Dawidziak group to tell ghost stories in Falls

Largely Literary Theater Company co-founders Sara Showman and Mark Dawidziak will present a spirited program of ghost stories at the Cuyahoga Falls Library on Tuesday, Oct. 11. The 7 p.m. performance is free and open to the public.

The two-part Ghosts By the Tale presentation opens with Showman telling a romantic ghost tale and a not-so-romantic ghost tale – two looks at relationships from a supernatural point of view. The company’s managing director, Showman performs several storytelling programs, including Animal Tales and Holiday Stories with Mrs. Santa Claus, at area schools and libraries.

Dawidziak, the company’s artistic director, then will shift the spooky mood a bit with personal stories about spirits connected to Akron-area locations.

Specializing in faithful adaptations of great literary works, the Largely Literary Theater Company was founded in 2001 to promote literacy, literature and live theater. The troupe is best known for: Twain By Three, a two-act adaptation of humorous sketches by Mark Twain; The Tell-Tale Play, a two-act collection of poems and stories by Edgar Allan Poe; and its three-person version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

The company recently performed Twain By Three as part of Massillon’s Big Read devoted to Mark Twain. In 2009, the troupe premiered its latest play, The Mystery of Dashiell Hammett, written for Hiram College’s Big Read program celebrating Hammett and The Maltese Falcon.

Showman performs “Eve’s Diary” and portrays other characters in Twain By Three. She plays 15 roles in A Christmas Carol, and performs “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Bells” and “Alone” in The Tell-Tale Play. She also performs various storytelling programs for grades K-2 and 3-5. She recently added a program for senior citizens titled Stories for the Ages, ideal for Red Hatters, senior church groups, clubs and civic organizations.

Dawidziak has been the television critic at the Cleveland Plain Dealer since July 1999. During his fifteen years at the Akron Beacon Journal, he held such posts as TV columnist, movie critic and critic-at-large. Also an author and playwright, his many books include the 1994 horror novel Grave Secrets and two histories of landmark TV series: The Columbo Phile: A Casebook (1989) and The Night Stalker Companion (1997).

The author of The Bedside, Bathtub & Armchair Companion to Dracula (2008), Dawidziak teaches the Vampires on Film and Television course at Kent State University. He edited and contributed essays to the 2006 collection Bloodlines: Richard Matheson’s Dracula, I A Legend, and Other Vampire Stories.

A recognized Mark Twain scholar, his acclaimed books on the author include Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing (1996) and Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003).

His most recent book, a collaboration with Paul Bauer, is a biography of “hobo writer” Jim Tully, a forgotten author hailed as “America’s Gorky” and as a literary superstar in the ’20s and ’30s. Titled Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler, it was published this year the Kent State University Press with a foreword by Ken Burns.