Arts

HDT presents new play based on life of poet Robert Lowell

BRATTLEBORO — The Hooker-Dunham Theater, 139 Main St., presents Running on Top of the Water, a play by Charles Monette directed by Miles Keefe.

Written by Monette, with words by famed poet Robert Lowell, Running on Top of the Water was inspired by a reading of Kay Redfield Jamison's biography of Lowell, Setting the River on Fire.

The play is a fictionalized soliloquy of memories, often mixed in time, gleaned from readings of Lowell's poems and Jamison's biography about Lowell's life and his struggles with manic depression.

A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a winner of the National Book Award, Lowell was considered the preeminent poet of his generation. His major books include Lord Weary's Castle, Life Studies, For the Union Dead, Near the Ocean, and The Dolphin. Lowell's play, The Old Glory, won an Obie for the best new play of 1965.

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