A Paper Tiger in the R

ainSeptem

ber 30-October 11, 2014

Welcome to the 2014-15 Forest Roberts Theatre SeasonWe find ourselves at the start of another year, and another exciting season at the Forest Roberts The-

atre. I am excited for you to see our opening production, A Paper Tiger in the Rain. The play is the 2014 winner of the Mildred and Albert Panowski Playwriting Award. The award honors the late

parents of former NMU theater professor James Panowski. It encourages artistic growth among educational and professional playwrights. It also provides NMU students and faculty the unique opportunity to mount and produce an original work on the university stage. Northern Michigan has a long tradition of support-ing new works, and we are one of only a few university theater programs in the country who do so on such a regular basis.

Bringing a new work to the stage is no small feat. The process began almost a year ago as we sorted through approximately 300 entries—all plays with the theme of “The Economy.” Our panel of readers from the local community and around the country helped us trim the long list down to about 15 plays for the faculty to consider. There were many strong contenders, but in the end, we were drawn to A Paper Tiger in the Rain because of its message and story. Further rewrites came in the summer after a week-long workshop with the playwright in residence. Director Paul Truckey and some student actors who volunteered to help with the process read the play aloud and offered their suggestions to playwright David J. Swanson. Drama-turg Meghan Digneit was invaluable in the process, as she help refine Swanson’s play to make it the best it could be. I hope enjoy this world premiere production.

Later in the season, we will have our annual Haunted Theatre and the musical Chicago. Your support has al-lowed us to continue programming that ranges from the traditional to the adventurous. I can’t tell you how important this is to our students and their growth as artists. We continue to graduate students who work successfully in the entertainment industry. For example, we had five NMU students and graduates work-ing at Hershey Park this summer, a group of alums who have started a theater company in Chicago, and a former student who is making a splash in Los Angeles. The success of our students lets me know that we are doing well in preparing them for the “real world.”

Thank you again for coming to the theatre!

Ansley ValentineDirector of Theatre, Forest Roberts Theatre

A Paper Tiger in the Rain

World Premiere 2014 Mildred and Albert Panowski

Playwriting Competition Winner by David J. Swanson

September 30-October 11, 2014Director Paul Truckey

Dramaturg Meghan DigneitSet Designer Steve McClain

Costume Designer Allie JohnsonLight Designer Victor G. Holliday

Sound Designer Dan ZiniProperties Master Emily Kinne †

Production Stage Manager Coop Bicknell †† indicates membership in Alpha Psi Omega, the National Theatre Honor Society.

There will be one 12 minute intermission

PLEASE NOTEThe videotaping or other video or audio recording of this production

is strictly prohibited without prior authorization. Please turn off all cellular phones.

CastJess Samantha Cole Office Information ‘16 Detroit, MI

Laura Alexandra Marks † Theater ‘15 Beloit, WIKelly Liz Trueblood English ‘17 Onalaska, WI

Nathan Parker Rusty Bowers * Theater ‘15 Marquette, MI

Cathy Korinne Griffith Theater ‘16 Woodstock, IL

Ava Jill Vermeulen Communication Studies and Theater ‘17 Marquette, MI

Damon James Greene Retired NMU Professor Chicago, ILBen Flynn Dorsey Sprouls Illustration ‘17 Cook, MN

Edward Tom Lee Theater ‘16 Waterford, MI

† indicates membership in Alpha Psi Omega, the National Theatre Honor Society.* indicates work presented in partial fulfillment of the Senior Capstone.

Additional Artistic StaffAssistant Stage Manager Abby SchneckAssistant Sound Designer Claire Alves †

Assistant Properties Master James Porras II †Light Board Operator Jamie Whiting

Sound Board Operator Claire Alves †Wardrobe Lauren SlottaRun Crew Nathan Morgan

Production Technical Director Steve McClainFaculty Technical Director David Pierce

Production AcknowledgmentsLee LaForge of Book World for cigars for the production Tadych’s Econofoods

Landmark Inn Ramada Inn

Rusty Bowers

Samantha Cole

James Greene

Korinne Griffith

A Paper Tiger in the Rain SynopsisNathan has just been promoted to his dream job: Editor-in-Chief of the Willow Falls Beacon Telegraph. He soon learns that the newspaper is in financial trouble. His prede-cessor hires Ben, a young blogger with a lack of reverence for the newspaper industry. As the newspaper’s financial picture worsens, Nathan is faced with saving impossible dreams and depending on false promises.

Tom Lee

Alexandra Marks

Dorsey Sprouls

Elizabeth Trueblood

Forest Roberts Theatre StaffCostume Shop Supervisor Ann Juidici

Costume Shop Crew Courtney Brown, Natalie Berger †, Jaqueline Hegmegee, Cecelia Holt, Allie Johnson, Sara Kiiskila, Lauren Slotta, Amanda Woods †

Scene Shop Foreman Steve McClainMaster Electrician David Pierce

Paint Charge Alexandra Marks †Carpenters, Electricians and Painters Kolby Borg, James Hegmegee, Emily Kinne †,

Calen Liverance, James Porras II, Dakota Vogel †, Dan Zini

Box Office Manager Mark NovakAssistant Box Office Manager Rusty Bowers

Box Office Staff Sam Arsenault †, Jacob DeLong †, Korinne Griffith, Tom Lee, Alysa Spivak

House Manager Alisha ArnspargerFacebook Find us at Forest Roberts Theatre

Tickets For all NMU events, purchase your tickets from the Forest Roberts Theatre, the NMU Bookstore, the Superior Dome, or at www.nmu.edu/tickets.

Cast BiosRusty Bowers (Nathan) Having appeared in a variety of venues in the Upper Penin-sula of Michigan and beyond; Rusty’s cred-its include outdoor dramas, world premiere performances, appearing at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and perform-ing for a number of years for Walt Disney World in Florida. When not performing on stage, Rusty can be found backstage. He has extensive technical credits for sound design, lighting, make-up design and ap-plication and stage management. He is a founding member of the Lake Superior Theatre and was also a board member for the First Nighters Club at NMU and PAAC in Negaunee. Some of Rusty’s favorite roles he has portrayed include: Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Sancho Panza in The Man of La-Mancha, Ebenezer Scrooge in Scrooge, and Captain Petroff in Beacon on the Rock. He is an avid singer, and comic book collector. he also has an incredible knack for music trivia. He is the owner of his own business: All Things Audio; a studio production fa-cility and Rusty Bowers Entertainment; Professional Mobile DJ Service. Rusty and

his lovely wife Lisa live in Marquette with their three children: Joseph, Jack and Jes-sica.

Samantha Cole (Jess) is a sophomore office information major. She loves performing and plans to continue doing so after col-lege. She enjoys growing in her craft and loves the impact performing has had on other aspects of her life. She hopes to con-tinue her growth within the arts and also learn more about different avenues such as sound, lighting and set design.

James Greene (Damon) grew up in Chica-go and attended DePaul University for his bachelor’s degree, and Loyola University for graduate work in philosophy. He re-ceived a Ph.D. in philosophy from Notre Dame, and then taught philosophy, first at Georgetown University in the sixties, and then for over thirty years at NMU. He took Professor Valentine’s acting class last semester, and found out that “they need-ed someone for this play who could look and act as though he was 70 years old.” He thought that would not be very difficult for him. So, he agreed to take the part. This is his first attempt at acting.

Jill Vermeulen

David J. Swanson

Coop Bicknell

Abby Schneck

Tom Lee (Edward) is a junior and theatre and entertainment arts major at Northern Michigan University, minoring in media production and new technologies. A Paper Tiger in the Rain is Tom’s second production at NMU. His first being in the ensemble cast of Northern’s production of 1776 in the fall of 2012. He is a trained actor from the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts (2011-2012), and has worked at Oak-land Community College’s Smith Theatre, working as tech for their various plays, concerts, and lectures. Tom has returned to NMU to complete his bachelor’s degree and hopes to continue his education and experience at graduate school. Tom Lee is pleased, and honored, to be a part of an original, and wonderful, cast. Please, enjoy the production.

Alexandra Marks (Laura) is a theater major with minors in music and art and design. Some of her favorite high school produc-tions were Macbeth, The Wiz, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Matchmaker, Dark of the Moon. She has performed at the FRT in 1776 as Abigail Adams, Fallujah as Woman, Paulette in Legally Blonde, Kate Monster in Avenue Q (James A. Panowski Black Box Theatre), Ensemble in Les Misera-bles (FRT) and Adriana in Comedy of Errors. She also was a part of the Lake Superior Theatre 2013 season, in Beacon on the Rock, and Pirates of Penzance. She would like to thank her family and friends for all of their love and support.

Dorsey Sprouls (Ben Flynn) is a junior il-lustration major with a minor in theatre and entertainment arts. He has appeared in numerous FRT and Black Box productions, including, but not limited to Avenue Q, The Comedy of Errors, and Les Miserables. He›s incredibly excited to be cast as Ben in this production, and sincerely hopes you enjoy the show as much as he does. When he›s not busy with the theatre, he draws comics for the student newspaper (which is doing just fine, he insists), runs the Van Antwerp Hall Government, and is an active member of Public Eye News and Alpha Psi Omega, the theatre honors fraternity.

Elizabeth Trueblood (Kelly) is a soph-omore at Northern Michigan Universi-ty, currently majoring in English, with a double minor in theater and writing. Past performance credits include Once Upon a Mattress (Queen Aggravain) and Brighton Beach Memoirs (Kate Jerome) at Onalaska High School, and A Kind of Alaska (Pauline) and Les Miserables (Ensemble) at the Forest Roberts Theatre. She is extremely excited to be a part of A Paper Tiger in the Rain, and would like to thank her family and friends for their never-ending love and support!

Jill Vermeulen (Ava) is an NMU sopho-more majoring in theatre and communi-cations with a dance minor. Some of her recent performances include Player and dance captain in Pippin (Lake Superior Theatre), Kaliope in She Kills Monsters (For-est Roberts Theatre) Luce in Comedy of Er-rors (Forest Roberts Theatre), dancing in An American in Paris (Forest Roberts Theatre), Ensemble/Understudy Cosette in Les Mis-erable (Forest Roberts Theatre), and Lisa in Beacon on the Rock (Lake Superior Theatre). She recently directed Narnia (Lake Superi-or Youth Theatre), assistant directed Honk Jr. (Lake Superior Youth Theater), choreo-graphed Shrek, the Musical (Marquette Se-nior High School), and was the Who cho-reographer for Seussical, Jr. (Lake Superior Youth Theater). Look forward to seeing her perform as Hunyak in Chicago (Forest Rob-erts Theatre). Vermeulen is honored to be premiering the role of Ava in A Paper Tiger in the Rain.

Staff BiosCoop Bicknell (Production Stage Manager) Coop is a junior theater major at Northern Michigan University. Although he has pre-viously assistant stage managed in the For-est Roberts Theatre’s productions Legally Blonde: The Musical and She Kills Monsters, this is his first time serving as a stage man-ager. Coop would like to thank his family, his friends, his lovely girlfriend, and the talented cast and crew of A Paper Tiger in the Rain for their support. He’d also like to give special thanks to Jalina Olgren, Em-ily Kinne, Meghan Marquardt, and Abby Schneck for their guidance.

Victor G. Holliday (Light Design) has been the designer for The Forest Rob-erts Theatre since 1982, and also served as technical director from 1982-2000. He earned his bachelor of arts in psycholo-gy from St. Johns University (Minnesota), and his master of fine arts in scenic design from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Before coming to NMU, he was designer and technical director at Trenton State Col-lege (now The College of New Jersey). Vic has also designed for summer and com-munity theatres and dance companies in Hawaii, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Jersey, and North Carolina. Outside of the theater, his major interests are history (particularly military and naval history) and ship mod-eling (pre-dreadnought steel navy), and he is an active ailurophile.

David J. Swanson (Playwright) spent much of his formative years growing up in Men-tor, Ohio while writing plays with his sister for the sympathetic audience of his parents. However, he found his love for theater in college while attending classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL. There he learned the craft of live theater in his university the-ater club as well as at various community theater groups. Upon moving to Wichita, KS, David began writing for his church in an effort to improve the quality of sketch-es being performed by the adult and youth drama teams. In the past eight years, David has become Drama Director at his church and published his first collection of scripts in February of 2012. David lives in Wichi-ta, Kansas with his beautiful wife and son Micah. He works as an aerospace engi-neer at an aircraft manufacturer in town, plays guitar in a big band as well as for his church worship team, and writes and di-rects sketches and videos for his church.

Paul Truckey (Director) acting credits in-clude leading roles in over 50 productions, most notably the roles of Grantaire, Javert and Thenardier in the Broadway and Na-tional touring companies of Les Misérables, Fredrik in A Little Night Music for the Pine Mountain Music Festival, Pete the Barber in the opera, Rockland, George Jr. in Utah! The Musical at the Tuachan Amphithe-atre,and George in Sunday in the Park with

George. As a director, he has staged dozens of productions, most recently The Come-dy of Errors, 1776, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, A Flea in Her Ear, The Mousetrap, Actletes, The Foreigner, The Full Monty, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Paul is currently a professor of theatre at North-ern Michigan University, and is a member of Actors Equity Association.

A Paper Tiger in the RainDramaturgy Notes by Meghan Digneit

The process of play-development that A Paper Tiger in the Rain went through as part of the Panowski playwriting award is two-fold. Following the announce-ment of the winning play, play-wright David J. Swanson was flown to Marquette and spent a week in a workshop with director Paul Truckey, a lovely cast of volunteer students, and myself as the drama-turg. We spent an intensive week reading, discussing, dissecting, and reworking the play, drawing out the strengths, improving the weakness-es, and making this piece the best

version of itself.

Being a part of the play-develop-ment process as a dramaturg is a unique and completely organic experience. The expectations for dramaturging a new work are com-pletely different than the traditional “resident expert” employed on other productions. For a new work, the dramaturg is asked to think about the play as a whole – the structure, the nuances, and the characters – in an effort to pull out inconsistencies and tighten the dramatic action. Paul’s focus during our intense week of work was “how will this play onstage?” David’s focus was “how are my words being read and interpreted by this group of outsid-ers?” My focus as the dramaturg was “does each line make sense in the play?” As the dramaturg I am

On the surface,

‘Paper Tiger’ may seem like a story of love and loss, but at its core, it’s

a story about the fantasies we build for ourselves to make it

through the day.

concerned with structure, flow, and consistency. These questions continued through the second phase of the award: the staging, production, and world-premiere of this new work.

Like all of the plays that win the Panowski award, Paper Tiger went through a wide variety of rewrites based on the readings of the actors and the input of Paul, David, and myself. However, like all theatre, what you will see tonight is still a work in progress. Theatre is nev-er a finite static thing, but rather an ever-evolving event that con-stantly explores new depths and levels. As such, the version pre-sented here at NMU as part of the world-pre-miere of A Paper Tiger in the Rain will not be the final version. There may never be a final version. Each production will develop, improve, alter, and emphasize different parts of the work depending on the needs of the moment.

On the surface, A Paper Tiger in the Rain is a story about love and loss. Our hero Nathan is a man who has dedicated his life to pursue a dream, and like most of us, finds that dreams are not as magical as they may initially seem. Nathan spends his journalism career dedicated

to a fledgling newspaper that is sinking fast by the time he be-comes editor-in-chief. Intricately interwoven into this tale about a failing newspaper is the love story between Laura and Na-than. This is a love story for the ages, a love that has been put on hold for over 20 years, a love that has survived cancer, heart attacks, children, and distance. A “magic” love. Or so Nathan be-lieves. On the surface, Paper Tiger

may seem like a story of love and loss, but at its core, it’s a story about the fan-tasies we build for ourselves to make it through the day. A theme that is certainly resonant for the times.

David J. Swan-son submitted an excellent piece to the Panowski

Playwriting Competition. Paper Tiger was wonderfully crafted, funny, intricate, and well-devel-oped by the time it reached us here at NMU. The week we spent in intensive workshop with the play served to flesh out the ideas and moments that were already there. While the words may have changed many times, the spirit of the play remains the same. So tonight, I want you to sit back, re-lax, and think about what it truly means to be a paper tiger in the rain in our contemporary era.Above: Rusty Bowers as Editor Nathan Parker

DesireMusic, Dance and Poetry • Carrie Biolo, Maria Formolo and Beverly Matherne

with the photo images of Tod PoirierOctober 11 at 7:30 pm

Forest Roberts Theatre • Tickets $3 Students/ $10 AdultsTickets available at any EZ Ticket Outlet or At The Door/ General Seating

906.227.2082 nmu.edu/theatre

Photo Image: Tod Poirier

Forest Roberts Theatre StaffDirector of Theatre Ansley ValentineDesigner/Associate Professor Victor G. HollidayDirector/Costume Supervisor/Professor Shelley RussellDirector/Professor Paul TruckeyTechnical Director/Assistant Professor David Pierce

She Kills Monsters, 2014Photo Credit: Justin Armstrong