Fane Productions presents Margaret Atwood live on stage and live in HD on Tuesday, September 10th in celebration of the global publication of The Testaments, Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to her seminal work, The Handmaid’s Tale. Catch the event at 7 p.m. that Tuesday at the Newport Performing Arts Center, in the Alice Silverman Theatre, hosted by Catherine Rickbone.
Margaret Atwood: Live in Cinemas will be broadcast to over 1,000 cinemas across the globe, including cinemas throughout the US, UK and Canada, with delayed screenings planned in Australia and New Zealand. Filmed live from the National Theatre in London, BBC journalist and New York Times best-selling author Samira Ahmed will interview Atwood about her remarkable career, her diverse range of works and why she has returned to her handmaid story, 34 years later. The event, presented in partnership with Equality Now, will include a number of special guests to be announced later this year.
Margaret Atwood says: “I am delighted that the launch of The Testaments will take place not only in London on September 10th, but also by live-streaming to over 1000 cinemas around the world. I can’t be in all the places at once in my analogue body, but I look forward to being with so many readers via the big screen.”
Alex Fane says: “We are thrilled to announce the continuation of our relationship with Margaret. To launch her new novel on an unprecedented global scale feels like a fitting gesture for such an innovative author whose work speaks to so many.”
The publication of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 and the current, Emmy Award-winning television series have created a cultural phenomenon, as handmaids have become a symbol of women’s rights and a protest of misogyny and oppression. In this brilliant sequel, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades. When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead. Margaret Atwood’s sequel The Testaments picks up the story fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
‘Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.’ – Margaret Atwood
The Testaments will be published by Penguin Random House and will be released on September 10, 2019.
Fane Productions’ live cinema broadcast is Executive Produced by David Sabel, the creator of National Theatre Live, with BY Experience, the New York based event cinema pioneer, global distribution representative of The Met: Live in HD and the global (ex-UK) distributor of National Theatre Live, distributing to cinemas, ex-UK. UK cinema distribution by National Theatre Live.
Women’s rights, female empowerment and resistance are at the core of Atwood’s story and in partnership with Equality Now these events will take on the issues faced by women in today’s world with vivid imagination and unflinching clarity.
“Equality Now uses a combination of national, regional and international human rights law to secure justice for survivors of discrimination and violence, to hold governments accountable for their promises, and to bring local issues to the attention of human rights bodies. Margaret Atwood’s work has had a huge impact on bringing attention to our cause and we are privileged to be partnering with her on these events.” – Yasmeen Hassan, Global Executive Director, Equality Now
Margaret Atwood is the author of more than fifty books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, The Robber Bride, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin and the MaddAddam Trilogy. Her 1985 classic The Handmaid’s Tale went back into the bestseller charts with the election of Donald Trump, when the Handmaids became a symbol of resistance against him; and the 2017 release of the award-winning Channel 4 TV series. Sales of the English language edition have now topped 8 million copies worldwide. Atwood has won numerous awards including the Booker Prize, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society, the Franz Kafka Prize, the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award. She has also worked as a cartoonist, illustrator, librettist, playwright and puppeteer. She lives in Toronto, Canada.