October 12–November 18 playwrights horizons
>>>book your tickets now FROM THE DESK OF CASTING TIM SANFORD UPDATE DEAR FRIENDS, “Consider them both, the sea and the land; scenes between Ellie and said Mormon, and do you not find a strange analogy to Elder Thomas, are pretty hilarious. But it’s something in yourself? For as this appalling Charlie who’s on the mission. Empathy and ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the insight seem to bounce off Ellie, though. soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, And when her mother, a tangled knot of full of peace and joy, but encompassed by liquored hurt and resentment, shows up at all the horrors of the half-known life.” Charlie’s door, we understand why.
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose Just as Melville coaxes layers upon layers a mighty theme. No great and enduring of meaning out of the symbology of Moby volume can ever be written on the flea, Dick, Sam gets a lot of mileage out of the though many there be who have tried it.” many intentional resonances of his play with Melville. The great white whale does CASSIE BECK PH: Prayer for My Enemy, The Drunken City —Herman Melville, Moby Dick not mean just one thing. To Ahab it may (Theatre World Award). BROADWAY: The Norman Conquests represent the darkness of his own soul, OFF-BROADWAY: Happy Hour, Oohrah! (Atlantic), Smudge None of the five vivid, lonely characters but in the worldview of the novel, it also (Women’s Project). in Sam Hunter’s mighty, exquisitely represents death or the hidden soul. For heart-rending The Whale have any recent Ellie and her mother, Charlie may embody REYna DE COURCY OFF-BROADWAY: Burning (New Group), acquaintance with the peace or joy of the dark demons of the “half-known life.” Orange, Hat & Grace (Soho Rep). FILM & TV: Beach Pillows, Melville’s metaphorical Tahiti. Its morbidly But at the same time, it becomes quite Girls Against Boys, The Bounty Hunter, Coming Up Roses, obese protagonist, Charlie, comes the apparent that Charlie is on a spiritual “Law & Order: SVU,” “Criminal Intent,” “Blue Bloods,” closest. Since the death of his partner, quest, and he wrestles with Ellie with the “Bored to Death,” “Army Wives.” Charlie has been quietly eating himself same kind of moral determination as one to death, looked after in his dingy Idaho finds throughout Melville’s pages. In this SHULER HENSLEY Broadway: Young Frankenstein, Tarzan, apartment by his dead lover’s sister, Liz, way, The Whale is not just a family drama Oklahoma! (Tony Award), Les Misérables. Off-Broadway: teaching an online English class. Just when about a morbidly obese man’s final days, Silence! The Musical, Sweet and Sad. TV & FILM: After.Life, she thinks it’s time to call an ambulance, any more than Moby Dick is just a chronicle The Legend of Zorro, Van Helsing, Monday Night Mayhem, she learns Charlie has a crackpot plan of a whaling ship. There’s something Someone Like You, The Bread, My Sweet, “Ed,” “Deadline,” to bribe his embittered, long-estranged otherworldly about Charlie sitting on his “Gary Powers,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “Criminal Intent,” “The teenaged daughter, Ellie, into visiting him. couch. He could be channeling Ishmael: Jury.” What’s more, a well- “Me thinks my body is but the lees of my meaning Mormon better being. In fact take my body who will, TASHA LAWRENCE BROADWAY: Wilder, Wilder, Wilder; Good teenager on a take it I say, it is not me.” There’s something People. FILM & TV: Hangnail, Romance and Cigarettes, “Law door-to-door metaphysical about the landscape of The & Order” franchise, “Third Watch,” “Deadline,” “Kevin Hill,” witnessing Whale. It’s almost Shakespearean. Or “Royal Pains,” “All My Children,” “Loving,” “The Line.” mission Beckettian. takes up CORY MICHAEL SMITH PH: The Shaggs. OFF-BROADWAY: Charlie as A few months ago, we had a reading of Cock (The Duke). REGIONAL: Tales from Red Vienna a cause. The Whale with the exact same cast that (Portland Center Stage), The Fantasticks (Rep. Theatre of St. It’s almost will perform in our production. I’ve never Louis), Yank (Workshop/Old Globe). the stuff experienced anything quite like it. The of comedy. journey it took us on was so harrowing, yet Actually the so beautiful, so cathartic and transfiguring, that the whole room was reduced to silence at the end. After about a minute I quipped, MEET THE TEAM “Don’t worry, they’ll applaud at the end During the run of The Whale, post-performance discussions when we do it.” Applause or no, I’m sure with Samuel D. Hunter and Davis McCallum have been you will be as moved as we all were by this scheduled for the following dates: remarkably wise and inspiring play. q Wednesday, October 17 Sunday, October 21 following the matinee, with Director of New Play Development Adam Greenfield Friday, October 26
These discussions are an important aspect of our play Tim Sanford development process. We hope you can take part! Artistic Director The Sharp Bulletin is generously funded, in part, by the Liman Foundation. PHOTO BY CHRISTINE GATTI ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT’S PERSPECTIVE: PLAYWRIGHT SAMUEL D. HUNTER
SAMUEL D. HUNTER’s recent plays include A Bright New About two and a half years ago, I took a job About two weeks later, I started taking Boise (2011 Obie award for playwriting, 2011 Drama teaching expository writing to freshmen at notes during my train ride on a play about Desk Nomination for Best Play; original production by Rutgers University. Initially, I had taken the connection and empathy, a play that would Partial Comfort Productions in NYC, recent production at job out of desperation; I needed money and eventually grow into The Whale. In many Woolly Mammoth Theater Company), The Whale (Denver was unable to find any adjunct teaching in ways, the main conflict in the play grew theater departments anywhere in the city. directly out of my interactions with freshmen Center Theatre), A Permanent Image (commissioned An hour into the first training session, as I at Rutgers. Though the story of The Whale and produced by Boise Contemporary Theater), Jack’s sat in the middle of a large group of English is fundamentally a story of a father trying Precious Moment (Page 73 Productions at 59E59), Five MA and PhD candidates and recent grads, a to reconnect with a daughter, he’s doing so Genocides (Clubbed Thumb at the Ohio Theater), Norway thought started to nag at me: You have no by trying to teach her how to write a good (Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis; Boise Contemporary idea how to write a good essay. When we essay. But in teaching her how to write a Theater), I Am Montana (Arcola Theatre, London; broke out into smaller groups, everyone good essay, he’s trying to teach her how to Mortar Theater, Chicago). He has active commissions introduced themselves and I stuttered a think independently and how to relate to from MTC/Sloan, Seattle Rep, and South Coast Rep. His bit before telling the group that I had a other people. Ultimately, he’s teaching her plays have been developed at the O’Neill Playwrights masters degree in playwriting. You have no how to have empathy. Conference, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, PlayPenn, idea how to write a good essay. We read Ojai Playwrights Conference, the Lark Playwrights examples of student work, everyone arriving There are many elements that circle around Workshop, Juilliard, LAByrinth, Rattlestick, Seven Devils at a consensus about what grade to assign the story in The Whale—morbid obesity, Playwrights Conference, 24Seven Lab and elsewhere. He various papers. You have no idea how to Mormonism, small-town America, etc.—but is a core member of the Playwrights Center, a member of write a good essay. References to The New ultimately the play grew out of this struggle Partial Comfort Productions and is an alum of Ars Nova’s Yorker were endlessly tossed around, to teach independent thought and empathy. Playgroup. He has taught at Fordham University, Rutgers pontifications about secondary theses, Though much of the play is dark, like many University, and Marymount Manhattan College. A native debates about paragraph organization, a dark day of teaching I had in New Jersey of northern Idaho, Sam lives in New York City. He holds references to grammar terms that I hadn’t two years ago, the hope in the play is the degrees in playwriting from NYU, The Iowa Playwrights heard since I was in the eighth grade. Dear same hope I felt during some infrequent Workshop and Juilliard. q God, what’s the difference between a but amazing moments when reading an gerund and a participle? YOU HAVE NO IDEA essay from an apathetic college freshman. HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ESSAY. Moments in which, for one shining second, I was reading something that was profound, The first day of teaching, I gave my students true and original. They were moments a preliminary assignment to complete in of naked sincerity that would strike like IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR class so I could get an idea of their writing, lightning and then, like the moments some benign prompt about what they hoped of empathy from the college freshman DAVIS McCALLUM to accomplish throughout the term, how character in The Whale, disappeared as DAVIS McCALLUM recently directed the world premieres they hoped to improve their writing. On the quickly as they came, of Quiara Hudes’ Water by the Spoonful at Hartford Stage train home, I pulled out their assignments leaving me with the Company and February House at the Public Theater. and began to read: “I believe that there are lingering sense NEW YORK: Sam Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Partial many aspects to writing. I think I am good at that somehow, Comfort; Drama Desk Nomination) and Five Genocides many of these aspects, but I think it is good in some way, (Clubbed Thumb), Michael Mitnick’s Sex Lives of Our to improve on these aspects. I am a good I had taught Parents (Second Stage), Greg Moss’s student. In conclusion, my goal for this class someone how punkplay (Clubbed Thumb), Chuck is to improve on aspects of writing for myself to write a good Mee’s Queens Boulevard (Signature for essays.” essay. q Theater), Quiara Hudes’ Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (P73; Pulitzer After reading the first couple, I had a Prize Finalist), Henry V (New revelation. I had been thinking that teaching Samuel D. Hunter, Victory), Jane Eyre, The Tempest, this class would be a process of me July 2012 The Turn Of The Screw (The Acting desperately teaching myself how to write Company). REGIONAL: the Guthrie, essays while simultaneously trying to teach the Old Globe, Humana, Oregon the same thing to these students. But at that Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, moment, I realized that I wasn’t just teaching Alliance Theater Company, Chautauqua them how to write good essays, I was Theater Company, the O’Neill, teaching them how to think. I was teaching Playmakers Rep, Two River, them to come up with original ideas, giving New York Stage & them the ability to have an independent Film, others. He thought and put that thought into words trained at LAMDA on paper. In many ways, writing a good and studied essay is almost exactly like writing a good at Princeton play—it takes original ideas, development, and Oxford, complication, revelation. Perhaps most where he was importantly, it takes the ability to treat your a Rhodes subject with respect and a lack of judgment. Scholar. q It takes empathy.
PHOTO BY ZACK DEZON PHOTO BY ZACK DEZON STORIES ON 5 STORIES BACKSTORY: THE MORMON POETIC JUSTICE MOMENT
You’re out of order! Still, no one objects to Stories The media are calling it “The Mormon Moment.” Perhaps on 5 Stories, Playwrights Horizons’ annual, one- you’ve noticed it. The GOP nominee for President is Mormon. night-only, one-of-a-kind fundraiser. The Book of Mormon remains by far the hottest ticket on Broadway. And, the ecclesiastical ad-men of Salt Lake City Join us on Monday, October 22nd to see seven have launched an omnipresent, well-produced TV campaign new mini-plays by some of America’s finest playwrights. featuring normal folks—a New York comedienne working for Each play will be set in an unconventional, unexpected The Daily Show, a Haitian woman turned American mayor, a space within the five stories of Playwrights Horizons’ French opera singer—who are meant to strike most of us as home at 416 West 42nd Street. Your contributions will unlikely Latter-day Saints. benefit our developmental programs and productions. Event guests ride the elevator to the next story. Since its inception in the 1820s, Mormonism has provoked complex feelings—a mixture of admiration, incredulity, suspicion and revulsion, that has inspired, above all else, Participating playwrights this year include: a persistent curiosity. There’s a lot about Mormonism that speaks to the American character, to our sense of exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. Founded in Upstate Sarah Ruhl & Todd Almond New York by Joseph Smith, a famously charismatic, classically American, up-by-his-bootstraps fellow, Mormonism locates Jon Robin Baitz the Garden of Eden, and the New Jerusalem from which Christ will reign after the End Times in America, and it asserts neal bell that the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were divinely inspired. What’s more, Mormon theology Kirsten Greenidge encourages a kind of acquisitive yet generous, civic-minded industriousness that seems to lead to both individual Itamar Moses and communal prosperity with a minimum of government Artistic Director Tim Sanford and actors Jennifer Mudge and interference. Mormonism teaches that striving towards Chris Henry Coffey. bruce Norris godliness in this life can enable us to achieve actual divinity in the next. Though this notion that we can become “the Stories on 5 Stories is a favorite event among the Playwrights Horizons family. Artists, gods of our own planets” in the afterlife is oft-derided by attendees and staff alike are delighted and inspired by this celebration of original writing, outsiders, it sounds, in many ways, like the supernatural unconventional presentation and community. The evening truly reflects PH’s mission to extension of the American Dream. develop and support writers and to produce adventurous, surprising theater. Yet, Mormons are not conventional American individualists. An optional pre-show dinner will begin at 6 pm at Chez Josephine with the evening’s writers, Mormon doctrine prizes obedience to God and the Playwrights Horizons Board members and staff. The event and performances will begin at ecclesiastical authorities above all else, and Mormon 8 pm followed by an exclusive after-party with the participating artists. productivity is, in many ways, the product of collectivism, subversion of the ego, and a quieting of independent thought Tickets for Stories on 5 Stories are on sale now. Visit the Playwrights Horizons website www. and dissent that makes many Americans uncomfortable. playwrightshorizons.org or call Michelle Kiefel at (212) 564–1235, extension 3143. Tickets Mormon clannishness has made the LDS authorities slow to are priced at $200 (a single ticket to the shows and exclusive after-party with writers and renounce the church’s more unsavory doctrines like polygamy actors) and $350 (a single ticket for the pre-show, sit-down dinner, shows and after-party). (in 1890) and racial exclusion (in 1972), and Mormon block voting and fundraising are considered singularly responsible Book early! The event is strictly limited to 200 people, and always sells out quickly. q for the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment and the success of California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage. And while the LDS have distanced themselves from fringe fundamentalists like Warren Jeffs, the violence, sexual abuse, intimidation, polygamy, incest and fraud routinely perpetrated by communities like his in Colorado City, Arizona are the product of a strict male authoritarianism YOU REALLY LIKE US! and anti-intellectualism that is, if anachronistic in the early 21st century, indistinguishable from the practices of Brigham A huge “thank you” to all of our Subscribers, Young (Smith’s successor) and his contemporaries in the FlexPass holders, Patrons, Donors, Members, middle of the 19th. and friends who reached out to THEIR friends and LIKED Playwrights Horizons on Facebook back in Of course, the official LDS church has evolved considerably June. With your help, the number of page LIKES since that time and continues to evolve. But the Mormon skyrocketed from just over 4,600 to 10,000 in Country that Sam Hunter so often returns to in his work PH the space of one month. As a result, Playwrights is still a world split in two, in which the same place wide secured an anonymous donation of $10,000 open and rugged, with soaring peaks and expansive desert and raised its online profile considerably. Now seems to those in the Church like God’s glittering kingdom that you’ve liked us on Facebook, why not begin on Earth, and to those outside it, a bleak, lonely purgatory. following us on Twitter (@phnyc), or on Tumblr q YOU (playwrightshorizons.tumblr.com)? q —Alec Strum, Associate Literary Manager 4 THE AMERICAN VOICE: your own private idaho
There’s Steinbeck and Salinas. Faulkner and “Yoknapatawpha.” Raymond struggle to retain faith, despite any corroborative evidence in particular, even Carver and his stomping ground, the Pacific Northwest. Philip Roth and when you have nowhere to put it. All over Sam’s body of work, characters are Newark. More recently, there’s Annie Baker and her fictional Shirley, Vermont. abandoned by the church. In Norway (2009), a young queer student is kicked And then there are the settings of Sam Hunter’s plays which, if you look closely, out of his Christian high school. In A Bright New Boise (2010), we meet Will, reveal a pattern: the newest employee at Hobby Lobby, whose association with an infamous, renegade extremist church in northern Idaho has turned him into a pariah. “An Olive Garden franchise in Pocatello, Idaho.” “The inside of a weathered, And in Jack’s Precious Moment (2008), Bib, a born-again is excommunicated paper-littered, unkempt office off of some random exit onI-90 in northern from his congregation after he draws parallels between Christian and Islamic Idaho.” “Lewiston, Idaho.” “Northern Idaho, the present.” “Various locations fundamentalism. “It’s like everything that I’ve accepted as total truth suddenly en route from Montana to Iowa via I-90.” “A large casino on the Coeur d’Alene doesn’t make sense,” he says, “and I don’t even know how to live anymore.” Indian Reservation in northern Idaho.” “The windowless breakroom of a Hobby Lobby in Boise, Idaho.” “The interior of a small, ranch-style house in Viola, a Discovering their deepest beliefs places them in contradiction to the world, the small town of about 700 people in northern Idaho.” stubborn heroes of Sam’s plays are propelled by a need to re-map, to find a way to simply live; and the routes they draw are characteristically perverse. In “I never sit down and say to myself that I’m going to write another play that’s Jack’s Precious Moment, Bib looks for answers by paying a visit to the Precious set in Idaho,” Hunter told Idaho Public Television earlier this year. “It always Moments Inspirational Park And Chapel (home to those intolerable figurines). just sort of naturally falls there.” In I Am Montana (2008), a bitter employee at “Valumart” road-trips south to the store’s annual convention armed with a suitcase of explosives. In Idaho/Dead For anyone, of course, the thought of home carries with it a confusing mash-up Idaho (2008), the region’s most promising young taxidermist goes to extreme of emotions and issues, chronically unresolved, where the claustrophobia and lengths to deny his homosexuality and lead a normal life. When impregnating disorientation of being a teenager is complicated by the remembrance of home- his lesbian cousin doesn’t do the trick, he throws himself fully into his cooked meals, bicycles, and hanging out. It’s not surprising that Hunter, like masterpiece: a stuffed mutant-dog-squirrel-hybrid with wings, envisioned as so many writers, returns to the landscape of his youth: the soil there is fertile. the centerpiece of the local casino. When considering his plays collectively, Sam’s Idaho is riddled with paradoxes, as majestic as it is oppressive, as desolate as it is unexpectedly beautiful. “I am—really terrible at being a person,” laments Bryan in The Few (2012) as he drunkenly contemplates downing a jug of anti-freeze. Editor of an In a sense, that’s a fascination inherent in any treatment of “The West.” Since inconsequential newspaper for truckers, Bryan lost a basic faith in humanity long before and after it was settled, its open expanse has carried mystery and after one of his pals intentionally killed himself and a family of four in a car maddening juxtapositions. “The most splendid part of the American habitat, crash—a downward spiral that’s reversed when he realizes his paper can help it is also the most fragile,” wrote Wallace Stegner (the “Dean of Western others. In Jack’s Precious Moment, Bib unfastens his seat belt on “The Octopus,” Writers”) in his essay Living Dry. “We found it different, daunting, exhilarating, a treacherous carnival ride, only to be saved from death by an alcoholic carnie, dangerous and unpredictable, and we entered it carrying habits that were often possibly his future boyfriend. But while Bryan and Bib (and many other Hunter inappropriate, and expectations that were surely excessive. … The West has antiheroes) work their way through to the other side of their crises, some get had a way of warping well-carpentered habits, and raising the grain on exposed stuck and give in. In Five Genocides (2010), an academic writes his dissertation dreams.” on major genocides of the twentieth century, ultimately opting for suicide when he develops what one character calls “an over-heightened sense of empathy,” Hunter’s plays evoke the magnetism of the west, but their landscape is losing his faith that mankind is capable of any goodness. “Today I stood in the distinctly, well, His Own Private Idaho. Lovingly satiric and perversely funny, grocery store for two hours,” he says, “realizing that the death of a culture may his writing centers on the marginal, ubiquitous underbelly that makes up the depend on which brand of orange juice I choose to buy.” In A Permanent Image place: characters who are eccentric but not particularly exceptional and as (2011), a weary husband and wife form a suicide pact, crediting a misinformed deeply weird as they are ordinary. His Idaho intertwines the stories of zealots understanding of the Big Bang Theory. and missionaries with meth-heads, carnies, avante-garde taxidermists and 650-pound men. It’s an Idaho where families fail to cohere though they live But, really, the word “suicide” rings so falsely when looking at the cosmology in a heartland that peddles the cliché of “family values” at every opportunity. of Sam Hunter’s Idaho. The word implies selfishness and violence—qualities It’s where the grandiose expectations of religious fundamentalism are trapped I wouldn’t include in any lexicon of his work—so I find myself searching for inside the windowless break room of a big box retail some other expression that better describes the way his characters surrender, store. “I grew up in northern Idaho and attended a dissolve, freeze in time, or call it a day. Their death is never dramatic or vindictive fundamentalist Christian high school while working so much as it is passive, almost loving. They stand up on a treacherous carnival at a local Walmart, so I guess the two experiences ride. They strip their clothes off and freeze to death in the parking lot of a Best have always been sort of conflated for me,” he Western. They fall asleep to Christmas Carols while Nembutal courses through said in a recent interview. Hunter’s characters their veins. They stop eating. Or they eat themselves to death. live in an Idaho where the divine smacks up against the banal, where their expansive In looking back at Sam’s collection of plays to date, at both the wide variety worldviews create a profound disconnection of subjects and the commonalities they share, The Whale strikes me as to their quotidian surroundings. They’re as quintessential—though it does seem worth noting, after typing words like lost within Idaho’s suburban sprawl as they are “quintessential” that this madly prolific guy is just barely past thirty years within the cosmos, each one struggling with a old. Sam writes, as he always does, with loving compassion for his decadent, fundamental part his or her self—whether it’s sociopathic characters. I’m astonished every time I realize that each character religion, sexuality, ethics or a cocktail of all these we meet in The Whale is driven by an obsession to make good. As bleak as things—that doesn’t fit into their surroundings their Idaho may seem; for all the destruction they leave in their wake; and or daily lives. despite the abuse they hurl at one another, what connects these characters is an attempt to salvage some faith. q This disconnection seems to drive the action at the center of his work: the —Adam Greenfield, Director of New Play Development CONTACT INFO & HOURS OF OPERATION PATRONS & GENERATION PH MEMBERS EXCHANGES You may reserve your house seats by calling Eva Subscribers, PATRONS & GEN PH MEMBERS TICKET CENTRAL, the box office for Playwrights TI ON Rosa at extension 3144. have unlimited exchange privileges. 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44 & x Empire Coffee & Tea LANDMARK TAVERN Westway Diner Housing works thrift store 622 10th Avenue 568 9th Avenue 626 11th Avenue 614 9th Avenue 9th Avenue at 49th Street New American Coffee and Treats Contemporary American Diner housingworks.org (212) 977–1170 (212) 268–1220 (212) 247–2562 (212) 582–7661 20% discount Mention PH and receive a 15% discount on all products 10% discount on purchase. 10% discount on purchase. complimentary fallen chocolate excluding cups of coffee. soufflé with dinner. NEW! Little Town NYC Yum Yum 3 Etcetera etcetera 366 West 46th Street 658 9th Avenue PARKING Above 352 West 44th Street Contemporary Brewpub Thai and Vietnamese ALLIANCE Parking At The Hilton Times Square Italian/Mediterranean (212) 677-6300 (212) 956–0639 Strand Apartment Building 234 West 42nd Street (212) 399–4141 15% discount on entire check. 10% discount on purchase. 43rd Street & 10th Avenue Contemporary American 10% discount on purchase. (212) 642–2626 The Meat Factory Steakhouse Yum Yum Bangkok $12 flat rate on weeknights after 10% discount on lunch or dinner. Fragolino TRATTORIA “Brazil Brazil” 650 9th Avenue 5 pm and anytime on weekends. 653 9th Avenue 330 West 46th Street Thai Rate is $19 after 5 hours (up to 12 BANGKOK HOUSE Italian Brazilian Steakhouse (212) 262–7244 hours). Please present your ticket 360 West 46th Street (212) 333–5300 (212) 957–4300 10% discount on purchase. stub to a parking manager. Thai 10% discount on entire check 10% discount on entire check (212) 541–5943 when paying in cash. Discount when paying in cash. Discount Zen Palate 10% discount on purchase. unavailable on Friday & Saturday. unavailable on Friday & Saturday. 663 9th Avenue Vegetarian NEW! Manhattan Parking Broadway Joe Steakhouse Il Punto Ristorante Sardi’s (212) 582–1669 475 West 41st Street. 315 West 46th Street 507 9th Avenue 234 West 44th Street 10% discount on take-out and American Steaks & Seafood Italian American Traditional delivery. $12 flat rate for 6 hours. (212) 246–6513 (212) 244–0088 (212) 221–8440 Download the discount coupon on 20% discount on lunch or dinner. Complimentary dessert with Complimentary glass of house Zuni Playwrights Horizons’ website or purchase of an entree. wine with entrée. Reservations 598 9th Avenue ask for a coupon at the concessions *Chez Josephine suggested. Contemporary American counter during your visit.
E XC L USI VE NE I GHBO R HOO D DISC O U N TS 414 West 42nd Street Kyotofu (212) 765–7626 French 705 9th Avenue Theatre Row Diner 10% discount on purchase. (212) 594–1925 Japanese Dessert & Sake Bar 424 West 42nd Street Complimentary glass of house wine (212) 974–6012 Diner with dinner. Complimentary glass of sake with (212) 426–6000 SPECIALTY ITEMS Reservations suggested. dinner or dessert. 10% discount on purchase. Drama Book Shop The Coffee Pot L’Allegria *West Bank Cafe 250 West 40th Street 350 West 49th Street 623 9th Avenue 407 West 42nd Street (212) 944–0595 Coffee and Sandwiches Italian American 10% discount (212) 265–3566 (212) 265–6777 (212) 695–6909 (some items excluded) 10% discount on purchase. 10% discount on entire check when Complimentary glass of house wine paying in cash. Unavailable on with entrée, per person. Friday & Saturday. THE WHALE SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY
MEMBER PREVIEW SPECIAL: Member tickets are just $30 from October 12–November 4 and $35 OCTOBER 12 13 for performances November 7–18. 7:30 pm 2:00 pm 7:30 pm 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 2:00 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm PPD 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 2:00 pm 7:00 pm 7:30 pm 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 2:00 pm PPD 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm PPD 2:00 pm 7:00 pm 7:30 pm 28 29 30 31 NOVEMBER 1 2 3 2:00 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 2:00 pm 7:00 pm 7:30 pm 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2:00 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 2:00 pm 7:00 pm 7:30 pm 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 2:00 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 7:30 pm 2:00 pm 7:00 pm 7:30 pm
18 KID-FRIENDLY? 2:00 pm PPD Indicates post-performance discussion Performance schedule and casting subject to change. 7:00 pm We recommend The Whale for audiences aged 14+.
Take home a library of your favorite PH titles for just $10 each!* STAGE TO PAGE BOOKSHOP
Tim Sanford, Artistic Director 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036 www.playwrightshorizons.org
C L WORLD PREMIERE • February 2010 “A SPIKY and DAMNINGLY INSIGHTFUL new comedy.” – The New York Times Y B O U R N E P “ABSOLUTELY SENSATIONAL! Dazzlingly written by Bruce Norris.” – New York Post
“BRUCE NORRIS IS A WONDERFUL, ORIGINAL, A R K GRAB-YOU-BY-THE-GUTS PLAYWRIGHT. The audience screams with laughter.”
– WOR Radio b y B r u c e N o i s “APPALLINGLY FUNNY.” – Time Out London
“Remarkably perceptive, often hilarious and surprisingly poignant.” – Associated Press
CRITICS’ PICK: The New York Times and Time Out New York
WHO ARE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD? In 1959, a white family moves
out. In 2009, a white family moves in. In the intervening years, change overtakes P l a y w r i g h t s H o z a neighborhood, along with attitudes, inhabitants, and property values. Loosely inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Bruce Norris’s pitch-black comedy takes on the specter of gentrification in our communities, leaving no stone unturned in the process.
Photos: Front, top from L to R: Christina Kirk, Jeremy Shamos, Annie Parisse, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, and Crystal A. Dickinson in Act I. Front, bottom: Damon Gupton, Crystal A. Dickinson, Annie Parisse, and
Jeremy Shamos in Act II. Back: Christina Kirk and Frank Wood in Act I. o n s G All photos by Joan Marcus.
a l WINNER! WINNER! Laurence Olivier Award,
M a y 2 , 0 1 2011 BEST NEW PLAY 2011 PULITZER PRIZE WINNER! Evening Standard Award, PRODUCTIONS IN PRINT for DRAMA BEST PLAY 2010 In An Hour Books www.inanhourbooks.com
Tim Sanford, Artistic Director 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036 Tim Sanford, Artistic Director World Premiere 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036 www.playwrightshorizons.org www.playwrightshorizons.org March 2011
G O B WORLD PREMIERE • February 2011 K A I
N “SIMPLY TERRIFIC. C K
GO BACK
PERHAPS THE FINEST NEW PLAY OF THE SEASON. T b y O TO WHERE YOU ARE Funny and audacious, haunting, and exquisitely wrought.” B W H E R
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“A beautifully developed portrait of how our friends and families shape who
we are and even who we love. A N “FUNNY, TOUCHING, and INNOVATIVE.” THIS ONE IS GUARANTEED TO MAKE – Jennifer Farrar, Associated Press YOU MISTY.” –Joe Dziemianowicz, NY Daily News
“ERROR NOT EVIL,CORRECTION NOT CATASTROPHE.”
A forgotten chorus boy from the theater of Ancient Greece, stuck in a lonely purgatory these past 2,000
years, is sent back to Earth on a mission from God. He now finds himself among a vacationing family in
Montauk, caught off-guard by his re-discovered ability to feel love. Go Back To Where You Are is a melan- P
choly comic romance, told with Greenspan’s unique brand of theatrical wit and exquisite lyricism. l a y w r i
DAVID GREENSPAN’s plays include The Myopia; She Stoops To Comedy; The Argument; Dead g Mother, or Shirley Not All in Vain; and the book to the musical Coraline. Mr. Greenspan is the recipient of h t two Obie Awards for Performance, two for Playwriting, and one for Sustained Achievement. s
H P Anna’s an Ivy League poetry scholar. Sean’s an Irish personal trainer. l o a y r
w They hardly seem destined for one another. ” Cover photo and photo illustration by Aaron Epstein. i z r
Texture photo by Tristan Bowersox. i o g But as their web of disparate family and friends cross– eCsha rglerse Iasht edrwiosotadnces—both psychologically and h n t
s geographically—an unlikely new family is forged. Bathsheba Doran’s play sheds a sharp light on the The New York Times s
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o changing face of kinship in the expansive landscape of the modern world. r Photo: Michael Izquierdo, Mariann Mayberry, David Greenspan, r i e z o
Brian Hutchison, Lisa Banes, Stephen Bogardus, and Tim Hopper in v n i s
the World Premiere of Go Back to Where You Are at Playwrights e
P Horizons, 2011. Photo by Joan Marcus. w r e
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PRODUCTIONS IN PRINT t E Clockwise from top: Suzanne Bertish, Patch Darragh, Kristen Bush, i d o
i Laura Heisler, Matthew Rauch, Kit Flanagan, Cotter Smith, Molly Ward, t
In An Hour Books n i o and Bill Buell in the World Premiere of Kin by Bathsheba Doran at s n SHOP ONLINE or FROM THE s wbwwy.in aDnhoAurbVookIs.cDom GREENPSlaywrPightsA HorizNons, 2011. Photos by Joan Marcus. COMFORT OF YOUR OWN PHONE visit our virtual bookshop at playwrightshorizons.org or ticketcentral.com 7 416 West 42nd Street • New York, NY 10036
BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR THE WHALE a new play by directed by SAMUEL D. DAVIS HUNTER McCALLUM
OCTOBER 12–NOVEMBER 18, 2012 Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater This is the second of six productions in the 2012/13 Season.
Performance Calendar Appears on Page 7 Show your PH community spirit and keep abreast of everything we do through our social media networks: Special thanks to the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation for its generous support of Facebook.com/PlaywrightsHorizons The Whale. Twitter.com/PHnyc PlaywrightsHorizons.Tumblr.com
THE SEASON IN a nutshell a heaven -ly bow
With four-time Tony Award nominee Kelli O’Hara in the lead role Have you reserved your tickets for our annual of Cathy Whitaker, the new musical Far From Heaven had a two- Season Panel Discussion at 92Y Tribeca? week preview production in July at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. The result of a commission from the Playwrights Featuring the authors of all of our 2012/13 shows in Horizons Musicals in Partnership Initiative, established with conversation with Artistic Director Tim Sanford, and and supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are moderated by The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman, so proud that Far From Heaven will be a part of our 2012/2013 the panel takes place on Monday, September 10 at season, and we are thrilled to be partnering with Williamstown 7:30 pm at 92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street at Canal on this remarkable new piece. Kudos also to the intrepid Street. artistic team: book writer Richard Greenberg, composer Scott Frankel, lyricist Michael Korie, and director Michael Greif. Far For $15 tickets and more information, visit www.92y. From Heaven will run from May 17–July 14, 2013. q org/tribeca and click on THEATER. q From L to R: Kelli O’Hara and Brandon Victor Dixon in a scene from Far From Heaven; Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale (Photos by T. Charles Erickson); Kelli O’Hara and Steven Pasquale at Far From Heaven opening at Williamstown (Photo by Steven C. 8 Koernig).