[NEohioPAL] Laurel School's Lord of the Flies OPENS TONIGHT!!!!!!

[leighann niles]

Shaker Heights, Ohio-The Performing Arts at Laurel is pleased to present William 
Golding’s Lord of the Flies– directed by Leighann Niles Delorenzo.  This 
production, adapted for the stage by Nigel Williams and adapted for the Laurel 
stage by Kimberley Butler, tells the story of a group of American schoolgirls 
stranded, alone, on what appears to be an uninhabited island.  The production 
poses the question: are the events that take place on the island a descent into 
savagery or a matter of survival? 




William Golding set his 1955 Lord of the Flies in a future wracked by the 
devastation of World War III, where stranded boys must survive by whatever means 
necessary, and the reader is asked, will they?  Can honesty, trust, and 
compassion prevail for them under the most dire and dreadful circumstances when 
those qualities don’t exist anymore in the adult world?  We are animals, so what 
really lies at the core of modern human existence?  

 
 In attention to the relevance of these questions, Leighann Delorenzo and 
Kimberley Butler developed a concept for Laurel’s take on Nigel Williams’ 1990 
dramatic adaptation of the novel that occurs in our near future—one where the 
advances of globalization and technology have engendered a more annihilating 
scope and sequence of total war.  The stranded girls are faced with identical 
questions, but the reason they are on the island and living in the rawest sense 
of themselves is something that they, and the audience, will be astounded to 
learn.
 
Ours is a cautionary tale, tinged with hope but tainted with the possibility 
that what is best about human spirit and ability—empathy, cooperative 
subsistence and sustainabilty—decays violently when the goal is sheer survival.  
 Delorenzo’s Lord of the Flies brings Golding’s essential questions to 2010 and 
asks us now:  What example are we setting for our youth?  What is this world we 
have prepared them for?  Have we?  What lies at the core of our modern human 
existence?  



-Kimberley  Butler, Dramaturge


PERFORMANCES:          Thursday, Friday, Saturday, November 4, 5, & 6 at 7:30 
p.m.
                                                Sunday, November 7 at 3:30 p.m.
PLACE:                                 Laurel School, One Lyman Circle, Shaker 
Heights
TICKETS:                            $7 Adults, $5 Students 
                                                $20 Priority Patron Seating