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Public offerings, including concerts, recitals, lectures, exhibitions, theatre performances, etc., are cancelled or postponed at least through March 29. UCF Celebrates the Arts 2020, planned for April 7-19 at Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, is also cancelled, as are several other events extending into April. Click here for more information.
Cost: $20 standard, $18 senior, $10 student
1809, on an elegant English estate, thirteen year-old Thomasina makes a startling scientific discovery that will change the way people understand the world. Around her, the adults, including her tutor Septimus, are preoccupied with secret desires, illicit passions, and intense rivalries. Two hundred years later, academic adversaries Hannah and Bernard, under the scrutinizing eye of a young mathematician, are piecing together puzzling clues, uncovering the past scandals of the estate, in their quest for an increasingly elusive truth.
“Stoppard’s richest, most ravishing comedy to date, a play of wit, intellect, language, brio and...emotion. It’s like a dream of levitation: you’re instantaneously aloft, soaring, banking, doing loop the loops... The playwright is a daredevil pilot who’s steady at the controls.” - The New York Times
“Full of complex ideas and pleasures one expects from this master of dramatic composition.” - Time Out New York
We’ve created some reading materials to provide some context to Arcadia. The notes are formatted for easy printing, so please, download and read them. The biographies, historical information, and glossary will enhance your enjoyment of the play.
Please join us on Friday, January 23 for a preshow discussion featuring director Kate Ingram and UCF Physics Associate Professor Enrique Del Barco.
Tom Stoppard set Arcadia at the cusp of a marked age of new brilliance— twice. With both the Industrial Revolution in 1809 and the Internet Boom in 1999, an apex of the public’s belief in technology and science began to manifest and consequently so did a trust in one another. This confidence in the unseen and the desire to continually pursue knowledge as a form on humanity are central themes in the play. The character of Hannah says to Valentine, “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.”
“Energy has the ability to transform but can be neither created nor destroyed.” — Sir Isaac Newton
—Teresa Kilzi, dramaturg
Czech-born playwright Tom Stoppard has written for radio, television, film and stage. In 1998 he co-wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay for the film Shakespeare in Love. His other works include A Walk on the Water (1960), Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead (1964), Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Rock ‘n’ Roll (2006) and of course, Arcadia (1993).
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