Spotlight Magazine, Spring 2015

SPRING 2015

SPOTLIGHT GREAT THEATRE — PRODUCED BY YOU

KICK OFF 2015 WITH VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE!

JIM COX

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE THE SECOND GIRL THE COLORED MUSEUM COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO 2015 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR EDUCATION HUNTINGTON NEWS & PERFORMANCE CALENDARS

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Marcia DeBonis, Martin Moran, Candy Buckley, and Tyler Lansing Weaks

Huntington Theatre Company Overseers, Michael Maso, Peter DuBois, and former Mayor Thomas M. Menino at the ribbon cutting ceremony

CELEBRATING THE CALDERWOOD PAVILION’S 10TH ANNIVERSARY TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY GUESTS INCLUDING FORMER BOSTON MAYOR THOMAS M. MENINO, IN ONE OF HIS LAST PUBLIC APPEARANCES, JOINED HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY CHAIRMAN CAROL G. DEANE, PRESIDENT MITCHELL J. ROBERTS, MANAGING DIRECTOR MICHAEL MASO, AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS, AS WELL AS BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS CHAIRMAN PHILIP W. LOVEJOY AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR VERONIQUE LE MELLE ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 FOR A RIBBON-CUTTING, REDEDICATION, AND CELEBRATION IN HONOR OF THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE STANFORD CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS.

Former Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Harry Collings, and Managing Director Michael Maso

The Calderwood Pavilion is the Huntington’s home for new play development and provides a much-needed resource for the local theatre community by offering a world-class facility and services at rates subsidized by the Huntington to dozens of Boston’s small and mid-sized theatre companies.

Following a public ribbon-cutting, guests assembled in the Virginia Wimberly Theatre for a rededication program featuring remarks from a number of the building’s benefactors, beneficiaries, and affiliated artists, and entertainment by The Skivvies and artists from SpeakEasy Stage Company.

Playwright Lydia R. Diamond spoke about the Huntington’s commitment to developing and producing new work and to being both of and for its community, “The Huntington does it better than anybody else,” she said. “I can’t tell you how unusual it is for a theatre company to produce a local artist. Most don’t grow artists from the ground up. I’m appreciative to the Huntington for not just talking the talk. They put their money where their mouth is. The Huntington knows that theatre is made for everyone, and it’s better when everyone sees it.”

Playwright Lydia R. Diamond

“Boston has artists and an audience that other cities would die for. What we have here is a building that is an integral part of its neighborhood, its cultural community, and its city — a building that has served over one million people in its first decade alone,” said Huntington Managing Director Michael Maso. “We have succeeded because of the dedication and generosity and collaboration of everyone in this theatre tonight.”

Company One Artistic Director Shawn LaCount

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Named #3 on Boston.com’s “Biggest Arts Stories of the Decade” (December 2009), the opening of the Calderwood Pavilion marked the first new theatre to be built in Boston in more than 75 years, and helped to revitalize the city’s South End neighborhood and make it a “new cultural hub” for the arts. In its recent report, The ArtsFactor, ArtsBoston commended the Calderwood Pavilion for being a model of collaboration, acknowledging, “The Calderwood Pavilion has hosted thousands of performances and events by more than 90 different organizations. In addition to having a positive impact on the Boston arts scene, the Calderwood has helped catalyze the development of the South End into one of Boston’s most desirable and dynamic neighborhoods.”

DON’T MISS THE REST OF OUR 2014-2015 SEASON! Artistic Director Peter DuBois

SMASH-HIT BROADWAY COMEDY

Ashley Herbert, 2014 August Wilson Monologue Competition National Champion

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE JAN. 2 - FEB. 1

IN THE CALDERWOOD PAVILION’S FIRST 10 YEARS: 750,000

MOVING IRISH DRAMA

THE SECOND GIRL JAN. 16 - FEB. 21

audience members

350,000

Ribbon cutting scissors

for Huntington shows

400,000 attending other companies’ shows

SCATHING COMEDY

THE COLORED MUSEUM MAR. 6 - APR. 5

4,168 performances

316

Nick Cearley and Lauren Molina of The Skivies perform

productions

153

TIMELY NEW DRAMA

different performing arts organizations

24 Huntington world and regional premieres

Weddings, fundraisers, community groups, business meetings, arts camps … and Baby Wiggles!

Codman Academy Charter Public School Principal Thabidi Brown and Executive Director Meg Campbell

Calderwood Pavilion’s 10th Anniversary Sponsors:

PHOTOS: PAUL MAROTTA

170,000 additional customers ticketed for Plaza Theatres

AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO MAY 22 - JUNE 21 PLUS A SPECIAL EVENT

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA MAR. 27 - APR. 26 HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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SM ASH -HI TB RO AD WA YC OM EDY

“Deliriously funny!”

In this wickedly wonderful Chekhovian mashup from master of comedy Christopher Durang (Betty’s Summer Vacation), Vanya and Sonia’s quiet, bucolic life is hilariously upended when their glamorous movie star sister arrives for the weekend with her brawny boy toy in tow. A Tony Award-winning Broadway sensation, this rollicking and touching new comedy pays loving homage to Chekhov’s classic themes of loss and longing.

WINNER OF THE 2013 TONY AWARD FOR BEST PLAY “Hugely entertaining!”

– USA TODAY

“I’ll never forget the experience of sitting among an audience overcome with the explosive laughter elicited by this hysterical riff on the work of one of the world’s great playwrights. The brilliant Christopher Durang has written a clever and creative play, and I know our smart, savvy audience will find much to recognize and relish. I look forward to welcoming Christopher back to the Huntington.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS Christopher Durang

MY LIFE WITH CHEKHOV

BY CHRISTOPHER DURANG

THE NEW YORKER CALLED CHRISTOPHER DURANG “ONE OF THE FUNNIEST DRAMATISTS ALIVE.” IN THIS ARTICLE CHRISTOPHER DURANG WRITES ABOUT HIS ENCOUNTERS WITH ANTON CHEKHOV’S WORK, BEGINNING WITH HIS FIRST ATTEMPT TO READ THE SEAGULL AS A YOUNG BOY.

I read plays from a very young age. Probably because my mother did.

She read to me from Winnie-the-Pooh when I was little — not a play, of course, but lots of good dialogue. My two favorite characters were windbag Owl, who bored everyone, and gloomy, worrying Eeyore.

My mother loved James Thurber and Noël Coward and The New Yorker. Thurber had lots of wonderful dialogue, too. And I find the arch sound of Coward’s dialogue very funny. My mother’s and my favorite Coward play was Hay Fever, about the chaotic and grandiose Bliss family and how they ignore and insult their houseguests.

So I was hungry to read the famous plays, the classic plays.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 1 (Chekhov in my childhood) When I was 14, I tried to read my first Chekhov play. I always looked at the cast of characters to figure out who was who.

The Russian names in Chekhov, though, intimidated me. Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina (Madame Treplev by marriage) was the first character listed in The Seagull. Much harder to take in than Judith Bliss in Hay Fever.

Then there was Konstantin Gavrilovitch Treplev (Kostya), who was Irina Nikolayevna Arkadina’s son. But below him on the list was Boris Aleksyeevich Trigorin, who was “a writer.”

And the character names in the text were Arkadina, Treplev, and Trigorin. And the last two names seemed similar to me, as well as unfamiliar. And the characters had very long speeches, and after a while I felt that I wasn’t ready to read Chekhov.

So I went back to reading Blithe Spirit or the musicals I loved, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.

I wrote comic plays of my own, as well as two musical comedies that my Catholic high school put on. My college guidance counselor was a smart and worldly priest, and he suggested I apply to all these famous schools. My grades were good but not spectacular, but he told me that I should stress the playwriting I had done in school. To my utter surprise I got into Harvard.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 2 (The Seagull) Harvard did not have a theatre major, which I knew when I applied.

I thought that, as a would-be playwright, maybe I should be wellrounded. Which I am not. In terms of my education, I ended up only semi-rounded, with large, gaping holes in my knowledge. I really couldn’t be a contestant on Jeopardy!

The English department did offer some theatre classes. And during the first week of my freshman year I auditioned to get into an acting seminar.

The list of who got in was posted, but there was a throng of people standing in front of it. I decided to wait until the crowd thinned

LEARN MORE ONLINE Get to know playwright Christopher Durang, read about why Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is taking the nation by storm, and explore what it’s like to take on the role of happy-go-lucky, often shirtless Spike.

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T. CHARLES ERICKOSN

T. CHARLES ERICKOSN

The cast of the Huntington’s production of The Seagull (2014)

out, and I stood by a striking young woman who was barefoot and wisely avoiding the crowd so as not to have her feet trod upon.

I was bushy-tailed and friendly my freshman year (before I entered the dark Night of my Soul sophomore year), and I asked the barefoot young woman how her audition for the George Hamlin acting seminar had gone. She looked at me and said, in a resonate voice, “Mr. Hamlin said my Saint Joan was the finest he had ever seen.”

Well, that was a bit of a conversation stopper. I later wished I had said, “Ah, that’s what he said to me, too.” But I didn’t. Plus he hadn’t. I think he found my Saint Joan to be mediocre. And she got into the seminar, and I didn’t. But a few years later I got to see her in a student production of Three Sisters, and she was very good. But I am ahead of myself. I still hadn’t figured out how to read Chekhov.

I signed up for an enormous lecture class called “Contemporary American and British Theatre, From the 1950s Through the Present.”

This sounded like bliss to me. And it was taught by a famous professor who was also a playwright — William Alfred, a much beloved teacher and scholar, who in 1965 had had an Off Broadway success with his Irish-family play Hogan’s Goat, which gave the actress Faye Dunaway her first professional success.

The class was in a large lecture room. Professor Alfred walked to the podium. He announced that in order to fully understand modern American and British drama, we needed to know something about the plays that preceded them. And so we were going to read Greek tragedy, a Roman play, a Molière, a Shakespeare, a Chekhov, a Shaw, etc., until we got to the modern-day playwrights. This was rather far from the published syllabus, but it also sounded terrific.

The assigned Chekhov was The Seagull, the play I had tried to read when I was 14.

I did better reading the play this time — and I made my own character list, which was easier to follow.

But it wasn’t until Professor Alfred read the scenes aloud that I had the door to Chekhov opened for me.

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Kate Burton in the Huntington’s production of The Cherry Orchard (2007)

In a rumpled suit, and with a friendly Irish face, Alfred was a brilliant lecturer, full of wisdom, but he was also a wonderful reader of plays.

For some reason, he read aloud not from The Seagull but from Three Sisters, which I had not read yet. He chose the complicated scene where Baron Tuzenbach is talking to Irina, who says that she will marry him even though she’s not in love with him. She no longer believes that she can be happy. The baron accepts this, and they are to marry the next day. But there is an unspoken upset between them, because they both know that he is about to go off and fight a duel. And they are saying nothing about it. And Professor Alfred read this scene with such a sense of fragility and uncertainty of life that I suddenly heard how the characters were meant to chatter and then to express something deeply felt, but then rush back to chatter again, I feel that he showed me the enormous vulnerability and sadness that can lie right beneath commonplace conversation, both in Chekhov and in life.

My senior year, I was lucky to be accepted into a small playwriting seminar that he taught.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 3 (The Seagull and Vanessa Redgrave) I went to the movies a great deal in college. And, in my sophomore year, suddenly there was a movie version of The Seagull, directed by Sidney Lumet. It was meandering, and the talented Simone Signoret wasn’t right for Arkadina.

But, oh my, there was Vanessa Redgrave playing Nina.

I think it’s an impossibly difficult role, but Redgrave’s portrayal was the perfect Nina I had imagined when I read the play for Professor Alfred’s class. Her Nina was charming but so, so intense — her youth was painfully raw, her insecurity palpable, her infatuation with the theatre was almost humorous, and she gushed at everyone a bit too much. She was spectacular.

But the character’s youthful hope dies very quickly. Konstantin falls in love with her, but when she doesn’t respond he suddenly deposits a dead seagull at her feet. This was seemingly his extremely inappropriate way of saying, “Please don’t ignore me. I

JIM COX

Tyler Langston Weaks, Haneefah Wood, Candy Buckley, and Martin Moran in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

love you.” Nina, meanwhile, falls for the writer Trigorin. They fall in love, she has a baby, the baby dies, Trigorin loses interest in Nina.

In Act 4, she comes back secretly to visit Konstantin. In despair and grief, she keeps saying, “I am a seagull.”

It is very hard to play that scene. But Ms. Redgrave knew how to make that mad scene work. It’s an imperfect film, but I watch it for her sometimes.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 4 (Three Sisters) I mentioned my Dark Night of the Soul during my sophomore year.

It might also be called depression. And it lasted into my junior year as well. I lost my Catholic faith (I left it on the ground, like a dead seagull), and I lost my bushy-tailed exuberance and could only react to dark, despairing literature.

A teaching fellow whose small class I was in correctly pointed out to me that I didn’t like the poet Wordsworth because I was angry that he wasn’t Beckett. That was quite an accurate statement he made, and his taking the time to try to unravel my brain helped me a lot in managing to pass his course. Later, in my 30s, I grew to like Wordsworth. But all that rattling on about nature drove me crazy in my youth. I wanted psychological angst and hopelessness. That is, I didn’t want it, but it’s what I was feeling, and I needed it reflected back to me so I felt less alone. The melancholy of Chekhov suited me very well.

In my junior year, I saw Three Sisters. It was being done by the Harvard Dramatic Society.

The production was directed by an undergrad, Leland Moss, who had been inspired by Jerzy Grotowski, a famous experimental Polish theatre director. This inspiration made for some nontraditional staging in the play — when the star-crossed lovers Masha and Vershinin had a scene, other actors would say their dialogue, while Masha and Vershinin would get down on their knees and growl and purr and paw each other. I guess they were leopards in love or something. Maybe they were lions. I don’t think they were raccoons, because they weren’t eating garbage.

Sorry to be flip, and I’m sure the growling-crawling behavior is far from a fair description of what Grotowski meant. And I know that he was significant in the history of experimental theatre. Though, as a comic writer, I find it hard not to look back at the “inner animal” sections and find them kind of funny.

Besides which, what I really liked about the production was all the regular acting in it. Most of the play — two thirds, maybe? — was just young actors embodying their roles with intelligence and passion. And the play was new to me; I had not read it.

Of course, I did know that the recurring lament of the three sisters was their desire to “go to Moscow,” where they grew up and where life seemed stimulating and hopeful.

I already liked Beckett and the existential feel of Waiting for Godot, who never came, and the three sisters seemed a precursor to that.

They longed to go to Moscow, and yet they never went. The ending of Waiting for Godot is this: Vladimir: Well? Shall we go?

Estragon: Yes, let’s go.

They do not move. End of play.

Which is similar to Olga, Masha and Irina. “Oh, my sisters, let’s go to Moscow.” They do not move.

The cast was excellent. That barefoot girl who got into the acting seminar played Masha and was terrific. (Her name was Susan Yakutis.) Nancy Cox was very good as the oldest, already spent sister Olga. And the sisters’ beloved brother Andrei was played by a Harvard senior named André Bishop. Yes, that André Bishop, who is the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater. (I didn’t know him then.) He was poignant and tortured as Chekhov’s Andrei.

A strange thing happened in this production. Laurie Heineman was so good as Irina that she became the protagonist for me.

It is Irina’s “name day” (birthday) in Act 1, and Heineman’s Irina was so convincingly full of excitement and youthful hope for the HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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future that I was riveted. When she was onstage, I watched only her. I clocked her every movement and emotional shift.

In Act 3, time has not been kind to Irina. She has a boring job at the Town Council. She imagined she’d meet the man of her dreams once they moved to Moscow. But they keep not going to Moscow, and instead her only choice is a loveless marriage to Baron Tuzenbach. She is disappointed in her beloved brother Andrei, who has made a disastrous marriage to the bullying Natasha and is gambling and has given up his dreams of being a professor. They have all given up their dreams.

Heineman’s shift from joy to despair was riveting. Starting with a startling “Where has it all gone to?... where is it?,” Irina quickly progresses to how hopeless her life seems, how she feels muddled and is forgetting everything. She says, “I don’t remember the Italian for ‘window’ or ‘ceiling.’ And every day I’m forgetting more and more….”

Because I had never read the play, the weird specificity of forgetting foreign words for “window” and “ceiling” jumped out at me as a beautiful and heartbreaking line. It positively haunted me. It embedded itself in my brain. I guess Three Sisters is actually my favorite Chekhov play.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 5 (Oh, Uncle Vanya) I read Uncle Vanya on my own. And I saw a wonderful production directed by Mike Nichols in 1973 at Circle in the Square, with an exciting cast of George C. Scott, Nicol Williamson, Julie Christie, Elizabeth Wilson, Lillian Gish, and Barnard Hughes. I paid $10 for standing room, and it was thrilling to see.

And if the “Italian for window and ceiling” lines haunted me in Three Sisters, it was Sonia’s devastating lines at the end of the play that transfixed me here. Vanya has had an emotional meltdown and has tried to shoot the professor, missing each time. And now Vanya and his niece Sonia are left alone, both rejected by the people they love, and both with no hope of any kind. Like me on Mondays. (No, just kidding.)

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JIM COX

JIM COX

Martin Moran, Candy Buckley, and Marcia DeBonis in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Tyler Langston Weaks, Marcia DeBonis, and Candy Buckley in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

And Sonia says, “What can we do? We shall go on living. We shall suffer through a long succession of tedious days and tedious nights.”

Reading the play, I stopped right there. “Long succession of tedious days.” I don’t feel that every day, though I did during my middle two years at college. And I don’t know why I find that such a despairing sentiment doesn’t depress me; it moves me. It shows me that other people feel awful at certain times. It’s the opposite of the people who rush in and say “Cheer up!” to you when it’s the wrong time to say that.

Oh, I don’t know. I guess I love the emotional sadness in Chekhov.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 6 (Chekhov meets Dostoyevsky meets Chris and Albert) My senior year at college, my depression lifted. A longer story, but lifted it did. I was accepted into the Yale School of Drama with a play that I had written in two days — a burst of energy after not writing for a couple of years.

I made three important friendships at Yale: fellow playwright Albert Innaurato, actress Sigourney Weaver, and fellow playwright Wendy Wasserstein.

Albert and I were both raised Catholic, and we both had nuns in our plays. We had a brief period of distrust — was the school big enough for two nun-writing authors?

However, Albert made me laugh, and we became friends. We co-wrote and performed in two cabaret pieces. And we also wrote a very odd, playful musical together — The Idiots Karamazov. The setup was that Constance Garnett was translating The Brothers Karamazov, but she was old and crazy and kept mixing it up with Chekhov and Eugene O’Neill and Charles Dickens — it was a literary roller coaster.

It was done first as an undergrad project (directed by Albert). Then it was a Drama School project, starring acting student Meryl Streep as Constance. (Whatever happened to her? Ha-ha.) And then, as a

professional production at the Yale Repertory Theatre, still starring Meryl, and I was unexpectedly cast as the monk Alyosha.

In the first scene, Constance introduces the Karamazov brothers, but when they enter they sing a spirited song called “O, We Gotta Get to Moscow.” The lyrics included these lines. “O, we gotta get to Moscow, make a check-off list and pack, and we’ll leave this town behind us, and we’re never coming back… O, we gotta get to Cleveland, San Francisco, or LA, and we’ll sell the cherry orchard, and we’ll give the pits away… Goodbye now, Uncle Vanya, don’t you cry now, Gotta get to Moscow, Moscow right now!”

It was a crazy and chaotic play, and it was Albert’s and my first professional production.

CHEKHOV ENCOUNTER NO. 7 I had the idea to write Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike a few years ago, when I realized that I was now the age that Vanya was (or seemed to be). And, like Vanya and other Chekhov characters, I started to reassess choices made in the past.

I live in a stone farmhouse with my partner, the writer-actor John Augustine, on a small hill in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I choose to live here for the quiet and the trees, and there is a small pond where a blue heron comes and sees what is available to eat.

But I started to think to myself, what if I didn’t live here with my partner but with my adopted sister, and the two of us had spent 15 years taking care of our elderly and eventually incoherent parents.

What if we never left the house we lived in as children, and felt jealous of our older sister, who was a glamorous stage and film star. She sends us money, but our lives feel empty and unexciting.

What if my life had been closer to a Chekhov play?

By the way, I also have cherry trees around the house. About nine of them, I’d say. Very pretty two weeks a year.

CURTAIN CALLS NAME Candy Buckley ROLE Masha HOMETOWN We moved a lot when I was a kid.

I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My fondest childhood memories are in California, Utah, and Virginia. Now I’m a New Yorker.

WHAT WOULD YOU WEAR TO A COSTUME PARTY AND WHY? As an actor, I HATE COSTUME PARTIES! It’s my job, so I don’t want to do it recreationally. I have a horrible (very Masha) memory of my mother making me a fabulous Martha Washington costume for a contest. The tiny (I was always tall) girl in a grass skirt won, and I was devastated.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE FROM THE PLAY? “I suppose I’m monstrous but lovable monstrous, I hope!”

NAME Marcia DeBonis ROLE Sonia HOMETOWN Marin County, California WHAT WOULD YOU WEAR TO A COSTUME PARTY AND WHY? I have every intention of buying my Sonia/Maggie Smith dress. Should I ever be invited to a costume party in the future, I shall don my teal blue Maggie Smith dress and go as her on her way to the Oscars.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? Happily, I think I have a more optimistic outlook on life than Sonia, though I too enjoy complaining ...

NAME Martin Moran ROLE Vanya

My play is not a parody. It is set in the present day. Once I finished the first draft, I started to say to people, “The play takes Chekhov characters and themes and puts them into a blender.”

Throughout my life, I keep reacting and reacting to Chekhov.

Christopher Durang is an award-winning playwright whose work has appeared on and Off Broadway, including the Tony Award nominated A History of the American Film, the Obie Awardwinning Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, and Miss Witherspoon, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. With Marsha Norman, he is the co-chair of the playwriting program at The Julliard School.

HOMETOWN Denver, Colorado WHAT WOULD YOU WEAR TO A COSTUME PARTY AND WHY? A traditional Indian mundu because I am touring in India now, and I love what the guys wear in south India.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I am like Vanya in that I am mostly quiet until I am so not.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE QUOTE FROM THE PLAY? “It’s comforting to have a pond to look at.”

NAME Tyler Lansing Weaks ROLE Spike HOMETOWN Chicago, Illinois WHAT WOULD YOU WEAR TO A COSTUME PARTY AND WHY? As a kid my Robin Hood costume was my favorite. I think I might like to bring that one back. Any excuse to wear tights!

SEE PAGE 30 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? First off, Spike and I look uncannily similar. Also, like Spike I love to have fun and enjoy living in the moment. However, I’m probably a little more sensitive to other people’s thoughts and feelings than he is … and hopefully just the teensiest bit more intelligent.

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TH GIR E S FEB L EC O .21 ND “Ronan Noone is one of his adopted country’s best young playwrights.”

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– THE BOSTON GLOBE

With Eugene O’Neill’s classic Long Day’s Journey into Night as a backdrop, The Second Girl is set in the downstairs world of the Tyrone family kitchen in August 1912. Two Irish immigrant servant girls and the chauffeur search for love, success, and a sense of belonging in their new world in this lyrical and poignant world premiere

by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Ronan Noone (Brendan, The Atheist) and directed by Campbell Scott (The Atheist).

The Second Girl is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award.

T. CHARLES ERICKOSN

“Ronan Noone has been a central part of the Huntington’s family since 2003 when he was named to the very first cohort of Playwriting Fellows. Our audiences responded so warmly to Brendan, his play about an Irish immigrant finding his way in his adopted home of Boston, and I know they’ll feel the same about his latest work that intimately explores the longings of the secondary characters from one of the 20th century’s greatest dramas.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS Left, Ronan Noone; Campbell Scott in Noone’s The Atheist (2007)

AN INTERVIEW WITH RONAN NOONE RONAN NOONE WAS AMONG THE FIRST COHORT OF HUNTINGTON PLAYWRITING FELLOWS IN 2003. HIS PAST WORKS INCLUDE THE ATHEIST AND BRENDAN. OVER THE FALL HE CORRESPONDED WITH DIRECTOR OF NEW WORK LISA TIMMEL ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE LEAVING IRELAND AND WHY HE DECIDED TO WRITE THE SECOND GIRL.

The Second Girl was selected for production after having a Breaking Ground Festival reading in January 2014. How did it go and what changed after the reading?

The reading went down very well. There was a silence in the audience that was the attention being paid and the comedy coming out of the play which was important especially in the somber note of O’Neill and the Monte Cristo house. I hadn’t found that [comedy] before. I think every playwright has to be somewhat aggressive in pursuing getting their play up: meeting people, talking to people, trying to activate interest in it. You can get to a place, when you get all the elements in place and after the reading, if it’s successful, and the theatre commits to it, you almost feel like the wind has been taken from your sails. After I pursued that and achieved that, doubt set in. I spent the summer trying to get rid of the self-doubt, and trying to go back to exactly why I wrote the play in the first place.

Once the auditions began it became much more tangible; the last few weeks it has really come back to me again.

Why did you write the play in the first place?

I was looking for a bridge to tell a story about the Irish in America.

I hadn’t found a way to tell that story about — not just Irish Americans but Irish-born Americans. That led me straight to O’Neill.

I finally locked onto the idea of looking at Long Day’s Journey into Night, and when I read it, I saw that O’Neill used the words “amiable, ignorant, and clumsy and possessed by a dense well-meaning stupidity” to describe the second girl, Cathleen. I thought maybe I can redeem her from what she was seen as outside the kitchen and see her more as possessed of better qualities and more intelligence inside the kitchen.

What made you decide to leave Ireland and come to the US? I’ve always had an affinity for America ever since I was young. I think it was because of the wild landscapes. It’s clichéd, but it’s what you saw on television. It’s a place that just says a sense of adventure. It also seemed to be, coming out of Ireland, a place that said if you have ambition you can achieve what you want with effort and work.

And that’s true in my case. There’s a claustrophobic feeling in Ireland and America was much wider and more available to you to become almost new because nobody knew who you were.

Was there any particular impetus for emigrating when you did?

Oh no. I came out of Ireland with resentment on my back. Exile.

There were no jobs, your confidence was beaten down, and there was no outlet for any kind of fire in your belly. There’s only so far you can take that before you say you have to leave it all behind.

Have your feelings about being a citizen changed much over the last 14 years?

I’ve accepted that this is my home — and gladly — but I have noticed as I’ve gotten older, and this is just a big general reductive statement, but I think about home more, about growing up, about the events and adventures of what it was like to be a child, a teenager, and in my early 20s in Ireland, and how that influenced all my work. I found a lot of that early stuff in reading about O’Neill’s life too. I don’t know if that’s just part of what it is to be a playwright, but it reminds me of an old Irish proverb: contention is better than loneliness. Out of that kind of world of just hanging with all these characters, good friends of mine still, there were a lot of conflicts, but it was almost a conflict that we created to override the loneliness of growing up in small town Ireland.

Is that part of the relationship between Cathleen and Bridget, the housemaid and cook in The Second Girl?

Oh yeah. I think there’s a lot of contention there, and sometimes I think that they create that contention. It doesn’t boil over into anything physical. They accept the back and forth of each other.

It takes away from the loneliness of having left home.

LEARN MORE ONLINE Get to know playwright Ronan Noone and read a New York Times article about Noone and Scott’s first collaboration together on The Atheist.

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CAROL ROSEGG

Santo Loquasto’s design for the 2011 Off Broadway production of The Cherry Orchard with John Turturro, Alvin Epstein, Daniel Davis, and Dianne Wiest

SANTO LOQUASTO’S WORLD ON STAGE Santo Loquasto

By 1980, a profile in People magazine proclaimed him “the most sought-after costume and set designer in the performing arts.”

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The set designer for Ronan Noone’s world premiere production of The Second Girl is none other than virtuosic, legendary theatre designer Santo Loquasto who will be making his Huntington debut.

Loquasto has a resume that stretches back to shortly after his birth, relatively speaking. At age 5, he was enrolled in a children’s theatre class instead of going to school. “I just wasn’t interested in doing what the program or what everyone else was doing, so they thought it would be best if I just skipped [kindergarten] and started first grade the following year,” explained Loquasto in a LehighValleyLive.com interview. Theatre design became his lifelong vocation. Growing up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania he started painting sets at various summer stock and local theatres such as the Ross County Playhouse. At 16, he was building and designing sets as well; his adolescent credits include Gigi and Picnic. At 21 he designed his first professional set at the Williamstown Theatre Festival where he worked closely with set designer John Conklin and where he says, “I probably learned more over bad meals with [him] than I learned ever anywhere else.”

In 1969 he followed in Conklin’s footsteps and enrolled at the Yale School of Drama where he met Joseph Papp, artistic director of the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1972, Papp hired him to design the world premiere production of That Championship Season and Sticks and Bones, both of which subsequently transferred to Broadway. His design for That Championship Season garnered Loquasto his first Tony Award nomination. He won his first Tony Award for The Cherry Orchard in 1977 for a famously austere white-on-white design. The Cherry Orchard opened the night after American Buffalo, where Loquasto had designed a set that

was “obsessively detailed” according to The New York Times and contained about a ton of scrap metal. Since then, Loquasto has designed sets and/or costumes for over sixty Broadway productions garnering 15 Tony Award nominations and three Tony Awards.

By 1980, a profile in People magazine proclaimed him “the most sought-after costume and set designer in the performing arts.” His design work had expanded to include dance and film. His steady collaborators included Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and most famously Woody Allen with whom he’s designed 27 films. Tharp summed up what makes Loquasto so sought after, “He’s so good because he has an eye that can read, describe, and exaggerate in the right ways,” and for Baryshnikov it was that, “He has so much life in his work.”

No matter how great his success on Broadway, in film, and in dance, Loquasto has never stopped working in regional theatre.

He explained in the Yale Alumni Magazine that after The Cherry Orchard, it felt as if everyone “wanted twelve tons of that.” However in regional theatre he was afforded more range, “In New York, you’re hired based on what you’re good at. It’s in the regionals where you get to do Joe Orton and Peer Gynt in the same season.”

Joseph Papp noted that Loquasto has a chameleon-like ability to adapt to the needs of the production at hand.

For the Huntington production of The Second Girl, director Campbell Scott gave Loquasto a lot of lead: “All I said to Santo before he started working was that I wanted us to be in a real place, and since Ronan has done such a lovely job of creating three characters whose days are defined by their labors, I wanted it to be practical, practical, practical — which, for a play that takes place in 1912 New England, can be very challenging and, I think for the audience, rewarding.” Unsurprisingly, given Loquasto’s depth of experience, Scott’s expectations were exceeded, “He’s managed to do everything I asked for and at the same time, defy my expectations in a way that will allow the production to be more than what Ronan and I might have imagined — more lyrical, more harrowing, more immediate.” For Noone, the experience of working with this storied designer has been deeply rewarding. “One of the driving reasons I work in the theatre is to have the opportunity to collaborate with exceptional designers like Santo Loquasto,” he says. “He thinks deeply about the ideas the play presents and allows those ideas to filter through every element of the set.

It’s incredible.”

– LISA TIMMEL

Developing and producing thought-provoking new plays is at the core of the Huntington’s artistic mission. You can help support new work by making a gift to the Huntington’s Annual Fund.

Please visit huntingtontheatre.org/support or call 617 273 1546.

CURTAIN CALLS NAME MacKenzie Meehan ROLE Cathleen HOMETOWN Aurora, Colorado HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I identify with Cathleen’s spirit and gumption at her age. Pursuing a career in acting requires an extraordinary amount of courage. I first caught the bug when I was 11 and was determined to “make it” as an actor, despite the difficulty. There were members of my family who warned me of the relentless rejection and precarious nature of the life. Their warnings only made me want it more.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE DAILY ROUTINES? Coffee time!

I love connecting with my husband over coffee in the morning.

I’m also a fan of ending the day with a hot bubble bath or shower.

Especially during the winter!

WHAT MAKES A PLACE A “HOME” TO YOU? Friends and family. If I don’t have them, I’ll settle for a soft, comfortable bed, a nice candle, and a great book.

NAME Christopher Donahue ROLE Jack HOMETOWN North Andover, Massachusetts ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? Jack and I are both observers, and we are both quietly content. And awkward.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE DAILY ROUTINES? I am relatively routine-less but a good day is marked by the accomplishment of two things — to make something, and to be useful to somebody else.

WHAT MAKES A PLACE A “HOME” TO YOU? Love.

NAME Kathleen McElfresh ROLE Bridget LAST HUNTINGTON ROLE Daisy in Brendan HOMETOWN Gulf Breeze, Florida HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I can be as stubborn as Bridget. And as rigid at times. And as right about everything. I don’t even come close to having the experience of being isolated in a foreign country away from all loved ones. I don’t know what it’s like to live at a time and in a society that makes it impossible for me to raise my own child.

WHERE WAS YOUR FAMILY IN 1912? My grandfather McElfresh would love to answer this one if he was still around! I went to the Scottish Genealogy Society in Edinburgh once, looked through the microfilm, and found versions of our name had come over in the 1600s.

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE DAILY ROUTINES? A cup of coffee in the morning. Walking my son through Central Park to pre-school.

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T MA M HE R.6 U C - AP SE OL O U R.5 M R ED “A wild evening of black black humor.

George C. Wolfe takes no prisoners.”

Climb aboard for a madcap and stinging journey through 11 hilarious looks at African-American culture — from the depths of the Celebrity Slaveship to the spinning heights of Harlem. Tony Award winner George C. Wolfe’s landmark comedy has electrified, discomforted, and delighted audiences of all colors, skewering stereotypes and redefining what it means to be black in contemporary America.

“George Wolfe’s sketches of black American life are both startling and hilarious. The play was ahead of its time in 1987 and is now ripe for a major revival. I’m thrilled that the incredible Billy Porter, fresh from his Tony Awardwinning performance in Kinky Boots on Broadway, will direct. Bringing these two brilliant American theatre artists together is a dream.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS

George C. Wolfe

“POWER AND PAIN AND BRILLIANCE”

GEORGE C. WOLFE’S THE COLORED MUSEUM A two-time Tony Award winner, George C. Wolfe is a rare theatrical polymath; he has dominated the fields of playwriting, directing, and theatrical producing. The Colored Museum is his earliest success, premiering in 1986 at a small theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey before going on to play New York, London, and across the nation in a version filmed for PBS. On the surface, The Colored Museum is a collection of 11 hilarious and biting theatrical “exhibits” of African-American life, stretching from slavery to the present. A young woman’s natural and relaxed wigs argue over who she should wear when she tells off her boyfriend. A stewardess on the Celebrity Slaveship tells her passengers tofasten their shackles. While the play is considered a forerunner of African-American sketch-form comedy — for many critics, without The Colored Museum, there would have been no In Living Color — for Wolfe the comedy is the vehicle, not the message.

For all its acclaim, Wolfe questions how many people have seen and understood the play’s deepest message. “Nobody’s ever written about [The Colored Museum] the way it should have been written about,” Wolfe said, many years after the play’s success. “It was one of the few plays in the ‘80s that was about black people that was set in a contemporary context.”

Wolfe was uniquely positioned to see the contradictions and complexities of black life. Born in 1954 in Frankfort, Kentucky, Wolfe grew up in a wholly segregated environment. “Growing up in the time of segregation forced me to develop an inner strength that has served me well. It was a profoundly significant thing in my life, to deny a child access to any place because of the way they look,” Wolfe says. Like Zora Neale Hurston, whose writings Wolfe would later adapt in his acclaimed play Spunk, Wolfe was forged in an all-black environment where his self-esteem blossomed. “I knew I couldn’t go certain places but I knew everywhere I went in my world, I was extraordinary,” Wolfe says. “So therefore when I went into the white world and I had this opposition to me, it injured me but it did not injure my core, because I had 12 years of ‘you are extraordinary.’”

Wolfe’s swagger and confidence echoes in The Colored Museum; his

frequent advice to the original cast was “The only thing missing from this play right now is your arrogance.”

At the time of the play’s premiere, his relationship to the material was misinterpreted by the African-American community. “When The Colored Museum happened, all these mediocre Negroes who regard themselves as the guardians of black culture attacked me because they thought I was attacking black culture, that I was doing things in front of white people that shouldn’t be done,” Wolfe says in an interview with feminist icon bell hooks. “They didn’t understand my arrogance, my belief that the culture I come from is so strong it can withstand public scrutiny. I don’t see black culture as a fragile thing.”

While black audiences attacked the play when it premiered for trading in stereotypes of black culture, Wolfe sees the play’s artistic value in reclaiming and transforming them. “We have such a kneejerk response to a silhouette, that if it’s a fat black woman with a bandanna on her head, we say ‘Offensive? Road block! Don’t think!

Don’t hear what the character’s saying, don’t deal with it,’” Wolfe says.

“Because so much of the imagery of the archetype has been co-opted by white culture — and turned into a stereotype — so that we end up throwing out certain symbols and imagery that have a tremendous amount of power and that have a more ancient cultural context to them simply because they’ve been corrupted by white culture.”

The Colored Museum, for all its humor, is filled with what Wolfe calls “pure unadulterated metaphor,” distillations of black experience that he believes are specific and evocative enough to resonate far beyond their time and place. “As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see “Leave it to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” or Hamlet and look beyond the specifics of it — whether it was silly white people on an island, or a family living in Nowheres, or a Danish person — to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me,” Wolfe says. “I’m interested: is the reverse possible? Can people who are not of color leap past the specifics of who these people are and get inside the dynamic of who they are as individuals?”

– CHARLES HAUGLAND

LEARN MORE ONLINE Read about the exhibit George C. Wolfe curated for the newly opened Center for Civil and Human Rights and learn more about director Billy Porter.

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A VISIT TO THE COLORED MUSEUM THE COLORED MUSEUM TRADES IN “IMAGES WE’VE ALL SEEN BEFORE,” PLAYING WITH STEREOTYPES, TROPES, AND ICONS OFTEN AT ONCE FAMILIAR AND INFLAMMATORY. ITS SATIRE MINES FOR MEANING IN THE VISUAL AND MATERIAL CULTURE OF 20TH CENTURY AFRICAN AMERICANA.

In the exhibit “Symbiosis,” a black businessman throws out souvenirs of his late 1960s youth. His collection of Black Power buttons clatter into the trash can, but even personal and pop cultural artifacts carry the political; for him, Afro-sheen is black experience, pressurized into an aerosol can. By discarding these relics, he renounces history to accommodate the comforts of corporate culture and sate the appetite of assimilation. It’s a matter of survival, he claims: “the climate is changing, Kid, and either you adjust or you end up extinct. A sociological dinosaur.”

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MY FIRST PAIR OF CONVERSE ALL-STARS • MY FIRST AFRO COMB • MY FIRST DASHIKI • MY AUTOGRAPHED PICTURES OF STOKELY CARMICHAEL, JOMO KENYATTA, AND DONNA SUMMER • MY FIRST JAR OF MURRAY’S POMADE • MY FIRST CAN OF AFRO-SHEEN • MY FIRST BOX OF CURL RELAXER • ELDRIDGE CLEAVER’S SOUL ON ICE • JIMI HENDRIX’S “PURPLE HAZE” • SLY STONE’S THERE’S A RIOT GOIN’ ON • THE JACKSON FIVE’S “I WANT YOU BACK” • STEVIE WONDER’S FINGERTIPS PART 2 • FREE ANGELA! FREE BOBBY! FREE HUEY! U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM, CAMBODIA, HARLEM, DETROIT, AND NEWARK • THE TEMPTATIONS’ GREATEST HITS

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR Broadway performer BILLY PORTER will direct George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum this spring at the Huntington! Billy Porter was most recently seen in the Tony Awardwinning production of Kinky Boots on Broadway. “The Colored Museum came into my life at a very formative time,” Porter says. “I was a teenager longing for more than just one type of ‘Black’ representation in the creative storytelling landscape. Wolfe’s unique and irreverent voice of inclusion ignited the fire of possibility inside of me and set me on a creative journey that included stretching myself beyond what, up until then, I thought was possible for a little black gay boy from the ghetto. I am forever grateful.”

SEE PAGE 30 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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“David Cromer grabs Inge’s portrait of marriage by the scruff of its neck and leaves a riveting, must-see production.”

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When Doc and Lola Delaney rent a room in their cluttered Midwestern home to Marie, a vivacious college student, her youthful energy stirs up forgotten dreams and missed opportunities.

Visionary director David Cromer, the creative force behind the Huntington’s acclaimed production of Our Town, returns to the Roberts Studio Theatre for this intimate and heartrending portrait of a marriage.

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“David Cromer’s magnificent production of Our Town transported us into a familiar work with shockingly poignant intimacy, and I know that is what he’ll bring to this new production.”

CAROL ROSEGG

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS

David Cromer in Our Town at the Huntington (2012)

DAVID CROMER RETURNS TO THE HUNTINGTON In Come Back, Little Sheba, William Inge explores the fraying fabric of American marital life in 1950. When chiropractor Doc and his wife Lola let a spare room to spirited college student Marie, her rosy exuberance disrupts their complacent marriage and revives discarded dreams.

Visionary director David Cromer (Our Town) returns to the Roberts Studio Theatre to tackle Inge’s intimate portrait of ordinary folks.

A Chicago native and a MacArthur Fellow, Cromer is known for reinterpreting classic American plays and illuminating their relevance to contemporary society. From Chicago to New York, and most recently to London, Cromer has a proven track record of staging plays with urgency and intimacy that resonate with the audiences of today.

Cromer remounted his acclaimed staging of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town for Huntington audiences in 2012, featuring a host of local favorites. In this inaugural Huntington production in the Roberts Studio Theatre at the Calderwood Pavilion, the audience was introduced to an ensemble of actors in contemporary dress speaking in their natural voices. Heralded for its pared-down, intimate approach, this Our Town purposefully eschewed sentimentality and attempted to strip artifice from the theatrical experience, inviting the audience to become part of the town, the actors their neighbors.

Cromer is returning to Come Back, Little Sheba, just as he is returning to Boston. An earlier 2006 production of the show garnered rave reviews from the Chicago press; Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune declares, “his direction wrings out all the poetic niceties, the mannered sentiment, the memories of the Shirley Booth movie, the gauzes covering the raw human anguish.”

Although Cromer has a reputation for taking unique and novel approaches to classic plays, originality is not a guiding factor.

“That can’t be the goal. Looking for a new way to do something should never be your motivation,” Cromer explained in an interview.

“The job is to understand the circumstances that are laid out for you and try to create forces around them that will cause those things to happen organically.”

This new production of Come Back, Little Sheba focuses less on the element of surprise than did Our Town, choosing to honor the original intention of the text in a different way that puts the characters on display instead. The raw aesthetic of the world of the play is brutally honest, not shying away or prettying up the characters. Powerful, mesmerizing, and provocative, Cromer’s intention is to lay bare the world of the script.

Set designer and frequent collaborator Stephen Dobay promises Come Back, Little Sheba will allow the audience to get up close and personal with a real home. Without wanting to give away too much, Dobay hints that the realism of the physical world is exciting in that it seems to be in sync with how Cromer is trying to portray the characters as deeply flawed, real people.

Cromer promises to find the truthfulness in Come Back, Little Sheba.

“You just have to find a way to make it seem like it’s really happening when the lights go out and the play starts.”

– STEPHANIE LEBOLT

LEARN MORE ONLINE Read the original Broadway production program book, watch clips from the 1952 film, and read a New York Times profile on Director David Cromer.

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The set for the Huntington’s production of Our Town (2012)

Set rendering for Come Back Little Sheba

AN INTERVIEW WITH SCENIC DESIGNER

STEPHEN DOBAY STEPHEN DOBAY’S SCENIC DESIGN FOR OUR TOWN STUNNED HUNTINGTON AUDIENCES IN 2012.

HE TEAMED WITH DIRECTOR DAVID CROMER AGAIN ON PRODUCTIONS OF OUR TOWN AT THE BROAD STAGE IN LOS ANGELES, KANSAS CITY REP, AND THE ALMEIDA THEATRE IN LONDON. DOBAY AND CROMER RETURN TO THE ROBERTS STUDIO THEATRE THIS SPRING WITH WILLIAM INGE’S COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA. THE YOUNG NEW YORK-BASED DESIGNER REFLECTED ON THE COLLABORATION AND INSPIRATION THAT SHAPE HIS WORK WITH LITERARY PROFESSIONAL INTERN MOLLY FITZMAURICE.

What led you to scenic design?

I fell in love with scenic design as a student at Williams College, which hosts the Williamstown Theatre Festival. While there I would admire the work and lives of the New York and Boston based designers who summered in the Berkshires, many of whom still remain mentors and friends. I knew very early on that I wanted their freelance life for myself: to be able to travel and create evocative environments to help tell the stories as a part of live performance.

What I love most about my career now is how different design jobs can be from one show to the next.

Stephen Dobay

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As you sit in your studio approaching Come Back, Little Sheba, what are some of the questions you ask yourself?

Who are Lola and Doc Delaney? — the married couple at the center of the drama. How did they meet, fall in love, and settle into their lives in a small Kansas college town? And how does that affect the look of the modest house they call home? What does a home look like when two people — who on the surface seem to not like each other very much — are oddly co-dependent, yet live together for as long as this couple has? And then of course, how does their world turn upside down when they decide to take on a boarder who is as vibrant and as full of life as Marie is? The home where all of this drama unravels needs to be as specific as the characters Inge has written.

CURTAIN CALLS NAME Derek Hasenstab ROLE Doc HOMETOWN Belleville, Illinois HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I’d like to think I could cope with Doc’s situation differently — but I have my doubts. I find myself assessing my past more, and if my life’s trajectory had the sudden turns that Doc’s had taken, I may be reacting the same way.

WHAT THEME IN THE PLAY SPEAKS TO YOU? Making peace with one’s past. Whether we long to return to it, or try to shut it out, it profoundly affects our present and future, and those closest to us.

NAME Michael Knowlton A photo from Dobay and Cromer’s research in Lawrence, Kansas

ROLE Milkman HOMETOWN Born in Van Nuys, California / Raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts LAST HUNTINGTON ROLE Citizen in Our Town

Where do you find inspiration to build on the script and characters?

Director David Cromer and I were recently in Kansas City mounting another production of Our Town, and we happened to be within driving distance of Lawrence, Kansas, where Come Back, Little Sheba is speculated to take place. Like in the play, it’s a small college town in Kansas where Inge happened to have gone to school. It was the perfect opportunity to do some in-person research. Exploring Lawrence was almost like an exercise in casting.

I slowly drove through the town taking snapshots of homes where I could feasibly see Doc and Lola living out their lives. The set that ends up onstage will probably be a pastiche of architectural details from these homes.

Tell me about your ongoing collaboration with director David Cromer.

David is an extremely visual director who comes to the table with a very strong first impulse of what the world of the play should look like. For those who saw Our Town, that visual impulse was the 3rd act reveal. For Come Back, Little Sheba, it’s the idea that the audience should feel so close to the action that they are almost sharing the modest home where the play is set with the actors.

Not all directors have such a command of the power of thoughtful design, and it’s this side of him that makes him an extremely fun director to collaborate with.

How has your collaborative relationship developed over the course of five productions of Our Town and now Come Back, Little Sheba?

I feel that a designer always gets better the more experience he has working with a specific director. When a director becomes more familiar with your work, and vice versa, a trust builds. It’s the reason why when you read the playbill you see directors and designers working together on so many projects.

SEE PAGE 31 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? The milkman says he used to be “sickly, no appetite” when Lola compliments his “husky” physique. There’s no hiding the fact that I’m skinny, so I got a gym membership and with a lot of dedication I hope to be the huskiest milkman I can be.

WHAT THEME IN THE PLAY SPEAKS TO YOU? I’m interested in Lola and Doc’s obsession with the “what ifs...” in life. These “what ifs” are venomous. Like a volcano, the longer they sit, the bigger the eruption.

NAME Adrianne Krstansky ROLE Lola HOMETOWN Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois / Lives in Newton, Massachusetts HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I relate to Lola’s Midwestern-ness — how bewildered she is by growing older and the different ways she copes with loss of youth and attention. Unlike Lola I have no understanding of what a twice-baked potato is.

WHAT THEME IN THE PLAY SPEAKS TO YOU? I think no one writes about American loneliness and isolation like William Inge.

I also think Inge has a few good questions to explore about marriage in the play.

NAME Marie Polizzano ROLE Marie LAST HUNTINGTON ROLE Lauren in Circle Mirror Transformation HOMETOWN Cheshire, Connecticut HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? Marie is very positive, full of creativity and passion, and excited about her future. We’re similar in those ways.

WHAT THEME IN THE PLAY SPEAKS TO YOU? The one that sticks most with me is that of the past robbing us of the present moment. I love that this story reveals that through fully accepting our reality, we can let go of what’s past and arrive in the present, open to new possibilities and hope.

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An ordinary job interview at a local bookstore becomes much more as storeowner Linda and aspiring writer Daniel realize that their connections go far deeper than a shared love of literature.

Together they will have have to face the trauma of their past — but can they find forgiveness?

Artistic Director Peter DuBois directs this deeply felt and intimate new play about bullying and second chances.

“Rey Pamatmat’s insight into his young characters’ complex emotional lives rings true.”

– STAGE LEFT

“I fell in love with this play when I read it for both the sensitivity of Rey Pamatmat’s voice and the way he engages in a major social conversation with great warmth, sharp humor, and an incisive point of view. The story makes my heart race, and I think our audiences will love it.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DUBOIS

A. Rey Pamatmat

UNCOVERING THE TERRIBLE THINGS Playwright A. Rey Pamatmat’s newest play after all the terrible things I do begins with a job interview. Daniel, a Midwestern boy looking to reconnect with himself after college and focus on his writing career, has moved back to his hometown, and he wants a job at a little store that he loved as a child, Books to the Sky. The owner Linda, a Filipina émigré, likes Daniel right off; he’s a morning person, he’s smart about literature, he even pulls out a Frank O’Hara poem he’s memorized: Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?

I was thinking of you having a Coke in the heat it was your face I saw on the movie magazine, no it was Fabian’s I was thinking of you and down at the railroad tracks where the station has mysteriously disappeared I was thinking of you as the bus pulled away in the twilight I was thinking of you and right now But when the poem leads to a conversation about Daniel’s sexuality, Linda bristles, and Daniel wants to know why. Is it that Daniel has been unprofessional and too personal with his new potential boss? Or is she uncomfortable that he’s gay? From that moment of friction, Pamatmat starts a complex portrait of two strikingly different people. “Rey sees all the layers of the way we talk to each other every day, bracingly intimate and effortlessly political,” Artistic Director Peter DuBois says of what attracted him to the play. “That Rey also has the artistic craft to build those tiny exchanges into an emotionally wrenching drama makes him a rare and important voice.”

Pamatmat has steadily built a national reputation for plays that are flooded with both emotional honesty and surprising humor, such as his 2011 play Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them. Premiering at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, Edith was a breakout hit,

going on to productions from San Francisco to Philadelphia (Edith will be produced simultaneously this summer by Company One Theatre). Though the plays aren’t connected in any overt way, all of the playwright’s work shares certain fundamental questions about how we experience our lives. “All of my plays are usually about some moment of self-actualization,” he says. “A person comes to understand that they’ve been either standing in their own way, or allowing other people to stand in their way, and the play is about the things that they have to do to overcome that obstacle.”

Because after all the terrible things I do follows just two characters in one location, this play represents a new challenge for Pamatmat, whose plays have ranged from epic myths to historical drama. But the ordinary, near mundane setting of a bookstore is purposeful for the writer. “I grew up on a farm, and I read a lot,” he says. “When I was a kid, I read like a crazy person. It was one of the only things to do. It was one of those communities where there was a Bookmobile.

And so, I would be in this Bookmobile all the time grabbing books and requesting that they bring something next time. Then my college job was in a bookstore. When I was writing this play where the issues are large and maybe even unfathomable, I wanted to juxtapose them with an environment that was so normal.”

Both of the characters are well-read and highly literate, and as Daniel shares his fledgling novel with Linda, she begins digging into the lived experiences that she believes may have inspired it. The more she reads of his story, the more her own experience echoes his, and from Daniel’s book, a question emerges: can an unforgiveable act be forgiven? The play is named for a different Frank O’Hara poem, and the writer’s work is a kind of literary cousin to the play that Pamatmat wrote. Like the best of O’Hara’s poems, after all the terrible things I do looks at a few, isolated snatches of disparate lives, and out of those interactions, draws a surprisingly funny and deep portrait of what it means to know another person.

– CHARLES HAUGLAND

LEARN MORE ONLINE Read Frank O’Hara poems that influenced the play, explore excerpts from A. Rey Pamatmat’s blog, and watch a video about Pamatmat’s experience at The Lark Play Development Center.

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JONATHAN HOLLINGSWORTH

MICHAEL C. PALMA

Rodney To, Amielynn Abellera, and Brian Hostenske in Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them at the Humana Festival of New American Plays (2010)

Colin Wait and ensemble in Pamatmat’s play, Something in the Water from The Mysteries at The Flea Theater (2014)

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT:

A. REY PAMATMAT LITERARY PROFESSIONAL INTERN MOLLY FITZMAURICE TALKED WITH AFTER ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS I DO PLAYWRIGHT, A. REY PAMATMAT, ABOUT HIS WRITING PROCESS AND WRITING FROM A BULLY’S PERSPECTIVE.

Your play joins a national conversation around bullying.

How did you hope to shift the dialogue?

What surprised me when I was reading all the articles that led up to the It Gets Better campaign, was that the focus was always on victims. We get to know the kid that was hurt or that committed suicide, but we don’t know the perpetrators. There was never any real analysis of what behaviors in our society actually encourage bullying. I started to wonder why that was, but part of me also already knew that we idolize bullies. From CEOs to celebrities, we put more value on being competitive or being the best or being excellent than we have on being the most understanding, the kindest, or the most generous. That’s just American values right now, and when we weight those things too much without weighing kindness or generosity or sensitivity, then we create bullies.

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As you refocused your attention on the perpetrators, what did you learn from stepping into the shoes of bullies?

It’s not what I thought I was writing about, but eventually I realized I was writing about empathy. What was really funny is I actually had to learn to have empathy for people who hurt people, for people that I thought lacked empathy — and I was having trouble. In terms of a personal journey in the writing of the play, I did come to a place where I realized that taking punitive measures against bullies may not be the right tack.

Finding empathy is probably the best way to lead them to a different place or to shift people’s ideas of what is important.

Why did you choose a naturalistic single setting and small cast to tell this story?

The play exists in a very normal, very cozy and comforting environment, and within that environment we learn things that are not so cozy or comfortable. I really wanted it to be an everyday sort of situation so that when the things that maybe seem not so everyday happen, we realize how seamlessly they fit into the everyday. It’s even the simple stuff, like when Daniel corrects the way Linda talks about gay people. A lot of her language comes from ignorance or was shaped by people with hateful agendas, and she has adopted that language without knowing what she’s saying — that happens every day. It’s not horrendous; it’s not Fred Phelps. It’s like someone you went to school with, or your parents, or your best friend, or someone’s kid. Part of what’s surprising is that it’s actually a very everyday practice.

Once these “terrible things” come to light and the characters have to face their pasts, the play asks us to if there are any truly unforgivable acts. How have audiences responded to that question?

There have already been people who come to the play and can’t forgive the unforgiveable acts. They think that there is no hope for the people that perform them; that no matter what they’re striving to do or to be, bullies have to continue to be watched and corrected, because they will never be able to do it themselves.

There are other people who feel that it’s impossible for a person to actually leave their past behind unless they can do some sort of penance or rectify what’s been done. Even the idea of forgiveness — whether people deserve forgiveness — audiences have even been butting up against that. But I think I am more hopeful. The trouble is that once we think people are beyond help or beyond reformation, we have to start asking ourselves why we don’t just kill them. The thing is we don’t just kill them. We still believe that there is some use or some meaning to their existence. I am more hopeful.

SEE PAGE 31 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

Last spring, Company One Theatre Artistic Director Shawn LaCount heard through the grapevine that the Huntington was close to announcing after all the terrible things I do by A. Rey Pamatmat. LaCount had long been keen to produce Pamatmat’s 2011 breakout hit Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, and so he reached out to Huntington Artistic Director Peter DuBois to ask if the theatres could team up again.

The two companies had collaborated on a 2010 festival of Annie Baker’s works with SpeakEasy Stage Company, and both DuBois and LaCount were interested in deepening that connection.

The plays themselves show an incredible range for Pamatmat. Edith is equal parts dangerous and whimsical, a love letter to young love, while terrible things is searing and provocative, showing a young man looking back on things he did in his youth. Though they both touch on a few of the same topics — gay youth, Filipino American identity, Midwestern culture — they are totally distinct artistic experiences.

“When we produced Annie Baker’s festival, it was important for people to know that they didn’t need to see the plays in any particular order and that it wasn’t a literal ‘trilogy’ of any kind,” says Director of New Work Lisa Timmel. “Like that grouping, Rey’s plays don’t have an overt connection, and instead subtly inform one another. See one, or see them both — but we think the experience of people who see both plays will be richer, deeper, and more complex.”

The collaboration also has tangible benefits to both companies, bringing new eyes to their work and in the case of Company One Theatre, a new space. Edith takes place partially in the loft of a barn, and LaCount knew the company needed more vertical space than they have in their usual venues. Edith will be their first show in Deane Hall at the Huntington’s Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. “Collaborating like this gives companies a chance to share expertise and resources. The way the Huntington is interested in mentoring emerging writers and actors, we’re also keen to support smaller theatre companies,” Timmel says. “But the most exciting part is seeing the audience encounter a writer’s voice in multiple dimensions.”

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2015 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR MON.APR.27 Honoring Jill and Mitchell Roberts with the Wimberly Award and celebrating the artistic legacy of Nicholas Martin Event Co-Chairs Valerie and Mark Friedman & Linda and Bill McQuillan With special appearances by Kate Burton, Debra Monk, Brooks Ashmanskas, Christopher Fitzgerald, and Victor Garber

SAVE THE DATE! Mark your calendar for Monday, April 27 when the Huntington will honor Jill and Mitchell Roberts (President of the Huntington’s Board of Trustees) with the Wimberly Award and gather to celebrate the artistic legacy of our former artistic director, the late Nicholas Martin at the 2015 Spotlight Spectacular. The evening will be co-chaired by Valerie and Mark Friedman & Linda and Bill McQuillan, and will be held in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts.

The Spotlight Spectacular is the Huntington’s signature annual fundraising gala. It has raised $1 million dollars for two consecutive years and is celebrated as one of Boston’s premier fundraising events. Proceeds from this event support all of the Huntington’s programs, including its award-winning youth, education, and community initiatives that reach more than 33,000 youth and community members annually.

The evening will feature design by leading Boston event planner Rafanelli Events, a cocktail reception and dinner by MAX Ultimate Food, online and live auctions, presentation of the Wimberly Award, presentation of the Gerard and Sherryl Cohen Award, and rousing entertainment by some of the theatre world’s shining stars.

The Wimberly Award is given annually to celebrate those who have had a tremendous impact on the Huntington as artists or champions, and the Gerard and Sherryl Cohen Award is given annually in recognition of excellence among the Huntington’s production and administrative staff.

To sponsor a table, reserve tickets, or for more information: Catherine Halpin at 617 273 1503 or chalpin@huntingtontheatre.bu.edu

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Don’t miss your chance to be a part of this year’s celebration!

huntingtontheatre.org/spectacular

MEET OVERSEER TRACIE LONGMAN & CHAITANYA KANOJIA:

“THEATRE IS THE HOOK!”

Tracie Longman and Chaitanya Kanojia

HUNTINGTON OVERSEER TRACIE LONGMAN AND HER HUSBAND, CHAITANYA KANOJIA MET WITH DIRECTOR OF MAJOR GIFTS MEG WHITE TO TALK ABOUT THEIR CONNECTION TO THE HUNTINGTON. TRACIE LONGMAN IS A HUNTINGTON DEVOTEE WHO ESTABLISHED HER RELATIONSHIP WITH THEATRE AS A CHILD AND WITH THE HUNTINGTON IN ITS EARLIEST DAYS.

Tracie Longman says her family had a tradition of going to the theatre.

“When I was still very young, we lived outside of Washington, DC, and we’d go on family outings to the Ford Theatre. Later, after my family relocated to Rhode Island, we’d go to Trinity Repertory Company in Providence. We’d also take three or four-day family trips to New York City, to visit museums and attend theatre — always plenty of theatre. Although we saw many productions, Equus and Sly Fox were two of the stand-outs.”

After law school, Tracie stayed in Boston, began her career, and bought her first subscription to the Huntington in the mid-1980s.

She has been a subscriber ever since. Initially Tracie subscribed with a friend and colleague, and when her theatre friend moved away Tracie “inherited” her ticket and used the second seat to bring other friends.

Chaitanya Kanojia didn’t grow up attending theatre. Raised in India, Chaitanya came to the US for graduate school. The first play he ever attended was on a date with Tracie at the Huntington. This story works out well, as they became partners both in life and theatre.

Now, with busy lives which include school-aged children at home and a career which requires Chaitanya to travel, coming to the Huntington continues to be their favorite “date night” activity. They protect their subscription nights from other distractions and make certain to have a babysitter lined up well ahead of time. It’s an opportunity to be together and a time for them to catch up. Sometimes they extend these evenings to include other couples, and several of their guests have gone on to become subscribers in their own right.

The first play Chaitanya ever attended was on a date with Tracie at the Huntington.

This story works out well, as they became partners both in life and theatre.

Tracie loves all aspects of the theatre, and perhaps it’s now wired into her DNA from those early family trips. She exudes excitement when she says that, for her, “Theatre is the hook!” Her favorite Huntington plays include Melinda Lopez’s Sonia Flew, Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly, Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, August Wilson’s Fences and Radio Golf, and they both adored The Jungle Book.

Chaitanya talked enthusiastically about production values, especially the sets, and the relationship these elements play to the production, “They’re almost another character that supports the story.” Chaitanya added how much he enjoys attending the productions at the BU Theatre “because of its grandeur.”

Tracie, who was elected to the Council of Overseers a little more than a year ago, also commented on the importance of the Huntington’s education programs and the joy she has had being involved. Last year, Tracie helped with the Poetry Out Loud program, and she was astounded by the level of discipline and skill she observed as she listened to the student participants. She is looking forward to this year’s Poetry Out Loud competition (details on page 29) — as well as to the time when her own children are old enough that their classes can participate.

Visit huntingtontheatre.org/support to join Tracy and Chaitanya in supporting the Huntington.

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HUNTINGTON AND PLAYWRIGHT KIRSTEN GREENIDGE COLLABORATE ON NEW ANTI-BULLYING PROGRAM PAUL MAROTTA

STUDENT MATINEE SERIES CONTINUES Make the Huntington part of your school’s experience this year! All student matinee performances begin at 10am and include a lively post-show Actors Forum with members of the cast. Student groups are also welcome at regularly scheduled performances.

SEATING LIMITED – CALL TODAY!

THE SECOND GIRL SOUTH END / CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA THURS., FEB. 12

Now Waiting On The World To Change is an antibullying initiative that will allow students to create a play that addresses the contemporary issues of bullying at the middle school and high school levels. The pilot program will launch this year, and participating students will learn about the craft of playwriting while working with Huntington Playwriting Fellow Kirsten Greenidge (Luck of the Irish) on developing an original play about bullying. The program will also allow students to participate in intensive playwriting and acting workshops. In March, actors will perform a staged reading of their play at the Huntington, as well as at participants’ schools.

“I often wonder if the arts can do more than entertain or deliver a message for a few hours,” says Director of Education Donna Glick. “Can the arts be so powerful, so unforgettable that someone thinks and acts differently not for a day or two, but for a lifetime? It’s our hope that Now Waiting On The World To Change will have that kind of impact in our community.”

During the first two years of the program, the Huntington will work with several Boston and Greater Boston schools to develop curriculum materials that provide teachers, students, and school community leaders with the tools they need to identify and remedy instances of bullying. The program will eventually include a task force of professionals who have expertise in recognizing bullying, as well as educating youth and adults on how specific behaviors can result in positive or negative outcomes. For more information on this new program contact Director of Education Donna Glick at djglick@huntingtontheatre.bu.edu

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COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA SOUTH END / CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA THURS., APR. 16 Our online Curriculum Guides are available for use in the classroom and include historical information, interesting facts about the production, lesson plans, and more.

LEARN MORE ONLINE: Visit huntingtontheatre.org/studentmatinees

2014 August Wilson Monologue Competition contestants and National Champion Ashely Herbet (center)

AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUE COMPETITION CELEBRATES 5 YEARS! This year eleven schools in Boston will read plays from Wilson’s Century Cycle, select and rehearse monologues, and learn about August Wilson’s life and legacy.

Three students will be chosen from the participating schools winners to advance to the National Finals in New York City.

Regional Finals: Monday, February 2 at 7pm Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA Free and open to the public National Finals: Monday, May 4 Broadway’s August Wilson Theatre, New York City Funded in part by the BPS Arts Expansion Initiative at EdVestors.

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DAVID MARSHALL

FRI., MAR. 13

PAUL MAROTTA

2014 Poetry Out Loud finalists

POETRY OUT LOUD CELEBRATES 10 YEARS! THIS YEAR POETRY OUT LOUD CELEBRATES ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY! POETRY OUT LOUD IS A FREE NATIONAL COMPETITION THAT THE HUNTINGTON HAS FACILITATED WITH THE MASSACHUSETTS CULTURAL COUNCIL SINCE POETRY OUT LOUD’S INCEPTION IN 2006.

State Semi-finals: February 28 and March 1 Times and locations TBA Massachusetts State Finals: March 8 at 9:30am Old South Meeting House, Boston National Competition: April 27-29 Washington, DC

For video and more information: huntingtontheatre.org/poetry

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TOP 10 FUN FACTS ABOUT POL: Since the program’s inception, the Massachusetts program has grown from 14 schools in 2006 to 85 schools in 2014 24,479 students participated in the program in 2014, significantly up from 1,500 in 2006 This year we expect close to 100 schools and more than 26,000 students to participate Poetry Out Loud in Massachusetts has ranked in the top five nationally in school, student, and teacher participation for the last four years Massachusetts is the only New England state to rank in the top five Poetry Out Loud helps students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about their literary heritage Nationally, the program saw more than 375,000 students participate from more than 24,000 schools Poetry Out Loud is in every state, as well as Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands Since 2006, Poetry Out Loud has awarded approximately $920,000 in both cash and scholarships to top scoring students at the state and national levels, as well as stipends for those students’ schools to purchase poetry books Poetry Out Loud is free for all schools to participate, and all competitions are free and open to the public

Supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Brookline Bank.

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HUNTINGTON NEWS MICHAEL MASO NAMED HYDE SQUARE TASK FORCE INSPIRING LEADER Huntington Theatre Company Managing Director Michael Maso received the 2014 Hyde Square Task Force Inspiring Leader Award at the organization’s Annual Making Change Happen Breakfast. The award is presented annually to an experienced and successful leader in the community who embodies the values of Hyde Square Task Force. Hyde Square Task Force (HSTF) has been working for more than two decades to develop the skills of youth and their families so they are empowered to enhance their own lives and build a strong and vibrant urban community.

“As the managing director of the Huntington Theatre Company for more than thirty years, Michael’s work mirrors our dedication to cultivating Boston’s rising artists and to using arts as a means for social change,” says HSTF Executive Director Claudio Martinez. “Examples such as the Huntington’s longstanding relationship with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, welcoming Melinda Lopez as the theatre’s inaugural playwright-in-residence, and the award-winning partnership with the Codman Academy Charter Public School all showcase the theatre’s significant contribution to Boston’s artistic landscape and its commitment to embracing diverse artistic perspectives.

Michael wholeheartedly exemplifies the spirit of the Inspiring Leader Award.”

NEWS ABOUT THE 2015-2016 SEASON While we still have a few more fantastic shows to come this season, we are already in the thick of planning for our 2015-2016 season!

Subscribers: you’ll be among the first to know about the rest of new year’s lineup. We plan to announce the season and mail renewal packets in February.

Stay tuned for more information about our 2015-2016 season!

And please make sure we have your email address on file so we can be in touch.

Send your address to tickets@huntingtontheatre.org.

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(d) ACTORS FORUM Participating members of the cast answer your questions following the performance.

(c) COMMUNITY MEMBERSHIP A special reception for members of our Community Membership program.

( f ) FIRST LOOK (h) HUMANITIES FORUM A post-performance talk on the (•) POST-SHOW CONVERSATIONS Dynamic post-show

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members. Call 617 273 1558 for more information.

historical and literary context of the show featuring a leading local scholar.

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professionals aged 21 - 35 complete with a post-show party.

Visit huntingtontheatre.org/35below for more information.

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conversations with fellow audience members and Huntington staff held after most every performance (except select Saturday and Sunday evenings).

( * ) PRESS OPENING NIGHT ( s ) STUDENT MATINEE For groups of students in grades 6-12.

Call 617 273 1558 for more information.

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TICKETS PRICES Start at $25 35 BELOW $25 for those 35 and under at every performance STUDENTS (25 AND UNDER) & MILITARY $15 GROUPS (10+) Discounts are available for Groups of 10 or more, plus groups have access to backstage tours, talks with artists, and space for receptions. Contact 617 273 1525 or groupsales@huntingtontheatre.org.

SUBSCRIBERS Receive $10 off any additional tickets purchased.

Prices include a $3 per ticket Capital Enhancement fee.

JIM COX

Allison Layman, Martin Moran, and Candy Buckley in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

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UPCOMING EVENTS STAGE & SCREEN AT THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE Stage & Screen is a collaboration between the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Huntington that explores the depictions of shared themes in Huntington productions and acclaimed films. Our next screening is:

VANYA ON 42ND STREET MONDAY, JANUARY 5 AT 7PM In the early 90s, theatre director André Gregory mounted a series of spare, private performances of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in an abandoned Broadway theatre. This experiment in pure theatre — featuring Wallace Shawn, Julianne Moore, Brooke Smith, and George Gaynes — would have been lost to time had it not been captured on film by Louis Malle. Join us for a conversation after the film, which will include a discussion on Chekhov’s classic themes of loss and longing.

Tickets are $11 ($8 for Huntington subscribers) and may be purchased online at Coolidge.org or at the Coolidge box office, located at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.

INSIDERS EVENTS Join us for post-show talkbacks featuring guests from The Boston Globe.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 14 AT 7:30PM Columnist Robin Abrahams (aka Miss Conduct) from Boston Globe Magazine will lead a postshow talkback on manners and the bad behavior in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 AT 8PM Boston Globe columnist Kevin Cullen will lead a post-show talkback with playwright Ronan Noone after the evening performance of The Second Girl.