August Wilson's Fences
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FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON IN THIS ISSUE FEBRUARY 2016 Title Page 2 Cast 3 About the Play 4 The Cast 8 The Creative Team 11 ATC Artistic Director 15 ATC Board of Trustees 18 Corporate and Foundation Donors 19 Individual Donors 20 ATC Staff 26 Theatre Information 29 Fences playwright August Wilson Cover art by: ESSER DESIGN 1 David Ira Goldstein Artistic Director Presents a Co-Production with Indiana Repertory Theatre Janet Allen Executive Artistic Director and CEO; Suzanne Sweeney Managing Director and COO AND Milwaukee Repertory Theater Mark Clements Artistic Director; Chad Bauman Managing Director AUGUST WILSON’S FENCES Lou Bellamy Director Vicki Smith Scenic Designer Mathew J. LeFebvre Costume Designer Don Darnutzer Lighting Designer Brian Jerome Peterson Sound Designer Brent Gibbs Fight Choreographer T. Greg Squires Resident Lighting Designer Timothy Toothman* Stage Manager Glenn Bruner*. Assistant Stage Manager On this original Arizona Theatre Company production, the ATC Production Staff is responsible for scenic construction, costume construction, lighting, projections, sound, props, furniture, wigs, scene painting and special effects Fences is produced by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC Originally produced by Yale Repertory Theatre, Lloyd Richards, Artistic Director 2015/2016 SEASON SPONSORS: I. MICHAEL AND BETH KASSER 2 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) David Alan Anderson* Troy Maxson Marcus Naylor* Jim Bono Kim Staunton* Rose James T. Alfred* Lyons Terry Bellamy* Gabriel Edgar Sanchez* Cory Simeeyah Grace Baker Raynell *Members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. TIME: 1957; later, 1965 PLACE: The Maxson family home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania THERE WILL BE ONE FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERMISSION. UNDERSTUDIES Sterling Boyns Cory / Lyons Nadya Crawford Raynell ADDITIONAL STAFF Emma DeVore Assistant to the Stage Manager Additional casting by ATC Artistic Staff and Claire Simon Casting. Arizona Theatre Company operates under agreements between the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States; Stage Directors and Choreographers, an independent national labor union; and United Scenic Artists Local USA-829, IATSE To learn more about Fences please visit the Education page on our website at arizonatheatre org for a comprehensive free Play Guide The Play Guide contains historical information, cultural context, and more Play Guides are also available in The Temple Lounge for a nominal charge to cover printing Cell phones and other devices that make a noise can greatly disturb your fellow audience members and the performers. PLEASE TURN THEM OFF before the performance and again after intermission. 3 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY August Wilson (Playwright, April 27, 1945-October 2, 2005) authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of the descendants of Africans in North America, decade-by-decade, over the course of the twentieth century. His plays have been produced at regional theaters across the country and all over the world, as well as on Broadway. In 2003, Mr. Wilson made his professional stage debut in his one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. Mr. Wilson’s Playwright August Wilson works garnered many awards including Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987) and for The Piano Lesson (1990); a Tony Award for Fences; Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Jitney; as well as seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, and Jitney. Additionally, the cast recording of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom received a 1985 Grammy Award, and Mr. Wilson received a 1995 Emmy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Mr. Wilson’s early works included the one-act plays The Janitor, Recycle, The Coldest Day of the Year, Malcolm X, The Homecoming, and the musical satire Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. Mr. Wilson received many fellowships and awards, including the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships in Playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award, 2003 Heinz Award, was awarded a 1999 National Humanities Medal by the President of the United States, and received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, as well as the only high school diploma ever issued by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. He was an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 1995 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and on October 16, 2005, Broadway renamed the theater located at 245 West 52nd Street - The August Wilson Theatre. Additionally, Mr. Wilson was posthumously inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. Mr. Wilson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and lived in Seattle, Washington at the time of his death. He is immediately survived by his two daughters, Sakina Ansari and Azula Carmen Wilson, and his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero. 4 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY THE AMERICAN CENTURY CYCLE By Katherine Monberg, ATC Literary Manager August Wilson’s American Century Cycle is a collection of ten plays that chronicle a collective century of the Black American experience, with each of the ten plays set in a different decade spanning the 20th century. Nine of the ten plays are set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, one of many connection points woven through the multiple narratives. Though the American Century Cycle is not connected into a single linear story, several characters or their descendents appear more than once throughout the ten scripts; the character with the most appearances is Aunt Ester, a “washer of souls,” who appears in various stages of life and reference in Gem of the Ocean, Two Trains Running, King Hedley II, and Radio Golf. As a playwright, August Wilson was dedicated to cultivating social consciousness through the power of theatre, and the use of a medium through which a community could truly connect to invite an audience to bear witness to the state of the world around them, and their own place in the historical and contemporary social fabric. In an interview with The Paris Review, Wilson stated that “my plays offer (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans. For instance, in Fences they see a garbageman, a person they don’t really look at, although they see a garbageman every day. By looking at Troy’s life, white people find out that the content of this black garbageman’s life is affected by the same things – love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.” Gem of the Ocean, set in the 1900s, premiered in 2003 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago before transferring to Broadway the following year. The play depicts 285-year-old Aunt Ester, a healer and a keeper of tradition, as she cleanses the souls of those who pass through her kitchen. She leads one new arrival, Citizen Barlow, aboard the legendary slave ship known as the Gem of the Ocean, to embark on a journey of spiritual redemption to the mythical City of Bones. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in the 1910s, premiered in 1986 at Yale Repertory Theatre before opening at Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre in 1988. The play depicts the lives of boarding- house owner Seth Holly and his wife Bertha, as they meet and share living space with freed former slaves who have moved north after the Civil War, illuminating the ongoing racism and discrimination in the post-war United States. 5 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY Jevetta Steele in ATC’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, 2010 David Downing in ATC’s Seven Guitars, 1997 Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in the 1920s, premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1984 before opening on Broadway later that year. The only play of the American Century Cycle set in Chicago, it describes the rising tension between members of blues singer Ma Rainey’s band, and the desperation entwined in limited and thwarted opportunities. The Piano Lesson, set in the 1930s in the aftermath of the Great Depression, premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1987, and later opened on Broadway in 1990. Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, The Piano Lesson was inspired by a painting of the same name by Romare Bearden. The play depicts the lives of Doaker Charles and his household, interwoven with their various perspectives on the meaning and fate of the family heirloom piano. Seven Guitars, set in the 1940s, premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 1995 before moving on to Broadway in 1996. Seven Guitars details the journey of blues singer Floyd “Schoolboy” Barton as he seeks to define his own humanity, self-acceptance, and self-understanding and to right past wrongs after signing a record deal. The play begins with a funeral, describing the previous events in a series of flashbacks; the stories of some characters in Seven Guitars are later revisited in King Hedley II, set in the 1980s. Fences, set in the 1950s, premiered at Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985 before opening at Broadway’s 46th Street Theatre in 1987. Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play, Fences focuses on 53-year-old Troy as he struggles to provide for his family as a garbage collector, years after being forced to abandon his dreams of becoming a professional baseball player due to the persisting color barrier in Major League Baseball.