KPAX

Posted: Mar 2, 2010 7:37 PM
Updated: Mar 2, 2010 9:06 PM

KALISPELL - The one-man show "Shakespeare's Treason", starring New York actor and author Hank Whittemore, will return to Flathead Valley Community College for two performances on March 12 and March 13. Whittemore will present the 90-minute solo in the FVCC Theatre, the same venue where he opened the college's Honors Symposium with the show in 2008.

Since his Kalispell appearance, Whittemore has brought "Shakespeare's Treason" to a variety of audiences in venues around the country such as the Gerding Theater in Portland, Ore. and Theatre Row Studios in New York, as well as stages in Boston and Houston. In England, he also performed the show at Shakespeare's Globe, at the invitation of the Shakespearean Authorship Trust and its chairman Mark Rylance, as well as at Gonville and Caius College of Cambridge University.

"Shakespeare's Treason," co-written by Whittemore and director Ted Story of New York, is based on Whittemore's 900-page edition of the Sonnets titled "The Monument."  Dr. Daniel Wright, director of the Shakespeare Authorship Studies Centre at Concordia University in Portland, cites the book as "the most important work on Shakespeare since 1920, when it was first suggested that Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford was the true author."

"Hank Whittemore's work has opened a new doorway leading to previously unexplored pathways for studies of the Shakespeare works," Wright said.  "By contrast, the orthodox version of Shakespearean biography is filled with flights of contradictory fancy, and now that traditional view is in serious crisis."

Whittemore began his professional acting career at 19 appearing off-Broadway in "This Side of Paradise" and on Broadway in "Take Her, She's Mine" starring Art Carney.  After graduating from Notre Dame, he worked as a reporter while authoring 11 books-among them "The Super Cops," a bestseller made into a movie directed by Gordon Parks-as well as dozens of television shows and articles for "PARADE" Magazine.

Whittemore will perform "Shakespeare's Treason" at 7 p.m. in the Arts and Technology Building on the FVCC campus. Tickets are $10 for general admission and $5 students and senior citizens and may be purchased in advance at the FVCC Bookstore, by calling 756-3814 or online. Remaining tickets will be available for purchase at the door.

For more information call the FVCC Box Office at (406) 756.3906.