FEBRUARY Matinee Features Talkback with Playwright Lisa Moore at Alumnae Theatre, Sept 23

Award-winning and critically acclaimed Newfoundland writer Lisa Moore has adapted her 2009 novel FEBRUARY for the stage, and Alumnae Theatre Company is set to present the world premiere, running now through October 6, 2012.

Following the first Sunday matinee performance today, September 23, Lisa Moore will join The cast and director Michelle Alexander on stage to answer audience questions in a Talkback session.

FEBRUARY was Moore’s second novel, praised as “luminous” and “soaring” and nominated for the Man Booker Prize. The Newfoundland literary festival Winterset in Summer commissioned her to write a stage adaptation, and when a longtime member of Alumnae Theatre Company caught a staged reading while on vacation Down East last year, she brought it to the attention of Alumnae’s Programming Committee.

FEBRUARY is the time-shifting story of Helen, left a young widow with four children when her husband is killed in the sinking of the oil rig Ocean Ranger off Newfoundland in February of 1982. Twenty-seven years later, while Helen still struggles to escape the memories and move forward with her life, past and present intertwine as her now-adult son John deals with a dilemma of his own.

The cast of Alumnae Theatre Company’s world premiere of features Lavetta Griffin as Helen; John Fray as Helen’s husband Cal; Justin Skye Conley as their son John; Kathleen Jackson Allamby as Helen’s sister Louise; Trevor Cartlidge playing multiple roles, including Cal’s bereaved father; Victoria Fuller as John’s former love interest; and Steve Switzman as a lovable carpenter renovating Helen’s house.

Tickets for FEBRUARY are on sale now, and are available at www.alumnaetheatre.com.

Portrait by Barbara Stoneham.