Last Weekend for *Cyrano de Bergerac*!

"My own dearly beloved -- and my heart / Still so heavy with love I have not told, / And I die without telling you!"

Only four more performances of Edmond Rostand's romantic classic, Thursday through Saturday at 7:30p and Sunday at 2p! The Haymarket Theatre, 803 "Q" Street in Lincoln.

Call 402-473-2897 now!

And little background on the history behind this play --

 

Hercule-Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (1619 – 1655) was a French playwright, poet, prose writer, free-thinker, and soldier. His family was Gascogne aristocracy, which led to service in the Gascon guards in 1639 and 1640, including the Siege of Arras during the Thirty Years War (see below). His literary talents in both tragedy and comedy attracted the attention of court officials interested in cultivating an idealized approach to “national theater.” Cyrano apparently went his own way instead, although he eventually published political tracts supporting the policies of Cardinal Mazarin, who succeeded Cardinal Richelieu as Chief Minister of France (and whom Cyrano had previously satirized). One of his comedies, Le pédant joué, was indeed so good that Moliére borrowed substantial passages from it in his Scapin. Always outspoken, Cyrano called approving attention to the work of Pierre Gassendi, a priest and philosopher who encouraged applying the idea of atoms (found in ancient Epicureanism) to developing science. This interest in rational inquiry is reflected in Cyrano's two pioneering works of science fiction: The Other World: or the States and Empires of the Moon (circulated in manuscript and then published in 1657, after his death) and The States and Empires of the Sun (1662) propose fanciful modes of space travel and offer slyly satirical depictions of the Moon's and Sun's inhabitants and civilizations. The character in Rostand's play is based less on the historical record and more upon the qualities of intelligence, imagination, and independence evident in Cyrano's life and works.

Photo: Amy Jirsa as Roxane and Vince Learned as Cyrano in Flatwater Shakespeare's production of Cyrano de Bergerac.  Photo Credit: John Nollendorfs.