Our Mother's Brief Affair
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45th Season • 434th Production SEGERSTROM STAGE / APRil 3 - MAy 3, 2009 David Emmes Martin Benson PRODUCING ARTiSTiC DiRECTOR ARTiSTiC DiRECTOR presents the World Premiere of OUR MOTHER’S BRIEF AFFAIR By Richard Greenberg Sibyl Wickersheimer Rachel Myers Lap-Chi Chu Michael K. Hooker SCEniC DESiGn COSTuME DESiGn LiGhTinG DESiGn SOunD DESiGn John Glore Joshua Marchesi Kathryn Davies* DRAMATuRG PRODuCTiOn MAnAGER STAGE MAnAGER DiRECTED By Pam MacKinnon The Playwrights Circle, hOnORARy PRODuCER OUR MOther’s Brief AffAIR was commissioned by South Coast Repertory. Our Mother’s Brief Affair • So u t h Co a S t Re p e R t o R y P1 CAST OF CHARACTERS (In order of appearance) Seth ......................................................................................................... Arye Gross* Anna ................................................................................................... Jenny O’Hara* Abby .................................................................................................. Marin Hinkle* Lover/Father ..................................................................................... Matthew Arkin* SETTING A few years ago and 1973. LENGTH Approximately 90 minutes with no intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Casting ............................................................................................. Joanne DeNaut Assistant Stage Manager ................................................................ Chrissy Church* Dance Consultant ........................................................................ Gabriela Estrada Assistant to the Lighting Designer ......................................... Matthew Shimamoto Assistant to the Sound Designer ........................................................... Tim Brown Stage Management Intern ..................................................................... Julie Renfro Light Board Operator ..................................................................... Aaron Shetland Audio Technician ................................................................................. Angie Bryant ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Playwright accommodations provided by the Marriott, Costa Mesa. 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. Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Segerstrom Season Media Partner Media Partner Media Partner P2 So u t h Co a S t Re p e R t o R y • Our Mother’s Brief Affair In Brief of an alternate universe. It takes place in the late 1990s and chronicles a visit from Anna’s daughter, Celia, now in her fifties, to her younger sister, Nell, who lives in Orange County, California. Although Anna’s offspring (and her unhappy demise as reported in Everett Beekin) differ markedly between the two plays, a secret at the center of her early family life occupies a similar place in family lore in both. reenberg’s interest in family secrets has cropped up in other plays, as well. In Three Days of Rain G(SCR world premiere in 1997) siblings Walker and Nan reunite for the reading of their father’s will, but it’s the reading of his recently discovered diary that draws John Slattery, Patricia Clarkson and Jon Tenney in the world much of their attention. Their father, Ned, a renowned premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. architect, had long been a source of frustration for both of them, mostly because he was so emotionally closed ver the course of Our Mother’s Brief Affair the title off from his family. “My father was more or less silent,” character, Anna, relates memories of her sisters recalls Walker; “my mother was more or less mad”— and Oand their early family life. If those recollections the diary sheds little light on the mystery of his parents’ seem oddly familiar, it may be because they recall marriage. Among the most baffling entries is the first one Greenberg’s earlier play, Everett Beekin. The first in the journal, for April 3-5, 1960, which in its entirety act of that play (which premiered at SCR in October reads “Three days of rain.” 2000) takes place in a tenement apartment on the “You know,” says Walker, “the thing is with people Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1947, where sisters who never talk, the thing is you always suppose they’re Anna and Sophie spar with each other and their harboring some enormous secret. But, just possibly, the immigrant mother over various family matters (their secret is, they have absolutely nothing to say.” bickering frequently punctuated with the interjection, But it turns out there was indeed a secret about what “Shah!”). Anna has come home for a weekly visit, transpired during those three days of rain. At the end having recently married Abe and moved into a “starter of the first act, Walker burns the diary, prompting Nan house” in the new planned community of Levittown. to protest, “Now we’ll never know anything!” But the She is five months pregnant with a child she intends second act of the play flashes back to that three-day to call “Celia” if it’s a girl. Anna’s much younger sister span and fills in the details of a love triangle involving Miri has taken to bed with some kind of mysterious Walker’s parents and his father’s partner Theo. We come ailment and doesn’t appear until near the end of to understand why Ned left his most famous creation, the act. “The Janeway House,” to Theo’s son rather than to his Thus far the events of Everett Beekin correspond own children, but Walker and Nan never learn how their closely to the memories Anna relates in Our Mother’s parents’ lives were as complicated as their own. They Brief Affair. But the second act diverges into something are left only to wonder. omentous decisions are likely to have momen- the playwright is more interested in casual, seemingly tous consequences. Such is the case with the his- small decisions—and how even the smallest can some- Mtorical event that intersects with the story Anna times change the course of lives. Anna has been car- has been telling her son and daughter through much rying around a secret for most of her life, a private of Our Mother’s Brief Affair. In that bit of history, a burden that has grown heavier and heavier over time. man makes a big decision that leads to the deaths of She finally lets it go as her story comes to an end, but some of his closest family members. as is so often the case in the world of Richard Green- But that historical event is something of a footnote berg, the mystery of Anna’s life lingers beyond the to the main story Greenberg is telling. In the end final curtain. Our Mother’s Brief Affair • So u t h Co a S t Re p e R t o R y P3 Artist Biographies San Cristobal of A.H., Love Suicide at Sheffield Barracks MATT H EW ARKIN * Lover/Father and Black Box with the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble; and La Bête and Sleep… at Stages Theatre Center, where he is making his SCR debut. Broad- served as Artistic Director from 2000 to 2003. Mr. Gross way credits include Losing Louie, is heard with some frequency on NPR and Public Radio The Sunshine Boys and Laughter International in dozens of radio dramas and as the host on the 23rd Floor. Off-Broadway of PRI’s “Jewish Holy Days” series. Films include the up- appearances include Dinner With coming Grey Gardens for HBO Films, Harvest, Minority Friends (Drama Desk nomination), Report, Big Eden, Gone in 60 Seconds, A Midnight Clear, Rounding Third, Indian Blood, You Should Be So Lucky Mother Night, The Opposite Sex, For the Boys, Coupe De and Moonlight and Magnolias. Regional theatre cred- Ville, Tequila Sunrise and Soul Man. Notable televi- its include The Scene at Hartford Stage, Sight Unseen sion guest appearances include “Law & Order” (SVU & at George Street Playhouse, Little Footsteps and Lost in CI), “Friends,” “ER,” “The West Wing,” “CSI” (Vegas & Yonkers at Pennsylvania Stage Company, Around the NY), “The Riches” (recurring), “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The World in 80 Days at The Cape Playhouse, A Thousand X-Files,” “Judging Amy” (recurring), “The Practice” (re- Clowns at American Stage Company, Two Rooms and curring) and “Six Feet Under” (recurring). He was also a True West at TheatreWorks and Talley’s Folly at Bay series regular on the ABC sitcom “Ellen” and CBS’s short Street Theatre. Film and television credits include Mar- lived “Citizen Baines.” Mr. Gross attended UC Irvine and got at the Wedding, Second Best, Raising Flagg, Death is a graduate of the SCR Summer Conservatory (1978). to Smoochy, Bittersweet Place, An Unmarried Woman, The Curse, “Rescue Me” (recurring), all incarnations of MA RIN HINKLE * “Law & Order,” “Ed,” “Third Watch,” “All My Children” Abby (recurring) and “Simple Justice.” returns to SCR after the world pre- miere of Kate Robin’s What They ARYE GROSS * Seth Have last season. Additional SCR credits include the Pacific Play- returns to SCR after having ap- wrights Festival reading of Truth peared in the world premiere of and Beauty and the NewSCRipts Brooklyn Boy, The Time of Your readings of Incendiary and Manna. Broadway credits Life, Wild Oats, Screwball and include Electra, A Thousand Clowns and The Tempest. Let’s Play Two. He was seen most She has appeared Off-Broadway in The Dybbuk and recently in Julia Cho’s The Win- Henry VIII at The Public Theater, Miss Julie at Rattle- chester House at Theatre @ Boston Court, M. Butterfly stick Playwrights Theater, Blue Window at 28th Street at East West Players and the world premiere of Chek- Theater, Sabina at Primary Stages, The Changeling at hov X 4 with The Antaeus Company, of which he is a Theatre for a New Audience and Wonderful Time at WPA member and Associate Artistic Director. Additional Theatre. Some of her regional credits include Romeo & theatre credits include the world premiere of David Juliet, Uncle Vanya, Ghosts, Heartbreak House, God of Henry Hwang’s The Silver River at the Santa Fe Cham- Vengeance, Evolution, As You Like It, Rose and Walsh ber Music Festival; The Square at Mark Taper Forum’s and Rabbit Hole.