Kerrmoor (FringeNYC)

WILL THE CHILLING RITE OF KERRMOOR BE REPEATED?

KERRMOOR WRITTEN BY Susan McCully

Presented by Grrl Parts Productions in association with Interrobang Theatre as a part of

AUGUST 22-27

Grrl Parts Productions in association with Interrobang Theatre present

KERRMOOR WRITTEN BY Susan McCully

FEATURING

KYLIE Erin Hanratty

LORNA Katie Hileman

AGATHA Meg Kelly*

ELINOR Susan McCully

DIRECTED BY Eve Muson SET DESIGN Gregg Schraven

LIGHTING DESIGN Adam Mendelson

COSTUME DESIGN Eric Abele

SOUND DESIGN Patrick Calhoun

MUSIC COMPOSITION Linda Dusman

FIGHT DIRECTION John Bellomo

STAGE MANAGER Brady Whealton *Member of Actors’ Equity Association (AEA) Actors' Equity Association (AEA), founded in 1913, represents more than 50,000 actors and stage managers in the United States. Equity seeks to advance, promote and foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of our society. Equity negotiates wages and working conditions, providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. AEA is a member of the AFL-CIO, and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions. The Equity emblem is our mark of excellence. www.actorsequity.org The costume and sound designers are represented

by United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 of IATSE.

The director is a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the theatrical union that unites, empowers, and protects professional Stage Directors and Choreographers throughout the US.

PRODUCTION STAFF PRODUCERS MARKETING DIRECTOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ELECTRICIAN DRAPERS STITCHERS MASK CREATION GUITAR, MANDOLIN, BODHRAN ACCORDIANS RECORDING ENGINEER RECORDING ASSISTANCE SINGERS

TOWNSPEOPLE

MOVEMENT CONSULTATION LIGHT AND SOUND BOARD OPERATOR FRINGENYC RUN CREW

Eve Muson, Kiirstn Pagan Kiirstn Pagan Serafina Donahue Serafina Donahue Shelley Joyce, Joan Larkins Mather Adam Ciotta, Keri Eastridge, Destiny Harris, Benjamin Nabinger, Nicki Nelson, Isabelle Tabet Kerry Chipman Zan Mcleod Nancy Puckett Alan Wonneberger Sarah Baugher, Rhett Repko David Brasington, Serafina Donahue, Stephen M. Gondre-Lewis, Erin Hanratty, Katie Hileman, Kiirstn Pagan, Jessie Poole, Zachariah Thomas, Samuel Winnie, Davis Wootton-Klebanoff David Brasington, Erin Hanratty, Katie Hileman, Serafina Donahue, Nick Genna, Justin Lawson Isett, Susan McCully, Jacob Mueller, Kiirstn Pagan, Jessie Poole, Eric Scharfenberg, Brady Whealton Wendy Salkind Brady Whealton David Brasington, Serafina Donahue, Adam Mendelson, Jacob Mueller, Kiirstn Pagan, Jessie Poole, Brady Whealton

SPECIAL THANKS Charm City Fringe Commonvision Eggspectation Emmanuel Episcopal Church FringeNYC

Peace A Pizza Rep Stage Laura Schraven St. Mark’s Lutheran Church Strand Theatre Company

UMBC Department of Music UMBC Recording Studios UMBC Department of Theatre Venus Theatre Women’s Voices Theatre Festival

Kerrmoor is made possible with the generous support of the UMBC College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Scott Casper, Dean).

This performance will run approximately 70 minutes with no intermission.

Please turn off all cell phones and mobile devices.

The video and/or audio recording of this performance is strictly prohibited.

A NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT WRITTEN BY Susan McCully

A photo from playwright Susan McCully’s grandmother’s yard in Pennsylvania.

For more than 25 years I have struggled to write some version of the play now titled Kerrmoor. It’s born of a conflict deep in my heart. How I can both adore and abhor my ancestral home?

I was raised in rural, Appalachian Pennsylvania feeling an enormous pride of place, character and family. My Scots-Irish soul revels in our history of rugged individualism; our warrior’s pride in never backing down; and our willingness to sacrifice in order to protect our loved ones and our land.

These qualities harken to the American mythos.

It’s the stuff of tragic heroes.

I have spent years trying to tell the awful truth about this racist and sexist culture that shaped me—the twisted fearful thinking born of prideful insularity. The easy and comfortable path is to disavow these ugly traits. By writing Kerrmoor, I’ve attempted to embrace my people, not to celebrate them, but to explore the cost of glorifying a certain kind of rural American mythology.

Kerrmoor is an Appalachian Greek tragedy. It is highly fictional. None of it is real. It is my attempt to write something completely true.

At the heart of the play is a fictional town, Kerrmoor, whose foundational myth is told through song...

THE BALLAD OF MONA KERR Old man Kerr took a wife Name a Mona McCauley They come over from Ulster Walked to mountains from the sea Mona Kerr and her husband Took a hatchet to the land Cleared this whole hillside Down to the moor by hand Sent for their kin Scots in Ireland T’make the hollow all their own For three hundred years Kerrmoor has been our home Then one night in darkness Savage bears come on a raid The bears come a scalpin Men was gutted and splayed Mona Kerr had one daughter that the savage bear bit She was full ripe with a black bear from a bite to the hip As the bear growed dark inside her Kerrmoor’s cares they growed too Till Mona cut the bear out Makin all pure and true

ACTOR BIOGRAPHIES Erin Hanratty (Kylie) is a graduate from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) BFA in Acting program.

During her time at UMBC she had the opportunity to perform in Grrl Parts, an annual festival of new commissioned plays with new roles for actresses. Since graduating she has been performing in the Baltimore/DC area working mostly on world premieres of new plays.

Some of these include dry bones rising with Venus Theatre Company, A Christmas Carol, 1933 with Parlor Room Theatre Company, and the Interrobang Theatre Company’s Heavy Hors D’oeuvres 1 and 2, which each featured three new one act plays by Baltimore playwrights. Erin also played the role of Kylie in the first production of Kerrmoor in 2015, which was a participant in the DC Women’s Voices Theatre Festival and the Charm City Fringe Festival. Erin will next appear in The Dancing Princesses at Pumpkin Theatre.

Meg Kelly (Agatha) appeared most recently in Columbia, Maryland in Rep Stage’s production of Circle Mirror Transformation as Marty. She spent many summer seasons at the Cumberland Theatre in western Maryland. Performances included Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, Ruth in Blithe Spirit, Dottie Otley in Noises Off, Eleanor in The Lion in Winter, and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Meg has also written, produced, and performed productions of onewoman shows based on historical characters, including the pioneer investigative journalist, Nellie Bly and Civil War spy, Elizabeth Van Lew. Performance sites included midAtlantic schools and historical societies, Ft. Polk Army Base in Alabama, the Newseum in Washington, DC as well as the State Department. She teaches acting as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts at Towson University.

Katie Hileman (Lorna) is the Artistic Director and a founding member of The Interrobang Theatre Company and a very proud graduate from the BFA Acting program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). At Interrobang Katie has worked as a writer, director, and actor. Acting credits with Interrobang include Kerrmoor (coproduction with The Strand Theater), Heavy Hors D’oeuvres, and Scab. Other recent acting credits include The Antigone Project and Las Meninas at RepStage, The Well of Horniness at Iron Crow Theatre, Midlife at Single Carrot Theatre, as well as several developmental workshops and readings in the Baltimore/ DC area.

Susan McCully (Elinor, playwright) is a playwright, dramaturg and professor of feminist theatre. She is the Artistic Director for Grrl Parts Productions, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s (UMBC) festival of new plays by women. Her plays Cyber Becomes Electra, Inexcusable Fantasies, Voracious and Leah’s Dybbuk have played at colleges, universities and fringe festivals across the U.S. and abroad including University of Toronto, University of Exeter, the Kolibri Pince in Budapest. Inexcusable Fantasies was invited to the Prague and the New York Fringe Festival in 2013. Kerrmoor premiered as part of the DC Women’s Voices Festival in 2015.

ABOUT GRRL PARTS Baltimore’s Grrl Parts Annual Festival of New Plays for New Actresses has established a substantial record of producing high-quality short plays where female characters drive the action and their private struggles are realized as iconic and epic. Originally conceived at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, to address the dearth of published works available for college-aged actresses, the project's success has naturally grown into a commissioning program supporting and promoting women playwrights. Grrl Parts is Susan McCully (Artistic Director) and Eve Muson (Principal Director).

Susan McCully

Eve Muson

ABOUT INTERROBANG The Interrobang Theatre Company is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to producing high quality, new and contemporary plays that are challenging and exciting for the young actor and director. Through our work, we want to make the unfamiliar familiar and accessible to our audiences by exploring universal stories of the human experience. It is part of our mission to attract and retain theatre artists to Baltimore by offering professional opportunities, and to establish Baltimore as a vital city in the contemporary theatre scene. Interrobang is David Brasington, Katie Hileman (Artistic Director), Kiirstn Pagan (Managing Director), Jessie Poole, and Brady Whealton.

David Brasington

Katie Hileman

Kiirstn Pagan

Jessie Poole

Brady Whealton

THANK YOU TO OUR INDIEGOGO CONTRIBUTORS

This summer leading up to FringeNYC, Interrobang ran an Indiegogo campaign to raise $4,000 to help send the Kerrmoor team to New York City. Thanks to these donors, we met and exceded our goal! This production would not have been possible without the support of the following people...

Anonymous (2) Adele Kenworthy Alissa Bond Anne Neal Berit Killingstad Caitlin Anglemyer Caitlin Rife Daniel Bunch Dave LaSalle Dorothy Muson Dr. Fern Loos Beu Dustin Morris Dyan Brasington Ellen Talles Gary Hileman Glenn Ricci Ian Hawes Jessica Lynn Kate Drabinski Katie Kopajtic

Katie Kudrick Kristin Hamby Kristin Hileman Laura Angel-Hanratty Lauren Christine Lena Salins Linda Dusman Lizzy Handy Mabelle Fomundam Matt Shea Matthew Manning Michele Alexander Nancy Sloane Randi Kosten Sean Latta Susan Pagan Suzanne Beal Tara Cariaso Tori Buckshaw Vincent Scalese