New York, NY Permit No. 7528
PAID
MAY 26 THROUGH JULY 22, 2012
NON - PROFIT U . S . POSTAGE
866-811-4111 or minttheater.org At the Mint Theater, 311 West 43rd St, 3rd floor
SPECIAL DISCOUNT OFFER! Save 30% May 26 & 27 at 2pm: Pay Only $38.50 Save 20% May 29 through June 24: Pay Only $45 (use code Mint45) (Regular Price $55. $2.75 per ticket service charge applies to all orders)
ORDER YOUR TICKETS TODAY!
PERFORMANCES
PHONE: 866-811-4111
Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday at 7pm
M-F 9am -9pm; S-S 10am - 6pm
Friday & Saturday at 8pm Saturday & Sunday at 2pm
IN PERSON: 311 W. 43rd St, Ste 307
ONLINE: minttheater.org
No Evening Performance on Saturday, May 26 No performance Tuesday, June19th Added Matinee Wednesday, June 27th at 2pm
CHEAP TIX You don’t have to be a cheapskate to appreciate a bargain, especially these days. We offer a LIMITED NUMBER of HALF-PRICE TICKETS ($27.50) for EVERY PERFORMANCE. FAQ: How many seats are available? About 10 per night, sometimes less—and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Do I get to choose where I sit? No. We assign your seats the night of the performance. But don’t worry, our theater only has 100 seats. Will I get to sit with my friends? Absolutely. We won’t ever split your party.
WHAT’S
NEXT
MARY BROOME By Allan Monkhouse Directed by Jonathan Bank
“ What’s striking about the play today is that it not only transports us back to a bygone era of high and mighty middle-class mores and lowly working-class expectations but that it also continues to speak to modern confusions about what men and women can expect from life - and from each other.” - Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph
PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
JONATHAN BANK FINANCE & PRODUCTION
SHERRI KOTIMSKY
August 18th Tickets now on sale: www.minttheater.org
311 W. 43rd St. 3rd Floor New York, NY 10036
Performances begin
to attend rehearsals and show interest and be helpful.” They sat together in the balcony on opening night at London’s Embassy Theatre in 1946, listening to the “audience roar with laughter” and then fled into the night when the crowd called “Author!, Author!” Love Goes to Press is a wise-cracking romantic farce set in a makeshift press camp in the village of Poggibonsi, Italy, 1944. Headlining are two smart, sassy and determined journalists who brave the front lines to get their stories. They “sail in looking like Vogue illustrations” while scooping stories from their less adventurous male colleagues. Annabelle and Jane, both glamorous American women, are autobiographical caricatures of the authors: Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles. Also caricatured in the play was Gellhorn’s ex, another war correspondent by the name of Ernest Hemingway. Both Gellhorn and Cowles were highly successful and serious war correspondents; they had met in Madrid while covering the Spanish Civil War.
“Lavishly mingles public relations, private lives, lines of communication, tough dames, and tender passages” - The Observer Critical response was as enthusiastic as the roaring opening night audience the Stage said “the humor rises to brilliance”—and it quickly transferred to the West End. The play was a resounding success—much to its authors’ surprise. “The trouble was that audiences laughed too much and this convinced an American producer that he should take the play to New York,” Gellhorn wrote 60 years later in her introduction for the belated publication of the play in 1995. “The play lasted four days in New York. We gathered the critics were furious with it…That was the end of the play.” Not quite…
“I must advise you at once, that this play bears no resemblance whatever, of any kind at all, to war and war correspondents. It is a joke. It was intended to make people laugh.” - Martha Gellhorn Seasoned journalists but newbie playwrights, Cowles and Gellhorn wrote the play as a lark. “We knew nothing about the theater…we were barely playgoers.” They did not know, for example, that playwrights were “expected
In 1992, Professor Sandra Spanier wrote to Gellhorn suggesting that the play really ought to be in print. Gellhorn did not even own a copy. Spanier sent her a photocopy of the only known manuscript, a “blurry carbon typescript on onionskin paper, on file at the U.S. Copyright Office.” Gellhorn said the play made her “laugh out loud 3 times” and agreed to write an introduction. In 2008 Mint did a reading of Love Goes to Press and the play had the audience roaring with laughter once again. Beginning May 26th, you’ll have an opportunity to laugh too!
“A comedy based on the loves and professional skullduggery of a group of war correspondents on the Italian front, the play features women correspondents surprisingly like the Misses Gellhorn and Cowles in looks, bravery, and competence ”- The New York Times
ENRICHMINT EVENTS
EnrichMINT Events are supported in part by a grant from The New York Council for the Humanities and the Michael Tuch Foundation. All events take place immediately after the performance and usually last about fifty minutes. They are free and open to the public. Speakers and dates subject to change without notice.
Sunday, June 3, after the matinee LILYA WAGNER LILYA WAGNER has a masters in Journalism and a doctorate in Education. She was one of the first scholars to gather information—including many valuable firstperson interviews—about the women journalists who covered World War II— research which became the basis for her pioneering master’s thesis. This thesis, in turn, evolved into the groundbreaking book Women War Correspondents of World War II, published by Greenwood Press. A professional fundraiser as well as a scholar and writer, Wagner is a frequent workshop and seminar presenter and speaker.
Publicity photo from 1946: Ralph Michael, who plays a public relations officer in the British army; Virginia Cowles; Martha Gellhorn; and Irene Worth, who plays one of the woman correspondents.
Saturday, June 9, after the matinee TALKBACK WITH THE CAST
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) covered nearly every major conflict during her lifetime, from the Spanish Civil War to the U.S. invasion of Panama (when she was 81). Famously, she was one of the few reporters who witnessed D-Day; she did so by locking herself in the toilet of a hospital ship – the first ship to survive the crossing. Gellhorn published 17 books during her six-decade career as a journalist, short story writer, and novelist.
Virginia Cowles (1910-1983) served as a war correspondent for the New York Times, the London Times, and the Daily Telegraph. During World War II, she interviewed Mussolini and Chamberlain and covered the German invasion of Poland. Cowles also wrote 15 books of non-fiction, including the 1941 bestseller Looking for Trouble.
“The play is delicious from the standpoint of literary gossip....The temptation to read the rival reporters in “Love Goes to Press” as comic caricatures of Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway is hard to resist.”
A talkback with the cast, director and dramaturg, highlighting the special preparation that goes into working on a fictional account based on real people. Also noteworthy, this play was first introduced to Mint audiences as a one-night reading in 2008 with many of the same cast members, all Mint “alumni”. These actors will talk about what they remember from that reading, and to what extent that reading influenced the full production.
Saturday, June 16, after the matinee SARAH BLAKE SARAH BLAKE has a BA from Yale University and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University. Her novel, the New York Times’ bestseller The Postmistress (Amy Einhorn Books/Berkley Publishing), is set during World War II and tells the story of Frankie Bard, a young woman reporting the war on the radio. In The Postmistress, Frankie finds inspiration in the words and example of the real-life war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, who covered World War II along with many of the other military conflicts of the 20th century. Blake herself found inspiration in reporters like Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles, whom she learned about while doing research to write her novel.
- Sandra Spanier, General Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, Cambridge University Press. The brief and stormy marriage of Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway is the subject of an HBO movie, due to premiere on Monday, May 28th at 9pm. Starring Nicole Kidman and Clive Owen and directed by Philip Kaufman, “Hemingway and Gellhorn” tells the story of one of the greatest romances of the last century – the passionate love affair and tumultuous marriage of literary master Ernest Hemingway and the trailblazing war correspondent Martha Gellhorn.
DID YOU
KNOW?
Many of our EnrichMint Events have been recorded and are available for viewing online. minttheater.org/enrichmint.php or vimeo.com/channels/enrichmint