At the Saturday Club

Rob Velella (the one on the left) wanted to commemorate the 200th birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and so he wrote a one-act play called "At the Saturday Club." The Club, which still exists today, was founded in 1855 and was an informal gathering of the great writers and thinkers of that age. They met at Boston's Parker House for "extravagant meals and even more extravagant conversations."

This play begins in 1892, with Holmes being the last survivor of his generation of writers. In his mind, he travels back to 1860, where he revisits his old friends Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The dialog in the play is taken from the original words of these historical figures.

The play was performed this afternoon at the Massachusetts Historical Society.