ARCADIA, Yale School of Drama, 2011.

Yale School of Drama presents

Arcadia “A mountainous and picturesque district of Greece in the heart of the Peloponnesus whose people were distinguished for contentment and rural happiness,” “any region or scene of simple pleasure or untroubled quiet.”

In Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Lady Croom quotes from the painting by Nicolas Poussin (1594—1665,) and says, “‘Et in Arcadia ego!’ ‘Here I am in Arcadia,’ Thomasina.” She thinks that she is expressing her pleasure at living “in nature as God

Arcadia

intended,” and doesn’t realize that there is a much darker meaning to the words. In the painting, it is Death itself, that utters “Et in Arcadia ego,” or, “Even in Arcadia, I exist.” Even in the most idyllic setting, Death is there.

On April 4, 2011, while we were rehearsing our production of Arcadia in our own region of untroubled quiet, the School of Drama’s Studio Theatre, news came to me of the brutal murder of my friend, Palestinian/Israeli theatre artist, Juliano Mer-Khamis (1958—2011), founder and artistic director of The Freedom Theatre, Jenin Refugee Camp, in front of his theatre in the West Bank by five masked assailants. Juliano had dedicated his life to peace, freedom, and healing through the arts, giving the children of Jenin an alternative to guns and war. His world was not an Arcadia. His world is our world.

I dedicate our work to his memory, to the children of Jenin, and to our courageous community of theatre artists all over the globe who dare to make art.

— Joan MacIntosh, Director

by tom stoppard directed by joan macintosh

2010–11 season

The Studio Series productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at Yale School of Drama to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works.

Your attendance meaningfully completes that process.

drama.yale.edu

Thursday, april 21, 4PM Friday, april 22, 3PM and 8PM Saturday, april 23, 4PM STUDIO 217 PARK STREET

Love’s Primer

april 21 to 23, 2011 Yale School of Drama James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean presents

Arcadia by tom stoppard directed by joan macintosh cast

in alphabetical order Valentine Coverly Tomas AndrÉn Richard Noakes Matt Biagini Gus/Augustus Coverly Tim Brown Chloe Coverly Hallie Cooper-Novack Jellaby Brett Dalton Captain Brice Robert Grant Lady Croom Alexandra Henrikson Septimus Hodge Andrew Z. Kelsey Ezra Chater Brian Lewis

Artistic Staff Dramaturg Emily Reilly Stage Manager Heather Klein*

production Staff Assistant Director Ethan Heard Associate Production Supervisor Jonathan Reed Crew Michael Backhaus Nikki Delhomme Ted Griffith Music Consultant and Additional Pianist Jamie O’Leary Management Assistant jeNnifer lagundino House Manager Tara Kayton

Bernard Nightingale Max Gordon Moore Hannah Jarvis Shannon Marie Sullivan Thomasina Coverly Emily Trask

SPECIAL THANKS: Michael Frame, Summer Lee Jack

*The Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

“It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” (Valentine, Scene Four).

A play about love and science, Arcadia is both a detective story and a comedy. In the same room, two hundred years apart, the characters in Arcadia crave knowledge that will help them make sense of a disordered world. In the twenty-first century, Hannah, Bernard, and Valentine try to uncover what exactly happened to the inhabitants of the Sidley Park Estate two centuries earlier, believing that knowledge of the past will illuminate the present. As they speculate during their hunt through diaries, miscellaneous inscriptions, letters and game books, we realize that the past is never lost. Arcadia asks us to keep our eyes open, really to look at our surroundings, and to remember, as Valentine says, that “the ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.”

A play about the big questions and the little ones, Arcadia takes us on a journey that explodes from the inside of a coffee cup out to the expansive cosmos. Through the music of language Stoppard makes us hunt with his characters for that piece of the puzzle that hovers just out of reach; together, we discover that the delight is not in the answers but in the search. “Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point,” says Hannah. “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.

Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in.”

Act One Act Two Scene 1: April 10, 1809 Scene 5: Present Scene 2: Present Scene 6: April 12, 1809 Scene 3: April 11, 1809 Scene 7: Present and 1812 Scene 4: Present Scenes 1–6 occur in the morning; scene 7 both morning and evening

The Evolution of the Sidley Park landscape 1740: Italian Formal style: Drawing on principles of design found in the formal gardens of Italian villas, this style presented a highly organized and structured landscape dominated with geometric shapes, walled borders and formal beds, box hedges, patios, walkways and fountains that flowed into long rectangular pools.

1750–1809: The formal constraints of the Italian style were done away with in favor of rolling lawns, and still lakes. Harsh geometric lines became smooth serpentine curves, evoking the natural, pastoral landscape of rural England. The influence of classical art remained strong, manicured hills, lakes and trees were dotted with allegorical temples sculpted into the land.

1809: Gothic style (picturesque). The picturesque garden style emerged in England in the 18th century, one of the growing currents of the larger Romantic movement. Garden designers like William Kent and Capability Brown emulated the allegorical landscape paintings of European artists, especially Claude Lorraine, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. The desire was to create a rugged wilderness. Calm lakes were turned into waterfalls or rapids; temples were turned to ruins, and boathouses to hermitages.

—emily reilly, dramaturg

Love’s Primer

april 21 to 23, 2011 Yale School of Drama James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean presents

Arcadia by tom stoppard directed by joan macintosh cast

in alphabetical order Valentine Coverly Tomas AndrÉn Richard Noakes Matt Biagini Gus/Augustus Coverly Tim Brown Chloe Coverly Hallie Cooper-Novack Jellaby Brett Dalton Captain Brice Robert Grant Lady Croom Alexandra Henrikson Septimus Hodge Andrew Z. Kelsey Ezra Chater Brian Lewis

Artistic Staff Dramaturg Emily Reilly Stage Manager Heather Klein*

production Staff Assistant Director Ethan Heard Associate Production Supervisor Jonathan Reed Crew Michael Backhaus Nikki Delhomme Ted Griffith Music Consultant and Additional Pianist Jamie O’Leary Management Assistant jeNnifer lagundino House Manager Tara Kayton

Bernard Nightingale Max Gordon Moore Hannah Jarvis Shannon Marie Sullivan Thomasina Coverly Emily Trask

SPECIAL THANKS: Michael Frame, Summer Lee Jack

*The Stage Manager appears through the courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

“It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.” (Valentine, Scene Four).

A play about love and science, Arcadia is both a detective story and a comedy. In the same room, two hundred years apart, the characters in Arcadia crave knowledge that will help them make sense of a disordered world. In the twenty-first century, Hannah, Bernard, and Valentine try to uncover what exactly happened to the inhabitants of the Sidley Park Estate two centuries earlier, believing that knowledge of the past will illuminate the present. As they speculate during their hunt through diaries, miscellaneous inscriptions, letters and game books, we realize that the past is never lost. Arcadia asks us to keep our eyes open, really to look at our surroundings, and to remember, as Valentine says, that “the ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about—clouds—daffodils—waterfalls—and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in—these things are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks.”

A play about the big questions and the little ones, Arcadia takes us on a journey that explodes from the inside of a coffee cup out to the expansive cosmos. Through the music of language Stoppard makes us hunt with his characters for that piece of the puzzle that hovers just out of reach; together, we discover that the delight is not in the answers but in the search. “Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point,” says Hannah. “It’s wanting to know that makes us matter.

Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in.”

Act One Act Two Scene 1: April 10, 1809 Scene 5: Present Scene 2: Present Scene 6: April 12, 1809 Scene 3: April 11, 1809 Scene 7: Present and 1812 Scene 4: Present Scenes 1–6 occur in the morning; scene 7 both morning and evening

The Evolution of the Sidley Park landscape 1740: Italian Formal style: Drawing on principles of design found in the formal gardens of Italian villas, this style presented a highly organized and structured landscape dominated with geometric shapes, walled borders and formal beds, box hedges, patios, walkways and fountains that flowed into long rectangular pools.

1750–1809: The formal constraints of the Italian style were done away with in favor of rolling lawns, and still lakes. Harsh geometric lines became smooth serpentine curves, evoking the natural, pastoral landscape of rural England. The influence of classical art remained strong, manicured hills, lakes and trees were dotted with allegorical temples sculpted into the land.

1809: Gothic style (picturesque). The picturesque garden style emerged in England in the 18th century, one of the growing currents of the larger Romantic movement. Garden designers like William Kent and Capability Brown emulated the allegorical landscape paintings of European artists, especially Claude Lorraine, Poussin, and Salvator Rosa. The desire was to create a rugged wilderness. Calm lakes were turned into waterfalls or rapids; temples were turned to ruins, and boathouses to hermitages.

—emily reilly, dramaturg

Yale School of Drama presents

Arcadia “A mountainous and picturesque district of Greece in the heart of the Peloponnesus whose people were distinguished for contentment and rural happiness,” “any region or scene of simple pleasure or untroubled quiet.”

In Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, Lady Croom quotes from the painting by Nicolas Poussin (1594—1665,) and says, “‘Et in Arcadia ego!’ ‘Here I am in Arcadia,’ Thomasina.” She thinks that she is expressing her pleasure at living “in nature as God

Arcadia

intended,” and doesn’t realize that there is a much darker meaning to the words. In the painting, it is Death itself, that utters “Et in Arcadia ego,” or, “Even in Arcadia, I exist.” Even in the most idyllic setting, Death is there.

On April 4, 2011, while we were rehearsing our production of Arcadia in our own region of untroubled quiet, the School of Drama’s Studio Theatre, news came to me of the brutal murder of my friend, Palestinian/Israeli theatre artist, Juliano Mer-Khamis (1958—2011), founder and artistic director of The Freedom Theatre, Jenin Refugee Camp, in front of his theatre in the West Bank by five masked assailants. Juliano had dedicated his life to peace, freedom, and healing through the arts, giving the children of Jenin an alternative to guns and war. His world was not an Arcadia. His world is our world.

I dedicate our work to his memory, to the children of Jenin, and to our courageous community of theatre artists all over the globe who dare to make art.

— Joan MacIntosh, Director

by tom stoppard directed by joan macintosh

2010–11 season

The Studio Series productions are designed to be learning experiences that complement classroom work, providing a medium for students at Yale School of Drama to combine their individual talents and energies toward the staging of collaboratively created works.

Your attendance meaningfully completes that process.

drama.yale.edu

Thursday, april 21, 4PM Friday, april 22, 3PM and 8PM Saturday, april 23, 4PM STUDIO 217 PARK STREET