A Doll's House, Part 2

GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE

A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2 2018 – 2019

GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE David Saint, Artistic Director Kelly Ryman, Managing Director Presents

A Doll’s House, Part 2

by Lucas Hnath Directed by Betsy Aidem Scenic Design by Deb O Costume Design by Olivera Gajic Lighting Design by Rick Fisher Original Music and Sound Design by Mark Bennett Hair and Wig Design by Troy Beard Fight Direction by Rick Sordelet Production Manager Christopher J. Bailey Production Stage Manager Kristin Pfeifer* Casting by McCorkle Casting, Ltd.

November 27 – December 23, 2018 Originally produced on Broadway by Scott Rudin, Eli Bush, Joey Parnes, Sue Wagner, and John Johnson.

Commissioned and first produced by South Coast Repertory.

A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2 benefited from a residency at New Dramatists.

Presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.

In accordance with Actors’ Equity Association regulations, we remind you that all electronic devices, including pagers, cellular phones and watches must be turned off during the performance.

Grant funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund.

Made possible by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, A Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.

George Street Playhouse is a constituent of the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and a member of the New Jersey Theatre Alliance. The theatre operates under an agreement between LORT and Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States, and is a member of the New Brunswick Cultural Center.

CAST in order of appearance Anne Marie

Ann McDonough*

Nora

Kellie Overbey*

Torvald

Andrew Garman*

Emmy

Lily Santiago* *- denotes member of Actors’ Equity Association.

A Doll’s House, Part 2 is performed without an intermission

Understudies: Eileen Doan and Emma Wagner

The actors and stage managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

The director is a member of The Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, Inc., an independent national labor union.

The stage technicians of George Street Playhouse are proud members of IATSE Local 21.

The Scenic, Costume, Lighting and Sound Designers in LORT theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists Local USA-829, IATSE. The George Street Playhouse playbill is published five times a year by George Street Playhouse, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation. Please send advertising inquiries to George Street Playhouse, P. O. Box 194, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0194, attn: Playbill Advertising.

COMPANY bios.

Andrew Garman (Torvald) Broadway: Salomé. OffBroadway: The Christians (Lortel, Drama Desk nominations; Playwrights Horizons); Admissions (Lincoln Center); The Glory of the World (BAM); The Moors (Playwrights Realm); The Ugly One (Soho Rep); Ashville (Cherry Lane/Rattlestick); A Bright New Boise, The Bereaved, After (Partial Comfort Prods); Burning (The New Group); Cymbeline, Hamlet (NYSF, The Public); Burnt Umber, The Trojan Women (LaMama). Other theatre credits include Macbeth (Actors Theater of Louisville); The Merchant of Venice (A.R.T.); Under Milkwood (Theater Building Chicago). Film & TV credits include Julie & Julia, Simple Revenge, “Search Party,” “Madame Secretary,” “Law & Order.”

Ann McDonough (Anne Marie) LCT: Admissions, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Dinner at Eight. Off-Broadway includes The Dining Room, What I Did Last Summer, Uncommon Women and Others, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, The Middle Ages, The Rise and Rise of Daniel Rocket and Trelawney of the Wells. Regional includes John (ACT San Francisco),The City of Conversation (Arena Stage), Time of My Life (Pittsburgh Public Theater), and Our Town, Absurd Person Singular, Painting Churches, All in the Timing, The Voysey Inheritance, Paris Bound (Long Wharf Theatre). Film: Moonstruck, The Mothman Prophecies, Six Degrees of Separation. TV: “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “All My Children,” “The Good Wife.”

Kellie Overbey (Nora) Broadway: The Coast of Utopia, Twentieth Century, “Q.E.D.”, Judgment at Nuremberg, Present Laughter, Buried Child. Drama Desk nominations for Women Without Men (The Mint) and Sleeping Rough (Page 73.) Lortel nomination for The Savannah Disputation (Playwrights Horizons.) Most recent off-Broadway: Mary Page Marlowe at 2nd Stage. Film & TV include: Imitation Girl, That’s What She Said (also screenwriter), Sweet and Lowdown, Outbreak, “FBI,” “Blindspot,” “Blue Bloods,” “30 Rock,” and “The Good Wife.” Kellie is the Executive Director of AisFor.org, an Eastern Principal Councilor at Actors Equity Association, and a founding member of FairWageOnStage.org.

Lily Santiago (Emmy) is a recent graduate of Northwestern University and last appeared in The New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Othello directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. Other productions include In The Red and Brown Water, Fuente Ovejuna and Water By The Spoonful. She is a proud graduate of LaGuardia Performing Arts HS in New York City and represented

by Innovative Artists.

Lucas Hnath (Playwright) His plays include Hillary and Clinton, Red Speedo, The Christians, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Isaac’s Eye, and Death Tax. His work has been produced at Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival of New Plays, Ensemble Studio

COMPANY bios.

Theatre, Gate Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Royal Court Theatre, Soho Rep, Traverse Theatre, and Victory Gardens. He has been a resident playwright at New Dramatists since 2011. He is a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre and a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect. He has received the Kesselring Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award, two Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award Citations, an Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, and an Obie. His work is published

by Dramatists Play Service and Overlook Press.

Betsy Aidem (Director) This is Ms. Aidem’s professional directorial debut. She directed a premiere production of Caroline McGraw’s Ultimate Beauty Bible (Experimental Theater Wing/NYU). Acting: At GSP: Mama’s Boy, God of Carnage and Jolson Sings Again directed by David Saint and most recently at the Cherry Lane theater in Final Follies.

Thank you to so many directors: David Kennedy, David Cromer, Sir David Jones, Michael Gracey, Kenneth Lonergan, Neil Pepe, Tina Landau, Carolyn Cantor, Maria Mileaf, Bartlett Sher, Bill Rauch, John Malkovich, Simon Curtis, Julie Taymor, Daniella Topol, Brian Mertes, Woody Allen, Christopher Ashley, Melia Bensussan, Pamela Berlin, Adam Rapp, Sara Wolkowitz, Danya Taymor, Michael Apted, Daniel Aukin, Carey Perloff, Phil Gelatt , Pamela Berlin, R. Stuart White, Phillip Glass, Richard Hamburger, Liz Diamond, Ain Gordon, Alex Timbers, Jo Bonney, Michael Greif, Mark Nelson, Paul Mullins.

Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance.

Deb O (set designer) Selected set and costume designs: This Is Reading (Reading, PA) Ready Set Go: Race (Falconworks, NY), Airness (Humana Fest, KY) Selkie (Z Space,

CA) Thieves (El Portal Theater, LA) Sweeney Todd (Perseverance Theater, Alaska) Christmas Carol and Middletown (Trinity Rep, RI) Light: A Dark Comedy (New Victory, NY) Rite Of Spring (Kimmel Center, PA) The Seagull, Ivanov, Platonov, Uncle Vanya (Lake Lucille, NY) The Nature of Captivity (Mabou Mines, PS 122) Salsalandia (La Jolla Playhouse, CA) Savannah Disputation (The Old Globe, CA) The Lacy Project (Premiere Yale) The Mistakes Madeline Made (Yale Rep).

She received her MFA from Yale. She teaches design at NYU – ­Tisch/PHTS. See more of her work at www.debo.nyc Olivera Gajic (Costume Designer) was featured in the US National Exhibit at the 2004 & 2007 Prague Quadrennial; Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance (Lincoln Center). She is the recipient of a NEATCG Design Award, IT Award, TDF/Irene Sharaff Young Master Award, Barrymore Award and Bessie Award for Outstanding Visual Design. Olivera has a 150+ theater, opera, dance and film productions to her credit. She extensively designs at the esteemed Juilliard School, Trinity Rep and Arden Theatre Company. USA local 829. www.oliveragajic.com Rick Fisher (Lighting Designer) From: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Career Highlights: he won Tony and Drama Desk Awards for Billy Elliot and An Inspector Calls on Broadway, which is currently touring the USA in 2018/19. A regular at Santa Fe Opera since 2001, designing over twenty different productions there. He designed the award winning Monteverdi Opera Cycle for Sir John Eliot Gardiner, which toured Europe, Chicago, and Lincoln Center. He has spent most of his career in Great Britain

COMPANY bios. where he has served as chairman of the Association of Lighting Designers. Other recent projects include The Audience for the West End and Broadway, Consent National Theatre and West End. Mark Bennett (Original Music and Sound Design). Broadway: The Coast of Utopia (Drama Desk Award, Outstanding Score; Henry Hewes Award, Sound Design), Driving Miss Daisy, Junk, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Henry IV, A Steady Rain, A Streetcar Named Desire, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Golda’s Balcony, The Goat, Lily Tomlin’s The Search..., The Lion in Winter, A View From the Bridge. Off-Broadway: The Low Road, The Bridge Project 2009-2012 (BAM/Old Vic), An Iliad (Obie Award), Mad Forest (New York Theatre Workshop), The Seagull and original scores for eight Shakespeare in the Park productions (The Joseph Papp Public Theatre). Age of Innocence, Turning Off The Morning News (McCarter), As You Like It (Two River). Fourteen Drama Desk nominations.

Obie Award - Sustained Excellence in Sound Design.

Troy Beard (Hair and Wig Designer) Trained at Frederic Fekkai. Broadway: (Associate Hair Design) The Bridges of Madison County, Romeo and Juliet. Off-Broadway (Hair Design) Her Opponent. Regional: Present Laughter, Wind in the Willows (Two River Theatre). Currently the Hair and Wigs Supervisor at The Juilliard School.

Rick Sordelet (Fight Director) Rick and his son, Christian Kelly-Sordelet, are the creators of Sordelet Inc., an exciting new stage combat company bringing over 30 years of action movement experience to the entertainment community. 72 Broadway productions including Beauty

and the Beast and Lion King. 52 first-class productions worldwide, including: Ben Hur Live in Rome and European Tour, dozens of opera productions, Cyrano and Don Carlos at the MET, The Royal Opera House and La Scalla. Cold Mountain, Don Giovanni,Romeo and Juliet and La Funciulla del West for Santa Fe Opera. Stunt Coordinators for films Ben is Back starting Julia Roberts, The Game Plan, Dan in Real Life, Brave New Jersey also 12 years as Stunt Coordinators for Guiding Light. Instructors at Yale School of Drama CUNY Harlem, HB Studio.

Winners of the Edith Oliver Award for Sustained Excellence from the Lucille Lortel off-Broadway League, Jeff Award for Best Fight Direction for Romeo and Juliet at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Author of the play Buried Treasure. www.sordeletinc.com Kristin Pfeifer (Production Stage Manager) NYC Credits: Hedwig and The Angry Inch Nat’l Tour (Production Asst.) Regional Credits: A Doll’s House, Part 2; The Nerd and The Fabulous Lipitones (Production Stage Manager, George Street Playhouse). Multiple Family Dwelling, & Juliet, Halftime with Don, F-Theory, Mutual Philanthropy, The Calling, Wild Horses, Mercy, Love Letters w/ Dan Lauria and Wendie Malick, Theatre Brut Festival (Production Stage Manager, New Jersey Repertory Company) Other credits: The Cat and the Canary, Oliver! (Production Stage Manager, Berkshire Theatre Festival) It Shoulda Been You, The Toxic Avenger, RED, Calvin Berger, (ASM, George Street Playhouse). Kristin is a proud member of Actor’s Equity.

Christopher Bailey (Production Manager) This season marks Mr. Bailey’s 21st at George Street Playhouse and 14th as its Production Manager, having previously served the

COMPANY bios.

Playhouse as Technical Coordinator and Sound and Lighting Manager. Recently for GSP was Lighting Designer for last season’s productions of Trying, and American Hero.

Was also Lighting Designer for GSP’s production of Clever Little Lies, which moved to the Guild Hall Theatre in East Hampton and then off-Broadway to the Westside Theatre. His other designs for GSP includes 6 scenic designs and 9 sound designs for GSP’s Educational Touring productions, 27 lighting designs and 40 sound designs for GSP’s mainstage productions. Also, has designed for: Pearl Theatre, Barrington Stage, Premiere Stages, Bickford Theatre, Abingdon Theatre, Strand Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, Two River Theater, Ashlawn Highland Opera, LKB Dance, Randy James Dance, Rand Theater, The Irish Repertory Theatre, Westport Country Playhouse, Long Wharf, Delaware Theatre Company, Jacob’s Pillow, and more.

McCorkle Casting, Ltd. (Casting) Pat McCorkle (C.S.A.), Katja Zarolinski (CSA) have been the proud casting director of George Street Playhouse for over 20 years.

Broadway: Over 50 productions; Amazing Grace, On The Town, End of the Rainbow, The Lieutenant Of Inishmore, The Glass Menagerie, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus, She Loves Me, Blood Brothers, A Few Good Men. Off Broadway: Over 60 original productions; Clever Little Lies, Becoming Dr. Ruth, Tribes, Our Town, Falling, Toxic Avenger, Freud’s Last Session, Almost Maine, Killer Joe, Driving Miss Daisy. Feature film: Senior Moment, Year by the Sea, Child of Grace, My Man is a Loser, Ghost Town, Secret Window, Tony and Tina’s Wedding, The Thomas Crown Affair, The 13th Warrior, Madeline, Die Hard with a Vengeance, School Ties, etc.,Television:

Twisted (ABC Family) humans for Sesame Street, Californication (Emmy nomination), Hack (CBS), The Education of Max Bickford (CBS), Chappelle’s Show, Strangers with Candy, Barbershop (Comedy Central) and series’ for Showtime, HBO, TMC. David Saint (Artistic Director) is in his 22nd season as Artistic Director of George Street Playhouse. He has directed 40 mainstage production at GSP, having most recently helmed this season’s The Trial of Donna Caine and last season’s American Hero; I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change; and An Act of God starring the legendary Kathleen Turner. His time here has been marked by collaborations with such artists as Keith Carradine, Tyne Daly, Rachel Dratch, Sandy Duncan, Boyd Gaines, A.R. Gurney, Uta Hagen, Jack Klugman, Dan Lauria, Kathleen Marshall, Elaine May, Anne Meara, David Hyde Pierce, Chita Rivera, Paul Rudd, Stephen Sondheim, Marlo Thomas, Eli Wallach and many others, including a remarkable partnership with Arthur Laurents. In addition, many new award-winning works have begun their life here during his tenure, such as The Toxic Avenger, Proof, The Spitfire Grill, Joe DiPietro’s Clever Little Lies and It Shoulda Been You. He has directed Final Follies at Primary Stages, Clever Little Lies at Guild Hall in East Hampton, N.Y., and off-Broadway at Westside Theatre, as well as the National Tour of West Side Story. In July 2016, he directed a two-night concert performance of West Side Story at the legendary Hollywood Bowl. He also has directed on Broadway, off-Broadway and regionally at Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, Primary Stages, McCarter, Williamstown, Seattle Rep, Pasadena Playhouse, Pittsburgh Public, Long Wharf and many others on premieres by writers such as Aaron Sorkin, Wendy

COMPANY bios.

Wasserstein, Peter Parnell, Jonathan Marc Sherman, Joe Di Pietro and Jonathan Larson. He is the recipient of the Alan Schneider Award, Helen Hayes Award, L.A. Drama Critics Award, several DramaLogue Awards and is the President of The Laurents/ Hatcher Foundation.

Kelly Ryman (Managing Director) is now in her 19th season at George Street Playhouse. In partnership with Production Manager Christopher Bailey, Ms. Ryman oversaw the planning, construction and operations of GSP’s 2017 move to the

company’s interim home on Rutgers Cook Campus. As GSP’s Director of Marketing and PR from 2000 to 2013, Ms. Ryman spearheaded efforts that resulted in the top ten-highest grossing productions in the Playhouse’s history – including the hit musical It Shoulda Been You which moved to Broadway in 2015 and The Toxic Avenger which won a 2009 Outer Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical. She is a board member of New Brunswick City Center and an adjunct professor of Arts Business at Mercer County College. Ms. Ryman received ArtPrideNJ’s Leadership Award in 2012.

“You Have To Want Something” (right?)

An interview with Lucas Hnath Lucas, how did you go about creating a play that could be understood relationally but also independently of the source text?

Lucas: The setup is there’s a woman who left her family 15 years ago. That’s kind of the only information you need. The play doesn’t get into much about the specifics of the plot that motivated her to leave. There aren’t really winky references to the original. It seemed necessary that I write the play in a way that did not require knowledge of the original, otherwise it would turn into some kind of inside theatre joke.

Ibsen didn’t necessarily consider “A Doll’s House” a feminist text, but it’s come to be one over the years. How have you entered the conversation on feminism that surrounds Ibsen’s play?

Lucas: All of the things that were debated and negotiated in A Doll’s House are still topics that are debated and negotiated now. So one of the first ideas that I had about A Doll’s House, Part 2 is it’s a play about how much we’ve changed, and how much we haven’t, in terms of thinking about equality between men and women. I was reading a lot of Charlotte Perkins Gilman while working on the play, the woman who wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. She wrote a great deal of feminist theory and she had a really interesting line saying, when you hear a school teacher, nurse, secretary — she listed a bunch of occupations — the first thing that anybody imagines is a woman. She goes on to say that she’s looking forward to the day when you can say one of those titles and a woman is not the first image that pops into the mind. She’s thinking about certain limitations in terms of how women are perceived. At a certain point, I brought the play in conversation with a number of feminist scholars and asked them to take a

look at the play and counter argue anything that gets said in it. One of the questions I asked at one point was, “It was shocking for Nora to leave her children at the end of Doll’s House, but if it were written now, what would be the shocking ending?”

The response was, “Well that’s still the shocking ending! That’s still something that is unthinkable.” That was actually very helpful to hear. I think I had gotten quite numb to the shock.

And there were a lot of arguments in my play that some of the scholars thought went too far. More often than not, I would actually give whatever critique they had of Nora’s argument to another character. A lot of times, I would just let Anne Marie say something like what the scholars said and it made the argument better.

How did you decide that the cast would be these four particular characters?

Lucas: I tried out a number of other different characters, but those four offered the most essential and unique points of view. It felt necessary to have a character who’s basically a footnote in the original, but is extremely significant, which is Anne Marie. She was in a position to most directly deal with the fallout from Nora’s leaving. Then of course Torvald had to be there. Nora has three kids and at some point I entertained the notion of having all three, but then it started to come off as fussy, and I was most interested in — as opposed to having one of the boys — the perspective of the daughter.

Lucas, this is in many ways a play about marriage. How did your own thoughts on marriage influence your work?

Lucas: The argument that Nora makes at the beginning about predicting and advocating for a world in which there’s no marriage, in which the lines aren’t drawn between couples, that’s something I’ve never really been able to understand. My interest in the arguments in the play does not necessarily have to do with what I believe, but with what I don’t understand. I don’t understand Nora’s initial argument; I have a hard time relating to it. When I’m writing, I try to find examples of people who very convincingly make some of those arguments.

George Bernard Shaw wrote a play called Getting Married. Shaw often has a cluster of essays in front of his plays. Getting Married has a couple of essays that very strongly inform Nora’s big opening speech about marriage. I often try to find arguments that I don’t really agree with, try to put those arguments in my own words, and try to make them as convincing as possible. That tends to be the relationship between the plays and what I do or don’t believe.

Courtesy of Sarah Rose Leonard, Literary Manager, Berkeley Repertory Theatre