Download - Bus Stop Program
Nov 21–Dec 23
By William IngeDirected by David Schweizer
An Enemy of the People
The Completely Fictional— Utterly True—Final Strange Tale of Edgar Allan Poe
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2012–13 season
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THE ENDURING AMERICAN
In the pantheon of the great mid-20th-century American playwrights—Eugene O’Neil, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams—William Inge is often included, but with a kind of modesty as the “quiet” one, the plainspoken one, known for his tales of the American heartland. There is a premonition of something folksy about to happen. His famous plays—Come Back, Little Sheba; Picnic; Bus Stop—are performed frequently by community theaters, even colleges and high schools. His writing seems to reinforce a nostalgic view of a lost America, of apple pie, and of mom and pop equipped with dreams of a good life. Theater as comfort food. Family fare. If you know his plays at all, isn’t this your perception of him?
REALLY?
Doesn't Bus Stop feature a deviant alcoholic, a physically abusive cowboy who kidnaps a young woman to drag her across state lines, a lonely and sex-starved café owner, a brooding sheriff with a shady past, and many others—all thrown together against their will during a terrifying snow storm in a lonely remote Kansas whistle stop? Does this sound like family fare?
The fact that it actually IS is not a misconception on the part of theater audiences who have savored this play for the last 60 years—since its triumphant 1955 Broadway opening, where it was hailed as charming and delightful. More accurately, Bus Stop defines the enduring appeal of the writing of William Inge, an isolated and unhappy man in his “real life,” whose best plays allowed his essentially lonely and heartsick characters to display a courage and lack of self-pity that compels them to be energetic, resourceful, and often hilarious in the pursuit of their goals. In case you haven’t yet seen this play, I won’t reveal here whether Bo, the rambunctious young cowboy, is able to persuade his love object, Cherie, the saloon singer from the Ozarks, to marry him in the end. (You may remember that Cherie was memorably played by Marilyn Monroe in the famous film version.) But I will say that the interactions of this group of travelers trapped all night in Grace’s Diner in the middle of Kansas are indeed highly entertaining as well as poignant—a combination that Inge masters with such delicacy in his “quiet” way that we are very nearly approaching an American Chekhov here.
Tennessee Williams might unleash his poetic eroticism, Arthur Miller might proclaim his cultural critique. William Inge buries his concerns about the fragility of the human heart deep within his characters as they do everything they can to press on—keep on living and moving forward, feisty, uncomplaining, courageous.
Like the good Americans we hope ourselves to be.
William Inge remains our home town poet.
No frills, just hard-earned wisdom.
Even 60 years later…
It’s a world we have been inspired to live in as we prepared this production for you. And your entire family!
David Schweizer, Director
Letter from the Director
Director David Schweizer
Scenic Designer James Noone
Costume Designer Clint Ramos
Lighting Designer James F. Ingalls
Original Music & Sound Designer Lindsay Jones
Production Dramaturg Susanna Gellert
Voice and Dialect Director Ashley Smith
Fight Director Lewis Shaw
Casting Director Pat McCorkle
Additional Music by Larry Tobias
Time: One snowy night in 1955.
Place: Grace's Diner, in a small town about 30 miles west of Kansas City.
Scene 1: 1 o'clock in the morning.
Scene 2: A few moments later.
InTermISSIon
Scene 3: Immediately following.
Scene 4: Dawn, some hours later.
Virgil Blessing Larry Tobias*
Grace Hoylard Pilar Witherspoon*
Elma Duckworth Kayla Ferguson*
Will Masters Michael D. Nichols*
Cherie Susannah Hoffman*
Dr. Gerald Lyman Patrick Husted*
Carl Malachy Cleary*
Bo Decker Jack Fellows*
Stage Manager Laura Smith*
Assistant Stage Manager Captain Kate Murphy*
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association
The CasT (in order of appearance)
The seTTing
The arTisTiC Team
Bus Stop is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc.
THErE WiLL BE OnE 15-MinuTE inTErMiSSiOn. PLEASE Turn OFF Or SiLEnCE ALL ELECTrOniC DEViCES.
in CASE OF EMErGEnCy (during performances only) 410.986.4080
Bus sTop iS MADE POSSiBLE WiTH SuPPOrT FrOM
PrESEnTinG PArTnEr
SEASOn SPOnSOrSellen and ed BernardStephanie and Ashton CarterJames and Janet ClausonLynn and Tony Deering and
The Charlesmead FoundationJane and Larry DroppaTerry H. morgenthaler and Patrick KerinsJudy and Scott PharesPhil and Lynn rauchJay and Sharon SmithBarbara Voss and Charles e. noell, III
ASSOCiATE SEASOn SPOnSOrKathleen HyleKenneth C. and elizabeth m. Lundeen
SEASOn PArTnErS
T. rowe Price Foundation
MEDiA PArTnErS
Bus StopBy William Inge • Directed by David Schweizer
Nov 21–Dec 23 , 2012
CENTERSTAGE is funded by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive.
William Inge’s life was not a life he was prepared to live. Known as “Billy” as a kid, he
was born on May 13, 1913 to Luther—a travelling salesman— and Maude Inge, in Independence, Kansas. The youngest of five, Billy was introverted and teased as a ‘mama’s boy’ when young. At age seven, he recited a poem for his classmates to great acclaim, which sparked a dream that would last into his adult life: to become a famous actor. Kansas, he knew, was not for him. He felt he had “nothing in common” with Kansas: it was “boring as hell” and he “wanted out,” as he told interviewer Digby Diehl. So he planned to move to New York—city of bright lights and big dreams.
Delayed by the economic realities of the 1930s, it was not until Inge took a job as a drama critic in St. Louis in 1943 that his career as a dramatist really began to take shape. Here, Inge met Tennessee Williams, and followed the playwright to Chicago one weekend to see the pre-Broadway “break-in run” of The Glass Menagerie. He recalls, “It was so beautiful when I saw it there…it was the finest thing I’d seen in the theatre in years. I went back to St. Louis and felt, ‘Well, I’ve got to write a play.’” Inge got to work directly on early drafts of plays that would later become his greatest hits. The first piece to garner the attention of Williams’ agent, Audrey Wood, was Come Back, Little Sheba. She set the play on the road to Broadway, which propelled Inge to move to New York and begin the successful, glamorous life he had been yearning for.
Something Like a Home
“This nice well-bred next-door neighbor, with the accent that belongs to no region except the region of good manners, has begun to uncover a world within a world and it is not the world that his welcome prepared you to meet…”
—Tennessee Williams, “Williams about Inge: The Writing is Honest”
“Mebbe I don’t know what love is. Mebbe I’m expectin’ it t’be somethin’ it ain’t.”
—Bus Stop
By Kellie Mecleary, Artistic & Dramaturgy Senior Fellow
2 | CENTERSTAGE
In the move East, Inge, now known as Bill, sought to leave his Midwestern past behind, but quickly realized the impossibility of that goal. In fact, it was Inge’s Midwestern upbringing that defined him in New York. As he told Diehl, “It wasn’t until I got to New York that I became a Kansan. Everyone there kept reminding me that they were Jewish or Irish, or whatever, so I kept reminding them that I was Midwestern. Before I knew it, I actually began to brag about being from Kansas! I discovered I had something unique, but it was the nature of New York that forced me to claim my past.” The Midwest was one of the main ingredients for all of Inge’s most successful plays; Sheba, Picnic, Bus Stop, and Dark at the Top of the Stairs were all produced in succession, all hits, and all set in the Midwest.
Along with stories, Inge brought to New York a Midwestern sensibility and perspective. The picture friends and biographers drew of Bill is that of someone sweet but shy. He opened up to few and spent a good deal of time alone. At parties, he was known to find a quiet corner and pass the evening sipping ginger ale and watching the other guests. There was much that many did not know about Bill. He had secrets, and felt the need to keep them— a habit that was also a product of his background. Inge was an alcoholic and a closeted homosexual, and was deeply ashamed to be so. Upon moving to New York, Inge’s secrets did not disappear—nor did his shame diminish.
Further, the success Inge craved and found proved to be very different from what he thought it would be: the pressure to continue succeeding crippled him at times. And the home he hoped to find in New York proved elusive: the city too cramped, too stressful, too big. A “hostile place,” as he put it. But he could not bring himself to go back to Kansas, even briefly. Twice he planned trips and began the trek west, only to turn back mid-journey. It was not until after his father died that he made it back to Kansas, to visit his ailing mother. He stayed for only 24 hours.
Amid all of this, Inge wrote Bus Stop, which opened on March 2, 1955, and ran for 478 performances—his third hit in a row. Bus Stop, a play filled with lonely, wandering souls who find momentary rest and warmth in a congenial Kansas diner, was born out of a short play written in St. Louis called People in the Wind.
For Inge, Bus Stop was an exploration of several different kinds of love. He countered the central romantic storyline of Bo and Cherie with other, less conventional relations between the professor and the young waitress, the bus driver and the diner proprietor, and the two cowboys. “They all kind of play into a pattern…” said Inge.
Around this time, Inge had several close friends. Tennessee Williams was both confidant and competitor—their relationship at times rocky but ultimately enduring. He was also getting to know the actress Barbara Baxley, who described Inge as a “kindred soul.” Finally, there was the intermittent presence of eccentric George Faricy—although little is known about the man and their relationship.
While writing Bus Stop, Inge was effectively without a place he could call home: he could not go back to Kansas, and New York just wasn’t right. Nor had he found a person with whom he could openly, comfortably spend the rest of his life. But with his friends he was finding a kind of love—not love that looked like Bo and Cherie’s, but love, nonetheless. And perhaps, with that love, a kind of belonging. Love as a kind of home.
Inge’s life didn’t end well. He met a great deal of criticism and failure in the years that followed his 1950s hits. In 1965, he bought a house in the hills of LA, and as he met more and more rejection and disappointment, became more and more of a recluse—quitting prestigious teaching positions, ignoring friends, and rarely leaving his isolated home. Inge took his own life on June 10, 1973.
But his work lives on. Inge’s most successful plays have been turned into films, are produced regularly in regional and local theaters, and frequently enjoy Broadway and Off-Broadway revivals. They deal, above all, with love and its necessity in life, inviting us to accept and understand the different forms love takes. An understanding and acceptance Inge could not find for himself, but invites us to witness in a little Kansas diner in the middle of a snowstorm.
U
Bus stop | 3
AB C
D
DINER
A: THE OZARKS
“I lived there till the floods come, three years ago this spring and washed us all away.”In July of 1951, a five-day rainstorm inundated Kansas and Missouri, flooding millions upon millions of acres throughout the southern Midwest. Newspapermen found the big story in Kansas City, where stockyards disappeared and rising rivers washed away bridges and the trains they carried. But devastation reigned across the region and people getting by in the low-lying lands were among the hardest hit.
In Bus Stop, Cherie tells the story of how her family split apart when the flood-waters came to her hometown of River Gulch. A fictional place that is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in the Ozarks, Inge’s imagination made River Gulch a hometown in the soggy river bottom landscape of southern Missouri. It is a rural land of big families and broken dreams. If the flood washed away Cherie’s home, it also gave her the chance to escape to the big city where she just might become a star.
B: JOPLIN
“Anyway, second prize was good enough to get me to Kanz City t’enter the contest there.”Amateur talent contests (like the one Cherie competed in) had their heyday in post-war America. Amateur Night at the Apollo and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts were among the most famous, but small towns and cities throughout the country frequently hosted their own competitions. These events did not want for contestants as neighbors lined up for their chance at a big break. That well-known recording artists such Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney made it big through such competitions only fueled the fire.
C: KANSAS CITY
“I jest came back from a rodeo where I won ‘ bout ev’ry prize there was.”In 1899, Kansas City hosted the first nationwide event for the sale and exhibition of livestock. In a city where, as Rodgers and Hammerstein would tell us, “everything’s up to date,” it didn’t take long for this annual livestock fair to outgrow its origins and become the “American Royal,” so named with a nod to England’s Royal Agricultural Society. The fair added a horse show in 1907 and the rodeo arrived in 1949. To this day, more than 50,000 people gather to trade livestock, discover new agricultural techniques, and participate in competitions ranging from barrel racing to bronco busting.
But the American Royal offered more than just an opportunity to show off. Throughout the Twentieth Century, farmers and ranchers travelled to the fair where they could indeed get up to date on all the goings on in town. Making their first journey to Kansas City, Bo and Virgil would have hoped to display their skills, to learn new ones and—of course—to win prizes and admirers. More than that, they would have looked forward to meeting a community larger than the one they had back home.
D: TONGANOXIE“This is just a country town.”
We don’t know much about the time Inge spent in Tonganoxie, but we do know that a legend has grown up around his visits to the town. Indeed, the Myers Hotel, at the corner of 3rd and Main, claims that it is that restaurant with a bus stop where Inge met his Grace. We do know that the town has a hotel, a police station, a few churches, a school where a girl like Elma can dream of the day that someone will see past her glasses, and a restaurant like Grace’s where an independent woman can offer coffee and donuts to folks seeking shelter from a storm. A self-described
“grass-widow,” Grace wouldn’t have been a total anomaly in the Midwest of the 1950s, but she certainly wouldn’t have been the norm. She lives on her own, happily estranged from her husband, running a business that welcomes strangers to town. In the character of Grace, Inge combined the traditional archetype of the hard-working farmwife with the figure of the independent woman that started to penetrate American culture following the Second World War.
Inge would have met women like Grace in Tonganaxie, the town about 30 miles west of Kansas City where he is said to have found inspiration for his play. While teaching at Stephens College, Inge often rode the bus into town. These travels introduced him to many of the characters he later wrote into his play and it brought him to restaurants like Grace’s, where he would have seen firsthand many of the scenarios he created.
4 | CENTERSTAGE
E
F
G
G: TIMBER HILL, MT
“I got a herd a fine Hereford cattle and a dozen horses, and the finest sheep and hogs anywhere in the country.”Four-lane highways, television reaching from coast to coast, phone lines crisscrossing the land, electric light warming town and country: this was the landscape of modernity in America after the war. In a country that was flying headlong into the future, rural Montana would have looked for all the world like a place caught in time. It wasn’t until the 1970s that telephone service and power lines reached the state’s rural communities. In Breaking Clean, a memoir of growing up on a big sky ranch in the late ’50s, Judy Blunt looks at a family photograph taken in 1958 and writes that “a stranger guessing the date of the photo would likely place it in the Great Depression rather than some 30 years later.”
Given what we know about Bo Decker—he’s got $6,000 in the bank and a color TV—we can guess that his ranch on Timber Hill Mountain in Montana would have been somewhat more up to date than the one in that photograph. Young, ambitious, and in charge of his own place since the age of 10, Bo would have put his energy into growing his heard, expanding his acreage, and bolstering his reputation as a prime rancher. Still, however many tractors he owned and however new his John Deere might be, his life on the ranch would have been a hard and solitary one. With the nearest town over an hour away and a home full of cowboys and ranch hands, a bus trip to Kansas City would have seemed like a journey into a new world and another time.
By Susanna Gellert, Production Dramaturg
Scenic TravelssE: TOPEKA
“Didn’t you say there was a university in Topeka? ...Washburn University, of course! You know, it just occurs to me that I should stop there to check some references on a piece of research I’m engaged in.”Growing up in the small town of Independence in the 1930s, William Inge looked forward to the day when he would go to the University of Kansas to study drama. For Inge, as for many
looking to move beyond
small town life of the early Twentieth Century, college provided the bridge to the fulfillment of big ambitions. With his move to New York City and eventual success as a playwright, Inge would ultimately succeed in transforming his college dreams into grown-up reality. Before arriving in New York, however, he would spend some years fostering the dreams of others at Stephens University, a small women’s college in northern Missouri.
Unlike Dr. Lyman, Inge never thought himself a very good teacher even though he devoted himself to his students. What he and Lyman might have had in common, however, was the notion that their talents were being squandered in these small college towns.
F: WYOMING
““That’s all I ever get on my bus, drunks and hoodlums.”During the Second World War, when the government rationed gasoline and manufacturers all but halted car production to supply the combat effort, inter-city bus travel in the USA hit its peak. The largest companies, Greyhound and Trailways, served
diverse communities of riders, from troops making their
way across the country to
independent travelers looking for work in growing cities. As the war and rationing ended, and people started buying cars and travelling by plane, buses found themselves an outmoded form of transportation. Riders now were those who couldn’t afford to travel by other means and so-called
“oldsters” habituated to long-distance bus rides.
Carl’s bus would have made the journey from Kansas City to Montana on slow-moving state roads and local byways. Only after the passage of the Federal Highway Act of 1956, when the construction of the Interstate Highway system began, could buses travel on quick-paced roads. With the highways came sleek, new bus stops and futuristic buses whose speedy routes would have bypassed quiet diners like Grace’s.
Bus stop | 5
6 | CENTERSTAGE
malachy Cleary*—Carl. CENTERSTAGE: debut. Broadway—Our Town (w/ Paul Newman), Larry Gelbart’s Mastergate. Off Broadway—Negro Ensemble:
The Picture Box; Irish Rep: The Field; Working Theatre: Belmont Ave Social Club; New Georges; Rattlestick Productions; South Street Theater; Columbia U; Manhattan Theater Club. Regional—World’s End Theatre: The Way of the World (Mirabell), The Seagull (Trigorin); Kirby Center/Wilkes Barre: The Molly MaGuires (Fr. O’Connor); Theatreworks Hartford: Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Syracuse Stage: Born Yesterday (Ed Devery); Virginia Stage; Actor’s Theatre of Louisville; Dallas Theater Center; The Olney; Seattle Rep; Asolo; Player’s Theatre-Columbus; Fleetwood Stage; Long Wharf; American Stage Company; TheaterFest New Jersey. Film/TV—Taking Woodstock, Whirlygirl, The Day After, Heartbreak Hospital, A Dog Year, 666 Park Ave., Unforgettable, White Collar, Boardwalk Empire (Warren Harding), Onion News Network (David Barrodale), Rescue Me, Cashmere Mafia, PBS’ Novel Reflections: Seize the Day (Tommy Wilhelm), One Life to Live, The Sopranos, Day Zero, Law and Order, numerous commercials.
Jack Fellows*—Bo Decker. CENTERSTAGE: debut. New York—2011 Fringe Festival: Dreamplay. Regional—Connecticut: The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Spring
Awakening (Play), Guys and Dolls, Urinetown, Tommy, Comedy of Errors, Galileo, Pericles. Film—Pentathlon, Threeway. Education: BFA, University of Connecticut.
Kayla Ferguson*— Elma Duckworth. CENTERSTAGE: debut. New York—Radio Theatre NYC: King Kong (Ann Darrow); The Heights Players:
The Foreigner (Catherine); Co-Op Theatre East: Twelfth Night (Olivia). Education—New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Stella Adler Studio. For my Momma and Daddy. www.kaylaferguson.net
Susannah Hoffman*—Cherie. CENTERSTAGE: debut. New York—… But the Next Morning (Celine); Romeo & Juliet (Juliet, Mercutio, Prince). Regional—
ART: The Donkey Show, Best of Both Worlds, Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Deb), Paradise Lost (Pearl, u/s); ART Institute: Hamletmachine (Ophelia), Skin of Our Teeth, The Little Tragedies. Film/TV—Lament for the Artist. Education—MFA, ART/MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University; BA Psychology, St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Professional—member, Dangerous Ground Productions; member, Empirical Rogue. Extra heaps of love and gratitude to DG, DGP, J&K, and my DP.
Patrick Husted*— Dr. Gerald Lyman. CENTERSTAGE: Galileo, Blythe Spirit. Off Broadway—The Mint Theater: Dr. Knock; New World Stages: Bill W.
and Dr. Bob (Dr.Bob); the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit (Dr. Kelekian); Signature Theater: Arthur Miller’s The American Clock. Regional—over 150 plays in theaters across the country. Film—upcoming roles in Low Life with Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix, The Place Beyond the Pines with Bradley Cooper, Gods Behaving Badly with Oliver Plat and Sharon Stone, Clutter with Carol Kane; others, including Blow with Ray Liota, Cradle Will Rock written and directed by Tim Robbins. TV—recently in Mildred Piece with Kate Winslet; numerous guest star appearances on episodic shows including LA Law, Law and Order, L&O:SVU, L&O:CI, Sopranos, Third Watch, Sisters.
michael D. nichols*—Will Masters. CENTERSTAGE: debut. Broadway—November (World Premiere with Nathan Lane), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Tony,
Best Revival; with Gary Sinese). Off Broadway—The Pearl Theatre: Exit the King, Iphigenia at Aulis; New Victory Theatre: Tom Sawyer. Regional— Kansas City Repertory
Biographies The Cast
Bus stop | 7
Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Syracuse Stage, Alley Theatre, Pioneer Theatre Company, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Goodspeed Opera House, Barrington Stage, Studio, Arena Stage, Orlando Shakespeare Festival, and Round House Theatre. TV—All My Children, Another World, As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives, General Hospital. Mr. Nichols is a Veteran of the U.S. Army and holds an MFA from the Old Globe Theatre.
Larry Tobias*—Virgil Blessing. CENTERSTAGE: debut. New York—York Theatre: Almost Blue; UBU Rep: Alexander; Metropolitan Museum
of Art/Cloisters: The Death of Pilate Pilate. National Tours—Stand By Your Man, Big River, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, The Adventures of Lewis & Clark. Regional— Flat Rock Playhouse: Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming; Charlotte Rep: All My Sons; Thalian Association: Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (w/ Pat Hingle); Studio Tenn: Our Town; GMT Regional Tour: Julius Caesar; Richmond Shakespeare Festival: The Tempest, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Macbeth; Cape Fear Regional Theater: Twelfth Night, Hamlet; Mountain Playhouse: Keep On The Sunny Side, Boeing Boeing, The Foreigner, Greater Tuna; Fireside Theater: Ring of Fire; Tennessee Rep: Big River; Virginia Musical Theater: Pump Boys and Dinettes; Theatre at Lime Kiln: Smoke on the Mountain. Film/TV: The Angel Doll, Ball of Wax, Ding-A-Ling-Less, Donnie Brasco, Private Parts, Duncan’s World, A Gift of Love, NY Undercover, America’s Most Wanted.
Biographies The Cast [cont]
For 50 years, CENTERSTAGE has served the greater Baltimore area with professional
theater of the highest caliber. The law fi rm of Kramon & Graham, P.A. recognizes that the
support of the corporate community is crucial to CENTERSTAGE’s continued success. We have, for many years, actively participated in
supporting CENTERSTAGE, and look forward to continuing that support.
Law Offi ces
KRAMON & GRAHAM, P.A.Baltimore, Maryland
www.kramonandgraham.com
8 | CENTERSTAGE
Pilar Witherspoon*—Grace Hoylard. CENTERSTAGE—debut. International/Touring— Rezo Gabriadze’s acclaimed production
of The Doctor and the Patient, opposite Mikhail Baryshnikov. New York—credits include Lincoln Center, Clubbed Thumb, Cherry Lane Theatre, The Drama League, New Dramatists, the Mint Theater Company, Playwrights Horizons, Roundabout Theatre, Second Stage Theatre. Regional—Guthrie Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Sundance Theatre Lab, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Barrington Stage Company, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, St. Louis Shakespeare Festival, among many others. Film/TV—The Big C, Law and Order, L&O: SVU, Third Watch, Ten Stories Tall, The Taking of Beslan. Other Professional—narrator for Recorded Books in New York City. Awards—Fox Fellowship recipient. Training—The Juilliard School.
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association
Bus stop | 9
Standing ovation.As we mark our 75th year in Baltimore, we join CENTERSTAGE in
celebrating its own milestone anniversary—50 years of artistic excellence
provided through thought-provoking theater for this great community.
That’s no small act.
We’re proud to be a long-time supporter of this remarkable cultural
institution, which enriches our city’s quality of life.
As loyal fans, we say, Bravo!
CENTERSTAGE
Bus Stop
10 | CENTERSTAGE
David Schweizer—Director. CENTERSTAGE: The Rivals; Snow Falling on Cedars; Cyrano; Caroline, or Change; These Shining Lives; The Boys From Syracuse; Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Permanent Collection; The Miser; And God Created Great Whales. Broadway— Lincoln Center: Troilus and Cressida. Off Broadway—Horizon, Getting Home, Los Big Names, Songs from an Unmade Bed, White Chocolate, Wintertime, Cologne, And God Created Great Whales (Obie), It’s a Man’s World, Bad Sex with Bud Kemp, All for You, The Waiting Room, Booth, You Could Be Home Now, Kingfish, The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador, Gogol, Earthworms, The Last Days of British Honduras, My Price Point. International Tours/Residencies—Warsaw; Prague; Lisbon; Hamburg; London; Stockholm; Oslo; Toga Village, Japan. Regional—La Jolla Playhouse; Kansas City Rep; McCarter; Seattle Rep; Arena Stage; Mark Taper; LATC; Pasadena Playhouse; Williamstown; Yale Rep; Trinity Rep; Geffen Playhouse. Opera—NYCO: The Mines of Sulfur; Glimmerglass: The Greater Good (world premiere); Boston Lyric Opera: The Emperor of Atlantis, Macbeth; Gotham Chamber Opera: Albert Herring; Long Beach: La Indian Queen, Elegy for Young Lovers, Powder Her Face, La Perichole, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; Houston Grand Opera: Abduction from the Seraglio; Washington Arts Society: Nytrate Hymnal. Education—Yale School of Drama. Upcoming—Winter’s Journey, a new opera by Doug Cuomo.
James noone—Scenic Designer. CENTERSTAGE: Ah, Wilderness; Crumbs from the Table of Joy. Broadway—Match; Urban Cowboy; Jekyll & Hyde; A Class Act; Judgment at Nuremberg; The Rainmaker; Night Must Fall; The Sunshine Boys; The Gin Game; Inherit the Wind; Getting and Spending. Off Broadway—Fully Committed; Full Gallop; Three Tall Women; The Boys in the Band; Cowgirls; Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune; Breaking Legs; Lincoln Center; Playwrights Horizons; Second Stage; Vineyard. Regional—Guthrie; Shakespeare (DC); Chicago Shakespeare; Pittsburgh
Public; Huntington; Old Globe; Long Wharf; Goodspeed; Ravinia. Opera—HGO; NYCO; LA; Washington National; Portland; Canadian Opera Company. Awards—American Theatre Wing; Drama Desk; Helen Hayes.
Clint ramos—Costume Designer. CENTERSTAGE—Ah! Wilderness, And God Created Whales. Recent sets and/or costumes—Public Theater: Wild With Happy, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…; CalShakes: Hamlet; Oregon Shakespeare Festival: Party People; Roundabout Theater: The Common Pursuit; Williamstown: The Elephant Man w/ Bradley Cooper; Playwrights Horizons: After The Revolution; Signature: Angels in America 1&2, Hurt Village. Other New York—Lincoln Center Theater, Second Stage, New York Theater Workshop, Culture Project, Foundry, Ma-Yi, Women’s Project, New Georges, NAATCO, Clubbed Thumb, others. Regional—Alley, A.R.T, Asolo, Alliance, Dallas, Guthrie, Kansas City Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Huntington, Denver Center, Cleveland Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, Long Wharf, Opera Boston, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and others. International—Barbican, Thalia, Rijksteatern, O’Reilly, Kanon, Teatro Pilipino, and others. Honors/Awards—2010 Lucille Lortel award, 2009 TDF Irene Sharaff award, 2007 & 2009 ATW Henry Hewes award, 2008 & 2010 Drama Desk nominations.
James F. Ingalls—Lighting Designer. CENTERSTAGE: The Voysey Inheritance, Mary Stuart, Les Blancs, The Taming of the Shrew, Happy End, Ghosts, The Baltimore Waltz, Police Boys, The Broken Pitcher, Fool for Love, Buried Child, Who They Are and How It Is With Them, Native Speech, On the Verge or the Geography of Yearning, Execution of Justice, Our Town. Regional—Steppenwolf: Kafka on the Shore (dir. Frank Galati). Tours: Kafka Fragments (dir. Peter Sellars, w/ Dawn Upshaw and Geoff Nutall) at Lincoln Center, LA Philharmonic, Cal Performances/Berkeley; La Passion de Simone at Lincoln Center, Helsinki Festival, New Crowned Hope, Vienna. Opera—Paris
Biographies The Artistic Team
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Bus stop | 11
Opera/Bastille: Tristan und Isolde; Santa Fe Opera: Adriana Mater; Festival D’Aix-en-Provence: Zaide. Dance—Mark Morris Dance Group: Romeo and Juliet: On Motifs of Shakespeare, Mozart Dances, King Arthur, The Hard Nut; Merce Cunningham Dance Company: Split Sides, Fluid Canvas. He often collaborates with Saint Joseph Ballet, Santa Ana, CA.
Lindsay Jones—Original Music & Sound Designer. CENTERSTAGE: Let There Be Love, Intimate Apparel. Off Broadway—Public Theatre: Wild With Happy, The Brother/Sister Plays; Playwrights Horizons: The Burnt Part Boys; Primary Stages: Rx; New York Theatre Workshop: Top Secret; many others. Regional—McCarter; South Coast Repertory; Arena Stage; Goodman; Old Globe; Steppenwolf; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Guthrie; Hartford Stage; Chicago Shakespeare; Lookingglass Theatre Company; Yale Repertory; many others. International—Austria, Royal Shakespeare Company (England), Stratford Shakespeare Festival (Canada), and productions in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Scotland, and Austria. Film/TV scoring work—The Brass Teapot for Magnolia Pictures; A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin (2006 Academy Award Winner, Best Documentary Short Subject) for HBO Films. Awards—Six Joseph Jefferson Awards and 16 nominations; two Ovation Awards and three nominations; LA and SD Drama Critics Circle Award; two ASCAP Plus Awards; nominations for Drama Desk, Barrymore, Henry Hewes Design, and AUDELCO Awards; and was the first sound designer to win the Michael Maggio Emerging Designer Award.
Laura Smith*—Stage Manager. CENTERSTAGE: Resident Stage Manager; Stage Manager: An Enemy of the People; The Whipping Man, Gleam; The Rivals; Snow Falling on Cedars; Cyrano; Working it Out; Fabulation or, The Re-Education of Undine; Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Regional—
Biographies The Artistic Team [cont]
CENTERSTAGE has reached a signifi cant milestone—and we’re so glad you’ve chosen to be a part of the celebration.
This holiday season, please consider making a special gift to CENTERSTAGE in honor of our 50th Anniversary Season. Your support will directly impact our ability to continue to serve thousands of Maryland residents each year through artistic, education, and community outreach programming. And the best part is, you will help ensure that CENTERSTAGE’s future is bright for the next 50 years.
Please visit www.centerstage.org/donate.
thank you for your support!
support 50 Years of world-class theater
$50-1 Hour Studio or Outdoor Photo Session and 20% off Your Order.
Mention Centerstage when booking your appointment.
Maureen (240-676-2837) & tracey (301-437-9388)
[email protected] || Mobilemomsphoto.com
12 | CENTERSTAGE
Everyman: Pygmalion, Shipwrecked, The Exonerated, Rabbit Hole, Doubt, Gem of the Ocean, And a Nightingale Sang, The School for Scandal, A Number, Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, Yellowman; Woolly Mammoth: Gruesome Playground Injuries, House of Gold, The Unmentionables, Vigils, After Ashley; Folger: Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors (ASM); Olney Theatre: Stuff Happens; Theater Alliance: Headsman’s Holiday, Pangea, [sic]; Catalyst: Cloud 9; Longacre Lea: Man with Bags.
Captain Kate murphy*—Assistant Stage Manager. CENTERSTAGE: Resident Stage Manager; Stage Manager for The Completely Fictional…Edgar Allan Poe, A Skull in Connemara, American Buffalo, Crime & Punishment, Let There Be Love, The Santaland Diaries; Assistant Stage Manager for An Enemy of the People, The Importance of Being Earnest, Things of Dry Hours, Trouble in Mind, Three Sisters, Radio Golf, The Murder of Isaac, Once on this Island, King Lear, Assistant Production Manager 2008–09. Regional—Trinity Rep: Boeing-Boeing; Actors Theatre of Louisville: All Hail Hurricane Gordo*, The Clean House, Moot the Messenger*, Dracula, The Ruby Sunrise*, Tall Grass Gothic*, The Drawer Boy, Amadeus, As You Like It (*premieres at the Humana Festival of New American Plays); Contemporary American Theater Festival: The Overwhelming, Pig Farm; Totem Pole Playhouse: Over 70 productions through 12 summer stock seasons. Film/TV—Route 30, Route 30 Too!, Next Food Network Star. Proud Actors Equity and ASCAP Member.
Susanna Gellert—Production Dramaturg/Artistic Producer—joined CENTERSTAGE in January 2012. Prior to joining CENTERSTAGE, she received a Masters from the subcommittee on Theater Studies at the English Department of Columbia University. Recent directing projects include Bar Joke by Sam Allingham (Old American Can Factory), Open the Dark Door by David Nugent (New York Music Theater Festival), Visiting Day by Andy Bragen (Sewanee Writers’ Conference), Fugue States (PS 122), You Can’t Take It With
You (University of Rochester), The Boss in the Satin Kimono (New York International Fringe Festival), The Duchess of Malfi (FSU/Asolo Conservatory), and Marat/Sade (The Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College). Additional New York directing credits include The Lacy Project (Soho Think Tank’s Ice Factory ’07, the Ohio Theater), adaptations of Tamburlaine the Great and Valkyrie (Target Margin Theater’s Laboratory), Match and L’Interieur (American Living Room), as well as workshops at the Lark, EST, and NYU. Susanna has taught at the University of Rochester, Bard College, Columbia University, and NYU. Susanna was the founding Artistic Director of Chicago’s I-80 Drama Co. and an associate artist at Target Margin Theater. Currently, she is a member of Wingspace Theatrical Design Group and the Women’s Project Directors’ Lab. A recipient of SDCF’s Sir John Gielgud Fellowship and the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize, Susanna is a graduate of Yale School of Drama and The University of Chicago.
Ashley Smith—Voice and Dialect Director. CENTERSTAGE: The Rivals. Regional, voice and text—Studio Theatre: Sucker Punch; Victory Gardens Theatre: My Children! My Africa!; American Players Theatre: Exits and Entrances, The Circle; Dallas Theater Center: The Good Negro, Pride and Prejudice, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof, My Fair Lady. Regional, acting—Shakespeare Theatre Company: Much Ado About Nothing, All’s Well That Ends Well; Great Lakes Theatre Festival: Arms and the Man; Utah Shakespeare Festival: Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Our Town; Idaho Shakespeare Festival: Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing; Dallas Theater Center: Pride and Prejudice, The Misanthrope, The Glass Menagerie. Education—University of Delaware. Professional—Assistant Professor of Voice and Acting, University of Maryland: School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.
Lewis Shaw—Fight Director. CENTERSTAGE: Gleam, Crime & Punishment, Snow Falling on Cedars. Fight Direction—
Hear Victor Danchenko and Soovin Kim perform Prokofiev’s Sonata in C major for Two Violins on Tuesday, Jan. 29, at 8:00 pm in Miriam A. Friedberg Hall
To purchase tickets, call the Peabody Box Office at 410-234-4800
Visit www.peabody.jhu.edu/events for Audio Program Notes and the complete 2012-2013 Peabody Concert Calendar
AUDIOPROGRAM
I want nothing better, more flexible,
or more complete than the sonata
form.
2013
Deadline: Fri, Feb 8, 2013
Maryland Students in grades K–12 are encouraged to submit their original plays to the 2013 Young Playwrights Festival.
Visit us at centerstage.org/education.
Budding playwrights!
Bus stop | 13
Biographies The Artistic Team [cont]
Everyman Theatre: Private Lives, All My Sons, Mystery of Irma Vep, Filthy Rich, Much Ado About Nothing; Baltimore Opera: Romeo et Juliette, Otello, Elektra, Aida; Studio Theatre: Frozen, Mojo; Rep Stage: Bach at Leipzig, Lonesome West, Swan; Globe Theatre, London (Workshop Season); Shakespeare Theatre: Taming of the Shrew; over 40 episodes of America’s Most Wanted. Other Professional—Weapons and Specialty Prop Design, Broadway: Addams Family, Life in Theatre, Shrek, Pirate Queen, Aida, Scarlet Pimpernel, Tarzan; West End: Royal Family. Regional: Ben-Hur Live, Metropolitan Opera, Baltimore Opera, Washington Opera, Folger Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre. Film/TV: Killer Joe, Death Games. Teaching—Certified Teacher with the Society of American Fight Directors and on faculty for the Opera Studio at University of Maryland, College Park.
Pat mcCorkle—Casting Director. CENTERSTAGE: Gleam. Pat McCorkle (C.S.A.) and associate, Joe Lopick, cast the critically acclaimed Tribes and Our Town for Barrrow Street Theatre in New York. Memorable Broadway casts include End of the Rainbow, The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, The Glass Menagerie, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, The Ride Down Mt. Morgan, Amadeus, She Loves Me, Blood Brothers, A Few Good Men, among many others. Notable Off Broadway projects include Almost Maine, Ears on a Beatle, Down the Garden Paths, Killer Joe, Mrs. Klein, Driving Miss Daisy. A partial list of feature film projects include Premium Rush, Ghost Town, Secret Window, Basic, Tony and Tina’s Wedding, The Thomas Crown Affair, The 13th Warrior, Madeline, Die Hard with a Vengeance, School Ties, etc, and for television, humans for Sesame Street, Californication (Emmy nomination), Hack, Strangers with Candy, Barbershop, Chapelle’s Show, among several others.
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association
A place where Edgar Allan Poe and Baltimore are celebrated on a daily basis.
reservations suggested
601 South Clinton Street, Baltimore, MD 21224 410.522.2929 | www.annabelleetavern.com
Supported by:
Donations being accepted nOW
Wednesday, February 6–Monday, February 25, 2013Since its inception, the auction has raised close to $5 million
for CENTERSTAGE programs and activities.
ONLINE ITEM PREVIEW: Wednesday, February 6–Saturday, February 9
ONLINE BIDDING: Sunday, February 10–Monday, February 25
To donate, contact Sydney Wilner, Auction Coordinator, at 410.986.4025, or [email protected].
14 | CENTERSTAGE
Artistic Director Kwame Kwei-Armah oBe, an award-winning British playwright, director, actor, and broadcaster, is in his second season as Artistic
Director. At CENTERSTAGE he has directed An Enemy of the People, last season’s The Whipping Man, and previously Naomi Wallace’s Things of Dry Hours. Among his works as playwright are Elmina’s Kitchen and Let There Be Love—which had their American debuts at CENTERSTAGE—as well as A Bitter Herb, Statement of Regret, and Seize the Day. Kwame has served on the boards of The National Theatre and The Tricycle Theatre, both in London. He served as Artistic Director for the World Arts Festival in Senegal, a month-long World Festival of Black Arts and Culture, which featured more than two thousand artists from 52 countries participating in 16 different arts disciplines. He was named the Chancellor of the University of the Arts London, and in 2012 was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
Managing Director Stephen richard, a leader on the national arts scene for more than 30 years, joined CENTERSTAGE in January
2012. Stephen comes most recently from a position as Vice President, External Relations, for the new National Children’s Museum. Previously, he served 18 years as Executive Director of Arena Stage, where he planned and managed the theater’s $125 million capital campaign for the Mead Center for American Theater. Also a professor of Arts Management at Georgetown University, he has served on the boards and committees of some of the nation’s most prestigious arts organizations, including the National Endowment for the Arts, American Arts Alliance, League of Resident Theatres, and Theatre Communications Group. twitter: @sjrcenterstage
FYi Audience ServicesPrE-SHOW DininG Visit Sascha’s Express, our pre-performance dinner service located just up the lobby stairs in our Mezzanine Café. Featuring delicious prix fixe dining, service begins two hours before each performance. You’ll find the current menu at www.centerstage.org/saschas.
ACCESSiBiLiTy PrOGrAMSWheelchair-accessible seating is available for every performance. For patrons who are hearing impaired, we offer assistive listening devices at no charge. An Open Captioned performance is available for one Sunday performance of each Classic Series production for deaf and hearing impaired patrons. Several performances also feature Audio Description, and Braille programs or magnifying glasses are available upon request.
On-STAGE SMOkinGWhen a play requires on-stage smoking, we use tobacco-free herbal imitations and do everything possible to minimize the amount of smoke that drifts into the audience. If you’re smoke-sensitive, be sure to let our Box Office know.
PHOTOGrAPHy & rECOrDinG PrOHiBiTEDBecause of copyright and union regulations, photography or recording of performances—both audio and video—is strictly forbidden.
BE COurTEOuSPlease silence your cell phone, pager, or other electronic devices both before the show starts and after intermission. And, while you’re welcome to take beverages with lids to your seat, eating is never allowed inside the theater.
AnyTHinG ELSE WE CAn DO?CENTERSTAGE wants every patron to have an enjoyable, stress-free experience. Your feedback and suggestions are always welcomed: [email protected].
Associate Artistic Director/Director of Dramaturgy Gavin Witt came to CENTERSTAGE in 2003 as Resident Dramaturg, having served in
that role previously at several Chicago theaters. As a dramaturg, he has worked on well over 60 plays, from classics to new commissions—including play development workshops and freelance dramaturgy for TCG, The Playwrights Center, The New Harmony Project, The Old Globe, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, CATF, The Kennedy Center, and others. A graduate of Yale and the University of Chicago, he was active in Chicago theater for more than a decade as an actor, director, dramaturg, translator, and teacher, not to mention co-founder of greasy joan & co. theater, while serving as a regional Vice President of LMDA, the national association of dramaturgs. He has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago and DePaul University, and locally at Towson University.
Biographies The Staff
Bus stop | 15
16 | CENTERSTAGE
Focus From YPF to My America
The young Playwrights Festival is one of CENTERSTAGE’s oldest educational programs. In 1985, CENTERSTAGE recognized that a new generation of playwrights should be cultivated to continue the growth of original work and complement its professional new play development. Now entering its 27th year, the 2013 Festival will accept submissions through February 2013, encouraging the involvement of up-and-coming theater makers throughout the state. Each spring CENTERSTAGE presents a selection of the plays at a staged performance—complete with sets, costumes, and lights.
Juliana Avery first became involved with CENTERSTAGE as a participant in the 2002 Young Playwrights Festival. Her play, In the Bag, was selected as a finalist when she was in 11th grade at Magruder High School in Montgomery County. The play follows two men, one younger and one older, who meet outside of a department store while holding their wives’ purses, patiently waiting as the unseen women shop inside. As they wait, the men talk about life, love, and the privileges of partnership.
In April 2012, at CENTERSTAGE’s Annual Gala, In the Bag was brought back to Calvert Street, performed alongside honorees from that year and other scripts from the Festival’s past. Avery says that she was nervous to see her piece remounted: “It’s not something I get to go back to a lot… But it went better than I expected it would; I was thrilled to see it again.”
While at the Gala, Avery (and 500 other guests) was introduced to CENTERSTAGE’s newest artistic initiative, My America. In January 2012, the theater’s artistic team asked 50 American playwrights to answer the question “What is my America?” with a three-minute monologue. The writers jumped at the chance, and the result was more than 50 brand new works. At the Gala, actor Delroy Lindo performed one of
the first monologues submitted, written by playwright Lynn Nottage. A few months later, in August 2012, Avery was asked to write her own monologue to contribute to the project.
“CENTERSTAGE Associate Artistic Director, Gavin Witt, actually contacted me and said, ‘Would you be willing to give it a shot as someone who did YPF? We’d love to hear what you think.’ He compared it to a 24-hour film festival: I had three days, three nights.”
Avery set to writing the monologue, starting where Lynn Nottage had: looking at big, overarching political ideals. While she recognized these as important, she says her initial ideas felt too preachy, and so she decided to look at her own life and family.
“I’m a middle class girl from the suburbs of DC, but that’s part of the American experience as well. I think every family has their struggles. My grandmother grew up in a household that spoke primarily German
and [only one of my four grandparents went to college]. Now here we are a couple of generations later and things are very different. I was thinking about that experience and the evolving idea of the American Dream. There’s an opportunity, but also a responsibility, when you’ve had a lot of good fortune to really push the barriers and live your dreams and that can be very complicated and frustrating.”
After a whirlwind three days, Avery penned The Dream. The monologue is delivered by a young woman at a job interview who speaks of Abraham Maslow’s Pyramid of Happiness, relating her family’s experiences in America since arriving in the mid-19th century, and the expectations that success has place on her:
It’s not enough to be…content. You’ve got to be someone. … I’m the culmination of generations of work and I can’t just let that go to waste by being nobody. I’ve got to live my goddamned dream...
The Dream was one of five un-filmed monologues in the My America series (50 were filmed by Hal Hartley and Possible Films for release online), but was performed live at the My America premiere event in September 2012. Says Avery, “When you do something so short and fast, you’re not sure how it’s going to turn out, but I was pleased with it. It was a very positive experience.”
Avery continues to pursue a career in theater. She holds a degree in playwriting from NYU’s dramatic writing program and is a part of Playwrights Gymnasium, a writer’s group located in Washington, DC, alongside fellow My America playwright Rich Espey.
“I’m still with it, still working on it, it’s still a work in progress. But it’s definitely still the dream.” ö
By Kiirstn Pagan, Marketing and Public Relations Fellow
Top: Juliana Avery (photo by Richard Anderson). Bottom: John Ramsey and Michael Micalizzi in Avery’s In the Bag at the 2012 Gala for CENTERSTAGE.
My America is supported by:
Lynn and Tony Deering and The Charlesmead Foundation
The Young Playwrights Festival is supported by:
Bus stop | 17
By Katori HallDirected by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Jan 9–Feb 24
3 Pa c k MembershipsThree plays, Your Way!
It’s not too late to become a Member! For a limited time only, select any three shows remaining in our 2012–13 Season and save up to 37% off the full price!
$79 Previews$99 Weekdays$129 Weekends
Buy yOurS TODAy—in person, call, or go online!410.332.0033 • centerstage.org
Next Up
Dr. martin Luther King receives a mysterious visitor on his fi nal
night at the Lorraine Hotel.
for stealing the show.
pnc.com
©2012 The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. All rights reserved. PNC Bank, National Association. Member FDIC
Inspiring. Thought Provoking. PNC is proud to sponsor
CENTERSTAGE. Because we appreciate all that goes into your work.
18 | CENTERSTAGE
Can you share a favorite or vivid holiday memory from your childhood?
Stephen Richard • I remember my dog, Poquito, who we discovered on the table, having eaten the Christmas dinner. That is the most vivid memory I have, sad but true.
Kwame Kwei-Armah • My most vivid memory was when I was about 15 and the family went to Grenada for Christmas. My uncle, who was a farmer, says, “What do you want for Christmas dinner tomorrow? Should it be beef, should it be turkey, should it be chicken…?” And we all thought, oh, it would be nice to have beef. And he went and killed the cow that was literally in front of us. [Both laughing] They lived real lives!
SR • Said the vegetarian!
KKA • My sister became a vegetarian from that day—as we sat, looking at what had been Betsy on the Christmas dinner table. My sister never ate meat again, and I’ve never had beef again. I just eat chicken.
Could you share a favorite holiday tradition that you had growing up that you still practice, or a new tradition you started with your families?
KKA • In my immediate family, as in my nuclear family, we don’t really celebrate Christmas, we celebrate Kwanzaa. We started doing that about 20 years ago. What I love about the holiday season is that my children can go to their grandparents’ house, and enjoy the tradition of getting presents from there. Then coming home, we do the wonderful thing that I love about Kwanzaa, which is talking about how one serves the community. I enjoy reading with my children, and them writing essays and presenting to the rest of the family what they intend to do for themselves and for their family and for the community—that’s a real high point of the holiday season for me.
SR • The one tradition that we started in my grown-up family, with my son and my former wife, was we would take in theater orphans for Christmas. We would take in actors or sometimes interns, people who were working in such a way that they could not get to family and were going to have their Christmas dinner at McDonalds or something. It was always such a nice tradition. Perhaps it’s time to restart that.
Is there a holiday celebration that occurs in Baltimore, or in the region, that you enjoy, or are hoping to try this year?
KKA • I did the monument lighting [in Mount Vernon] last year with the family, and it was great fun. We’ll do that one again this year without a shadow of a doubt.
SR • I’m very curious about the Hampden parade. I will definitely do that this year. A number of times in the past we were lucky enough to be invited to the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House, and that’s a pretty cool celebration.
KKA • Can you get me one of those, sir?
SR • That depends on—well, I guess we know who will be the President this year….
Do either of you have a holiday travel horror story?
SR • I was presenting a ballet company in Savannah, Georgia, with my wife— this was 20-plus years ago. We thought, surely we won’t have any trouble finding a Thanksgiving meal somewhere. A few hours later—after hours of driving—we ended up having our Thanksgiving meal at a truck stop outside of Savannah. Not a horror story, I guess. In fact, it’s kind of wonderful, in a perverse way.
Each program this season will include a short conversation between CENTERSTAGE’s fearless leaders.
conversations with Kwame and Stephen
We encourage you to join the conversation!You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or just email [email protected] with your questions for Kwame and Stephen.
centerstagemd @centerstage_md
Bus stop | 19
Looking for just the perfect present for your child’s teacher, a coworker, or maybe even yourself? Give the gift of theater tickets. From now until December 31 you can purchase our Holiday Gift Pack, which entitles the recipient(s) to four tickets, good for any performance, any night*, and any seat for only $100.
Call the Box Offi ce at 410.332.0033 or visit us online at www.centerstage.org/GiftPack to set up this Gift Pack for yourself or a loved one.
OR
Detach the Gift Pack Certifi cate included here and fi ll it out with the information the Box Offi ce gives you. [If you need more than one, we’ll be happy to send additional certifi cates.]
This Gift Pack Cert ifi cate is a gift from ______________________ and entitles
the bearer ____________________ to four tickets to use for any performance*
remaining in the 2012–13 50th Anniversary Season at CENTERSTAGE. Simply call
the Box Offi ce to redeem at 410.332.0033 and refer to Order Number _________. *Opening Nights are excluded.
Detach gift certifi cate below
*Opening Nights are excluded. Gift Packs redeemable for four tickets each. Additional tickets [in multiples of four] may be purchased at retail price.
Holiday ShoppingMade Easy!
Robert Dorfman; Justin Scott Brown and Dana Steingold; Gretchen Hall and Avery Brooks; Bruce Randolph Nelson. Photos by Richard Anderson.
20 | CENTERSTAGE
As we move through our landmark anniversary season, we invite you to help us celebrate our past. For videos, audio interviews, and memories of our history, visit www.centerstage.org/anniversary.
1975–1991Between 1975 and 1991 Stan Wojewodski, Jr. served as Artistic Director. Throughout his tenure, Wojewodski personally directed over 40 productions, challenging audiences with an artistically adventurous, intellectually rigorous repertoire and furthering the theater’s reputation as a bold leader at the vanguard of the national regional theater movement.
Under Wojewodski’s leadership, and financed by a National Endowment of the Arts Challenge Grant, First stage was launched in 1979, allowing for the development of new works by commissioning new playwrights. First Stage also enabled directors and writers to workshop new plays before an audience. Over the course of the project, several plays would return to CENTERSTAGE as full productions.
In this period, CENTERSTAGE grew to be a bedrock of the regional theater community. Actors such as John Goodman, Patricia Gage, Kyra Sedgwick, Terry O’Quinn, and Samuel L. Jackson took a turn on the theater’s boards before becoming household names through television or film. Debut works by the likes of playwright Eric Overmyer and such directors as Hal Prince also marked CENTERSTAGE's role in the greater theater world.
In March of 1978, the Maryland General Assembly officially honored CENTERSTAGE as the State Theater of Maryland, formally recognizing the leading role the theater continued to demonstrate within the Baltimore cultural community and beyond. In April of the same year, WBAL-AM and CENTERSTAGE began an unusual and exciting partnership, as the radio station aired the first of what would
be 33 years of on-air radio auctions for the theater. The annual auction (now held online) became a well-loved event and a major fundraiser for the theater’s educational and artistic endeavors.
In 1985, the young Playwrights Festival celebrated its debut. This award-winning educational program still thrives today, receiving hundreds of original scripts each year from student playwrights throughout Maryland. Plays by selected honorees receive staged public productions featuring professional actors at the annual festival.
To accommodate the theater’s growing audience and broad artistic ambitions, the Calvert Street building’s facilities soon expanded as well. In October of 1990, CENTERSTAGE dedicated the downstairs theater in honor of benefactors Peggy, Richard, and Esther Pearlstone. Not long afterward, in February of 1991, an innovative, flexible new performance space was added on the fourth floor as part of a major building renovation. The Head Theater, named for longtime trustee Howard Head and his wife Martha, opened with the world premiere of Overmyer's The Heliotrope Bouquet By Scott Joplin & Louis Chauvin. As Managing Director Peter Culman observed at the time,
“The imagination of the production complemented the imagination of The Head Theater.”
At the end of the 1990–91 Season, Stan Wojewodski stepped down after 16 years at the helm to accept the position of Dean of the Yale School of Drama. Irene Lewis would soon take the reins as Artistic Director, propelling CENTERSTAGE into a new period of innovation and outreach.
Visit www.centerstage.org/anniversary for a more in-depth look at our history— and keep an eye on the programs throughout the season as we chronicle each era of CENTERSTAGE’s growth in the Baltimore community.
50th anniversarY The Third Decade: Growth & New Voices
Top to bottom: Stan Wojewodski, Jr.; cleaning out the fourth floor in what would become The Head Theater; Opening of The Head Theater.
Bus stop | 21
To celebrate its 50th Anniversary, CENTERSTAGE asked 50 American playwrights to answer a simple question: What is my America?
The responses, captured in 50 new monologues fi lmed by award-winning director Hal Hartley and Possible Films, range from the political to the personal, and form a snapshot of our nation through the eyes of its playwrights.
CENTERSTAGE would like to thank Lynn and Tony Deering and The Charlesmead Foundation for sponsoring this project, and all of those who commissioned individual monologues:The William L. and
Victorine Q. Adams Foundation and The Rodgers Family Fund
Denise and Philip AndrewsPeter and Millicent BainPenny BankEllen and Ed BernardSylvia and Eddie BrownStephanie and
Ashton CarterBrian Comes and Ray
MitchenerScott and Kim DavidJane and Larry DroppaJohn Gerdy and
E. Follin SmithCarole and Neil GoldbergAdam and Fredye GrossBob and Cheryl GuthRichard and Margaret
HimelfarbCheryl Hudgins Williams
and Alonza Williams
Mame HuntKathi HyleMurray and
Joan KappelmanBob and Townsend KentPatrick KerinsJohn LaporteKenneth C. and
Elizabeth M. LundeenMichelle McKenna-DoyleJohn and Mary MessmoreTom and Cindi MonahanTerry MorgenthalerMr. and Mrs.
J. William MurrayTommy and Sally O’BrienLee and Marilyn Ogburn Judy and Scott PharesMr. and Mrs. Philip RauchStephen RichardMatthew and Dana SlaterJay SmithSharon Smith
Scott and Mimi SomervilleThe Staff at CENTERSTAGEHank Stewart and
Joyce UlrichJim and Lynn StrottLouis B. Thalheimer
and Juliet A. EurichDonald and Mariana
ThomsTransamerica Financial
Solutions Group Katherine L. VaughnsThe Dedicated Volunteers
at CENTERSTAGEBarbara Voss and
Charles E. Noell, IIIEllen Remsen Webb and
J.W. Thompson WebbPatricia Yevics-Eisenberg
and Stewart EisenbergSteven Ziger and
James Snead
Go online to www.centerstage.org/myamerica to view all of the videos, or stop by the Media Wall in the lobby.
22 | CENTERSTAGE
By Gavin Witt, Associate Artistic Director
preview: The MountaintopBy Katori Hall • Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah • Jan 9–Feb 24, 2013
The Lorraine Hotel. April, 1968. In room 306, Dr. King unwinds and prepares. A visit from a hotel maid offers welcome diversion and a challenging new perspective—but also raises profound and surprising questions. Already an international sensation—winner of London’s Olivier Award in its West End debut and recently hailed in a star-studded Broadway production—Katori Hall’s dynamic new play gets its first showing for Baltimore audiences at CENTERSTAGE starting January 9, 2013.
As much as Hall’s play offers a fantasia on the final hours of one of history’s monumental men, she also uses The Mountaintop to explore a more personal story, uniting three generations of the women in her family. Memphis natives, Hall’s mother and grandmother were looking forward to hearing Dr. King speak during his 1968 visit in support of the sanitation workers strike. But when word spread, all-too-plausibly, of a planned bombing at the Mason Temple, they stayed home; Hall’s mother, Carrie Mae, then only 15, was left pleading in vain with “Big Momma” to let her go.
Instead, missing the speech became a lifelong regret. Now, in Hall’s hands, Carrie Mae becomes Camae, the hotel maid who spends a few of those fateful final hours with King. There in his room at the Lorraine Motel, he is not just a figure of legend; he is also a husband, father, leader, colleague, and man, who could inspire many and yet doubt himself. He is the myth, and the
human behind the myth. And the seemingly innocuous, nearly anonymous maid more than holds her own with the icon and the man. Partly based on Carrie Mae’s missed opportunity, Hall has said that Camae also bears traces of her mother in other ways, and she provides a distinctive contrast to the Reverend. This outspoken working woman offers Dr. King a chance to unburden, but also finds a way to have her say. And what a say she turns out to have.
The speech that Dr. King gave in Carrie Mae’s absence, with its prophetic gaze into the future and equally prophetic foreboding of the next night’s assassination, has become one of the more famous among a long list of King’s noted orations. In it, King imagines himself gazing like Moses into a Promised Land he may never reach, but peaceful and happy to have led the way there. When he was killed the following evening, the prophetic seemed prescient. In The Mountaintop, Katori Hall goes back in time to give her mother the chance encounter she never got; but she also offers a fantastical, imaginative reflection on all those prophetic overtones that shroud the Memphis visit. Her play offers a panoramic view that goes well beyond the events of 1968—and invites us to consider roads travelled and still untrodden. After all, as Hall so powerfully envisions in her theatrical duologue, we are all at once witnesses to history and participants in it. Come play your part.
Œ
“The truth ain’t gotsta to be fair. It’s the truth.”
“Well, as you can tell...I ain’t yo’ ordinary ole maid.”
katori Hall
Bus stop | 23
supporting the Annual Fund @ centerstageJuly 1, 2011– October 17, 2012
The following list includes gifts of $250 or more—individual, corporate, foundation, and government contributions—made to the CENTERSTAGE Annual Fund between July 1, 2011 and October 17, 2012. Although space limitations make it impossible for us to list everyone who helps fund our artistic, education, and community programs, we are enormously grateful to each person who contributes to CENTERSTAGE.
We couldn’t do it without you!
The CEnTErSTAGE Society represents donors who, with their annual contributions of $2,500 or more, provide special opportunities for our artists and audiences. Society members are actively involved through special events, theater-related travel, and behind-the-scenes conversations with theater artists.
ArTiSTS CirCLE ($25,000+)
The William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Foundation and The rodgers Family Fund
The miriam and Jay Wurtz Andrus Trustellen and ed BernardStephanie and Ashton CarterThe Annie e. Casey FoundationThe Charlesmead FoundationJames and Janet ClausonLynn and Tony Deeringedgerton Foundation new
American Play AwardsKathleen HyleKenneth C. and elizabeth m. Lundeenmarilyn meyerhoffTerry H. morgenthaler and Patrick KerinsJudy and Scott Pharesmr. and mrs. Philip rauchGeorge rochemr. and mrs. George m. ShermanThe Shubert Foundation, Inc.mr. and mrs. robert W. Smith, Jr.Harold and mimi Steinberg
Charitable Trustms. Barbara Voss and Charles e. noell, III
PrODuCErS CirCLE ($10,000–$24,999)
Peter and millicent BainThe William G. Baker, Jr. memorial FundPenny BankThe Jacob and Hilda Blaustein
Foundation, Inc.
The Bunting Family Foundationmr. and mrs. George L. BuntingThe Helen P. Denit Charitable Trustms. nancy Dorman and mr. Stanley
mazaroffmr. and mrs. Larry D. DroppaJohn Gerdy and e. Follin SmithThe Goldsmith Family FoundationThe Laverna Hahn Charitable Trustmartha HeadJ.I. Foundationmr. and mrs. e. robert Kent, Jr.mr. and mrs. Samuel G. macfarlanemr. and mrs. J. William murraymr. Louis B. Thalheimer and ms. Juliet
A. eurichms. Katherine L. Vaughns
PLAyWriGHTS CirCLE ($5,000–$9,999)Anonymousms. Katharine C. BlakesleeHenry and ruth Blaustein rosenberg
FoundationJames T. and Francine G. BradySylvia and eddie BrownThe nathan & Suzanne Cohen
FoundationThe Cordish FamilyThe Jane and Worth B. Daniels, Jr.
Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation
Brian and Denise eakesFascitelli Family FoundationDr. and mrs. neil D. Goldberg
Donald and Sybil Hebbmr. and mrs. martin Hillmurray and Joan KappelmanFrancie and John KeenanKwame and michelle Kwei-ArmahThe John J. Leidy Foundation, Inc.The macht Philanthropic Fundrobert e. meyerhoff and rheda BeckerJohn and Susan nehraStephen richard and mame HuntThe Jim & Patty rouse Charitable
FoundationDr. edgar and Betty Sweren, in honor
of Kwame Kwei-Armah and his oBe Award recognition
mr. and mrs. J.W. Thompson Webbms. Linda Woolf
DirECTOrS CirCLE ($2,500–$4,999)
AnonymousThe Lois and Irving Blum Foundation, Inc.Drs. Joanna and Harry Brandtmary Catherine BuntingAugust and melissa ChiaseraThe mary & Dan Dent Fund of the
Baltimore Community Foundationmr. and mrs. Walter B. Doggett, IIImr. and mrs. michael FalconeDick and maria Gamperms. Suzan GarabedianThe Harry L. Gladding Foundation/
Winnie and neal BordenGoldseker Foundation/Ana Goldseker
Fredye and Adam Grossrobert and Cheryl GuthF. Barton Harvey, III and Janet marie
Smith, in honor of Peter CulmanThe Hecht-Levi Foundation, Inc.Dr. and mrs. J. Woodford HowardThe Harley W. Howell Charitable
Foundationms. Sherrilyn A. Ifillmr. and mrs. Stephen Immeltmr. and mrs. Herschel L. LangenthalJonna and Fred Lazarusmrs. Diane markmanLinda and John mcClearymr. and mrs. John L. messmoreJim and mary millerJeannie murphyDr. and mrs. Lawrence C. Pakulamarjorie rodgers Cheshire and mark
Cheshiremonica and Arnold SagnerScot T. Spencermr. michael Styermr. and mrs. Donald and mariana ThomsTrexler Foundation, Inc. - Jeff Abarbanel
and David GoldnerKathryn and mark Vaselkivmr. and mrs. Loren and Judy WesternScott and mary WielerTed and mary Jo WieseCheryl Hudgins Williams and Alonza
WilliamsSydney and ron Wilner
InDIVIDUALS & FoUnDATIonS
50 th AnnIVerSAry SeASonPrESEnTinG SPOnSOr
SEASOn SPOnSOrSellen and ed BernardStephanie and Ashton CarterJames and Janet ClausonLynn and Tony Deering and
The Charlesmead FoundationJane and Larry DroppaTerry H. morgenthaler and Patrick KerinsJudy and Scott PharesPhil and Lynn rauchJay and Sharon SmithBarbara Voss and Charles e. noell, III
COrPOrATE SPOnSOrS
T. rowe Price Foundation
ASSOCiATE SEASOn SPOnSOrSKathleen HyleKenneth C. and elizabeth m. Lundeen
MEDiA PArTnErS
24 | CENTERSTAGE
InDIVIDUALS & FoUnDATIonS (continued)ASSOCiATES ($1,000–$2,499)AnonymousMr. and Mrs. Raymond Bank
Family Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation
Ms. Taunya BanksDonald BartlingMr. and Mrs. Marc BlumJohn and Carolyn BoitnottDr. and Mrs. Donald D. BrownSandra and Thomas BrushartMaureen and Kevin ByrnesMeredith and Joseph CallananThe Campbell Foundation, Inc.Caplan Family Foundation, Inc.Sally and Jerry CaseyJohn ChesterAnn K. ClappDr. Joan Develin Coley and Mr.
Lee RiceConstantinides Family
FoundationRobert and Janice DavisThe Richard & Rosalee C.
Davison FoundationMr. James H. DeGraffenreidt, Jr.
and Dr. Mychelle Y. FarmerAlbert F. DeLoskey and Lawrie
DeeringRosetta and Matt DeVitoMr. Jed Dietz and Dr. Julia
McMillanMr. and Mrs. Eric DottMs. Lynne Durbin and John-
Francis MergenJack and Nancy DwyerPatricia Yevics-Eisenberg and
Stewart EisenbergBuddy and Sue Emerson, in
appreciation of Ken and Elizabeth Lundeen
Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Freedman
Frank and Jane GaborJose and Ginger GalvezJonathan and Pamela Genn, in
honor of Cindi Monahan and Beth Falcone
Ms. Sandra Levi GerstungJanet and John GilbertAnnie Groeber, in honor of
Dr. John E. AdamsStuart and Linda GrossmanH.R. LaBar Family Foundation
Fund of The Greater Cincinnati Foundation
Bill and Scootsie HatterSandra and Thomas HessDrs. Dahlia Hirsch and Barry
Wohl, in honor of Carole Goldberg
Mr. and Mrs. Leonard HomerMr. and Mrs. James HormuthThe A. C. and Penney Hubbard
FoundationMr. and Mrs. Theodore ImesJoseph J. JaffaMr. and Mrs. Mark JosephFrancine and Allan KrumholzMr. and Mrs. Mark and Sandra
LakenJoseph M. and Judy K.
LangmeadDr. and Mrs. George Lentz, Jr.Marty Lidston and Jill
LeukhardtMr. and Mrs. Earl & Darielle
Linehan/Linehan Family Foundation
Maryland Charity CampaignMichelle McKenna-DoyleJoseph and Jane MeyerTom and Cindi Monahan
Ms. Stacey Morrison and Mr. Brian Morales
Mr. and Mrs. Lee OgburnMs. Jo-Ann Mayer OrlinskyMr. and Mrs. Stanley Panitz
Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation, in honor of Peter Culman
Ms. Beth PerlmanRonald and Carol RecklingMs. Kathleen C. Ridder, in
honor of Peter CulmanThe James and Gail Riepe
Family FoundationNathan and Michelle
RobertsonDr. David A. RobinsonMr. Grant RochThe Rollins-Luetkemeyer
FoundationMr. and Mrs. Todd SchubertMrs. Gail SchulhoffCharles and Leslie SchwabeThe Tim and Barbara Schweizer
Foundation, Inc.Bayinnah Shabazz, M.D.Barbara and Sig ShapiroThe Ida & Joseph Shapiro
FoundationThe Earle & Annette Shawe
Family FoundationDr. Barbara SheltonDana and Matthew SlaterMr. and Mrs. Robert N.
SmelkinsonJudith R. and Turner B. SmithMr. and Mrs. Scott SmithScott and Mimi SomervilleMr. Gilbert H. Stewart and Ms.
Joyce UlrichDr. and Mrs. John StrahanSusan and Brian SullamMr. and Mrs. Ronald W. TaylorSanford and Karen TeplitzkyJohn A. UlatowskiUnited Way of Central
Maryland CampaignMr. and Mrs. George and Beth
Van DykeCarolyn and Robert WallaceNanny and Jack Warren, in
honor of Lynn DeeringJanna P. WehrleAnn Wolfe and Dick MeadJohn W. WoodDr. Laurie S. ZabinMr. Calman Zamoiski, Jr., in
honor of Terry MorgenthalerDrs. Nadia and Elias ZerhouniZiger/Snead ArchitectsMr. E. Zuspan
COLLEAGuES ($500–$999)AnonymousLindsay and Bradley AlgerThe Alsop Family FoundationMrs. Alexander ArmstrongArt Seminar GroupMr. Robert and Dorothy BairMayer and Will Baker, in honor
of Terry MorgenthalerAmy and Bruce BarnettMr. and Mrs. Charles C. and
Patti BaumMs. Jane Baum RodbellJaye and Dr. Ted Bayless FundMr. and Mrs. S. Woods and
Catherine L. BennettMr. and Mrs. Bruce Blum, in
memory of Shirley Feinstein Blum
Rose CarpenterMr. and Mrs. Carl F. Christ
Combined Charity CampaignThe Deering Family FoundationGene DeJackome and Kim
GingrasThe Honorable and Mrs. E.
Stephen DerbyDave and Joyce EdingtonPatricia Egan and Peter
Hegeman, in honor of Peter Culman
The Eliasberg Family Foundation, Inc.
Donald and Margaret EngvallMr. and Mrs. Edgar and Faith
Feingold, in memory of Sally W. Feingold
Sandra and John FerriterAndrea and Samuel FineDennis and Patty FlynnMs. Nancy FreymanDr. Joseph Gall and Dr. Diane
DwyerHal & Pat GilreathMary and Richard GormanLouise A. HagerTerry Halle and Wendy
McAllisterMelanie and Donald HeacockLee M. Hendler, in honor of
Peter CulmanRebecca Henry and Harry
GrunerBetsy and George HessMrs. Heidi HoffmanMr. Edward HuntMs. Harriet F. IglehartRichard Jacobs and Patricia
LasherMs. Mary Claire JeskeBJ and Candy JonesMax JordanDr. and Mrs. Juan M. JuanteguyPeter and Kay KaplanMs. Shirley KaufmanMr. and Mrs. Padraic Kennedy,
in honor of Ken LundeenRoland and Judy Phair KingStewart KoehlerMr. John Lanasa, in honor of
Peter CulmanMr. Claus Leitherer and Mrs.
Irina FedorovaDr. and Mrs. Ronald LesserMarilyn LeutholdDr. and Mrs. John LionKenneth and Christine LoboThe Dr. Frank C. Marino
Foundation, Inc.Dr. Carole MillerMr. Jeston I. MillerStephanie F. Miller, in honor of
The Lee S. Miller Jr. FamilyThe Montag Family Fund of The
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, in honor of Beth Falcone
Ms. Karen MalloyGeorge and Beth MurnaghanLettie MyersJudith Needham and Warren
KilmerRoger F. Nordquist and Joyce
WardMr. and Mrs. James and Mimi
Piper Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation
Bonnie PittMr. Mike Plaisted and Ms.
Maggie WebbertDave and Chris PowellJill PrattRobert E. and Anne L. PrinceMr. and Mrs. Richard RadmerMrs. Peggy L. Rice
Mr. and Mrs. Harold RojasDorothy L. and Henry A.
Rosenberg, Jr.Kevin and Judy RossiterMrs. Bette RothmanMr. Al RussellSheila and Steve SachsMs. Renee C. SamuelsMs. Sherry SchnepfeMr. and Mrs. Eugene H.
SchreiberScott Sherman and Julie
RothmanThe Sinksy-Kresser-Racusin
Memorial FoundationSusan Somerville-Hawes, in
honor of EncounterGeorgia and George StamasMr. Ben StoneRobert and Patricia TarolaDiana and Ken TroutSharon and David TufaroIn memory of Sally WessnerMr. Michael T. WhartonDr. and Mrs. Frank R. WitterEric and Pam Young
ADVOCATES ($250–$499)AnonymousMr. Alan M. Arrowsmith, IIMr. and Mrs. Jon Baker, in
honor of Terry MorgenthalerMichael BakerDrs. Lewis and Diane BeckerJudge Robert BellRachel and Steven Bloom, in
honor of Beth FalconeMr. Chad Bolton, in honor of
Peter CulmanPerry and Aurelia BoltonChiChi and Peter BosworthBetty Jo BowmanJan BoyceBeth and Dale BradyMr. and Mrs. Charles BryanMr. David BundyMs. Deborah W. CallardCindy CandeloriThe Jim and Anne Cantler
Memorial Fund of the Baltimore Community Foundation
Mr. and Mrs. David CarterMr. Andrew J. CaryMr. and Mrs. James CaseDonna and Tony ClareStanton CollinsDavid and Sara CookeMr. and Mrs. Richard D. CraftonMs. Barbara CrainMr. Thomas Crusse and Mr.
David Imre, in honor of Stephanie and Ash Carter
Richard and Lynda DavisSally Digges and James ArnoldMr. and Mrs. Ivor EdmondsDeborah and Philip EnglishMr. Dennis EppsMs. Rhea FeikinMs. Jeannette E. FestaBob and Susie FetterDr. and Mrs. Robert P.
FleishmanMr. and Mrs. George FlickingerJoan and David ForesterDr. Neal M. Friedlander and Dr.
Virginia K. AdamsConstance A. GetzovMark and Patti GillenHerbert and Harriet GoldmanMr. Bruce Goldman
robert W. Smith, Jr., Presidentedward C. Bernard, Vice PresidentJuliet eurich, Vice PresidentTerry H. morgenthaler, Vice Presidente. Follin Smith, TreasurerKatherine L. Vaughns, Secretary
Katharine C. Blakeslee+James T. Brady+C. Sylvia Brown+Stephanie CarterAugust J. ChiaseraMarjorie Rodgers CheshireJanet ClausonLynn DeeringJed DietzWalter B. Doggett, IIIJane W.I. DroppaBrian EakesBeth W. FalconeC. Richard Gamper, Jr.Suzan GarabedianCarole GoldbergAna GoldsekerAdam GrossCheryl O’Donnell GuthMartha HeadKathleen W. HyleTed E. ImesMurray M. Kappelman, MD+John J. KeenanE. Robert Kent, Jr.Joseph M. Langmead+Jonna Gane LazarusKenneth C. LundeenMichelle McKenna-DoyleMarilyn Meyerhoff+J. William MurrayCharles E. NoellEsther Pearlstone+Judy M. PharesJill PrattPhilip J. RauchHarold RojasMonica Sagner+Renee C. SamuelsTodd SchubertGeorge M. Sherman+Scott SomervilleScot T. SpencerMichael B. StyerRonald W. TaylorDonald ThomsJ.W. Thompson WebbRonald M. WilnerCheryl Hudgins WilliamsLinda S. Woolf
+ Trustees Emeriti
BoArD oF TrUSTeeS
Bus stop | 25
Mr. Howard GradetRon and Andrea GriesmarThomas and Barbara GuarnieriMs. Doris M. GugelMr. David GuyJane Halpern and James PettitMs. Paulette HammondDr. and Dr. James and Vicki
HandaMr. and Mrs. Richard HawesIn Memory of Eric R. HeadSue HessMr. Donald H. Hooker, Jr.Mr. Jonathan HornbeckMs. Irene HornickMr. and Mrs. Martin HorowitzMs. Sarah IssacsMr. William JacobMr. and Mrs. James S. and
Hillary Aidus JacobsA.H. Janoski, M.D., in honor of
Jane JanoskiJames and Julie JohnstoneRichard and Judith KatzB. KellerDr. and Mrs. Myron KellnerMr. and Mrs. Stephen J. KellyDonald Knox and Mary Towery,
in memory of Carolyn Knox and Gene Towery
David and Ann KochDr. and Mrs. Randi L. KohnGina KotowskiMr. and Mrs. Robert A. LagasDrs. Don and Pat LangenbergMr. Richard M. LansburghMr. and Mrs. William LarsonDrs. Ronald and Mary LeachSara W. LeviTerry Lorch and Tom LiebelPaul and Anne MaddenNancy Magnuson and Jay
Harrell, in honor of Betty and Edgar Sweren
Mr. Elvis MarksDon MartinMs. Michael McMullanMary and Barry MenneCarolyn and Michael MeredithPeniel and Julia S. MoedMr. and Mrs. James and Shirley
MooreThe Honorable Diana and Fred
Motz, in memory of Nancy Roche
Mr. and Mrs. William H. MullinDr. Patrick Murphy and Dr.
Genevieve A. LosonskyStephen and Terry NeedelIn memory of Nelson NeumanMs. Nina NobleMs. Irene Norton and Heather
MillarThe P.R.F.B. Charitable
Foundation, in memory of Shirley Feinstein Blum
Michael and Phyllis PanopoulosJustine and Ken ParezoFred and Grazina PearsonLinda and Gordon PeltzChris and Deborah PenningtonMr. William PhillipsRonald and Patricia PillingMrs. Kathy PivenLeslie and Gary PlotnickDr. Albert J. Polito and Dr.
Redonda G. MillerConnie and Roger PumphreyCyndy Renoff and George TalerDr. Michael Repka and Dr. Mary
Anne FaccioloNatasha and Keenan RiceAlison and Arnold RichmanRichard and Sheila Riggs
Ms. Elizabeth Ritter and Mr. Lawrence Koppelman
Ida and Jack RoadhouseMr. and Mrs. Domingo and
Karen Rodriguez, in honor of Emma Grace Barnes
Mr. and Mrs. Jerry RoeslerRichard and Mary RimkunasLouis and Luanne RuskFrank and Michelle SampleMs. Gloria SavadowFrederica and William Saxon, Jr.Mr. Steve SchwartzmanMs. Minnie ShorterMr. and Mrs. L. SiemsMr. Howard Sigler and Ms.
Deborah HyltonDr. and Mrs. Donald J. SlowinskiRosie and Jim SmithSolomon and Elaine SnyderJoseph SterneMrs. Clare H. Stewart, in honor
of Peter CulmanBrenda and Dan StoneMs. Joann StricklandMr. and Mrs. James R.and Gail
SwanbeckTed and Lynda ThillyFredrick and Cindy ThompsonRobin and Harold TuckerComprehensive Car Care/
Robert WagnerDonald and Darlene WakefieldMs. Magda WesterhoustMs. Camille Wheeler and Mr.
William MarshallHarold and Joan YoungMr. Norman YouskauskasMr. Paul Zugates
SPECiAL GrAnTS & GiFTSThe Leading National Theatres Program, a joint initiative of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
GOVErnMEnT GrAnTSCENTERSTAGE is funded by an operating grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency dedicated to cultivating a vibrant cultural community where the arts thrive. Funding for the Maryland State Arts Council is also provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
CENTERSTAGE’s catalog of Education Programs has been selected by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities as a 2011 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award Finalist.
CENTERSTAGE participates annually in Free Fall Baltimore, a program of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts.
Baltimore County Executive, County Council, & Commission on Arts and Sciences
Carroll County Government
Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County Government
GiFTS in-kinDThe Afro AmericanAkbar RestaurantDean AlexanderArt LithoAu Bon PainThe Baltimore SunBlimpie
The Brewer's ArtCalvert Wine & SpiritsCasa di PastaCharcoal GrillCima Model ManagementThe Classic Catering People ChipotleThe City PaperEggspectationsFisherman’s Friend/PEZ Candy,
Inc.Gertrude's RestaurantGreg's BagelsGT PizzaGutierrez Studios Haute DogHeavenly HamThe HelmandHotel MonacoIggie'sThe Jewish TimesMarriott Minato Mitchell Kurtz Architect, PCMount Vernon Stable and
SaloonNew System BakeryNo Worries CosmeticsOriole's Pizza and SubPazoPizza Boli'sPizza HutPromoWorksRepublic National Distributing
CompanyRoly Poly Romano’s Macaroni GrillSabatino'sSenovvaShugoll ResearchThe SignmanStyle MagazineSunlight LLC, in honor of Kacy
ArmstrongUrbaniteA Vintner's SelectionWawaWegman'sWhitmore Print & ImagingWYPR Radiowww.thecheckshop.us
MATCHinG GiFT COMPAniES The Abell Foundation, Inc.Bank of AmericaThe Annie E. Casey
FoundationConstellation EnergyThe Deering Family
FoundationExxon CorporationFrance-Merrick FoundationGE FoundationGoldseker FoundationIBM CorporationMcCormick & Co. Inc.Norfolk Southern FoundationOpen Society Institute PNC BankStanley Black & Decker SunTrust BankT. Rowe Price Group
We make every effort to provide accurate acknowledgement of our contributors. We appreciate your patience and assistance in keeping our lists current. To advise us of corrections, please call 410.986.4026.
PLAyWriGHTS CirCLEAnonymousAccentureAmerican Trading &
Production CorporationThe Baltimore Life
CompaniesBaxter, Baker, Sidle, Conn
& Jones, P.A.Brown Advisoryenvironmental
reclamation CompanyFTI ConsultingHoward BankLord Baltimore Capital
CorporationmcGuireWoods LLPPnC BankProcter & GambleStifel nicolausTransamerica Financial
Solutions GroupVenable, LLPWhiteford, Taylor &
Preston LLPWhiting-Turner
Contracting Co.
DirECTOrS CirCLEAlexander Design StudioBay Imagerye*Trade Financial
CorporationFunk & Bolton, P.A.offit | Kurman, Attorneys
at LawPessin Katz Law P.A.PricewaterhouseCoopers
LLPSchoenfeld Insurance
AssociatesStevenson UniversityThe Zolet Lenet Group at
morgan Stanley Smith Barney
ASSOCiATESAyers Saint Gross,
IncorporatedChesapeake Plywood, LLCCorporate office
Properties Trusternst & young LLP
CorPorATIonS
PrODuCErS CirCLE
ArTiSTS CirCLE
ADVOCATES continued
T. Rowe Price Foundation, Inc.
26 | CENTERSTAGE
Baltimore Community Foundation Web: www.bcf.org Phone: 410.332.4171
Bus stop | 27
Kwame Kwei-Armah oBe–Artistic Director Stephen richard–Managing Director AdministrationAssociate Managing Director–Del W. RisbergExecutive Assistant–Kacy ArmstrongThe Ellen and Ed Bernard Management Intern–
Batya FeldmanYale Fellow–Alyssa Simmons
ArtisticAssociate Artistic Director–Gavin WittArtistic Producer–Susanna GellertArtistic Senior Fellow–Kellie MeclearyThe Lynn and Tony Deering Artistic Intern–
Samantha Godfrey
Audience relationsBox Office Manager–Mandy BenedixAssistant Manager/Subscriptions Manager–
Jerrilyn KeeneAssistant Manager–Blane WycheFull-time Assistants–Lindsey Barr, Ashley Fain,
Rachel Holmes, Alana Kolb, Christopher LewisPart-Time Assistant–Froilan MateBar Manager–Sean Van CleveHouse Manager & Volunteer Coordinator–
Bertinarea CramptonAssistant House Managers–Linda Cavell,
Faith SavillAudience Relations Intern–Quincy PriceAudio Description–Ralph Welsh &
Maryland Arts Access
AudioSupervisor–Amy WedelEngineer–Eric LottThe Jane and Larry Droppa Audio Intern–
Andrew Graves
Community Programs & EducationDirector–Julianne FranzEducation Coordinator–Rosiland CauthenCommunity Programs & Education Intern–
Dustin MorrisThe James and Janet Clauson Education Intern–
Kristina SzilagyiTeaching Artists–The 5th L; Oran Bandel; Jerry Miles, Jr.;
CJay Philip; Wambui Richardson; Joan Weber
CostumesCostumer–David BurdickTailor–Edward DawsonCraftsperson–William E. CrowtherStitcher–Jessica RietzlerThe Terry H. Morgenthaler and Patrick Kerins Costumes
Intern– Elizabeth ChapmanThe Judy and Scott Phares Costumes Intern–
Anna Tringali
DevelopmentDirector–Cindi MonahanGrants Manager–Sean BeattieAnnual Fund Manager–Katelyn WhiteEvents Coordinator–Brad NorrisDevelopment Assistant–Julia OstroffAssistant–Christopher LewisAuction Coordinator–Sydney WilnerAuction Assistant–Norma Cohen
DramaturgyDirector–Gavin WittDramaturgy Senior Fellow–Kellie MeclearyApprentices–Roisin Dowling, Christine Prevas,
Kate Ramsdell, Bennett Remsberg, Matthew Buckley Smith, Lucy Walker
FinanceDirector–Susan RoseberyBusiness Manager–Kathy NolanAssociate–Carla Moose
GraphicsArt Director–Bill GeenenSenior Graphic Designer–Jason GembickiProduction Photographer–Richard AndersonGraphics Intern–Michelle FlemingThe Stephanie and Ashton Carter Digital Media Intern–
Leslie Datsis
information TechnologiesDirector–Joe LongSystems Administrator–Mark Slaughter
LightingLighting Director–Lesley BoeckmanMaster Electrician–Lily BradfordMultimedia Coordinator–Stew IvesStaff Electrician–Bevin MiyakeThe Barbara Capalbo Electrics Intern–Scot Gianelli
Marketing & CommunicationsDirector–Tony Heaphy Public Relations Manager–Heather C. JacksonMarketing Manager–Timmy MetznerDigital Media Associate–Timothy GellesMarketing Associate–Tia AbnerThe Jay and Sharon Smith Marketing and
Public Relations Fellow–Kiirstn PaganMedia Services–Planit
OperationsDirector–Harry DeLairOperations Assistant–Kali KeeneyHousekeeper–Jacqueline StewartSecurity Guards–Crown Security
Production ManagementProduction Manager–Mike SchleiferAssistant Production Manager– Caitlin PowersCompany Manager–Sara GroveProduction/Stage Management Intern–Ashley RiesterThe Phil and Lynn Rauch Company Management
Intern–Matt Shea
PropertiesManager–Jennifer StearnsAssistant Manager– Nathan ScheifeleArtisan–Jeanne-Marie BurdetteThe Kenneth C. and Elizabeth M. Lundeen Properties
Intern–Kimberly Townsend
SceneryTechnical Director–Tom RuppAssistant Technical Director–Laura P. MerolaShop Supervisor–Trevor GohrCarpenters–Joey Bromfield, Mike Kulha,
Scott RichardsonScene Shop Intern–Ryan Cole
Scenic ArtScenic Artist–Stephanie NimickIntern–Lauren Crabtree
Stage ManagementResident Stage Managers–Captain Kate Murphy,
Laura SmithThe Peter and Millicent Bain
Stage Management Intern–Brent BeaversThe Barbara Voss and Charles Noell
Stage Management Intern–Lindsay Eberly
Stage OperationsStage Carpenter–Eric Burton
The following .designers, artisans, and assistants contributed to this production of
Bus stop—Assistant to the Director–Ryan HaaseAssistant Lighting Designer–Charles WinterDraper–Ginny McKeeverLighting–Cartland Berge, Alison Burris, Jake Epp,
Aaron Haag, Michael SperberProperties–Samantha KuczynskiRun Crew–Meghan HughesScenery–Bernard Bender, Mark Eisendrath,
Seth Foster, J.R. FritschWigs–Chuck LaPointe
…Edgar Allan poe—Run Crew–Chris Gummerson
An Enemy of the people—Run Crew–Tenley Pitonzo
CENTERSTAGE operates under an agreement between LORT and Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.
The Director and Choreographer are members of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Inc., an independent national labor union.
The scenic, costume, lighting, and sound designers in LORT theaters are represented by United Scenic Artists, Local USA-829 of the IATSE.
Musicians engaged by CENTERSTAGE perform under the terms of an agreement between CENTERSTAGE and Local 40-543, American Federation of Musicians.
CENTERSTAGE is a constituent of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the nonprofit professional theater, and is a member of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT), the national collective bargaining organization of professional regional theaters.
The CEnTErSTAGE Program is published by:Center Stage Associates, Inc. 700 North Calvert Street Baltimore, Maryland 21202
Editor Heather C. JacksonAssistant Editor Kiirstn PaganArt Direction/Design Bill Geenen Design Jason Gembicki
Advertising Sales [email protected]
COnTACT inFOrMATiOnBox Office Phone 410.332.0033 Box Office Fax 410.727.2522 Administration 410.986.4000www.centerstage.org [email protected]
Material in the CENTERSTAGE performance program is made available free of charge for legitimate educational and research purposes only. Selective use has been made of previously published information and images whose inclusion here does not constitute license for any further re-use of any kind. All other material is the property of CENTERSTAGE, and no copies or reproductions of this material should be made for further distribution, other than for educational purposes, without express permission from the authors and CENTERSTAGE.
staff
28 | CENTERSTAGE
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