All but forgotten by modern theatre fans, Charlotte Cushman was the greatest English speaking actress of the nineteenth century; an actress so acclaimed that when she ‘retired’ from the New York stage a parade in her honor was held down Fifth Avenue. Famous for her cross-dressing “breeches” roles, most notably as Romeo, Cushman’s audiences included four U.S. Presidents and English royalty. She openly and unabashedly lived and traveled with her “wife,” the sculptor Emma Stebbins, and was a scion of the community of ex-patriot women artists living in Rome during the height of the Victorian era.

Karen Shields will perform “The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman,” a moving one-woman play by Carolyn Gage that opens with the announcement that the performance is about to be cancelled. Cushman, struggling desperately against breast cancer, insists that the show go on – and taking up the challenge of her condition – devotes the entire evening to the subject of death Having played many roles that require dying, Charlotte regales the audience with moving, and sometimes hilarious scenes from Macbeth, Hamlet, Oliver Twist and the notoriously bad melodrama, Guy Mannering, Interspersed with her monologues are anecdotes about other actors, her family and about the romantic intrigues in her community of friends.

“The Last Reading of Charlotte Cushman” is included in Carolyn Gage’s collection of plays, “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc and Selected Plays” which won the 2008 Lambda Literary Award in Drama.

This performance is free and open to the public. St. Roberts Hall Auditorium 7:00 p.m.