The Picture of Dorian Gray

JUNE 2018

2017-18 MAINSTAGE // I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS + HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE + THE MALTESE FALCON THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO + THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY 2017-18 TOURING STORIES // WHOOSH!: LONNIE JOHNSON’S SUPER-SOAKING STREAM OF INVENTIONS INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN + ADA’S VIOLIN: THE STORY OF THE RECYCLED ORCHESTRA OF PARAGUAY

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Arts al Fresco

From left: James Ehnes, Stephen Rose, Jordan Anderson, Edward Arron, and Jonathan Vinocour. Photo by Tom Mark Photography.

Shakespeare, chamber music, puppetry...no matter your preference, there's a way to soak up the arts and the sun this summer. Danielle Mohlman previews Seattle's arts al fresco.

Living in Seattle means living for the summer. Between hiking, biking and visits to the city’s incredible beaches and lakes, it’s easy to fill every evening and weekend with glorious outdoor activities. But while you’re solidifying your summer schedule, don’t forget to make room for the arts. Several intrepid Seattle arts organizations program their summers around the great outdoors, taking advantage of public spaces to bring art to the entire city. The Seattle Art Museum programs a biweekly concert and arts series at the Olympic Sculpture Park in Belltown, aptly named Summer at SAM. GreenStage produces the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival at Volunteer Park in Capitol Hill each summer, a festival that boasts sixteen performances on three stages across

the park. And the Seattle Art Fair takes over the CenturyLink Field Event Center every August, attracting local and national art aficionados alike. I had the opportunity to speak with the artists behind three of our city’s most anticipated outdoor performances: Wooden O’s productions of King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Chamber Music in the Park and Common Area Maintenance’s inaugural puppetry production. Don’t forget the sunscreen!

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Wooden O twenty-five years ago as a way to reconnect with his Pacific Northwest roots. The Mercer Island native noticed that the island’s annual summer festival, Mostly Music in the Park, was entirely music in the park.

Eager to bring outdoor performance to his hometown, Mount solicited the Arts Council of Mercer Island for a grant to perform Shakespeare at the Luther Burbank Park Amphitheatre—just three nights of Much Ado About Nothing to justify the “mostly” in the festival’s title.

Twenty-five years later, Wooden O has expanded its scope to include parks across the Puget Sound region. But one thing remains the same all these years later: the festival opens and closes at Mercer Island’s Luther Burbank Park Amphitheatre.

monster of a play and an audacious choice to present in the summer under two hours. But Wooden O was pretty much started as an audacious endeavor.”

Mount pointed out that King Lear’s cynicism makes it the perfect play for 2018.

“So many of the people act out of venal self-interest and casual disregard of others around them,” Mount said. “I worry about that behavior when I look at our politics, our consumerism, digital isolation, tribal isolation and ideological insulation.”

I had the opportunity to speak with George Mount about the significance of Wooden O’s twenty-five year anniversary and his role as director of this summer’s King Lear.

Actor Vanessa Miller’s Wooden O connection is longer than the festival’s history. Miller attended Mercer Island High School with George Mount and when he asked her to return to Washington to play Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, the decision was simple.

“We’ve never done it outside,” Mount said of Shakespeare’s tragedy. “It’s a

“I really think that free theatre is important,” Miller said. “When I was

a kid, I remember seeing some park shows produced by Empty Space.

Watching those shows changed my life, inspired me to follow a path into theatre. It only takes one beautiful summer evening in front of a happy crowd of people eating picnic dinners, laughing or listening to the beautiful poetry, to get hooked for life.”

She loves the community aspect of Wooden O and the way the actors truly connect with the audience. And she’s always aware that she could be part of an audience member’s first Shakespeare experience.

“Our job as actors is to be very specific with the language and the relationships,” Miller said. “If we know what we’re saying, and we act with intention, then it clicks for the audience too. If we, as actors, are bluffing it, or generalizing, then it’s really hard for the audience. Plus, Wooden O shows are very physical and lively. It’s not an academic experience.”

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“People can enjoy the weather and maybe a picnic while they listen to us play.” might not have the chance to hear us downtown at Benaroya Hall,” Ehnes said.

“It’s tremendously gratifying to see all the families and young people that attend these events in the parks.”

Last summer, SCMS introduced a community play-along component to Chamber Music in the Park, inviting string players from the Puget Sound region to play alongside SCMS musicians.

A lovely evening out. Photo by Tom Mark Photography.

Reginald Andre Jackson made his Wooden O debut eighteen years ago and says that there’s nothing like performing Shakespeare outdoors. He loves seeing audience members reclined on a blanket, enjoying a bottle of wine and a cheese plate or sending their kids off to play as they enjoy the performance.

“Every now and again, nature will come in and lift the play in unexpected ways,” Jackson said. “We took Macbeth to Walla Walla. One night during dusk, bats began to swoop and circle in a feeding frenzy near the trees that surround the stage. Wooden O has hired some pretty great designers. But nature—she is queen.”

George Mount left me with some words of advice for audience members who are hesitant to give Shakespeare a try.

“Wooden O was founded on the conviction that Shakespeare’s plays are popular entertainment,” Mount said.

“That’s been a driving force in how we approach the plays. Shakespeare’s plays entertain the whole person. The language challenges the brain. The romance lifts the heart. The pathos hits the gut.”

Mount added that even if a play isn’t to 6 ENCORE STAGES

an audience member’s liking, they still spent two hours in a gorgeous Seattle park, with a picnic dinner, surrounded by friends and family. Who could ask for a more perfect evening?

King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor run July 12 to August 12 in parks throughout the Puget Sound region. Visit seattleshakespeare.org for more information.

On a walk through Capitol Hill’s gorgeous Volunteer Park one summer, James Ehnes, director of the Seattle Chamber Music Society (SCMS), and his wife Kate, came across a small stage perfectly sized for a chamber orchestra.

She suggested that Ehnes program a summer concert in the space and Chamber Music in the Park was born.

“Bringing this music, for free, into Seattle parks has been a wonderful way to spread this beautiful music to listeners from all over the city who

“Everyone had a really fantastic time,” Ehnes said, “and it was very meaningful and moving to see so many crosssections of Seattle represented in the group—people of different genders, ethnicities, ages and backgrounds, all sharing in the joy of music.”

Violinist Amy Schwartz Moretti loves performing in any venue, but whenever she performs outdoors she feels a deep connection with the world and the lives around her.

“One of my favorite memories of a Volunteer Park concert was during a performance of the Dvorak Viola Sextet,” she shared. “I had a moment when I wasn’t playing for a few measures where I was so taken by the beauty of the scenery and music-making. I saw an airplane flying over carrying people to their various destinations, heard children laughing and dancing, and just had a general sense of all being right with the world.”

Violinist Erin Keefe also loves performing at Volunteer Park because the setting is more casual than the orchestra’s Benaroya Hall performances.

“The nice thing about it is that parents can bring their children without worrying about upsetting anyone if they get a little restless,” Keefe said.

“People can enjoy the weather and maybe a picnic while they listen to us play. It’s very fun for the performers and it’s something I look forward to every summer.”

Chamber Music in the Park is on Saturday, July 28 at Volunteer Park. Visit seattlechambermusic.org for more information, including information on how to register for the community play-along.

When Alexander Mostov joined Common Area Maintenance (CAM), a community gallery and generative studio in Belltown, he was looking for an inspiring workspace where he could interact with fellow creatives. In the years since, CAM has provided much more than that community. It’s become a space where Mostov, an artist who works primarily in two-dimensional gouache and computer illustration, can challenge his work and experiment with new forms. Which is how he came up with the idea to produce a puppet show that audience members can view from the sidewalk.

The puppetry performance will be the first of its kind in this space, but one that has the potential to become an annual summer tradition.

“I saw a traditional puppet show while I was studying abroad in Barcelona and was totally inspired,” Mostov shared.

“I love magic realism and the idea of injecting fantasy into one’s everyday life.

There’s something about puppetry that lends itself to that everyday fantasy.”

When I asked him what he was looking forward to the most about this collaborative art form, Mostov shared

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that he’s excited about merging his own visual style with the aesthetics of artists who work in other mediums.

For example, how will an artist who works primarily in sound enhance the script?

When Mostov and I spoke in the spring, he was in the process of assembling a team and writing the script, in collaboration with two other CAM artists.

“We’re playing with the idea of adapting a whimsical picture book script I wrote last year,” Mostov said.

“We’re planning on adding adultlevel humor, political references and sarcasm.”

Sounds like we’re in for a treat.

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Common Area Maintenance’s puppetry performance will run May through June at their space in Belltown. Visit facebook. com/commonartspace for more information.

So, pack a picnic and a wide-brimmed hat. Because whether you’re a puppetry fan, a Shakespeare fiend or an orchestra aficionado, there’s a performance for everyone this summer in Seattle. < Danielle Mohlman is a nationally produced feminist playwright based in Seattle. Her play Nexus is among the 2015 Honorable Mentions on The Kilroys list.

She is an alumnus of the inaugural class of Playwrights’ Arena at Arena Stage and a member of the 2018 Umbrella Project Writers Group.

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Welcome to The Picture of Dorian Gray, adapted from Oscar Wilde’s provocative exploration of art and human psychology. Wilde believed that art is central to human life. Art is not just entertainment – it provides models for people to better understand themselves and the world around them. That’s why people have always created and shared stories: they inspire and guide us through the infinite possibilities that life presents.

Art has power. That’s why Book-It has spent 28 years adapting some of the world’s best literature into inspiring and powerful theatre – now numbering 130 world-premiere productions! In that time, Book-It has reached over one million audience members. That includes patrons like you, and students in our education program, which brings interactive arts education into schools across the state.

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Today we ask you to Stand Up for Book-It so that we can continue providing these opportunities to our community. We believe our plays and our education programs must be accessible and affordable for everyone, and we rely on contributions from patrons like you to make that possible. As we approach three decades of meaningful theatre in Book-It’s unique style, will you make a gift to support our work?

Stand up for meaningful stories.

Stand up for literacy education.

Stand up for Book-It. Thank you,

Jane Jones & Myra Platt Founding Co-Artistic Directors

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By Oscar Wilde Adapted by Judd Parkin • Directed by Victor Pappas**

CAST Ian Bond Anastasia Higham Imogen Love* Jon Lutyens* Michael Patten* Chip Sherman Brandon J. Simmons Jon Stutzman Ruth Eitemiller Shawna Grajek

Chorus 2/Alan Campbell Sibyl/Hetty Chorus 4/Victoria Basil Hallward Chorus 1/Mr. Ashton Dorian Gray Lord Henry Wotton Chorus 3/Victor Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager

PRODUCTION AND ARTISTIC TEAM Pete Rush *** Andrew D. Smith *** Ron Erickson Johanna Melamed Linda Kenworthy Reynolds Jennifer Oaster Gin Hammond Geoffrey Alm ** Ian Stewart Giusippe Mele

Scenic Designer Lighting Designer Costume Designer Sound Designer Properties Designer Assistant Costume Designer Dialect Coach Fight Choreographer Dramaturg Production Assistant

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER Nesholm Family Foundation PRODUCER Kathy and Brad Renner

PRODUCTION STAFF Dan Schuy Benjamin Radin Jocelyne Fowler Jessica Christensen Shelby Choo Adrian Delahunt Charlie Minshall Suzi Tucker Emily Sershon Levi Plumb Jessica Jones Anna Bowen

Production Manager Technical Director Costume Shop Manager Scenic Charge Artist Master Carpenter Scenic Carpenter Scenic Carpenter Scenic Carpenters Properties Master Master Electrician Sound Engineer Dresser

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States **Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national theatre union ***United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 of the IATSE is the union representing Lighting and Sound designers in this Live Performance. encoremediagroup.com/programs A-3

ADAPTER NOTES I owe my love of Dorian Gray to Jack the Ripper.

In my early adolescence, a time when young boys love grisly stories, my best friend John Roberts and I became obsessed with Mad Jack. After we’d exhausted every bit of Ripperania we could find in our local library, we started reading all the fiction from the gas-lit Victorian era that we could lay our hands on, and the only qualification was that the book had to have a high and preferably bloody body count. We sped through the Sherlock Holmes stories, Jekyll and Hyde, and arrived, inevitably, at The Picture of Dorian Gray, which stood above the rest for two reasons: first, it had the greatest “Twilight Zone” concept ever, and second, it was FUNNY. I missed a lot of Wilde’s sub-textual humor in my early readings of the book, but even as an idiot 11-year-old, I could recognize a great epigram in Lord Henry’s line, “To get back my youth I would do anything in the world,

ADAPTER

Judd Parkin

except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” This made me laugh as an 11-year-old, and it still makes me laugh as someone approaching old age, though there are melancholy shadings in this joke for me now.

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Oscar Wilde was one of the great beacons of light in his time, and he remains one in ours. Wilde said that he put his art into his life, but this is false modesty, because it vastly underrates his astounding artistic achievements. The Importance of Being Earnest? An Ideal Husband? Salome? De Profundis? Any of these works would have secured immortality for Wilde, even if he’d never written Dorian Gray. His creative output wasn’t enormous, but it was unfailingly brilliant. It has been a joy and privilege to spend this past year in Oscar’s company, and he has expanded my world, as he has done throughout my life. I dedicate my work on this adaptation to my mother, Louise Parkin of Chicago, 93-years-old and still causing trouble, who first introduced me to Ivan Albright’s wonderfully ghoulish painting of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” many years ago in The Art Institute of Chicago. Thanks, Ma. A-4 BOOK-IT REPERTORY THEATRE

DRAMATURG’S NOTE ON THE SCRIPT If you’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray, you might think this play is missing a few scenes. This script is adapted from the original typescript that Wilde submitted to Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, which was not published until 2011. This version is quite a bit different from the novel that most readers are familiar with, and allows for refreshing new insight into this famous story.

The editor of Lippincott’s, J.M. Stoddart, was shocked when he read Wilde’s typescript. Because of the controversy it would surely cause, Stoddart and his colleagues decided to proceed with caution: “Rest assured that it will not go into the Magazine unless it is proper that it shall. In its present condition there are a number of things which an innocent woman would make an exception to. But I will go beyond this and make it acceptable to the most fastidious taste.”

Stoddart removed over 500 words, primarily those that were most explicitly sexual and homoerotic, in order to confine the novel’s contents to the acceptable limits of what could be published in 1890. Wilde was not informed of these changes before it went to the presses.

Despite Stoddart’s censorship, the story was sufficiently controversial. Reviewers condemned the “poisonous” and “unclean” story. Wilde counted 216 attacks on him in the press within the first two months. Britain’s largest bookseller, W.H. Smith & Son, pulled the magazine from their shelves. Wilde spent the following months defending his work in the press. He wrote impassioned letters to newspapers that had run scathing criticisms of his work.

Wilde also began revising and expanding the story, which was published as a full novel in 1891. (If you’ve read The Picture of Dorian Gray, it was this version.) This version has nearly twice as many chapters, a greatly expanded cast of characters, and a vengeful villain. Dorian Gray is presented as a less sympathetic character, suggesting that Wilde may have caved somewhat to the novel’s moralistic critics.

Although this is the most widely-read version of the novel, many critics contend that the 1890 typescript better represents the story Wilde wanted to tell. When Wilde

revised the story for the 1891 publication, he no longer had access to the original typescript, and had to work from the already-censored Lippincott’s edition. Furthermore, the publisher of the 1891 edition told Wilde to soften its sexual explicitness before they would release it (and Wilde had already been turned down by another publisher). Above all, Wilde needed to avoid further public scrutiny. The reaction to the censored magazine edition had been so extreme that publishing the original text might have endangered him legally, so his self-censorship was an act of self-preservation.

If you’re already familiar with The Picture of Dorian Gray, or if you’re experiencing it for the first time, we hope you enjoy the version of the story that was considered too risqué for Victorian readers. This is unabashed and uncensored Oscar Wilde at the peak of his career.

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PREFACE TO THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY Oscar Wilde was a master of aphorisms — short, pithy observations of general truths.

He composed a series of aphorisms responding to critics of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and then attached them as a Preface to the 1891 novel publication.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.

The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.

They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved.

No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style.

No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.

Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol.

Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

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OSCAR WILDE BIOGRAPHY “Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry is what the world thinks of me: Dorian is what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps.” and new pleasures. One can see how these ideas appealed to a young contrarian queer man like Oscar Wilde. Pater is the direct source for many of Lord Henry’s statements in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

By 1883, at age 29, Wilde was a moderately successful lecturer and writer who was constantly evading both moneylenders and persistent rumors of homosexuality. For Wilde, a middle class artist, marriage to a rich woman might solve both problems. After courting a handful of women, he met and married Constance Lloyd the next year. Victorian masculinity was defined primarily by marriage, so marrying Constance allowed him to more easily live a double life.

EARLY LIFE Oscar Wilde was born in Ireland. His mother was a respected radical poet who wrote dramatic lyrical poetry about Irish independence, the cruelty of English colonizers, and the oppression of women.

When he came of age, Oscar received a scholarship to Trinity College in Dublin, and after three years he left Ireland to study Classics at Oxford. Not long after moving, he learned to pass among the English by shedding his Irish accent and lisp. Even as a young man, Oscar was recognizable as the man he would become: obsessed with art, disdainful of traditional morality, and sexually ambiguous.

At Oxford, Oscar met his own personal Lord Henry Wotton: Walter Pater.

While studying at Oxford, Oscar read Pater’s book Studies in the History of the Renaissance, which Oscar called his “golden book.” In this study of Renaissance art, Pater espoused the value of Art for Art’s sake. Most controversially, he wrote that the true end of life is “experience itself,” encouraging his readers to indulge in new experiences

SUCCESSES In 1886, Wilde reached a turning point in his life when he lost his same-sex virginity to his friend Robert Ross. For once he felt truly able to act on his latent desires, and it even changed his outlook on himself: “After 1886 he was able to think of himself as a criminal, moving guiltily among the innocent”1. Over the next few years he wrote essays and magazine articles on society, art, and culture, and fully developed his own version of Aestheticism. Almost single-handedly, he revived the Aestheticist movement.

Wilde wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1890, which cemented his reputation as a writer. He was soon introduced to a fan who had read the novel fourteen times in a row. The young man, the youngest son of the Marquess of Queensberry, was a spoiled and temper-prone brat. But he was also very handsome, so Wilde offered to tutor him in reading Greats. The boy’s name was Lord Alfred Douglas, and their relationship would develop into a long and tumultuous affair.

“Apostle of the lily.” 1878 caricature of Wilde.

Wilde launched his career by latching onto the Aestheticist movement, even though it was falling out of fashion. After graduating he developed a wide reputation as a flamboyant, witty Aesthete. Wilde even embarked on a sold-out speaking tour across the United States, where he gave news-making lectures on Aestheticism, fashion, and interior design.

Wilde and Douglas

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Over the next few years, Wilde wrote his famous plays, including Lady Windermere’s Fan, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and The Importance of Being Earnest. He dined frequently with groups of young men and spoiled them with gifts. They were happy to take advantage of his kindness and his sexual attraction to them. Wilde would later call this “feasting with panthers.”

Soon enough, some of these young men began to blackmail him.

The handsome Lord Alfred Douglas was also becoming increasingly reckless in his trysts with Wilde, and rumors of their romance spread widely across London.

Douglas’ father Lord Queensberry, also a hothead, would not tolerate such a relationship. He tried accosting Wilde at a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest, but failed to get his attention.

Queensberry also failed to reach Oscar at his club, so he left a calling card which read, “To Oscar Wilde posing Somdomite [sic].”

This was the last straw. Wilde decided to sue Queensberry for libel.

BEFORE THE LAW The libel suit was a bad case, even in foresight. Wilde’s friends urged him to drop it. Because the law required the defendant in a libel suit to defend his words, Queensberry would have the opportunity to give evidence that Wilde was a “posing Somdomite.” Twelve young men testified that Wilde had committed sodomy, and Queensbury’s counsel presented incriminating love letters and evidence of the blackmail he’d paid to young male sex workers.

Wilde lost the case, which made him legally responsible for paying for the defense. He immediately went bankrupt.

Shortly thereafter, Wilde was arrested on the charge of gross indecency — a term meaning “homosexual acts not including buggery”. At this trial the jury could not reach a verdict, so a third trial was called.

Wilde was convicted in short order: the witnesses for the prosecution were being paid off, Wilde was obviously guilty, and the judge was particularly homophobic.

After the jury reached a verdict, the judge condemned him: “It is no use for me to address you. People who can do these things must be dead to all sense of shame, and one cannot hope to produce any effect upon them. It is the worst case I have ever tried. … I shall, under such circumstances, be expected to pass the severest sentence that the

Lord Queensberry’s consequential calling card.

law allows. In my judgment it is totally inadequate for such a case as this. The sentence of the Court is that each of you be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for two years.”

PRISON & EXILE Prison was nearly unbearable. Wilde’s imprisonment was unfortunately timed; at the end of the century, prison conditions were as inhumane as possible to act as a deterrent to crime. For his “crime,” Wilde was forced to sleep on a plank bed in the cold. Prison food was soup and gruel, measured out ounce by ounce. Disease and diarrhea were rampant. Multiple times guards became violently ill upon merely opening cells in the morning and seeing the conditions the prisoners lived in. In the first few months Wilde suffered a fall, which damaged his hearing and caused his ear to occasionally drip blood thereafter.

What is the lasting impact of Oscar Wilde’s life and art?

Biographer Richard Ellman perhaps says it best: “His work survived as he claimed it would.

We inherit his struggle to achieve supreme fictions in art, to associate art with social change, to bring together individual and social impulse, to save what is eccentric and singular from being sanitized and standardized, to replace a morality of severity by one of sympathy. He belongs to our world more than to Victoria’s. Now, beyond the reach of scandal, his best writings validated by time, he comes before us still, a towering figure, laughing and weeping, with parables and paradoxes, so generous, so amusing, and so right.”2a

One day in prison a fellow inmate muttered to him, “What are you doing in this place, Dorian Gray?” Wilde replied, “Not Dorian Gray, but Lord Henry Wotton.”

After his release, Wilde spent the rest of his life in exile. At first he lived in France with his old friend Robert Ross, where he wrote “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, published under the pen name C33 — his prison cell number. Its main theme described what he felt Lord Douglas had done to him: “For each man kills the thing he loves.”

He soon lost all will to write; it no longer brought him any joy. Toward the end of his life, Wilde’s health and appearance deteriorated. He became covered in red rashes and wandered alone through city streets, meeting old friends and acquaintances mostly through chance encounters. He ultimately developed meningitis, a consequence of a surgery he’d had for his injury in prison. Only two friends were present at his deathbed.

Oscar Wilde’s tomb, by sculptor Jacob Epstein. It was tradition for admirers to wear lipstick and kiss the tomb.

CITATIONS 1. Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde, 1988.

Print. p. 278.

2. ibid. p. 589.

A-8 BOOK-IT REPERTORY THEATRE

MEET THE

CAST

Ian Bond

Chorus 2/Alan Campbell Ian Bond is delighted to return to the Book-It stage where he has been seen in Treasure Island and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Recent credits include Teh Internet is Serious Business (Washington Ensemble Theatre), Don’t Split the Party (Transparent Storytelling Theatre), and Hamlet (The Horse in Motion). Ian has performed with Seattle Public Theater (Bad Jews), Taproot Theatre Company (Jeeves Intervenes), Seattle Shakespeare Company (Titus Andronicus), Sound Theatre Company, Forward Flux, eSe Teatro, Mt. Baker Theatre, and Coeur d’Alene Summer Theatre. Ian is a former resident ensemble member of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company where favorite roles include Romeo, Mr. Darcy, and Hamlet. He is represented by Topo Swope Talent.

Anastasia Higham Sibyl/Hetty

Anastasia is delighted to make her BookIt debut. Previous credits include Our Town, Proof, and Frost/ Nixon (Strawberry Theatre Workshop), Into the West (Seattle Children’s Theatre), and Romeo and Juliet (Seattle Shakespeare Company). She has also performed with Seattle Repertory Theatre, Annex Theatre, Theatre22, Taproot Theatre, Wooden O, ACTLab, Island Stage Left, Playing in Progress, Seattle Fringe Festival, and The 14/48 Projects.

Imogen Love* Chorus 4/Victoria

Imogen Love has been acting, directing, and writing in Seattle for 27 years. She was last seen in Seattle Shakespeare Company’s The Government Inspector, and as President Lincoln in Live Girls! Theater’s The Secret and Impossible League of the NoöSphere.

Favorites over the years include Reverse Psychology, Under the Gaslight, Chicks With Dicks (Empty Space Theatre); Deflowered in the Attic, What’ve We Done To Baby Jane (Re-bar), both of which she co-wrote and co-produced; Cloud Nine (Strawberry Theatre Workshop); These

Streets (ACT Theatre). Directing credits include Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Rebar, 2004). Next she can be seen playing Mistress Quickly in Wooden O’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, and soon in her onewoman show, Dear John, at West of Lenin.

Jon Lutyens* Basil Hallward Book-It audiences last saw Jon Lutyens as Fuzzy Stone (and others) in The Cider House Rules. Younger audience members may have heard his music in their schools with Book-It’s educational tour adaptation of the SkippyJon Jones series. He has also appeared with ACT Theatre, Arizona Theatre Company, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Intiman Theatre, Village Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Showtunes Theatre Company, and others in roles ranging from British intellects and ill-fated Frenchmen to an emigrant leprechaun and an East African elephant. Jon is a WWU alum and proud member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Michael Patten* Chorus 1/Mr. Ashton

Michael returns to Book-It having previously appeared in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, A Tale for the Time Being, Little Bee, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Great Expectations, and Owen Meany’s Christmas Pageant. Michael has had the good fortune to work at many of Seattle’s theaters including Seattle Repertory Theatre (Circle Mirror Transformation, All the Way, The Great Society, Noises Off, The Odyssey); Intiman Theatre (Heartbreak House, All the King’s Men); ACT Theatre (In the Next Room, The Crucible). Mr. Patten was a co-founder of New Century Theatre Company, performing in O Lovely Glowworm, Festen, The Trial, and On the Nature of Dust. He has appeared in numerous productions at Seattle Opera where he will be playing the Coroner in Porgy & Bess this August.

Chip Sherman Dorian Gray Chip is a trained dancer, actor, singer, and Core Company Member at ACT Theatre who has enjoyed playing roles from Shakespeare and Brecht to contemporary playwright Moby Pomerance. Recent local

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States

productions include Beatrice and Benedict as Friar/Messenger, A Christmas Carol as Middle Scrooge, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings as Bailey/Ensemble, and Alex & Aris as Alexander the Great. Other notable roles include MacHeath in Threepenny Opera, Julian in How We Got On, Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, Olivia in Twelfth Night, and The Tin Woodsman in The Wizard of Oz. Thank you for supporting diverse theatre; the world needs it now more than ever!

Brandon J. Simmons Lord Henry Wotton

Brandon J. Simmons is pleased to return to Book-It, having last appeared in Bud, Not Buddy. An award-winning writer, actor, producer, and director, Brandon co-founded The Seagull Project, and has appeared in The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull (both in Seattle and on tour to Tashkent, Uzbekistan).

Brandon’s play Is She Dead Yet? (a white comedy) won the Gregory Award for Outstanding New Play in 2016. As an actor, he has appeared with numerous theaters in Seattle, including On the Boards, Satori Group, Artbarn, New City Theater, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and numerous appearances with Seattle Shakespeare Company. Most recently, Brandon directed the Seattle premiere of An Octoroon at ArtsWest. He will co-direct the world premiere Anansi and the Halfling at Annex Theatre this fall.

Jon Stutzman Chorus 3/Victor

Jon is excited to be working with Book-It for the first time! Recent credits include Teach in American Buffalo and the Man in Turn of the Screw with Seattle Immersive Theatre. In Chicago, he has appeared in over 20 productions with such theaters as Shattered Globe, Lifeline Theatre, The Artistic Home, Raven Theatre, Steep Theatre, Griffin Theatre, Building Stage (where he was a company member), Back Stage Theatre Company, The Side Project, and City Lit Theater Company. Regional credits include numerous shows at the B Street Theatre, the New Harmony Theatre, and touring nationally for two years in Defamation with Canamac Productions.

Catch him in A Christmas Carol at ACT Theatre this winter.

encoremediagroup.com/programs A-9

MEET THE

ARTISTIC STAFF Victor Pappas Director

Over the course of a lengthy career, Victor Pappas has been an actor, a director, an educator, and an administrator. In Seattle, his work has been seen at Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, the University of Washington, Alice B Theatre, Showtunes Theatre Company, ReAct Theatre, and Civic Light Opera. He is a proud member of SDC, AEA, and SAG-AFTRA, and was a founding board member of Theatre Puget Sound.

Pete Rush

ArtsWest, On The Boards, Velocity Dance Center, and Broadway Performance Hall.

National work includes Cornerstone Theatre Company, Flint Youth Theatre, Horizon Theater Company, Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Roust Theater, and Cardinal Stage Company. Andrew holds a BA from Duke University and an MFA from the University of Washington, where he currently teaches.

Ron Erickson

Costume Designer Ron Erickson is pleased to be designing costumes for Book-It again. Previous costume design credits for Book-It include Jane Eyre, Hard Times, Dracula, Rebecca, Pride & Prejudice, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, which was also remounted at Portland Center Stage.

Ron was the head of costume design at Cornish College and is head of wardrobe at Seattle Opera.

Johanna Melamed

Scenic Designer Pete Rush previously designed Welcome to Braggsville, The Cider House Rules, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Sense & Sensibility, and SlaughterhouseFive for Book-It. Other select credits include The Legend of Georgia McBride, Little Shop of Horrors, Rapture, Blister, Burn (ACT Theatre), RENT, Jasper in Deadland, Spamalot (The 5th Avenue Theatre), The Government Inspector, Hamlet, Electra (Seattle Shakespeare Company), The Adding Machine, The Big Meal (New Century Theatre Company), Hir, Mothers and Sons, and Wonderful Life (ArtsWest) as well as productions at Washington Ensemble Theatre, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, West of Lenin, and Seattle Public Theater. Regional credits include Hangar Theatre, George Street Playhouse, Berkshire Theatre Festival, and Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble.

Andrew D. Smith Lighting Designer

Andrew has designed with Book-It since 2008, most recently lighting Howl’s Moving Castle. Andrew’s work has been seen at Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, New Century Theatre Company, Washington Ensemble, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Azeotrope, Strawberry Theatre Workshop, Seattle Public Theater, Theater Off Jackson, AFFILIATIONS

Sound Designer

Most recent sound designs in Seattle include Smoke & Dust and …And Starring Claire From Hollywood (Macha Theatre Works), The Flight Before Xmas (Seattle Public Theater), Sycorax (Snowflake Avalanche), Frozen (ArtsWest), The Big Meal and The Realistic Joneses (New Century Theatre Company), and Sorry (Thalia’s Umbrella). Atlanta designs include Exit Strategy, American Buffalo, and Race (Kenny Leon’s True Colors). She was also the sound designer for Anna Karenina (Book-It). Johanna has created multiple sound scores for visual and media artist Barbara Robertson in local and international venues.

Linda Kenworthy Reynolds Properties Designer

Linda is very excited to be part of the creative team for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Linda has been active in the Seattle theatre scene for many years. Her work has been seen on the stages of Seattle Opera, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, ACT Theatre, Bathhouse Theater, and the Empty Space Theatre. Before landing in Seattle, Linda worked at The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and The Portland Production Company. Linda has a BA in Drama /specialized in Technical Theater from California State University Stanislaus. This is Linda’s first show with Book-It.

Jennifer Oaster

Assistant Costume Designer Jenn is a Seattle-based costume designer for theatre and dance. Recent credits include Washington Ensemble Theatre (The Nether, Teh Internet is Serious Business, Every Five Minutes), The Horse in Motion (Hamlet and Wellesley Girl), and ACTLab (Measure for Measure), among others. Jenn is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts. She is the resident costume designer at Washington Ensemble Theatre and also works in the costume departments at Seattle Opera, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Ruth Eitemiller Stage Manager

Ruth has enjoyed spending the last ten years in Seattle working with companies such as Book-It, ACT Theatre, The 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle Shakespeare Company, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and others. Her recent credits include Patti and the Kid with Frank Boyd & Libby King, NextFest with The 5th Avenue Theatre, and A Christmas Carol with ACT Theatre.

She was a former company member and production manager with New Century Theatre Company, where she helped create shows such as Mary’s Wedding, The Trial, and The Adding Machine.

Shawna Grajek

Assistant Stage Manager Shawna Grajek has previously worked with Book-It (Howl’s Moving Castle, A Tale for the Time Being, The Brothers K), Seattle Public Theater (Ironbound), The Seagull Project (The Cherry Orchard), ArtsWest (The Nance, Holiday Cast Party), and New Century Theatre Company (The Big Meal).

She is the casting associate for Book-It, and the artistic associate and ensemble liaison for The Seagull Project.

Gin Hammond Dialect Coach

Gin Hammond received her MFA from the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University/Moscow Art Theater. Recent performances include the 22-character, 11-dialect solo show Seedfolks at Seattle Children’s Theatre. She teaches a wide array of vocal techniques such as voiceover, public speaking, and accent/dialect skills. Hammond’s voice can be heard on commercials, audiobooks, and a variety of

Actors Equity Association This theater operates under an agreement within AEA, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.

Actors Equity Association (AEA) founded in 1913, represents more than 49,000 actors and stage managers in the United States.

Theatre Puget Sound

Theatre Communications Group

video games including “BattleTech,” “Undead Labs: State of Decay,” “DotA 2,” and “Halo 3: ODST.” www.ginhammond.com

Geoffrey Alm

Fight Choreographer Geoffrey is pleased to be a part of the Dorian Gray team. Recent credits include Kiss Me Kate at The 5th Avenue Theatre, Here Lies Love at Seattle Repertory, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at Seattle Children’s Theatre. His work has been seen nationally and regionally. Mr. Alm teaches stage fighting at Cornish College of the Arts, the MFA program at University of Washington, and Freehold Theatre. He is a fight master with the Society of American Fight Directors.

Ian Stewart Dramaturg

Ian writes and directs plays. Directing credits include In Short Order (MonoMyth Theatre), New Works Festival: Family (Fantastic.Z Theatre Company), Wait Until Dark (Edmonds Driftwood Players), disappearer (Oregon Contemporary Theatre). He was the assistant director of The Brothers K (Book-It). Ian is also Book-It’s development associate. www. iancstewart.com

Jane Jones

Founder, Founding Co-Artistic Director Jane is the founder of Book-It and founding co-artistic director of Book-It Repertory Theatre, with Myra Platt. In her 30 years of staging literature, she has performed, adapted, and directed works by such literary giants as Charles Dickens, Eudora Welty, Edith Wharton, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Pam Houston, Raymond Carver, Frank O’Connor, Jim Lynch, Ernest Hemingway, Colette, Amy Bloom, John Irving, John Steinbeck, Daphne du Maurier, and Jane Austen. A veteran actress of 35 years, she has played leading roles in many of America’s most prominent regional theatres. Film and TV credits include “Twin Peaks” and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Singles, and Homeward Bound. She co-directed with Tom Hulce at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Peter Parnell’s adaptation of John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Parts I and II, which enjoyed successful runs here in Seattle, at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles (Ovation Award, best director) and in New York (Drama Desk Nomination, best director).

Recently Jane directed Book-It’s Great Expectations at Portland Center Stage, where her credits also include Pride and Prejudice, Cyrano and Twelfth Night (2008 Drammy award for Best Direction and Production). For Book-It, she has directed The Maltese Falcon, A Moveable Feast,

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, The Dog of the South, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: Uncensored, Truth Like the Sun, The House of Mirth, The Highest Tide, Travels with Charley, Pride and Prejudice, Howard’s End, In a Shallow Grave, The Awakening, Owen Meany’s Christmas Pageant, A Tale of Two Cities, and The Cider House Rules, Parts I and II, winner of the 2010 and 2011 Gregory Awards for Outstanding Production. In 2008 she, Myra Platt, and Book-It were honored to be named by The Seattle Times among seven Unsung Heroes and Uncommon Genius for their 20-year contribution to life in the Puget Sound region. She is a recipient of the 2009 Women’s University Club of Seattle Brava Award, a 2010 Women of Influence award from Puget Sound Business Journal, and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation’s 20th Anniversary Founders Grant, and was a finalist for the American Union for Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s 2012 Zelda Fichandler Award.

Myra Platt

Founding Co-Artistic Director As an original founding member of Book-It, Myra has helped produce over 130 worldpremiere mainstage productions and over 30 education touring productions. Most recently she directed and adapted the new musical Howl’s Moving Castle. Previously, she adapted and directed The Brothers K and directed The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2014 Gregory Award for Outstanding Production, The Seattle Times Footlight Award). She was nominated for Outstanding Director 2012 (Financial Lives of the Poets) and 2014 (Kavalier & Clay). Directing credits include Little Bee, The Financial Lives of the Poets, The River Why, Persuasion, Night Flight: An Operetta, Red Ranger Came Calling, The House of the Spirits, Plainsong, Cry, the Beloved Country, Sweet Thursday, Giant, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Cowboys Are My Weakness, Roman Fever, and A Child’s Christmas in Wales. Adapting credits include Little Bee, The Financial Lives of the Poets, The River Why, Night Flight: An Operetta, Red Ranger Came Calling, The House of the Spirits, Giant, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Cowboys Are My Weakness, Roman Fever, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and co-adapted Owen Meany’s Christmas Pageant with Jane Jones.

Composing credits include Prairie Nocturne, Night Flight: An Operetta (with Joshua Kohl), Red Ranger Came Calling: A Musical (with Edd Key), The Awakening, Ethan Frome, Owen Meany’s Christmas Pageant, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and I Am of Ireland. Acting credits include Seattle Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, New City Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, Prairie

Nocturne, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, The Awakening (West Los Angeles Garland Award), and Howards End. She originated the role of Candy Kendall in The Cider House Rules, Parts I and II directed

by Jane Jones and Tom Hulce. Myra is the recipient, with Jane Jones, of a Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Anniversary grant, the 2008 Women of Influence from Puget Sound Business Journal, and was named

by The Seattle Times a 2010 Unsung Hero and Uncommon Genius for their 20-year contribution to life in the Puget Sound region.

Book-It Repertory Theatre’s Arts & Education Programs are dedicated to inspiring people of all ages to read.

We are proud to offer you an array of programs that provide forums for learning, growth, exploration, and participation in the intangible benefits of arts integration.

2018+19 TOURING STORIES The Upside Down Boy / El niño de cabeza

by Juan Felipe Herrera Illustrated by Elizabeth Gómez TOUR DATES: Oct – Dec

New Shoes

by Susan Lynn Meyer Illustrated by Eric Velasquez TOUR DATES: Jan – March

The Trickster Tales: Raven and Coyote

by Gerald McDermott TOUR DATES: March – June

Book Your Touring Story Today 206.428.6266 education@book-it.org encoremediagroup.com/programs A-11

BOOK-IT

DONORS

This list reflects gifts received March 1, 2017 – February 28, 2018.

ADVOCATES CIRCLE - $100,000+ Sage Foundation

LITERARY LEGENDS CIRCLE - $50,000+ The Boeing Company Mary Pigott True-Brown Foundation Kris & Mike Villiott

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Many thanks to the supporters whose gifts made The Picture of Dorian Gray possible: EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Nesholm Family Foundation PRODUCER

Kathy and Brad Renner BECOME A PRODUCER

You can bring a book to our stage!

By becoming a Producer, you will earn special recognition and exclusive access to the production process of a mainstage show. Learn more by contacting us at development@book-it.org.

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GIFTS IN HONOR & MEMORY In honor of Samuel Bernstein Hollister Weber In honor of Erika Calhoun Andrea Calhoun In honor of Emily Davis Stephanie M. Hilbert In honor of Melinda Deane Andrea Ptak & Aaron Houseknecht In honor of Anne Fisher & Jaxon Ravens’ wedding Deborah Wolf In memory of Susan Hirasawa Anonymous In memory of Reuben “Boy” Lopez on Live for Good Day 2017 Colleen & Brad Strangeland In memory of Julia Mukhalian Martha Mukhalian In memory of Joyce Radke Sara Agassiz In honor of Rem Ryals Karen Van Genderen In honor of Christine Stepherson Nancy Ward Penny & Dan Smith • Veronica Smith & Natalie Hamrick • Barbara Snyder • Julie Stohlman • Linda & Hugh Straley • Liann & Stephen Sundquist • Lisa & Manish Tripathi • Jorie Wackerman • Susan Ward • Melinda Williams • Shannon Williams • Michael Winters • Anonymous (7)

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BOOK-IT’S GLITTERATI GALA A heartfelt thanks to all the donors who supported Book-It for our Glitterati Gala!

GALA SPONSORS The Boeing Company Point B Puget Sound Business Journal R. Stuart & Co. Winery Vincru GALA DONORS Josh Aaseng John Aldaya & Tom DeFelice Monica Alquist Gail Anderson Virginia Anderson Lisbet Nilson & Mark Ashida Cinnimin Avena Donna & Anthony Barnett Kayti Barnett-O’Brien Susan Bean & Ray Walton Lenore & Dick Bensinger Philip L Bereano Diane Bisset Jen Blackwood Penny Bradley & Michael Yang Karen Brandvick-Baker & Ross Baker Erin Brindley Patricia Britton Don & Karen Brown Linda Brown & Larry True Sally Brunette Christine Caldwell & Michael Richardson Linda & Peter Capell Laura Carr & Jeremy Derfner Kacee Chandler Laura & Greg Colman Beth Cooper & Dan Schuy Jane & Bob Cremin Robin Dearling & Gary Ackerman Allison Dennin Annie DiMartino Lynn Dissinger Peter Dixon & Gayle Fitzgerald Annie & Don Downing Jeremy Eknovian Laura Finn Anne Fisher Ravens Ben Fitch A-14 BOOK-IT REPERTORY THEATRE

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In-Kind Donors (cont)

Seattle International Film Festival Seattle Men’s Chorus & Seattle Women’s Chorus Seattle Opera Seattle Shakespeare Company Sheraton Seattle Hotel Solo Bar & Eatery Taylor Shellfish Third Place Books Two Beers Brewing Co. & Seattle Cider University Book Store Village Theatre W Hotel Washington Ensemble Theatre Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience Woodhouse Wine Estates Book-It makes every attempt to be accurate with our acknowledgments. Please contact Development Associate Ian Stewart at ians@book-it.org or 206.428.6202 with any changes or corrections.

Returning Summer 2018

Ada’s Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay This Spanish/English bilingual play is available to tour to community centers,

STAND UP for MEANINGFUL STORIES. STAND UP for LITERACY EDUCATION. STAND UP for BOOK-IT. Book-It transforms great literature into great theatre through simple and sensitive production and inspires our audiences to read. Book-It has reached over one million audience members and students with powerful stories and innovative educational programs.

Book-It is raising $100,000 by June 30 to support our 2018-19 season. Your gift makes this work possible.

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camps, and schools.

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book-it.org Drop cash, a check, or a giving envelope into our donation box in the lobby

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Mail a check to: Book-It Repertory Theatre 305 Harrison St Seattle, WA 98109

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encoremediagroup.com/programs A-15

Book-It Repertory Theatre is a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming great literature into great theatre through simple and sensitive production and to inspiring its audiences to read.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

BOOK-IT STAFF Jane Jones Founder & Founding Co-Artistic Director

Myra Platt Founding Co-Artistic Director

Kayti Barnett-O’Brien Managing Director

Chief Financial Officer, Clipper Seafoods

ARTISTIC

DEVELOPMENT

ADMINISTRATIVE

Josh Aaseng Associate Artistic Director

Sally Brunette Director of Development

Charlotte Moss Bookkeeper

Shawna Grajek Casting Associate

Ian Stewart Development Associate

PRODUCTION

EDUCATION

PATRON SERVICES

Dan Schuy Production Manager

Annie DiMartino Director of Education

Sasha Bailey Patron Services Manager

Dominic Lewis Tour Manager

Aly Guzman-Dyrseth Box Office Sales & Data Specialist

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Shawna Grajek Assistant Production Manager Benjamin Radin Technical Director Jocelyne Fowler Costume Shop Manager

SERVICES

Glen Miller Director of Marketing & Communications

Wolken Communica Graphic Design

Val Brunetto Communications Manager

Chris Bennion Photography

Alabastro Photography

OFFICERS Larry Pihl, President

Shelby Choo Master Carpenter Emily Sershon Properties Master

Stephen Robinson, Vice President Writer

Stuart Frank, Secretary

Casting Manager, Entertainment, Holland America Line

John Aldaya, Treasurer

Chief Financial Officer, Carrix

BOARD MEMBERS Monica Alquist

Director of Events and Special Projects, Puget Sound Business Journal

Mark Boyd Community Volunteer

Linda Brown Community Volunteer

Laura Colman

Healthcare & Human Resources Executive, Retired

Anne Fisher Ravens

Senior Associate, Point B

Craig Greene

Vice President of Operations, Lydig Construction

Jane Jones

John Ulman Photography

Founding Co-Artistic Director, Book-It Repertory Theatre

Fat Yeti Photography

Margaret Kineke

Senior Vice President, Financial Consultant, Davidson Companies

Tom Wahl, IT Support

Mary Metastasio

Senior Portfolio Manager, Safeco, Retired

CONTACT US

Shyla Miller

Book-It is a vibrant literature-based theatre company that transforms great works of classic and contemporary literature into fully staged works for audiences young and old — more than 130 world-premiere adaptations and counting. Book-It’s combined programs ignite the imaginations of more than 80,000 people yearly through the power of live theater. Among the company’s honors: 2010 Mayor’s Arts Award, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Founder’s Award, 2012 Governor’s Arts Award, and three Gregory Awards for Outstanding Production. www.book-it.org

Community Investor, Global Corporate Citizenship NW Region, The Boeing Company

Christopher Mumaw (Associate) Independent scenic designer

Myra Platt Founding Co-Artistic Director, Book-It Repertory Theatre

Shirley Roberson Senior Associate, Hughes Media Law Group

CENTER THEATRE AT THE ARMORY

BOX OFFICE CONTACT

BOX OFFICE

206.216.0833 • boxoffice@book-it.org

Seattle Center

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305 Harrison Street, Seattle

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158 Thomas Street, Seattle

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Dialogue

Encore Stages in conversation

Photo from Teh Internet is Serious Business at Washington Ensemble Theatre. Photo courtesy of John Carpenter Photography.

As a fourth generation Seattelite, Rachel Guyer-Mafune lives with the Pacific Northwest in her DNA. She’s a 2016 graduate of Cornish College of the Arts and a member of ACT’s 2018 Core Company. And like any great actor, she considers her artistic identity a work in progress. She’s committed to expanding her capabilities, learning from and listening to her theatre peers and finding inspiration in everything.

We had the opportunity to speak with her about her recent performance in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves, her commitment to new work and her passion for this city.

The Wolves seems to be gaining momentum with every regional production. What attracted you to Sarah DeLappe’s script? How has working with this ensemble at ACT informed the way you rehearse and collaborate?

it means to be a teenage girl today.

Everyone working on The Wolves truly became a pack, and the trustful bond we created was an imperative step to becoming a team.

Looking

I played soccer as a child and was a teenager not too long ago, so this script resonated with me front to back. The characters are intelligent, strong as hell and defy reductive female stereotypes in theatre. I was so excited for the audience to get a glimpse of what

at this past season— especially Teh Internet is Serious Business at WET, Howl’s Moving Castle at Book-It and The Wolves at ACT—it’s clear you’re attracted to new plays and Seattle premieres. Are there any favorite playwrights you’re hoping to see on Seattle stages one day?

Rachel GuyerMafune.

Photo by Dawn Schaefer.

I’m super amped for WET’s next season, which includes new plays written by female playwrights. Joining WET as a company member last year has motivated me to read new plays and discover playwrights I might not otherwise know about. Having a theatre family to discuss new works with is awesome. I’m also really excited about ACT’s first playwright in the Core Company, Yussef El Guindi. He’s had plays produced at ACT and all over the encoremediagroup.com/programs 9

country and he’s one talented dude. It’s been a blast reading his work with other Core Company members.

You were recently named to ACT’s 2018 Core Company. Could you talk to me about what it means to be part of this company of artists?

Joining ACT has made me realize that my artistic path is not one I have to navigate alone. Knowing I’m surrounded by folks who believe in my work and have confidence in my ability to grow as an actor—it’s incredible. I am one lucky gal. John Langs, the artistic director, absolutely adores actors and he’s committed to providing us with a space to bloom and creatively flourish.

I’m beyond proud to represent ACT as an artistic ambassador this year.

What excites you most about being an artist in Seattle? How do you hope to grow and challenge the theatre community here?

Being part Japanese American and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I’m hungry for more characters like me.

I mean, how dope would it be to see an unapologetically brazen, mixed, pansexual woman onstage right now?

I’m currently working on using my voice to express our need for diverse, inclusive and relevant theatre. I’m learning how to take my space, while giving the mic to others who need to be heard first.

STRAWBERRY THEATRE WORKSHOP

HOW

I

LEARNED TO

DRIVE

BY PAULA VOGEL

strawshop.org 10 ENCORE STAGES

JUN 7 – JU L 7

Are there any musicians, dancers or theatre artists that you’re especially excited about next season?

I’m looking forward to continuously watching new artists and work I’ve never seen before. I want to see more shows and make connections with folks who are dedicated to telling honest, unvarnished stories onstage and off. It’s going to be an amazing year to find inspiration in this community. <Danielle Mohlman

Dialogue

Encore Stages in conversation

James Asher (Gamal) and Kunal Prasad (Mohsen) in the 2016 Golden Thread Productions staging of Our Enemies: Lively Scenes of Love and Combat, directed by Torange Yeghiazarian. Photo by David Allen Studio, courtesy Golden Thread Productions.

Encore Stages talks with playwright Yussef El Guindi on the immigrant—and American—experience.

If you’re an avid theatre-goer in Seattle, chances are you’ve seen a Yussef El Guindi play. This prolific playwright has become an artistic staple here in Seattle, a city he has called home since 1994. (Upon reflection, he shared that he’s lived in Seattle longer than he’s lived anywhere else—even England, where he was raised after his family emigrated from Egypt.) We had the opportunity to speak with him about his writing, being a theatre artist in Seattle and ACT’s 2018 Core Company.

Many of your plays examine the immigrant experience through a

theatrical lens. Is there something that you wish Seattle residents better understood about immigration in America?

It’s not easy. Immigrating is sort of akin to walking a wobbly, wooden bridge over a precipice in a deep fog—a bridge that appears to be disappearing behind you and whose intact structure up ahead is not assured. And even if you “make it across” and achieve citizenship, world events and political shenanigans might occur that might suddenly imperil your standing as an immigrant. encoremediagroup.com/programs 11

collective group. There is no sense of guilt or worry that this might in some way impact their standing in society.

Yussef El Guindi. Photo by Ann-Margaret Johnson/Sassafras Photos.

Different racial and immigrant groups at different times will frequently get slandered in the headlines. I think it’s a phenomenon among immigrant groups, and more broadly, different racial groups within the United States, to hold their collective breaths every time there is some horrendous act of violence that makes the news. We all secretly pray it isn’t someone from our “tribe.” When a white person commits a horrific act of violence, I don’t get the sense among European Americans that they feel they have to carry the burden of that crime.

The crime is not foisted on them as a

But for certain immigrant groups and people of color, that worry is real. You feel pressured to publicly disavow any connection or feeling for the individual who perpetrated that crime. If the perpetrator is an Arab or Muslim, the mainstream press won’t speak of that individual as troubled or suffering from mental health issues. Instead, they’re terrorists, monsters, and live outside the pale where everything good and civilized apparently lives.

At such times, you feel you’re back on that bridge over that precipice. And the bridge feels even more wobbly than usual.

How has our country’s current political climate impacted your writing?

The United States has been “Trumpland” for some time: a place where an alarming degree of xenophobia and racism are the norm. I’ve been in “crisis mode” when crafting plays for some time now. And when responding to current political events, I have to tread carefully. Mainly because,

Shanga Parker (Musa) and Carol Roscoe (Sheri) in the 2011 ACT world premiere of Pilgrims Musa and Sheri in the New World, directed by Anita Montgomery. Photo by Chris Bennion, courtesy of A Contemporary Theatre (ACT).

12 ENCORE STAGES

with rare exceptions, the turnaround between completing a first draft and a full production can range from two to three years, sometimes longer.

Whatever political crisis that triggered the play may be old news by the time your piece is staged. You have to sift through the news event, or zeitgeist of that moment, to find what resonates on a more universal level—and that might transcend the particular political moment that triggered the play. Which means breaking things down into very personal, human matters—locating your protagonists, with all their personal issues, within the social and political web in which they operate and understanding that what makes us human are also the political structures that prop us up as social creatures.

That’s the goal anyway: to turn something very specific, local and political into a more universal exploration of our status as citizens and humans just trying to survive.

As for my home country of Egypt, after the revolution in 2011 I wrote several plays in response. One of them, The Mummy and The Revolution, I wrote too soon—feeling much too hopeful for a future that didn’t come to pass.

The other two plays, Threesome and The Tyrant, I took a different tack. I know these plays are still expressive of both past and present circumstances. The shock waves from the revolution and its aftermath continue to ripple through me and will probably impact my writing in some way for some time to come.

You’ve worked with a number of local theatre companies in the production and development of your plays. Do you have a favorite theatre company to collaborate with? Why?

I’m very thankful to all the theatre companies who have extended their hand out to me. Most theatres are very squeamish when it comes to putting on plays by and about Muslim and MENA (Middle Eastern, North African)

William Dao (Nasser), Mujahid Abdul-Rashid (Kevin), and James Asher (Ahmed) in the 2011 West Coast premiere of Language Rooms, directed by Evren Odcikin, a coproduction between Golden Thread Productions and Asian American Theater Company. Photo by David Allen Studio, courtesy Golden Thread Productions.

writers. They’re not quite sure where these stories and people fit in the received narratives of the day. For all the talk of diversity, most theatres lack a truly global vision that encompasses the full array of voices from around the world. Not to mention an inability to see beyond the limited diversity schemata that determines who is and is not heard from.

So, I really appreciate those adventurous local theatres that have reached out to me, like West of Lenin, Theater Schmeater, 18th & Union, and ACT. ACT in particular has shown a keen interest in my work. To have a theatre of this size give me a platform for my plays has been very important in my development as a writer.

and women—itinerant individuals knocking on numerous doors, trying to get theatres to invite us in. And how humiliating it is, when more often than not, those doors are either shut on us or our knocks are ignored altogether. So, for ACT to invite me in to be part of their 2018 Core Company is huge. As for how that plays out in the future, we’ll see.

We’re all sort of making up this position as we go along. As John Langs, the artistic director, likes to put it, I get to be the first pancake. But psychologically, for me, the promise of having a home where I might get to exercise my talents, where my plays may have a good chance of being staged, to have a place where I can try out new material with exceptionally good actors, well, that’s just a lovely position for a playwright to be in.

You were recently named to ACT’s 2018 Core Company. Could you talk to me about what it means to be part of this company of artists?

What excites you most about being an artist in Seattle? How do you hope to grow and challenge the theatre community here?

I joke with colleagues that as theatre people we are door-to-door salesmen

What’s interesting to me is the degree to which I have been shaped encoremediagroup.com/programs 13

as a playwright by Seattle theatre audiences. There are personal and cultural influences of course that will always infuse the heart of everything I write, and to which I am both grateful for, and to which I am a prisoner of—to the degree that we are all shaped and imprisoned by the particulars of our individual pasts. But as a playwright, having spent now twenty-four years in Seattle seeing many plays at different theatres, I realize I have not only been learning from the plays I watch, but from the reactions by the Seattle audiences to those plays.

Without realizing it, my plays are being influenced by those audience reactions. I have some appreciation of what might and might not stir a Seattle audience. There are, of course, no guarantees that what you write will be to their liking. But I think any playwright who spends a long enough time in one city will invariably start unconsciously adjusting their work for the audiences they’ve attended plays with. Sort of like knowing what jokes and stories will fly at a family gathering.

But that is very much countered by my non-Seattle subject matter. And that’s the challenge for me. To write about peoples and conflicts that people here don’t necessarily relate to. To humanize individuals and situations that too often get flattened in the press.

People do like to see themselves up on stage in some way. My job is to bridge the gap between the non-Seattle folk I portray and the Seattle audiences who, hopefully, come to see my work. (Thank you to all those who do attend!)

Do you have any plugs? How can folks find more about you and your work?

I do have a play of mine called Hostages, written almost thirty years ago (!), that’s going to be done at 18th & Union in October, directed by David Gassner. I’m curious to see how it stands up after all these years. Come see it if you can. <Danielle Mohlman 14 ENCORE STAGES

Intermission Brain Transmission Are you waiting for the curtain to rise? Or, perhaps, you’ve just returned to your seat before the second act and have a few minutes to spare? Treat your brain to this scintillating trivia quiz!

Email us the answer to the last question and have a chance to win tickets to a show!

1) Book-It Repertory Theatre presents The Picture of Dorian Gray, June 6–July 1. Oscar Wilde wrote the novel, originally serialized in 1890 in which literary magazine? a) b) c) d)

Scribner’s Magazine Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern Harper’s Magazine

2) Until the Flood, a play that focuses on the social unrest following the fatal police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, will play at ACT June 8–July 8. The playwright, Dael Orlandersmith, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. For which play was she nominated? a) b) c) d)

The Gimmick Beauty’s Daughter Yellowman Forever

3) ACT Theatre presents the one-woman show Lauren Weedman Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, July 20–August 12.

Now a resident of Los Angeles, playwright and performer Lauren Weedman lived in Seattle for several years, where she was a regular contributor to which Seattle-produced radio show? a) b) c) d)

Rewind Too Beautiful to Live Robin and Maynard BJ Shea

Bonus Question What was the last arts performance you attended that you liked best and why?

Email your response to production@encoremediagroup.com with "Trivia Quiz" in the subject line.

Oscar Wilde. Photo by Napoleon Sarony.

4) Playing July 11–August 18 at Taproot Theatre is Sweet Land, in which a German woman immigrates sight-unseen to marry a Norwegian farmer in post-WWI Minnesota.

Seattle’s own Scandinavian neighborhood is Ballard. In what year was Ballard annexed to Seattle? a) b) c) d)

1905 1896 1907 1911

5) July 12–August 12, Seattle Shakespeare Company will run Wooden O, a series of free outdoor Shakespeare performances. This year they will perform King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Who played King Lear in the 2008 motion picture directed by Trevor Nunn? a) b) c) d)

Patrick Stewart Ralph Fiennes Ian McKellen Michael Caine

ANSWERS: 1) b. – Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. It merged with Scribner’s in 1916. 2) c. – Yellowman was a 2002 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama. 3) a. – Rewind with Bill Radke was produced at KUOW and syndicated on NPR until 2004. 4) c. – The City of Ballard was annexed to Seattle in 1907 after several years of struggling with an inadequate supply of potable water. 5) c. – Ian McKellen

encoremediagroup.com/programs 15

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