Yale Cabaret 9: soft apples (2022)

A note from the Cab

Can non-profit American theater exist without the exploitation of the most marginalized members of its community? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot since starting my graduate school journey studying “theater management”. Take one look at the We See You, White American Theater demands, and you can see the ways in which the theater industry has perpetuated harm against so many. Clearly, the model is broken. How do we fix it?

This piece raises a lot of questions. Is it up to us – the audience – to sort it out after? Or is it for us to sit with and think about our place – and complacency – in it all?

The soft apples team moved mountains to put on this show and to build a theater INSIDE a theater! The actors have brought vulnerability and care into these difficult moments. I’m grateful to the entire team, led by the trio of playwright Doug Robinson, director Gabrielle Hoyt, and producer Chloe Knight, for bringing this play to the Cabaret and sharing this story.

- Sarah Ashley Cain, Artistic Director

A note from the show team I hear soft apples asking me: What are the fruits of our labors?

When a tree is rotting, what can it grow?

What can we grow?

This play is not real, but it grows from real feelings and real experiences. For each of us on the team, these feelings and experiences live in our hearts and bodies differently. In order to resist the possibility of reinscribing hurt, we focused on our process.

One of our intentions was to practice creating a rehearsal room that prioritizes the people within it more than the play it might produce. As with any practice, we may not have succeeded in this goal—and “life is pain,” as Westley says in The Princess Bride. There was, is, and will be pain in our rehearsal processes and our world. But we hope we made a space for life and care here too. soft apples may be a play with death, but it is a play about life. Our lives.

And now, here it is, in front of you.

-Hannah F. Gellman, Dramaturg

soft apples s

By Doug Robinson Proposed with Gabrielle Hoyt and Chloe Knight CREATIVE TEAM Director Scenic Designer Costume Designer Lighting Designer Sound Designers Assistant Sound Designer Fight and Violence Director Fight and Violence Advisors Dramaturg Producer Technical Director Stage Manager Script Consultant

Gabrielle Hoyt Suzu Sakai* Miguel Urbino Sam Skynner* Bryn Scharenberg and Stan Mathabane Evdoxia Ragkou Isuri Wijesundara Malachi Beasley and Michael Rossmy Hannah F. Gellman Chloe Knight Ro Burnett Bekah Brown Faith Zamblé

CAST Actor 1 Actor 2 Actor 3 Actor 4 Actor 5 Actor 6 Narrator Artistic Director

Michael Allyn Crawford* Caro Riverita* Lillie Horton* Leo Egger Jason Gray Whitney Andrews* Doug Robinson A.J. Roy

Special Thanks: The Dramaturgy Class of 2024 (The 2024s), Bobbin Ramsey, Stefani Kuo, David De Carolis, Alary Sutherland, Rob Chikar, John Horzen, Kitty Cassetti, Micah Ohno, Christine Szczepanski, Jamie Farkas, Phuong Nguyen Content Transparency: This production includes depictions of gun violence, racial trauma and apathy, death, and suicide. If you need support after this play, resources are available in the lobby. *Yale Cabaret Debut

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Mission

Land Acknowledgement

Yale Cabaret is a beautiful experiment of artistry and process. With every season and iteration, we build a home for David Geffen School of Drama at Yale students to imagine, create, and share their stories alongside our many communities.

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.

Values Build Community Community is central to our work at the Cab. We seek to build intentional and nourishing relationships with each other and the communities of Yale, greater New Haven, and beyond.

Keep Experimenting The Cab is the place for students to disrupt their process, take risks, and explore within and beyond their disciplines. Make a mess, try again, re-invent, and grow with us.

Welcome All We aspire to create a more inclusive and welcoming theater across our many diverse identities and backgrounds. You are invited to show up as your full self at the Cab.

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 Artistic Director Sarah Ashley Cain

Co-Managing Director Natalie King

Associate Artistic Director Abigail C. Onwunali

Co-Managing Director A.J. Roy

Production Manager Sydney Raine Garick

Collaborators Graphic Designer Mikayla Johnson

Cabaret Assistant Jake Hurwitz

Website Designer Laura Copenhaver

Videographer Andre Griffith

Artistic Associates Community Engagement Kayodè Soyemi

Inclusivity Jacob Santos

Scenic Marcelo Martínez García

Costumes Kitty Cassetti

Lighting Riva Fairhall

Sound Bryn Scharenberg

Directing James Fleming

New Work Danielle Stagger

Stage Management Brandon Lovejoy

Dramaturgy Nicholas Orvis

Performance Cooper Bruhns Isuri Wijesundara

Technical Direction Cam Camden

Projections Hannah Tran

Board of Directors Matthew Suttor, Chair Benjamin Benne Samanta Yunuen Cubias Kelvin Dinkins, Jr.

Libby JollyStone Reed Northrup Linda-Cristal Young

Our Supporters In 1968, 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 2022 and beyond.

Partners ($1,000-$2,499) Santino Blumetti Ann Judd & Bennett Pudlin Matthew Suttor R. Lee Stump & Abigail Roth Clifford Lee Warner Show Sponsors ($500-$999) Nina R. Adams & Dr. Moreson Kaplan Joan Channick & Ruth Hein Schmitt Kelvin Dinkins, Jr. & Alexis Rodda Latiana “LT” Gourzong Andrew D. Hamingson & Sarah A. McLellan Bill & Sharon Reynolds Paul Walsh Yaro Yarashevich Grace Zandarski Enthusiasts ($250-$499) Audrey Conrad Pamela Jordan Jim & Eileen Mydosh Florie Seery James Sinclair & Sylvia Van Sinderen

Supporters ($100-$249) Shaminda Amarakoon Anne Danenberg Cornelia Evans Jerry & Donna Lodynsky Bonnie L. Kramm Edwin Martin Advocates ($50-$99) Katherine & Chava Burgueño Donna K. Doherty Mercedes Eugenia Matthew Sonnenfeld Rosalie Stemer Jessica Wolf

Thank You To Our Sponsors!

$8 crafted drinks during late night happy hour!

What’s Next Felon: An American Washi Tale A solo performance by Reginald Dwayne Betts March 31 - April 2 New Haven local poet, Yale Law School Ph.D. candidate, and MacArthur Genius Fellow Reginald Dwayne Betts adapts his critically-acclaimed book of poetry, Felon, into a solo performance about re-imaging paper. Felon: An America Washi Tale begins with the pages of a book being slid into a cell, traverses stoves made of toilet paper, kites from a father, handwritten affidavits, legal complaints, handmade paper, certificates of pardon, & 1,000 squares fashioned from the clothing of men serving life sentences. Betts weaves traditional theater, poetry, fine art, and Japanese paper-making aesthetic principles into a meditation on his own experiences of incarceration and his legal work to free friends that are still in prison.

the father, the son, and the holy spirit Proposed and written by Matthew Elijah Webb April 14 - 16 How clean must a son be to experience the full and unconditional love of his family? Of God? To what ends will he go to cleanse his mind, his body, and his spirit of all things impure?

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