THEATREWORKS Newsletter

The Director Steps Up

The Director Steps Up

We facebooked with our guest director, Geoffrey Kent, about our forthcoming production of The 39 Steps. He knows more about the show than we do.  He knows more about it than almost any man alive.  You could almost call him fanatical on the subject, which is one reason we engaged his services.

 

 

Murray Ross We know this show is a favorite of yours, and you’ve seen how many different productions? What’s so hot about The 39 Steps? What makes you love it so?

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Geoffrey Kent  I’ve watched or worked on about five productions and what is not to love? We will be packing the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theater with planes, trains, and automobiles. I think The 39 Steps manages to capture what theater does so well… fire up our imaginations. A cast of four actors creates over forty characters and twenty different locales all with only some steamer trunks and a few odds and ends. I sometimes think that Patrick Barlow, the original adapter for the piece, created it on a dare. It won an Olivier for best comedy and was nominated for a Tony for the same. And it is a riot.

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 Murray Ross Have you seen the Hitchcock film or read the John Buchan book?  What do you think of them?

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Geoffrey Kent  To say the Hitchcock film is loosely based on the novel by Buchan might be a bit too polite. I think Alfred might have skimmed it on a train ride from Rome to Florence (or was that me?). At the risk of alienating Hitchcock fans, I don’t believe it is one of his strongest films (despite landing #4 in the British Film Institute’s Top 100); however, it does have one of his best themes, the innocent man on the run. Though in our version he runs from very tiny planes and very tiny puppets.

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Murray Ross  You’ve got four actors. Are they any good?

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Geoffrey Kent  Very, and several are new to the THEATREWORKS audience. Our leading man, Josh Robinsion, is a regular performer at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and charming as can be. Lindsay Rae Taylor is our gorgeous Femme Fatale/Ingenue/Leading Lady and will break hearts with all three roles. Clown 1 is Justin Walvoord, an old friend from the National Theatre Conservatory and I’ve been dying to work with him since he returned from NYC to raise a family. Oh, and three more words: Sammie. Joe. Kinnett, who THEATREWORKS audiences will remember from I Am Nikola Tesla and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Yup, a top notch cast.

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Murray Ross  What is especially challenging about directing such a silly play?

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Geoffrey Kent  The challenge that keeps me up at night is not letting the technical aspects of the play upstage the great story we have to tell. Yes the show is rife with amazing quick changes and theatrical magic. But it also is a great spy caper and a bit of a wistful love story, as our aging bachelor searches for, and 
possibly finds, the girl of his dreams.

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Murray Ross  What do you hope to bring that is special or unique to this production?

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Geoffrey Kent  The trick with a great script like this and a sharp cast and design team is to mostly get out of their way and work as an editor. Keep the tech simple and keep the story flying with a feel of spontaneity. Oh, and a great homage to Hitchcock’s The Birds ...that I haven’t discovered yet.

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Murray Ross  One person will say you can’t beat the Hitchcock film, so why bother. Why bother?

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Geoffrey Kent  I’d say The 39 Steps doesn’t really try to beat a Hitchcock film, rather it tries to reinvent one. The tone of the original is left fairly far behind on our steamer trunk train track and instead this script celebrates theatrical invention and levity. Of course to make it harder they also added nods of the head to several other Hitchcock films. North by Northwest poses a particular challenge, a solution you just have to buy a ticket to see. :-) So we have plenty of references for a Hitchcock fan and a fair share of bits for those who think he needs a wedgie.

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Murray Ross  Another will say it’s all just too stupid and cute for words. What do you say?

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Geoffrey Kent  It will ask for a little childlike wonder and a little “what else can this cardboard box be” kind of imagination. If that is stupid and cute… so were my childhood trips to the moon and the center of the earth. Okay those were actually cute. 

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Murray Ross  And a third will say its postmodern post Pirandello meta-theatrical structure will go way over the audience’s heads. Comments?

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Geoffrey Kent  I don’t know what most of those words mean.

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Murray Ross  Geoffrey Kent is an English name I believe. What gives you the right to direct a play set in mostly Scotland? Will there be riots in the Highlands?

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Geoffrey Kent  Come now, it does have an Englishman at its heart who is part Bertie Wooster, part James Bond. I describe myself as the same. No one agrees mind you, but I keep saying it nonetheless.

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Murray Ross  Why 39 steps?  Why not 17 or 23 or 564?

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Geoffrey Kent  The original novel led to thirty nine steps down a cliffside in Kent (no relation) to a mysterious yacht. I’m fairly certain 564 would have done them in.

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Murray Ross  Is there sex in this show?

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Geoffrey Kent: Yes. Well… there is a very famous scene with the removal of some stockings that is both stunningly 
lascivious and wonderfully innocent…for 1935 Britain anyway.

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Murray Ross 

Anything else?

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Geoffrey Kent  My last directing effort for THEATREWORKS was The Grapes of Wrath with a cast of 34, a real truck, an onstage rainstorm, and a set consisting of some four miles of lumber. I asked you for something smaller next time. I’m not certain that wish was granted. But I’m excited to give it a shot.

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The 39 Steps

Adapted by Philip Barlow

From the novel by John Buchan

From the movie of Alfred Hitchcock

Licensed by ITV Global Entertainment Limited

And an original concept by Simon Corble and Nobby Dimon

September 15 -October 9, 2011

Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30 P.M.

Saturday, September 24 and October 1 and 8 at 2:00 P.M.

Sundays at 4:00 P.M.

Tickets - $30

Tickets at www.theatreworksCS.org

Box Office Phone 255-3232

The production of The 39 Steps is made possible in part by a generous sponsorship from Carnick & Company

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National Theatre Live is a groundbreaking initiative to broadcast the best of British theatre to theaters around the world. The first season of events, which began in June 2009 with the acclaimed production of Phèdre starring Helen Mirren, was seen by over 165,000 people on 320 screens in 22 countries.

 

One Man, Two Guvnors

by Richard Bean

October 3-5, 2011

7:00 PM

$15 ($13 for subscribers)

One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean with songs by Grant Olding is based on The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni.

Fired from his skiffle band, Francis Henshall becomes minder to Roscoe Crabbe, a small time East End hood, now in Brighton to collect £6,000 from his fiancée’s dad. But Roscoe is really his sister Rachel posing as her own dead brother, who’s been killed by her boyfriend Stanley Stubbers.

Holed up at The Cricketers’ Arms, the permanently ravenous Francis spots the chance of an extra meal ticket and takes a second job with one Stanley Stubbers, who is hiding from the police and waiting to be re-united with Rachel. To prevent discovery, Francis must keep his two guvnors apart. Simple – right?

To get the rest of the story come to the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant theater on October 3rd, 4th, or 5th at 7:00 P.M. for an evening of fun and frivolity … and some free ice cream at the interval.

<Click here for more information on NT Live.>

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The 39 Steps and the Films 
of Alfred Hitchcock.

Sunday, September 25th, 2:30 P.M.

Free

 

We are so happy to have Professor Robert Von Dassanowsky join us for our second Prologue of the season.  Robert is an expert on all things film and is particularly passionate about Hitchcock.  On September 25, Robert will lead us through the career of the great director and focus on his 1935 film of The 39 Steps.  Always engaging and passionate, Professor Von Dassanowsky is one of the best lecturers anywhere.  You won’t want to miss it.   Join us for popcorn, film clips, and Robert’s critical insights at 2:30 at the Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theater.  

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In Memoriam

Bob Johnson

Friend of the THEATREWORKS London Tour

Bob Johnson, a regular on THEATREWOKS’ annual London Tour since 2000, died on Saturday, Aug. 13, 2011, at Augusta Medical Center. He was 73. All of us who went on one or many of the tours knew and loved Bob. He had already written his deposit check for this year’s tour when we received this devastating news. All who knew him remember him fondly and send our deepest condolences to his family.

We are dedicating this season’s final production, Mary Stuart, to Bob’s memory. Friends of Bob Johnson have established a memorial fund with 
THEATREWORKS for anyone who would like to extend his memory with a star on our donor wall. Checks should be made out to the CU Foundation with Bob Johnson Memoriam in the comment field.  Please mail checks to THEATREWORKS at 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, Colorado Springs, CO  80918.  Or follow the Support Us links online at the THEATREWORKS website.

Bob was the Cincinnati Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Washington and Lee University. He joined Washington and Lee’s faculty in 1965. In 2004, the University honored him with the dedication of a classroom in Robinson Hall on the historic Colonnade.

Johnson was an unusually devoted mentor to generations of W&L students, many of whom became devoted friends in later years. His range of interests — in theater, music, history, literature, science —made him a valued friend to a wide circle of friends who prized his wit, his enthusiasm and his steadfastness. An avid traveler, he visited many parts of the world often accompanied by friends, former students, and family.

Johnson was born in Pikeville, Ky., on Nov. 23, 1937 and grew up in Frankfort, Ky. He graduated from Georgetown College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned his Ph. D. He is survived by his brother, Glen, and sister-in-law, Sipra, of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., a niece, Denise Johnson, of Washington, D.C., and a nephew, Robert Alexander Johnson, of Portland, Oregon.

For the Love of Love and Money

The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice With the extreame crueltie of Shylock the Jew towards the said merchant, in cutting a just pound of his flesh and the obtaining of Portia By the choice of three chests

This is the original blurb for The Merchant of Venice, the title page of the 1600 quarto edition, advertising a play about a monster, a pound of flesh, and the winning of a lovely woman by solving a riddle. It sounds like a fairy tale—- not one of those modern powdered sugar fairy tales, but something older and darker out of folk legend.  And so it is.  The Merchant of Venice is a terrific fairy tale—and a whole lot more.  It’s a very funny and engaging play; it has great cameo roles, charming young men, a fetching heroine, a good clown, and also a Jew. A monster Jew.

Right from the start it was the Jew that was the source of the play’s success, and also of its problems.  Shylock appears in only a fourth of the scenes, but he dominates the play as well as its first title page.  Even as he first appeared, as a recognizable comic villain in a red wig and big nose, his “extreme cruelty” has usurped top billing from the play’s leading character, the princess of Shakespeare’s fairy tale, who is quite a gal in her own right.  Like Falstaff, Shylock bursts the bounds of his play— he is so vigorous, so isolated, so singular, and ultimately so enigmatic. Recent centuries have only imbalanced matters more. After the holocaust it’s become much more difficult (some would say impossible) to stage a play which perpetuates the most pernicious and destructive of racial stereotypes, and Shylock embodies them all: he’s the archetype of the malevolent, greedy, rich, and cunning Jew. We first produced The Merchant of Venice here in 1984, and we made every effort to dignify and humanize Shylock.  Our production was favorably reviewed in Shakespeare Quarterly, the journal which covers Shakespearean drama all over the world.  But after praising our show from start to finish, and noting our conscientious efforts, the reviewer concluded:

“The Merchant of Venice seems like an odd choice for Colorado Springs, a conservative community with an undercurrent of old-fashioned racism. One wonders about the effect this play will have had on the all those kids who were seeing Shakespeare for the first time. Let’s hope they came away with nothing but love in their hearts, for Shakespeare, and for the theatre.”

This is a reasonable concern for any producer of The Merchant of Venice, whether in conservative Colorado Springs or anywhere else. And yet, The Merchant of Venice is regularly produced everywhere. You might even say it is the Shakespeare play of the moment, with several productions the past year in London and New York, starring Patrick Stewart, F. Murray Abraham, and Tony nominated Al Pacino. Why should this be?  The obvious answer is that this endlessly troubling play is also one of Shakespeare’s greatest, and one of his most modern.

The theater has been working hard to solve the problems of The Merchant of Venice, rescuing it from the anti-Semitism that understandably offends modern audiences.  In the process we have learned much about the play and its characters. All the play’s nice and good people, including the much admired Portia, seem a little less appealing, especially when it comes to their dealing with people not like themselves, the aliens who don’t share their culture, religion, or skin color. Lately, much of the play’s comedy — much of it directed at the Jew—has been damped down, out of respect to the seriousness of the issues involved.  Shylock the monster has been thoroughly humanized, almost to the point where is seems that Shakespeare was on his side. We now appreciate this play is also about money, how it’s won, shared, and lost.  We see what money does to people.  (The most recent London production was set in Las Vegas.) So you will understand why, in most productions these days, the play seems less a comedy than a twisted and ironic fairy tale.

The play has a dark side, no question. Many dark sides, in fact. But it has brightness everywhere too. The language throughout is fluid and lovely, silk on a stream. The nice people might be spitters on and kickers of Jews but they are wonderful to their friends, generous, loving, and self-sacrificing.  They are not hoarders, they are risk takers.  They are good Christians, except when they are not. They are witty, playful, loving life and music, and sharing in love’s wealth.  They want the best for everyone.  Well, almost everyone.

Shakespeare’s extraordinary ability to combine contradictions and opposites in characters and action was never more richly exploited than in The Merchant of Venice.  A fortune hunting slacker is also the bravest and truest of lovers, the person who can plea most eloquently for the quality mercy is also the one who most denies its application; the man who has everything feels like nothing, until he’s about to lose everything, and then he feels wonderful; the play’s greatest villain, a real monster, is also the play’s greatest victim, deeply and strangely human. Every conclusion we reach about a character is reversed, and often in an instant, and then reversed again.

You’d think this is the kind of play that gives audiences huge headaches—-and it is.  But they come only after the play has ended.  During its two hours traffic of the stage, The Merchant of Venice is about as entertaining as a play can be. It’s lively as all get out. Three excellent and thrilling plots involving a dangerous bargain, an elopement, and the riddle of the caskets, are all expertly and thrillingly handled.  The play is funny and scary and beautiful and charming, with all sorts of shadings that lend it depth and tonality.  By all means do take the kids; it’s a great story, a marvelous ride—they will love it. Afterwards, however, you may have some explaining to do, and not just to the kids.  These discussions could go on for days.  They could send you back to the Bible, to the history of the Jews, to the practice of usury and venture capital in the Renaissance, to the psychoanalytic and mythic roots of the riddle of three caskets, to Venice, to pondering the symbolic significance of bonds and rings, to questions of gender identity, to arguments about villains and heroes, justice and mercy, and of course to the play itself, again and again.  I can almost promise you this is what will happen, and that these discussions will be fruitful and expansive.  They are unlikely, however, to arrive at any full and comprehensive solution.

At the heart of The Merchant of Venice is a riddle: which of three caskets, gold, silver or base lead, contains the portrait of the prized Portia. The reward comes to the one willing to “give and hazard all he hath.”  You just have to surrender everything and go for it.  That would be my advice to you watching this play.  You won’t be a loser.  The particular casket which houses this priceless play is not some gold and silver palace of the arts, but a modest tent pitched in a mountain field. You will risk mud, hail, and heavy rain in your journey to get there.  And when you find you have chosen correctly, when the casket opens and Shakespeare’s infinite riches are opened to you, you will be left with laughter and with joy, and with something more: another, even greater riddle, unsolvable. A melancholy shadow, a pleasurable and disturbing dream, sweet harmonies, bright lives, a dark emptiness, glitter amidst “the muddy vesture of decay.”

— Murray Ross

Click here for tickets.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

 August 4-27 at Rock Ledge Ranch.

Tuesdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.

Come as early as 6:00 p.m. to enjoy the ranch 
and bring your own picnic

Reserved Tickets:  $30, Children 16 and under $15, Friends and Family Pak 4 tickets for $50.

General Admission:  Same Day Rush Tickets $10, 

Present your Rock Ledge Day Ticket for $5 Admission

A limited number of Free Tickets are available at the 
circulation desks of the Pikes Peak Library District.

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Shakespeare Opening Weekend

August 4, 5, 6

We will kick off Shakespeare at Rock Ledge Ranch this year in grand style with an opening weekend celebration that includes complimentary drinks and a pasta supper served before the show beginning at 6:00 p.m.  All FREE for patrons and subscribers attending that evening’s performance.  Reservations are NOT required for the dinner, but a ticket to that evening’s performance is a must.

Call 719.255.3232 for more details.

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Love in the Garden

Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 6:00 pm

Forest Edge Gardens

$65 per person

Space limited to 50 people

What’s better than Shakespearian sonnets in the surroundings of the most beautiful garden in Colorado Springs? Not much. Toss in a delicious dinner, some wine, and a special visit from Shakespeare’s most famous young lovers, and you have the makings for a perfect evening under “yonder blessed moon...that tips with silver all these fruit tree tops.”

Our friends Laura and Tim Spear are once again opening their Forest Edge Gardens to us for our annual Shakespeare garden party. Join us on August 14th at 6:00 pm and spend a couple blissful hours among primroses and peonies with THEATREWORKS friends. We will be joined by a handful of great Colorado actors, bringing love into the night air. Benjamin Bonenfant and Jamie Anne Romero, currently playing Romeo and Juliet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, will be seen--and heard--on the balcony of the most magical garden in all Verona.

Availability is limited so reserve your space early.

Click here for tickets.

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Judaism on Stage

Wednesday, August 24

at 6:00 pm

Rockledge Ranch

FREE!

Don’t miss our roundtable discussion this month about the representation of Jewish characters on the Renaissance stage. Discussion of The Merchant of Venice is always impassioned, but we will have experts helping us dissect all of the intricacies of Shylock and the greater themes in this fantastic and complex play. Murray and I will be joined by Rabbi Anat Moskowitz and professor Raphael Sassower from UCCS in our Shakespeare tent at Rock Ledge Ranch.

This discussion will be a culmination of a lot of thinking by a lot of people involved with this show. If you haven’t already, follow the blog that I am writing with Chris Lowell on the THEATREWORKS Facebook page. Chris is giving excellent insight into his preparation of the creation of Shylock. I am getting Oskar Eustis and the famous director Dan Sullivan in on this too. They presented Merchant last year on Broadway. In mid-July, I visited them in New York to pick their brains about how to portray such difficult Jewish stereotypes on the American stage in 2011. There was lots of interesting discussion and I will share it with you on August 24th.

As always, Prologue is our effort to help bring everyone into the world of the plays that we produce. Our Merchant discussion—our first Prologue of the season—promises to be fascinating. We are all looking forward to seeing you there.

-Kevin Landis

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London Theater Tours in January and May

 

January 5-12, 2012 starting at $3,611

May 4 – 20, 2012 starting at $5,830 (includes Queen Mary II crossing)

We’re gearing up for two 2012 London Theater tours, now scheduled January 5-15 and May 4-20. The May tour includes an Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary.

Our January tour is our longest running tour and has been produced annually since 1996.  Over 400 patrons have travelled with us on this spectacular tour to one of the world’s great cities.  A must for theater lovers everywhere. 

While it’s too early to tell exactly what we’ll see, we have just secured tickets to Richard II with Eddie Redmayne at the Donmar Warehouse, and that’s just for starters.

The May trip promises to be one of the most extraordinary tours we have ever planned. This tour celebrates a love for travel, theater, and springtime in England.   

We will begin your journey in New York and embark on the Queen Mary II, arriving in Southampton one week later.  From there, it is a short coach ride to your hotel where the adventure continues.

Please contact Drew Martorella at 719.255.3275 for more information or visit www.theatreworksCS.org.

 As always Murray Ross, our Artistic Director, will preview each evening’s show and lead a group discussion of what we’ve seen.  For many, these gatherings are what make these unbeatable tours so very special.

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Matt Weed

THEATREWORKS and I lost a very good friend last week.  Matt Weed suddenly passed away succumbing to a brief, powerful illness.  But Matt’s legacy lives on here at THEATREWORKS, because it was Matt who designed our logo.  He created it a decade ago; a long time, but really just a fraction of our history. The image has become so indelible that most of us can’t recall any of our earlier models.  I for one had no idea that this simple gesture would establish itself as the defining image of our theater.  It’s a great logo that elegantly expresses what we are:  a theater dedicated to classic work that is not at all stodgy.  It is unique, ingenious, and imminently clever....just like Matt.  I will miss him very much.

—-Drew Martorella

 

 

 

Don't Miss the Boat - Join Us Today on Our Season of High Adventure

A SEASON OF HIGH ADVENTURE

Most readers of our shameless Propaganda already know how excited we are about the new season at THEATREWORKS, but that’s not going to stop me from jumping up and down.  Because, really, this season promises to be the most varied, the most challenging, the most entertaining and the most flat out fun we’ve ever had together—-and that’s saying something.  Let me count the ways by explaining why I think each one of our shows is worthy of your special consideration.

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THEATREWORKS Shakespeare Festival

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Rock Ledge Ranch August 4 – 27

Tuesdays – Saturdays  7:30 p.m.

Prologue Saturday  August 21 at 6:00 p.m.

 

For over 300 years The Merchant of Venice was one of Shakespeare’s best known and best liked plays. It has a gripping hate plot where good triumphs over evil at the very last minute.  It has a romantic love plot, in which the hand of a beautiful princess is won by the young suitor who solves the famous riddle of the three caskets. But in a post holocaust century, the play has become more complicated, because the plays comic villain is, emphatically, a Jew. Shylock is the embodiment of many of the strongest anti-Semitic stereotypes, and he is also, clearly, a target of such stereotyping . He is both Jewish villain and Jewish victim.   The Merchant of Venice has become one of Shakespeare’s most problematic plays—a romantic comedy, a courtroom thriller, a dissection of a wealthy society not unlike our own, and an exploration of racial prejudice.  What does this all add up to?  One of the most exciting nights of theater you could hope for, and played out in our festival tent at Rock Ledge Ranch it promises to be the most entertaining and absorbing evening of the summer. We’ve got a wonderful cast, featuring Jane Noseworthy, who you may remember from her award winning performance in As You Like It two years ago. Jane will once again wear pants to deliver one of the greatest speeches in Shakespeare—but this time she gets to be a princess on a pedestal, too.  Christopher Lowell, once the angriest of our 12 angry men, will be even angrier and much more potent when he returns to the courtroom as Shylock demanding his pound of flesh.  It’s one of the most memorable roles in all dramatic literature. It’s quite a play.

 

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THE 39 STEPS

September 15 – October 9

Thursdays  – Saturdays  7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinees on September 25, October 2 & 9 at 2:00 p.m.

Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday September 25 at 2:30 p.m.

   

When I was a boy I found a book on my mother’s bookshelf, a Penguin paperback, called The 39 Steps.  There was a picture of a roadster on the cover, and behind the car were some scruffy hills and a running man.  The book had everything a boy wants in a story: mystery, danger, very sinister bad people, dastardly plots, fog, trains, Scotland on the eve of the Great War.  It had a perfect hero, Richard Hannay, a man with a stiff upper lip and a terrific knack for getting in and out of trouble.  Years later I saw the Hitchcock film, which in some ways was even better than the book because now there were some intriguing women around, and by then I was ready for them.  And many years after the film comes this play, which has been a sensation in London, New York, Denver, and very probably in the Highlands, too.  The play includes just about everything I loved about the book and the movie, and a whole lot less— because the entire thrilling affair is performed by only four actors. They have their work cut out for them, believe me.  It really is almost too much, especially when they are short on the handsome resources that usually come with action thrillers.  Can our little Bon Vivant Theater hold a play that features planes, locomotives, leaps off bridges, murder in a London flat and a grand climax in the Royal Albert Hall?  Yes, it can!  Just you wait.

 

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CHURCH

October 27 – November 6

Thursdays – Saturdays  7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinees at 2:00 p.m.

Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday October 30 2:30 p.m.

   

Theater was twice born in our western civilization, once in Greece, and thousands of years later in the Middle Ages.  And on both occasions the mother of theater was religion. Since then theatre has grown up and gone its own way, and these days theatre and religion don’t go out together much anymore.   All that changes in Church, which is not only a play but also a religious service conducted by four young ministers who have quite a lot to celebrate.   The author is Young Jean Lee, perhaps the most original and provocative playwright in America.  The New Yorker calls her plays personal, probing and “utterly demented.”  She grew up going to church with her Korean parents, and she hated it.  She would sit there and look around at the people and think how awful they were.  She went to college and declared herself an atheist. And then she wrote this play.  It is not what you think.  You will find yourself very surprised and possibly something more when you come to Church and worship in the house of Young Jean Lee.

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WOMEN OF WILL

November 9 - 13

Wednesday – Saturday 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinee on November 12 at 2:00 p.m.

Sunday November 13 at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday November 13 at 2:00 p.m.

   

Tina Packer claims there are 177 female characters in Shakespeare—that’s nothing compared to his 770 men.  But Juliet, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth, Desdemona, and Kate the Shrew are quite a handful.  You’ll meet them ,and several more, in this extraordinary performance, which The New York Times calls “a lively and illuminating tour” of the women of Will.  Ms. Packer is the founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, and there is no one more qualified to lead us into the unusually rich world of Shakespeare’s heroines, queens, warriors, saints and murderers.  She doesn’t merely show, she also tells— explaining as she explores the many variations of the feminine Shakespeare created over his long dramatic career. There’s a man in the room too, Nigel Gore, her performing partner who fully assists as husband, lover, friend and foe. 

 

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PETER PAN

December 1 - 23

Wednesdays – Saturdays 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinees on December 11 & 18 at 2:00 p.m.

Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Performances Tuesday - Friday December 20-23 at 7:30 p.m.

Prologue Sunday December 11 at 2:30 p.m.

   

We love this story, and so does everybody else, and we are going to retell the whole thing on our stage all over again, and very faithfully too.  The only difference, and we think you’ll agree it is a minor one, is that our story will not begin in a London townhouse but in a senior assisted living center somewhere near here.  We believe that is it not just young boys who never grow up, or middle aged boys who develop a syndrome, but old boys too, who are just as lost, just as young at heart, and even more likely to live in Never Land.  I know this from looking at many of the old boys around me, and also from looking in the mirror.  We are also fearless, foolish, ardent in the pursuit of justice, and even more certain, as Peter is, that dying will be “an awfully big adventure.”  We’d like the chance to play with mermaids, Indians, and fairies, and we are still ready to take on the pirates.  I’m very certain you will relish the chance to fly out the window with Peter, Wendy and a bunch of very lost boys.

 

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JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE 

January 26 – February 19

Wednesdays – Saturdays 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinees on February 4, 11, & 18 at 2:00 p.m.

Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday February 12 at 2:30 p.m.

 

August Wilson’s ten play cycle chronicling a century’s experience of black Americans is one of our nation’s great theatrical accomplishments. THEATREWORKS has produced two of these plays:  Fences, set in the 1950’s, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in the 1920’s. We think Joe Turner may be the greatest play of this great series.  It’s set (as usual) in Pittsburgh, this time in 1911, in a boarding house which serves as a refuge for people on the move, making the great migration north to a new world, a new age of industrialization, and a new identity. The play has an astonishing range, moving forward into the future but also back to a spiritual past, culminating in the juba, a dance which conjures the holy spirit in an ecstatic frenzy.  At the heart of Joe Turner is Harold Loomis, who arrives with his young daughter in search of his missing wife.  His journey is to recover his strength, to stand up, shine and find “his song.” It is a rare thing to produce a play in Colorado Springs with a large cast of African Americans, and it is rarer still to stage a play of this depth, richness and musicality.  Joe Turner is perhaps the most ambitious production of our ambitious season, and it’s worth its weight in gold. It is gold.

 

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SALOME

March 15 – 25

Wednesdays – Saturdays 7:30 p.m.  Saturday Matinees 

at 2:00 p.m.    Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday March 18 at 2:30 p.m.

 

Our student theater is always doing something bold and surprising, and here comes the play celebrated as the quintessence of “decadence.”  Salome was controversial from the beginning– when word of its lurid quality got around London, rehearsals were halted in 1892 on the grounds it was illegal to depict biblical characters on the stage.  Its first production was in France (wouldn’t you know it?) four years later, by which time Wilde was already in prison.  Audiences a century later might be slightly less shocked, but the story of the girl who asks her step dad for a saint’s head on a platter as a reward for a lap dance still seems very—well—modern. Oscar Wilde’s version is an elegant invitation to spectacle and we are confident our young and gifted students will deliver every shimmer of every tantalizing veil.

 

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MARY STUART

April 19 – May 6

Wednesdays – Saturdays 7:30 p.m.

Saturday Matinees on April 28 & May 5 at 2:00 p.m.

Sundays at 4:00 p.m.

Prologue Sunday April 29 at 2:00 p.m.

   

Two Queens, one kingdom, and one thrilling play.  Friedrich Schiller wrote Mary Stuart in 1800; it’s classic romantic drama.  But it’s also strikingly modern, a heady rush of passion and power in a political world that looks a lot like our own. Queen Elizabeth has imprisoned Mary, and she would quite like the Queen of Scotland out of the way.  But it’s not that easy; in fact it’s an extremely awkward situation. There all these men in suits hanging around—some loyal, some devious, some spineless.  Spin matters. It’s a very rough business.  Eventually a lovely head will roll, but not before a suicide, a failed rescue plot, and an extraordinary heart to heart, face to face collision in the rain. Mary Stuart is a dream come true for two of the best actresses in the land, and for theater goers who are ready for what theater used to be: rousing, beautiful, and heroic. It’s a great bubble bath of blank verse with just a little bit of the best soap in the world thrown in.  Well, more than a little bit: it’s hot, wet, rich, and oh so refreshing!

So there you have it: eight plays, and eight reasons why the artistic director of THEATREWORKS is feeling especially exhilarated these days.  Each of these plays is a unique adventure, a remarkable adventure. I think it’s a season any theater in America could be proud of. So much better than Disney World, so much closer, so much more affordable, so much more human and fun all year long. Ready? Let’s go!

 

— Murray Ross

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In late May I had the pleasure of accompanying several UCCS arts students on our annual tour of New York City.  We saw some of the greatest theatre New York has had to offer in decades.  Beyond the art, we got to reconnect with UCCS and THEATREWORKS friends and artists (Gareth Saxe in The Lion King.  Richard Crawford in Warhorse).  On the final day of the tour, Public Theater Artistic Director Oskar Eustis took the students on a behind the scenes tour of the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.  It was a magical afternoon and a lovely send off for the students.  The most powerful producer in American theatre spent over an hour with us, told funny stories, answered questions and enlightened us about the history of Shakespeare in the Park.  In beautiful 75-degree weather we sat in the famous Delacorte and watched technical rehearsals for the Shakespeare in the Park. It seemed the perfect New York afternoon.

For me, the scene in Central Park is a perfect example of the great benefit, edification and joy of our new Prologue Lecture Series. While Oskar is a friend and former professor of mine, he certainly did not have to give of his time during technical rehearsals of the biggest Shakespeare festival in the nation.  But, in the eight months since Oskar came to Colorado Springs for his Prologue lecture, he has mentioned to me on several occasions how much he loved his brief stay in our community.  He was moved by the warmth and intellectual curiosity of our students and of the THEATREWORKS patrons.  In short, he said, he would do anything for us.  A class in Central Park with our students?  No problem.

­These are more than just anecdotes about professional connections.  And while The Prologue Lecture Series has already helped put THEATREWORKS and UCCS on a larger theatrical map, the friends that we are making and building help all of us link up the small but powerful community of American theatre enthusiasts and professionals.  Theatre is nothing if not a medium of social connection and community building and indeed, there is a good reason why we turn off the television and drive across town to see a play.  We gather in a theatre to be with other people who love art as we do.  This has been the major philosophic underpinning of Prologue: to provide fun and educational forums for our community in order to connect with and learn from people from other theatrical communities.  And, in the true spirit of the democratic theatrical ideals that Oskar espoused, we do it for free.  I promise that there is nowhere else in the country that you can have the opportunity to work at no cost with superstars such as Double Edge, Anne Bogart, Tina Packer and Eric Hill.  In addition, the series has allowed us all to expand our minds, to greater appreciate theatre and to further heighten the enjoyment we have for our own great little theatre here on the Front Range.

This coming season we are no less ambitious.  In fact, we have upped the ante.  Some of you have asked for a little introduction to our speakers so that you are better prepared to enjoy and appreciate these luminaries.  So, I am happy to give you a brief overview of what we have in store for our 2011-2012 season:

In August several prominent Colorado rabbis will join Murray and me on the stage at Rock Ledge Ranch for a round-table discussion about Shylock and the problematic representation of Jews in The Merchant of Venice.  I am working on an article about portrayals of Shylock in 2011, specifically vis-à-vis our new production and the New York production starring Al Pacino (and produced by, who else, Oskar Eustis).  I will share what I have learned.

If you don’t already know Professor Robert von Dassanowsky, be sure you meet him in September.  One of the great film scholars in America, Von Dassanowky will tell us about the films of Alfred Hitchcock in connection with our production of The 39 Steps.  Robert is one of the most compelling and knowledgeable speakers I know and I am so excited to hear what he has to share.

More theatre royalty in October.  Young Jean Lee runs one of the most important experimental theatre companies in America.  We are doing one of her plays and thought we might try to get her to join us for a couple of days.  She said yes!  Lee’s story is fascinating and we will have an afternoon to ask her questions about her life in art.

Tina Packer is one of my favorite people and I am giddy about her visit to present Women of Will in November.  Tina is one of the great Shakespearian actors in the world (I know, it seems hyperbolic… but its true) and a funny and engaging teacher.  In addition to her production, she is going to lead a lucky few in a Shakespeare acting workshop.  Make sure to sign up early.

Murray Ross needs no introduction.  He will provide one of his usual fabulous talks before Peter Pan in December.

The winter and spring season will kick off with the most prominent name in theatre scholarship: Richard Schechner.  Even if you don’t yet know his name, trust me, this is a real coup.  Dr. Schechner is the author of dozens of books on theatre and Performance Studies.  Famously, he directed Dionysus in 69, arguably the most important experimental theatre piece of the last 50 years.  I will give him a proper and full introduction in the February issue of Propaganda.

Clinton Turner Davis is a prominent director and his work is known worldwide.  Clinton thought it would be fun to have a mid-winter banquet that celebrates the culinary references in the writings of August Wilson.  We agreed, and so delectable food will accompany Clinton’s lecture in February.

The most famous acting teacher in America will be here in the spring.  Anne Bogart pioneered a method of training called Viewpoints that encourages the actor/dancer to come into tune with physical surroundings and architecture.  There is no theatre company or program in the country that does not use some form of her research and teachings.  I am so excited to share her and her work next year.  Again, space will have to be very limited… reserve your spot early.  This is a once in a lifetime experience.

Eric Hill will be a wonderful companion lecture to Anne Bogart.  He teaches a form of acting from Japan called Suzuki training.  Think stomping, running, yelling, drumming and sore thighs!  It’s great, really.  Eric was a member of the Suzuki Company of Toga Japan and there is no one better to teach the style that we will be using in the student production of Salome.

I will close out the season with a lecture about the work of Friedrich Schiller as our final prologue to Mary Stuart.  Sorry, I won’t praise myself… but I think you should come.

I am sure that you will agree that it is an amazing list of artists and scholars.  You really won’t want to miss any of them.   As this year showed, going into a play with a little background information makes the theatre all the more exciting and personal.  We have more people to meet and connections to make and I hope that you will join us for all of the excitement.

All my best for a wonderful summer.  I look forward to seeing you at our first Prologue at Rock Ledge Ranch in August.

 

– Kevin Landis UCCS Theatre Program Director / Prologue Producer

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The Prologue Series Begins August 14

 

THEATREWORKS, in association with the University of Colorado’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts is thrilled to announce Prologue, a series of events that will be connected to our exciting season of theatergoing.  There are only a few theatre companies in America that can boast a tie to an institution of higher learning.  THEATREWORKS is one and we are proud to present ten special lectures, discussions and workshops from some of the most respected theatre makers in America.  We see these events as entrees into the plays that we will be producing, thus the title, Prologue.  Ever wanted to know more about how an actor trains for a certain role?  Well, we will have a workshop that addresses that.  Want to know how Murray creates original works out of thin air (I am Nicola Tesla, coming this fall)?  He will be happy to talk to you about it at an open discussion in September.

But beyond our local community and our areas of expertise, we are humbled by the great interest that our series has attracted from scholars and artists from all over the country.  The world-renowned Double Edge Theatre Company will be joining us in November for a series of open training sessions and discussions about experimental theatre.  Dr. Laurence Senelick, America’s foremost scholar on the plays of Chekhov (he has translated all of them) will come to talk to us about The Inspector General and The Seagull in March.  Hal Cannon, the dean of Cowboy Poetry in this country and an NPR regular, will be with us in December to talk about this fascinating and popular genre.  And in October, we will be honored by the presence of theatre royalty, when Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York and perhaps the most powerful theatre maker in the United States today, visits us for a lively discussion about his incredible career and the future of the American professional theatre (take a look at the recent feature article in The New Yorker about Mr. Eustis).

It is truly an exciting lineup and all of the details will be provided to you in the coming months. But, make sure you mark your calendars today for the first event in our Prologue series:

Dr. Rebecca Laroche, the chair of the UCCS department of English, will talk with us about William Shakespeare and some of the fascinating themes he was toying with in the writing of The Merry Wives of Windsor.  Bring a picnic dinner and join Rebecca on the lawn at Rock Ledge Ranch on Saturday, August 14^th at 6:00 pm.  It will be a wonderful introduction to our production that will perform immediately following the lecture.

 

We are providing these events free of charge.

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One Hit Wonder

  

In the annals of great American playwrights, the name of Joseph Kesselring (1902-67) is little more than a footnote.  That’s not for the lack of trying.  He wrote a dozen plays, including Aggie Appleby, Maker of Men, There’s  Wisdom in Women, Four Twelves are 48, Mother of That Wisdom,  Maggie McGilligan,  Solomon’s Mother, Surgery is Indicated, and A Frog in His Pocket.  You’d be hard pressed to find any productions of these plays nowadays, or even any old copies on the dusty shelves of ancient libraries.  Kesselring was active and soon forgettable, with one exception. He is the forgotten man who wrote Arsenic and Old Lace, possibly the greatest one hit wonder of the American stage. Its surprising quality was immediately noticed by Brooks Atkinson, reviewing the play for the New York Times: “Nothing in Mr. Kesselring’s record has prepared us for the humor and ingenuity of Arsenic and Old Lace...  his murder drama is compact with plot and comic situation... The lines are bright. The story is mad and unhackneyed. Although the scene is always on the verge of macabre and the atmosphere is horribly ominous, Mr. Kesselring does not have to stoop to clutching hands, pistol shots, or lethal screams to get his effects. He has written a murder play as legitimate as farce-comedy.”

 

One hit wonders are common enough, especially in popular music.  Former teenagers of the Bronze Age can rock down the road singing  “Sh-Boom, ” but we’d be hard pressed to remember anything else by the Chords;  we all moaned with “Earth Angel,” but that’s the only time we heard the Penguins.  Many of you  know  “Mule Skinner Blues,” “Who Let the Dogs Out,” and “Macarena” but I doubt you have many other tracks by The Fendermen, The Baha Men, or Los del Rio.  But one hit wonders can be really good.  Literature has several, with Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Black Beauty topping the charts. (It’s remarkable that all of these were written by women—but that’s the subject of another essay.)

 

In the theater, one hit wonders are perhaps more rare, but Arsenic and Old Lace is certainly one of them.  It opened on January 10, 1941 and played for 1,444 performances, nearly a five year run, not bad for a show without hit tunes. The play’s life after Broadway has been even more wondrous.  I’m willing to bet that not a night has gone by in America without the Brewster sisters serving their delicious Elderberry wine on some stage or other.  The body count is astounding  (at a conservative estimate, 12 dead men in every cellar x  500 productions per year = 60,000 in this young century alone).  There are already over 500 clips of the play on youtube  (please do not go there).  There really is nothing quite like Arsenic and Old Lace.

 

How can we account for such a phenomenon, the work of a writer otherwise known only for workmanlike competency and assiduity?  To begin with, Arsenic and Old Lace rode in on the high tide of the screwball, one of America’s greatest contributions to comic style.  Screwball comedy takes its name from a pitch thrown by Carl Hubbell, a novel and bewildering variation of the curve ball.   The screwball comedy, like Hubbell’s pitch, was reliably unpredictable.  In the movies and on stage, screwball comedy depended on surprising juxtapositions—an aristocrat was paired with a low life,  a couple found themselves with a pet leopard.   As we all now know, the central juxtaposition of Arsenic and Old Lace is that the play’s endearing old ladies are also homicidal maniacs. They really are sweet, and they really are serial killers. For just once in his life Joseph Kesselring stood on the mound, went into his motion, reared back and threw a pitch that is still fluttering, still spinning in surprising ways. He found the perfect screwball.

 

We now know, however, that like many a great pitch, Arsenic and Old Lace was doctored.  The play is the work of Joseph Otto Kesselring, but also of Howard Lindsay and Rachel Crouse who were definitely not one hit wonders. They wrote Life With Father, a play just as popular as Arsenic, as well as State of the Union, a Pulitzer Prize winner.  Lindsay and Crouse were the first readers of Kesselring’s play, and they were also its producers and skillful re-writers. Though they always gave sole credit to its originator; they were major league screwballers too, adding lots of their own extra spin.

 

Screwball comedy at its best combined preposterous situations with knowing and elegant repartee; another of its surprising juxtapositions.   The innocent share the stage with the sophisticated; the artless meets the artful.   In Arsenic and Old Lace, Mortimer Brewster is the witty theater critic who hates the theater; he’s seen too many first nights and liked none of them. (It’s a pity he was moved over from real estate, which he actually knew something about.) Mortimer is the brother of Teddy, an unadulterated enthusiast who thinks he’s President Roosevelt charging San Juan Hill.  At almost every one of its many wonderful moments, Arsenic and Old Lace is reminding us that this is just a very silly play, and sometimes a silly play about silly movies (the other brother’s face has been surgically altered to resemble Boris Karloff)— and yet its active and intricate plot carries us along, often with some thrilling moments of silly suspense.  It’s just the best kind of fun you could have in a home that’s also a graveyard.

 

 

A recurring characteristic of one hit wonders is that they are frequently infused with autobiographical energy.  Arsenic and Old Lace is no exception.  Kesselring’s father was a famous New York surgeon, and you can guess from the characters of Dr. Einstein and Jonathan Brewster (a sadistic butcher), that the playwright had a few mixed feelings about his dad.  Teddy Brewster’s identification with Teddy Roosevelt is akin to Kesselring’s own bursting pride and patriotism.  And in the characters of the self-absorbed theater critic and the would-be playwright Officer Patrick O’Hara, Kesselring paints self portraits of a man who, as he confessed in jingle, was endlessly self preoccupied:

I thought to rhyme of simple things

Of lily leaves and package strings,

Of travel trunk and Christmas tree—

And all I wrote about—-was me.

In another rhyming self portrait the playwright mocked his own sad decline into  the trivia of light comedy:

What a man is Kesselring

Former jump and wrestle king.

Now he trips on hill of mole

Grappling with a feather stole.

Considering the events of 1941, you might agree that this very silly play does seem a bit on the light side.  It’s almost as insulated from the Second World War as the Brewster house is removed from the 20th century.   Yet in hindsight the dark time seeps through the walls and comes up through the floorboards.  In the parlor, old fashioned fruit wine is being served, but the wine is laced with strychnine.  The sweet old ladies are as sweet as they can be, and completely insane.  The comic villain is absurdly sadistic and out of control, but he is sadistic and out of control.  You’ll remember there was one of those loose in Germany. (As Abby Brewster confesses, “I’ve almost come to the conclusion that this Mr. Hitler isn’t a Christian”.)  Teddy Brewster’s dismissal of Europe reflects America’s isolationism, but his warning about Japan is prophetic. There are twelve bodies in the cellar. Pearl Harbor is eleven months away.

 

It’s this combination of the still gruesome and the truly hilarious, perfectly juxtaposed, that continues to make this oldest of comic warhorses, the steady staple of high school theaters, an arresting theatrical experience.  Like the wine of the Brewster house, it’s delicious and packs a quite a kick.  It was Joseph Kesselring’s one big hit.  And it’s still a real wonder.

 

— Murray Ross