Warren Kliewer—The East Lynne Company’s founder and first producing artistic director—was a much-published
poet before he ran away to join the theatre. Those two loves melded in his Places, Please, Act One: Poems around
and about theatres. Warren completed that manuscript before his death, in 1998. It’s been rediscovered, and just released, by Gelassenheit Publications, Ontario. Celebrating the book’s publication, Michèle LaRue, Warren’s wife
and partner of 27 years, is touring Places, Please, Act One, the performance—from Cape May to Kansas to
​Manitoba. Interweaving selected new poems with those from earlier volumes, Michèle’s exuberant spoken-word performance glimpses into the private and public lives of her husband, who grew up in rural Minnesota—in a community of German-speaking Mennonites whose values and traditions frowned upon the frivolous.