Lesley Sharp among the stars to perform at Festival

Professional actresses and actors, Lesley Sharp (top photgraph), Eve Matheson (middle photograph), Jenny Quayle, Michael Palmer and Philip Battley, have been engaged by Dr. Joe Spence (lower photograph) to perform in rehearsed readings of extracts from Greene’s plays (mainly The Potting Shed and The Complaisant Lover) at the Graham Greene International Festival in the Civic Centre, Berkhamsted (UK), on the evening of Friday 1st October 2010.

Dr. Spence will introduce and conclude the event with a talk on “In and Beyond The Living Room: The Art and Scope of Graham Greene, Dramatist”.

Dr. Spence has been the Master of Dulwich College since September 2009. He was previously Master in College at Eton College and headmaster of Oakham School. He is an historian and playwright. He writes on nineteenth and twentieth century Irish literary and cultural history, and has had two plays (Gogol’s Gamblers, Pleasance Edinburgh and BAC, and Descent, Pleasance Edinburgh and King’s Head, Islington) produced professionally. His interest in the plays of Graham Greene has been long-standing, and grew out of a fascination with the playwrights of the 1950s and ‘60s (such as Greene, John Whiting, Enid Bagnold and Rodney Ackland) who were ignored in the era of the Angry Young Men.

The actresses and actors, who will appear at the Festival subject to their availabilities, began rehearsals with Dr. Spence in the third week of August 2010.

Graham Greene’s The Potting Shed will be revived at the Finborough Theatre (Earl’s Court, London, UK) on dates between 12th and 27th September 2010.