FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. August 31, 2009
LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE
All Hallows Eve celebration.
”The thing is still out there.” Fall River Daily Globe
Join LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE at the Eagle Performing Arts Center, 35 N. Main Street, Fall River, MA 02720 on Saturday, October 31st @ 8:00 p.m. for an All Hallow’s Eve Celebration. A fun filled night of thrills, chills and prizes. Did she or didn’t she do it? You decide. If you wish come dressed as your favorite character from the story. Grand prize for best costume is one night at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast in Fall River, MA. Second prize is a one-year subscription to The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies. Tickets ($25). Third prize will be 2 tickets to the Providence Ghost Tour (good thru Nov 14th). Purchase on line at www.lizziebordenlive.com (click on Schedule page) or at the door. Seniors, students and card carrying union members $5 off at the door only.
On a hot August morning the bodies of Andrew Borden and his wife, Abby, were found bludgeoned to death. Their youngest daughter, Lizzie, became the only suspect. Think you know her? . . . Think again. The legend comes to life with humor and insight as one of the most notorious women in the annals of true crime takes the stage for the first time to tell her side of the story.
LIZZIE BORDEN LIVE played to a SOLD OUT house in its first visit to Fall River at the newly restored Eagle Performing Arts Center.
Compelling performance. Rick Snizek, Fall River Spirit
Fall River Mayor Robert Correia praised the play saying, “It was powerful and
exceptionally performed.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"If she was innocent, that was an incredible price to pay. If she was guilty, she got what she deserved. But it raises aspects and a side of this story I never had considered."
Bristol County District Attorney Sam Sutter
"Dalton is nothing less than superb in her depiction of the character, as her Lizzie is alternating sweet, innocent, witty and savagely murderous. The audience is left to decide which Lizzie is the real one." Cape May Star Wave
Jill Dalton, (writer/performer) an award winning New York actress with a long list of television and theatre credits, won the Jacoby Award for her performance in Lizzie Borden Live. The play was commissioned by the East Lynne Theater Company in Cape May, N.J. where it enjoyed a successful five-week run garnering praise and standing ovations from audiences and critics alike. Ms. Dalton wants the audience to decide for themselves if Lizzie Borden was guilty of killing her father and stepmother on August 4, 1892.
The true crime thriller is set 13 years after the double murder in Maplecroft, the mansion Lizzie bought with money inherited from her father. "Dalton gives a compelling performance enacting the humanity, humor, irony and sadness of a woman who's had time to reflect on horrific events." Susan Johnson, Red Rock News, Sedona AZ
“Dalton enacts a Lizzie such as never before been portrayed anywhere in stage, screen or literature. Her accomplishment may be by far the most accurate, the most thoroughly researched and the most brilliantly complex Lizzie created for dramatic purposes.
Jill Dalton’s Lizzie Borden Live is an accomplishment of not only theater and performance, but of Lizzie Borden scholarship, a tale woven with historical accuracy and intelligent speculation, one that does not try to solve the murders, but to puzzle out the mystery inside the woman herself . . .. one that deserves serious attention from anyone interested in the American mystery that is Lizzie Andrew Borden.” Richard Behrens, The Hatchet
Jack McCullough, (director) born in Fall River, said, "We had to get down to the very marrow of the bone, otherwise there's no point in telling the story. People come to see Lizzie expecting to see a monster and instead they find themselves."
Haunting the performance is music written by Emmy winning and Tony nominated orchestrator and composer Larry Hochman, who created his original pieces based on the script and his personal observations during rehearsals.
Dalton's credits include: Law and Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Rachel Getting Married, Veronika Decides to Die (2009), Wall Street, Another World, All My Children, One Life to Live, As The World Turns and Saturday Night Live. Ms. Dalton was also a stand up comic for several years and won the Mary Jo Comedy Show Award for stand-up comedy in NYC.
McCullough, a graduate of the Trinity Repertory Consecratory in Providence, R.I., also directed another of Dalton's solo plays, My Life in the Trenches, most recently at the Kitchen Theatre in Ithaca, NY and at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, the International Midtown Theatre Festival NYC, the One Festival and the 78th Street Theatre Lab in NYC. As an actor he appeared in Third Watch, Desperate Measures, The Observer, Osmosis Jones, Spenser: for Hire, Mr. North and Providence.
The Eagle Performing Arts Center
35 N. Main Street
Fall River, MA 02720
Tickets ($25). Available at www.lizziebordenlive.com (click on Schedule page) or call the Eagle at (508) 989-9207. Also available at the door.
Press contact: Jack McCullough (917) 806-3243 or lizziebordenlive@gmail.com
When Ms. Dalton was asked to write a play about the notorious Miss Borden she declined saying she didn’t want a homicidal maniac living in her head. But her interest was peaked and she began reading about Lizzie Borden and one day Lizzie started speaking to her. She wrote down everything Lizzie said and when Lizzie stopped. She stopped. Ms. Dalton also felt what she was reading was objectifying Lizzie and decided to look at original source material. The trial had just been transcribed and put on the Internet. She read all 1,700 pages along with the Inquest testimony, Lizzie’s Will and newspaper articles of the time. Ms. Dalton then asked her friend, Jack McCullough, if he would be interested in directing the play. That’s when she learned he was born in Fall River. She took that as a sign. “Let’s face it Lizzie Borden is a very provocative subject and I have always been fascinated by true crime perhaps because I’m so white bread. People are often surprised by the humor in the piece. I read somewhere Lizzie liked to joke about the murders. Like Lizzie I’ve had a lot of loss in my life and I deal with my pain through humor. I also did stand-up comedy for a few years and like Richard Pryor said, “Tragedy plus timing equals comedy. I live by that and I think Lizzie might have too.” Once Mr. McCullough came on board they began taking field trips to Fall River. Jill calls it the land of Lizzie. We went to 92 Second Street, Maplecroft, and the Oak Grove Cemetery. Jack drove right to the graves. All the pieces of the play and her character began to fall into place.