DETAILS: Island Theatre Presents First Class at the Bainbridge Public Library

“Theodore Roethke and Bloedel Reserve: A Poet’s Place” will be accompanied by an Island Theatre playreading of First Class by the late poet and Roethke student David Wagoner at 7 p.m. on Saturday, September 28, and 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 29, at the Bainbridge Public Library; both readings are free, with donations welcome. Set in one of Roethke’s legendary poetry workshops, the 75-minute production features Island Theatre founder Steve Stolee as Theodore Roethke.

"This is a poetry workshop, God help us,” begins First Class. In his introduction to the play, David Wagoner wrote: “Most of the teaching methods of artists in all categories have gone unrecorded. We know very little about what great painters and great composers, for instance, said to their pupils. In First Class I've tried to re-create the atmosphere of one of Roethke's poetry workshops, working mostly from my memories of him and a number of examples of the kinds of poems and opinions he admired, some of the near rituals he used both on students and himself, some of his unique spirit, and some of the hectic ways Time and Place would leap over each other for him as if he were in charge of both."

In the process, the audience is swept into not only the exhilarating milieu of Roethke’s classroom, but also the terrible landscape of the mental illness that clouded most of his life.

"Theodore Roethke and Bloedel Reserve: A Poet’s Place” is made possible through by a grant from the Bainbridge Community Foundation and funding from the City of Bainbridge Island. Other Bainbridge Island Poet Laureate Program support comes from the Bainbridge Public Library and Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network (BARN).