Mint Theater Company Jonathan Bank Ted Altschuler Sherri Kotimsky Rochele Tillman
Board of Trustees Geoffrey Chinn, President Elsa A. Solender, Secretary Linda Calandra Carol Chinn Jon Clark Toehl Harding Eleanor Reissa Gary Schonwald M. Elisabeth Swerz Kate Weingarten Jonathan Bank
Artistic Director Associate Director General Manager Box Office Manager Board of Advisors John Booth J. Ellen Gainor Charles Keating Austin Pendleton George Morfogen David Rothenberg
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Mint Theater Company Jonathan Bank, Artistic Director presents
with
Christine Albright, Denis Butkus Antony Hagopian,Carol Halstead Amanda Jones, Emily Moment Stacy Parker, Ben Roberts Cherene Snow, Sammy Tunis
Dawn Powell by
Scenery Roger Hanna
Lighting Stephen Petrilli Sound Jane Shaw
Costumes Brenda Turpin
Graphics Jude Dvorak
Props Sally Plass
Production Stage Manager Jason A. Quinn
Press Representative David Gersten & Associates
Assistant Stage Manager Noelle Font
Casting Stuart Howard, Amy Schecter & Paul Hardt
Directed by
Steven Williford
Walking Down Broadway
Foundation, Corporate & Government Support
by Dawn Powell
CAST in order of appearance
MARGE
CHICK ELSIE DEWEY EVA ELMAN MAC ISABEL GINGER LIBRARIAN #1 LIBRARIAN #2
Christine Albright
Denis Butkus Amanda Jones Ben Roberts Carol Halstead Antony Hagopian Cherene Snow Sammy Tunis Emily Moment Stacy Parker
Act I: The girls’ room in the rooming house of a “refined southern gentlewoman” near Riverside Drive in the West Nineties. A summer evening Intermission Act II: The boys’ apartment on West Ninety-seventh Street. Three months later. Intermission Act III: Same as Act I Scene 1: The following Sunday afternoon. Scene 2: The next Saturday night Assistant Direc tor Technical Director. Assistant Lighting Designer Assistant Costume Designer Musical Staging Master Electrician. Stage Crew Wardrobe Supervisor Carpenters Painters House Managers Box Office Associate
STAFF
Tom Wojtunik Evan Schlossberg Steve Sakowski Vanessa Leuck James Horvath Phillipe Bachy Rachel Gordon, Amanda Harland Jennifer Diviney Rob Boyle, Christopher Connolly, Kyle Jordan Dave Kniep, Adam Shive Vanessa Mrovich, Phillipe Belhache Danielle Quisenberry & Barbara Ann Rollins Janel Cooke
SPECIAL THANKS
The Costume Collection, Jean Cocteau Scene Shop, Tim Page, Peter Skolnik, Yvonne Shafer, Lighting equipment provided by the Technical Upgrade Project of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York through the generous support of the New York City Council and the City of New York Department of Cultural Affairs. Actors’ Equity Association was founded in 1913. It is the labor union representing over 40,000 American actors and stage managers working in the professional theatre. For 89 years, Equity has negotiated minimum wages and working conditions, administered contracts, and enforced the provisions of its various agreements with theatrical employers across the country. The Director is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, an independent national labor union.
$25,000 and above Robert Sterling Clark Foundation $10,000 - $24,999 Lucille Lortel Foundation The Shubert Foundation
$5,000 - $9,999 Jean & Louis Dreyfus Foundation Irving & Gloria Fine Foundation DJ McManus Foundation Ted Snowdon Foundation Michael Tuch Foundation
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This event is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.
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A Note from the Artistic Director
The production of Walking Down Broadway begins a year at Mint dedicated to American women. This is not new territory for us; we produced Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett in 2000 and Susan Glaspell’s Alison’s House in 1999. Both were Pulitzer Prize-winners, and both were sorely neglected in the decades following their award. It is hardly surprising or noteworthy that good, stage-worthy plays by women writers should be neglected. My great hope is that by focusing our attention for three producEd Sala and Angela tions as well as several readings, Mint might create a greater level of Reed from Mint's prointerest and consideration for these sadly neglected writers and their duction of Miss Lulu plays amongst other producers and scholars across the country. Bett by Zona Gale
Walking Down Broadway was written in 1931 and is a look back at Powell’s early days in New York, immediately after the war, when she herself lived in a rooming-house on the upper Westside very much like the one described in her play. Powell sets the play in 1931 and on the one hand, it is filled with popular culture references from that time, but on the other hand, the play has a very nostalgic feel. As with Powell’s diaries and other writing, there is no explicit mention of the depression and while Chick is concerned about his income, Dewey is absolutely brimming with consumer confidence, buying new clothes every week. We’ve set our production in between the time Powell first arrived in New York and the time when she wrote the play.
Women Playwrights in the Twentieth Century By Yvonne Shafer
During the first quarter of the twentieth century many new playwrights were introduced to the American theatre. Because of improved copyright laws and an expanding theatre, there were ample rewards for the many male and female playwrights. The period was one in which many stars were performing in New York and touring throughout the country. The demand for popular material was enormous. As playwright Martha Morton said, “There is an almost frenzied demand for plays.” Production hit a peak in 1927 when 290 plays opened on Broadway. In addition to professional productions, churches, universities, and community groups presented plays. Previous to this time, not surprisingly, there were few women playwrights. After 1900 many turned from writing novels or working on newspapers to writing for the theatre. By 1910 many had been successful and wanted to be considered professional playwrights. Accordingly, they attempted to join the prestigious and powerful American Dramatists’ Club which was founded in 1891 and was an important factor in establishing the copyright laws and creating legal protection for playwrights. The members were male and viewed the organization largely as a social club, so women were not allowed to join. In reaction to this Martha Morton established the Society of Dramatic Authors in 1907. Initially, the society had 28 women playwrights and one male. Soon the two groups were united with Morton as Vice President. This was a major step in the development of women playwrights in terms of recognition, legal rights, and professional interaction. These early women playwrights established a path which was followed by such later playwrights as Rose Franken, Lorraine Hansberry, and Wendy Wasserstein.
In a sense the theatre seems a microcosm of the whole of American society in which women were striving for change, particularly in career opportunities. In the time in which Martha Morton was earning huge sums for her playwriting, casting and directing her plays in an entirely professional manner, she was still unable to vote in elections. Women’s suffrage was achieved after great struggles in 1920. This was, of course, due to the Suffragettes and the feminists. As June Sochen wrote in The New Feminism in Twentieth Century America:
“The feminists envisioned an open society where each human being, in this land of infinite opportunity, could develop his or her potential to its fullest...women who wanted a career, with or without marriage, could do so. The society would rearrange its institutions to provide for this. Collective nurseries, flexible residence requirements for graduate studies, and husbands that accepted equal responsibility in the home would enable the feminist dream to become a reality.”
These views were expressed in many plays by the end of the first quarter of the century, but in the first ten years most women playwrights were content to write formulaic plays tailored for stars. But by 1910 feminist concerns were being presented in plays, along with characterizations of single women (no longer called “old maids” or “spinsters”) who successfully pursued careers. Florence Kiper (who represented the many women writing for newspapers) wrote in 1914 that this should be an important element in the plays by women. “It is hoped that women playwrights will feel impelled to set forth sincerely and honestly, yet with vital passion, those problems in the development and freedom of women that our modern age has termed the problems of feminism.”
Many articles were written about the emerging women playwrights. These often stressed the importance of and the need for plays written by women about women. There was no dearth of plays about women and their problems in a changing society written by men., however, these often set up a problem (such as a woman seeking a career against her family’s wish), which is then resolved with an ending conforming to the generally accepted views of American society. In 1910, Rachel Crothers wrote a decidedly controversial play called A Man’s World. In it a career woman rejected a man because she could not accept his view of the “double standard” regarding sexuality. In answer Augustus Thomas wrote a play defending the double standard and the disempowerment of women, for which he was highly praised. It was apparent that women faced a challenge in writing about a society in which they were not considered equal to men.
Obviously women viewed themselves and their roles in society in a markedly different fashion from men in terms of their capabilities, their intelligence, and their needs. While more women were receiving college degrees and Ph.D.s, most men were reluctant to view them as their equals. They not only viewed them as different, but lacking qualities which fit them for careers, voting for public officials, or managing a business. In 1910, a newspaperman wrote an article entitled “Do Women Have a Sense of Humour?” and concluded that they did not. As late as 1916, critic and historian Brander Matthews included a chapter in a book called “Women Dramatists.” In this, he concluded that Rachel Crothers women can never depict women as well as men. He put forth the view that they could not be good playwrights because they lacked the ability to be logical and therefore lacked the ability to construct a play well, concluding that women, “lack the inexhaustible fund of information about life which is the common property of men.” In contrast, women writers noted the wide experience and education of many of the women playwrights and the need for them to recreate their own experiences through art. As Patricia Meyer Spacks wrote, “Women dominate their own experience by imagining it, giving it form, writing about it.”
University in his hometown of Cleveland, OH.
Ted Altschuler (Associate Director) Directing: operas: at New York City Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Rode Hoode (Amsterdam), and Juilliard where he taught for nine years Plays include: the long-running, award-winning Virginia (Cloud 42, Chicago), On the Verge, The Road to the Graveyard, Hot Fudge, Icarus's Mother, Play with Repeats and The Glass Menagerie. Former Artistic Director of Clavis Theater Ensemble, Milwaukee. Recent projects include: an opera of Poe's A Tell Tale Heart, Georgia O'Keefe x Catherine Rogers. Upcoming productions include the American Premiere of Glyn Maxwell’s Broken Journey with Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and For the Living and the Dead, created from the poems of Tomas Transtroemer.
Sherri Kotimsky (General Manager) Produced for Naked Angels: Meshugah, Tape, Shyster, Omnium Gatherum, Fear: The Issues Project and several seasons of workshops and readings. As Naked Angels Managing Director, managed Hesh and Snakebit. Also produced Only the End of the World and Blood Orange. Most recently Theatre Manager for the Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts at Pace University, home to National Actors Theatre, Tribeca Film and Theatre Festivals, River to River Festival and the Carol Tambor Awards 2005 productions, amongst many others.
Stuart Howard, Amy Schecter & Paul Hardt (Casting) have cast hundreds of shows over the past 25 years. Among their favorites are: Broadway: Gypsy (Tyne Daly), Chicago (Bebe Neuwirth, Ann Reinking), Sly Fox (Richard Dreyfuss), Fortune's Fool (Alan Bates, Frank Langella) & the original La Cage Aux Folles. Off Broadway: I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change & The Normal Heart. At the Mint: The Skin Game. Upcoming: the Broadway revival of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.
David Gersten (Press Representatives) is proud to continue our relationship with Mint. DGA currently represents the off-Broadway hits Altar Boyz and The Awesome 80s Prom as well as Dr. Sex, the musical comedy about Alfred Kinsey, opening this month. Other current clients include Ensemble Studio Theatre, Edge Theatre Company, The Lucille Lortel Foundation, and The League of OffBroadway Theatres & Producers' annual Lortel Awards (10th year!), which David also writes and co-produces. David serves on the Board of Governors of ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers.
Dawn Powell: In Her Own Words
“I saved $25 and went to Lake Erie College, Painesville, an ultra school for girls. It seems that it cost more than that when I got there, but they couldn’t send me home because there wasn’t any, so I remained typing in the registrar’s office. Now I'm graduated. It’s the last year of the war. The movies are still in their infancy; Lindberg is a little boy who won't go on errands. Fannie Ward is having her face lifted for the twentieth time, and hairdressers all over the country predict that bobbed hair is a fad and will not last. All the other girls I know are going to be farmerettes on the old college campus. A lady offers a ticket to a farm in Connecticut to one lone farmerette, so I take it and hoe potatoes in a very arty colony all summer so I will be near New York for autumn. “In four days I had a job at the Butterick Company, but I wanted to go away to war and I entered the Naval Reserve. In three weeks I ended the war, but I had to go on being a sailor down at 44 Whitehall Street until I was released. At that time I answered an ad, stumbled into publicity work, sold several short stories, married Joseph G. Gousha, had a baby, lived in a top floor on Riverside Drive and wrote between filling the baby’s bottles and doing housework. At night I listened to my husband’s intellectual friends talk music and art, and I wished like anything that I could go to the Palace to see Joe Cook. “Come with me now to Washington Square where all night long typewriters click, people sing in the streets, hurdy gurdies go all day and the laundry boy reads Turgenev. I realize that never again will I be trapped into respectable neighborhoods or the awful respectability of a home. (I meant to say responsibility, not respectability.) “For three years I tried to sell “She Walks in Beauty.” I wrote “The Bride’s House” next and got only fine words from the publishers. Probably they were right, I decided. Suddenly a friend of mine got a job at Brentano’s, took my novel down the first day after dusting it off and shaking out the mothballs, and the publishers were delighted with it. Not until it came out did I really believe they had taken it. After that, publishers who had turned it down started to ask for my next work and said they intended to buy that first novel all along, but were kept from it by a mean old man in the office who made faces at them. “I realize that as an autobiography many things are lacking from this life of Dawn Powell. I have no anecdotes of Queen Victoria, no meeting with Gladstone or matching of wits with Disraeli. I haven’t moved empires by dancing as Mata Hari did, nobody has written poems to me, but I am still hopeful. After all, life stretches ahead of me, a long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.” reprinted from Ohioana Authors
Stephen Petrilli (Lighting Designer) previously designed Mr. Pim Passes By and Ivanov for Mint Theater. He has also designed several shows for New York's Pearl Theatre Company, Second Generation Productions, Melting Pot Theatre Company, and the National Asian American Theatre Company. In the dance world, he has designed for Pilobolus Dance Theatre, Shapiro & Smith Dance and Ailey II. Regional theatre credits include designs for Penguin Rep, The Village Theatre in Seattle, State Theatre Company in Austin and the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival in his hometown of Pittsburgh. Stephen also spent five years touring as the Lighting/Sound Supervisor for Pilobolus. He and his wife Shannon have a two year old boy, Liam.
Sally Plass (Props designer) has been doing props Off-Broadway for 15 years, and to that end has set up a 'lending-library' nonprofit prop house in the "A.R.T./New York Spaces at 520" to service all not-for profits, student and independent films, and TV. She has propped, as 'The Propper Ms. Plass' for such theatres as The Atlantic, Primary Stages, Signature, Manhattan Theatre Club, Dramatists League, Pan Asian, May Yi and Ensemble Studio Theatre. She is also on the faculty at Juilliard as a Production Stage Manager.
Jane Shaw (Sound Design) At the Mint: Lonely Way, Ivanov (Jonathan Bank), No Time for Comedy (Kent Paul). Designs include: Susan Marshall's Cloudless, Sleeping Beauty and Other Stories; Big Dance Theater's Plan B, Mac Wellman's Girl Gone, A Simple Heart, Another Telepathic Thing, Shunkin, and Antigone; The Pearl Theatre's Imaginary Invalid and The House of Bernarda Alba; Synapse Productions' Silence and Machinal; and The Fairy Tale Project (LAByrinth). Ms. Shaw toured with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, held positions at NYU Tisch and Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
Brenda Turpin (Costume Design) has designed costumes for numerous productions in New York, including Rite of the Serpent Skirt at Manhattan Theatre Source, Skin Deep at the WorkShop Theatre, Berlin at Theatre 315, numerous productions for Theatre Garden, and regional productions of The Threepenny Opera, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Rocky Horror Show, and Slaughter City. She also assisted Ann Hould-Ward on Open Heart at the Cherry Lane Theatre. For the past three years she has been a buyer for Barbara Matera Ltd., and a freelance personal shopper for numerous clients. Brenda has a MFA in Costume
Design from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.
Jason A. Quinn (Production Stage Manager) Broadway: Cabaret, Phantom of the Opera, Urban Cowboy, and Candide with the NY Philharmonic, pre Broadway engagements of Annie Get Your Gun, this season's In My Life and the upcoming production of A Tale of Two Cities. Off-Broadway: Criss Angel Mindfreak, Tony 'n Tina's Wedding, and productions for Lincoln Center, Culture Project, and Chicago's Second City. Select industrials include the re-opening of the Statue of Liberty, GLAAD Awards, US Open, and events for Miller Light, VH1's Save the Music, the NY Yankees, and the NFL. Jason is a credited contributor to several books on event management and has served as a professor and guest lecturer at several universities in the northeast.
Noelle Font (Assistant Stage Manager) Walking Down Broadway marks Noelle's maiden voyage with The Mint. Some past credits include: Disney's Tarzan Aerial Lab (Disney Theatrical Prod.), The Tempest (Shakespeare on the Sound), the world premier of Where's Annie? (Hudson Stage Company), Leave it to Kern (American Musicals Project / NY Historical Society), Crimes of the Heart (T. Schreiber Studio), The Trial, Masterpieces, and Comedy of Errors (Purchase Repertory Theatre), and over 20 productions during her three year residency at Cortland Repertory Theatre. Noelle holds a BFA in Stage Management from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College.
Jonathan Bank (Artistic Director) Under Bank’s leadership, Mint has been awarded both an Obie and a Drama Desk in the last three years. Bank has unearthed and produced more than two dozen worthy but neglected plays including Echoes of the War by J.M. Barrie, The Daughter-In-Law by D. H. Lawrence and Arthur Schnitzler’s Far and Wide and The Lonely Way which he adapted and directed. He is the editor of Worthy But Neglected: Plays of the Mint Theater Company which includes his adaptations of Thomas Wolfe’s Welcome to Our City and Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, both of which he directed at Mint, along with five other Mint rediscoveries. He also edited Mint’s latest volume: Arthur Schnitzler Reclaimed. Bank directed Ivanov and Othello for the National Asian American Theater Company, John Brown’s Body, The Double Bass and Three Days of Rain for the Miniature Theater of Chester and Candida and Mr. Pim Passes By for the Peterborough Players. He earned his M.F.A. from Case Western Reserve
The plays to be presented this season at the Mint show characterizations of women and men through the eyes of women playwrights. In the years following Crothers’ assault on the domination of males in society and the double standard of sexuality, other women took on serious questions related to the society in which they lived. Zona Gale, for example, drew attention to the dreary lives lead by women in small towns in America, especially those unfortunate enough to be “old maids.” Miss Lulu Bett presents a picture of the downtrodden women Gale knew from personal experience. One critic wrote of it, “Miss Gale has done authentically what perhaps only a feminist, and certainly what only an artist can do. She has shown in perfect American terms, the serious comedy of an emancipation.”
As the years moved on toward the middle of the century, women playwrights such as Sophie Treadwell (remembered for Machinal and other plays), Rose Franken (Another Language and Claudia), and Lillian Hellman (The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes) created a grand canvas depicting the lives of Americans from the smart drawing rooms in Manhattan to the bleak valleys of Appalachia. But Treadwell, Franken, and Hellman are but a few of the hundreds of women who wrote for the American theatre. The list runs from Mercedes de Acosta to Irma Zimmer. Many of these women achieved critical and financial success in the professional theatre. Others took pride in presentations in churches and schools in Cleveland, Harlem, Chicago, and elsewhere.
Not only were women encouraged to write about women, but women encouraged production of plays by other women. The popular actress Margaret Anglin announced that she would not act in a play by a man if she could get one written by a woman. Susan Glaspell and other women directed each other’s plays at the Provincetown Players. Women were forming organizations to encourage women playwrights as well. For example, women in Evanston, Illinois founded the Drama League shortly after the turn of the century. This was a model later copied by other women in the country. Alice Gerstenberg, as founder of the Playwrights Theatre of Chicago, opened the door for production of many plays by women. Zona Gale was encouraged by the Wisconsin Dramatic Society. Another important organization was The Playwrights Fellowship estabSophie Treadwell lished by playwright Edith Ellis Baker in 1921 to encourage production of plays by women. Twentieth century women playwrights were recognized in their time as important contributors to the American theatre, they received praise from the critics and were popular with audiences. There were articles by men and women about the significance of women playwrights. In 1917 Alan Dale wrote “Women Playwrights: Their Contribution has Enriched the Stage.” The women playwrights whose work appears at the Mint this season represent hundreds of others. Not only critical and financial success were achieved, but women received Pulitzer Prizes, Drama Critics Circle Awards, Tony Awards and other significant indications of their talent and determination. At a time when many professions were closed to women, female playwrights showed that a woman could successfully compete with men, earn considerable money, and have the pleasure of a career in the theatre.
Yvonne Shafer is the author of American Women Playwrights: 1900-1950.
For more information on Dawn Powell go to:www.minttheater.org/onstage/notes.html
Christine Albright (Marge) is thrilled to be making her Mint Theater debut. Regional Theatre credits include: Stamford Center for the Arts: Expectations (opposite Eartha Kitt), La Jolla Playhouse: Burning Deck (Starring Diane Venora), Virginia Stage Company: Vincent in Brixton (Eugenie). New York Credits Include: New York Classical Theatre: As You Like It (Celia), Manhattan Theatre Source: Arcadia (Thomasina). Christine Got Her MFA From UCSD, where she performed in The Beauty Project (Directed By Tina Landau), The Seagull (Nina-San Diego Playbill Award For Outstanding Actress) and Angels In America (Harper). Thanks to Jerry, George, Jed, and Jonathan. All My Love to Mom, Dad, RJ, and Adam.
Denis Butkus (Chick) was most recently seen as Rolf in The Mint Theater Company's production of The Skin Game directed by Eleanor Reissa. Other New York Theater credits include: Chris in Mark Schultz's play Gift in this summer's New York International Fringe Festival, directed by Daniel Talbott; Third Man in the workshop of Will Power's The Seven at New York Theatre Workshop, directed by Jo Bonney; Io in Prometheus Bound at the Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab, directed by Braden Abraham; Jan in Andy Bragen's Greater Messapia at Queens Theater in the Park, directed by Jonathan Silverstein; Tom in Matt Pepper's St. Crispin's Day at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, directed by Simon Hammerstein; Ed in Three-Cornered Moon at Keen Company, directed by Carl Forsman. Regionally he has appeared at The Seven Devils Playwrights Conference in Andy Bragen's Spuyten Duyvil as Buddy Starlight, directed by Jim Abar and at the Sacramento Theater Company in Arcadia as Septimus Hodge. He is an Artistic Associate of Rising Phoenix Repertory and a graduate of Juilliard.
Antony Hagopian (Mac) most recently appeared in The Importance of Marrying Wells at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, as part of the NY Fringe Festival. Other New York credits include: Brothers Karamazov (La Mama e.t.c.), Mercury, Richard II (HERE), Fever (NYFringe), The Garden of Hannah List (Hypothetical Theatre Co.). Regional: The Shakespeare Theatre (Wash, D.C.); Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park; Missouri Repertory Theatre; Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Alabama Shakespeare Festival; Virginia Stage Co.; Indiana Repertory Theatre; New Jersey Shakespeare Festival; PlayMakers Repertory Co.; Texas Shakespeare Festival; PCPA Theatrefest; He has also appeared in several independent films, and
TV shows including: Law & Order, Guiding Light, All My Children and As The World Turns. Training: MFA from Temple University.
Carol Halstead (Eva Elman) Ms. Halstead appeared on Broadway in Gore Vidal's The Best Man Off-Broadway: Dionyza in Pericles, Annie in Easter Candy, Anna in The Mask, Digel in Alan Ball's The Amazing Adventures of Tense Guy, Other New York includes : Urgent Fury (The Cherry Lane) Alarm Dog Rep Plays Dead (The Public Theatre), Dreams are Funny (Home) Planet America (Ensemble Studio Theatre) Regional Theatre includes; The Voysey Inheritance (Center Stage), All My Sons (The Chautauqua Theatre Company), Haley Walker in the West Coast premier of Teresa Rebecks' Bad Dates (San Jose Repertory -Dean Goodman Choice Award- Best Solo Performance). A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur, Arcadia, The Skin of Our Teeth, Misalliance, Racing Demon, Life with Father (The Denver Center Theatre) Picasso at The Lapine Agile (The Cleveland Playhouse and Budapest), Alls Well that Ends Well, Loves Labors Lost (The Shakespeare Theatre) TV and Film- Jonny Zero, As the World Turns. All My Children, The Whipper Snapper
Amanda Jones (Elsie) Off Broadway: with Jean Cocteau Repertory, The Maids (Solange), Arms and the Man (Raina), Uncle Vanya (Sonya), The Importance of Being Earnest (Cecily) and Henry V (Boy), among others. Regional: Bell, Book and Candle and Picnic (Sierra Repertory); Arsenic and Old Lace and Engaged (The Depot Theatre); Sylvia and On The Verge (TriState Actors Theatre); The Magnificent Ambersons and The Man Who Came To Dinner (Oldcastle Theatre). Television: One Life to Live, Trinity. Film: short films Fisherboy and Harry Otter: Life and Times, and feature film Black Mary. Education: Dartmouth College. Thanks to Mom and Dad for your faith and support. www.missamandajones.biz
Emily Moment (Librarian #1, Marge U/S) Emily is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut with Mint Theater. Most recently Emily was seen as Lel in Great Romances of the 21st Century as part of Turtle Shell Productions' "8 Minute Madness Playwright Festival" where she received an award for Best Performance. She would like to thank her Mother and Sister for their undying love and support and Stephanie for being such an encouraging inspiration to keep trying.
Stacy Parker (Librarian, Elsie U/S) Stacy is a recent graduate of the MFA Acting program at Columbia University. This spring she was a member of the acting company for Andrei Serban's Faust at the Metropolitan Opera. She was also seen in Karin Coonrod's House of Bernarda Alba and Eduardo Machado's Crocodile Eyes both in New York City and at the Premio DAMS Festival in Bologna, Italy. She is a Chicago girl, born and bred, and worked there professionally prior to moving to NYC.
Ben Roberts (Dewey) Makes his debut in New York with Walking Down Broadway. His previous professional credits include Connie in Grapes of Wrath at Syracuse Stage. He recently graduated with a BFA in acting from Syracuse University this past May and has just moved to the city. He’d like to thank everyone involved with this production, everyone at Leading Artists, the Silbermann’s and his family for their constant support.
Cherene Snow (Isabel) A member of Actors Equity since 1996, Cherene is proud to be making her Mint Theater debut. Theatre credits include: The Miracle Worker (Arkansas Rep), Brooklyn Under Construction, the world premiere of I See Fire in the Dead Man's Eyes (The Clurman at Theatre Row), The Last of the Thorntons (Signature Theatre), Home, To Kill a Mockingbird (Ford's Theatre), Straight As A Line (The Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Public Ghosts: Private Stories (George St Playhouse), B.A.F.O., Coyote on a Fence and Compleat Female Stage Beauty (Contemporary American Theatre Festival), Flyin' West, A Piece of My Heart, the world premiere of The Good Times are Killing Me, the U.S. premiere of Playboy of the West Indies, Othello, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Film/TV: City of Angels, The Long Walk Home, Out of Darkness (ABC-MOW), The Jury, Law & Order,:Suicide Box, Chappelle's Show, Third Watch, L. A. Doctors, Reasonable Doubts, Caroline in the City, The Drew Carey Show, Beyond Belief and The Tonight Show w/ Jay Leno. Thank you Steven and Jonathan for this opportunity.
Sammy Tunis (Ginger) is thrilled and honored to be making her Off-Broadway debut at the Mint. Other credits include The Adding Machine (Columbia Stages) Then Let Them Eat Cake (Edinburgh Fringe) and Sex and Hunger (Access Theater) Thanks to Mom and Dad, Bob and Bob,and Charley. Sammy is a graduate of Oberlin College where she played such roles as Lil Bit in How I Learned to Drive, Adela in The House of
Bernarda Alba and Bebe in Crimes of the Heart.
Steven Williford (Director) is the resident director of the Lark Play Development Center. His work there includes Pera Palas by Sinan Unel, Day Of The Kings by Daphne Greaves, God's Creatures and Lenny & Lou by Ian Cohen, Knepp by Jorge Goldenberg (translated by Judith Leverone), and new projects by Sandi Goff, David Simpatico, Ron Fitzgerald, and Chantal Bilodeau. Other developmental work includes new plays for Manhattan Theatre Club, the Cherry Lane Alternative, Ensemble Studio Theater, Rattlestick, Provincetown Theatre Company, Stamford Theatre Festival, and two seasons with the O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. His more than forty regional productions include work for Long Wharf, Missouri Rep, Tacoma Actors Guild, New City Theatre in Seattle, Miniature Theater of Chester, Hudson Stage Company and six seasons as the artistic director of The New Harmony Theatre in Indiana. Television: Guiding Light, As The World Turns, and All My Children. Steven is an honored recipient of the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award - and he holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Tom Wojtunik (Assistant Director) last assisted Steven Williford on the Lark workshops of The Misfortune of Our Friends and Where's Annie?, as well as a production of the latter at the Hudson Stage Company. This summer he directed and cocreated The Miss Education of Jenna Bush (starring Melissa Rauch) for FringeNYC, which was voted Audience Favorite and Best Solo Show... He is a member of Emerging Artists and the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab.
Roger Hanna (Set Designer) is pleased to design his first Mint show. Roger has designed sets for directors and choreographers including Laura Alley, Trazana Beverly, Dorothy Danner, Thomas Gruenewald, Barry Harman, Ralph Lee, Elisa Monte, and Michael Parva, as well as repeated collaborations with Jack Allison, Suzanne Bennett, Ralph Buckley, the Gilgamesh Theatre Group, Robin Guarino, Ron Jenkins, and Susan Marshall. Recent work includes Cloudless at Jacob's Pillow, On the Town at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, Kiss Me Kate at the Performing Arts Center in Duluth, Don Giovanni and Die Zauberflote for Mannes Opera, and the two most recent U.S. premieres of new Dario Fo plays. To see some of his work, visit www.rogerhanna.com.