Discord by Scott Carter
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FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON IN THIS ISSUE MAY 2016 Title Page 2 Cast 3 About the Play 4 The Cast 8 The Creative Team 10 ATC Artistic Director 15 About Arizona Theatre Company 16 ATC Board of Trustees 20 Corporate and Foundation Donors 21 Individual Donors 22 ATC Staff 28 Theater Information 31 The Herberger Theater Center, ATC’s performance venue in downtown Phoenix Cover art by: ESSER DESIGN 1 David Ira Goldstein Artistic Director THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY: DISCORD BY SCOTT CARTER Matt August Director Takeshi Kata Scenic Designer Ann Closs-Farley Costume Designer Luke Moyer Lighting Designer Cricket S. Myers Sound Designer Jeffery Elias Teeter Projection Designer Michael Nyman Music Michael Donovan, CSA Casting T. Greg Squires. Resident Lighting Designer Brian Jerome Peterson Resident Sound Designer Glenn Bruner Production Stage Manager Maggie Swing Tucson Stage Manager Timothy Toothman Assistant Stage Manager On this original Arizona Theatre Company production, the ATC Production Staff is responsible for scenic construction, costume construction, lighting, projections, sound, props, furniture, wigs, scene painting and special effects The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc , New York Produced in 2014 by the Geffen Playhouse 2015/2016 SEASON SPONSORS: I. MICHAEL AND BETH KASSER 2 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE) Larry Cedar Thomas Jefferson Mark Gagliardi Charles Dickens Armin Shimerman Count Leo Tolstoy The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. TIME: YES PLACE: A ROOM ...DISCORD IS PERFORMED WITHOUT AN INTERMISSION. ADDITIONAL STAFF Emma DeVore Assistant to the Stage Manager Ned Mochel Fight Choreographer Amy Chaffee Dialect Coach Richie Ferris Casting Assistant Arizona Theatre Company operates under agreements between the League of Resident Theatres (LORT) and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States; Stage Directors and Choreographers, an independent national labor union; and United Scenic Artists Local USA-829, IATSE To learn more about …Discord please visit the Learning & Education page on our website at arizonatheatre org for a comprehensive free Play Guide The Play Guide contains historical information, cultural context, and more Play Guides are also available in The Temple Lounge for a nominal charge to cover printing Cell phones and other devices that make a noise can greatly disturb your fellow audience members and the performers. PLEASE TURN THEM OFF before the performance. 3 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY DISCORDANT & HARMONIOUS NOTES BY SCOTT CARTER The writing of this play began, really, in June 1986 as I awoke choking on a Sunday morning. As a lifelong asthmatic, this was not unexpected, but the attack was to be the most severe of my life and I spent nearly a week in the hospital. At that time, I was a struggling standup comic and, like many colleagues, I was either indifferent or hostile to God; Jesus was the ghost who came into my bedroom when I was a child and tried to choke me to death on a nightly basis. I was released from Bellevue that Saturday afternoon. At the intersection of 26th and First Avenue, I had an epiphany like Saul on the road to Damascus when a thunderbolt knocked him to the ground, scales fell from his eyes and he knew that Jesus Christ was his Lord and Savior. My metanoia was less specific and more non-denominational; I went from cynical comic to non-affiliated deist. I received the unshakable realization of God’s existence and that of grace – for which I though myself unworthy but grateful. I guess that’s why it’s called grace. I entered into a bliss state – loving all whom I met and forgiving previous transgressions done to me. It lasted about a week. Then it faded and I felt a return to the petty life I’d always led. I didn’t want this to happen. I wanted to make this event into the B.C./A.D. of my existence. But I had no strong religious affiliation to which to turn. My parents were devout believers in whatever Protestant community was closest and nicest. I grew up Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran. Post-service coffee and donuts were sacraments as sacred as any wafers or wine. So I made a pact with the universe in the summer of 1986: I would remain open to signs and direction from anyone offering religious literature, conversation or ritual. On October 5, 1988, I watched an episode of A World of Ideas on PBS. Host Bill Moyers was interviewing Reverend Forrester Church of All Souls Unitarian in New York. And it was here that I learned about the Jefferson Bible. In 1804 President Jefferson bought two identical copies of the King James Bible. Needing both sides of each page for his project, he then, over three consecutive nights, used a razor to cut out only the verses he liked from all four gospels. Jefferson then pasted his chosen scraps of scripture into the pages of a blank book. He named his volume “The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth.” I became fascinated with the details of this history. What modern president would hatch such an idea and then spend his White House evenings executing it? For the next eight years, my fascination stopped short of creativity. I was getting jobs writing and later producing television. In 1993, HBO teamed me with Bill Maher to develop Politically Incorrect for Comedy Central. As that show took off, Jefferson gathered dust. 4 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY (CONTINUED) In 1996 my wife and I moved from New York to Los Angeles. We rented a house near Larchmont Village where, one Saturday at the independent bookstore, Chevalier’s, I discovered The Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens. I subsequently learned that Dickens, between 1846 and 1849, condensed the gospels for the first five of his ten children. He read it to them so often that they had it memorized before they learned to read. Dickens’ favorite word in the English language was “fancy.” And, as you will soon hear, Dickens embraced most of the gospel verses that Jefferson jettisoned. I now had a play to write: two great men debating whose version of the gospels is better. The first pages of these men’s fictive theological spat multiplied madly during the ensuing months. One day, while allegedly doing more research (procrastinating), I happened on this note in Stephen Mitchell’s superb The Gospel According to Jesus: “…Tolstoy, too, compiled a gospel harmony, which he called The Gospel in Brief.” My excited first thought – adding Tolstoy to this debate – instantly gave way to an easily imaginable five more years of research to turn this duet into a trio. After the global success of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy suffered a Russian epic of a depression so severe that his family hid his hunting guns to avoid his suicide. He embarked on a 30-year spiritual quest, learning Greek and Hebrew to freshly translate scripture. The Gospels in Brief, unlike the work of Jefferson and Dickens, was published during Tolstoy’s lifetime – though not in Russia. His increasingly controversial works were smuggled into Switzerland and would later result in Tolstoy’s excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church. Harmonizing this latest Tolstoy research with the other two was proving unwieldy and was going to require much more work. The Jesus narrative is hardly, “the greatest story ever told.” Yes, there’s a beginning and end but the middle is a structural mess. At the end of 1999, after producing the first 1,100 episodes of Politically Incorrect, I left to develop my play and knew I needed help. Michael Bruner, a graduate of Princeton Seminary and the University of Hamburg began to meet with me regularly over the next three years. We organized the messy muddle of Christ’s ministry into a 315-page multi-colored volume. My literary agent shopped it around; no publisher was interested (at least not yet). Still, in 2005, this source material gave rise to the first draft of the play! It was universally hated. My wife hated it. My agent hated it. My lawyer hated it. And I felt guilty for wasting their time reading and so much of my time writing. I shelved it. 5 FEEL THE MOMENT 2015/2016 SEASON ABOUT THE PLAY (CONTINUED) But, please, no pity: I’ve had a long and lucrative career in television. By then, Real Time with Bill Maher was on HBO and scheduled in a way that allowed me to develop other projects. In December 2008, I found myself with three open months and re-read my play’s 151-page first draft. Every bit of Jefferson, Dickens, and Tolstoy trivia had been thrown in; using the passage of time as perspective for this editing, I promptly removed most of it, focused on the Christ narrative, and distilled the page count from 151 down to 47 and increased the font size. But did I really have anything? I wanted someone to hear it who both had killer story chops and a spiritual simpatico. I called my friend, the brilliant writer, actor and comedian Garry Shandling. We were fellow Tucsonans who went to the same high school. He’d enjoyed my monologues and appeared on Politically Incorrect. We made dinner and reading plans for his house and I brought three little sticks with the heads of Jefferson, Dickens and Tolstoy to keep clear which character was talking.