Study Guide: Students & Educators Heather Baird Director of Education Tyler Easter Education Associate Fran Tarr Education Coordinator 1 SECTION I | THE PLAY Synopsis Characters Setting Themes SECTION II | CAST & CREATIVE SECTION III | YOUR STUDENTS AS AUDIENCE Theater Vocabulary Relating Themes to Our Own Lives Webbing & Discussion Triggers SECTION IV | YOUR STUDENTS AS ACTORS Reading a Scene for Understanding Practical Aesthetics Exercise Mini-Lesson Vocabulary Scene Analysis Worksheet SECTION V | YOUR STUDENTS AS ARTISTS Post-Theater Critical Thinking Exploration Individual and Peer-To-Peer Critical Assessment Create the Song of Your Life Common Core & DOE Theater Blueprint SECTION VI | THE ATLANTIC LEGACY 2 Section I: PLAY The Play PLAY Synopsis Characters Setting Themes 3 SYNOPSIS An Egyptian Police Band arrives in Israel to play a concert. After a mix-up at the border, they are sent to a remote village in the TEWFIQ: Male, 50-59, Egyptian; leader middle of the desert. With no bus until morning and no hotel in of the Egyptian Ceremonial Police sight, these unlikely travelers are taken in by the locals. Under Orchestra, a widower; shy. the spell of the desert sky, their lives become intertwined in the most unexpected ways. HALED: Male, 20-29, Egyptian; handsome womanizer, smooth; loves jazz, member of the orchestra. CAMAL: 20-39, musician in the band; wants to go home. THEMES DINA: Female, 25-39, owner of a café, 1. Where do I belong? (Acceptance of one’s circumstances) very attractive. 3. Mistrust 4. Vulnerability ITZIK: Male, 25-39, married to Iris; once 5. Lost a guitarist. 6. Acceptance IRIS: Female, 20-39, Itzik’s wife, headstrong, unsympathetic. AVRUM: Male, 18+, Iris’s father. SETTING PAPI: 20-29, disheveled, works at café, Bet Hatikva, a fictional town in nervous around girls. the middle of Negev Desert in Israel. Once upon a time, not ZELGER: 20-29, brash, charismatic, long ago. friend of Pai’s, sets Papi up with his cousin. JULIA: 20-29, Papi’s blind date, gloomy and shy. ANNA: 20-29, Julia’s cousin; sexy and Teacher Objective extroverted. To introduce students to the characters, setting, and story of The Band’s Visit. TELEPHONE GUY: 20-29, street musician, very romantic. Student Goal To understand that actors, working together, will simply SAMMY: Male, 30-39, married man and and truthfully create the story of the play. ex-lover of Dina. 4 Section II: Cast & Creative CAST Director And CAST Cast Bios 5 DAVID YAZBEK ITAMAR MOSES DAVID CROMER ANDREA GRODY Music & Lyrics Book Director Music Director DAVID YAZBEK (Music & Lyrics). A ITAMAR MOSES (Book) is the author DAVID CROMER (Director). Recent ANDREA GRODY (Music Director). varied career as a recording artist, of the full-length plays Outrage, credits include: The Effect (Barrow Recent projects include the world Emmy Award®-winning TV and Bach at Leipzig, Celebrity Row, The Street Theatre), Come Back, Little premieres of Cake Off at the screenwriter, music producer, and Four of Us, Yellowjackets, Back Sheba (Huntington Theatre), Angels Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA pianist has somehow led Yazbek Back Back, Completeness and The in America (Kansas City Rep) and and the Bucks County Playhouse; to become one of Broadway’s Whistleblower; the musicals Nobody Our Town at the Almeida Theatre in The Fortress of Solitude at Dallas preeminent composer/lyricists. His Loves You (with Gaby Alter) and London. NY Credits include: Women Theater Center and the Public three shows, The Full Monty, Dirty Fortress of Solitude (with Michael or Nothing at Atlantic Theater Theater; Unknown Soldier at the Rotten Scoundrels and Women on Friedman); and the evening of short Company, Really Really at MCC, The WIlliamstown Theatre Festival; the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown plays Love/Stories (or But You House of Blue Leaves and Brighton and Love’s Labour’s Lost at the have received a combined 24 Tony Will Get Used to It). His work has Beach Memoirs on Broadway, When Delacorte Theater in Central Park; Award® nominations, including three appeared Off-Broadway, at regional the Rain Stops Falling and Nikolai and the regional premieres of The for Best Score. As a recording artist, theaters across the country and in and the Others at Lincoln Center Great Immensity and Venice at Yazbek is responsible for five albums: Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, and Theater. Also at the Barrow Street the Public Theater. Other favorites The Laughing Man, To ck, Damascus, Venezuela, and is published by Faber Theatre he has directed Tribes, Our include Robin Hood at Williamstown Tape Recorder and Evil Monkey Man. & Faber and Samuel French. He has Town and Orson’s Shadow as well (as Composer/Music Director) and He has written and/or produced for received new play commissions from as Adding Machine, which was a Tectonic Theater Project’s Carmen: such acts as XTC, Ruben Blades, The McCarter Theater, Playwrights BST production at the Minetta Lane. An Afro-Cuban Jazz Musical with The Persuasions, Joe Jackson, Tito Horizons, Berkeley Repertory Originally from Chicago, his credits Moisés Kaufman and Arturo O’Farrill. Puente and many others. He also Theatre, The Wilma Theater, South there include Sweet Bird of Youth Upcoming: Assassins at Yale Rep. produced the original cast albums Coast Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, (The Goodman); A Streetcar Named Andrea’s writing credits include the of his Broadway shows. He has three Lincoln Center and The Goodman Desire, Picnic and The Price (Writers full-length musical Strange Faces Grammy Award® nominations. In Theatre. On television, Itamar has Theatre); Cherrywood, Mojo, and The and several songs for The Civilians’ the past couple of years, he has written for both TNT’s “Men of a Hot l Baltimore (Mary-Arrchie); The Let Me Ascertain You series. She is scored the final season of HBO’s Certain Age” and HBO’s “Boardwalk Cider House Rules (co-directed with an Associate Voice Teacher at New “Boardwalk Empire,” composed Empire.” Itamar holds an MFA in Marc Grapey at Famous Door); and York Vocal Coaching. B.A. Princeton music for Larry David’s Fish in the Dramatic Writing from NYU and has Angels in America (The Journeymen); University, M.A. Royal Conservatoire Dark and written songs and music for taught playwriting at Yale and NYU. among others. For Michael Ira of Scotland. Much Ado About Nothing at Central Cromer (1966-2015). Park’s Delacorte Theater, all while opening productions of Scoundrels and Women on the Verge in London’s West End. In past lives, he has written dozens of scripts and many songs for television and film, won an Emmy Award® for his stint on “Late Night with David Letterman” and wrote the unrelenting theme song for “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” David is seven. 6 GEORGE ABUD BILL ARMY JOHN CARIANI KATRINA LENK (Camal) (Zelger) (Itzik) (Dina) Proud Lebanese-American actor. is so excited to be making his Broadway: Something Rotten! (OCC Broadway: Once, Spider-Man: Turn Broadway: Karl Schell in The Visit Atlantic Theater Company debut! nom.); Fiddler on the Roof (Tony Off the Dark, The Miracle Worker. starring Chita Rivera and Roger Broadway: Act One (Lincoln Center nom.; OCC Award). Off-Broadway: Off-Broadway: Indecent (Vineyard Rees (Tony-nom. Best Musical; OBC Theater, directed by James Lapine); Almost, Maine (Transport Group); Theatre), Touch (59E59), Last Recording). Upcoming International: Relatively Speaking, an evening Two Gentlemen of Verona (The Dance (York Theatre). Regional World Premiere of Mohammed of three one-act plays by Ethan Public/NYSF); Modern Orthodox; It’s includes: Indecent (Yale and Fairouz and David Ignatius’s The Coen, Elaine May, and Woody Allen, My Party. Regional: Williamstown, LaJolla Rep), iWitness (Mark Taper New Prince with Kelsey Grammer directed by John Turturro. Off- The Old Globe, Center Theatre Forum), Elemeno Pea, Cloudlands, (Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam). Broadway: The Changeling (Red Bull Group, Barrington Stage, Hudson Caucasian Chalk Circle (South Coast Off-Broadway: Peer Gynt opposite Theater); Old Jews Telling Jokes; All’s Valley Shakespeare Festival. Rep), Camille (Bard Summerscape), Gabriel Ebert, Nathan The Wise Well That Ends Well and Measure Television: Recent guest stars on Lost Land (Steppenwolf Theater), opposite F. Murray Abraham, and for Measure (The Public Theater). “Blacklist”, “The Good Wife”, and and Lovelace: A Rock Opera (LA Allegro directed by John Doyle Company Member of the Potomac “Homeland”. Recurring roles on Weekly, LADCC and Garland Award (Classic Stage Company). Regional/ Theater Project since 2007: Scenes “Law & Order” (CSU Tech Beck), winner). Film/TV: Look Away, Evol: NY: A Midsummer Night’s Dream from an Execution (opposite Jan “Numb3rs”, and “The Onion News The Theory of Love, FracKtured, (Puck, Geva Theatre Center), Fiddler Maxwell), Vinegar Tom, Gertrude Network”. Several films. Playwright: “Elementary,” “The Get Down,” on the Roof (Human Race Theatre), – The Cry, The Europeans, and No Almost, Maine; Last Gas; LOVE/ and “The Blacklist.” Co-creator of Man of La Mancha and Oliver Twist End of Blame. TV: “Deadbeat” (Hulu), SICK, all available through DPS. the comedy web series “Miss Teri” (Shakespeare Theatre of NJ), The “Cohab” (Webseries). MFA: NYU. Proud AEA member. and a member of several bands Other Shore (Sonnet Repertory Bill dedicates his work to his new including her own, moxy phinx. www. Theatre). Solo-Cabaret: Change son or daughter who is due to arrive katrinalenk.com Partners: A Broadway Love Affairat possibly before the end of the run of Birdland, Never Been Young at 54 this show, and his wife, Jessica! Below. This performance is for my mother Paulette, with great love to my father, my Sitto and my Erica. “Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life, bringing peace, abolishing strife.” 7 ERIK LIBERMAN ANDREW POLK RACHEL PRATHER JONATHAN RAVIV (Telephone Guy) (Avrum) (Julia) (Sammy) Broadway: LoveMusik (dir.