THEATRICAL/VARIETY

An Evening With CS Lewis

The year is 1963 and C.S. Lewis, the famous British author, is hosting a group of American writers at his home near Oxford. They are about to experience a captivating evening with a man whose engaging conversation and spontaneous humor made him one of the great raconteurs of his day.

Seated in his living room and he recalls the people and events that inspired his thought and shaped his life; of his friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien; why he nearly abandoned the Narnia Chronicles; how he came to embrace Christianity and of the American woman who turned his life upside down.

Described by critics as ‘Extraordinary!’ ‘A Must See!’ ‘A Master Class!’ An Evening with C.S. Lewis has proved again and again to be an enthralling theatrical experience and one which has led many thousands to discover (or rediscover) the continuing impact of a man who died over 50 years ago and whose collected works made him one of the literary giants of the 20th Century.

Lewis and Tolkien Onstage

Lewis & Tolkien, Of Wardrobes & Rings, is a play set in Oxford’s Eagle & Child pub. Aging and legendary authors, J.R.R. Tolkien and his great friend C.S. Lewis, meet for what turns out to be the very last time.

They were lions of 20th-century British fantasy, giants of a literary genre that reached millions of readers, young and old alike, with mystifying adventures to entertain and deep truths to move people’s hearts. C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia) and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) were also distinguished faculty members at Oxford University and participants in a literary group known as the Inklings. Their robust philosophical discourse served an uncommon friendship that was not without its differences. Life’s circumstances and, sometimes, unresolved disagreements forced an uncomfortable season of estrangement.

In Lewis & Tolkien, Of Wardrobes & Rings, we join “Jack” and “Tollers,” as they knew each other, at Oxford’s historic Eagle and Child pub for one last visit, tempered by thawing humor, confession, and reconciliation.

David Payne

He never dreamed of being an actor.

Most actors had fantasies of being onstage from their youth, but David Payne studied to be an engineer. He liked numbers and planning and strategy. He liked order and structure, so any career in the arts was far from his thinking as a youth, growing up in the south of London. He was destined for a life of calculators and slide rules.

Yet after just a few short years as a structural engineer, David found himself pulled into the music and entertainment business. He and his two partners formed a groundbreaking company that encompassed a record label, publishing, event promotion, a youth magazine, and artist management. He became an expert in crunching the numbers and making the business side of the music industry work.

In fact, David was still in the music business in the 1990s, when he was asked to come over to the US and oversee a British record label’s operations in the States. He was just wrapping up his contract and considering whether to make the trip back to the UK when a flier arrived, advertising auditions for a play about CS Lewis… a play called Shadowlands.

“British accents a help,” the advertisement read. A bit bored, a bit intrigued, and with no hope of getting anything more than a walk-on role, David Payne scooted along to the audition….just to see what might happen.

Well as it turned out, a lot happened. Since landing the role of CS Lewis in that original play, David Payne has become the world’s foremost actor in the world of Lewis. He has performed as CS Lewis in more than 1000 productions, in front of nearly 750,000 people. Requests for his show, An Evening with CS Lewis come from all over the world, although he has mainly restricted his performances to the US, the UK, and Canada. Even so, he still hasn’t been able to fulfill all the requests for engagements.

“Never in a million years did I think I would ever be a performer on stage,” he says from his dressing room in Chicago’s Broadway Theatre. “And never did I think that I would enjoy it so very, very much.”

He’s not the only one who enjoys it. There almost seems to be a magical connection between Payne and his audiences. Throughout the entire 90 minutes, audience members feel as if they’re in the presence of the great author, scholar, and humorist as Payne completely embodies the role. During the performance, you can hear a pin drop in between all the infectious laughter and the occasional sob coming from the audience and at the end, the result is almost always the same… an instantaneous standing ovation.

So while David Payne never ended up making his career as an engineer, he has managed to engineer one thing….. he’s made audiences all over the world fall in love with one of the most enduring and endearing characters in all of literature.

Siegfried Tieber

Siegfried Tieber is a Los Angeles-based performer and sleight-of-hand magician.

Born and raised in Ecuador, his first international appearance was in 2011 in Bogotá, Colombia. In 2015, Siegfried headlined at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world, where his performance was highly praised by reviewers and critics. 2017 saw the premiere of his show See/Saw in Los Angeles and in 2018 the project was taken to New York, where Time Out NY listed it as #1 in its “The best magic shows in New York City.”

Siegfried has been featured in prominent media outlets such as Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times and Forbes.  Most recently he was invited to be part of Penn & Teller: Fool Us, a television series featuring the legendary performance duo (yes, he did fool them).

Sarah Reich

Sarah Reich (Performer, Choreographer, Instructor, Composer) has emerged as one of the new leaders in the Art Form of Tap Dance. At the young age of 15, this Los Angeles native was featured in Dance Spirit Magazine’s article, “20 Hot Tappers Under 20” and was named one of the “25 To Watch” in the 2017 Dance Magazine article. Sarah has been sought after to perform, choreograph, and teach in over 40 countries. “I want to continue to bring tap into mass media with great respect and quality,” she says, focusing on “reprogramming the minds of the general public on their perception of tap dance.” (Dance Magazine 2017)

Sarah has become one of the art form’s pop culture ambassadors, thanks to her appearances in videos with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox. Her videos with them (A Star Wars–themed tribute, “The Tap Awakens,” & “Thriller”, a Michael Jackson cover featuring Wayne Brady) have garnered millions of views on YouTube, all receiving rave reviews. She has toured the world with Postmodern Jukebox playing prestigious venues such as Radio City Music Hall, Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Sydney Opera House as well as a televised PBS special filmed in Las Vegas.

In addition to her vast international travels and countless television appearances, Sarah has had the honor to perform at some of the most prestigious venues back home in Los Angeles such as The Hollywood Bowl, the Greek Theater with Mexican Pop-Star, Cristian Castro and the Kodak/ Dolby Theater with the great Herbie Hancock.

With her Tap Music Project intensives in various cities, Reich teaches tap dancers how to dance with more musicality, communicate with musicians and write music. Using a live band in class, she instructs students on how to “scat” rhythms or transcribe choreography with rhythm notation, among other skills.

Sarah is developing new, and exciting works with her company Tap Music Project, with her debut Tap Jazz Album titled New Change. This album is originally produced, composed from percussive tap rhythms, and performed by a great selection of musicians to create a unique sound. She hopes this is just the beginning: “I want to be the first tap dancer to win a Grammy Award!”

Tiffany Michelle

Tiffany Michelle a record-breaking Professional Poker Player, Television Personality and On-Camera Host, named one of MAXIM'S Top 20 Hottest Celebrity Poker Players and one of the Top 10 Most Fascinating People in Poker. She is internationally known for being the World Series of Poker Last Woman Standing at the 2008 WSOP Main Event, where she broke the record for the largest field conquered by a woman in live poker history, placing 17th in a field of 6,844 players for a payday of $334,534. The following year, Tiffany's competitive drive landed her on the Emmy-winning 15th season of The Amazing Race on CBS, where she once again defied the odds as the season's only all-female team, and toughed it out on a 21-day race around the world, finishing just three legs shy of the million-dollar finish line.

Tiffany is also known for finishing in Bobby Flay’s top 3 on season 3 of Food Network's Worst Cooks in America, for appearances on TLC’s L.A. Ink and GSN’s World Series of Blackjack, and for playing resident villainess Scarlett Kane on the final season of the Emmy-nominated soap opera series DeVanity. She is based in Los Angeles and travels both nationally and internationally as a Poker Pro, On-Camera Talent, TV Host and inspirational Professional Speaker.

Roy Charles

The Author, Roy Charles, was born in Westminster, London, and has lived in and around this great city all his life. 
From 1954 until 1999, packets of Brooke Bond tea included illustrated cards, usually 50 in a series, which were collected by many children." Famous Britons" and "British Costume" were two of the subjects covered, and there were a total of about 85 separate titles issued around the world: 59 series published in the UK, 17 series in Canada, 7 of these were released in the USA, 6 series in what was Rhodesia, and 3 series in South Africa.
Having been interested in UK history, Roy noted that there was not an A6 book of British Prime Ministers in existence, hence the first in the WoB style was published in November 2017. 

Roy has spent much of his career in Information Technology ( IT ) Services as well as being a part-time professional singer and music producer. From 2000 to 2005, Roy was also the Chairman of a UK Government Learning and Skills Council responsible for funding post 16 education.
Roy now resides in Ash, Kent, on the outskirts of London with his family, having been blessed with four children.
Series includes British Prime Ministers, Kings and Queens of England and Britain, British Castles and Palaces with British Battles from 825 to Present due out in April 2020 and Great British Women on the drawing board.