WILDE

Born in Manhattan, raised in Washington DC, and now living in Brooklyn, Wilde uses her days off to pop into the Brooklyn Museum for First Saturdays or to do hip-hop yoga in Union Square.

There's food for thought, then, in this novel event, which will see various local storytellers, musicians, writers, actors, artists and activists present a programme as delightful and varied as Wilde's own body of work: writings, musings and reviews which saw him pen everything from the heart-rending Ballad of Reading Gaol to the much-loved children's tales The Star Child and The Happy Prince .

Two years previously, Wilde had been imprisoned for acts of gross indecency with other males.

The story of Wilde's downfall begins with a luckless coincidence: Bosie's father was the 9th Marquess of Queensberry, a thuggish and irascible Scottish aristocrat whose "Queensberry Rules" would become the global standard for boxing matches.

Everett's drama charts the period from 1897, when Wilde was released from the British prison where he served time for "gross indecency," to his death in 1900 in Paris.

Frankel's narrative is organized into two parts; approximately sixty pages on Wilde's prison years and then approximately two hundred pages on his exile.

With Wilde's reputation, marriage and career in ruins - and a diet of champagne, cocaine and absinthe having wrecked his health - he begins to re-evaluate his selfish behaviour and life decisions.

We meet Wilde (Everett) after his release from Reading Gaol, on the brink of financial ruin.

"The Happy Prince", written and directed by Everett, is a biography of Wilde's exile in Paris after he was convicted of gross indecency in 1895 for having sex with a man during a Victorian clampdown on homosexuality.

is short for Marette, Wilde's middle name and her grandmother's middle name.