In conjunction with Princeton University Library’s exhibition In the Company of Good Books: Shakespeare to Morrison in Firestone Library’s Milberg Gallery, the Lewis Center for the Arts’ presents When Pages Breathe: Bringing Good Books to Life on October 10. Four actors—award-winning film, television, and stage actor Antoinette LaVecchia; veteran Shakespearean actor Maren Maclean; Tony and Obie Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson; and Tony-nominated writer and performer Sharon Washington—and Lewis Center Chair Judith Hamera will read selected works from the exhibition. The event begins at 5:30 p.m. with tours of the exhibition at Firestone Library, followed by a reception at 6:30 p.m. in Chancellor Green Upper Hyphen, and the performance at 7:00 p.m. in Chancellor Green Rotunda. All activities are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Firestone Library and Chancellor Green are accessible venues. Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at least one week in advance at lewiscenter@princeton.edu.
The Library’s exhibition, which honors the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623, draws from the Library’s diverse collection of English language literature and many of the writers and readers who brought life to English literature around the world, such as a 1598 first edition of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and Toni Morrison’s handwritten manuscript drafts of Desdemona. The exhibition, on view through December 10, is curated by Jennifer Garcon, Librarian for Modern and Contemporary Special Collections, Gabriel Swift, Librarian for American Collections, and Eric White, Scheide Librarian and Assistant University Librarian for Special Collections, Rare Books & Manuscripts.
The four professional, award-winning actors and Hamera will read from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, as well as works by John Milton, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Phillis Wheatley, Emily Dickinson, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou, and Walt Whitman. When Pages Breathe: Bringing Good Books to Life is curated and hosted by Lecturer in Theater Chesney Snow.
Snow is utilizing the Library’s exhibition and archives in his fall course, “The Oral Interpretation of Toni and William,” a performance lab that is examining speech as an aspect of fine art through the exploration of the literary canons of Morrison and Shakespeare. The class will culminate in a series of events in late November and early December showcasing work created during the course. Students in the class will speak and introduce the readers at the October 10 event.
Antoinette LaVecchia. Photo courtesy the artist
Antoinette LaVecchia is known to television audiences for her work on The Sopranos, the reboot of Mad About You, The Deuce, and Blindspot, and her film work includes Team Marco, Deliver Us From Evil, and Delirious. She has appeared on Broadway in Torch Song and A View From The Bridge and appeared in leading roles off-Broadway and in regional theater including in McCarter Theatre’s A Comedy of Tenors in 2015. She has received several acting awards and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award.
Maren Maclean. Photo courtesy the artist.
Maren Maclean is a core member of The Bridge Initiative and is currently working on her sixth official production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as Southwest Shakespeare Company’s voice and dialect coach. She has worked primarily as an actor but also as director, dramaturg, and designer for theaters such as Utah Shakespearean Festival, Phoenix Theatre, Southwest Shakespeare Company, Verse Theatre Manhattan, Nearly Naked Theatre, Algonquin Theatre Company, and The Shakespeare Theatre, and she has worked with programs serving incarcerated populations.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Photo courtesy the artist.
Ruben Santiago-Hudson received the 1996 Tony Award as Outstanding Featured Actor in a Drama for August Wilson’s Seven Guitars. The Broadway premiere of his autobiographical solo show Lackawanna Blues received the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama, as well as a Tony nomination in the same category, and he received a Humanitas Prize in writing for the HBO film adaptation. He directed the 2017 revival of Wilson’s Jitney, which received the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play. Santiago-Hudson co-starred opposite Phylicia Rashad on Broadway in Gem of the Ocean in 2004 and has appeared in numerous roles in film and television. In 2009 he received the NAACP Lifetime Achievement Theatre Award.
Sharon Washington. Photo courtesy the artist.
Sharon Washington was nominated for a 2023 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical as co-writer of New York New York. Her solo play Feeding The Dragon was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and won an Audelco Award. As an actor, Washington was seen as Queen Margaret in the Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park production of Richard III starring Dania Gurira and broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances. Her recent film and television appearances include Power Book III: Raising Kanan, Bull, and the Academy Award-winning Joker. She appeared on Broadway in The Scottsboro Boys musical, in a number of off-Broadway productions, as well as regional theaters around the country including Guthrie Theater, Denver Center, and Arena Stage, among many others.
Judith Hamera was appointed chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts in 2022. She is a professor of dance with a faculty appointment in the Effron Center for the Study of America and affiliations with the Programs in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Urban Studies at Princeton. Her most recent book, Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization, received the 2018 Outstanding Book Award from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the 2017-2018 Biennial Sally Banes Publication Prize from the American Society for Theatre Research, and the 2020 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research awarded to the best dance studies book of the past three years by the Dance Studies Association. In 2023, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Chesney Snow is a Drama Desk Award winner who recently collaborated with Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Dominique Morriseau for Skeleton Crew on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club to craft vocal soundscapes and music for the critically acclaimed production. He originated the role of Boxman in Broadway’s first a cappella musical In Transit. Considered a pioneering figure in American beatbox culture, he founded the American Beatbox Championships and executive produced the documentary American Beatboxer, which was placed in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Harvard University Hip Hop archives, among others. He twice headlined Carnegie Hall with DCINY and has collaborated on stage as a beatboxer with many legendary artists including KRS One, Zap Mama, and Nile Rodgers. His most recent work as a composer and lyricist was alongside renowned playwright and actress Regina Taylor for her 15th anniversary production of Crowns at McCarter Theatre and the Long Wharf Theatre.
To learn more about the exhibition, visit Princeton University Library’s website.
Visit the Lewis Center website to learn about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures, and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts.
