on to tour throughout the state of Mississippi. In October of 2002, June Recital was staged, by special invitation, at The Second International Welty Symposium in Rennes, France. In June of 2003 the Eudora Welty Society and the William Faulkner Society commissioned an adaptation of Welty’s short story “Music from Spain.” The adaptation titled “He felt ...” is a reduction of the original words of “Music from Spain” in a dialogue with music mentioned or implied in the text of the original story. In May 2004 the second half of “He felt…” premiered at the American Literature Association conference in San Francisco. This program has been underwritten in part through the generous support of Armfield Coffey. Due to limited parking adjacent to Valborg Theatre, free shuttle bus service from the Broyhill Inn will be available, beginning at 7:15 pm. Tickets Tickets are $18 for adults; $9 for students; and $2 for children age 12 and under. Tickets are available online at www.appsummer.org or through the Festival Box Office at 828.262.4046 or 800.841.2787. Box Office hours are 10am - 6pm, Monday – Saturday.