TALES OF THE VICTORIANS
Entering our 33nd Year of a Storytelling Tradition!
ELTC Actors read American short stories, famous speeches, and one-act plays, while guests enjoy tea and homemade treats.
Reservations are requested and may be made by calling 609-884-5898 or e-mailing eastlynneco@aol.com.
$12 cash at the door; ages 12 and under are free
Thursdays at 4:00 at Different Locations from June 16 - August 25 and Saturday, November 17
We'll post locations and performers when we know them.
June 16: The Dormer House, 800 Columbia Avenue
Michele LaRue reads "Representing T. A. Buck" written by Edna Ferber, known for novels including
Giant and Show Boat and plays including Dinner at Eight written with George S. Kaufman
August 4: Property Owners Association of Cape May Beach (Historic Town Bank), 201 Clubhouse Rd.
Performers Stephanie Garrett and Frank Smith
Saturday, November 19: Gayle's Back Yard, 121 Fourth Avenue, West Cape May, NJ
Michele LaRue reading two stories from Elsie Singmaster's 1913 collection
Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath.
In 2020 and 2021, TALES was on YouTube (virtual) and in a Backyard (live)
James Rana pictured above in the Backyard
ELTC Actors read American short stories, famous speeches, and one-act plays, while guests enjoy tea and homemade treats.
Reservations are requested and may be made by calling 609-884-5898 or e-mailing eastlynneco@aol.com.
$12 cash at the door; ages 12 and under are free
Thursdays at 4:00 at Different Locations from June 16 - August 25 and Saturday, November 17
We'll post locations and performers when we know them.
June 16: The Dormer House, 800 Columbia Avenue
Michele LaRue reads "Representing T. A. Buck" written by Edna Ferber, known for novels including
Giant and Show Boat and plays including Dinner at Eight written with George S. Kaufman
August 4: Property Owners Association of Cape May Beach (Historic Town Bank), 201 Clubhouse Rd.
Performers Stephanie Garrett and Frank Smith
Saturday, November 19: Gayle's Back Yard, 121 Fourth Avenue, West Cape May, NJ
Michele LaRue reading two stories from Elsie Singmaster's 1913 collection
Gettysburg: Stories of the Red Harvest and the Aftermath.
In 2020 and 2021, TALES was on YouTube (virtual) and in a Backyard (live)
James Rana pictured above in the Backyard
Gayle Stahlhuth
NOT IN CAPE MAY?
On April 30, 2020, ELTC launched its
TALES OF THE VICTORIANS AT HOME on ELTC's YouTube Channel for free!
Visit https://www.tinyurl.com/ELTCYouTube
Our TALES have been featured on Broadwayworld.com, NJArts.net, and NewJerseyStage.com!
Enjoys stories written by Poe, Service, Stowe, Stockton, Clark, Thayer, Twain, Chopin, Gale, and others read by ELTC actors.
On April 30, 2020, ELTC launched its
TALES OF THE VICTORIANS AT HOME on ELTC's YouTube Channel for free!
Visit https://www.tinyurl.com/ELTCYouTube
Our TALES have been featured on Broadwayworld.com, NJArts.net, and NewJerseyStage.com!
Enjoys stories written by Poe, Service, Stowe, Stockton, Clark, Thayer, Twain, Chopin, Gale, and others read by ELTC actors.
MEET SOME OF OURTALES' PERFORMERS
Amanda Brinlee is a recent graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University, a small business owner, stage manager, and performer. Since receiving her Bachelors of Arts in Acting in 2020, she performed in ELTC’s virtual reading of Something to Vote For; worked backstage and onstage in Vaudeville Variety, Tales in the Backyard and Poe by Candlelight; assistant stage managed Dorothy Parker: A Certain Woman, and assistant directed The Summer Student Workshop’sThe Reluctant Dragon. When she is not working in theatre, she is running her small business, Amanda Brinlee Designs on Etsy, and raising her daughter. Amanda would like to thank ELTC and Gayle for this continued opportunity, as well as her husband and the rest of her family for their love and support.
Suzanne Dawson has played leading roles off-Broadway in: CBS Live, The Last Musical Comedy, The Great American Backstage Musical, and the revival of New Faces of ’52. Her regional credits include Sylvia at Florida Studio Theatre, The Snowball and A Little Night Music at Buffalo Studio Arena, Carnival at The Alliance in Atlanta, and Rumors at Paper Mill Playhouse here in NJ. She toured with Rumors, and opposite Gavin Macleod in Last of the Red Hot Lovers. ELTC shows include: To the Ladies!, Alice on the Edge, The Butter and Egg Man, Berkeley Square, The World of Dorothy Parker, Dulcy, Ruth Draper’s Company of Characters, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Zorro!, Arsenic and Old Lace, and Dorothy Parker: A Certain Woman.. Member AEA.
Stephanie Garrett splits her time between Philadelphia, Cape May and Florida. She played Mary in ELTC's NJ premiere of Jan Buttram's Lost on the Natchez Trace, and also performed in ELTC’s Women and the Vote, Rain, The People of Cape May v. Johan Van Buren, and Christmas in Black and White with Gayle Stahlhuth. She performs regularly for the company’s popular “Tales of the Victorians.” Over fifteen years ago, as a volunteer at Historic Cold Spring Village, she became a storyteller, specializing in early 19th Century Cape May County African American History. Garrett has a BA and MA in Sociology and worked as a Sociologist and Human Resources Manager during her career in Federal Government. Upon early retirement she received the Meritorious Service Award, the highest award given by the Department of Navy to a civilian employee. She is past President of the Greater Cape May Historical Society.
Michele LaRue, raised outside Chicago, has spent most of her life in Secaucus, NJ, working in theater and film in NYC and NJ. Her credits with ELTC include William Dean Howells’ Bride Roses, Susan Glaspell’s Suppressed Desires, and Gayle Stahlhuth’s adaptation of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle – all directed by her late husband and ELTC's founder and first artistic director, Warren Kliewer. She was also in Jesse Lynch Williams' The New York Idea, directed by Stahlhuth.
For over 25 years, LaRue has been performing throughout the country in one-woman shows. She makes people laugh with her Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire, written by Marie Jenney Howe in 1912, and directed by Kliewer. She makes people gasp in her re-imagined version of Yellow Wallpaper, adapted and originally directed by Kliewer, based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 horror story. She also portrays the Famous First Lady in Eve's Diary, adapted by Stahlhuth, based on the writings of Mark Twain. AND she's been performing Kliewer's own vibrant poetry about life in the theater in Places Please, Act One.
LaRue was one of the first to read on porches as part of ELTC's Tales of the Victorians. Now, under her own title, Tales Well Told, she reads works of Kate Chopin, Mary Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, Dorothy Canfield Fisher and other American writers, in various venues throughout the country. A popular piece recently has been her Gettysburg: One Woman’s War, three stories from Elsie Singmaster's moving 1913 classic book Gettysburg,
She is an active member of New Jersey Repertory Company, which specializes in developing and producing new scripts, and the two performing unions: Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA. As a theater editor-writer, she is also a member of the Drama Desk, a group of New York drama critics.
For over 25 years, LaRue has been performing throughout the country in one-woman shows. She makes people laugh with her Someone Must Wash the Dishes: An Anti-Suffrage Satire, written by Marie Jenney Howe in 1912, and directed by Kliewer. She makes people gasp in her re-imagined version of Yellow Wallpaper, adapted and originally directed by Kliewer, based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 1892 horror story. She also portrays the Famous First Lady in Eve's Diary, adapted by Stahlhuth, based on the writings of Mark Twain. AND she's been performing Kliewer's own vibrant poetry about life in the theater in Places Please, Act One.
LaRue was one of the first to read on porches as part of ELTC's Tales of the Victorians. Now, under her own title, Tales Well Told, she reads works of Kate Chopin, Mary Wilkins Freeman, O. Henry, Dorothy Canfield Fisher and other American writers, in various venues throughout the country. A popular piece recently has been her Gettysburg: One Woman’s War, three stories from Elsie Singmaster's moving 1913 classic book Gettysburg,
She is an active member of New Jersey Repertory Company, which specializes in developing and producing new scripts, and the two performing unions: Actors’ Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA. As a theater editor-writer, she is also a member of the Drama Desk, a group of New York drama critics.
James Rana East Lynne credits include: Nothing Matters, A Year in the Trenches (playwright), Dracula,
Strictly Dishonorable, Huckleberry Finn (playwright), Zorro! (playwright/performer), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (playwright), The Poe Mysteries (playwright/performer), and Sherlock Holmes’ Adventure of the Norwood Builder. Ensemble Studio Theatre, Pan Asian Rep, Luna Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Co. (UK), Classical Theatre of Harlem, Actors Shakespeare Co., Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Coney Island USA, Comedysportz, Worth Street Theatre, Shakespeare & Co., Princeton Rep, Globe Neuss and Bonn Biennale (Germany). Film/Television: Swim Little Fish Swim, The War Within, A Girl Like You With A Boy Like Me, The Assassin, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire, Third Watch, One Life To Live, As the World Turns, Conan O’Brien. Radio: Poe: A Celebration (wrote and narrated) for NPR. Stage Adaptations: From The Earth To The Moon (workshop: Tri-State Actors Theatre), A Christmas Carol (Actors Shakespeare Co.).
In 2017, he performed in Off-Broadway's The Government Inspector starring Michael Urie. In the fall of 2017, he began rehearsals for Broadway’s The Band's Visit, and performed several times in the role of the Band's Leader, originally performed by Tony Shalhoub, and other roles. When this Tony Award winning show closed on Broadway in April 2018, he began performing in The National Tour.
James received his MFA from Trinity Rep and is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and the Dramatists Guild.
Strictly Dishonorable, Huckleberry Finn (playwright), Zorro! (playwright/performer), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (playwright), The Poe Mysteries (playwright/performer), and Sherlock Holmes’ Adventure of the Norwood Builder. Ensemble Studio Theatre, Pan Asian Rep, Luna Stage, The Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Co. (UK), Classical Theatre of Harlem, Actors Shakespeare Co., Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Coney Island USA, Comedysportz, Worth Street Theatre, Shakespeare & Co., Princeton Rep, Globe Neuss and Bonn Biennale (Germany). Film/Television: Swim Little Fish Swim, The War Within, A Girl Like You With A Boy Like Me, The Assassin, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago Fire, Third Watch, One Life To Live, As the World Turns, Conan O’Brien. Radio: Poe: A Celebration (wrote and narrated) for NPR. Stage Adaptations: From The Earth To The Moon (workshop: Tri-State Actors Theatre), A Christmas Carol (Actors Shakespeare Co.).
In 2017, he performed in Off-Broadway's The Government Inspector starring Michael Urie. In the fall of 2017, he began rehearsals for Broadway’s The Band's Visit, and performed several times in the role of the Band's Leader, originally performed by Tony Shalhoub, and other roles. When this Tony Award winning show closed on Broadway in April 2018, he began performing in The National Tour.
James received his MFA from Trinity Rep and is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, and the Dramatists Guild.
Frank Smith was a detective with the Philadelphia Police Department before he bought a house in Cape May and turned it into The White Dove Cottage Bed and Breakfast on Hughes Street. From 1990 until he sold it in 2002, he greeted guests at his B&B and even helped plan events such as family reunions and weddings. From 2003-2007, he was a travel consultant for the Cape May County Chamber of Commerce, and from 2007-2013, a host at Aleathea’s Restaurant at The Inn of Cape May. From 2014-2020, when the place was sold, he was the assistant manager of The Henry Sawyer Inn, where he also conducted Murder Mystery Weekends like he did when he ran The White Dove. Frank was a volunteer for Cape May MAC, portraying “Dr. Physick” from 1992-1997. He joined ELTC’s board in 1993 and served off-and-on as president from 1996-2016. He also was ELTC’s storyteller on “The Ghosts of Christmas Past Trolley Rides,” co-sponsored with MAC, from 2007-2017, and still sells tickets many nights at ELTC's box office on show nights.
Gayle Stahlhuth has performed off-Broadway (Manhattan Theatre Club, etc.), in national tours (Cabaret, Fiddler, etc.), regional theater (Gateway Playhouse in Long Island, etc.), television, and radio. Other work involves directing cabaret shows in NYC, starting a dinner theater in Billings, MT, and creating a Medieval Festival at The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. A Year in the Trenches (2017), marked her 100th production for ELTC since becoming artistic director in 1999. As a playwright, her adaptations for ELTC include Tales by Twain, that also ran at Surflight Theatre; Spoon River, based on the famous Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, The Ransom of Red Chief based on O.Henry's classic tale, and two radio-style scripts: The Adventure of the Norwood Builder and The Adventure of the Red-Headed League. .She’s been awarded commissions from The National Portrait Gallery, the Missouri and Illinois Humanities Councils, and grants from the NJ Humanities Council, the NYS Council on the Arts, and the Mid-Atlantic Foundation for the Arts. For several years, she was a judge for the Emmy Awards in the field of broadcast news. In 2016, she was honored for her work in theater by The National Association of Professional Women (NAPW). Member: AEA, SAG-AFTRA, Dramatists Guild, and NAPW.
