In January of 1919, celebrated Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky gives his final ballet performance and begins the diary that will chronicle his descent into madness. In 1936 St. Louis, Rose Williams – beloved sister to renowned playwright Tennessee Williams – discovers Nijinsky’s diary and dreams of escaping into his world. Separated by every possible spatial, temporal, and social barrier, the virtuosic dancer and the secluded sister have one thing in common: both are suspected of a peculiar and precocious dementia that terrifies and repulses their families who will do anything – anything – to contain them. A play about desire, madness, and the legacy of art, The Intense Fragility imagines an encounter outside the slipstream of history that brings two people together in the realm of the subjunctive where anything is possible and fantasy becomes reality.

We welcome you to a staged reading of this piece in the

In Sophia Naylor’s Honors thesis project, a young heroine called Kate has returned with two friends to the rolling green hills of Ireland where she first realized she saw what others didn’t see: a world colored by synesthesia (the crossing of senses). Meanwhile, the ancient fairies living underneath Kate’s hovel struggle to keep the earth, battered by its human population, from tearing itself apart at the seams. In the face of destruction and disorder on a grand scale, Kate and the fairies strive to at least be remembered for their attempt to keep back entropy.

A staged reading will take place in the LPAC Frear Theater Friday, November 16 and Sunday, November 18 at 7PM.