LEGENDARY LOCALS OF RED BANK author Eileen Moon visits the Little Silver Library on Monday evening…while Next Stage Ensemble brings a little Shakespeare to the Middletown Township biblio.
There’s the pioneering African American journalist T. Thomas Fortune, whose historic home is currently the subject of an intensive rescue effort. Industrialist Sigmund Eisner, whose legacy includes a public library, a Galleria, and a former chairman of the Disney entertainment empire. Trailblazing attorney Florence Forgotson Adams, the father-and-son Drs. James Parker, the Dorns, the Irwins — and famed illustrator James Avati, the “Rembrandt of the Paperbacks” remembered in a 2011 feature that appeared here on redbankgreen.
They are all among the Legendary Locals of Red Bank profiled by veteran newspaperwoman Eileen Moon in her new book, an entry in the series from Arcadia Publishing that the author will discuss in a free Monday night reading/ signing appearance at Little Silver Public Library. Going up at 7 pm, it’s part of a busy itinerary by the equally legendary reporter and editor, who in a recent feature on redbankgreen described her concept of a Legendary Local thusly: “It takes a strong personality, and a vision, and a risk-taker sometimes, to change what is into some new evolution of that.”
Such language might also describe the scribe known as William Shakespeare — and at the same hour of Monday night, another nearby community cultural resource hosts a troupe of players who have had their audiences calling out requests for “Free Bard.”
That troupe is Next Stage Ensemble, the young-performers professional touring unit of the venerable Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey — and the evening’s entertainment of choice for June 23 is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the most kinetic, enchanted (and, it’s generally agreed, accessible) comedy from the quill of the Bard. The fantasy of fairy royalty, landed gentry and actorly ego plays out in the Community Room of Middletown Township Public Library at 7 pm; there’s no charge for admission, but seating is limited, and reservations are required in advance.
