Borderland

In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, the narrator awakes in a mysterious gray city and eventually realizes that he is a ghost, as are the people he encounters. Incandescent figures appear and urge the ghosts to follow them to heaven, but most choose not to abandon their purgatorial — yet strangely familiar — new surroundings. Inspired by The Great Divorce, Jenny Bellington’s play Untrodden Ways depicts a young woman who wakes up in a surreal place somewhere between this life and the next and begins a quest for answers. “I wrote it as an exploration of film and stage dealing with the themes of realization and redemption,” Bellington says by e-mail in a spoiler-proof summation. Untrodden Ways, with the playwright in the lead, opens tonight at 7:30 at Peters Theater on the William Jewell campus (500 College Hill in Liberty, 816-415-7590), with an encore performance at the same time on Saturday. Tickets cost $6, or $5 for students.

Fri., Dec. 7, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Dec. 8, 7:30 p.m., 2007