CARNEGIE MELLON SCHOOL OF DRAMA
2006-7 PRODUCTION SEASON
2006-7 PRODUCTION SEASON
Grad 1 acts:
FIRST REHEARSAL: August 30, 2006
FIRST TECH: September 15, 2006
OPEN: September 20, 2006
CLOSE: September 22, 2006
VENUE: WELLS
Junior Performance Project
FIRST REHEARSAL: August 30, 2006
FIRST TECH: September 18, 2006
OPEN: September 26, 2006
CLOSE: September 30, 1006
VENUE: CHOSKY
Title House of Blue Leaves
Author John Guare (1938- )
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1971
Genre Contemporary Dark Comedy
Director Guest
Cast 6M/5F
FIRST REHEARSAL: August 29, 2006 Scene Designer: Patrick Lynch
FIRST TECH: September 25, 2006 Costume Designer: Deana Frieman
PREVIEW: October 5, 2006 Lighting Designer: Dan Henry
OPEN: October 6, 2006
CLOSE: October 14, 2006
VENUE: RAUH
Title Miss Julie
Author August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Nationality Swedish
Year First Produced 1888
Genre Naturalist Drama
Director Ed Iskandar
Cast 1M/2F
FIRST REHEARSAL: September 5, 2006
FIRST TECH: October 6, 2006
OPEN: October 11, 2006
CLOSE: October 13, 2006
VENUE: CHOSKY
Title Man is Man
Author Bertolt Brecht (1858-1956)
Nationality German
Year First Produced 1924
Genre Social Satire/Dark Comedy
Director Kathleen Aumshoff
Cast 7M/1F
Note This will be produced at a site other than the Purnell Center
FIRST REHEARSAL: October 2, 2006
FIRST TECH: November 3, 2006
OPEN: November 8, 2006
CLOSE: November 10, 2006
VENUE: OFF-SITE
Title Side Show
Author Henry Krieger
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1997
Genre Contemporary Musical
Director Guest
FIRST REHEARSAL: October 16, 2006 Scene Designer: Adam Koch
FIRST TECH: November 13, 2006 Lighting Designer: Maya Nigrosh
PREVIEW: November 30, 2006 Costume Designer: Brandon McWilliams
OPEN: December 1, 2006
CLOSE: December 9, 2006
VENUE: CHOSKY
Title Romeo and Juliet
Author William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Nationality British
Year First Produced 1591 (perhaps)
Genre Elizabethan Tragedy
Director Laura Konsin
Cast 3M/4F for some reason
FIRST REHEARSAL: October 30, 2006
FIRST TECH: November 29, 2006
OPEN: December 6, 2006
CLOSE: December 9, 2006
VENUE: RAUH
New Works 1&2
FIRST REHEARSAL: November 27, 2006
FIRST TECH: January 29, 2007
OPEN: February 2, 2007
CLOSE: February 10, 2007
VENUE: WELLS
Title Keely & Du
Author Jane Martin
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1993
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Kristina Ball
Cast 2M/3F
FIRST REHEARSAL: November 27, 2006
FIRST TECH: February 2, 2007
PREVIEW:
OPEN: February 7, 2007
CLOSE: February 9, 2007
VENUE: RAUH
Title The Memorandum
Author Vaclav Havel (1936- )
Nationality Czech
Year First Produced 1965
Genre Contemporary Social Satire
Director Mladen Kiselov
Cast 6M/6F
Note This will be produced at a site outside the Purnell Center
FIRST REHEARSAL: November 27, 2006
FIRST TECH: February 3, 2007
OPEN: February 7, 2007
CLOSE: February 10, 2007
VENUE: TBA-Outside Purnell
PLAYGROUND
Begins: Sunday February 11, 2007
Ends Sunday February 18th, 2007
New Works 3&4
FIRST REHEARSAL: January 26, 2007
FIRST TECH: February 19, 2007
OPEN: February 23, 2007
CLOSE: March 3, 2007
VENUE: WELLS
WQED
OPEN: March 26, 2007
CLOSE: March 29, 2007
VENUE: WQED
Title 36 Views
Author Naomi Izuka (1965- )
Nationality American
Year First Produced 2002
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Michael Denis
Cast 3M/3F
FIRST REHEARSAL: January 16, 2007
FIRST TECH: February 23, 2007
OPEN: February 28, 2007
CLOSE: March 2, 2007
VENUE: RAUH
Title Frozen
Author Bryony Lavery (1947- )
Nationality British
Year First Produced 2002
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Robert May
Cast 2M/2F
FIRST REHEARSAL: February 5, 2007
FIRST TECH: March 23, 2007
OPEN: March 28, 2007
CLOSE: March 30, 2007
VENUE: RAUH
Title The Oresteia Project
Author Aeschylus (525-426 bce)
Nationality Greek
Year First Produced 458 bce
Genre Classical Tragedy
Director Jed Allen Harris
Cast 15M/8F
Note Harris’ ten-year research into this play culminates in a multiple-night, multiple-venue boundary-smashing vision that fills two major production slots, a first for our School.
FIRST REHEARSAL: February 19, 2007
FIRST TECH: March 26, 2007
PREVIEW: April 12, 2007
OPEN: April 13, 2007
CLOSE: April 28, 2007
VENUE: CHOSKY
Title Woyzeck
Author Georg Büchner (1813-1837)
Nationality German
Year First Produced 1873
Genre Social Drama
Director Dan Rigazzi
Cast 5M/1F
FIRST REHEARSAL: March 19, 2007
FIRST TECH: April 14, 2007
OPEN: April 25, 2007
CLOSE: April 28, 2007
VENUE: RAUH
CARNEGIE MELLON SCHOOL OF DRAMA
2006-7 PRODUCTION SEASON
SCRIPT DOSSIERS
Written by M. Chemers
Overview The 2006-7 Season of the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama promises to be one of the strongest in our century-old history of theatre productions. The season showcases cutting-edge new works as well as presenting innovative twists on some time-honored masterpieces. We have assembled some of the most celebrated playwrights of the ages, traditional and radical, tragic and funny, ranging from the incisive wit of social satirists, to the profound moral philosophies of the classical greats, to the transcendent beauty of song and dance, all done with the inimitable and consummate dedication you have come to expect from our students, faculty and guest artists.
Title House of Blue Leaves
Author John Guare (1938- )
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1971
Genre Contemporary Dark Comedy
Director Guest
Cast 6M/5F
Plot Summary Sad clown Artie wallows in self-pity; he writes terrible songs and on top of that no one wants to listen to them. He also has to manage his loony wife Bananas and his manic mistress, Bunny. Did I mention the Pope is in town and Artie’s psychotic son Ronnie has gone AWOL in order to assassinate him? Three nuns soon show up seeking shelter, followed by a deaf (and dumb) Hollywood starlet. Luckily at the last minute a Hollywood producer shows up, deus-ex-machina style, to save everyone.
Critical Interest Although critical responses are mixed (some take issue with the mingling of genres and social commentary), this play persistently nets big awards, including an Obie, a NY Drama Critics’, and a Tony in the1986 revival. Like much of Guare’s writing, this one is about the fear of obscurity, and the lengths to which people will go for their fifteen minutes of fame. It’s about the malaise that sets in following the failure of the American dream, about waking from a drug-induced stupor with strung-out has-been celebrities to find the whole world’s gone down the tubes and your government has dragged you into an illegitimate war. Uh, Viet Nam, I mean.
Author Bio John Guare is probably best know for his Six Degrees of Separation. Raised in Queens, Guare completed a playwrighting MFA at Yale in 1963. Guare was a founding member of the O’Neill Theatre Center, and was the resident playwright of the New York Shakespeare Festival. Louis Malle wrote of him that he “practices a humor that is synonymous with lucidity, exploding genre and clichés, taking us to the core of human suffering: the awareness of corruption in our own bodies, death circling in. We try to fight it all by creating various mythologies, and it is Guare's peculiar aptitude for exposing these grandiose lies of ours that makes his work so magical.”
Title Side Show
Author Henry Krieger
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1997
Genre Contemporary Musical
Director Guest
Cast
Plot Summary Based, extremely loosely, on the real-life show-business sisters, Daisy and Violet Hilton. Conjoined twins possessed of great beauty and musical talent, the historical Daisy and Violet led highly visible but very unglamorous and violent lives in the Depression-era United States. This play is a fictionalized treatment of the young sisters as they leave off music to begin careers in vaudeville. They must negotiate the dangers of fame and romantic entanglements while simultaneously living two very different lives in one body.
Critical Interest In the late 90’s, the show attracted a fanatic following before closing (some say prematurely) on Broadway. The script is not uncontroversial, as many disability rights advocates see the freak show tradition it romanticizes as the Amos n’ Andy of disability. Nevertheless, Side Show combines some unique theatricality with an enchanting score, brilliant strong acting and singing roles for two women, and opportunities for amazing design elements that span the aesthetic spectrum from the grotesque to the sublime.
Author Bio Kreiger is best-known for his score for the Broadway Dreamgirls, for which he was awarded a Grammy and nominated for a Tony and a Drama Desk Award. Side Show was nominated for a Tony in 1998. Krieger did net two Tonys for his score of The Tap Dance Kid.
Title The Oresteia Project
Author Aeschylus (525-426 bce)
Nationality Greek
Year First Produced 458 bce
Genre Classical Tragedy
Director Jed Allen Harris
Cast 15M/8F
Note Harris’ ten-year research into this play culminates in a multiple-night, multiple-venue boundary-smashing vision that fills two major production slots, a first for our School.
Plot Summary Part I, Agamemnon. The great leader is returning triumphant from the Trojan War, but at home, the terrible price he paid to sail to Troy (his daughter’s life) is coming due. Clytemnestra, his queen, conspires with her lover and husband’s cousin, Aegisthus, to murder her husband. Aesgisthus also has a debt to be repaid; Agamemnon’s father Atreus murdered Aegisthus’ siblings and fed them to their own father, Atreus’ brother Thyestes. Agamemnon slain, these karmic debts are repaid, but with worthless Aegisthus on the throne and a new blood crime to be avenged, all is not well.
Part II, The Choëphoræ, Orestes returns to find his father’s city in ruins, and his sister Elektra enjoins him, along with Apollo, to avenge his father’s murder. The theme of the play is largely meditations on the audacity and shamelessness of human action, as the leaders behave with such amorality to satisfy their passions. Orestes, caught in a moral abomination (damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t), executes his mother and so condemns himself to persecution from the chthonic forces of primal vengeance, the Furies.
Part III, The Eumenides. Pursued by the Furies, Orestes seeks asylum in Athens, where Apollo and Athena contest with the Furies over his fate. In the end, the horrific primal vengeance demons are subdued; all things being equal, Athena’s vote introduces mercy into the cosmic scheme, and the Furies are transformed into “the Kindly Ones,” but Athena reserves the right to release them again should the leaders of men ever lose their moral compasses and use their power to act wickedly with impunity.
Critical Interest The greatest oeuvre of the greatest playwright of all time, Oresteia contains all the glories of Aeschylus’ genius. William von Humboldt wrote of it that “among all the products of the Greek stage none can compare with it in tragic power; no other play shows the same intensity and pureness of belief in the divine and good; none can surpass the lessons it teaches, and the wisdom of which it is the mouthpiece.”
Author Bio Son of Euphorion, Aeschylus was noble-born. Set to watch his father’s vineyard as a boy, he was visited by the god Dionysos who advised him to go into playwriting. Young Aeschylus began writing for, and winning, the newly-established Athenian Drama Festival. With his Seven Against Thebes, his status as “the father of tragedy” was established and remains to this day undisputed. He is credited with establishing the second actor, diminishing the chorus, setting the “no violence onstage” decency standard, and innovating spectacular design concepts, particularly in costuming. The reception of his aristocratic masterwork, Oresteia, in democratic Athens, however, was so disappointing to him that it drove him into a self-imposed exile in Sicily, where an eagle, mistaking his bald head for a stone, dropped a tortoise on him from an extreme height, killing him instantly. Or so it is written.
Title Romeo and Juliet
Author William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Nationality British
Year First Produced 1591 (perhaps)
Genre Elizabethan Tragedy
Director Laura Konsin
Cast 3M/4F for some reason
Plot Summary This play follows the misfortunes of the original star-crossed lovers, children of feuding families in 16th century Verona. The intransigence of their respective clans forces the lovers to marry in secret; but the intrigue leads to murder, banishment, civic unrest, and the tragically beautiful ending that is cemented in the cultural consciousness of the English-speaking world.
Critical Interest The uber-play of tragic romances, this play is the most celebrated work of Shakespeare and is considered one of the most definitively characteristic plays of the English Renaissance. It is certainly one of the most revived, most translated to film, and most imitated plays in history.
Author Bio Born in Warwickshire in England, Shakespeare’s life remains a hotly-debated mystery. It seems likely that he fled an unhappy marriage to break into the London theatre scene in the 1580’s, where he joined the Admiral’s Men (later the King’s Men). A favorite playwright to the courts of Elizabeth and James, Shakespeare became the most widely-produced author in England and America in the 17th through the 19th centuries and heavily influenced the work of German classical and modern writers. Shakespeare is now widely considered the greatest dramatic writer of the English language, combining powerful moral themes, intense theatricality, sophisticated plots, psychologically complex characters, and elegant poetry.
Title Woyzeck
Author Georg Büchner (1813-1837)
Nationality German
Year First Produced 1873
Genre Social Drama
Director Dan Rigazzi
Cast 5M/1F
Plot Summary Woyzeck is an Army barber, tormented by a callow Captain, who earns money by allowing an amoral Doctor to conduct purposeless experiments on him. His girlfriend, with whom he has a son, is unfaithful to him with a Drum Major. Which of these degradations turns Woyzeck into a murderer? That depends entirely on the dramaturgy.
Critical Interest Little can be said about Woyzeck that is not the subject of intense scholarly debate. It is the first German literary work to have a working-class protagonist. Woyzeck is meant to be a dark version of Everyman, dehumanized by callous cruelty and the political and moral absolutism of his society. The play combines Expressionism and Naturalism in ways that would become powerfully influential in the creation of German social drama. What’s amazing, however, is that he did this in 1837, long before these movements had begun to take hold. The play, unfinished, lay in his desk after his death, untouched, for decades. Even in 1873, when it was rediscovered and published, no one knew for sure what order the thirteen scenes were meant to take. This makes Woyzeck singularly adaptable to the vision of a strong director.
Author Bio Born near Darmstadt, the son of a doctor, Büchner studied medicine and mental health in Strasbourg. In 1828 he became involved with a Shakespeare reading group with strong humanist leanings; they would eventually become part of the Society for Human Rights (Gessellschaft für Menschenrechte). Büchner became a translator of French works, including those of Victor Hugo, and became influenced by the utopianism of Saint-Simon. He founded a secret society dedicated to the liberation of peasants. Accused of treason, he fled to France, where in 1835 he wrote Danton’s Death and Lenz, followed by Leonce and Lena in 1836. Woyzeck, probably begun that same year, was never completed. He was invited to Zürich to lecture at university, where he died shortly after arriving. It is generally held to be true that had Büchner lived longer, he would have a place among the greatest of German dramatists.
Title The Memorandum
Author Vaclav Havel (1936- )
Nationality Czech
Year First Produced 1965
Genre Contemporary Social Satire
Director Mladen Kiselov
Cast 6M/6F
Note This will be produced at a site outside the Purnell Center
Plot Summary A government office is instructed to conduct all its business in a new official language, Ptydepe; never mind that no one can understand it. The bureaucracy becomes entirely devoted to finding meaning in this strange code. Language breaks down entirely. The office workers begin to be unable to determine who is working, arguing, agreeing, or flirting. Sinister forces take advantage of the confusion to promote an insidious new order. A minor administrator sees the truth and tries to save the company, but the forces arrayed against him (or her) are devastating.
Critical Interest The second play of a man who would become one of Europe’s leading moral, intellectual, and political figures, The Memorandum combines the cutting social insights of Woyzeck with the desperate humor of Dilbert, drawing into stark clarity the dehumanizing effect of the pointless activity that dominates modern life. Some will see this as a powerful philosophical inquiry into modern life; but anyone who has worked in an office will see it, alas, as a documentary!
Author Bio Václav Havel was born to a family closely linked to anti-communist progressivism in Czechoslovakia. Denied other careers because of this connection, he worked as a stage technician and studied Drama by correspondence, in the 1960’s becoming a resident playwright of the “Theatre of the Balustrade.” Following the military invasion of the Prague Spring, Havel stood against the communist "normalization" and became a founder of the revolutionary Charter 77. He was imprisoned three times and spent nearly five years behind bars. In 1989 a massive uprising, which began as a meeting of a University Drama Club, resulted in the democratic “Velvet Revolution.” Havel was elected President by the Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia. In his inaugural address, he promised to lead the nation to free elections, which he fulfilled in the summer of 1990. He was re-elected, but rifts soon developed between the ethnic Czech and Slovak communities. Disgusted by the refusal of these parties to reconcile, Havel resigned the Presidency. However, he was re-elected by the new Czech Republic in 1998.
Title Miss Julie
Author August Strindberg (1849-1912)
Nationality Swedish
Year First Produced 1888
Genre Naturalist Drama
Director Ed Iskandar
Cast 1M/2F
Plot Summary A servant plays a dangerous game of seduction and violence with a volatile noblewoman. Jean, a groom with aspirations of equality and delusions of adequacy, flirts with the unpredictable daughter of the Count who employs him. Miss Julie is on the rebound from a broken engagement; the young man took exception to her “training program,” as she made him jump hedges while beating him mercilessly. Jean spins fairy tales of love and seduces the confused Julie. When her heart and her reputation is at his mercy, however, Jean turns abusive, ready to force Julie to run away with him, or kill herself. All too soon, the authority of the shadowy Count reasserts itself… which of these midsummer dreams and nightmares will survive the harsh glare of reality?
Critical Interest Along with fellow-Scandinavian Henrik Ibsen, Strindberg is hailed as a founder of the Naturalist school of playwriting, for which Miss Julie (particularly its preface) acts as a kind of manifesto. Eschewing the contrived plots and shallow characterizations of melodrama, the Naturalists rigidly adhered to an honest realism of storytelling and diction, and a psychological complexity of character. His straightforwardness, however, made Strindberg particularly unpopular with religious leaders and the emerging women’s rights movement. Based on the Zola short story “The Sin of Father Moulet,” Miss Julie was censored for its content, and many critics found its blatant, Darwinian themes distasteful.
Author Bio Misogynist, alchemist, anti-Semite, blasphemer, sometimes magnificent, sometimes pathetic, definitely unbalanced, Strindberg was tormented by inner demons throughout his life. Born to an unhappy family in Stockholm, Strindberg believed his parent’s antipathy was due to their class difference (he was a shipping magnate, she a former servant). At various times an actor, librarian, and journalist, he himself married out of his own class, to the flamboyant noble-born actress Siri von Essen. He wrote confused, hate-filled novels, consumed with paranoid visions, largely about Siri, but he is chiefly known as a founder of the naturalist school of European playwriting. Strindberg’s writing career was put on hold in the 1890’s as he suffered a series of psychotic episodes, but between 1898 and his death in 1912, he wrote some 36 plays and developed the concept of “intimate theatre.”
Title Man is Man
Author Bertolt Brecht (1858-1956)
Nationality German
Year First Produced 1924
Genre Social Satire/Dark Comedy
Director Kathleen Aumshoff
Cast 7M/1F
Note This will be produced at a site other than the Purnell Center
Plot Summary The year is 1925; the place, India. Gayly Gay heads out to buy a fish for his wife to prepare for dinner. He gets mixed up with three soldiers who have looted a temple. In fear of the sadistic Sgt. Fairchild, who is trying to seduce the bombshell Widow Begbick, the trio enlists Gay as a stand-in for their comrade, lost when he tried to move the temple treasure box with his head. Gay’s transformation into the lost machine-gunner is complicated when he is offered the ownership of an imaginary army elephant. In the end, it is the story of how easily an innocent can be seduced into atrocity, and that any given man is nor more good, and no less expendable, than the next.
Critical Interest An much-beloved play from the father of radical theatre, Man is Man shows Brecht’s early experiments in the creation of Verfremsdungseffekt, or “estrangement” of the audience from the action of the play. Brecht’s radical theatre seeks to engage the mind, not the passions of the viewer. Brecht’s dramatic technique, specifically anti-Aristotlean, is an amalgam of Shakespearean and Asian methods, with a healthy dose of German cabaret and Marxism. Worried about the pernicious influence of capitalism on the intellectual health of the theatre (market-successful plays tend to be philosophically and politically unchallenging), he worked tirelessly to redefine the relationship between audience and art object, and to make the theatre a tool of social liberation. Although the Widow is in some ways an ancestor of Mother Courage, Man is Man highlights the use of slapstick, stage magic and intense, overt theatricality. Original productions in Germany featured Peter Lorre as the hapless Gay.
Author’s Bio Born in Bavaria, where he studied medicine and worked as an army doctor until 1924, Brecht wrote his first play, Baal, in 1923. Virulently anti-bourgeois and a student of Karl Korsch, Brecht traveled to Berlin to work for directors Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt, and with composer Kurt Weill, doing innovative playwriting, directing, and dramaturgical work with the Berliner Ensemble. The rise of German Nazism made him persona non grata and in 1933 he fled to Denmark, and to the United States to work in Hollywood from 1941-1947. Back home, his books were burned in Nazi pyres, but after the war he was forced to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, who were on a witch hunt for communists in show business. To HUAC, Brecht famously lied through his teeth, then returned to Europe, where he wrote theoretical works. He was celebrated in Paris and Moscow, where he received the Stalin Peace Prize in 1955. He would die of a heart attack a year later. One of the most controversial theorists in modern theatre, Bertolt Brecht was decribed by Peter Brook as “the key figure of our time, and all theatre work today at some point starts or returns to his statements and achievement.”
Title 36 Views
Author Naomi Izuka (1965- )
Nationality American
Year First Produced 2002
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Michael Denis
Cast 3M/3F
Plot Summary Inspired by the artist Hosukai’s visual masterwork “36 Views of Mount Fuji,” this play is composed of 36 connected scenes. When an amoral vendor of Japanese art discovers what he thinks is an antique “pillow book” that will revolutionize the understanding of Asian aesthetics, he becomes hoist by his own petard. The book is actually the rambling draft of a novel by his assistant, John, but a net of lies is woven around the book so thickly that the characters cannot escape the intrigue, seduction, and danger that follows as luminaries of the art world vie for a piece of the action. It’s a complex tale in which lies deftly become truth, each of the scenes interlocking to form a delicate and beautiful whole that leaves the viewer wondering where dreams end and reality begins.
Critical Interest George Santayana’s edict that art is most successful when the content and aesthetics coincide seems to be the guiding principle of this play. While critics have trouble with the play’s rather contrived plotline (which hearkens back to the cozener-cozened stories of Jonson and Moliere) and apparent lack of character development, 36 Views is also an opportunity for some brilliant postmodern design, as the elegantly transcendent world of kabuki-era Japan collides with the unpoetic mercantilism of the modern world. To what extent does art owe its existence to the exchange of capital: financial in terms of the wheeler-dealer world of art collectors, and for the world of academics, in terms of prestige?
Author Bio Born in Tokyo to a Japanese father and Latina mother, raised in Holland, Indonesia, and Washington D.C., Naomi Izuka is one of the most startling new voices in American theatre. Izuka’s plays have garnered a Whiting Award, a McKnight Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, Princeton’s Hodder Fellowship, a Jerome Fellowship, and a PEN Center USA West Award. Izuka’s most celebrated works, like 36 Views and Polaroid Stories, are ones in which ancient and modern worlds collide and collude in fascinating ways.
Title Frozen
Author Bryony Lavery (1947- )
Nationality British
Year First Produced 2002
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Robert May
Cast 2M/2F
Plot Summary A deadly serious play, Frozen takes the audience into one of the darkest regions of human experience; the world of homicidal pedophilia, and the aftermath of the most unspeakable acts conceivable. After 10-year old Rhona disappears, apparently the victim of a killer pedophile, her mother Nancy remains psychologically frozen in a condition of irrational hope, locked to a moment in time when her daughter was still unviolated and alive. Nancy becomes involved with Agnetha, an academic looking to justify the most heinous acts of evil, and mysterious drifter Ralph, and the embark on a journey of discovery so dreadful that it numbs the mind and chills the blood.
Critical Interest Responses to this play are dramatically mixed: staging a parent’s worst nightmare is bound to draw at the heartstrings, but at what cost? Is the play a sophomoric meditation on evil within an irrationally evangelical diatribe, or a horrifying excursion into the worst aspects of the human condition? Either way, the play leaves viewers with their blood running cold. Another point of interest: in 2004 Lavery admitted to plagiarizing parts of the play from a 1997 New Yorker article about the work of psychiatrist Dorothy Lewis, who was scandalized at what she perceived to be her portrayal in the character of Agnetha.
Author Bio Raised in Dewsbury, England, Lavery came out as a lesbian rather late in life. She was active in the Women’s Movement in the 1970’s, when she became instrumental in the rise of the politically radical fringe theatre scene. Artistic Director of the Gay Sweatshop and Female Trouble theatre troupes, Lavery teaches playwriting at Birmingham University in the UK. Author of more than 20 plays , tv scripts, and books, including a biography of Tallulah Bankhead, Lavery notes “I’m good at grief, death, sex, and anger. They are my specialist subjects.”
Title Keely & Du
Author Jane Martin
Nationality American
Year First Produced 1993
Genre Contemporary Drama
Director Kristina Ball
Cast 2M/3F
Plot Summary Keely, three-months pregnant and seeking to terminate her pregnancy, is kidnapped by the pastor of an anti-abortion church-qua-detention center. Handcuffed to a bed and cared for by jailer/nurse Du, Keely is forced to bring her baby to term. In the end, as secrets are gradually revealed, a profound exploration into the reaches of human fear emerges between the endless bromides and empty shibboleths of each extreme of this unresolvable social problem.
Critical Interest Emerging as it did during the eruption of abortion as the hot-button issue of American politics in the early 90’s, this decidedly unbalanced, pro-choice play plays upon the illogical extremes of the anti-abortion movement and its evangelical rationalization and justification of outrageous acts. Nevertheless, the character of Du reveals that the absurdities of the pro-life crowd are grounded in a certain sensibility of Christian love, albeit a ridiculously narrowly-defined one. One thing’s for sure: whichever side of the abortion debate you’re on, Keely & Du will really tick you off.
Author Bio Despite her nomination for a Pulitzer and other prestigious awards, the true identity of the mysterious Jane Martin remains one of the worst-kept secrets in American theatre. Jane Martin is almost certainly a pseudonym for Jon Jory, for many years Artistic Director of the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, which produced a great many of Jane Martin’s works. Many theatre insiders have observed that the elaborately-constructed identity provided a cover for Jory as a rather flimsy affectation, and also to avoid charges of self-interest in producing and directing his own plays at ATL’s expense. Nevertheless, Jory has been a champion of new theatre in America, fostering young playwrights and innovative directors for many decades. He left the Actor’s Theatre in 2001 to join the acting faculty at the University of Washington’s School of Drama.
CARNEGIE MELLON SCHOOL OF DRAMA
2006-7 PRODUCTION SEASON
Brochure Copy
M. Chemers
House of Blue Leaves Sad clown Artie wallows in self-pity; he writes terrible songs and on top of that no one wants to listen to them. He also has to manage his loony wife Bananas and his manic mistress, Bunny. Did I mention the Pope is in town and Artie’s psychotic son Ronnie has gone AWOL in order to assassinate him? Also some nuns show up, and a starlet. Like much of Guare’s writing, this one is about the lengths to which people will go for their fifteen minutes of fame, about the malaise that sets in following the failure of the American dream, about waking from a drug-induced stupor to find the whole world’s gone down the tubes and your government has dragged you into an illegitimate war.
Side Show Based, extremely loosely, on the real-life show-business sisters, Daisy and Violet Hilton. Conjoined twins possessed of great beauty and musical talent, the historical Daisy and Violet led highly visible but very unglamorous and violent lives in the Depression-era United States. The sisters must negotiate the dangers of fame and romantic entanglements while simultaneously living two very different lives in one body. Side Show combines an enchanting score, brilliant strong acting and singing roles for two women, and opportunities for amazing design elements that span the aesthetic spectrum from the grotesque to the sublime.
The Oresteia The greatest oeuvre of the greatest playwright of all time, Oresteia contains all the glories of Aeschylus’ genius. Young Orestes must avenge his father Agamemnon’s death by slaying his murderer, Orestes’ mother Clytemnestra. Either way, he will invoke the immortal punishment of the chthonic demons, the Furies. William von Humboldt wrote of it that “among all the products of the Greek stage none can compare with it in tragic power; no other play shows the same intensity and pureness of belief in the divine and good; none can surpass the lessons it teaches, and the wisdom of which it is the mouthpiece.” School of Drama Directing Professor Jed Allen Harris’ ten-year research into this play culminates in a multiple-night, multiple-venue boundary-smashing vision that promise to take this ancient text to new aesthetic heights.
Romeo and Juliet The uber-play of tragic romances, R & J follows the misfortunes of the original star-crossed lovers, children of feuding families in 16th century Verona. The intransigence of their respective clans forces the lovers to marry in secret; but the intrigue leads to murder, banishment, civic unrest, and the tragically beautiful ending that is cemented in the cultural consciousness of the English-speaking world. The most celebrated work of William Shakespeare, it is considered definitive of the English Renaissance, and is certainly one of the most revived, most translated to film, and most imitated plays in history.
Woyzeck Woyzeck is an Army barber, dehumanized by callous cruelty and the political and moral absolutism of his society. He is tormented by a callow Captain and an amoral Doctor who conducts purposeless experiments on him. His girlfriend, with whom he has a son, is unfaithful to him with a Drum Major. Which of these degradations turns Woyzeck into a murderer? The mystery surrounding this play’s strange authorship makes Woyzeck singularly adaptable to the vision of a strong director.
The Memorandum A government office is instructed to conduct all its business in a new official language; never mind that no one can understand it. Tied to the loony lingo, the office workers are unable to determine who is working, arguing, agreeing, or flirting. Sinister forces take advantage of the confusion to promote an insidious new order. A minor administrator sees the truth and tries to save the company, but the forces arrayed against him are diabolical and devastating. An early work of a man who would become one of Europe’s leading moral, intellectual, and political figures, The Memorandum combines the cutting social insights of Woyzeck with the desperate humor of Dilbert. Some will see this as a powerful commentary on modern life; but anyone who has worked in an office may see it, alas, as a documentary!
Miss Julie A servant plays a dangerous game of seduction and violence with a volatile noblewoman. Jean, a groom with aspirations of equality and delusions of adequacy, flirts with the unpredictable daughter of the Count who employs him. Miss Julie is on the rebound from a broken engagement. Jean spins fairy tales of love and seduces the confused heiress. When her heart and her reputation is at her mercy, however, Jean turns abusive, ready to force Julie to run away with him, or kill herself. All too soon, the authority of the shadowy Count reasserts itself… which of these summertime dreams and nightmares will survive the harsh truth of reality? Misogynist, alchemist, by turns magnificent and psychotic, August Strindberg was tormented by inner demons throughout his life; this play is considered his greatest contribution to Naturalist theatre.
Man is Man The year is 1925; the place, India. Gayly Gay heads out to buy a fish for his wife to prepare for dinner. He gets mixed up with three soldiers who have looted a temple. In fear of the sadistic Sgt. Fairchild, who is trying to seduce the bombshell Widow Begbick the trio enlist Gay as a stand in for their comrade, lost when he tried to move the temple treasure box with his head. Gay’s transformation into the lost machine-gunner is complicated when he is offered the ownership of an imaginary army elephant. In the end, it is the story of how easily an innocent can be seduced into atrocity, and that any given man is nor more good, and no less expendable, than the next. A much-beloved play from the father of radical theatre.
36 Views Inspired by the artist Hosukai’s visual masterwork “36 Views of Mount Fuji,” this play is composed of 36 connected scenes. When an amoral vendor of Japanese art discovers what he thinks is an antique “pillow book” that will revolutionize the understanding of Asian aesthetics, he becomes hoist by his own petard. The book is actually the rambling draft of a novel by his assistant, John, but a net of lies is woven around the book so thickly that the characters cannot escape the intrigue, seduction, and danger that follows as luminaries of the art world vie for a piece of the action. It’s a complex tale in which lies deftly become truth, each of the scenes interlocking to form a delicate and beautiful whole that leaves the viewer wondering where dreams end and reality begins
Frozen This deadly serious play takes the audience into one of the darkest regions of human experience; the world of homicidal pedophilia. After 10-year old Rhona disappears, her mother Nancy remains psychologically frozen in a condition of irrational hope. Nancy becomes involved with an academic looking to explain (and justify) the most heinous acts of evil, and mysterious drifter Ralph, and the embark on a journey of discovery so dreadful that it numbs the mind and chills the blood. A fringe theatre innovator and author of more than 20 plays, tv scripts, and books, including a biography of Tallulah Bankhead, Lavery notes “I’m good at grief, death, sex, and anger. They are my specialist subjects.”
Keely & Du Keely, three-months pregnant and seeking to terminate her pregnancy, is kidnapped by the pastor of an anti-abortion church-qua-detention center. Handcuffed to a bed and cared for by jailer/nurse Du, Keely is forced to bring her baby to term. In the end, as secrets are gradually revealed, a profound exploration into the reaches of human fear emerges between the endless bromides and empty shibboleths of each extreme of this seemingly-unresolvable social problem.
