Rob Melrose, Artistic Director Paige Rogers, Associate Artistic Director Suzanne Appel, Managing Director Amy Clare Tasker, General Manager Pelleas & Melisande by Maurice Maeterlinck translated and directed by Rob Melrose music composition by Cliff Caruthers featuring Derek Fischer, Bennett Fisher, Paul Gerrior, Caitlyn Louchard, Brittany Kilcoyne McGregor, Carla Pauli, Gwyneth Richards, Jessica Jade Rudholm, Joshua Schell Set Designer Choreographer Costume Designer Michael Locher Laura Arrington Raquel Barreto Lighting Designer Stage Manager Video & Projection Designer York Kennedy Jocelyn A. Thompson Wesley Cabral www.cuttingball.com FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” - André Gide During his lifetime, Maurice Maeterlinck said many things and people did listen. He won the Nobel Prize for literature, was compared to Shakespeare after writing his first play, and influenced theater greats like Chekhov, Strindberg, Ibsen, Beckett and Stanislavski. He was one of the most respected writers of his time. But we, for the most part, have forgotten Maeterlinck and his legacy mainly comes from his influence on the music world, notably the pieces inspired by Pelleas and Melisande composed by Debussy, Fauré, Schoenberg, and Sibelius. Maeterlinck’s dream-like symbolist theater gave way to realism and now with film and television, realism has declared total victory and the mystical world of Maeterlinck has faded into the mist. At the same time, a visit back to Maeterlinck’s world gives great rewards. There is something about his worldview that is truly unique. It is at once modern and medieval. It is the world we imagine when we come across the ruins of a castle. It is a world of kings and princesses. It is a fairy tale world for adults. The characters of his plays aren’t historical, they are the characters of our dreams. Their concerns aren’t political, they are of love, happiness and eternal truths. It is a world of essences that is concerned with the soul and what is eternal. In our busy modern lives, there is something very refreshing and eye-opening about spending some time in this world. How to depict this world on stage has been a challenge to theater artists ever since Maeterlinck’s plays were first written. The great Russian directors Stanislavski and Meyerhold struggled with the best style for Maeterlinck’s writing throughout their careers. I have been dreaming about how to direct Pelleas & Melisande since I first read it twenty years ago. How do we open this world up to a contemporary audience? I’ve been influenced by the video installations of Bill Viola, the architecture of Tadao Ando, and the music of Steve Reich. I’m excited to have brought together a team of some of Cutting Ball’s best designers and actors to grapple with how to make Maeterlinck’s world manifest on stage. As a result, we’ve configured the theater in a way we never have before, using technology in ways that are new to us as well. What is exciting to me is that this one-hundred-eighteen-year-old play is still pushing us to imagine new ways of creating theater. That speaks to the power Maeterlinck’s wonderful imagination. I hope you enjoy entering his world with us! Sincerely, Rob Melrose Artistic Director Pelleas & Melisande by Maurice Maeterlinck CAST in order of appearance Servants......................... Brittany Kilcoyne McGregor .................Carla Pauli, Jessica Jade Rudholm Porter........................................................Paul Gerrior Melisande.........................................Caitlyn Louchard Golaud....................................................Derek Fischer Genevieve......................................Gwyneth Richards Arkel..........................................................Paul Gerrior Pelleas....................................................Joshua Schell Yniold.......................................Jessica Jade Rudholm Old Servant....................................Gwyneth Richards Doctor...................................................Bennett Fisher Pelleas & Melisande runs approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission PRODUCTION Rob Melrose.............................................................Director and Translator Cliff Caruthers................................................................................Composer Laura Arrington.....................................................................Choreographer Michael Locher..........................................................................Set Designer Wesley Cabral...................................................Video & Projection Designer York Kennedy....................................................................Lighting Designer Raquel Barreto.................................................................Costume Designer Jocelyn A. Thompson............................................................Stage Manager Bennett Fisher..............................................................................Dramaturg Gwyneth Richards...........................................................Voice & Text Coach Jason Nall.....................................................................Production Manager Technical Director..................Frederic O. Boulay of Oaktown Productions Annie Paladino..................................................................Assistant Director Bessie Delucchi...............................................Associate Costume Designer Simone Hamilton..................................................Assistant Stage Manager Dave Robertson...............................................................Master Electrician Glenn Davy.........................................Electrics Assistant & Board Operator The Cutting Ball Theater’s 2011 - 2012 Season is made possible in part by: Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Mental Insight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Phyllis C. Wattis Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and by our individual donors. FROM THE DRAMATURG An Overlooked Revolutionary In his lifetime, Maurice Maeterlinck was widely acknowledged as a modern master. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911 after years of critical and commercial success as a playwright, poet, and essayist, but, one hundred years later, his name is largely unknown to American audiences. Nevertheless, Maeterlinck’s footprints can be found throughout the artistic world. His writing had a major impact on J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; Constantin Stanislavski’s production of his 1908 play The Blue Bird can still be seen at the Moscow Art Theatre; and Pelleas and Melisande inspired Claude Debussy’s landmark opera (to say nothing of the work of composers Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, and Jean Sibelius). He is, quite possibly, the most famous and influential writer you’ve never heard of. It became clear early on in the course of my research that Maeterlinck’s interests as a writer were very much in keeping with the Cutting Ball spirit of celebrating the often- unrecognized gems in classic literature while simultaneously exploring the new and the experimental. In Pelleas and Melisande, Maeterlinck reaches back to French Medieval ideas of chivalry and courtly love, Pythagorean metaphysics, Belgian folklore, Arthurian legend, and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, but he cultivates these seeds into something rich and revolutionary. While Maeterlinck’s Pelleas and Melisande is singular, the conflicts at the core of the play are very familiar. We know each element of the story, both the childlike: the fairy tale kingdom; the delicate princess; the melancholy youth; the sage king; and the mature: the jealous husband; the unspoken passion; the stifling quality of an inactive life. What makes the play fascinating is that Maeterlinck keeps changing the landscape, merging these narratives and our associations until the product is somehow, paradoxically utterly recognizable and delightfully unfamiliar. Maeterlinck and Symbolism Maeterlinck is perhaps the most famous playwright of the Symbolist school, a literary movement that began in the mid 19th century with the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Varlaine, and Stéphane Mallarmé. In 1886 – four years before the publication of Pelleas and Melisande – poet and essayist Jean Moréas published Le Symbolisme, a manifesto that rejected the tenants of Naturalism and praised the qualities of the emerging style: The Idea, in its turn, should not be allowed to be seen deprived of the sumptuous lounge robes of extraneous analogies; because the essential character of symbolic art consists in never approaching the concentrated kernel of the Idea in itself. The Symbolist perspective is comparable to the analogy of the cave from Plato’s Republic. According to Plato, men are like prisoners chained to the wall of a cave with light shining behind them. They can perceive the shadows of the cave, and misinterpret it as the totality of life, but what is truly essential cannot be seen. So too, Symbolist philosophy and art are marked by a focus on the metaphysical, with particular interest paid to the ideas of fate and pre-destination. The mundane, natural world is just the outer layer, and the individual must strive to look beyond those signifiers to hidden meaning. Maeterlinck helped shaped the Symbolist aesthetic through