FPC Newsletter Oct. 2011

first priority club news

Next at the Mint...

RUTHERFORD & SON By

Githa Sowerby Directed By

Richard Corley

Volume VIII, Issue II October, 2010

performances

Next at the Mint...

Rutherford & Son

By Githa Soweby

begin feb.

4th!

EnrichMINT Events Coming soon...

Love Goes to Press

By Virgina Cowles & Martha Gellhorn Spring Benetfit: April 23rd Save the Date!

FPC Box Office (212) 315-0231 www.minttheater.org

David Van Pelt and Robert Hogan from Mint's 2001 production of Rutherford & Son. Both actors will be returning in 2012.

Rutherford & Son, set in the industrial north of England, tells the story of a father determined to do whatever it takes to ensure the success and succession of the family glassworks, started by his own father, but now in danger of shattering.

THE STORY

HISTORY

John Rutherford rules home and business with an iron fist, a tyrant who inspires fear in his workers and hatred in his grown children. Now rebellion is brewing. His eldest son, working in secret has discovered a process that could save the firm, cutting costs by one third—but he refuses to share it with his father unless he “gets his price.”

Rutherford & Son was scheduled for only four performances when it opened at London’s Royal Court Theatre on January 31, 1912. Critical response was so enthusiastic the play quickly transferred to the West End. “One of the very best, strongest, deftest, and altogether most masterly family dramas that we have had for a long time from any one, however famous,” wrote one London critic. Productions were soon slated across Europe and America.

Written 100 years ago by Githa Sowerby, “this acute play shows how by striking hard bargains and always winning, a man may lose everything.

The play is as skillful as blown glass. It is a subtle meditation on ownership, justice, and loyalty” wrote Kate Kellaway in The Observer, reviewing the National Theater’s revelatory 1994 production.

Reviewing the same production, Charles Spencer wrote in the Daily Telegraph, “It is far better than most of Shaw and easily stands comparison with another Edwardian masterpiece, Harley Granville Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance…A great play has been reclaimed.”

The New York premiere in 1912 stunned American critics: “A play that carries conviction in every line—that leaves no doubt that it was written out of a fullness of knowledge of the life and people with which it deals,” wrote The New York Times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR The power of Sowerby’s writing wasn’t the only sensation surrounding Rutherford & Son. People were astounded when this first-time playwright—K.G. Sowerby— was revealed to be a woman. A reporter for the Los Angeles Times observed “She is the last person in the world one would expect to find as the author of so grim, powerful, and closely thought-out drama of business.”

Few realized business ran in Sowerby’s blood. Like the characters in her play, Katherine Githa Sowerby (1870-1976)— known as Githa—came from a wealthy family that had owned a prominent Tyneside glassworks. In the 1850’s, the Sowerbys’ Ellison Glass Works was Europe’s leading manufacturer of pressed glass. The family had stopped at nothing to succeed.

Githa’s stern grandfather, John, the probable inspiration for Rutherford, was particularly ruthless. He swallowed up failing businesses, arranged financially gainful but loveless marriages for his children, and had no time for sentiment. His exacting standards inspired fear and grudging awe; yet he was just as hard on himself. Once, during a strike, he shocked everyone by stripping off his customary frock coat and top hat to shovel coal into the furnaces—one and a half times more than any of his employees could manage.

The incident evolved into family legend, and lives on in Githa’s play.

Githa’s father, John George, was more interested in art than business. When John Sowerby died in 1879, John George focused his energies on developing new types of art glass, not reinvigorating the family business. Profits nosedived. The board forced him to resign. Unphased, he became a landscape painter, living off dwindling capital while his wife and children struggled to forge an existence.

By 1906, Githa and her sister Millicent had moved into their own flat in London.

End with the bittersweet romantic comedy Sheila (1917), but the play was branded a disappointment and closed early. Another romantic comedy, The Stepmother (1924), had only one performance at London’s Play Actors Club and was never published. Her last play, Direct Action, written in 1937/8, was never produced or published.

Githa Sowerby

Financial need, as much as artistic aspiration, drove them to create children books.

It’s not clear why Githa suddenly decided to take up playwriting, but when she did, she did so with a vengeance. Rutherford & Son blazes with a ferocity and depth of character rarely achieved by experienced authors, much less a first time playwright with no knowledge of the theater.

Program and tickets, signed by the author. 1912.

After Rutherford, Githa wrote mainly comedies; none achieved critical or financial success. Her whimsical “curtain raiser,” Before Breakfast (spring 1912) was dismissed by the Guardian as something “that might have been written by any dramatic hack of the day.” A Man and Some Women (1914), her first full-length work after Rutherford, received such lukewarm notice in Manchester it never transferred to London. Sowerby returned to the West

The London Times had once predicted a brilliant theatrical future for Sowerby, but that future never arrived. They had called Rutherford & Son “a play not easily forgotten,” but by the time of her death in 1970, it had faded from memory. No papers carried Sowerby’s obituary.

Fame never rested easily on Githa’s shoulders. A private person, she disliked interviews and burned her personal papers shortly before she died. When interest in her work began to rekindle, people still knew very little about her. A 1980 revival of Rutherford & Son inspired productions across England, culminating with the National’s acclaimed revival in 1994. But it wasn’t until 2009, when scholar Patricia Riley published Looking for Githa, that concrete details of Githa’s life emerged. Riley interviewed Githa’s daughter and uncovered previously unknown archival materials in London and British Columbia, assembling the first biography of this compelling artist.

“Sowerby knew what she was talking about,” wrote Lyn Gardner in her Guardian review of the 2009 Newcastle production of Rutherford & Son. “The amazing thing is that she did it so blatantly and with such flair almost 100 years ago, when women were seen but seldom heard on British stages.” The Mint is proud to re-introduce American audiences to Sowerby’s masterpiece.

Q & A with JONATHAN BANK The Mint first produced Rutherford & Son in 2001. We began performances on September 7, 2001— and in spite of marvelous reviews, this play could not possibly get the audience it deserved at that tumultuous time. One hundred years after it was first produced, we are thrilled to give Rutherford & Son another chance to dazzle New York theatergoers.

Why revive a play you’ve already produced?

First of all, we did this play ten years ago: September 2001.

Our opening night was set for September 12th, which of course we had to cancel. When we resumed performances on the 13th, everyone had a pretty hard time concentrating, audiences and actors alike. Of course the actors rose to the challenge and the play worked its magic. Audiences were transported to another place and time and taken out of themselves for a couple of hours. I do remember how grateful people were for that. But I’ve always felt that the play deserved a better opportunity. It was a very difficult time.

You said, “First of all.” Are there other reasons?

We’ve made so many new friends since that time and we’ve grown so much. We’re in a position now to reach a much larger audience. Nowadays we run for eight to ten weeks and our shows are seen by 5,000 to 6,000 people. In 2001, Rutherford & Son ran for a month; about 1,700 people saw the show. We only had 82 seats at the time; this was when were still on the 5th floor. I was looking back through the old box office records, it’s kind of amazing—we had to turn people away our last four performances–in spite of everything. We played to 94% of capacity.

What else has changed since that time?

In some ways very little has changed. For example, the set and lighting designers for Rutherford & Son ten years ago, Vicki Davis and Jeff Nellis, just did the designs for Temporal Powers. But the budgets are certainly different! In 2001 our total expenses for the production were about 15% of what they’ll be this time around.

“The Geiger counter that the Mint Theater Company waves over theater history in search of long-unperformed treasures has identified a still-ticking nugget. The play has emotional depth, narrative pull, and linguistic potency to retain an impact today.”

The New York Times.

Wow, what accounts for the huge increase?

We spend more on everything, sets, costumes, programs, you name it. Lots more. But the biggest difference is that back then the actors were working for car-fare (and even that was a lot cheaper than it is today!) Now the actors are on contract, earning salaries—plus we contribute to their union’s pension and health fund.

So, does that mean you get much better actors now?

No! That isn’t the case at all, we had a fantastic cast in 2001 and some of those actors will be back this time around. We can’t have everyone back, because after all, ten years is a long time, if you know what I mean…but we had terrific people. For example, Robert Hogan played Rutherford ten years ago and he’s coming back to rule the roost again. Bob has been a working actor for 50 years with endless stage, film and T.V. credits. Right now he’s in rehearsal at Lincoln Center for the new play Blood and Gifts by J.T. Rogers, directed by Bartlett Sher.

How did you manage to get a guy like that to do a play at the Mint ten years ago for no money?

We were very lucky to have him, no doubt. And lucky to have him back, too. I think good actors are always going to be drawn to good roles in good plays. Sometimes they have to follow the money but sometimes they have to follow their hearts. They don’t always lead in the same direction! I’m happy to say that Bob has stayed in touch and been a fan and supporter. When I began thinking about bringing this play back, the first thing I did was to check on his availability– along with Richard Corley, who directed the first production.

I’m thrilled to have both of these guys back and I’m looking forward to sharing this play with all of the new people who have become friends of the Mint in the last ten years.

EnrichMINT Events ON THE PLAY AND ITS AUTHOR Three leading scholars from the Ivy League—Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell—join us for discussions on Rutherford & Son and playwright Githa Sowerby.

Sunday, February 19 after the matinee Dr. Michael Cadden, Princeton University Michael Cadden is currently Director of the Program in Theater and Dance at Princeton University, where he has been teaching for 25 years. In 1993, Michael was awarded the University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching. In 2003, he helped inaugurate Princeton’s new Roger S. Berlind Theater. He began his career at Yale School of Drama, where he worked for four years as a dramaturg at the Yale Repertory Theatre under Lloyd Richards and as a lecturer in the dramaturgy, directing, and acting programs.

Sunday, February 26 after the matinee Dr. Martin Meisel, Columbia University Martin Meisel is the Brander Matthews Professor Emeritus of Dramatic Literature at Columbia. He is the author of Shaw and the Nineteenth-Century Theater (Princeton and Oxford), Realizations: Narrative, Pictorial, and Theatrical Arts in Nineteenth-Century England (Princeton), as well as numerous essays and articles on drama and the visual arts. He has been the recipient of two Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, residential fellowships at the National Humanities Center, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (Edinburgh); and of awards from the American

Philosophical Society and the Huntington Library among others. In 2003 he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia.

Saturday March 3 after the matinee Dr. J. Ellen Gainor, Cornell University Soon after moving to London, Githa Sowerby joined the Fabian Society, becoming a member of the influential group of writers, artists, and public intellectuals that included Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Dr. Gainor will discuss how Sowerby’s affiliation with the Fabian Socialists profoundly affected her playwriting.

J. Ellen Gainor is Professor of Theatre and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Cornell. A specialist in British and American drama of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and women’s dramaturgy, she is the author of the award-winning studies Shaw’s Daughters: Dramatic and Narrative Constructions of Gender and Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture and Politics 1915-48. Most recently, she edited The Norton Anthology of Drama. She has edited two influential essay collections, Imperialism and Theatre and Performing America: Culture Nationalism in American Theater. With Linda Ben-Zvi, she co-edited The Complete Plays of Susan Glaspell, the first complete anthology of Glaspell’s plays. Dr. Gainor is currently editing the Collected Works of Githa Sowerby.

ON THE ISSUES Dr. Donald J. Jonovic, an internationally respected family business consultant, will discuss the play’s portrayal of family business and intergenerational conflict.

Saturday February 11th & Sunday February 12th (after the matinees)

Patricia Riley Author, Looking for Githa Pat Riley, Leeds-based author and the world’s leading authority on Githa Sowerby, will share her groundbreaking insights into Sowerby’s life and work during three special EnrichMint Events.

The details of Githa Sowerby’s life were a mystery until Pat Riley wrote Looking for Githa, the first Sowerby biography, in 2009.

During her research, Riley uncovered previously unknown documents in England and Canada and conducted several interviews with Sowerby’s elderly daughter Joan. The project was funded by the Arts Council of England.

Ms. Riley has degrees in law, social science, and management.

On retirement from a career in government, she began a degree in theatre studies, deepening her life-long love of theatre. During her coursework, she was introduced to a powerful play by an early twentieth century feminist playwright no one seemed to know anything about—Rutherford and Son by Githa Sowerby.

Curious to discover what kind of a woman had been brave enough in 1912 to wrote this play, Ms. Riley began the research that ended with the publication of Looking for Githa.

Sunday March 4th, after the matinee Donald J. Jonovic, Founder, Family Business Management Services, Inc. Donald J. Jonovic has been an advisor to family business owners since 1973, focusing on the unique issues related to management development, growth, and ownership transition, particularly ownership transition

of the successful owner-managed business.

His professional consulting practice has included industrial and agricultural clients throughout North America, ranging in size from $5 million to $2 billion.

**All events take place immediately after the performance and usually las about fifty minutes. They are free and open to the public. Speakers and dates subject to change without notice.

A Night Out with the Mint!

A Special EnrichMINT Event

A Man and Some Women

by Githa Sowerby

Featuring a discussion with Patricia Riley, author of Looking for Githa.

Join us for dinner and discussion with Patricia Riley at EtceteraEtcetera before the reading!

Tickets are $60, which includes dinner, reading of A Man and Some Women, followed by a discussion, and a complimentary signed copy of her book, Looking for Githa!

For tickets call 212-315-0231 Or send/fax the order form to 212-977-5211 EtcEtc is located at 352 W. 44th St. (between 8th and 9th Ave.)

Looking for Githa

by Patricia Riley Looking for Githa is the first and only biography of playwright Githa Sowerby. A private person, Sowerby disliked interviews and spoke little of her family’s turbulent history. Almost nothing was known of her life for over a century, until Leeds-based author Pat Riley began her research.

Riley uncovered previously unknown records in England and Canada to assemble this revelatory study, linking elements of Sowerby’s family history directly to her playwriting. The book also includes personal reminisces from Sowerby’s elderly daughter, Joan, whom Riley interviewed several times.

A Man and Some Women debuted in 1914 at Annie Horniman’s influential Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. (Mint audiences may remember it was Horniman who first brought Arnold Bennett’s What the Public Wants to America in 1913).

The play tells the story of a man (Richard) and the women dependent upon him—his wife (Hilda), his unmarried sisters (Rose and Elizabeth), and a family friend (Jessica).

Sowerby hoped for a London transfer. She had bad timing. Britain’s escalating involvement in the First World War meant dwindling demand for thoughtful drama. The play never made it out of Manchester and was never published.

A Man and Some Women was forgotten until 1995, when a small Bristol company, Show of Strength, revived it to positive notices. “So Rutherford & Son wasn’t a one-off wonder…. Sowerby’s intelligent and heartfelt examination of personal freedom makes compelling theatre,” wrote The Independent.

Nevertheless, few people paid any attention to A Man and Some Women until the Mint’s artistic director, Jonathan Bank, read the play while researching the 2001 production of Rutherford & Son . When the Shaw Festival produced Rutherford in 2004 he gave a packet of Sowerby’s lost plays—including A Man and Some Women and a later work, The Stepmother, which upturns the notion of a wicked stepmother—to the Shaw Festival’s artistic director, Jackie Maxwell. She had been searching for these plays herself, but the search had proven fruitless, until Bank, whom she dubbed “the Indiana Jones of arcane playwriting” came along. Maxwell directed The Stepmother for the Shaw in 2008 and in the summer of 2012, the Festival will present A Man and Some Women.

The Mint is pleased to share A Man and Some Women with our audience, showing you another side to the astonishing Githa Sowerby.

COMING UP... Love Goes To Press Stop the presses! This spring, the Mint presents the first revival of Love Goes to Press by Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles—“the kind of comedy which mingles public relations, private lives, lines of communication, tough dames, and tender passages.”

Love Goes to Press opened at London’s Embassy Theatre in 1946 to enthusiastic reviews—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.

Gellhorn and Cowles, seasoned journalists but newbie playwrights, had written Love Goes to Press as a lark. Theatrical workings baffled them. They did not know, for example, that playwrights were expected to attend rehearsals, or that, as writers, they were entitled to free tickets. Gellhorn recalled seeing the play for the first time on opening night—from the balcony, in seats she and Cowles bought themselves:

Day 1947, it folded after just four performances—and hasn’t been produced since.

Years later, Gellhorn speculated New York audiences simply weren’t ready to laugh at the war. She and Cowles had written their fun, frothy

After the final curtain, with the cast lined up on the stage, there were cries of ‘Author, Author!’ Ginny and I fled from the balcony into the night. We did not know that authors are supposed to make a gracious little speech when the audience is aper... plauding loudly and ememb 008 r y a calling for them.

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With a hit on their hands, the play’s producers fully expected Love Goes to Press to repeat its success in America. Notices on the road were good—the Washington Post deemed it “light, laughable, loquacious entertainment”—but Broadway was a different story. Opening on New Year’s

romantic comedy as “an antidote to the heart-sickening cost of war. Everyone longed to laugh in the first cold winter of peace. Laughter was a life-saving escape.” London audiences, fresh from the war, understood. They felt

entitled to laugh; New York audiences did not. “Some jokes, like some white wines, don’t travel,” Gellhorn mused.

Of course, some wines improve with age—and the same could be said of Gellhorn and Cowles’ ruefully funny play. Love Goes to Press paints a delicious portrait of two smart, funny, brave, ambitious and complex women—journalists working just miles from the European front (as Cowles and Gellhorn did)— surrounded by less competent, less adventurous men. “Sex rears its head-lines among the clattering overtones of war-time reporting in the field,” as everyone falls in and out of love, then back again. Professor Sandra Spanier of the University of Pennsylvania, who rescued the play from the ash-heap and was responsible for its publication in 1995, describes it as “part comedy of errors, part English-country-house farce, part Woman of the Year, a fascinating piece of American literary history.”

Now the Mint gives Love Goes to Press its due, with a full production directed by Jerry Ruiz. Performances begin May 26, 2012.

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.

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Mint's NEW book! the

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Monday April 23rd, 2012 Mint Theater Company’s

Spring Benefit 2012

TERESA DEEVY RECLAIMED · TEMPORAL POWERS · KATIE ROCHE · WIFE TO JAMES WHELAN Edited by Jonathan Bank, John P. Harrington, and Christopher Morash

The Importance of Being... Rachel

$15.95 *Shipping is FREE for FPC

Celebrating the life and works of Rachel Crothers

To Order: Call us at 212- 315-0231, send in the order form, or visit www.minttheater.org

We made our match!!

The Mint is a proud recipient of a $50,000 grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

We were challeged to raise $10,000 in matching funds, and with the generosity of our loyal patrons like you, we made our match! Thank you so much to those who contributed!

Linda & Lloyd Alterman Sylvia Amato Hugh Baron & Carla Lord Frances Bauer Julia Beardwood &

Jonathan Willens Al Berr Evelyn Bishop Zelda & Julian Block Debra Brockway Edgar Brown Jason J. Buzas David Carlyon James Case Abraham Clott John Comiskey Michael Crowley Wanda Davenport &

Martin Cohen Stuart & Sue Davidson David Day Thomas Dieterich Nancy M. Donahue Herzl Eisenstadt Quince Evans Colleen Fay Robert & Judy Fenerty Simon Fischer

Jerry Floersch & Jeffrey Longhofer Donald Fox Charlotte Frank Mary Geissman Caryl Goldsmith Joyce Gordon & Paul Lubetkin Beatrice Gottlieb Virginia Gray Leonard Greenberg Allen & Linda Greengrass Dawn Guerriero Hugh Heckman Melanie Herman Samantha Herrera Susan Hill Robert & Mary Barbara Hogan Heather & Bruce Horner Harriet Inselbuch Sarah Jones Karen Kelly Sandke Laurie Kennedy & Keith Mano Martin Kesselman &

Linda Irenegreene Gerald & Marlene Kolbert Paul Laferriere Pearl & Karl Lazar Ellen & Roger Leeds Renee Lerner

Teresa Levine Gloria & Mitchell Levitass Marlene Litwin Maristella Lorch Mary & Boyd Lowry Mary Rose Main Gloria Marti & Fred T. Ferguson Jean May Ilse Melamid Maureen Murphy Mary Nelson Terence O’Neil Patricia O’Shea Richard & Dotti Oswald Jonathan Parker Suzan And Martin Pegler Anick Pleven Sheila & Irwin Polishook Robert & Carlo Prinsky Judith Quillard Betty Reardon Edith Rehbein Ona Robinson &

Edward Stephens James Roe Michael Rubin Catherine Scaillier Louis Scheeder

Barbara Schoetzau Jay M. Schwamm Veronica Scutaro John Settel Suzanne Shaughnessy George & Marjorie Shea Stephen Sheppard Virginia Shields Marian Silber Martin & Kayla Silberberg Joyce K. Simon Susan Sitner Janet & Mike Slosberg Douglas Smith Dennis & Katharine Swanson Susan Tackel & Elias B. Silverman Sheila & Arthur Taub Anne Teshima Virve Toots Jacob Waldman Kurt Wissbrun *This list represents donations made specifically for the Bloomberg Philanthropies challenge grant as of 10/26/2011.

Every effort is made to ensure its accuracy. Please contact us regaurding any mistakes

FIRST PRIORITY CLUB Dear Friends, November and December are planning months here at the Mint. This edition of the First-Priority Club Newsletter is filled with information about our plans for the winter and spring. I know it may be a long time to wait for our next production, but I hope it’s not too far away for you to make your plans to join us.

Those of you who have been supporting the Mint for a while may recognize both of the titles announced within. Our next production, which will begin performances in February, 2012, is a play that we first produced ten years ago. Inside you’ll find a full explanation of why we’re reviving this play—in short: it’s a great play. Are there other plays from our own past that we might bring back? It’s certainly possible. If you have a favorite, let me know—I’d love to hear from you!

Timing plays an important role in the planning process here at the Mint. It’s not enough to have a good play (although that certainly is important). Having a good play at just the right time can make all the difference. Just think of the attention we might have received if we had been running “What the Public Wants”, Arnold Bennett’s satire about a media tycoon who doesn’t know where to draw the line at the same time that the “phonehacking” scandal was at its height!

I hope you enjoy a peaceful and fulfilling holiday season, which will be upon us all before you know it. And I hope you enjoy reading about our plans for 2012. I look forward to seeing you back at the Mint before long.

All the best,

The other familiar title within is the play we have scheduled for this summer with performances beginning at the end of May. This comedy is one that we did a reading of four years ago at our annual benefit. At the time, numerous people who had enjoyed the reading encouraged me to plan a full production.

I promised that I would, when I felt the time was right. Hopefully my sense of timing is correct and this will turn out to be the perfect moment.

Jonathan

first priority club news www.minttheater.org (212) 315-0231 311 West 43rd Street, Suite # 307 New York, NY 10036