Yale Cabaret: Tobie

A Note from the Cab Team For our last show of the year, we end back to the beginning of what theater is truly about. We go back to simpler, more innocent times when our we suspended our imagination for the sake of play as children. We start our last show with puppets—an innocent inanimate object that takes on whatever look or shape or perspective we prescribe it. It becomes shaped by whatever kind of storytelling captures us in the moment. As we reflect on our season, it’s only fitting that we gather around closely and allow ourselves to believe, imagine, and dare I say, “sniff” our way back to a kind of intimacy that theater is all about.

For our last show of the year, we thank you. We thank all our artists and collaborators and supporters and the community for continuing to show up for us. This year, we lovingly named ourselves Parachute: A Soft Landing. As promised, the ride has not always been smooth, but the views have been breathtaking. We couldn’t have asked for a better year.

And now, that we’ve launched, it’s time for our arrival—please enjoy this playful touchdown, Tobie, which is representative of the softest landing we could have imagined.

-Jason, Kayodè & Ashley

A Note from the Translator/Director To be perfectly honest, I can’t quite believe we are all here. I met Tobie in Fall 2021, a semester full of uncertainty and skepticism, while taking Paul Walsh’s Translation class. Initially, I approached the task of translating this play with a lot of doubts, mostly about my own abilities.

But Tobie has no time for doubt. It is a play in which magic is unequivocally real and the impossible happens every day. It has an elegantly declamatory angel and a crudely hilarious demon, slapstick humor and reverent expressions of faith. Without an English translation available, each page I translated of Maurice Bouchor’s 1889 Symbolist adaptation of the Book of Tobit (an apocryphal Old Testament text) brought giggles of confusion, cackles of delight, and head-scratching discoveries: The fish did WHAT? The feast description is how many pages?

Shakespeare gets a mention? What is happening?!

Without doubt, Tobie is a really weird play. It is also a rather simple story.

At its heart is Tobie, our easily overwhelmed hero, who just wants to be a good son and a good man. Buffeted back and forth by divine and demonic forces, he is trying to do his best, to make his family proud, and to be brave enough for love.

I have loved working on this play. From the first pages we aloud in class, through the year of jokingly—and then not so jokingly—imagining staging it here at the Cab, to these last few weeks of working with this incredible team and experimenting with puppets, it has brought me enormous joy.

I hope it will do the same for you.

-Lily Haje

Tobie

Translated and Adapted by Lily Haje from Maurice Bouchor PRODUCED BY

Roman Sanchez & Mikayla Stanley

CREATIVE TEAM

Director Assistant Director Stage Manager Scenic Designer(s) Lighting Designer(s) Sound Designer Puppet Design Mask Design Backstage Run Crew Technical Director(s) Lobby Display Show Sponsor

Lily Haje Clementine Rice* Adrian Alexander Hernandez B Entsminger & Patrick Blanchard Neil Qiu, Doaa Ouf, & Yichen Zhou Bryn Scharenberg Lily Haje & Company Nicholas Orvis M.L. Roberts ATD Collective Clementine Rice* Paul Walsh, Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan

CAST

Sophia Carey Natalie King Nicholas Orvis Madeline Pages Doug Robinson Liam Bellman-Sharpe *Yale Cabaret Debut

Special Thanks Faith Zamblé, Yichen Zhou, Kate Baker, Simon Toop, Helen Haje, Paul Walsh & Fall 2021 Translation, Micah Ohno, ATD Collective (Cian Freeman, Luke Tarnow-Bulatowicz, Luanne Jubsee, & Kim Zhou)

Mission

Yale Cabaret 55 is a transition; a space to place your art and watch it transform. We do not suggest that your art begins or ends with us, but it will change with us. We invite our community to take risks with us. Failure is not an option; it is an illusion. Like Pantone Color of the Year: Very Peri, we know that “as we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways.” We seek to be a holding space to explore these changes.

Cabaret 55 is a shared experiment of what it means to come back to theater.

Values • The Cab is a studio • The Cab is a space for trial and error • The Cab is a space for fellowship • There is no utopia, only risk and commitment • There are no assignments, only invitations

Land Acknowledgement

The state of Connecticut and Yale University occupy the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, Quinnipiac, and other Algonquian speaking peoples. We honor and respect their continued relationship with and stewardship of this land, and we acknowledge that Yale University, Yale Cabaret, and those affiliated have benefited from the oppression of these Nations.

Labor Acknowledgement

Yale University does not exist independently from the centuries of forced labor and economic extraction of enslaved people, primarily of African descent, on which this country was built. We are indebted to their labor and their unwilling sacrifice, and we must acknowledge the ongoing violence inflicted on Black and brown people and the resulting impact and generational trauma still felt today.

Leadership Team Executive Artistic Director

Jason Gray

Producing Artistic Director

Producing Artistic Director

Kayodè Soyemi

Ashley M. Thomas

Production Managers

Leo Surach & Cameron Waitkun

Collaborators Graphic Designer

Community Engagement

Anchor Spa x Yale Cabaret

Website Designer

Marketing Associate

Cabaret Assistant(s)

Mikayla Johnson

a.k. payne

Kayodè Soyemi

Chef Kendall Thigpen

Roman Sanchez

Anne Ciarlone Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

Advisory Board Stage Management

Sound

Technical Design

Nakia Avila

Evdoxia Ragkou

Eugenio Saenz Flores

Theater Management

Scenic

Lighting

Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

Cat Raynor

Jiahao (Neil) Qui

Dramaturgy

Projections

Directing

Lily Haje

John Horzen

Garrett Allen

Playwriting

Acting

Costumes

Danielle Stagger

Lucas Iverson

Kyle Artone

Board of Directors Chair

Wendy Davies Jacob Basri Samanta Yunuen Cubias Eric M. Glover L.T. Gourzong Linda-Cristal Young

About the Cab In 1968, the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale students established a basement performance venue in the former home of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at 217 Park Street.

Envisioned as an alternative outlet for drama school students’ creativity and experimentation, Yale Cabaret became a forum for our expanded New Haven communities, whom we invite to gather around food, drink, conversation, fellowship, and artistry.

Since its founding, the Cabaret has remained in continuous operation, including pivoting to virtual performance during the 2020/21 season. The Cab has produced hundreds of plays, old and new, alongside musicals and musical revues, comedy shows, dance, performance art, and genre-defying performance.

Our supporters have made this storied history happen. With their partnership, we continue this tradition into 2023 and beyond.

Our Supporters Honorary Season Producer ($7,500+)

Indira Etwaroo & Apple

Parachuter ($5,000-$7,499)

Santino Blumetti Brian Tyree Henry

Champion ($2,500-$4,999)

Wendy Davies Tarell Alvin McCraney R. Lee Stump Partners ($1,000-$2,499)

Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan Joan Channick Eric M. Glover, PhD Lindy Lee Gold James G. Hood Bennett Pudlin & Ann Judd Bill & Sharon Reynolds Elaine Ring

Show Sponsors ($500-$999)

Audrey Conrad Betty & Josh Goldberg L.T. Gourzong Caroline V. Gray Jim & Eileen Mydosh Anne Renner

Enthusiasts ($250-$499)

James A. Bundy & Anne Tofflemire Sarah Cain Pamela C. Jordan Corby S. Kummer Erin Rocha Florie Seery

Thanks for coming out this season!

We’re not done yet!

Join our end of the year giving campaign.

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www.yalecabaret.org/55for55 Thank you to our Sponsor!

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Yale Cabaret 55: Parachute 217 Park Street New Haven, CT 06511 (203) 432-1566 | yalecabaret.org