OMM Play Guide R2

PLAY GUIDE 2015 2016 About ATC …………………………………………………………………………………….. 1 Introduction to the Play ……………………………………………………………………..….. 2 Meet the Author …………………………………………………..…………………………… 2 Meet the Characters …………………………………………….……………….…………….. 4 Adaptation: Of Mice and Men …………………………………..….……………………………. 5 Themes in the Play ……………………………………………..……………………………… 7 Cultural Context: 1930s America ……………………..…………………………………………. 8 The Wild West …………………………………………………………………………………. 13 Social Perceptions of Disability …………………………………………………………………. 16 Behind the Scenes: Meet Lola ………………………………………………………………….. 18 Game Rules …………………………………………………..………………………………. 19 Glossary ……………………………………………………………………………………… 21 Of Mice and Men Play Guide edited and designed by Katherine Monberg, ATC Literary Manager, with assistance from Luke Young, Learning & Education Manager; Shelby Athouguia and Bryanna Patrick, Learning & Education Associates; Kacie Claudel, Chloe Loos, Gabriel Oladipo, and Angelina Valencia, Contributing Writers; and Joy Nielsen, Editorial Assistant. SUPPORT FOR ATC’S LEARNING & EDUCATION PROGRAMMING HAS BEEN PROVIDED BY: APS Rosemont Copper Arizona Commission on the Arts Stonewall Foundation Bank of America Foundation Target Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona The Boeing Company City of Glendale The Donald Pitt Family Foundation Community Foundation for Southern Arizona The Johnson Family Foundation, Inc. Cox Charities The Lovell Foundation Downtown Tucson Partnership The Marshall Foundation Enterprise Holdings Foundation The Maurice and Meta Gross Foundation Ford Motor Company Fund The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Foundation The Stocker Foundation JPMorgan Chase The WIlliam L. and Ruth T. Pendleton Memorial Fund John and Helen Murphy Foundation Tucson Medical Center National Endowment for the Arts Tucson Pima Arts Council Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture Wells Fargo PICOR Charitable Foundation ABOUT ATC Arizona Theatre Company is a professional, not-for-profit theatre company. This means that all of our artists, administrators and production staff are paid professionals, and the income we receive from ticket sales and contributions goes right back into our budget to create our work, rather than to any particular person as a profit. Eash season, ATC employs hundreds of actors, directors and designers from all over the country to create the work you see on stage. In addition, ATC currently employs approximately 50 staff members in our production shops and administrative offices in Tucson and Phoenix during our season. Among these people are carpenters, painters, marketing professionals, fundraisers, stage directors, sound and light board operators, tailors, costume designers, box office agents, stage crew - the list is endless - representing an amazing range of talents and skills. We are also supported by a Board of Trustees, a group of business and community leaders who volunteer their time and expertise to assist the theatre in financial and legal matters, advise in marketing and fundraising, and help represent the theatre in our community. Roughly 150,000 people attend our shows every year, and several thousand of those people support us with charitable contributions in addition to purchasing their tickets. Businesses large and small, private foundations and the city and state governments also support our work financially. All of this is in support of our vision and mission: The mission of Arizona Theatre Company is to inspire, engage and entertain - one moment, one production and one audience at a time. Our mission is to create professional theatre that continually strives to reach new levels of artistic excellence that resonates locally, in the state of Arizona and throughout the nation. In order to fulfill our mission, the theatre produces a broad repertoire ranging from classics to new works, engages artists of the highest caliber, and is committed to assuring access to the broadest spectrum of citizens. The Temple of Music and Art, the home of ATC shows in downtown The Herberger Theater Center, ATC’s performance venue in downtown Tucson. Phoenix. 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAY Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Directed by Mark Clements Winner of the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play Emotional and stirring, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men follows two friends – Lennie and George – as they drift from job to job across the fields and farms of Central California during the hardship of 1930s America. This is a timeless tale of friendship, loneliness, loyalty, sacrifice, and the Jonathan Wainwright, Jonathan Gillard Daly, and Scott Greer in human connections that form our bedrock for survival in ATC’s Of Mice and Men. Photo by Michael Brosilow. desperate times. Of Mice and Men is as resonant, emotionally shattering and startlingly relevant now as ever before. MEET THE AUTHOR John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (1902-1968) was born February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California to Episcopal parents – a retired teacher and manager of a flour mill – as the third of four siblings. He had two older sisters, Esther and Beth, and a younger sister named Mary. While his family was staunchly middle class, his parents often took the children to the theatre in San Francisco and ensured that their children had plenty of literature to peruse. Steinbeck loved reading, a passion which began to manifest at age 14 when he began to write. In his teenage years, Steinbeck’s easy-going childhood took a hit when his father, John Sr., lost his job at the mill, and then opened a failed feed store before finally becoming became county treasurer. From 1919 to 1925, Steinbeck attended Stanford University in pursuit of an English degree that he never obtained. He also worked a variety of odd jobs, such as a laborer in sugar factories and mills as well as a ranch hand; these experiences heavily influenced some of his later John Steinbeck in 1962 during his trip to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for works. Literature. 2 Steinbeck met Carol Henning in Lake Tahoe in 1929 – shortly after completion of Cup of Gold (1929) – and married her in Los Angeles on January 14, 1930. While living in Pacific Grove, Steinbeck wrote, and Carol worked to support them. While he had some publications, his first true success and claim to fame came in 1935 with the positive reception of Tortilla Flat, a novella about “paisanos” (countrymen) living out their lives following World War I. Steinbeck’s California Novels, In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Mice and Men (1937), and The Grapes of The Steinbeck House in Salinas, California, where John Steinbeck spent his childhood. Wrath (1939) displayed a transition from his previous stories of his home to tales involving labor issues. The Grapes of Wrath originated journalistically after the San Francisco News asked him to investigate migrant camps near Bakersfield. While this novel is considered to represent the upper echelon of his work – it won him the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – and was the top- selling novel of 1939, the controversy surrounding its politics led to its ban and a boom of unwanted fame, which in turn led to the decline of Steinbeck’s health and marriage. He and Carol divorced in 1943; shortly afterward, Steinbeck married Gwendolyn Conger, who would become the mother of his children, Thomas and John IV. Steinbeck, while patriotic, was denied a commission in the armed forces during World War II due to suspected communist leanings, and he took to writing war propaganda instead. Some examples include Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber Team (1942) and The Moon is Down (1942). In 1943, he was hired by the New York Herald Tribune to report on the war, and his correspondences during this time were published in the collection Once There Was a War. Afterwards, he published Cannery Row (1945) and The Pearl (1947). Cannery Row was Steinbeck’s post-war novel in which he gently prodded at the characters who work on Ocean View Avenue; it was also a tribute to his friend, Ed Ricketts, who influenced his earlier work The Pearl, which was an extension of a story Steinbeck had heard on one of their many trips. His political investment continued as he befriended and became an unofficial advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964 for his literary contributions. An initial supporter of the Vietnam War, Steinbeck’s opinion changed when he visited the country to report on the war. The later portion of the 1950s was not kind to Steinbeck. Ecologist and marine biologist Ed Ricketts, his dear and influential friend, died after being hit by a train, and Gwyn asked for a divorce. Steinbeck met Elaine Scott the following year; she would become his final wife and companion as he returned to New York City, where he had briefly lived for a few years after attending college. The two travelled avidly as Steinbeck returned part-time to journalism. His travels took him to England where he worked on a modern English translation of Le Morte d’Arthur (an influential book he received in his youth) that 3 was never completed. Following his return to the States in 1959, his work began to focus on what he perceived as America’s moral lapses. Some later works of his career included East of Eden (1952), his self-named magnum opus, Travels with Charley (1960), and The Winter of Our Discontent (1961). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 to some controversy as critics felt his work was one-note and crowded with pitiable philosophy; it was revealed in 2012 that he was a compromise winner of a shortlist that was considered to be of poor quality. Due to the critical outcry and condemnation, he ceased writing fiction. John Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968 from heart failure due to smoking and was cremated and buried in Salinas, California: the town of his birth. Today, Steinbeck is regarded as one of the great American writers due to his truthful (and sometimes experimental) voice representing the common man and concern with social movements and protest. His writings are also considered an excellent account of American history during the Great Depression, which supply interesting insight into America itself, as seen in his later works.

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