Call Me Elizabeth

February 11 – 13, 2027

Waterfront Playhouse, Mallory Square, 407 Wall Street

The Spotlight Series continues with the Florida premiere of Call Me Elizabeth, written and performed by Kayla Boye. It’s set on a single morning in May 1961 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, drawn from Elizabeth Taylor’s real conversations with the writer Max Lerner about a biography he planned to write. Lerner is never seen — the audience occupies his chair.

Taylor has just won the Academy Award for Butterfield 8, a film she thought little of, and is still recovering from the bout of pneumonia that nearly killed her. Over the course of the morning she works through her early life, her marriages, her films, and the gap between the woman she is and the one the fan magazines have invented. The compassion that would later make her one of the first major public figures to take up the fight against AIDS is visible throughout.

Boye is a Chicago-based actor whose credits include Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Drury Lane, and Porchlight Music Theatre; Call Me Elizabeth was her first play. It premiered virtually through the Edinburgh Festival Fringe during the pandemic before its live world premiere at the 2022 Hollywood Fringe Festival, and has toured since.

Schedule subject to change. Information courtesy of Waterfront Playhouse — visit waterfrontplayhouse.org for tickets and complete details.