From: New
Jersey Repertory Company
In
the largely true but playfully skewed world of Exposure Time by Kim Merrill,
photography is the Next Big Thing; Darwin and Tennyson are A-List celebrities;
and Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) wants all the great minds to sit for
his camera alone. Winner of a 2009 Edgerton Foundation New American Plays
Award, Exposure Time is a journey into a period in history that has profoundly
shaped our own time, forged with passions and rivalries still echoing today.
Long Branch, NJ –
While Johnny Depp portrays the Mad Hatter on movie screens around the world
this winter, Lewis Carroll, the conflicted creator of Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland, will be on stage at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch,
fighting passionately to be known not as a children’s author but as Charles
Dodgson, the greatest portrait photographer in the British Empire. Standing in
his way is the larger-than-life and now tragically forgotten Julia Margaret
Cameron, who was the Annie Leibovitz of her day and a constant thorn in
Dodgson’s side. The real Alice will be there as well, trying to sort out her
complex relationship with Dodgson, along with Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the
Victorian Idol of a society that worshiped its poets like rock stars.
It may seem absurd in our world of instantaneous everything
that the painstakingly slow process of wet collodion photography was the
19th-century equivalent of the personal computing revolution, raising the same
fever of promise and controversy. Was it art or science? Would it change the
world for better or worse? Should the photographer be an observer or a participant
creating images that for the first time could be shared democratically across
the globe? Just as curious is the little-known fact of Charles Dodgson’s
passion for photography and contempt for his own fame as the writer, Lewis
Carroll. His ambitions put Dodgson on an inevitable collision course with
Cameron, a woman who came to photography late in life and took Victorian
society by storm with her talent, beauty, and daring innovations. Although
Dodgson had a provocative way with photos of children, he could never match the
inner light captured in Cameron’s portraits of nearly everyone who was anyone
in the sciences, arts, and letters.
In the cultural shorthand of today, Dodgson would be a PC and Cameron a Mac. He
argues for technique and precision while she aspires to expressiveness and
freedom. Both are vying to win the mind and heart of Alice Liddell, who is
involved in her own struggles against time, her fictional identity, and
societal expectations. Stirring up the already explosive rivalry while providing
comic relief and lyric eloquence, is Alfred Tennyson, Julia’s neighbor, biggest
fan, and close intimate.
A magical journey into the literary heart of Victorian England, Exposure Time
is a perfect play for young teens and above.
Directed by Alan Sousa, Exposure
Time features Andrea Gallo as Julia Margaret Cameron, Adam Jonas Segaller as
Charles Dodgson, John FitzGibbon as Alfred Tennyson, and Jessica Howell as
Alice Liddell. Stage manager is Rose Riccardi; scenic design by Quinn Stone;
lighting design by Jill Nagle; properties by Jessica Parks; costume design by
Patricia E. Doherty; original music and sound design by Merek Royce Press.