Animal Engine Theatre Company presents an original play, Henrietta Solway, commissioned by the National Willa Cather Center, that combines the short fiction and serialized novels of Willa Cather into one epic story. When a tomboy growing up in a small Midwestern town is befriended by a glamorous opera singer with tales of art and culture in the big city, her restless passion is given purpose and the direction of her life is forever changed. Cather works such as “The Treasure of Far Island,” “Tommy the Unsentimental,” “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional,” and novels A Lost Lady, The Professor’s House, and Lucy Gayheart are woven together and reimagined to tell a story of ambition, sacrifice, and reconciliation.

Programming at the National Willa Cather Center's Red Cloud Opera House is made possible with the support of the Nebraska Arts Council and the Nebraska Cultural Endowment. 

Special thanks to Arts Across Nebraska for their support of Henrietta Solway.

About Animal Engine

ANIMAL ENGINE is the collaboration between Karim Muasher and Carrie Brown, two movement-based theatre artists who met while training at the London International School of Performing Arts. We create original plays that reimagine works of literature. Working from a place of serious playfulness, we create our plays using research, improvisation, movement, and music. Fascinated with the simple act of storytelling, our plays have just a few performers and simple design elements. We believe in creating community through live performance, so our plays are written with multigenerational audiences in mind. Our work has been called “hard to beat” by the Washington Post and “remarkably clever” by CityBeat Cincinnati. We perform and teach in New York City, across the United States, and internationally at theatres, festivals, and schools. www.animalengine.com

ADA Accessibility

Please contact Visitor Services Coordinator Nick Powers at npowers@willacather.org about accessibility accommodations.

Buy tickets here