Nancy Willard's imaginative prose and poetry seem ready-made for theater. From the fantasy world she created in "A Visit to William Blake's Inn" to the bizarre characters in "Pish, Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch," Willard has a knack for making the surreal come to life on the page. So it's no wonder Alley Cat Players — a theater troupe that often finds inspiration in other art forms — chose her work to perform on stage. The cast should have no trouble finding a sympathetic imagination in Willard's work; for one thing, she wrote an introduction to a recent edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Mon., Aug. 14, 7 p.m., St. Petersburg Main Library, 3745 Ninth Ave. N., St. Petersburg, and Tues., Aug. 15, 7 p.m., Seminole Heights Library, 4711 Central Ave., Tampa, free, 813-231-8478, www.alleycatplayers.com.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.