The Legend of Georgia Mcbride by MATTHEW LOPEZ Directed by JEFFREY MEANZA
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McGuire Proscenium Stage / July 14 – Aug 26, 2018 The Legend of Georgia McBride by MATTHEW LOPEZ directed by JEFFREY MEANZA PLAY GUIDE Inside THE PLAY Synopsis, Setting and Characters • 3 THE AUTHORS From Director Jeffrey Meanza •4 About Playwright Matthew Lopez • 5 CULTURAL CONTEXT Drag Defined •6 A Brief History of Drag • 6 Drag and Gender Identity • 6 People, Places and Things in the Play • 7 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 12 Play guides are made possible by Guthrie Theater Play Guide Copyright 2018 DRAMATURG Jo Holcomb GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves CONTRIBUTOR Jo Holcomb Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55415 All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Play Guide ADMINISTRATION 612.225.6000 may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic BOX OFFICE 612.377.2224 or 1.877.44.STAGE TOLL-FREE or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in guthrietheater.org • Joseph Haj, artistic director writing from the publishers. Some materials published herein are written especially for our Guide. Others are reprinted by permission of their publishers. The Guthrie Theater receives support from the National The Guthrie creates transformative theater experiences that ignite the imagination, Endowment for the Arts. This activity is made possible in part by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation stir the heart, open the mind and build community through the illumination of our by the Minnesota State Legislature. The Minnesota State Arts Board received additional funds to support this activity from common humanity. the National Endowment for the Arts. 2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE PLAY PHOTOS: COSTUME SKETCHES BY PATRICK HOLT SETTING Panama City Beach, Florida. Synopsis Any time right about now. Casey is an Elvis impersonator and tribute artist with everything going CHARACTERS for him, including a flashy sequin jumpsuit. There’s no question that he’s Casey (20s, white), an Elvis a natural, but he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time – at least so far impersonator who works at – and his act just doesn’t make it at Cleo’s, a failing bar in Panama City Cleo’s Bar Beach. Jo (20s, African American), Casey’s wife When Eddie, the bar’s owner, decides to give his cousin Tracy a chance Eddie (50s/60s), the owner to resurrect his club and her drag act, things start to pick up – but not of Cleo’s bar for Casey. His long-suffering wife Jo is growing weary of their always- bouncing rent checks while Casey continues to drop cash on slices Tracy (40s/50s), Eddie’s cousin of pizza or yet another rhinestone-bedazzled jumpsuit. And as their and an elegant, down-on-her- finances hit rock bottom, Jo discovers she’s pregnant. luck drag queen named Miss Tracy Mills (sometimes referred Their future seems bleak until one fateful night at Cleo’s, when Tracy’s to as Bobby) partner Rexy has one too many pre-show drinks and can’t take the Rexy (20s/30s)*, a not-so- stage as Anorexia Nervosa. It’s the big break Casey’s dreamed of, elegant drag queen named but only if he’s willing to trade in his jumpsuit for a pair of stilettos. Miss Anorexia Nervosa He agrees, and “The King” transforms into an all-out queen with the Jason (20s/30s)*, Casey’s help of some new friends. As his success and reputation grow, so do lifelong friend, neighbor his personal conflicts with this newfound work that – much to Casey’s and landlord surprise – gives him the artistic fulfillment and family he’s always wanted. *One actor plays the roles of Rexy and Jason. GUTHRIE THEATER \ 3 THE AUTHORS From Director Jeffrey Meanza means to you – the relationships the most colorful things you can with our biological family imagine. By the end of the play, we sometimes don’t make as much hope to have everyone dancing in sense as the family we gather the aisles. along the way. That’s what I love about this play. It honors that. But while the play is incredibly fun, there’s a deep heart at its core. It’s also important to note that It’s not simple. Some productions this play is a legend, which is could be quite glib and focus something the design team on chasing the funny or making worked on. It’s not meant to be light of what drag is. But as a rendered in an absolute reality. gay man and someone who has The title gives us great permission done drag, I can tell you that it’s PHOTO: NATHAN DALE STUDIOS to move across time and story. We something to be taken incredibly understand the space at the start seriously. As Rexy says, “Drag I first encountered this play to be Cleo’s, this rundown bar in is a raised fist inside a sequined when it was being developed at the Florida panhandle trying to glove. Drag is a lot of things, baby, Denver’s New Play Summit. A make ends meet. Then the owner but drag is not for sissies.” For friend was directing the workshop, takes a last-ditch, Hail Mary pass many of us who have struggled and he sent me the script. I was and invites his drag queen cousin through the journey of being gay, so taken with it because it has a and her friend to turn it into a drag drag has empowered us to take gay playwright and gay themes, bar, which ends up being a very back the power of the persona but at the center of the piece is beautiful and successful choice. that was ripped from us in our a heterosexual couple. It is so But the set and everything else adolescence and youth. So I take beautiful because it is ultimately opens up in a way that exposes it incredibly seriously. I hope that about acceptance and taking the theatricality of the piece and this production will be a love responsibility for one’s actions honors the idea that this story letter not only to queer folk but and love. really is a legend. to our community and the idea of building family together. As I watched this play develop In creating the design, we over its many drafts, there were experimented with things. What Edited from comments made to the cast, creative team and Guthrie staff on the first many different storylines, all quite we understand to be the back day of rehearsal beautiful. But as the play moved room or dressing room progresses forward in its development, it with the characters. As Casey circled closer to the idea of what enters his dark night of the soul, family is. As playwright Matthew elements disappear and we see Lopez said, it’s an odd group of the back wall, the gears and people – very distinct and well- the workings of the bar. And rendered – who would never end then, ultimately, by the finale we up together. But through the work understand that we’ve been in of drag and performance, they find Cleo’s the whole time, the McGuire an interesting, idiosyncratic sense Proscenium Stage is, in fact, Cleo’s of family. Armistead Maupin talks and we have all be complicit about your biological family versus participants in the storytelling. your “logical” family. For many of There will be a fabulous amount of us who identify as queer – queer color, confetti canons, jelly domes, in any broad sense of what that disco balls and hot pink walls – 4 \ GUTHRIE THEATER THE AUTHORS About Playwright Matthew Lopez where he recently served as the the one gay bar in my hometown Aetna New Voices Fellow. For the and watch him perform. I’d hang past two seasons, he has been the out in the dressing room with him Inaugural Playwriting Fellow at the and all the other queens as they Denver Center Theatre Company. prepared for their shows. That Lopez was a writer on the HBO energy backstage was intoxicating series “The Newsroom” and has (sometimes literally) and I wanted recently adapted the Javier Marías to capture my memories of that book trilogy Your Face Tomorrow time in this play. for the screen along with the biopic Dr. Q for Disney. Lopez in an interview with Dan Allen, quoted from “Elvis is dead but a star is born,” Los Angeles Blade, April 5, 2017 Edited from a biography by Dramatists Play Service PHOTO: SIMON ANNAND HIS WORK Matthew Lopez is the author IN HIS OWN WORDS of The Whipping Man, one of A friend of a friend of my then the most celebrated and widely boyfriend (now husband) had put produced new American plays of together a music playlist for her the last decade. The Manhattan boyfriend who was experimenting Theatre Club production received with drag as performance art. He Obie, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics was putting together a persona, Circle and John Gassner Memorial and the playlist was filled with Playwriting awards. It has since female country singers: Dolly, been produced at more than Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, 100 U.S. theaters as well as etc. It’s a great mix, and it got me internationally. The Legend of thinking: What would it take for Georgia McBride premiered at a straight man to become a drag Denver Center for the Performing queen? Who would he be, and what Arts and ran off-Broadway at would that journey look like? I’m MCC Theatre in a production that fascinated by people who leave received multiple Drama Desk, their bubble and willingly place Lucille Lortel and Outer Critics themselves in foreign territory.