PlayNotes - Season 50, Issue 7 - Manning

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Discussion Series

Join us for a Book Club-style Page to Stage with the Portland Public Library. Check out your copy of the script and join us two weeks before previews of each Mainstage Production. Scripts are available at the reference desk at the Main Branch of the Portland Public Library. This year discussions will be held in the Rines Room at 5pm two weeks before a show opens. Feel free to come and chat about the plays with Literary Manager, Todd Brian Backus; his Directing and Dramaturgy Apprentices, and special guests. Visit portlandlibrary.com/programs-events/ for more information.

The Artistic Perspective, hosted by Artistic Director Anita Stewart, is an opportunity for audience members to delve deeper into the themes of the show through conversation with special guests. A different scholar, visiting artist, playwright, or other expert will join the discussion each time. The Artistic Perspective discussions are held after the first Sunday matinee performance.

Curtain Call discussions offer a rare opportunity for audience members to talk about the production with the performers. Through this forum, the audience and cast explore topics that range from the process of rehearsing and producing the text to character development to issues raised by the work Curtain Call discussions are held after the second Sunday matinee performance.

All discussions are free and open to the public. Show attendance is not required. To subscribe to a discussion series performance, please call the Box Office at 207.774.0465.

PlayNotes 2 Manning
HannaH Cordes, Paula Vogel, anita stewart, and todd Brian BaCkus in a talkBaCk, Portland stage ComPany.

Manning by Benjamin Benne

PlayNotes Season 50 Editorial Staff

Editor in Chief

Todd Brian Backus

Contributors

Julia Jennings, Alex Oleksy

Copy Editor

Adam Thibodeau

Cover Illustration

James A. Hadley

Portland Stage Company Educational Programs, like PlayNotes, are generously supported through the annual donations of hundreds of individuals and businesses, as well as special funding from:

The Simmons Foundation

PlayNotes 3 PlayNotes
Susie Konkel Harry Konkel Harold & Betty Cottel Family Fund
Table of ConTenTs 4 Manning Table of Contents Letter from the Editors 5 About the Play 6 About the Characters 7 Portland Stage's Manning An Interview with the Playwright and Director: Benjamin Benne and Alex Keegan 8 Tech Talks: An Interview with Elliot Nye 11 New Play Development 13 The World of Manning Food as Past, Food as Present 14 Tomb to Womb 15 Glossary 17 Digging Deeper Fantastical, Not Magical 18 Masculine Grief and Violence 20 Manning in Translation 22 Extras Recommended Resources 26 Education and Outreach at PSC 27

Letter from the Editors

Dear PlayNotes Readers,

We're so excited to have you with us for the final play of our 50th season, the world premiere of Clauder Competition winner Manning, written by Bejamin Benne.

In this issue, we explore the world of Manning, a meditation on masculinity, grief, family, and falconry. Following Julio and his sons Freddy and Sebastian, Benne's play asks important questions about how men love, mourn, and move on.

Want to learn about this production of Manning? Head over to our "Interview with the Playwright and Director: Benjamin Benne and Alex Keegan” (pg. 10), and meet our actors in "About the Characters" (pg. 8). Curious about puppetry? Learn more about Jasmine the hawk in "Tech Talks: An Interview with Elliot Nye" (pg.13).

Curious about the political context of the play? Check out the article "Masculine Grief and Violence" (pg. 20) or learn about the practice of eco-funerals in "Tomb to Womb" (pg. 18).

When compiling each issue of PlayNotes, we strive to provide articles and interviews that give you insight into what the process has been like behind the scenes (see articles in "Portland Stage's Manning"), contain pertinent information about the play’s setting and major themes (“The World of Manning”), and provide deeper dives into specific subjects that compelled our literary department (“Digging Deeper”). We include a list of books, plays, and other media that we hope audiences will access for more cultural content that relates to the play (“Recommended Resources”).

We are delighted to have you join us for the conclusion of our 50th season, and we hope you enjoy seeing Manning.

Sincerely yours,

The Portland Stage Literary Department

Todd Brian Backus

Julia Jennings Alex Oleksy

Letter from the editors 5 PlayNotes

About the Play

Manning brings to life the moving story of three men who have just lost their matriarch and find a giant zucchini growing in her place. In this clever and innovative new work, playwright Benjamin Benne examines nature, nurture, and male grief through the lens of two brothers and their father who turn to the language of gardening, falconry, and cooking to find each other and to work through their shared despair.

Manning is a heartwarming meditation on male grief; nature vs nurture; and how we all cope with loss. Sebastian returns home with his newly bonded hawk after his younger brother Freddy discovers one of his zucchinis has grown to gargantuan size. Freddy asks Sebastian to stay when he reveals their father Julio isn't eating and has lost the will to live after the death of Ana, his wife and the boys' mother. Can Sebastian and Freddy inspire Julio to cope? Or will they be thwarted by nature (or nurture)?

Developed at the Yale School of Drama and then selected as the Grand Prize winner for the 2022 Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights, Manning has been workshopped at Portland Stage’s Little Festival of the Unexpected and the Latinx New Play Festival at La Jolla Playhouse, with support from the Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group at Primary Stages. This production marks Manning's world premiere, to close Portland Stage’s 50th anniversary season.

Portland Stage’S Manning 6 Manning
aCtors sHawn denegre-VaugHt (aea), martin ortiz (aea), daVe anzuelo (aea), annie Henk (aea), PlaywrigHt Benjamin Benne, and direCtor alex keegan at tHe first read of Manning.

About the Characters

Actor: Dave Anzuelo

Character: Julio

Description: The father, a chef. Ailing from a broken heart after the passing of his wife.

Actor: Shawn Denegre-Vaught

Character: Freddy

Description: The younger son, a gardener. Recently graduated from high school, more sensitive than his brother. Still developing a nuanced understanding of masculinity.

Actor: Annie Henk

Character: Ana/Jasmine

Description: Ana, the mother, recently deceased. Though she is now physically absent from their lives, she remains somehow omnipresent.

Jasmine, Sebastian's loyal falcon.

Actor: Martin Ortiz

Character: Sebastian

Description: The eldest son, a falconer. Left home several years ago, more detached and jaded than his brother.

Portland Stage’S Manning 7 PlayNotes

An Interview with the Playwright and Director: Benjamine Benne and Alex Keegan

Assistant Director and Dramaturg Julia Jennings sat down with the creative team of Manning to speak about their ongoing collaborations, and what they've learned from staging this world premiere at Portland Stage.

Julia Jennings (JJ): I know that this production of Manning is part of an ongoing collaboration between you two. Could you each tell me a little bit about your individual creative journeys with this show, and then also how you first started working together on it?

Benjamin Benne (BB): For me, the play started with an obsession with falconry videos and going down a YouTube rabbit hole during quarantine, and then [the process] continued when I was back home in Tacoma, Washington for the first time after many years during that first pandemic year, 2020. And I was watching my grandma garden outside the window of where my writing desk was stationed. These images of like, carnivore in the air, vegetation coming up from the earth, feelings of grief and loss that just felt really omnipresent and the cyclical nature of life and what does life look like after death? [All of these] started to permeate my writing. And somehow this play came out of an image that I suddenly had of a middle-aged man holding a giant zucchini and I was like, I don't know what the story is, but something about all these images around falconry, gardening, loss and grief are all feeling like they're part of the world building.

Alex Keegan (AK): And I think you sent me the play in early spring of 2021—that was the first time I encountered a draft of it. And the vaccine was on the horizon, it was that moment of a COVID lockdown/ non-lockdown world. I remember reading the play and being really immediately struck by these questions of how we hold grief and how a family holds grief when they feel isolated by virtue of the numbers of deaths from the rest of the world, which still feels very pressing, but at the time, it felt startlingly pressing. And likewise, I remember starting to look at art, photography, some collage-style paintings of gardens and birds and air and ground and that all felt cyclical

as well. The nature/nurture felt like a cyclical question in the play and then, how does our whole world come alive also felt like a cyclical question in imagining producing the play.

And to answer the part of the question about how we started to work together; I suppose we came back and we dove pretty immediately into both working on the play as text and also thinking about how it might exist three dimensionally. Questions of how do these different worlds within the play work? How does the garden work? How does an under-theground space work? How do we hold the house and garden simultaneously? And how do we create a world that centers these four characters—and the two puppets—so really these six characters in the space while also creating something that's fluid, that can morph really quickly and that can hold a sense of life but also a sense of loss and shift in a second? [That became] a big starting question in thinking about how to three-dimensionally imagine the play.

BB: And the way that [our grad] program worked [is that] there were three writers that got accepted each year and three directors, and then over the course of what was typically three years, we would be able to work with each person in a playwright/director pairing. I had been hoping that I would be paired with Alex for my thesis, and then my wish came true. I think we just had a really good collaborative relationship working on that thesis production—so I'm excited that that gets to continue for this.

JJ: Can you give me a brief window into the development process since then, like where this play has gone and how it's changed over time?

BB: Well, I think first we were workshopping here at Portland Stage after it won the Clauder Competition— that was the first workshop of the play after Carlotta.

AK: And there was the one-day reading—the Primary Stages reading.

Portland Stage’S Manning 8 Manning

BB: Oh, my God. Yeah, talk about that one. Because that was the first time we worked with Dave and Annie.

AK: We had produced [Manning] at grad school in the fall, and then in the spring of that year, we did this very fast one-day reading, and Dave and Annie were cast in that reading. We heard them read the play and were like, this is really exciting. We started to get a sense of what the actual parental dynamic was, which I would say was less explored in grad school production, just by virtue of it being an academic environment. I'm thinking of how it's changed. It's gotten shorter—it structurally has changed. But the thematic content and the character relationships don't necessarily feel like they veered far from those early productions and drafts. Ben, I don't know if you'd say that's true?

BB: Totally. Content has mostly stayed the same, but the form just keeps evolving. And definitely in the earlier drafts of the play, I was trying wildly different ways of structuring the content. But then eventually, it became more of this linear story about this family. And then it was just a matter of figuring out how to order the events optimally. So I think that's where things keep shifting—looking at different moments and changing up the beats to try to find the moment as clearly as possible.

AK: I guess also puppetry has changed. When we initially conceived of the play, the bird was an aerial object, like a kite puppet controlled from above. Which is a different relationship—Ana was never actually seen onstage. She was heard, but never appeared in any form—like puppeting, or in the under-theground—none of that. And then in the re-conceiving of it, we started to think about, what would happen

if Ana was present on stage and what would that actually do to the puppet, to the world of enlivening Jasmine and looking at people's interpersonal connections with the mom, physically in space?

BB: Yeah, and since the earliest versions of the play, Ana was in the play, in memories and all these other sequences to try to figure out what the relationships between the living characters and her character were. But as I continued to develop the play, it felt like oh, we don't really feel her absence if she's in the play so consistently. So those scenes started to get pulled out more and more. And then eventually there was just the one scene with her as essentially a ghost. But then as we were thinking about how to incorporate the puppet differently, there was a way that we saw that we could incorporate her as a presence, even if not necessarily as the character ‘Ana’, which felt really exciting.

JJ: Alex, question for you. I would love to hear a little bit about your approach to directing new work specifically. How does it change the rehearsal process to have the playwright present? And particularly with Manning, what has it been like to return to this evolving script?

AK: I think directing holistically is both deeply creatively fulfilling and also can, in moments, feel deeply isolated. Something about new play processes is that I rarely feel isolated in them. They feel like they're inherently more actively collaborative because you're in conversation from very early moments in development of the piece, and so you get to shape the initial world that the play can live in. There's a great and exciting responsibility in that and in figuring out, what are the rules of this world? What is the artistic and aesthetic language? What sort of container can I create for the play in collaboration with others that will hold it and allow the story to really blossom, as opposed to working on a classic or something, which still feels like you're mining the story and trying to enliven it, but inherently it's been produced many times before. So often you have to have a specific point of view or a specific reason for framing it. And that, I feel, is less exciting than actually getting to be in the room with the writer to hear what they're imagining and then take what they're imagining and offer a threedimensional language for that, and then offer questions and thoughts about how the world might evolve.

In the context of Manning, specifically, I encountered [the play] very early [in its process] by virtue of being in school. Because I'd had a sense of Ben's other

Portland Stage’S Manning 9 PlayNotes
PlaywrigHt Benjamin Benne and direCtor alex keegan.

work, I was really curious about how the story would evolve—I'd been watching and trying to learn types of staging language and expressive language [Ben] was interested in, in translating from page to three dimensional production. So the hope coming into working on the play in an early iteration was, how can I offer a world that feels like it's responding to some of the aesthetic interests that are on the page of the script? So it feels like you're in sort of a dance of being like, can I offer something and does it serve the story? And it feels like the playwright is simultaneously in that process through the lens of text—so you're sort of in this back and forth. And I would say that that back and forth feels like it's evolved over the course of getting to produce the play more than once. You get to come back to those questions of, what was really exciting? What was moving, what was delightful? And what are some moments that felt murkier or felt less defined and how can we go in and really reexamine them with this new group of people in this new space?

JJ: What are you most excited for audiences to see in this iteration of Manning and what do you hope they'll take away from this production?

AK: It feels like such a beautiful piece about how families reform and find each other again in the wake of loss, and I feel like it does that with humor and weirdness and poetry and I honestly hope audiences come into it with no expectations of what they're about to see, and allow themselves to be surprised and delighted and carried—in whatever way the piece moves. I feel as though, while we're farther now from 2020/2021, the themes of how do you lose someone, how do you reform, how do you come back together, how do you deal with the strangeness of grief time and the surrealness and the oddities that it brings up—the absurdity. [That remains pressing.] I hope that those things certainly delight people and move people but also perhaps make them feel like it's okay and perhaps normal to feel strange or feel like the world is cracking open and then coming back together in periods of grief. I also secretly hope gardeners come. When my mom saw the grad school production, she was like, the garden! And the roots are talking and she was so delighted, so I'm curious for other gardening folks to come and have whatever feelings they have about the interconnectedness of the ground in the context of life after death.

BB: It's so funny, this conversation is making me realize how much the play has changed. It just feels like all of this has been happening so organically, and over enough time that I just am not feeling that anymore, so it's really wild to think about what the show was and what it is now, how much it's grown. But I think one thing that has stayed really consistent for me—that I hope that the audience can appreciate—is the tenderness between men, and this incredible vulnerability. There are certainly moments where they harm each other and then have to repair that harm. But ultimately, it is about these men learning to take care of each other. And I just don't see a whole lot of stories like that. So that was something that I was really interested in exploring with this play. And I think that has stayed true as the core of what the play is for me.

Portland Stage’S Manning 10 Manning

Tech Talks: Elliot Nye

Edited for length and clarity by

For this issue our Literary Manager sat down with Puppet and Props designer Elliot Nye to discuss their process and work bringing Jasmine the hawk to life for the world premiere of Manning.

Todd Brian Backus (TBB): Elliot, I met you working on our production of Babette's Feast as a performer, and since then I've seen you in other shows with Fenix and other companies around town. But here you are making puppets! Can you talk to me a little bit about your artistic background and what sorts of things excite you theatrically?

Elliot Nye (EN): I think I am a bit all over the place, as is represented from this, this, Babette's Feast to Manning journey, but I think it tracks pretty well. My original sort of big dream was to be a professional stage actor which I was pretty rabidly invested in for many years, but I was also at Sarah Lawrence and the National Theater Institute, which are very new work devising centric programs. Whenever I was making stuff for course work, I always wanted to center it on playing with objects and sort of backseating text and story as the main sort of vehicle and more like what can be accomplished with a set of bananagrams tiles. Like, let's take this scene from Love and Information and make it all about how we're moving these tiles and arranging them. Initially I was playing a lot with object theater more so than puppetry because it's really intimidating to get into puppetry because it involves all these building skills and these sort of visual artistic skills, which I didn't have initially.

Right after our New York [production of Babette's Feast] closed, I pulled together my first puppet show, which we did at the Tank. That show was called Matilda's Inferno, and it was just like a clamp light that I had tied some fabric around, so it was like a little ghosty Pixar lamp. For a while, I was just iteratively making my own shows. And post-COVID, I started doing props and puppets for the Children's Museum, which was my final sort of springboard into now. I would consider myself more of a puppeteer and designer and I still do some acting.

TBB: I would love to know more about your puppet journey. Where did you go from there? And then I'd

love to also talk about Jasmine, this hawk that you're building for Manning.

EN: I guess my, my puppet journey does start the day I was born. The first apartment I lived in was landlorded by Shoestring Theaters folks, Nancy and Greg, who do the giant puppet parades. I grew up seeing their Odyssey and Alice in Wonderland and Christmas Carol.

When I got to Sarah Lawrence I got exposed to the "Bunraku"-style or direct operated puppetry art form. I think one of the first shows I saw in college was this puppeteer Josh Rice restaged a production of The Tempest where the thing that really sold me on it was that Caliban was an actor with just a head in his hand. That was the face who would interact. And then when he would soliloquize, he would look at the face and talk to it and that just blew my world open.

I took the puppetry course at Sarah Lawrence, which was run by Lake Simmons who's a big "Bunraku"-style person. Dan Hurlin was also running the MFA program at the time, he's one of the big artists translating the "Bunraku"-style of puppetry to American theater. I keep doing air quotes. See, this is sort of a contentious issue in the puppet world, or maybe not contentious, but the term "bunraku" actually technically refers to a specific theater in Osaka, Japan, and very specific traditions.

Ian Bannon, who's the artistic director at Mayo Street Arts said it's like Kleenex. You know, which is a specific brand that then people started using as a general use term for tissues. Similarly, "Bunraku" was used for a while as a general use term for direct operated puppetry, where you can see the puppeteer and you can see the person using their hands to operate it.

Bunraku is a specific repertoire of stories that are told using that style of puppet. There's like, a very specific training regimen that goes into Bunraku, where someone spends 10 years operating the feet, then they get 10 years on the waist and left hand, and then they finally can operate the head and the right hand.

Initially, the Bunraku style was migrated to America by certain puppeteers and has now evolved into this more open style of puppetry that we see all over. In Life of

Portland Stage’S Manning 11 PlayNotes

Pi, for instance. People have taken that idea and then developed it in so many ways. A lot of my background and training has been in this evolution from Bunraku.

TBB: I know that you've been doing some sessions with, uh, Annie Henk to help convey how to do that. Cause she will be puppeteering it. How's that been going for you? Both building, but also having to instruct?

EN: It's been really exciting and fun and challenging to work with Annie on the puppet. She's amazing and also not a puppeteer and she's doing an awesome job. We've been growing with it every day, and I'm so impressed with how fast she's grappling these ideas. You know, how to take something in your hand, and use all these ideas of like, tension and breath and directionality to animate.

She's really picking up on it super fast, but it's challenging. With Bunraku, it's people are spending 10 years operating one part of a puppet and she's having to learn how to use this puppet much faster.

TBB: It sounds like a lot of the puppets that you have built were for you to operate. Were there any interesting learning curves either for Annie or for you?

EN: It's so funny. Cause when I, even with the mock up puppet, when we were first working on it, she picked it up in a certain way and it was like, "Wait a second, this was built for a left handed person. You're a right handed person. You gotta switch your hands."

It's theoretically a symmetrical puppet, but for some reason, the way I built it, it just works better in a lefty orientation. It's definitely been eye opening. I'm so used to making stuff either for my own shows, which

are often direct operated. Usually I do tiny bald guys who smoke cigarettes and then a giant hand comes and crushes their face or something like that. With the Children's Museum, it's more in that foam carved-style and like, often the needs of the puppetry are a lot less sophisticated and sensitive than a show like this.

I've been really grateful in this process. To have been like, given the amount of time that Alex and the team has been giving me to actually like work on the puppetry often it's like, drop off or like show up, show 'em, and then I leave.

TBB: I know that you are also doing props for this production, which includes five foot long zucchinis and plenty of plants.Are there any projects that you're particularly excited about for this production?

EN: My next thing I'm going to work on for props is the stuffed rabbits! I'm making some rabbit carcasses. This is a stuffed animal, I've got it. And that's the kind of nasty thing I'm into, so. I'm excited to get into that tonight. Otherwise it's pretty simple.

A cool element of the design is there are these isolated parts of the set that represent a kitchen, or the father's room, but also the whole set is this garden at the same time. So we have a lot of moments where there's overlap. Where in this garden world, there are pots and pans.

One fun thing is we have a TV that's just coming out of a wooden crate. We're going to install some lights in that's going to, like, transform into a TV. I love stuff like that. Otherwise it's been pretty, pretty straightforward, especially coming from a children's theater where it's like "Build three five foot tall flowers and, you know, a mouse machine- a taco boat!

TBB: Is there anything else you'd like our audiences to know?

EN: Make a puppet. Try it. Puppetry is cool. I'm so excited that Portland Stage is taking the leap and trusting me and trusting puppetry to be a big part of this story.

I would always love to see more puppets.

TBB: More puppets.

EN: Yeah, more puppets.

Portland Stage’S Manning 12 Manning
PuPPet and ProPs designer elliot nye demonstrating a PrototyPe of jasmine tHe Hawk.

New Play Development

New work is nothing new at Portland Stage, where Manning by Benjamin Benne will be our 54th World Premiere in fifty seasons. It takes a village to bring a new play together, from initial readers and workshop participants who provide feedback, to designers, directors, and actors who receive script changes on the fly. We wanted to take a peek behind the curtain to delve into what the process of doing new work at Portland Stage looks like.

The Clauder Competition, started by Jeb Brooks, was designed to give support and feedback to New England writers. Each submitted script must be read by two different readers, and each playwright receives individualized feedback, a rarity in the theater industry. At its inception, the Clauder was an itinerant award that was judged by a jury based out of Boston. Brooks and the Clauder Competition would then ask different New England theaters to host a reading or production of one of the prize-winning plays. Portland Stage was approached in 1998 to host a production and the show went so well that we were asked to become the home of the competition. Artistic Director Anita Stewart was interested in making a greater commitment to new work, and figured the triannual competition would do just that.

When asked about the history of the competition, Stewart said, "Managing the competition really built up our experience with managing new work. It's not the same as just putting up a play with a finished script. By reading, workshopping, and producing works in progress we were able to see how plays grow and change over the course of their life. Committing to the Clauder Competition allowed us to learn how to inspire, nurture, and launch new work, and prepared us to craft shows like Almost, Maine and Saint Dad outside of the competition."

Benjamin Benne's Manning was selected from 171 submissions for the 2022 Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights. Each play had identifying information from the playwright removed so we could evaluate the texts without biases. Finalists were read aloud with a small group of actors and artists to determine how the plays worked off the page. After lengthy conversations in the Literary Department, Benne's Manning and Mallory Jane Weiss' The Page Turners were

named as the 2022 Clauder winners, both of which were featured in the 2023 Little Festival of the Unexpected, Portland Stage’s new works development program.

Both playwrights came to Portland and were assigned directors, actors, and dramaturgs to help investigate the script and bring it to life. We rehearsed each show for a week making revisions, cuts, and additions, and then presented the plays before live audiences. After each performance we had discussions with the playwright and audience about what worked for them, and what didn't. While playwrights don't necessarily take every bit of feedback, understanding what an audience is hearing with a piece and how they perceive it is crucial to the workshop process.

After that workshop, we usually debrief with the playwright, especially if it's a play we plan on producing in the future so we can figure out where the play seems to be going next, what additional support a playwright might need, and what we might want to keep an eye on in a subsequent reading or production. With Manning, we knew Benne would have another workshop at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego before the production you're seeing here at Portland Stage, so we anticipated there would be some changes.

Now that we're heading into production we have a whole host of other questions: What does this hawk puppet look like? How will the zucchini deteriorate? What does it mean for swaths of this play to be exclusively in Spanish for a primarily English-speaking audience? We'll answer all of these questions and more, with the hopes of launching this play to a bright future in the American Theater. We're excited to take this play from the page to the stage, and we can't wait to hear what you think about Manning.

The World of Manning 13 PlayNotes
dustin tuCker (aea) and aBigail killeen (aea) in a worksHoP PerformanCe of joHn Cariani's Cul de SaC

Food as Past, Food as Future

In Benjamin Benne’s Manning, grieving husband and father Julio holds the memory of his late wife Ana in his gut. Unable to eat or leave his room, his emotional presence in the opening of the play is a vacancy, an empty stomach that aches and growls. Sons Freddy and Sebastian try to satiate this hunger by convincing him to cook stuffed squash “the way mom liked it,” but the beloved recipe only makes the pain harder to swallow. When Ana is seemingly reincarnated as a giant zucchini, the heat of the kitchen clashes with the chill of mourning, throwing Julio into diabetic shock and nearly ending his life.

Benne’s use of food as a physical manifestation of loss may resonate with audiences who also saw Portland Stage’s recent production of Clyde’s, the newest play by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Lynn Nottage. In both works, culinary labor intertwines with spiritual longing to excavate the hidden interiors of their hungry characters.

Nottage’s Clyde’s follows a group of formerly incarcerated employees at a truck stop sandwich shop in Reading, PA. Led by the sage-like wisdom of culinary aficionado Montrellous, the play’s characters fight against personal struggles, the restrictions of the prison-industrial complex, and their sadistic boss Clyde in hopes of creating the perfect sandwich.

Unlike the memorial recipes of Manning, the sandwiches created in the truck stop’s kitchen are a gesture towards a future ideal, a world in which the chefs are not weighed down by their past mistakes. The use of food in Clyde’s also reflects the material conditions of Montrellous, Rafael, Letitia, and Jason. Often working with rotten meat and vegetables, the sandwich chefs must piece together ingredients to create something that is larger than the sum of its parts. Like the oppressive American carceral system and the unstable economics of Reading in which they exist, the sandwich chefs must take their inadequate surroundings and construct beauty out of them. In their pursuit of what Montrellous describes as “the perfect harmony of ingredients,” the formerly incarcerated workers dream of a future where culinary success liberates them from confines of prison and societal ostracization.

While Nottage’s exploration of the culinary field investigates the future of hopeful chefs, Manning aims to highlight the ancestral roots in the meals its characters consume. Beyond Julio’s stuffed squash recipe and the appearance of a giant zucchini, the origins of food in Benne’s play hold emotional importance. Through surreal conversations between Freddy and zucchini, we learn about the birth of the family’s garden over years of meticulous work.

“You taught me about planting,” Freddy whispers to the vegetable. “Over the years we got more and more serious: seeds, seedlings, transplants—we watched seeds turn to sprouts to stalks and vines that have grown tomatoes and squash and zucchini and tomatillos and cilantro and potatoes and onions and corn.”

The return to a time when families grew and harvested their own food gestures both to the play’s focus on familial lineage and the emotional past of the parents of Freddy and Sebastian. After their father is checked into a hospital for collapsing of diabetic shock, he's presented with the metaphysical choice of whether to join Ana or stay with his boys. In the alternate timeline he starts in, Julio dies to be with Ana, and the young men have nothing left to do but destroy the garden’s harvest and the memory of their parents. The culinary beauty of Manning lies not in the invention of something new, but in the protection of something ancient.

This beauty shimmers when Julio decides to continue living, awakening in his hospital bed to the shock and relief of his children. Upon reuniting, Freddy and Sebastian give their father a simple gift: a ripe tomato. In learning to let go of his grief, Julio can accept the strength of the past without letting its pain overtake him. The raw ingredient is still a reminder of Ana, but no longer leaves his stomach feeling empty.

Portland Stage’s 50th season has taken a special interest in the power of food and how it represents community, loss, and hope. In Manning, Benjamin Benne’s concentration on the fruits of the earth highlights the power of culinary memory when the struggles of life leave one without an appetite.

The World of Manning 14 Manning

Tomb to Womb

In Manning, brothers Freddy and Sebastian stumble upon the remarkable discovery that their garden is thriving after spreading their mother’s ashes there. This is indeed a miraculous occurrence, as the growth of plants is, in fact, often hindered by the presence of cremation ashes, because of their high pH and salt content. However, this phenomenon in Manning nods to a larger movement of creating growth from death, and embracing the potential of finding new life in decomposition.

Eco-friendly burials, for example, have seen a recent resurgence. The Green Burial Council was founded in 2005 to minimize the environmental impact involved in caring for the dead, largely by cutting down on the practice of embalming and the use of concrete vaults. The Council offers certification standards to cemeteries and funeral homes, encouraging a movement towards conservation cemeteries, in which a land trust preserves the land while still allowing burials. For example, Greenacres Memorial Park in Washington State, where the play is set, preserves land and allows families to plant shrubs, plants, or flowers over a

grave. Many such green burial sites opt for the body to simply be buried in a biodegradable shroud rather than a full casket.

Other popular green burial options include mushroom coffins, as mentioned in Manning, which facilitate decomposition, absorbing toxins released by the body and delivering nutrients to the soil that encourage plant growth. Some companies also offer special biodegradable tree-growing urns, with soil specially formulated to counteract the pH levels and nutrient imbalance created by cremated remains. Eternal Reefs, another green burial company in Sarasota, Florida, creates reef balls, which cast the ashes of the deceased in a concrete habitat placed on the ocean floor to support marine life.

Human composting, also known as natural organic reduction, is also lauded by the green burial movement, but is thus far only legal in California, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. The process of human composting

The World of Manning 15 PlayNotes
a memorial sCulPture in tiBet, symBolizing tHe loCation of water Burial

involves placing the body in a steel cylinder with straw, wood chips, and bacteria designed to break down organic matter. After about a month, the body will decompose into something similar to soil, and can be returned to the family or used to revitalize local conservation areas. Those who oppose human composting often cite health concerns, such as the possibility of spreading diseases and contaminants, or impacting soil quality. However, the process is carefully controlled to mitigate risk, and thus a number of additional states are moving to legalize human composting currently. a maP of states tHat HaVe legalized Human ComPosting.

about dispossession of land and of legacy. This revision is its own type of appropriation. We must acknowledge the revision and privilege of calling what is essentially an unmarked grave ‘natural burial’ because we know our legacy is intact.”

Of course, the process of returning a body to decompose in the earth is nothing new. While funeral homes discuss returning to these more natural forms of deathcare, many cultures never stopped. Much of what is currently considered part of the green burial movement is actually deeply rooted in Indigenous rituals around the world. Sky burials in Tibet and Mongolia, for example, involve placing the body of the deceased on a mountaintop to be consumed by scavenging birds. Water burials, practiced in some Buddhist, Hawaiian, and Japanese cultures, involve placing a body in the ocean or a river, sometimes attached to a weight so that it may more easily sink to the sandy floor.

As pointed out by Sarah Wambold of the Campo de Estrellas Conservation Cemetery in Smithville, Texas, the modern reclaiming of “green burials” represents a certain degree of privilege. There is a danger in embracing the environmentalism of green burials movement while neglecting to acknowledge the centuries worth of Black and indigenous unidentified and unmarked graves in the United States. Wambold noted, “Those of us who work in this type of deathcare must do more to consider the ways in which natural burial repackages what for some groups has been

While green burial efforts and other sustainable initiatives are essential for combating climate change, the movement around environmentally-conscious death care must remain cognizant of its greater context. The promise of new growth from death transcends the environmental framework to include also the healing and growth made possible when reparations are pursued for the ancestral remains present on the land we now inhabit.

Indeed, on an interpersonal level, Manning makes clear the connection between literal, physical growth from death, and the spiritual, emotional development that is possible. As Ana’s spirit finds its way into the soil, air and roots, her outward manifestations in the form of plant life capture the attention of Freddy, Sebastian, and Julio, forcing them out of their isolated experiences of grief and into a shared language, allowing them to grow in their understandings of themselves and their relationships with each other.

The World of Manning 16 Manning
sky Burial ground of a monastary outside of yusHu

Glossary

Blue angelfish: a species of ray-finned fish occurring in the western Atlantic Ocean, also kept as pets

Butterfly bandaid: narrow adhesive bandage used to close small, shallow cuts

Dispatch: to deal with quickly and efficiently, to kill

Insulin: a hormone produced in the pancreas that regulates the levels of glucose in the body. A lack of insulin can cause diabetes, thus either animal-derived or synthetic forms of insulin can be used to treat diabetes

Kidney stones: hard deposits of mineral and salts that occur inside the kidneys

Stockholm syndrome: a proposed theory attempting to explain why hostages supposedly develop a bond with their captors

TCC: Tacoma Community College in Tacoma, Washington. Undergraduate enrollment of approximately 5,000

Tomatillos: also known as Mexican husk tomatoes. Small spherical fruit which serves as a key ingredient in salsa verde

UW: University of Washington, located in Seattle. Undergraduate enrollment of approximately 31,300 students

The World of Manning 17 PlayNotes
a kidney stone. a tomatillo. a Blue angelfisH. tHe entranCe of taComa Community College.

Fantastical, Not Magical

Something strange is going on in Tacoma, Washington. Freddy and Sebastian’s father Julio won’t leave his room, and the young men have just discovered a fivefoot zucchini in the garden where they buried their mother’s ashes. And it's starting to talk.

Benjamin Benne’s surrealist approach to gardening, falconry, and grief in Manning blends the real and fantastic into a stirring narrative that untethers the audience from reality. Exploring the turmoil of the play’s three men, the playwright excavates the emotional through the physical, using the fruits and animals of the earth as spiritual stand-ins for those that have left.

This experimentation with the material world could be described as magical realism, a term coined in 1798 by German philosopher and poet Novalis, which re-emerged in literary criticism of the 1950s and ’60s to describe a writing movement in Latin America led by authors such as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. Writers of the movement utilized mythology and fantastical elements in juxtaposition with a detailed portrait of reality. Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, which follows seven generations of a family in the fictional town of Macondo, became a triumph of the Latin American

literary boom and solidified magical realism’s relationship with Latine writing.

In his 1998 op-ed “Sirenas en el Amazonas,” journalist Mario Vargas Lloas argues that this literary tradition emerged from the pre-colonial cultures of the region, and that violent encounters with imperialist forces in the 16th and 17th centuries necessitated the blending of the real and unreal. In Lloas’ words, the chronicles of both colonizing and native populations reveal that “the border between objective reality, made of brief occurrences, and subjective reality, forged with ideas, beliefs, and myths, did not exist.” Through this lens, we can understand the use of the fantastic, or “lo fantástico,” as a mechanism to grapple with the violence and brutality of colonization, a tradition buried by the weight of imperialism and reemerging in the political upheaval of the 20th century. This also provides Latin America’s literary tradition an origin story of its own, rather than an Anglocentric model popularized in the ’60s that described the Latin American literary boom as a reaction to the European avant garde.

While many Latine novelists, essayists, and playwrights continue the tradition of exploring the fantastic within their work, they have also pushed back on the catchall term of magical realism. In his Los Angeles Review of

Digging Deeper 18 Manning
aCtors sHawn denegre-VaugHt (aea), martin ortiz (aea), daVe anzuelo (aea), and annie Henk (aea) at tHe first read of Manning

Books essay “What We Talk About When We Talk About Magical Realism,” writer Fernando Sdrigotti argues against the popularity of the label, highlighting the term’s oversimplification or exoticization of the wide range of regions, cultural traditions, and artists of Latin America. Magical realism, Sdrigotti argues, “is a practical marketing ploy, a reduction by means not of absurdity but of obfuscation—a crude simplification through fuzziness.” By tossing all Latine writing in the magical realism bin, the social, political, and material importance of these works can be written-off as the whimsical musings of a far-off land. Sdrigotti proposes “that there is more to be gained from considering Latin American literature as driven by ‘lo fantástico,’ without resorting to vague distinctions in how that fantastical element works.” Instead of trying to dissect the logic of magical world-building, readers gain more from understanding the need for the fantastic element. What is buried beneath the surface, and why can’t the writer unearth it literally?

For Benne’s Manning, the politics and weight of grief demand the exploration of subjective reality. In the face of patriarchal violence that has silenced Julio, Freddy, and Sebastian, the loss of their wife and mother Ana cannot be experienced objectively. When men have not been taught how to healthily communicate, new pathways of dialogue are paramount. The appearance of a giant zucchini is not a stylistic flourish, but a literary and theatrical

device interrogating generations of emotional underdevelopment within the modern day’s framework of masculinity.

Even in its more ambiguous moments, Manning’s surrealism works best when audiences fight the instinct to categorize the play’s structure under Eurocentric terms. After their father’s death, Freddy and Sebastian unleash their bottled rage, destroying their family’s garden and killing Sebastian’s hawk. However, when Ana convinces Julio to continue living, the audience is transported back to the hospital room, both plant and animal unharmed. This use of “quantum time” is part science fiction, part fantasy, and part dream sequence, but more importantly it reflects a decision to heal. The choice to push against generations of repressive upbringing is not an easily articulated or demonstrable one. In unflinchingly toying with conventions of time and space, Benne utilizes the fantastic to deal with the true weight of masculine emotion under patriarchy without simplifying his techniques or the emotional stakes of Julio, Freddy, and Sebastian.

Manning’s exploration of masculinity through the fantastic draws on a tradition of Latine writing, but audiences can gather from it far more than aesthetic homages. Within the birds and plants of Benne’s myth-making lies the beating heart of an important conversation about how men grow, love, and communicate.

Digging Deeper 19 PlayNotes
jorge luis Borges. gaBriel garCía mÁrquez

Masculine Grief and Violence

The following article includes spoilers for the conclusion of Manning. Read at your own risk, or after seeing the play.

Benjamin Benne, the playwright of Portland Stage’s final production of its 50th season, describes Manning as “a meditation on male grief, nature, and nurture.” After the death of their mother Ana, sons Sebastian and Freddy must take care of themselves and their grieving father, Julio, whose isolation hides a worrying inner turmoil. When self-induced diabetic shock ends their father’s life, the young men’s emotional resilience shatters. In a fit of rage, Sebastian and Freddy destroy their parents’ garden and kill Sebastian’s cherished hawk.

Through these acts of ruination, Benne does not focus on Ana’s death as the impetus for violence, but instead on how the pressure of the men’s silence forces them to combust. In the absence of Ana, Julio and his sons are unable to talk about their pain, which builds and builds until the only possible outlet is the family’s selfdestruction and the destruction of the living creatures around them. Trapped by the limits of acceptable masculine emotionality, the men tear the world apart to find expression for their complete and utter loss.

This conflict of emotional volatility and gendered societal expectations reverberates throughout Manning, as well as modern America. In her dissertation “Take it Like a Man: A Study of Men’s Emotional Culture,” Dr. Maria Tempenis Shelley discusses how a majority of research on gender and emotion highlights that “(1) most sex differences occur in the domain of emotion expression or as stereotypes about women’s and men’s emotions, and (2) sex similarities tend to appear most often in actual emotion experiences and role performance.” Patriarchal structures dictate emotional development along a strict binary: women must be emotionally expressive, while men must be emotionally repressive or face ridicule and social ostracization. Shelley notes that multiple studies have found that children, regardless of gender, begin life on the same emotional “playing field,” but are eventually separated by their environment, parenting practices, and engagement with social norms.

This nurturing of young men to accept “hegemonic masculinity,” which emphasizes heterosexuality, aggression, and competitiveness, is at the heart of Manning’s conflict. Unable to deal with Julio’s depression directly, Freddy and Sebastian try to ease his pain through multiple attempts at cooking, which only worsen their father’s condition. Traditional masculinity’s stoicism and solitude leave them without the emotional intelligence or community to express vulnerability without utter destruction.

But Benne’s writing is not just a critique of masculinity; it is also a theatrical exploration of its potential future. The playwright has frequently cited the writings of late feminist scholar bell hooks, whose writings often concerned gendered divides on love and violence, as foundational to Manning. Two of hooks’ books, All About Love and The Will to Change are especially insightful to the struggles and futures of Julio, Freddy, and Sebastian.

In All About Love, hooks’ investigation into our societal understanding of platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships, she argues that patriarchal systems have created a society that centers itself on the “worship of death.” In a community that centers aggression and anger, death is seen as the true achievement of life. In hooks’ perspective, our

Digging Deeper 20 Manning
feminist sCHolar Bell Hooks giVing a sPeeCH.

obsession with dying “consumes energy that could be given to the art of loving.”

By not focusing on life, we see death in everyone around us. The recipes that were once adored by loved ones now only fill the stomach with dread. The garden that one’s parents nurtured for years becomes a graveyard to desecrate. A cherished pet and companion becomes meat for the slaughter. When patriarchy does not let us celebrate life, the celebration of death becomes viscerally destructive.

The Will to Change, hooks’ manifesto on raising, loving, and living with men, offers even further insight into the conflicting hidden lives of Manning. After the passing of Julio, the two young men we’ve seen paint each other's nails and bicker about falconry transform. Their change in personality seems out-of-step with the shy, kind men we’ve spent the last hour with. But this violence has been taught to them since they were born. “No man who does not actively choose to work to change and challenge patriarchy escapes its impact,” hooks says. “The most passive, kind, quiet man can come to violence if the seeds of patriarchal thinking have been embedded in his psyche.” The emotions stifled by a patriarchal society rupture. “Boys feel the pain. And they have no place to lay it down; they carry it within. They take it to the place where it is converted into rage.” In Benne’s drama, this rage pushes the brothers to destroy their parents’ garden and kill

Sebastian’s falcon after it lashes out at its owner. But both Manning and The Will to Change refuse to conclude on this destruction. hooks concludes her book with several chapters on the process of healing the male population and deconstructing the sexist ideology that captures them. “To heal, men must learn to feel again,” she says. “They must learn to break the silence, to speak the pain.”

Sometimes, they must speak the pain to the women in their lives, as Julio does to the spirit of Ana. Or they must experience emotions together, as the trio does upon Julio’s reawakening. hooks argues that “to grow psychologically and spiritually, men need to mourn.” Benne shines a light on the power of mourning, of sharing deep feelings without shame, to start the healing process despite patriarchal teachings. There is a comfort in the shared sadness that Freddy, Sebastian, and their father finally experience.

Manning’s use of silence and violence not only dramatizes the pain of loss, but also investigates the sexist structures the play and its audiences exist within. Masculinity acts as a claustrophobic trap to Benne’s characters, but the playwright refuses to watch them suffer forever. By finding connection in both love and sorrow, the men begin to break the cycles of patriarchal violence that threaten to isolate them time and time again.

Digging Deeper 21 PlayNotes
aCtors sHawn denegre-VaugHt (aea) and martin ortiz (aea) at tHe first read of Manning

Manning in Translation

The following article includes spoilers for Manning. Read at your own risk, or after seeing the play.

In Manning there are a few sequences with extended Spanish dialogue. While we think context and action can help audiences understand even if they aren't Spanish speakers, we wanted to provide these translations as a resource for anyone who was curious after the show.

Text in the Script:

JULIO bueno entonces

preheat oven to 350 cut delicata in half take out seeds brush con aceite sal y pimienta roast for 20 minutes

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (see? got him out)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (for now)

JULIO for the sauce: mantequilla brown sugar thyme

cook til sugar dissolves brush [squash con aceite] roast for 10 more minutes

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (he doesn’t look so good)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (that’s why we gotta get him to eat)

JULIO second sauce: cream garlic thyme for the filling: mantequilla shallot bay leaf thyme agua

Translation:

JULIO good so preheat oven to 350 cut delicata in half take out seeds brush with oil salt and pepper roast for 20 minutes

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (see? got him out)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (for now)

JULIO for the sauce: butter brown sugar thyme cook til sugar dissolves brush [squash with oil] roast for 10 more minutes

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (he doesn’t look so good)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (that’s why we gotta get him to eat)

JULIO second sauce: cream garlic thyme for the filling: butter shallot bay leaf thyme water

Digging Deeper 22 Manning

sal y pimienta / quinoa: 15 minutes then mushrooms stir stir stir til brown then mix

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (what about his medicine?)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (just give it to him)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (what if he doesn’t let me?)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (why wouldn’t he let you?)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (I don’t know)—

JULIO

EY

!

FOCUS

SEBASTIAN & FREDDY sorry, chef

JULIO mix mushrooms and quinoa

SEBASTIAN & FREDDY oui, chef

JULIO ahora parsley sal y pimienta stuff into squash sauce on top y ¡provecho!

Text in the Script:

ANA’S VOICE mis raíces mis raíces conocen el camino creciendo creciendo siempre alcanzando hasta la comida hasta el agua

SEBASTIAN (to ANA) after I caught Jasmine I kept her in my bedroom we were tethered to each other literally with this strap made of kangaroo leather until she got used to me I’d heard that those first few days were about overcoming animalistic instinct about one beast finally dominating the other...

salt and pepper / quinoa: 15 minutes then mushrooms stir stir stir til brown then mix

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (what about his medicine?)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (just give it to him)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (what if he doesn’t let me?)

SEBASTIAN (to FREDDY) (why wouldn’t he let you?)

FREDDY (to SEBASTIAN) (I don’t know)—

JULIO

EY

FOCUS

SEBASTIAN & FREDDY sorry, chef

JULIO

mix mushrooms and quinoa

SEBASTIAN & FREDDY oui, chef JULIO now parsley salt and pepper stuff into squash sauce on top and profit!

Translation:

ANA’S VOICE my roots my roots know the way growing growing always reaching to the food to the water

SEBASTIAN (to ANA) after I caught Jasmine I kept her in my bedroom we were tethered to each other literally with this strap made of kangaroo leather until she got used to me

I’d heard that those first few days were about overcoming animalistic instinct about one beast finally dominating the other...

Digging Deeper 23 PlayNotes
!

ANA’S VOICE

mis tallos conocen el camino creciendo creciendo siempre alcanzando hasta la comida hasta el agua

SEBASTIAN

but actually it wasn’t until day two when I whispered softly gently soothing her and offered her that little morsel of food that Jasmine finally ate it from my hand

ANA’S VOICE

mis hojas conocen el camino creciendo creciendo siempre alcanzando hasta la comida hasta la luz

SEBASTIAN then on day 3 she stepped from her perch onto my hand

ANA’S VOICE (cont’d) mis flores

SEBASTIAN then on day 4 she jumped to my hand

ANA’S VOICE mis flores conocen el camino

SEBASTIAN day 6 she flew 30 feet to my hand

ANA’S VOICE creciendo creciendo

SEBASTIAN then 100 feet

ANA’S VOICE siempre alcanzando hasta la comida hasta la luz

ANA’S VOICE my stems know the way growing growing always reaching to the food to the water

SEBASTIAN

but actually it wasn’t until day two when I whispered softly gently soothing her and offered her that little morsel of food that Jasmine finally ate it from my hand

ANA’S VOICE my leaves know the way growing growing always reaching to the food to the light

SEBASTIAN then on day 3 she stepped from her perch onto my hand

ANA’S VOICE (cont’d) my flowers

SEBASTIAN then on day 4 she jumped to my hand

ANA’S VOICE my flowers know the way

SEBASTIAN day 6 she flew 30 feet to my hand

ANA’S VOICE growing growing

SEBASTIAN then 100 feet

ANA’S VOICE always reaching to the food to the light

Digging Deeper 24 Manning

SEBASTIAN and by day 30 she did a 200 foot free flight right here to my hand and from then on tether or no tether we were inseparable...

ANA’S VOICE los frutos conocen el camino

SEBASTIAN then on the day that you...[passed] I took Jasmine out to fly and when I felt her eyes looking down on me [from above]

this sounds crazy but I also felt your eyes looking down on me ...and I thought maybe if you watched us long enough you’d see how special this relationship is that we’re a team [the best team] but...uh

SEBASTIAN takes the bell off THE HAWK’s ankle and gives her a final look then he releases her

SEBASTIAN (to THE HAWK) up!

SEBASTIAN watches THE HAWK fly off as he removes his falconer glove

SEBASTIAN (bye)

ANA’S VOICE creciendo creciendo creciendo

SEBASTIAN and by day 30 she did a 200 foot free flight right here to my hand and from then on tether or no tether we were inseparable...

ANA’S VOICE the fruits know the way

SEBASTIAN then on the day that you...[passed] I took Jasmine out to fly and when I felt her eyes looking down on me [from above]

this sounds crazy but I also felt your eyes looking down on me ...and I thought maybe if you watched us long enough you’d see how special this relationship is that we’re a team [the best team] but...uh

(SEBASTIAN takes the bell off THE HAWK’s ankle and gives her a final look then he releases her)

SEBASTIAN (to THE HAWK) up!

(SEBASTIAN watches THE HAWK fly off as he removes his falconer glove)

SEBASTIAN (bye)

ANA’S VOICE growing growing growing

Digging Deeper 25 PlayNotes

Recommended Resources by

Watch:

Game Hawker by Brett Marty and Josh Izenberg

Dying Green by Ellen Tripler

Becoming bell hooks by Sarah Moyer and Elon Justice

Kiss the Ground by Josh Tickell, Rebecca Harrell Tickell

Read:

All About Love by bell hooks

The Will to Change by bell hooks and thou shalt be healed by Benjamin Benne

In His Hands by Benjamin Benne

What a Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz

H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Get Involved:

Portland Farmer's Market (https://www.portlandmainefarmersmarket.org/)

Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener's Association (https://www.mofga.org/)

Digging Deeper 26 Manning
PlaywrigHt Benjamin Benne and direCtor alex keegan at tHe first readtHrougH of Manning.

Portland Stage Company Education Programs

Student Matinee Series

The Portland Stage Student Matinee Program provides students with discounted tickets for student matinees. Following the performance, students participate in a conversation with the cast and crew, which helps them gain awareness of the creative process and encourages them to think critically about the themes and messages of the play.

Play Me a Story

Experience the fun and magic of theater on Saturday mornings with Play Me a Story! Ages 4 – 10 enjoy a performance of children’s stories followed by an interactive acting workshop with Portland Stage’s Education Artists for $15. Sign up for the month and save or pick individual days that work for you. Build literacy, encourage creativity and spark dramatic dreams!

Shakespeare Teen Company

In April and May of 2024, students will come together as an ensemble to create a fully-staged production of Shakespeare‘s Hamlet in Portland Stage’s studio theater. Participants in grades 7-12 take on a variety of roles including acting, costume design, marketing, and more!

Vacation and Summer Camps

Dive into theater for five exciting days while on your school breaks! Our theater camps immerse participants in all aspects of theater, culminating in an open studio performance for friends and family at the end of the week! Camps are taught by professional actors, directors, and artisans. Students are invited to think imaginatively, critically, and creatively in an environment of inclusivity and safe play.

PLAY Program

An interactive dramatic reading and acting workshop tour for elementary school students in grades pre-k through 5. Professional education artists perform children’s literature and poetry and then involve students directly in classroom workshops based on the stories. Artists actively engage students in in small group workshop using their bodies, voices, and imaginations to build understanding of the text while bringing the stories and characters to life. PLAY helps develop literacy and reading fluency, character recall, understanding of themes, social emotional skills, physical storytelling, and vocal characterization. The program also comes with a comprehensive Resource Guide filled with information and activities based on the books and poems.

Directors Lab

Professional actors perform a 50-minute adaptation of a Shakespeare play, followed by a talkback. In 2024 we will be touring Much Ado About Nothing to middle and high schools. After the performance, students engage directly with the text in an interactive workshop with the actors and creative team. In these workshops, students practice effective communication, creative collaboration, rhetoric, and critical analysis. The program also comes with a comprehensive Resource Guide filled with information and resources about the play we are focusing on. Directors Lab puts Shakespeare’s language into the hands and mouths of the students, empowering them to be the artists, directors, and ensemble with the power to interpret the text and produce meaning.

Extras 27 PlayNotes

Anita Stewart Artistic Director

Martin Lodish Managing Director

Artistic & Production Staff

Todd Brian Backus Literary Manager

Jacob Coombs Associate Technical Director

Ted Gallant Technical Director

Myles C. Hatch Stage Manager Meg Lydon Stage Manager

Mary Lana Rice Production Manager & Lighting Supervisor

Seth Asa Sengel Asst. Production Manager & Sound Supervisor

Emily St. John Props Master

Susan Thomas Costume Shop Manager

Administrative Staff

Paul Ainsworth Business Manager

Isabel Bates Education Assistant

Beka Bryer Front of House Associate

Covey Crolius Development Director

Chris DeFilipp House Manager

Erin Elizabeth Marketing Director

Allison Fry Executive Assistant

James A. Hadley Assistant Marketing Director

Lindsey Higgins Development Associate

Jennifer London Company Manager

Renee Myhaver Assistant Box Office Manager

Donald Smith Audience Services Manager

Julianne Shea Education Administrator

Madeleine St. Germain Front of House Associate

Michael Dix Thomas Education Director

Adam Thibodeau House Manager

Apprentice Company

Katie Barnes Stage Management Apprentice

Ellis Collier Education Apprentice

Lucie Green Company Management Apprentice

Julia Jennings Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Ellery Kenyon Education Apprentice

Isee Martine Scenic Design Apprentice

Claire Lowe Electrics Apprentice

Alex Oleksy Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Elizabeth Sarsfield Stage Management Apprentice

Jessi Stier Directing & Dramaturgy Apprentice

Crow Traphagen Costumes Apprentice

Elena Truman Costumes Apprentice

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