Spring 2016-2017 Spotlight

PERFORMANCE CALENDARS

HUNTINGTON ON HUNTINGTON

A DOLL’S HOUSE

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

THE WHO & THE WHAT

RIPCORD

IN DEVELOPMENT EDUCATION

Andrea Syglowski (Venus in Fur) and Sekou Laidlow will appear in A Doll’s House

SPRING 2016-2017

joan marcus

SPOTLIGHT

GREAT THEATRE — PRODUCED BY YOU

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PERFORMANCE CALENDARS: JANUARY – JUNE 2017 A DOLL’S HOUSE S

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MAY - JUNE 2017

(O) 35 Below Wrap Party

(f) First Look

PRICES Start at $25

(@) ASL-Interpreted

(h) Humanities Forum

35 BELOW $30 for those 35 and under at every performance

(~) Audio-Described

(•) Post-Show Conversations ( * ) Press Opening Night (s) Student Matinee

STUDENTS (25 AND UNDER) & MILITARY $20

(c) Community Membership Reception

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TICKETS

CALENDAR KEY (d) Actors Forum

•2PM 8PM

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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 1657 or groupsales@ huntingtontheatre.org.

SUBSCRIBERS Receive $10 off any additional tickets purchased.

Prices include a $3 per ticket Capital Enhancement fee.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 617 266 0800

THE HUNTINGTON ON HUNTINGTON — UPDATE ON THE BU THEATRE paul marrotta

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BR NRIK Y I O ME NY BSEN LIA LA BEN VER SU Y SSE N BY

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“An undoubted masterpiece. Lavery’s subtly modern version gets to the heart of the matter.”

– THE LONDON TELEGRAPH Braille

Nora and Torvald Helmer are living their dream life: happily married with children and security. When Nora risks her reputation to save her husband’s life, the consequences test the limits of their love. In an acclaimed new translation

by Bryony Lavery, Ibsen’s powerful, groundbreaking classic about marriage, money, and equality remains as compelling and relevant as ever.

“Melia Bensussen is a great interpreter of classic plays and has the ability to tell intimate family stories that connect with our shared human experience. Plus, she has assembled a sexy group of actors (including Andrea Syglowski from Venus in Fur and Sekou Laidlow as Nora and Torvald) to interpret Ibsen’s iconic play and shake the dust off of a story we think we know.

Is it hot in this theatre or is it just this cast?”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS

Playwright Henrik Ibsen

Adaptor Bryony Lavery

Director Melia Bensussen

NORA, TORVALD & IBSEN’S AUDIENCE THROUGH THE AGES Who is to blame for an unhappy marriage? Some might blame one or the other of the married people. Perhaps both. Others could blame the law that bound them together. Or outdated marital traditions. Or gender inequality. All of these answers have been given in reference to the marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Every interpretation is shaped by who is looking at the marriage and what preconceptions they bring to the table.

shifting the blame towards the other half of the marriage. A review from Fædralandet, another Danish paper, felt it portrayed “marriage as an arrangement which, instead of educating the individuals…corrupts them,” placing blame on the institution itself. This diversity of opinion suggests that what an audience takes away from the marriage of A Doll’s House reflects more on their own values than on the original intention of the playwright.

In 1876, Laura Kieler learned that her husband was suffering from tuberculosis. To save his life, she secretly took out a loan to pay for a rejuvenating trip to Italy, but found herself unable to pay her creditors when she returned. Desperate, Laura forged a check to help with her payments. The bank quickly discovered the counterfeit, and Victor Kieler demanded a separation from his wife, arguing that she was an unfit mother. In shock, Laura suffered a mental breakdown that led to her institutionalization. It was another two years before Victor let his wife see their children again.

This was particularly true for the British female activists who were instrumental to the rise of Ibsenism on the London stage. For them, the problematic marriage was not something to blame, but rather something to celebrate as a marker of progress on the issue of female independence and agency. Their interpretation was deeply influenced by the political climate of the 1890s. Two years prior to the first English language performance of the play, Parliament passed a revised version of the Married Women’s Property Act, which required the law to treat women as distinct entities from their husbands and made them solely responsible for the debt they accrued. Born from the social issues of the late 1800s, this feminist lens shaped both public and scholarly interpretations of A Doll’s House for over a century.

While anyone familiar with A Doll’s House can see the similarities between the Kielers’ marriage and the play, the differences in the stories are almost as striking. Many of the shifts Ibsen made between the true story and his play stem from his own understandings of gender and the law. “There are two kinds of spiritual laws and two kinds of consciences — one for men and one for women,” wrote Ibsen.

“They do not understand each other, but in the practical matters of life women are judged by men’s law.”

Once A Doll’s House premiered in Copenhagen in 1879, thousands of viewers were given the opportunity to reinterpret the marriage for themselves. Like most of Ibsen’s work, A Doll’s House provoked conflicting interpretations. The New York Times found Nora to be a “peculiar, eccentric woman” and believed that nobody could “understand her or sympathize with her,” judging her to be the root of the Helmers’ unhappiness. The Danish Social-Democrat newspaper concluded in its review of the play, “the husband treats his wife as a child he amuses himself with, and so that is what she becomes,”

Nearly 140 years later, has the lens through which we interpret this problematic marriage shifted? Much has changed for married women since the play’s debut, from education, to professional opportunities, and expectations around marital roles. In the US, the definition of marriage itself has changed to include couples of all genders. And yet, the gendered barriers that Nora faces have not entirely disappeared.

While Ibsen’s home country elected its first female prime minister in 1981, the United States has yet to elect its first female president.

Indeed, the past election season exposed a national attitude towards gender that suggests a feminist lens may not yet be outdated. As Bryony Lavery, who adapted A Doll’s House, put it: “We’ve still a very very long way to go in equality of opportunity, power, and respect before this play is going to be a museum exhibit.”

– SARAH SCHNEBLY

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joan marcus

Sekou Laidlow and Andrea Syglowski will appear in the Huntington’s A Doll’s House (2017)

The Lonely Ones by Edvard Munch (1896)

A MODERN MARRIAGE:

DIRECTOR MELIA BENSUSSEN ON THE CONTEMPORARY FLAIR OF A DOLL’S HOUSE

MELIA BENSUSSEN’S PRODUCTIONS AT THE HUNTINGTON HAVE COUNTED BOTH NEW PLAYS — KIRSTEN GREENIDGE’S LUCK OF THE IRISH — AND CLASSICS — CLIFFORD ODETS’ AWAKE AND SING! NOW SHE TAKES ON HENRIK IBSEN’S A DOLL’S HOUSE IN A NEW TRANSLATION

BY BRITISH PLAYWRIGHT BRYONY LAVERY. BEFORE REHEARSALS BEGAN, SHE SPOKE TO DRAMATURG CHARLES HAUGLAND ABOUT THE PRECONCEPTIONS THAT WE BRING TO IBSEN’S WORK AND HOW SHE IMAGINES HER PRODUCTION WILL SURPRISE AUDIENCES.

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harles Haugland (Artistic Programs and Dramaturgy): Producing Director Christopher Wigle had been in conversation with you about a number of titles for your next project at the Huntington, but when this one came up, you really jumped at it as being one of your dream projects. Can you talk about how this play rose to the top of your list?

Melia Bensussen (Director): I assisted on a terrific production of A Doll’s House 30 years ago, and then when I started teaching directing to students, I returned to Ibsen because I thought the structure of the play was both spare and elegant. Every word has weight and import. There’s nothing extraneous and it’s very focused, so it was a very good text to use to teach students how to analyze a text. Every year when I taught it, I started doing more and more research about the play and realized that I had fallen in love with it in the rehearsal room all those many years ago. At some point, students in class started asking me, “When are you going to direct this? You obviously love it so much.” I started to think I should never direct it, because it had lived so long in me, it might become an obsessive endeavor. But when the Huntington proposed the play to me, I knew it was time. It’s just delightful and kind of terrifying.

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CH: Can you talk about what was important to you in terms of how the casting would shape the material?

MB: Traditionally in the US, Ibsen is cast with much older actors.

But A Doll’s House is about a young marriage: they’ve been married eight years, and she went straight from her father’s house to her husband’s house. She was a popular girl in school, and he’s just had his first big promotion. Everything in the text points out their youth.

It puts her, really, in her late 20s and him at the most at early 30s.

That really was an organizing principle for me, because there are connections: the character of Mrs. Linde went to school with Nora, and Krogstad went to school with Torvald. This group of people trying to make their way in the world in their 20s and early 30s was a very moving story to me. The decisions you make at those ages have huge repercussions.

Also, the adaptation that the Huntington has chosen is so great, and has never been professionally produced in the US. It excited me in terms of how immediate and modern the language is. So during the audition process, I was looking for actors who really had a passion for language and an ability to be charismatic and present on a stage.

I wanted everyone to have a kind of sharpness and wit, and to find

“ Some people may find this surprising — but I think Ibsen’s plays are very sexy. He’s really capturing how human intimacy and how sexuality shapes relationships.”

– MELIA BENSUSSEN

actors who brought an aspect of sensuality to all the roles. Some people will find this most surprising — but I think Ibsen’s plays are very sexy. He’s really capturing how human intimacy and how sexuality shapes relationships.

CH: Art lovers may notice that the couple in the poster for the production is inspired by an Edvard Munch painting, which has been one of your visual touchstones. Why Munch?

MB: Part of what I really wanted to do was shake the play out of any feeling that it was distant to us or far away. Munch was a contemporary of Ibsen’s, though he outlived him. They were compatriots, both from Norway, and Munch designed the set for the first production of Ghosts. But we’ve been inspired by Munch’s later work from the 1920s which creates emotion through color.

He’s very daring. He lets go of naturalism and really paints canvases that speak to the emotional reality more than the literal one. That’s what I’m hoping this production of the play does — captures the boldness of the play through color and through movement.

CH: How far away are we today from 19th century ideas about marriage? What does the play have to say to a contemporary audience?

MB: Ibsen asks us all to consider how you remain an individual while living in a larger society. This is a theme through much of his work. How do you stay true to yourself? Marriage becomes a microcosm of this. When the play premiered, he was awarded a prize by a women’s league for his “feminist” sentiments. He responded that he considered himself more a humanist. It’s not to say that he wasn’t a feminist, in many ways he was — but he is examining how challenging it is to live in any intimate relationship and hold on to your genuine self. I think that speaks to men and to women. Torvald, the husband in the play, has been viewed as a villain in many productions, but I believe he is an equal protagonist to Nora in the play. They each have fantasies about what the other will do and who the other person is. In many relationships, it is a challenge to get past the fantasies of what we think the relationship is versus what the reality of it is.

SEE PAGE 2 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

CURTAIN CALLS NAME Sekou Laidlow ROLE Torvald WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TORVALD? To investigate life beyond the scope of your upbringing and comfort because the happiness you are seeking is somewhere at the edge of the cliff.

WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP? 1. When you get really angry about something don’t speak what’s on your mind. 75% of the time “time” will inform a better response. 2.

Anticipate as much as possible what your partner needs and do it before they ask.

NAME Lizzie Milanovich ROLE Helene WHAT MAKES THIS ADAPTATION DIFFERENT? I love how straightforward it is. It maintains Ibsen’s thrilling storytelling while still moving it elegantly into a vernacular for a modern audience. It’s a little rough and raw and I like that.

WHAT MAKES A SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIP? I’m all about transparency. If you can’t wear your emotions on your sleeve AND trust a person with your Netflix password, what’s the point?

NAME Andrea Syglowski ROLE Nora LAST SEEN AT THE HUNTINGTON IN Venus in Fur (2014) WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM A DOLL’S HOUSE IN 2017? What I’ve learned from our world recently is that women can be held to a different standard.

What we can learn from A Doll’s House, which premiered in 1879, is that we’re still striving to understand female identity.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE NORA? Ah, Nora Nora Nora…

I don’t need to give her advice. I think she will discover some of what I would tell her over the course of the play. At least I hope so.

NAME Jeremy Webb ROLE Dr. Rank LAST SEEN AT THE HUNTINGTON IN Private Lives (2012) WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM A DOLL’S HOUSE IN 2017? We learn that there doesn’t need to be a big bad villain in the piece to make potent drama. This play is the anti-Twitter play, it’s a play that requires absorption and reflection on the part of its audience.

WHICH THEME IN A DOLL’S HOUSE RESONATES WITH YOU THE MOST? We want that which we cannot have. My character, Dr. Rank, wants more life, he wants more from Torvald, and much much more than Nora can ever give him.

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“Thrilling comic drama.

Dazzlingly written.”

– THE NEW YORK TIMES

Lincoln and Booth are brothers: best friends and bigger rivals.

Lincoln, a former 3-card monte hustler, works as a Lincoln impersonator in a shooting gallery; Booth is an aspiring grifter. He tempts his brother to get back in the game, but the consequences could be deadly.

Suzan-Lori Parks made history as the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama with this darkly comic, deeply theatrical fable about family wounds and healing bonds.

“Billy Porter directed a sizzling remount of George C. Wolfe’s The Colored Museum in 2015, and I am delighted to welcome him back for a major revival of a play that electrified Broadway audiences 5 years ago: Topdog/ Underdog. Exploring Suzan-Lori Parks’ dynamic Pulitzer Prize-winning play in 2017 will be extremely timely and impactful. Billy, a triple threat Tony Award winner, has proven that he is a man of boundless talent. Bringing these two brilliant American theatre artists together is a dream.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks

Director Billy Porter

THE WATCHER & THE WATCHED IN THE PLAYS OF SUZAN-LORI PARKS “Watch me close,” Booth intones as lights come up on Topdog/ Underdog. He is alone, throwing cards on a makeshift table, and practicing his 3-card monte patter. “Watch me close now.”

The opening lines of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning play usher the audience into the performative world of the playwright.

“There is a lot of watching,” notes Parks of her work. “I think that’s what theatre is all about. It’s about one person looking at somebody else.” Throughout the sensational career that has earned her two Obie Awards, a screenwriting gig with Spike Lee, and a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Parks returns again and again to the themes of watching and performance.

While Parks tackles the consequences of voyeurism in Venus, Topdog/ Underdog offers a different take on the relationship between the audience and the performer. Lincoln, the older brother and topdog of the play, spends his days dressed in white-face, reenacting the death of Abraham Lincoln as carnival attendees pay to shoot at him. Financially dependent on the act, Lincoln fears that his employers will fire him and enlists his brother to help him practice dying more effectively. With this character, Parks allows her audience to peek behind the curtain and witness both the effort of creating a performance and the stakes of making the performance good.

Parks first caught the eye of the theatre world with her unique style and a dramatic sensibility that disregards the confines of traditional theatre. Drawing on archetype, stereotype, and historical figures, Parks builds symbolically rich characters, from Black Man with Watermelon in her Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World to the Foundling Father of The America Play. “I like Greek myth, so I like larger than life characters,” Parks explains of the figures she creates. With an ear for rhythm and the poetry of dialogue, Parks rounds out her heightened characters with lyrical, dramatic speech. In many cases, the theatricality of the characters stems from their role as a performer within the world of the play.

While the characters of Venus and Lincoln might appear vulnerable in their roles as performers, Parks also challenges the idea that the audience holds power over the artist in Topdog/Underdog. Both the sardonically named brothers practice and perform the art of the 3-card monte hustle. In the traditional con, a dealer proficient in sleight of hand performs the game with help from his shills, luring a mark into betting all his money. “Watch me close now,” belongs to the verbal script the dealer uses to draw in his audience, tricking them into believing they have the power to win.

By writing performers into her stories, Parks is able to investigate the nuances of the relationship between the performer and the audience in each of her plays. In Venus, her 10th play, Parks confronts the reality that performance can have a negative and dehumanizing effect. The play follows the story of the Hottentot Venus, a young girl from South Africa exploited for her “exotic” body on British and French stages.

Near the beginning of the play, a chorus chants, “Lookie-Lookie-Lookat-her,” and a single chorus member adds, “A spectacle, a debacle, a priceless prize.” The chorus, eager to catch a glimpse of Venus’ spectacular body, sees her not as a human being, but as a prize.

Showing how the sideshow business objectifies Venus allows Parks to critique this aspect of performance within her own theatrical world.

Perhaps the relationship between the 3-card dealer and his mark is not so different from Parks’ own relationship to her audience. Parks captures the sounds of speech by using phonetic spellings within her dialogue, guiding her actors into specific and realistic performances.

Yet she also laces her characters with allegorical significance, lending a powerful context to each of the figures onstage. In many ways, Parks holds the trump card, the power behind the characters she reveals to her audiences. As she writes in her satirical essay “New Black Math:” “A black play ain’t playing your game, it might look like it’s playing your game, but if it look like that to you, then that means you been played, honey.”

– SARAH SCHNEBLY

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INTERCONNECTING IMAGES:

SYMBOLISM IN TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

“Entering the mythical, multilayered world of playwright Suzan-Lori Parks is a bit like poring over the pages of Joyce for the first time,” wrote The Boston Globe arts reporter Patti Hartigan. “Each word resonates a thousand different ways; images interconnect in the most astonishing — and perplexing — combinations. She creates a world of curious contradictions.” Rich and sometimes vibrantly chaotic, Suzan-Lori Parks plays are often anchored by just a few choice images. While these visual markers create a sense of cohesion within the play, the use of highly resonant symbols allows for a multiplicity of interpretations — for both the characters and the audience.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S HAT

3-CARD MONTE

“ What is it about Lincoln that hooks me first?

It’s his costume….It’s his costume: the hat, the beard, the height.”

“ Through the course of the play, this young man remembers who he is, and what his calling is, and he is called to throw the cards again.”

– SUZAN-LORI PARKS

“ Fake beard. Top hat. Don’t make me into no Lincoln. I was Lincoln on my own before any of that.”

– LINCOLN, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

– SUZAN-LORI PARKS

“ Aint nothing lucky about cards. Cards aint luck. Cards is work. Cards is skill. Aint never nothing lucky about cards.”

– LINCOLN, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

THE GUN

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

“ You ever wonder if someones gonna come in there with a real gun? A real gun with real slugs? Someone with uh axe tuh grind or something?”

“ [Topdog/underdog] is a psychological term for the dominant side and the submissive side…. I just like the words. Topdog underdog!

Sounds like two guys to me! They switch constantly. They’re always trying to be the dominant person in the room. They always ask, ‘Who the man? Who the man? I’m the man now! No, I’m the man!’”

– BOOTH, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

“ Thuh gun is always cold. Winter or summer thuh gun is always cold. And when the gun touches me he can feel that Im warm and he knows Im alive. And if Im alive then he can shoot me dead. And for a minute, with him hanging back there behind me, its real. Me looking at him upside down and him looking at me looking like Lincoln. Then he shoots.”

– LINCOLN, TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

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– SUZAN-LORI PARKS

“ [There is] a point in the play where the two brothers stop being brothers and turn into male animals. That’s when deadly, awful things can happen.”

– GEORGE C. WOLFE, DIRECTOR OF ORIGINAL PRODUCTION

CURTAIN CALLS NAME Tyrone Mitchell Henderson

NAME Matthew J. Harris

ROLE Lincoln

ROLE Booth

LAST SEEN AT THE HUNTINGTON IN Blues for an Alabama Sky (1997)

LAST SEEN AT THE HUNTINGTON IN Milk Like Sugar (2016)

WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT IN 2017?

Lincoln is named after a president and Booth is named after said president’s assassin. In past presidential assassinations/attempts, the assassin becomes intrinsically entwined with the man who led our country. Today we know the names of those who have become victims of police-related gun violence. Notoriety has become synonymous with the names of those we speak aloud, due to social injustice.

WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT IN 2017?

I think this play is important because our greatest rivalry will always be with our self. When we feel great on our own we don’t need validation from other people, but social media keeps encouraging us to record every moment of our lives just to see how many people like it. As we move forward in 2017, I think we need more and more reminders to nurture our relationship with the person in the mirror rather than the digital screen.

HOW CAN HISTORY HELP US BETTER UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER? I think how we learn our history is important. In elementary school we learn a very narrow idea of American history and possibly less of global history. We need to communicate with each other about where we come from and what we’ve experienced. Empathy and understanding go hand in hand. Our elders are crucial. Instead of looking at them as Grandpa sitting in the corner, we need to engage with them and get the real-deal. As Americans we need to see teachers that look like us, sound different than us, and have faith unlike ours.

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Phylicia Rashad and Tyrone Mitchell Henderon in Blues for an Alabama Sky (1997)

HOW CAN HISTORY HELP US BETTER UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER? I think it’s easier to learn from short term history than long term history. For example, look at people who have been happy for a long time and see what the trends are. Kind of like what Michael Moore did (but with countries) in his movie Where to Invade Next. Or, even our own personal history. I know I’ve been happiest in my life when I have been consistent with meditation and exercise, so it’s only logical to keep that up if I want to maintain happiness.

Jasmine Carmichael and Matthew J. Harris in Milk Like Sugar (2016)

billy porter: nile hawver

/ nile scott shots

SEE PAGE 2 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

FREE COMMUNITY EVENT TOPDOG/ UNDERDOG AT THE STRAND Join Tony Award winner Billy Porter (Kinky Boots, director of Topdog/Underdog) for a discussion about this Pulitzer Prize-winning play and its powerful resonance for contemporary audiences, and get a sneak preview of the production.

FREE and open to the public.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24 AT 7:30PM Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Road, Boston RSVP: huntingtontheatre.org/strand HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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“A vibrant culture-clash drama simmering with humor.”

– ASSOCIATED PRESS

Brilliant novelist Zarina is writing about women and Islam when she meets Eli, a young convert who bridges the gap between her modern life and traditional heritage. When her conservative father discovers her controversial manuscript, they all must confront the beliefs that define them. A fierce and funny new play about relationships, religion, and the contradictions that make us who we are, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the blockbuster hit Disgraced.

“After last season’s provocative hit Disgraced, I am looking forward to having another story by Ayad Ahktar brought to life on our stage. The Who & the What provides a unique, vitally important look into the Muslim American experience through the lens of faith and family.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS

Playwright Ayad Akhtar

Director M. Bevin O’Gara

AYAD AKHTAR: AN AMERICAN WRITER For those familiar with Ayad Akhtar’s play Disgraced, his play The Who & the What, a bittersweet drama about family, love, and the Prophet Muhammad, will come as a surprise. Disgraced became a cultural touchstone in a way that very few plays do. From its world premiere in Chicago in 2012 to its Broadway debut in 2015 and subsequent productions across the country in 2016, including at the Huntington — the ground underneath the play shifted. Speaking with The Los Angeles Times, Akhtar explained, “I wrote the play in 2010 and I didn’t think that that kind of degradation of rhetoric could exist anywhere but the theatre … But now we’re living in a world where what’s happening on stage is not all that controversial.” It takes a unique openness and thoughtfulness to write plays that both ride the wave of the zeitgeist and center on the intimate life of Americans. How Ayad Akhtar came to possess that generous perspective and to write several trenchant, diverse American plays is a long and surprising story.

and as life started to beat me up a bit — I began to understand that it wasn’t interesting for the art to be about me. It suddenly became much more interesting to be observing others and to see what’s happening in the world; for art to be this creative engagement. …I actually don’t think I came to be an artist until I understood that.” Around 2008, he began to confront his conflicted feelings about his identity: “It was a slow process of coming to understand how much I wanted to be European, how much I wanted to be white, how much I wanted to be things that I wasn’t. When I started to understand that, I had enough presence of mind to not do anything about it, but just observe. And as I observed, I metaphorically looked over my shoulder at what I had been running from, and it led to an explosion of creativity. I had been writing stories for a long time, so I think this inspiration manifested itself with craft built in — narratives, characters, textures, dramatic situations, and circumstances.”

Akhtar’s parents came to the United States from Pakistan in the late 1960s; both were doctors and both hoped he would be a doctor, too. His mother told young Ayad that when a teacher asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, he should reply, “A neurologist.”

That changed at 15 when he had a literature teacher who inspired him to become a writer. He spent his junior and senior years under her tutelage “reading everything under the sun,” including “a lot of very obscure modernist writers.” He left his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Brown University in 1988 with the goal of becoming a writer. There, he was drawn into the theatre scene after a friend cast him in a student production of David Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago. He loved it. After graduation, he left for Italy to work with renowned theatre director and theorist Jerzy Grotowski, eventually becoming his assistant. After returning to the US, he taught acting with avant-garde director Andre Gregory, and by 2002 had earned a MFA in film directing at Columbia University. Striking an ironic note about his long apprenticeship, Akhtar once remarked, “I had this weird, avant-garde training that was all about process. And now I write these overtly audience oriented, well-made, traditional plays.

It’s really weird how life is.”

The result of this slow process was indeed a stunning burst of creativity revolving around reconciling contemporary life with traditional Islamic culture — looking at what it means to be Muslim in America. Over the course of eight months in 2010, Akhtar wrote drafts of three plays: Disgraced, Invisible Hand, and The Who & the What. It was also during this time that he wrote the first draft of his novel American Dervish. Akhtar explains, “All together these stories are a picture; but no one of them is the picture. I would finish one, and I would go into the other. One work is a contradiction of the next, and is a response to the next, or takes the themes of the previous and develops them in a different way.”

All this time, Akhtar continued writing and growing. “There is an evolution that leads to the acquisition of craft and to the opening of oneself to the world. I think the big crossing for me was understanding.

As a young man, I thought of art as self-expression… As I got older —

Akhtar currently occupies a complicated space in the American theatre. As a first generation American he is pressured to represent his community in a positive light, but as an artist he is “interested in telling good stories and interesting audiences.” The Los Angeles Times writer Jeffrey Fleishman posited, “Akhtar’s work … examine[s], much like James Baldwin did for African Americans, the experiences, betrayals, and hopes of Muslim immigrants. He does not pretend to be the voice of such a diverse group… but he is shrewd and compassionate and understands the incendiary power of language both on and offstage.” Whether it’s the tragic downfall of a selfhating man or the bittersweet story of a woman and her father, Ayad Akhtar contains multitudes.

– LISA TIMMEL HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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Drawing of a women wearing a hijab inspired by Rosie the Riveter

Ms. Marvel comic book cover

Symbol of Islamic Feminism, that uses the Crescent Moon and Star, the symbol of Islam, with the Female symbol

MAWISH: What’s the book about? …

ZARINA: Gender politics.

MAHWISH: Hello? English?

ZARINA: WOMEN AND ISLAM MAHWISH: Like what, bad stuff?

ZARINA: Not only.

MAHWISH: Well, I hope not. Cause everyone’s always making a big deal about women in Islam. We’re just fine.

The sisters in The Who & the What, Mahwish and Zarina are as different as any two sisters in literature — like Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, except millennial and Muslim. Mahwish’s anxiety about Zarina’s book topic is rooted in the fact that many people have opinions about “Women and Islam,” perhaps especially those who are neither female nor Muslim. Below, we have collected quotes from prominent Islamic scholars on the topics of Islamic feminism and the tensions between the absolute spiritual equality between men and women in Islam and the social and political realities of gender inequality worldwide. “ What we are seeing today is a claim by women to their right to God and the historical tradition. This takes various forms. There are women who are active within the fundamentalist movements and those who work on a reinterpretation of the Muslim heritage as a necessary ingredient to our modernity. Our liberation will come through a rereading of our past and a reappropriation of all that has structured our civilization.”

– FATIMA MERNISSI (MOROCCAN FEMINIST WRITER AND SOCIOLOGIST, 1940-2015)

“What is Islamic feminism? Let me offer a concise definition: it is a feminist discourse and practice articulated within an Islamic paradigm.

Islamic feminism, which derives its understanding and mandate from the Qur’an, seeks rights and justice for women, and for men, in the totality of their existence. Islamic feminism is both highly contested and firmly embraced. There has been much misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and mischief concerning Islamic feminism. This new feminism has given rise simultaneously to hopes and to fears.”

– MARGOT BADRAN (AMERICAN HISTORIAN)

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“ If we are Muslims, whether or not believing or practicing, Islam is part of our identity, our way of life, a culture, a system of values. We may be at ease with it or find our position painful and ambiguous.”

– ZIKA MIR-HOSSEINI (IRANIAN-BORN LEGAL ANTHROPOLOGIST)

“ The real challenge for Muslim feminists today is not simply to prove Islam’s compatibility with women’s rights, but how to empower and include women in the political apparatus of the postcolonial Islamic state, which remains for the time being (with few exceptions) inaccessible to the Muslim masses, male and female alike.”

– LAMIA BEN YOUSSEF ZAYZAFOON (AUTHOR, TUNISIA)

“ My resistance to feminism stems not from its central premise that women and men are equally human and deserving of equal rights, but from two facts: First, I dispute the master narrative of feminism that claims this insight as a peculiarly feminist discovery.

In my own case, for instance, I came to the realization that women and men are equal as a result not of reading feminist texts, but of reading the Qur’an. In fact, it wasn’t until much later in my life that I even encountered feminist texts. But I do owe an intellectual debt to feminist theorizing about patriarchy and for having given me the conceptual tools to recognize it and talk about it. Second, it seems to me that, for the most part, feminism has secularized the idea of liberation itself such that feminists often assume that to be a believer is already to be bound by the chains of a false consciousness that precludes liberation.”

– ASMA BARLAS (PAKISTANI, SOUGHT POLITICAL ASYLUM IN THE US, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, ITHACA COLLEGE)

CURTAIN CALLS NAME Joseph Marrella ROLE Eli, a young convert to Islam, now an imam WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW? Our society is filled with misconceptions about what it is to be Muslim in America right now. This play gets beyond the stereotypes and buzzwords to show us the complexities of a culture’s heritage in the modern world. t. charles erickson

Shirine Babb, Rajesh Bose, Nicole Lowrance, and Benim Foster in the Huntington’s hit production of Disgraced (2016)

“ With respect to gender, I think that the Qur’an contains two moments, which can support two opposing perspectives. As a believer who sticks to equality and justice above all, I see these values to be the core of Islam. There are clear moments in the Qur’an that support this vision. But objectively, I can also see that the Qur’an contains an androcentric language, and, therefore, cannot adhere to an easy, naïve discourse that declares Islam or the Qur’an as feminist, or that gender equality is normative in the Qur’an. … Emphasizing the spiritual gender equality of the Qur’an should not lead to avoidance of dealing with its patriarchal discourse.”

– RAJA RHOUNI (MOROCCAN ACADEMIC)

“ As we engage more deeply with the intellectual heritage of centuries of Muslim thinkers, we must neither romanticize the tradition as it stands nor be blindly optimistic about prospects for transformation within it. Most importantly, as we expose reductive and misogynist understandings of the Qur’an … [w]e must accept responsibility for making particular choices — and must acknowledge that they are interpretative choices, not merely straightforward reiterations of ‘what Islam says.’”

– KECIA ALI (AMERICAN SCHOLAR, BOSTON UNIVERSITY)

“ Delving into memory, slipping into the past, is an activity that these days is closely supervised, especially for Muslim women. A passport of such a journey is not always a right. The acts of recollecting, like acts of black magic, really only has an effect on the present. And this works through a strict manipulation of its opposite — the time of the dead, of those who are absent, the silent time that could tell us everything. The sleeping past can animate the present. That is the virtue of memory. Magicians know it, and the imams know it too.”

– FATIMA MERNISSI (MOROCCAN FEMINIST WRITER AND SOCIOLOGIST, 1940-2015)

SEE PAGE 2 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

DESCRIBE YOUR WORST FIRST DATE. I am a bad candidate for this question, as I married the first girl I ever dated. My wife Mandy and I started dating in high school and have been married for eight years. We have a one-year-old little girl named Lily.

NAME Turna Mete ROLE Mahwish, sister of Zarina HAVE YOUR PARENTS EVER EMBARRASSED YOU? When I was in high school and desperate to fit in, I introduced a new friend to my dad.

Her name was Afton, but he said “nice to meet you **,” and used a slang curse word none the wiser. Mortified.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? Like Mahwish, I look to my sister for advice and guidance. She’s helped me through the little and big things! I was always close with my father, who being raised in a different culture sometimes drove me crazy, but he always wanted the best for his children.

NAME Ted Sod ROLE Afzal, father of Zarina and Mahwish WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW? There seems to be a lot of misinformation about the Muslim community and Muslim Americans, specifically right now. Any play that can dispel some of that misinformation is worthwhile doing.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I am completely unlike my character in so many ways — it is really terrifying — and one of the reasons I accepted the role.

I can be very blunt, however, so I do share that quality with Afzal.

NAME Aila Peck ROLE Zarina, sister of Mahwish WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT RIGHT NOW? My work as an artist has been largely focused on the demystification of the immigrant experience. This play not only humanizes the Muslim experience, it deconstructs the assumptions of what an American experience looks like.

HOW ARE YOU LIKE OR NOT LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I share Zarina’s passion, drive, and conviction. We both have found definition in the grey space of the American experience. She is an authentic artist: an individual who refuses to allow fear or challenges to stand in the way of illumination.

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E everyone in this laugh-out-loud comedy overflowing with massive amounts of heart!”

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“There’s something for

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When cantankerous Abby is forced to share her room in assisted living with endlessly chipper Marilyn, the two women make a seemingly harmless bet that quickly escalates into a dangerous and hilarious game of oneupmanship, revealing hidden truths that neither wants exposed. A deliciously inappropriate new comedy from Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire (Good People).

“Great fun and

genuinely moving.”

– TIME OUT NEW YORK

“With Ripcord, we welcome back two comedic geniuses to the Huntington: Boston-native and author of the smashhit Good People, David Lindsay-Abaire, and Jessica Stone, lauded actress and director of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. With this kind of genius at work, it is no surprise that this play is laugh-out-loud funny with a truly moving underbelly. It’s The Odd Couple with old women, nursing home shenanigans, and skydiving — what’s not to love?”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire

Director Jessica Stone

COMEDY WITH A THROBBING HEART: DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE ON RIPCORD

Abby has always had a quiet room to herself at the Bristol Place Senior Living Facility in David Lindsay-Abaire’s new play Ripcord.

If a new roommate was assigned to the second bed, Abby — cantankerous and private — quickly got them out. That is until enthusiastic, optimistic Marilyn arrives. Abby pleads with an orderly, “If I have to have someone in here, why can’t it be someone quiet?

What about that woman without the voicebox? She seems nice.”

But Abby finds that if she is going to get Marilyn out, she’ll have to do it herself, and the high-stakes bet that the two women make leads quickly to an all-out war of comic proportions.

Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire began the play as a challenge to himself. Huntington audiences know him best for his Southie-set comic drama Good People and his Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole — but before those more serious plays, Lindsay-Abaire was known for writing absurdist comedies. His landmark 1999 hit Fuddy Meers takes the audience on a wild ride through one day in the life of an amnesiac abducted by a mysterious stranger. Lindsay-Abaire wrote a string of hits including Wonder of the World and Kimberly Akimbo.

“I started to wonder if I can combine that spirit of those old comedic plays with, hopefully, the craft that I’ve garnered over the years,” Lindsay-Abaire says. “Once the play started to take shape, I realized that I was also writing something that was harkening back to some of the first plays that I had seen and loved as a kid: I’m Not Rappaport, Lettice and Lovage, or The Gin Game, comedies about two characters of a certain age really going at it with each other.

Those plays are really funny, but what I loved about them was that they were incredibly human. They had big throbbing hearts in the middle of them.”

As Lindsay-Abaire notes, the play is far from a simple comedy; the bet the women make is that Abby will make Marilyn feel anger before Marilyn can make Abby feel fear — and the laughs are grounded in that awareness. About director Jessica Stone, LindsayAbaire says, “Jessica understood immediately that this is ultimately

not a play about jokes, it’s a play about two women at a crossroads who land in this place (which can often end up being the last stop for people at their age), and who choose to grab life and live it fully. Maybe even more fully than they did when they were younger, knowing how fleeting time is.”

That combination of light and dark, hope and fear is a touchstone in all of Lindsay-Abaire’s work, an attribute he credits to growing up in South Boston. “I know that I talked about this when the Huntington produced Good People, because it was set there, but I just think about growing up and how awful life could be for my friends and family. And yet, in order to get through these awful things, humor was used as a coping mechanism. No matter how terrible things got, there was always humor to fall back on. And also, sometimes things were so awful that they were funny, unfortunately. There was always this sort of interconnectedness between humor and tragedy because that’s just what life was. If I’m gonna write a comedy, it shouldn’t be a surprise that, underneath it, there’s pain and hurt and desperate need.”

Ripcord is also wildly theatrical, shot through with a verve and penchant for creating unbelievable moments onstage that is common in Lindsay-Abaire’s early comedies. Lindsay-Abaire embraces that collaborators will find the solutions to the incredible ideas he dreams up. “I try not to edit myself, because the collaborators that I have worked with in my career have solved any difficult challenge I presented to them,” he says. “And it’s theatre!

So, you can have them leaping out of airplanes and skydiving. You put it in there and it gets solved, somehow. In my experience, the simpler the solution, the better it works.”

Lindsay-Abaire is also already hard at work on his next play, a return to the world of a recent hit. “It’s actually a prequel to Good People set in 1978,” he says “So I’m going back to the neighborhood and revisiting some of the characters from Good People. I don’t want to say too much about it, because I might change my mind.”

– CHARLES HAUGLAND HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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Jessica Stone in Betty’s Summer Vacation (2001)

Jessica Stone and Christopher Fitzgerald in Springtime for Henry (2003)

JESSICA STONE ON STAGING COMEDY: DIRECTING RIPCORD

JESSICA STONE BUILT HER CAREER AS AN ACTOR, APPEARING AT THE HUNTINGTON IN BETTY’S SUMMER VACATION, SPRINGTIME FOR HENRY, AND SHE LOVES ME AND ON BROADWAY IN REVIVALS OF THE ODD COUPLE, ANYTHING GOES, AND BUTLEY, AMONG OTHERS. IN RECENT YEARS, SHE HAS BEEN FOCUSED AS WELL ON DIRECTING, WITH CREDITS INCLUDING A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM AND THE LAST OF THE RED HOT LOVERS FOR WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL. BEFORE REHEARSALS BEGAN ON RIPCORD, SHE SPOKE TO DRAMATURG CHARLES HAUGLAND ABOUT THE PROCESS OF ASSEMBLING THIS UPCOMING PRODUCTION.

Jessica Stone and Troy Britton Johnson in She Loves Me (2008)

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harles Haugland (Artistic Programs and Dramaturgy): Can we start with what attracted you to working on Ripcord?

Jessica Stone (Director): I’ve always been a fan of David LindsayAbaire’s plays, and this particular play is really interesting because it harkens back to his earlier work. There’s an absurdist comedic sensibility that cloaks themes of real pain and loss and need.

That’s actually my favorite kind of storytelling. Humor is often misunderstood as just a lark or diversion when, in fact, it’s a tool to explore and reveal stories of very real stakes and deep emotion.

CH: Both as an actress and a director, you’ve primarily worked in comedy, but you’ve worked in a thousand different kinds of it.

Has your relationship to the art of comedy evolved or changed over your career?

JS: I don’t know that my relationship to it has evolved as much as deepened. We use humor in many different ways for many different reasons. It can be escapist; it can be political; it can be satirical.

The work that I tend to be attracted to, the comedy is used like a gateway drug. It is used to explore our darker impulses safely.

CH: We’re speaking almost six months before rehearsals will begin.

Where are you in the process right now?

JS: I am actually prepping for three plays right now — one before and one after Ripcord — so it is both very early, and I am incredibly behind. I’m just beginning to wrap my brain around casting, and I’m meeting Tobin Ost (our set designer) in a few days to tackle our set. It is challenging because, while the setting is fairly realistic (a retirement home), there are great, absurd twists in the story.

I want reality to feel absurd and I want the absurdity to feel real so...

Good luck, Tobin.

CH: What guides you most at this early stage in making your choices?

JS: Set design and music are the cornerstones for me in the early days (and I have yet to brainstorm with our genius composer Mark Bennett). This stage is for creating the physical world from which our play can emerge. These are the days that help me clarify the tone of the piece, and it is difficult because it is not necessarily tangible in this phase. Once we’re in a rehearsal room and tackling

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PRACTICAL JOKES IN HISTORY The escalating prank war between Ripcord’s Abby Binder and Marilyn Dunne appears shocking when set in their assisted living home, but practical jokes enjoyed a long history before these headstrong women came along.

ANCIENT DINNER PARTY PRANK Roman Emperor Elagabalus, who ruled from 218-222 AD, is believed to be the first to ever use a whoopee cushion when he fooled his guests into sitting on leather air-pillows. jim cox

Tyler Lansing Weaks, Haneefah Wood, and Candy Buckley in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2015)

tone with the actors, you have immediate results. When you are working on something with actors, we all feel it when we hit the sweet spot. It is inarguable. Working on our physical world in the early days feels a little more theoretical.

CH: Obviously you were here recently with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, but a lot of your history with the Huntington has been as an actor. Can you talk about how your work as an actor influences you as a director?

JS: As an actor, I was always drawn to larger elements of the story that were not my business. So, the answer might be: I should have been pursuing this career as a director much earlier. I may have been a director all along. I do find that thanks to the 20 plus years as an actor, for the most part I understand the bio-rhythm of a rehearsal and of a rehearsal process. I can also find different ways in to communicate with an actor, because I have been on that side of it.

The fun for me now, as someone who has been an actor for so many years, is collaborating with all of the designers which is something you never get to do as an actor — thinking about character through clothing, and emotion through music and sound. The world of lighting still mystifies me, and I am filled with awe at how lighting designers capture narrative and mood through light. That is super fun for me.

MYSTERIOUS DELIVERIES In 1810, Theodore Hook pranked a Mrs. Tottenham by ordering thousands of deliveries to her house on the same day, causing a massive traffic jam on her street in London. Among the goods delivered were 2,500 raspberry tarts, 12 pianos, a chamber organ, and a coffin for the lady of the house.

ELECTROSHOCK FOOLERY In the late 1870s, the “Pulling Machine” became popular in New York saloons. Patrons were challenged to test their strength by pulling on two metal rings — only to receive a large electrical shock when they touched the rings. This particular prank resulted in a number of lawsuits from victims who sustained injuries.

MIT DOME PLAYS DRESS UP The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has a history of logistically impressive practical jokes. In addition to playing host to myriad strange objects, the iconic MIT dome has, at various times, masqueraded as the Great Pumpkin, R2D2, and sheet music from Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” — a popular song for internet pranking.

– SARAH SCHNEBLY

CH: Former Huntington artistic director Nicholas Martin helmed all three shows for which you appeared at the theatre as an actor [She Loves Me, Springtime for Henry, and Betty’s Summer Vacation]. Do you still feel his influence on your work?

JS: One hundred percent. I was in plays that he directed, I also assisted him on a few things as a director, but first and foremost, he was a dear, dear friend. In some respects he was a mentor — but he was really a friend. We travelled all over Europe together and spent many a night in our jammies watching television and gossiping and eating ice cream. On almost a daily basis, I think about him and how he would have handled something, how he would have hated something, how he would have loved something, how he would completely agree on my take on this particular topic — or not. I check in with him more often than one would think.

He is a big, big part of who I am as an artist right now in my life.

Just days before the summer 1999 opening of The Phantom Menace, MIT’s great dome was transformed into the likeness of R2-D2.

SEE PAGE 2 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

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A NEW ERA OF HUNTINGTON BOARD LEADERSHIP THE HUNTINGTON THEATRE COMPANY BOARD OF TRUSTEES RECENTLY ELECTED DAVID R. EPSTEIN TO THE ROLE OF CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES, SHARON MALT TO PRESIDENT, CAROL B. LANGER TO TREASURER, AND SHERRYL COHEN TO CLERK. The new officers, all longtime Huntington Trustees, assumed their leadership roles at the September 19, 2016 annual meeting of the Huntington’s Board. Mr. Epstein succeeds Carol G. Deane, Chairman since 2010, and Ms. Malt succeeds Mitchell J. Roberts, President since 2010. Ms. Langer succeeds Joseph V. Roller II as Treasurer, and Ms. Cohen succeeds Linda Waintrup as Clerk.

David R. Epstein has served as a Trustee of the Huntington since 2002 and is the president and founding partner of The Abbey Group, a Boston-based real estate development company, as well as a managing partner of the Boston Celtics. He is a former chairman of the board and current trustee for the Stratton Mountain School, a school to educate aspiring Olympic winter athletes. Mr. Epstein and his wife Betsy Banks Epstein, also a Huntington Trustee, co-chaired the Huntington’s 2004 Spotlight Spectacular gala fundraiser. They reside in Boston and have three grown children and seven grandchildren.

Sharon Malt joined the Huntington Board in 2005. For the past 20 years, Ms. Malt has served as president of the boards of several non-profit organizations including the Parents’ Association of Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School; Hill House; The Esplanade Association; Beacon Hill Seminars; and Beacon Hill Garden Club.

She works in other areas of board development, governance, and advocacy for MSPCA/Angell, Conservation Law Foundation, Charles River Watershed Association, Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras, and the US Fund for UNICEF. She is currently serving as vice chair of the Conservation Committee of the Garden Club of America.

Ms. Malt and her husband, Brad Malt, reside on Beacon Hill and have two grown sons.

Mr. Epstein’s early involvement with the Huntington began in 2000 when his son Aron was cast as an understudy in artistic director Nicholas Martin’s first production at the Huntington — Dead End. “It was a way to enhance my life and also a way to broaden my connection with my son. Furthermore, I saw how important theatre is to young people through Aron’s involvement in high school theatre, and the Huntington’s education programs resonated very strongly with me.”

“The Huntington’s work really springs from Boston and not from somewhere else. I think because of that, the theatre is just a part of our lives here and I enjoy that,” says Malt. “The Huntington is not copying anybody else. They are doing their own thing. The work is varied, it’s diverse, and it appeals to a wide range of people that reflect the demographics of the city.”

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Huntington Board President Sharon Malt and Board Chairman David Epstein

Mr. Epstein and Ms. Malt step into their new leadership roles at a pivotal time in the Huntington’s history, as we prepare to fully renovate our theatre on the Avenue of the Arts and expand our public spaces to better serve audiences and the Greater Boston community. “I’ve seen first-hand what the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA did for the Huntington and the myriad of other theatre companies that utilize that facility,” says Epstein. “The Calderwood Pavilion is a great resource to the South End and all of Boston.

Now we have an opportunity to do the same thing on the Avenue of the Arts.”

On the Huntington’s future, Epstein says, “I’m looking forward to working with the new leadership team and the Huntington’s staff members, and I really feel like my wife Betsy is a partner in this with me. I wouldn’t undertake this new role without her. It is going to take all of us to usher the Huntington into its next chapter.”

“Mitch and Carol were unbelievable role models,” adds Malt. “I feel like we’re not only standing on their shoulders, but they’ve made it very easy for us.”

“Peter and I are deeply appreciative of Carol Deane, Mitch Roberts, Joe Roller, and Linda Waintrup for their extraordinary service to the Huntington,” says Managing Director Michael Maso. “We are equally grateful to David Epstein, Sharon Malt, Carol Langer, and Sherry Cohen for stepping in to fill these critical leadership roles as the Huntington takes on the next leg of its collective journey to renovate our home on the Avenue of the Arts.”

2017 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR HONORS MAYOR WALSH & BILLY PORTER — SAVE THE DATE FOR APRIL 24!

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he stage is set for Monday, April 24, 2017, when the Huntington will raise the roof with its annual million-dollar Spotlight Spectacular fundraiser! The Spotlight Spectacular is one of Boston’s social events of the season, and will be held again at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts.

This year, the prestigious Wimberly Award will be presented to the Honorable Martin J. Walsh, Mayor of the City of Boston, and Tony Award-winning Broadway performer and director, Billy Porter.

Additional details will be coming soon, but don’t miss your chance to be a part of the celebration. This event often sells out, so be sure to save the date and save your seat for this spectacular evening.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO RESERVE YOUR TABLE: Contact Kirsten Doyle, Special Events Manager, at kdoyle@huntingtontheatre.org or 617 273 1503.

SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE OPENING NIGHT THIS FALL HUNTINGTON STAFF, CAST, AND INVITED GUESTS GATHERED IN THE BU THEATRE PAINT & SCENE SHOPS TO CELEBRATE THE OPENING NIGHT OF SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE!

photos: nile hawver

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For information about how to get involved at the Huntington and attend these special events, please contact Kirsten Doyle, Special Events Manager, at kdoyle@huntingtontheatre.org or 617 273 1503.

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ASL INTERPRETATION AT THE HUNTINGTON:

A CONVERSATION WITH WENDY WATSON & MEG O’BRIEN nile hawver

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Jolanta Galloway, ASL-interpreter for A Little Night Music, interprets Director of Education Donna Glick’s curtain speech at the student matinee performance.

The Huntington is committed to making theatre more accessible for all members of the community. Each season we serve more than 4,800 audience members with accessibility needs, including patrons in wheelchairs, blind patrons, and those who are Deaf/deaf and hardof-hearing. The Huntington provides American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation of select performances for our Deaf/deaf and hardof-hearing patrons and is committed to expanding our accessible programming so that by the time we are in our newly renovated home on Huntington Avenue, every production will have at least one ASL-interpreted performance. Recently, access coordinator Meg O’Brien spoke with season ASL consultant Wendy Watson about the challenges and rewards of ASL interpretation at the Huntington.

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eg O’Brien (Huntington Access Coordinator): Audiences may falsely believe that ASL interpretation occurs “in the moment” as a real-time translation of the actors’ dialogue. Can you describe the roles of each member on an ASL team, the work that goes on before the show and behind the scenes, and provide an overview of the rehearsal process?

Wendy Watson (Season ASL Consultant): Translation of performance work is a labor of love! Interpreters are responsible for transmitting the meaning, nuance, emotional tenor, and intention of the creative team for the production. Performance work is a “hybrid” set of skills; of both simultaneous interpreting (in the moment) with rehearsed translation in preparation. In these settings, the interpreter is listening to what is happening in this show today, as well as drawing on planning and rehearsal that occurred in preparation. If the actor skips a couple of pages of the script; the interpreters skip, too. But unlike many interpreting jobs, in performance work we aren’t hearing it all for the first time.

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UPCOMING AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE & AUDIO-DESCRIBED PERFORMANCES AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE-INTERPRETED PERFORMANCES A Doll’s House • January 19, 10am • January 27, 8pm Topdog/Underdog • March 17, 10am • March 24, 8pm

AUDIO-DESCRIBED PERFORMANCES A Doll’s House • January 19, 10am • January 28, 2pm Topdog/Underdog • March 30, 10am • April 1, 2pm

Tickets are $20 for each patron and an additional $20 ticket can be purchased for one guest. To reserve tickets, contact Meg O’Brien at mobrien@huntingtontheatre.org or 617 273 1558.

American Sign Language (ASL) is often misunderstood to be a visual representation of English. It’s easy then to assume that ASL interpreters are just producing “word-for-sign” what they are hearing in the moment. This is not the case — ASL has its own complete linguistic structure. It also has a community of users who share a common culture. Therefore, the representation of the same nuance, meaning, tenor, and intention must be expressed not only in a different modality (visual vs. auditory), but also to an audience who doesn’t share the same worldview. Many decisions must be made about how the storytelling mastery and visual features on the stage can be used to create equivalent experiences for the audience in ASL.

For a typical production, two or three interpreters are hired, as well as an ASL consultant. This role is performed by a Deaf nativeuser of ASL. The team rehearses for a couple of weeks before a performance. They will also attend the show once or twice as audience members. Once they’ve seen the show, choices will be made about which interpreters are best suited to interpret for which characters. They will study the physical characteristics of the characters they will portray and look for moments in the show when the action on stage is more salient than the dialogue (or vice versa).

The Deaf/deaf audience is gleaning the whole experience through their eyes, so sometimes choices or adjustments in timing must be made. The team will note timing of speeches or songs, lighting cues that might be effected by the light on the team, etc.

Then the actual rehearsal process can begin! Teams work differently depending on years of experience, and other team members’ preferences and familiarity with the material also come into play.

But there will be “hands-up” work to make the translation dovetail with the requirements of each show. The ASL consultant watches the rehearsals to refine characterizations, translation choices, and timing issues.

MO: Can you describe your relationship to the Huntington and share a favorite moment or story from your work with the access program?

WW: I have worked with the Huntington under contract as a season consultant for nine seasons. I have also had the pleasure of interpreting many productions over the years. I function as a liaison between the theatre and the interpreting and Deaf/deaf communities. I hire the teams for each production, make sure that they have the resources they need (scripts, recordings, and access to performances) to prepare.

The Huntington is special for a couple of reasons. One is that we are allowed connection to the creative team for most shows.

We have unfettered access to rehearsal opportunities, and to seeing the show as many times as needed. This is not always the case in other theatres. Another perk at the Huntington is that we always

get to perform each show twice; once for a student matinee, and once for a general audience. The student matinees are definitely my favorite events. Particularly those shows that reflect the life experiences of the students; shows that leave the kids feeling known and represented.

MO: My favorite moment of work with ASL interpretation specifically was during a performance of The Jungle Book; two children who are Deaf were so inspired by the work of our interpreters in the first act of the play that they spent the entire intermission on the ASL platform recreating moments and signing their own version of the show. I watched their faces for much of the second act and saw pure joy and awe as they were allowed to experience the story through the interpretation.

Tell me a bit about the challenges facing the implementation of ASL interpreting (or accessibility services in general) in regional theatres like the Huntington. What is needed to be in place in order to provide the highest quality programming to meet the needs of the Deaf/deaf and hard-of-hearing communities?

WW: The biggest challenges are in finding and funding! Finding interpreting teams and in funding the access.

ASL interpreters take years to hone their skills; those working in performance settings are even more specialized. There are not enough interpreters to cover the work in the state of Massachusetts, so those willing to put in the extra time and effort to work on performance competencies are hard to find.

On the upside, there is more and more use of Deaf/deaf interpreters onstage of late. How I Learned What I Learned last spring was interpreted by a Deaf/hearing team. In this approach, a Deaf/deaf person who is trained in translation and has native skills in the language is in the spotlight, while a hearing interpreter “feeds” them the dialogue happening onstage. This approach can deepen the ability to present a culturally-sensitive and effective representation of the show.

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Deaf audience members applaud following a performance of I Was Most Alive with You.

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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 and explores the depictions of shared themes in Huntington productions and acclaimed films. Our fall lineup includes:

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

MONDAY, JANUARY 9 AT 7PM IN CONJUNCTION WITH A DOLL’S HOUSE Marianne and Johan always seemed like the perfect couple. But when Johan suddenly leaves Marianne for another woman, they are forced to confront the disintegration of their marriage in Ingmar Bergman’s acclaimed film. Join us after the film for a discussion with A Doll’s House director Melia Bensussen and Huntington dramaturg Charles Haugland.

MENACE II SOCIETY

MONDAY, MARCH 13 AT 7PM IN CONJUNCTION WITH TOPDOG/UNDERDOG After growing up in the turmoil and violence of the Los Angeles projects, 18-year-old Caine Lawson wants a way out. With the help of his caring teacher and supportive girlfriend, Caine plans to leave the city for good. But in a series of tragic events, Caine realizes that escape will not be easy.

Tickets are $12 ($9 for Huntington Subscribers) and may be purchased online at coolidge.org or at the Coolidge box office, located at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Join us for two special Humanities Forums featuring post-show talkbacks with guests The Boston Globe.

A DOLL’S HOUSE

SUNDAY, JANUARY 29 FOLLOWING THE 2PM PERFORMANCE Featuring “Miss Conduct” columnist Robin Abrahams with Huntington dramaturg Charles Haugland

TOPDOG/UNDERDOG

SUNDAY, MARCH 19 FOLLOWING THE 2PM PERFORMANCE Featuring Metro columnist Yvonne Abraham