Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan Is Presented by Arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc
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38th Season • 371st Production MAINSTAGE / FEBRUARY 15 THROUGH MARCH 24, 2002 David Emmes Martin Benson Producing Artistic Director Artistic Director presents the West Coast Premiere of by KENNETH LONERGAN Scenic Designer Costume Designer Lighting Designer TONY FANNING AMY L. HUTTO TAMMY OWENS SLAUSON Composer/Sound Designer Production Manager Stage Manager ARAM ARSLANIAN JEFF GIFFORD *SCOTT HARRISON Directed by OLIVIA HONEGGER THE PLAYWRIGHTS CIRCLE, Honorary Producers Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan is presented by arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc. in New York. Playwrights Horizons, Inc., New York City, produced the World Premiere of Lobby Hero in 2000-2001. The Playwrights Horizons production was presented Off-Broadway by Jenny Weiner, Jon Steingart and Hal Luftig. PERFORMING ARTS NETWORK / SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P - 1 CAST OF CHARACTERS (in order of appearance) Jeff ............................................................................................... *Kevin Corrigan William ............................................................................................... *T.E. Russell Dawn ........................................................................................ *Tessa Auberjonois Bill .................................................................................................... *Simon Billig SETTING: The spacious lobby of a middle-income high-rise apartment building in Manhattan and the street outside, over the course of four consecutive nights. LENGTH: Approximately two hours and 30 minutes including one 15-minute intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Assistant Stage Manager ............................................................................. *Dara Crane Casting Director ....................................................................................... Joanne DeNaut Dramaturg ....................................................................................................... Jerry Patch Assistant to the Scenic Designer ........................................................................ Joe Celli Stage Management Intern ...................................................................... Collin Morrison ACKNOWLEDGEMENT A special thank you to the police officers of the Rampart Division of the Los Angeles Police Department for their assistance. Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. Please refrain from unwrapping candy or making other noises that may disturb surrounding patrons. The use of cameras and recorders in the theatre is prohibited. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the theatre. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. Media Partner Official Airline Media Partner P - 2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY / PERFORMING ARTS NETWORK Some Moral Dilemmas BY JERRY PATCH ◆❖◆ narrow window of time, the workman n underwater tunnel is under will be crushed. If the fitting is with- obby Hero presents a set of four Aconstruction despite almost cer- drawn to rescue the workman, the characters, each of whom is in- tain loss of life in the attempt. The tunnel will have to be abandoned, Lvolved in at least one moral danger is accepted as a cost of con- and the project begun anew. Two dilemma or crisis of con- workmen have already died science. in the project. What The following should be done? Should were adapted from Moral Dilemma Defined the tunnel have been Moral Reasoning, by built? Victor Grassian (Pren- moral dilemma involves a situation in which the (Note: 112 men were tice Hall, 1981, 1992). Aagent has only two courses of action available, killed constructing n the novel Sophie’s and each requires performing a morally Hoover Dam. The first IChoice, by William impermissible action. was a surveyor, J. G. Styron, Sophie, a Polish Plato presents the classic example: Tierney, and the last was woman, is arrested by A man borrows a weapon from his neighbor his son, Patrick. Both the Nazis and sent to promising to return it at his neighbor’s request. One men drowned on the Auschwitz. Once there, day the neighbor, in a fit of rage, asks for the weapon same day, December 20, she is allowed a choice 13 years apart.) back apparently with the intention to kill someone. because she is not a The man is faced with a dilemma: if he keeps his Jew: one of her two ◆❖◆ children will be spared promise, then he will be an accessory to a murder; if execution in accord he refuses to hand over the weapon, he violates his im’s friend Tom has with her choice. She promise. Japplied for a job for agonizes, and, as both A moral dilemma, then, is a situation involving a which he is qualified and children are being choice between two opposing courses of action, where that Jim will hire. There taken away, she does there are moral considerations in support of each is another applicant who choose: she gives up course of action. is better qualified. Jim her daughter, believing –from The Encyclopedia of Philosophy believes he should be im- the son, older and partial, but would like to stronger, will more give Tom the job. Jim likely survive. decides that even though Sophie never learns his fate. structing the tunnel. On a day involv- morality might dictate giving the job Years later, haunted by guilt, she ing a race against time when a criti- to the best qualified, friendship has a commits suicide. Should she have cal fitting is lowered into place, a moral importance that might require felt guilty? Did she do the right workman is trapped beneath the fit- partiality in this case. He gives the thing? ting. If the fitting is installed in the job to Tom. Was he right? PERFORMING ARTS NETWORK / SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P - 3 The Moral Dilemma that Created American Literature n chapter thirty-one of strike no places to harden me against and then says to myself: Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain him, but only the other kind. I’d see “ ‘All right, then, I’ll go to hell.’” Igave his title character a crisis of him standing my watch on top of “…I shoved the whole thing out conscience that ultimately brought his’n, stead of calling me, so I could of my head; and said I would take up about American literature’s first go on sleeping; and see him how glad wickedness again, which was in my break from Puritan tradition. Adrift on a raft on the Mississippi River with Jim, the runaway slave, Huck pondered which course of action— turning Jim in or to keep on running with him—was the greater evil: “Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he’d got to be a slave, and so I’d better write a letter to Tom Sawyer and tell him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that notion, for two things: she’d be mad and disgusted at his rascality and ungratefulness for leaving her, and so she’d sell him straight down the river again; and if she didn’t everybody naturally despises an ungrateful nigger, and they’d make Jim feel it all the time, and so he’d feel ornery and disgraced. “And then think of me! It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame… “Well, I tried the best I could to kinder soften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was brung up wicked, and so I warn’t so much to blame; but something inside of me he was when I come back out of the line, being brung up to it, and the kept saying, ‘There was the Sunday fog; and when I come to him again in other warn’t. And for a starter, I school, you could a gone to it; and if the swamp. .and how good he always would go and steal Jim out of slavery you’d a done it they’d a learnt you, was… again; and if I could think up there, that people that acts as I’d “I was a trembling, because I’d anything worse, I would do that, too; been acting about the nigger goes to got to decide, forever, betwixt two because as long as I was in, and in for everlasting fire… things, and I knowed it. I studied a good, I might as well go the whole “But somehow I couldn’t seem to minute, sort of holding my breath, hog.” P - 4 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY / PERFORMING ARTS NETWORK TESSA AUBERJONOIS SIMON BILLIG KEVIN CORRIGAN Dawn Bill Jeff Artist Biographies *TESSA AUBERJONOIS (Dawn) ap- other theatre credits include Arms and Institute in NYC from 1984-88 but has peared earlier this season in Hold the Man at the Alley Theatre, Shake- gone on to work mostly in films and Please and made her SCR debut in last speare Festival L.A.’s production of Oth- television. One of the first directors to season’s opener Everett Beekin. She ello, Love’s Labour’s Lost at the New hire him was Martin Scorsese who let has appeared Off-Broadway in Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Forty him play Ray Liotta’s crippled younger Trainspotting at the Players Theatre, Four Sycamore and King Lear at the brother Michael in Goodfellas. Since Killers and Other Family at the Rattle- Asolo Theatre and the Public then Corrigan has appeared in more stick and Uncommon Women & Others Theater/New York Shakespeare Festi- than 40 films, mostly independent such at the Lucille Lortel. Her regional the- val’s The Comedy of Errors. He is a as Living in Oblivion, Walking and atre credits include The Country Wife member of The Actor’s Company The- Talking, Buffalo 66, Slums of Beverly and Camino Real at the Shakespeare atre in New York, with whom he has ap- Hills, Henry Fool, Steal This Movie, and Theatre in Washington D.C., Hay Fever peared in numerous productions, most the upcoming Scotland P.A. He also and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at recently as Luke in Look Homeward plays the weird uncle on the Fox show Yale Repertory Theatre, The Cripple of Angel.