THE SHIFT Yale School of Drama, 2020

THE SHIFT A LIVE READING VIA ZOOM MAY 8 AT 8PM 2019–20 SEASON

YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean

PRESENTS

THE SHIFT

By Margaret E. Douglas Directed by Logan Ellis Creative Team Scenic Designer

Stephen Marks Costume Designer

Meg Powers

Lighting Designer

Nicole E. Lang

Sound Designer

Bailey Trierweiler Projection Designer

Matthias Neckermann Production Dramaturg

Patrick Denney Stage Manager

Amanda Luke

Cast

in alphabetical order Aaron

Mihir Kumar Steph

Maggie McCaffery Jess

Maia Mihanovich Jeff

Reed Northrup Steve

Thomas Pang Erin

Madeline Seidman Red Shift Poet

Jessy Yates

Supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.

Setting

Artistic Staff

A bunker deep-beneath Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Assistant Scenic Designer

The Shift is read through without an intermission.

Assistant Costume Designer

Special Thanks

Rebecca Adelsheim, the O’Brien Family, Sophie Siegel-Warren

Miguel Urbino Travis Chinick

Assistant Lighting Designer

Jiahao Qiu

Assistant Sound Designer/Engineer

Noel Nichols

Production Stage Manager

THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Department from 1993 until his death in 2005.

Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

Fabiola Syvel

Assistant Stage Manager

Andrew Petrick

Production Staff Production Manager

Shannon Csorny

Associate Safety Advisor

Laurie Ortega-Murphy

Administration Associate Managing Director

Caitlin Volz

Assistant Managing Director

Madeline Carey

Management Assistants

Sarah Cain Samanta Yunuen Cubias House Manager

Jason Gray

Yale School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.

How to Be Happy Underground In January 1962, the pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead offered one of the most titillating theories for post-apocalyptic survival of the atomic era. To ensure the continuity of human progress, she imagined that a rotating, international cross-section of the most productive members of society would be placed within a network of strategic, secure bunkers.

This proposed underground utopia was bolstered by another group that Mead’s mid-century moment charged with the most reproductive potential: newlyweds. Thus, humanity’s future would be assured, built upon a puritanical drive for maximum productivity and hetero-normative correlation of the future with the child. But, like, what if the people living in this bunker, just… didn’t? The Shift takes Mead’s premise and joyfully drags it through a dive bar in Western Massachusetts. The best and the brightest have been herded together from an internet job post. Rather than high-minded ideals of advancing the human race, the millennials of Margaret E. Douglas’s play grapple with everyday worries such as health insurance and the ever-present force of FOMO. And rather than the straight couples of Mead’s vision, the space is populated by at least one confirmed bachelor(ette). The staff of this back-up bunker actively fails at living up to the expectations that government bureaucracy has tried to place upon them, but they just shrug and play some Gameboy. Rather than a world-ending roadblock, this gesture highlights the ability of failure to showcase that there is not simply one way to exist in the world. Rather than the dream world of scientists and bureaucrats, The Shift creates a glorious space where outcasts and oddballs can come together and just be themselves, at least for seventy-three days.

—PATRICK DENNEY, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG