SPRING 2012-2013 SPOTLIGHT GREAT PLAYS BEGIN WITH GREAT STORIES

INVISIBLE MAN P.2 A RAISIN IN THE SUN P.6 “M” P.10 RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN P.14 2013 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR P.22 REIKEN

HUNTINGTON NEWS P.26

ASTRID Teagle F. Bougere in Invisible Man. PERFORMANCE CALENDARS P.27 DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHERcELROEN M

“Theatrical brilliance! A must-see!” – CHICAGO TRIBUNE POWERFUL AMERICAN CLASSICADAPTED FOR THE STAGE BY ELLISON OREN JACOBY “Ravishing!” BASED ON THE NOVEL BY – THE WASHINGTON POST INVISIBLERALPH

“STUNNING! MAN Teagle F. Bougere gives a tour de force performance!” – BROADWAYWORLD.COM AVENUE OF THE ARTS BU THEATRE

“ I am an invisible man.” An idealistic young African-American man searches for identity and his place in the world in AN.4-FEB.3this epic journey through 1930s America. Ellison’s landmark American novel J about race, power, freedom, and liberty comes to life in this gripping theatrical adaptation. “This blazingly theatrical adaptation of one of the most important books of the 20th century confronts us with a blistering perspective on race in America.” – PETER DUBOIS

Ralph Ellison Oren Jacoby INTEGRATING IMAGINATION: STAGING INVISIBLE MAN When Ralph Ellison insisted that no adaptation of his iconic novel literary and the performative, Ellison wanted to “take advantage of the Invisible Man be made until after his death, he wasn’t merely being novel’s capacity for telling the truth while actually telling a ‘lie,’ which possessive. “Ralph was a stickler and a perfectionist and he was not is the Afro-American folk term for an improvised story.” persuaded it could be done,” explained his friend and literary executor, Though Ellison’s meticulous writing was hardly “improvised,” he was John Callahan. A panoramic tale of race in America told through one profoundly aware of signifying, that self-aware reshuffling of meaning man’s experiences, Invisible Man is as monumental in length as it is in that is a vital feature of black culture. Reviewing Henry Louis Gates, stature, an instant classic continuously in print for sixty years. Jr.’s The Signifying Monkey, John Wideman defines signifying as While its author’s censure, its narrative scope, and its legendary status “serious play that serves as instruction, entertainment, mental exercise, might seem daunting to the adaptor, Invisible Man is a work primed preparation for interacting with friend and foe in the social arena” — for performance. “Ellison was completely theatrical in his language,” a description that also expresses theatre’s role in society. Wideman adaptor Oren Jacoby explains. “The book is poetic, dramatic, further explains that signifying “is a sign that words cannot be trusted, rhetorical.” Jacoby’s text uses only the words of the novel, realized that even the most literal utterance allows room for interpretation, that through director Christopher McElroen’s striking imagery and the language is both carnival and minefield.” voices of a ten-member ensemble. For Ellison, linguistic flexibility was not only fundamentally black — it By bringing Ellison’s language to the stage, Jacoby continues the was also fundamentally American. “America is the land of masking project that the novel began — recognizing the voice of a young black jokers,” he wrote. “We wear the mask for purposes of aggression as American as the collective voice of his nation. well as for defense, when we are projecting the future and preserving the past.” Black experience is American experience; and American Though written as a monologue, Invisible Man is rife with voices. experience is performance. “When American life is most American it is In re-conceptualizing the American novel, Ellison captured the apt to be most theatrical,” Ellison stated — a compelling argument for polyphonies of American speech. “Compared with the rich babel realizing this nation’s creative visions on the stage. of idiomatic expression around me,” he wrote, the language of modern fiction “was embarrassingly austere.” In the South and in In Ellison’s introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of his novel, Harlem, Ellison heard people speaking “a mixture of the folk, the he wrote, “human imagination is integrative.” It seeks to combine Biblical, the scientific, and the political. Slangy in one instance, disparate parts in the search for a higher meaning. The United States, academic in another, loaded poetically with imagery at one moment, which Ellison loved as fiercely as he critiqued, idealizes this same mathematically bare of imagery in the next.” He transcribed this rich quest for synthesis. So does the theatre, in which a range of creative chaos in Invisible Man, a profusion that allows the novel’s narrator to impulses must be brought into harmony. By linking the power of become the myriad voices of an ensemble. Ellison’s words to actors’ voices and the visual imaginations of director and designers, Oren Jacoby’s Invisible Man embarks on the same By embracing the contradictions of the vernacular, Ellison altered the journey. scope of his tale. It became grander and more intimate, tuned to both magic and the mundane. Much as Jacoby’s adaptation combines the - SAM LASMAN

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/invisibleman to listen to an NPR interview with Oren Jacoby and Christopher McElroen, watch video from the world premiere production, read reviews of this production.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 3 THE ENDURANCE OF INVISIBLE MAN On the 60th anniversary of its publication, Ralph Ellison’s landmark novel remains as compelling and provocative as on its first publication, treasured by scholars and casual readers alike. Several scholars reflect on why Invisible Man has remained a touchstone of American literary culture.

“ Few writers in any tradition create a metaphor that accounts for the political condition of a group of people as well as the human condition. And he created this truly universal novel by delving deeply — deeper than anybody before him — into the fullest range of African-American culture: music, art, folklore, storytelling traditions, signifying humor. It’s an encyclopedia of black culture.”

— CRITIC AND SCHOLAR HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.

“ It’s probably the first post-modern American novel. It’s probably the most influential novel in the second half of the 20th century. It influenced two or three generations of writers, black and white, and the reason is because Ellison raised the artistic and intellectual standards of the American novel.”

— NOVELIST AND CRITIC CHARLES JOHNSON

“Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man encapsulates so much of modern American history and literature that it counts for several books at once. The deathbed advice of the protagonist’s grandfather — ‘affirm the principle’ — seems to signal Ellison’s own refusal to reject the potential of American democracy, despite the nation’s failure to live up to its stated ideals of liberty and equality.”

— SCHOLAR JAMES KLOPPENBERG

“The Invisible Man…takes on the world, body and soul. And at the novel’s end, he only wants to last, as Hemingway put it, and to get his work done: to tell his story truer than the facts.”

— ELLISON SCHOLAR ROBERT G. O’MEALLY

“The novel’s power to compel others to see their reality through the prism of African-American experience follows from Ellison’s fidelity to ‘a whole unrecorded history’ whose variable, vernacular richness equaled the range of spoken idioms Shakespeare heard in the streets and inns of Elizabethan England.”

— ELLISON’S LITERARY EXECUTOR JOHN F. CALLAHAN ASTRID

REIKEN

From top, Teagle F. Bougere and Deidra LaWan Starnes; the cast; SEE PAGE 23 Teagle F. Bougere and Johnny Lee Davenport in Invisible Man. FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

4 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 CURTAIN CALLS NAME Teagle F. Bougere NAME Edward James Hyland ROLE Invisible Man ROLE Mr. Norton, Brother Hambro, Ensemble HOMETOWN Smoke Bend, LA HOMETOWN Staten Island, NY WHEN HAVE YOU FELT THAT PREVIOUS HUNTINGTON ROLE YOU WERE INVISIBLE? Boss Mangan in Heartbreak House Being dismissed and stereotyped are forms WHAT IS ONE UNIVERSAL THEME OR of invisibility that I experience to varying degrees everyday. MESSAGE PRESENTED BY THE PLAY? They are insidious forms that occur in stores, museums, and Self-awareness is a quality that we all strive to attain, and the even in the park when I go for a run. Invisible Man demonstrates throughout that striving should be a IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANTED TO DO WHEN YOU constant in our lives. WERE YOUNGER BUT NOT NOW? WHAT CHANGED? IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANTED TO DO WHEN YOU WERE I wanted to be many different things when I was a younger YOUNGER BUT NOT NOW? WHAT CHANGED? (airline pilot, broadcaster for the San Francisco Giants, travel As a young man I tried my hand in many different professions with the circus etc.). Becoming an actor struck me as a way but was never satisfied until I found the theatre. It was there that of doing everything for a time. I felt not only at home but fulfilled by being able to reach out and touch people in a way that I had never before experienced. NAME De’Lon Grant ROLE Ralston, Tod Clifton, Ensemble NAME Deidra LaWan Starnes HOMETOWN Born in Providence, RI / ROLE Singer, Kate, Mary Rambo, Ensemble Raised in Duluth, MN HOMETOWN Washington, DC WHEN HAVE YOU FELT THAT WHAT IS ONE UNIVERSAL THEME OR YOU WERE INVISIBLE? MESSAGE PRESENTED BY THE PLAY? Performing in the show has made me acutely aware of Invisibility is perpetuated by allowing others to moments in life when I am forced into invisibility as opposed define and determine who you are. I think that one must have a to those in when I make myself invisible. As a tall, broad man, clear understanding of self so that what others think, say, or feel who can be courteous to his own detriment, I try and make about you does not end up affecting you. myself invisible on public transportation. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANTED TO DO WHEN YOU IS THERE ANYTHING YOU WANTED TO DO WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER BUT NOT NOW? WHAT CHANGED? WERE YOUNGER BUT NOT NOW? WHAT CHANGED? I used to want to be an elementary school teacher, but I know I I really liked being in charge of things, so at a young age don’t have all of the necessary qualities to be a highly effective I thought I wanted to teach, but I do not have the patience classroom teacher. But yet I still love to teach! that teaching requires.

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/invisibleman for expanded interviews with the cast. JEFF

The inspiration for the set of Invisible Man came from the Jeff Wall WALL photo After “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 5 BY DIRECTED BY LORRAINE LIESL HANSBERRY TOMMY

“A play that changed American TIMELESS FAMILY STORY theatre forever.” – THE NEW YORK TIMES A RAISIN IN THE SUN

AVENUE OF THE ARTS BU THEATRE

In a crowded apartment in Chicago’s South Side, each member of a struggling African- American family yearns for a different version of a better life. An impending and sizeable MAR.8-APR.7insurance payment could be the key. Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 classic drama is an inspiring and fi ercely moving portrait of people whose dreams are constantly deferred.

Braille “With Ruined and her fresh approach to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Director Liesl Tommy created two of the most artistically exciting productions of recent memory at the Huntington. Now she brings her perspective to one of the greatest American plays ever written.” – PETER DUBOIS

Lorraine Hansberry; the program cover of the 1959 production of A Raisin in the Sun. A DREAM REALIZED: HANSBERRY’S A RAISIN IN THE SUN Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun charts the quests for success “The play is honest. She has told the inner as well as the outer truth and happiness in the Younger family as they seek to buy a house in a about a Negro family in the south-side of Chicago at the present restricted neighborhood. Their naiveté and ambition as they pursue time,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in his New York Times review of the a place in America are as universal as that of the Lomans in Death of original production. “A Raisin in the Sun has vigor as well as veracity a Salesman or the Ricardos in I Love Lucy. In tragedy, in comedy, and and is likely to destroy the complacency of any one who sees it.” in drama, these fictional, mid-twentieth century families represent Because the author of this masterful portrait of American life was for us the touchstone of our cultural legacy: striving to achieve the young, black, and female, producer Phillip Rose toiled to find enough American dream. financing for the production. Once Raisin had opened, it garnered There is one notable difference, however. While the Lomans and the almost immediate success despite the tepid audience at its last Ricardos essentially function in environments dominated by the preview performance. The first play to debut on Broadway that was either written by a black woman or directed by a black director white worldview, the Youngers provide a rarely seen glimpse into (Lloyd Richards), Raisin earned four Tony Award nominations, the aspirations and struggles of African-Americans. Hansberry including Best Play. It won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award delved into her own family’s dreams to write her stark depiction for Best Play, making Hansberry the first African-American to do so. of the Younger family’s travails. Born in Chicago in May 1930 to Carl and Nannie Hansberry, her real estate broker-father moved Raisin’s success is met only by its prescience. “The events of every the family to the white-dominated Washington Park neighborhood passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun,” DJR Bruckner in 1938, defying a restrictive real estate covenant that prohibited wrote in a 1986 review in the New York Times. “It is as if history African-Americans from living there. Carl fought the contract all the is conspiring to ensure [sic] that the play will be a classic.” The way to the Supreme Court where a landmark decision allowed for play foretold both the civil rights and feminist movements of the contestation of such covenants. 1960s, uncannily presenting stories that would later speak to these revolutionary pushes for advancement. Hansberry compelled New York Hansberry found inspiration in both the incident and the lack of audiences to confront issues that were hardly discussed in private, let suitable representations of African-Americans in the art of the time. alone in a public forum, and that would soon absorb the country. Aiming to depict African-Americans as they were, Hansberry used vernacular speech and brought to light the challenges they often Langston Hughes anticipated such an uprising in his poem, just as Hansberry illustrated the effects of a dream deferred by the Youngers. encountered — as well as the dignity and strength they possessed. Raisin answers the incisive — and incendiary — last line of Hughes’ “The intimacy of knowledge which the Negro may culturally have of poem: “Or does it explode?” Indeed it did, and Raisin became a white Americans does not exist in the reverse,” she said. This window beacon for a changing nation. into black life reinforced for largely white audiences that perhaps the differences between races were not as sharp as they presumed. - ALI LESKOWITZ

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/raisin to watch a mini-documentary about playwright Lorraine Hansberry and read the New York Times review of the 1959 Broadway production and article about the play’s journey to Broadway and its legacy.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 7 A DREAM DEFERRED

What happens to a KEVIN

dream deferred? BERNE

Carla Duren and Pascale Armand in Ruined directed by Liesl Tommy (2011). Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? LIESL TOMMY Or fester like a sore — A FEROCIOUS STORYTELLER And then run? In 1995, Liesl Tommy auditioned for a role in the Huntington Theatre Company’s production of A Raisin in the Sun. Fast forward 17 years, and she is now the director Does it stink like rotten meat? behind the casting table auditioning actors for the same role. Huntington audiences know Tommy from her insightful direction Or crust and sugar over — of Lynn Nottage’s Ruined (2011) and August Liesl Tommy Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2012).

Tommy was born in Cape Town, South Africa under apartheid. She like a syrupy sweet? lived in a colored township outside of the city until she was 15 years old when her family moved to Newton, Massachusetts. An early lover of theatre, Liesl would explore the plays on her dad’s bookshelf Maybe it just sags and coerce her brother into reading the most dramatic scenes from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Glass Menagerie. She was active in theatre at Newton North High School, and after graduation like a heavy load. she studied acting at a conservatory in London and at a joint program at Brown University and Trinity Repertory Company. At Trinity, her teachers noticed and encouraged Tommy’s instincts for directing. Tommy slowly made the transition and now directs both Or does it explode? new plays and classics worldwide.

Tommy isn’t intimated by the task of re-envisioning a classic. “Part of the fun of doing a play like this is that the definitive production has - LANGSTON HUGHES already been done,” Tommy said of working on Mamet’s American Buffalo at Baltimore’s CenterStage. “I get to be an artist with it. There’s freedom and that’s wonderful…I can let my imagination take flight.” When developing her own take on a masterpiece such as the production of Hamlet she recently directed at California Shakespeare Theater, Tommy follows the advice of a former college professor: find the story born from her personal experience and perspective, rather than seek to create a definitive production.

8 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 CATCHING UP WITH CLYBOURNE Nearly fifty years after the Younger family moved to Chicago’s fictional white Clybourne Park neighborhood in A Raisin in the Sun, another Chicagoan did a bit of seminal neighborhood integration himself. It was in this climate of Barack Obama becoming the first African-American President of the United States and moving into the White House that Bruce Norris T

. premiered his 2010 play Clybourne Park, a companion of CHARLES sorts to Raisin.

ERICKSON In its first act, Clybourne Park follows the white couple that has agreed to sell their home to the Younger family. Neighborhood representative Karl Lindner — the only character to appear in Yvette Freeman and Corey Allen in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom directed by Liesl Tommy (2012). both Raisin and Clybourne — tries to convince them not to sell. The second act fast-forwards fifty years to the present, as a different white family tries to buy and tear down that same Tommy’s aesthetic is visceral and physical. “I’m interested in the house in a now black-dominated neighborhood. violence of being a human being,” says Tommy, “and sometimes that Norris realized that his generation represented the children of is with actual physical violence onstage, and sometimes it’s just the the fictional Lindner. “That’s a lesson that sticks with you, the thing that pulsates underneath every exchange.” In order to achieve lesson that you are, essentially the villain in someone else’s the “muscularly-performed” productions she is known for, Tommy story,” he told The New York Times in August 2011. “Many years starts with the metaphor of the play. She rarely sculpts a play to later, I thought, what if we turned the story around and told it drive a point or agenda, but strives to keep the metaphor alive “so from the opposite angle, the angle of people like my family, the that people can have the experience of the story. I rarely want things villains, the ones who wanted to keep them out?” to be just realism. I’m not all that excited by it. You always want that feeling that there’s a larger life in the back somehow.” The play debuted on Broadway in April 2012 and garnered numerous awards: the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the 2011 Her training as an actor at Brown/Trinity Rep informed how she Olivier Award for Best New Play, and the 2012 Tony Award for runs her rehearsals. Tommy does not like seeing hyper-sculpted Best Play. It makes its Boston premiere at the SpeakEasy Stage theatre where the director’s hand is clearly noticeable. She believes Company in March 2013 with a production directed by M. Bevin that the actors should drive the piece so that the audience can see O’Gara, the Huntington’s associate producer. people being free onstage. In the first week of rehearsals, she asks questions of her actors to gather their perspectives and impressions In concert, the two plays explore various facets and eras of of the piece. She rarely wants to adhere to a big concept that has no racism. Other playwrights, too, are grappling with the ideas relation to the actors on stage. First and foremost, Tommy strives to Hansberry addresses in her play: Kirsten Greenidge’s The Luck “tell the story with as much clarity and ferocity as possible.” With an of the Irish and Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Beneatha’s Place both emotionally engaging story such as Ruined, which follows a group take inspiration from Raisin, delving into further studies of race, of Congolese women surviving in the crossfire of civil war, Tommy American culture, and the search for home. didn’t give the actors any easy outs during rehearsals, instead immersing them in the details of the conflict. “It was imperative Hansberry predicted that racial tension would soon boil over. As that [the actors] felt the full depth of their characters, that they Frank Rich wrote in New York Magazine, “Explode it did, in the understood every facet of who they were,” she explains. years after Hansberry’s final curtain, and Norris’s play is most of all an effort to sort through the ensuing wreckage.” When working on a play, Tommy asks “What is the set in real life, and how do I take it up a few notches? How do these people - ALI LESKOWITZ interact and how do I make it more? I want to see people using language vigorously, smacking out those consonants, getting in each other’s face, and I want to feel like I’m smelling sweat.” We can expect nothing less with A Raisin in the Sun.

- VICKI SCHAIRER

SEE PAGE 23 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 9 ADAPTED FROM THE FRITZ LANG FILM BY RYAN LANDRY NIGHTMARISH GOOD TIME DIRECTED BY CAITLIN LOWANS “M” “With Ryan Landry, perversity and hilarity go skipping along SOUTH END hand in hand.” CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE– BOSTON.COM BCA

Famous for irreverently funny adaptations of classics, Ryan Landry (Death of a Saleslady, The MAR.29Little Pricks) sets - his sightsAPR.27 on Fritz Lang’s early fi lm noir masterpiece, “M,” about a child killer who is hunted down and brought to justice by the criminal underworld. This provocative yet surprisingly hilarious premiere features Boston favorite Karen MacDonald (All My Sons). “Ryan’s genre-breaking, gender- bending brand of theatre unites puppets, cross dressing, and a classic suspense fi lm. It won’t be for the faint of heart, but it will be an amazing collaboration between two Boston theatre legends. I am as excited as KELLY

anyone to see what happens.” DAVIDSON – PETER DUBOIS

Fritz Lang; The M 1931 movie poster; Ryan Landry as Willy Wanker in Willy Wanker and the Hershey Highway. “M” IS AMONG US Fritz Lang and Ryan Landry are men of unique vision. But whereas — drag, parody, and satire. In doing so, their work draws on the the stark, single-minded intensity of Lang’s oeuvre defined the aesthetic developed by Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical German Expressionist movement, Landry’s creativity rejects Company in the 1970s and ’80s, whose manifesto urged theatrical monomaniacal auteurship in favor of an aesthetic that scavenges, adaptors to, “treat the material in a madly farcical manner without remixes, and re-imagines with a fierce audacity. The results, though, losing the seriousness of the theme.” If anyone can find a way to are every bit as singular. express the terror of M while simultaneously offering release from its grip, it is Landry, whose work The Phoenix has praised for its Accommodating the visions of both men in a single project is a “uncanny if slightly unhinged faithfulness.” daunting task. Lang called M his greatest work, and critics have echoed his judgment throughout the eight decades since the The Orphans’ adaptations can certainly inspire purist outrage film’s release. The tale of a city panicked by an elusive child-killer alongside adulation. But such transgression is key to the history is certainly macabre enough to grip the imagination of any age, as of M, which was seen as dangerously corrupting even while it was evidenced by the numerous films, books, and other adaptations that lauded. The Nazis denounced it as degenerate, and critics were both have taken up the theme. Each, however, has fallen inevitably under fascinated and appalled. “Things get really evil only when raw and the shadow of Lang’s masterpiece. uncivilized sentiments are mixed with the most refined and highly civilized ability!” Gabriele Tergit proclaimed in a 1931 review, in a For Landry, a simple reiteration of the story’s events would be a judgment that encapsulates exactly the qualities that Landry seeks to doubly hopeless endeavor. Those who ape Lang inevitably find emulate. themselves losing by comparison. More importantly, though, repeating the grim cycle of the tale — murder, pursuit, judgment — The original M’s mix of sophistication and corruption represents the leaves audience and actors alike trapped in the gloom of an eternal basis of noir, perhaps the only fictional genre that owes its existence 1931 with no means of escape. entirely to the cinema. In turn, the Orphans’ trademark fusion of genres demands recognition of our complicity — as an audience and To provide a means of escape, Landry introduces a plucky ingénue as individuals — in both the perversity of pop culture and the inability (“Woman”) and a bold theatergoer (“Man”) whose madcap love to free ourselves of traditional strictures in performance, attitude, and affair provides a counterpoint to the haunted main plot. Drawing on adaptation. Applied to M, this approach deepens our understanding vintage romantic comedies and the cabaret glitz of Weimar Berlin, of what it means to hunt for the source of our fears, in the theatre the couple initiates a parallel manhunt, chased by those who would as well as in the wider world. The tale of a society’s search for the restore the proceedings to “the story as rehearsed.” demon hidden in its heart will remain current as long as we suspect — prompted by Lang, Landry, and the rest — that the killer is indeed Landry’s theatre company, The Gold Dust Orphans, are known for among us. embracing the turbulence of mainstream culture while simultaneously undermining it through classic techniques of theatrical subversion - SAM LASMAN

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/m to watch a clip from Fritz Lang’s 1931 film, read a Criterian article about the film, watch examples of Ryan Landry’s work, and more.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 11 The Gold Dust Orphan’s Phantom of the Oprah. P.J. McWhiskers and Penny Champayne in Ryan Landry’s The Gulls.

How did Ryan Landry — the playwright-performer-impresario famous for irreverent takes on the classics — end up onstage at the Huntington — an established regional theatre whose interpretations LOOKING FOR THE of the classics lean toward the reverent? The pairing, unlikely as it is dynamic, has its roots in a combination of Landry’s own constantly evolving aesthetic and the local focus of the Huntington’s new NEXT FRONTIER: work activities. Across his decades-long career, Landry has constantly pushed himself as a writer. His earliest writings were sketches for nightclubs RYAN LANDRY’S when he worked as a promoter. The first piece he recalls was a short work called “Here Lies Lucy.” “The ghost of Lucille Ball came back from the grave as a talking skull,” Landry tells. “Lucy wanted to get PLAYWRITING CAREER into the Clarks Elementary School production of Hamlet because Tallulah Bankhead was in it.” After acting in another company’s lackluster production, Landry dared himself to write his own full- length plays, often with a similar pop-culture focus — How Mrs. Grinchley Swiped Christmas, Charlie’s Angels, The Ebonic Woman. Landry’s company the Gold Dust Orphans became one of the most successful theatre companies in Boston, regularly selling out whatever space they performed in – from the small converted screening room where the company started to their current longtime home in the basement of the Fenway nightclub Machine.

As the Gold Dust Orphans became more established, Landry looked for new challenges for himself as a writer. “I started loving the plays of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller,” Landry says. “I’d been putting pop culture things through the filter of my brain, but now I wanted to tackle these beautiful plays and give them a different take. Who’s to say that Arthur Miller is any different than I Dream of

12 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 FROM AUDIENCE MEMBER TO AUTEUR: THE RIDICULOUS BEGINNINGS OF RYAN LANDRY Playwright Ryan Landry remembers the moment he knew where he belonged as an artist. He had just moved from a trailer park in Wallingford, Connecticut T . to New York and started art school CHARLES to study painting. One night, a friend

ERICKSON invited him to Le Bourgeois Avant Garde at the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in the West Village. “I didn’t know what Jonathan Popp and Larry Coen in Ryan Landry’s Psyched at the Huntington (2011). the hell he was talking about,” Landry says. “I couldn’t even understand ‘bourgeois,’ let alone ‘avant garde.’”

Ludlam’s play mashed up the Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme with a satire on the middle class embrace of Jeannie?” Productions like The Plexiglass Menagerie, Who’s Afraid of avant garde charlatans (the main character, Foufas, is patron of the Virgin Mary?, and Death of a Saleslady were major turning points artists so far out in left field they are called “avant derriere”). for Landry, as he developed his craft and intermingled his trademark Visiting the Ridiculous on a lark was a lifechanging event for comedy with increasingly dark and serious themes. “I remember Landry. “I went, and I never left after that,” Landry says. “I went how men and women sobbed in the audience during Saleslady,” every night — eventually they didn’t charge me, they just let Landry says. “I was so happy to hear them crying.” me in. I completely understood where I was supposed to be.”

Landry became a Huntington Playwriting Fellow in 2008 (one of For Landry, Ludlam’s aesthetic — bold, gender-bent, genre- Peter DuBois’ first invitations to the program when he arrived as breaking, simultaneously heady and bawdy — was a revelation. artistic director), and speculation about a potential collaboration Landry worked with the company for a brief period after quickly began. When Landry revived his daringly cinematic riff Ludlam’s death. During this period, he also began performing on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, reporter Joel Brown wrote in The original drag sketches. (“Not because I thought I looked like Boston Globe, “It’s boggling to imagine what the cheerfully brazen a woman,” he says, “but because there was money in it.”) theatrical mind behind The Gulls could do with a big stage and the Landry performed in contests, and intuited that the way to resources of a company like the Huntington.” win was not to have the glitziest performance but the most inventive one. “I would build sets and props out of cardboard DuBois agreed. The Huntington/Orphans first collaboration was a and paint them,” Landry recalls of these early performances. one-day-only production of Landry’s Psyched, a parodic prequel to “Some girl would dress as Batgirl and I would be Catwoman. Psycho from the perspective of Norman Bates’ mother, performed in I’d sing ‘The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face,’ and I would saw 2012. After Psyched, DuBois asked Landry what else he was working the girl’s face off.” on, hoping to find a next project to mount together, and Landry replied, almost reflexively, that he wanted to do an adaptation of Landry spent his summers on Cape Cod — “I grew up in Fritz Lang’s M with Boston actress Karen MacDonald in the Peter Provincetown,” he says, “even though I was eighteen when Lorre role. “I said what I thought would be the most far-fetched I got there.” After a particularly ugly breakup, friend and thing I could suggest, but Peter thought it was a good idea,” Landry collaborator James P. Byrne encouraged him to put up a play says. Landry’s new frontier has been marrying his irreverent brand of himself. On the front porch of the big gothic house where comedy to the most serious of topics. “With M, I knew I was dealing Landry lived, they staged a version of Ludlam’s Medea. On with child murder. I can’t make fun of it, nor do I think it’s funny,” opening night, the ex-boyfriend showed up. “I caught his eye Landry says. “M is the furthest I’ve traveled outside the original in — I couldn’t believe this, he was there with the guy he was any of my adaptations.” dating,” Landry remembers. “This bolt of lightning went KER- CRASH just as I caught his eye. And I shouted, ‘WOMEN OF - CHARLES HAUGLAND CORINTH!,’ and the whole audience screamed! I knew I had them from that moment forward. I remember the power I felt. It was a marker, ‘This is what I should be doing.’” Soon after, Landry began writing his own original plays, owing a debt to the Ridiculous work that Ludlam pioneered but also firmly Landry’s own delirious vision.

SEE PAGE 23 - CHARLES HAUGLAND FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 13 BY

DIRECTED BY GINA PETER , GIONFRIDDO DUBOIS

BITING NEW COMEDY , BURN RAPTURE

“An intensely smart, immensely funny new play!” – THE NEW YORK TIMES BLISTERSOUTH END CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA

After grad school, Catherine pursued a career as a rockstar feminist academic, while Gwen built a home with her husband and children. Decades later, each friend covets the other’s life. With searing insight and trademark wit, MAY 24this new - comedy JUN.22 takes a deep look at family, career, romance, and the decisions that defi ne a life. “Gina is a dear friend and has been an artistic partner since we were in graduate school. This sharp, smart comedy, set in a small New England college town will connect deeply with our audiences here in Boston. What the play has to say about marriage, feminism and parenthood — from the 20-something, 40-something, and 70-something perspective — is savagely funny and deeply human.” – PETER DUBOIS

Gina Gionfriddo EVERY THING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT POST-POST FEMINISM BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK “Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a began in the same place as Cathy, but chose another path, dropping forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.” out of school to be a stay-at-home-mother. Both women wonder - DANTE’S INFERNO what life would be like on the path not taken.

“I guess the grass is always greener. It’s just...It’s what you said, Life meets theory when Catherine convinces Don to let her teach right? It’s that forty-something thing where you start thinking a summer seminar on her topic: “The Fall of American Civilization.” about the life not lived.” - GWEN, RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN In an awkward twist, only two students enroll in the class has just two students: Gwen, and her erstwhile twenty-something babysitter, A popular assumption about feminists — not just among certain Avery. Cathy’s mother Alice is along for the ride, joining the women at right-wing personalities — is that they are ugly, sexless, humorless the end of their sessions with martinis and yet another perspective. harpies that no man wants (unless women advocate for access to birth control, then they are common sluts). In Rapture, Blister, Burn, A reconsideration of one’s life path at middle age is a near-universal Gina Gionfriddo grapples with the realities of women’s lives and pulls experience, however, for women, the questions are fraught with off a popular comedy about feminism. Fortune favors the bold and, political and social significance. Writing in The New York Times, as noted by Variety, “Gionfriddo’s some kind of genius.” Gionfriddo frames it this way: “The dream, then and now, postfeminist and post-postfeminist (or whatever we choose to call this moment) Originally, Gionfriddo tried to write a play about the possible is still simple and still incredibly hard: How do men and women figure psychological and sociological effects of internet pornography. As she out how to negotiate their equality better? As Cathy in Rapture told Playwrights Horizons’ artistic director Tim Sanford in an interview, advises a female student in the throes of love and ambition, “My “I was a child of the ’70s; when we wanted information about sex, it middle-aged observation is that, in a relationship between two was extremely hard to get. We would try to steal a Playboy Magazine equals, you can’t both go first.” or find a dirty book in the library. Now it’s just like Sodom and Gomorrah at the click of a mouse. And I am fixated by the idea that Catherine’s existential crisis prompts her to reflect, “My mother is there has to be some hideous psychological trickle-down from that.” going to die soon, and I find myself wondering if there isn’t some... She sketched out a character, an academic who would lecture on the wisdom in the natural order. In creating a new family to replace the topic, but lectures, she realized, are lousy theatre. Shifting gears, she one you lose.” She ultimately gets a chance to create a new family, developed plot ideas that would allow the character to confront her but not in the way that we expect. Gionfriddo wanted to create a area of academic expertise in her life. Gionfriddo says, “From there, stage picture, “which was something about women without men who the play evolved into a story less about porn than the state of male/ are both frightened and excited by what their future holds...” Real female relationships at this particular time in America.” feminists, as opposed to popular culture caricatures, never claim to be able to have it all. All human rights movements, fundamentally, are The protagonist, Catherine, disenchanted with her life as a hotshot concerned with self-determination, for good or for ill, with the costs public intellectual, latches onto her mother’s recent heart attack as of freedom being well worth the price. an excuse to return home. Home includes her friends from graduate school, specifically her ex-lover Don who jilted her for Gwen. Gwen, - LISA TIMMEL

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/raptureblisterburn to read Gina Gionfriddo’s complete New York Times op-ed, listen to a Playwrights Horizons podcast interview with the playwright, and more.

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 15 T . CHARLES CAROL

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Keira Naughton and Seth Fisher in Virginia Kull, Beth Dixon, Amy Brenneman in Playwrights Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw (2010). Horizons production of Rapture, Blister, Burn. IT’S GOOD TO MAKE A WRITER SQUEAMISH “I love working with living It’s no surprise that playwright Gina Gionfriddo and director Peter writers, and I love the process DuBois are collaborating again. They’ve been trading ideas since the Clinton administration. of developing a new play from fi rst draft to production ... I Currently, they’re hunkered down at Playwrights Horizons, working on the world premiere of Rapture, Blister, Burn, Gionfriddo’s new get excited by very original play about a career woman and a homemaker who envy each theatrical voices.” other’s lives. When Playwrights Horizons commissioned her to write – PETER DUBOIS the piece, Gionfriddo specifically asked for DuBois. “I’m not hugely prolific,” she says. “But anything that I’ve ever written, I would have wanted him to direct. It isn’t like I think he’s only right for certain projects. He’s right for all my work.”

Their connection became clear to the rest of the world when DuBois helmed Becky Shaw, Gionfriddo’s dark comedy about contemporary romance that was the hit of the Humana Festival in 2008. It eventually became a Pulitzer Prize finalist and drew raves at Second Stage Theatre in New York and the Almeida Theatre in London. (DuBois directed those productions, too.)

However, the pair met long before Becky Shaw, when they were both graduate students at Brown University in the 90s. He got an MA in theatre history and criticism, and she studied dramatic writing with Paula Vogel. (Both remember how he used to crash Vogel’s Friday night workshop sessions for her students because he was so eager to work with playwrights.) DuBois and Gionfriddo

16 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 CAROL

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Beth Dixon, Virginia Kull, and Amy Brenneman in Playwrights Horizons production of Rapture, Blister, Burn. THE GINA CHRONICLES When Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn opens in May 2013, three years will have passed since her Becky Shaw bonded. He directed her graduate project. She taught writing appeared on the Huntington stage. After directing Becky classes for him when he served as artistic director of the Shaw’s premiere, New York, and Huntington productions, Perseverance Theatre in Alaska. Peter DuBois mounted Becky Shaw in London where it was hailed as a comedic bridge between the United States and Thanks to their long friendship, they have a shorthand that has the United Kingdom. Invoking Neil LaBute and Jane Austen defined their process on Rapture, Blister, Burn. “It’s great because in praise of Gionfriddo’s “cultivated panache,” the Guardian you can be less cautious with one another,” says DuBois. “You’re not called the play, “astute, acerbic and richly funny.” tiptoeing around to make sure that you don’t hurt feelings.” Supported by a Playwrights Horizons Harold and Mimi For instance, DuBois suggested changes to the text that make the Steinberg Charitable Trust commission, Gionfriddo began housewife character, who dropped out of grad school to become developing a new work in which a feminist scholar voiced a wife and mother, much more manipulative. He encouraged misgivings about the corrosive effects of pornography. Gionfriddo to make the unmarried academic, whose specialty However, wary that drama might veer into lecture, she is pornography, darker and more seductive. He invented bits of expanded Rapture, Blister, Burn to include a generational business that not only gave actress Beth Dixon more laughs as a cross-section of women negotiating the pitfalls of academia septuagenarian with a fondness for martinis, but also underscore and relationships in modern America. the choices forced on older generations of women. In her January 2012 New York Times op-ed, Gionfriddo “He’s really fearless,” says Gionfriddo. “If there are places I need to recounts that following a preview performance of Rapture, go that I’m squeamish about going, he will push me there.” Wendy Wasserstein’s former assistant Jenny Lyn Bader told her that she wished Wendy had been able to see the new She is not the only playwright who has succeeded with DuBois. play, “taking up where The Heidi Chronicles left off.” The Heidi He’s alsodirected the world premieres of David Grimm’s The Miracle Chronicles, Wasserstein’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize winner, depicts at Naples, Paul Weitz’s Trust, Zach Braff’s All New People, Bob a woman’s journey towards self-assertion as a feminist and Glaudini’s Vengeance is the Lord’s, and Stephen Karam’s Sons single mother. Though Gionfriddo did not set out to respond of the Prophet (DuBois says he and Karam have already begun to Wasserstein’s work, Rapture inevitably came to confront storyboarding a sequel). And he’s done it all while serving as artistic many of the same hopes and fears. director of Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company. Yet the link between the plays also has a personal dimension. “I love working with living writers, and I love the process of In October 2011, Gionfriddo gave birth to a daughter, Ava. developing a new play from first draft to production,” says DuBois, “I did not write a homage to The Heidi Chronicles, and I do who spent two years living in the Czech Republic in the 90s because not endorse that play’s ending,” she wrote in the Times, he so revered its president, playwright Václav Havel. “I get excited challenging that play’s paradigm of empowerment through by very original theatrical voices.” motherhood. “But I have a play and a baby that suggest otherwise.” The ongoing search for gender equality must go - JANICE C. SIMPSON beyond the prescriptive or the reductive — as the intricacies of both Gionfriddo’s work and experience suggest.

- SAM LASMAN SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR AND EVENT LISTINGS

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 17 2013 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR

Eleven years ago, Huntington Trustee Susan B. SUSAN B. KAPLAN Kaplan helped create a Huntington tradition. She worked with Huntington staff to create a premiere RETURNS AS CHAIR annual event that would put the Huntington on the city’s social calendar in a whole new way. The result of her creativity and hard work was the Spotlight Spectacular, a gala event that has raised millions of dollars for Huntington programs, including our renowned youth, education, and community initiatives. Susan makes an unprecedented return as the Chair of the Spotlight Spectacular, inspired by the selection of this year’s honorees, Judi and

Susan B. Kaplan, Spotlight Spectacular Chair Douglas Krupp. A PASSION FOR THEATRE: HONOREES JUDI AND

CAROL DOUGLAS KRUPP

ROSEGG Each year, the Spotlight Spectacular includes a fabulous dinner, world-class entertainment, and the presentation of the Wimberly Award, the Huntington’s highest honor, given Honoress Douglas and Judi Krupp and David Cromer every year to a member of the community for their outstanding support and service.

This year’s honorees, Judi and Douglas Krupp, share a long SAVE THE DATE! history of philanthropy throughout Greater Boston. Judi is an 2013 Spotlight Spectacular active member of the Huntington’s Board of Trustees, and she and her husband Douglas chaired the 2005 Spotlight Spectacular. Monday, April 22, 2013 • The Park Plaza Castle With a passion for theatre that extends well beyond the Honoring Judi and Douglas Krupp, Huntington, Judi, through her production company Burnt Umber and Our Town director David Cromer Productions, has been involved with many New York productions, Spotlight Spectacular Chair: Susan B. Kaplan including American Idiot and Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo on Broadway, and David Cromer’s Our Town at the Barrow Street Featuring a cocktail hour, silent auction, live performances, Theater. Judi and Douglas have been instrumental in bringing a magnificent dinner provided by Huntington Trustee Our Town to Boston, so it is fitting that David Cromer will also be Neal Balkowitsch of MAX Ultimate Foods, and gorgeous honored with the Wimberly Award in recognition of his singular surroundings designed by legendary event planner contributions to the American theatre. Huntington Overseer Bryan Rafanelli of Rafanelli Events. For more information or for tickets, please contact: Just as our 2013 Wimberly Award honorees have inspired Susan Alli Engelsma-Mosser at 617 273 1522 or B. Kaplan, Nancy and Mark Belsky, and Liz and George Krupp to [email protected] merge their talents for this event, we all hope it will also inspire you to join us for the 2013 Spotlight Spectacular!

18 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 DAVID DAVID JOAN

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MARCUS

Viola Davis and Keith David in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars (1995); 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud winner Stephanie Igharosa; August Wilson Monologue Competition winner Tyrel Joseph. HUNTINGTON EDUCATION PROGRAMS INSPIRE WENDELL TAYLOR’S SUPPORT Huntington Overseer Wendell Taylor, a partner in the Corporate have the privilege of serving on the Diversity Committee and the Practice Group at WilmerHale, values the Huntington’s work in Hiring Committee. WilmerHale has been very exciting and rewarding Education and the community. for me and has given me a platform both through pro bono opportunities and service programs to engage in the community in How did you first become involved meaningful ways. WilmerHale’s commitment to providing top notch with the Huntington Theatre legal services while remaining engaged in the broader community is Company? the thing I admire most about the firm. The first show I saw at the Huntington was August Wilson’s Do you have a favorite Huntington experience so far that you’d Seven Guitars in 1995, and I haven’t like to share? missed an August Wilson play since. I have had several. On one hand, I had the opportunity to attend I was just finishing Law School at an early rehearsal of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Of course, I adored the time and was uncertain whether the play when I saw it, but having seen the early part of its creation Boston, with its reputation for being was both eye opening and exciting. In a very different realm, when inhospitable to persons of color, was Wendell Taylor I was first getting to know the Huntington, I was invited to an the right place for me. Becoming opening night by one of my colleagues whose wife is involved at engaged in the Huntington community and learning more about the Huntington. Now, some years later, they have become very close the Huntington’s commitment to diversifying the arts and bringing friends and I too am engaged in the Huntington community. Let’s together the city, helped me determine that Boston would provide call it a win-win! the environment that I was then seeking. Since my first experience, I have paid close attention to the Huntington and its deep involvement in the Greater Boston community. I now fully support YOU CAN HELP SUPPORT THE the Huntington and value its contributions. HUNTINGTON WITH A CONTRIBUTION As an Overseer, what about the Huntington excites you? Poetry Out Loud, and the August Wilson Monologue Competition TO THE 2013 ANNUAL FUND: are extraordinary programs that provide kids with vital access to 1. DONATE ONLINE: the arts and arts education, which is so lacking in today’s schools. huntingtontheatre.org/support As a board member, I want to help create momentum, to help these great programs, along with others, grow in visibility so people who 2. SEND A CHECK TO: are unaware of them or outside the Huntington community come to Huntington Theatre Company understand and value what it is that the Huntington does. 264 Huntington Avenue Boston, MA 02115 How long have you been at WilmerHale and what kind of practice Attn: Development Department do you have there? I have been at WilmerHale for seventeen years — which is my entire 3. CONTRIBUTE VIA PHONE: legal career. I am a Partner in the Corporate Practice Group and I Call the Development Office at 617 273 1546

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 19 2012-2013 STUDENT MATINEES ARE A HOT TICKET! Our 2012-2013 Student Matinee Season (comprised of a record ten performances) kicked off this fall with a sold-out performance of David Lindsay-Abaire’s compelling Southie story Good People. It was fitting that each school in attendance was from Boston and after the show the actors and students took part in a wide-ranging post-show discussion which was followed by an informal Q&A session with the cast.

Many of our student matinees this season are already sold out, however student tickets are also available at regular performances. For more information please contact Meg O’Brien at 617 273 1558 or mobrien@ huntingtontheatre.bu.edu.

OUR TOWN - SOLD OUT! WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19 WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9 THURSDAY, JANUARY 10 • JUST ADDED: JANUARY 25, 2013 INVISIBLE MAN - TICKETS AVAILABLE! WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23 THURSDAY, JANUARY 31 A RAISIN IN THE SUN - SOLD OUT!

THURSDAY, MARCH 21 Braille FRIDAY, APRIL 5 FREDERICK

AND

RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN - TICKETS AVAILABLE! WILL

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5 JAMIESON

LEARN MORE ONLINE Visit huntingtontheatre.org/studentmatinee

20 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 JOIN US FOR TWO HIGH SCHOOL PERFORMANCE COMPETITIONS! The Huntington’s nationally recognized Department of Education and Community Programs serves over 25,000 young people and underserved audience members each year. Below is a brief update on two of these events. For more information about our education and community programs, visit us at huntingtontheatre.org/education. POETRY OUT LOUD Join the over 20,000 students from 80 high schools across Massachusetts who will immerse themselves in the worlds of poetry and the spoken word this year when they participate in this national phenomenon. Compete for a chance to advance to the National Finals in Washington, DC and win $20,000. Audiences are welcome at all of the state level competitions, so please join us an see some incredibly talented and passionate students compete for the title of Massachusetts State Champion.

DAVID POETRY OUT LOUD’S 8TH ANNUAL COMPETITION

Massachusetts State Semi-Finals: March 2 & 3, 2013 MARSHAL Four locations throughout the state (Boston, Cape Cod, Springfield, and Framingham) 2012 Poetry Our Loud Finalists. Massachusetts State Finals: March 10, 2013 AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUE COMPETITION Now in our third year, we have expanded to include eleven Boston Public Schools and an estimated 500 students in this national monologue competition founded by Kenny Leon (director of Fences in 2009 and Stick Fly in 2010). Participants will learn about August Wilson’s life and legacy and will bring his iconic characters to life on our stage in February. Our staff, along with a great team of teaching artists, are in classroom residencies from October through January, and each school will hold their own competition to determine their champion. In February, each school champion will compete for placement in the top three to advance to the National Finals in New York City to perform on stage at the August Wilson Theatre. DAVID

JOIN US FOR THE BOSTON REGIONAL FINAL OF MARSHAL THE AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUE COMPETITION: Saturday February 9, 2013, 9am 2011 August Wilson Monologue Competition Contestants. Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA

For more information about Poetry Out Loud or the August Wilson Monologue Competition, please contact Donna Glick, Director of Education at 617 273 1548 or [email protected].

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 21 HUNTINGTON NEWS HUNTINGTON PLAYWRITING DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND Our Town has been extended through January 26. Don’t miss FELLOWS THE NEW CLASS David Cromer’s highly acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece. Buy now for the best seats! The Huntington recently announced the 2013 class of Huntington Playwriting Fellows: Lila Rose Kaplan, Walt McGough, and Lenelle Moïse. These artists will be in residence at the theatre for two years, during which time they will participate in a writer’ collective with the Huntington’s artistic staff, are eligible for readings and workshops, and receive a modest grant. They follow in the footsteps of past Huntington Fellows Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly), Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew), Ronan Noone (The Atheist, Brendan) Sinan Ünel (The Cry of the Reed), Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro (Before I Leave You), and Kirsten Greenidge (The Luck of the Irish). Lila Rose Kaplan’s plays include We All Fall Down, Home of the Brave, 100 Planes, Entangled, Wildflower, Bureau of Missing Persons, and Tink. Her plays have been produced by Second Stage Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Vic, SOUTH END Chalk Repertory Theatre, Perishable Theatre, CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA The Camden Fringe Festival, Manhattan Repertory Theatre, and Launchpad. She is a graduate of Brown University, where she OUR TOWN studied with Paula Vogel and Sarah Ruhl. She received her MFA “Cromer’s rethinking in Playwriting from UC San Diego. lilarose.org of Wilder’s masterpiece is a landmark. Walt McGough’s plays include The Farm, Priscilla Arrestingly original!” Dreams the Answer, Dante Dies!! (and then - THE WALL STREET JOURNAL things get weird), Everything Freezes, Paper NOW EXTENDED THRU JAN.26 City Phoenix, and The Haberdasher! He has worked with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Fresh Ink, Boston Actors Theatre, Sideshow Theatre Company, The Orfeo Group, Nu Sass Productions, Chicago Dramatists and The Second City Chicago. He currently serves on the staff at SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston. He holds a BA NEWS ABOUT OUR from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. waltmcgough.com 2013-2014 SEASON Lenelle Moïse’s plays include Matermorphosis, While we have a number of terrific shows still to come this Little Griot, Purple, Cornered in the Dark, and The year, we are thick in the planning for our 2013-2014 Season! Many Faces of Nia. Her two-act comedy, Merit, Subscribers: you’ll be among the first to hear about our won the 2012 Southern Rep Ruby Prize. She also exciting new lineup. We plan to announce the season and wrote, composed, and co-stars in the critically mail renewal packets in February, and ask that you renew acclaimed drama, Expatriate, which launched Off your subscription by April 30 to keep your seats or request Broadway at the Culture Project. Her work has been published in an upgrade. several anthologies including Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution. She holds an MFA in Playwriting Stay tuned for our season announcement! And please from Smith College. lenellemoise.com make sure we have your email address on file so we can be in touch. This program is supported by the Stanford Calderwood Fund for Send your address to [email protected]. New American Plays and the Harry Kondoleon Playwriting Fund.

22 BOX OFFICE 617 266 0800 PERFORMANCE CALENDARS JANUARY – JUNE 2013

INVISIBLE MAN A RAISIN IN THE SUN Braille S M T W T F S S M T W T F S 4 5 8 9 JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2013 •p8PM •p8PM MARCH - APRIL 2013 •p8PM •p8PM 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 •2PM 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 •2PM •p7PM •p7:30PM *7PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM •p7PM •p7:30PM *7PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM

13 •2PM 14 15 16d2PM 17 18 19 •2PM 17 •2PM 18 19 20 21~ds10AM 22 23 •2PM 7PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM 7PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 MLK, JR. @ds10AM •2PM PASSOVER •2PM •~2PM •2PM DAY •7:30PM •7:30PM d7:30PM •@8PM 8PM h2PM BEGINS •7:30PM •7:30PM d7:30PM •8PM 8PM EASTER PASSOVER 27 28 29 302PM 31ds10AM 1 2 •2PM 31 1 23456ENDS d2PM ds10AM •2PM h2PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM •2PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM 3 AVENUE OF THE ARTS 7 AVENUE OF THE ARTS 2PM BU THEATRE 2PM BU THEATRE “M” RAPTURE, BLISTER, BURN S M T W T F S S M T W T F S 29 30 24 25 MARCH - APRIL 2013 ••p8PM •p8PM MAY - JUNE 2013 •p8PM •p8PM EASTER PASSOVER 31 1 23456ENDS 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 •2PM MEMORIAL •2PM •p7PM •p7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM •p7PM DAY •p7:30PM *7PM •7:30PM ••8PM 8PM

7 •2PM 8 9 10 11 12 13 •2PM 2 •2PM 3 45678ds10AM •2PM 7PM •7:30PM *7PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM 7PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 •2PM PATRIOTS •2PM •2PM •2PM •2PM 7PM DAY •7:30PM •7:30PM d7:30PM •8PM 8PM h2PM •7:30PM •7:30PM d7:30PM •8PM 8PM

21 22 23 24d2PM 25 26 27 •2PM 16 17 18 19d2PM 20 21 22 •2PM h2PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM •2PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •7:30PM •8PM 8PM SOUTH END SOUTH END CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA CALDERWOOD PAVILION AT THE BCA

(•) POST-SHOW CONVERSATIONS Join us for dynamic post-show (s) STUDENT MATINEE For groups of students in grades 6-12. conversations with fellow audience members and Huntington staff after Call 617 273 1558 for more information. most every performance (except select Saturday and Sunday evenings). (p) PREVIEW (o) 35 BELOW WRAP PARTY A special evening for young professionals aged 21 – 35 complete with a post-show party. ( ) PRESS OPENING NIGHT Visit huntingtontheatre.org/35below for more information. * TICKETS Start at $25 (d) ACTORS FORUM Participating members of the cast answer your questions following the performance. 35 BELOW $25 for those 35 and under at every performance (h) HUMANITIES FORUM A post-performance talk on the historical and literary context of the show featuring a leading local scholar. STUDENTS (25 AND UNDER) & MILITARY $15

Save 20%! Behind-the-scenes access and on-site reception For blind and low-visioned audience members. GROUPS (10+) (~) AUDIO-DESCRIBED space available. Contact 617 273 1665 or [email protected]. Call 617 273 1558 for more information. Subscribers receive $10 off any additional tickets purchased. Prices include a $2 per ticket Capital Enhancement fee. (@) ASL-INTERPRETED For Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members. Call 617 273 1558 for more information. CALL 617 266 0800 OR VISIT HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 23 NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION US POSTAGE PAID BOSTON, MA PERMIT # 52499 MAIN BOX OFFICE

THEATRE MICHAEL MASO 264 HUNTINGTONBOSTON,617 266MA617 AVENUE02115-46067900 266 0800huntingtontheatre.org MANAGING DIRECTOR HUNTINGTON AVENUE OF THE ARTS COMPANY& SOUTH END IN RESIDENCE AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY PETER DUBOIS NORMA JEAN CALDERWOOD ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

FREE COMMUNITY EVENT TWO PLAYS, ONE HOUSE: A RAISIN IN THE SUN AND CLYBOURNE PARK AT THE STRAND THEATRE Members of the casts of the Huntington’s A Raisin in the Sun and SpeakEasy Stage Company’s Clybourne Park come together at the Strand Theatre for this special event featuring scenes from each show, Q&A with artists, and the chance to win tickets to both plays.

FREE and open to the public.

Set in Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun depicts an African- A RAISIN American family whose struggle for a better life leads them to purchase a house in a predominantly white IN THE SUN neighborhood. Clybourne Park picks up where Raisin leaves off, as nervous community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of the home to a black family, and then fast-forwards 50 years to explore the house’s legacy.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 at 7pm Strand Theatre, 543 Columbia Road, Boston Admission is free RSVP: huntingtontheatre.org/Strand