Ticketing Services Provided By WHITE HORSE THEATER COMPANY PRESENTS..... White Horse Theater website & the contents of this playbill (excluding the front cover) are designed, produced and maintained by Right Side of NY. www.WhiteHorseTheater.com February 5 to 21, 2010 ❖ Hudson Guild Theatre “Life ended for me when Zelda and I crashed. If she could get well, I would be happy again. Otherwise, never.” - SPECIAL POST-SHOW DISCUSSION ON F. Scott Fitzgerald* SUNDAY, FEB 14TH! With Renowned Williams Scholar Dr. Annette J. Saddik "I determined to find an impersonal escape, a world in which I and Nancy Milford, author of Zelda could express myself and walk without the help of somebody who was always far from me." - Zelda Fitzgerald** Moderated by Jennifer-Scott Mobley, Ph.D. Candidate in Theater History & Criticism, CUNY Graduate Center Clothes for a Summer Hotel, Mr. Williams’ highly theatrical and evocative “ghost play”, imagines an ethereal final meeting Dr. Saddik is an Associate Professor in the English between the restless ghosts of literary great F. Scott Fitzgerald Department at New York City College of Technology and his wife Zelda. Set on a windy hilltop at the gates of the Asheville, NC asylum where Zelda was institutionalized before her (CUNY), a teacher in the Ph.D. Program in Theatre at the death by fire in 1948, a desperate Scott pleads for CUNY Graduate Center and the author of Contemporary reconciliation while Zelda blames him for her failed writing American Drama and The Politics of Reputation: The career and ensuing madness. Taking extraordinary liberties with time and place, Clothes fuses the past, present and future as Critical Reception of Tennessee Williams’ Later Plays. Zelda and Scott re-visit the Jazz Age of their youth on the Ms. Milford’s Zelda was a finalist for the Pulitzer French Riviera and the ghosts of characters, including Ernest Hemingway, who helped shape their existence. Prize and the National Book Award, and spent twenty-nine weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. Clothes for a Summer Hotel, which opened at the Court Theatre on March 26, 1980 directed by Jose Quintero with Geraldine Page in the role of Zelda, was Mr. Williams’ last Broadway production. It closed after 15 performances. Author's Note This is a ghost play. Of course in a sense all plays are ghost plays, since players are not actually whom they play. Our reason for taking extraordinary license with time and place is that in an asylum and on its grounds liberties of this kind are quite prevalent: and also these liberties allow us to explore in more depth what we believe is truth of character. Actors' Equity Association (AEA), founded in 1913, And so we ask you to indulge us with the licenses we represents more than 45,000 actors and stage managers in take for a purpose which we consider quite earnest. the United States. Equity seeks to advance, promote and foster the art of live theatre as an essential component of —Tennessee Williams our society. Equity negotiates wages and working conditions, providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. AEA is a member of the AFL-CIO, This performance text of Clothes for a Summer Hotel is a and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization further revision, by the author, of the acting text published of performing arts unions. The Equity emblem is our mark of by Dramatists Play Service in 1981, which was itself a excellence. www.actorsequity.org revision of the script of the Broadway production. * Quoted in Andrew Turnbell, Scott Fitzgerald (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1962), p. 261. ** Quoted in Nancy Milford, ZELDA (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 175. 2 11 WHITE HORSE THEATER COMPANY MISSION STATEMENT: White Horse Theater Company Presents: The White Horse Theater Company is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to producing and developing American plays. We seek to investigate and question American social and political issues by re-examining American classics and nurturing new American voices. Clothes For A Summer Hotel We are particularly interested in the lost works of great A “Ghost Play” American playwrights that were not successfully received the first time in production. Our goal in re-working these forgotten plays is to solve the inherent problems while presenting a work By TENNESSEE WILLIAMS that is truly in line with the playwright’s original vision. Directed by Cyndy A. Marion Finally, we aim to shed new light on these unknown works by Featuring in order of appearance: making them accessible to both the general public and a scholarly audience. F. Scott Fitzgerald………………………………..Peter J. Crosby* Sister One/Party Waitress……………………….Julie Kelderman WHTC Board of Directors: Sister Two/Thin Dancer………………………….Ambien Mitchell Rod Sweitzer — President, Founding Artistic Director Gerald Murphy…………………………………..Tom Cleary* Cyndy A. Marion — Vice President/Treasurer, Producing Artistic Zelda Fitzgerald………………………………….Kristen Vaughan Director Intern/Edouard…………………………………..Montgomery Sutton* Loretta Hunt Marion — Secretary, Director of Marketing & Becky/Mrs. Patrick Campbell…………………....Mary Goggin* Development Sara Murphy……………………………………..Lisa Riegel* Dr. Zeller………………………………………….Christopher Johnson* ASSOCIATE ARTISTS: Nurse/Singer……………………………….Kyle Lamar Mitchell* Boo-Boo/Hadley Hemingway……………………Sarah Levine Vanessa R. Bombardieri — Director, New Play Development Ernest Hemingway………………………………Rod Sweitzer* Michael G. Chin — Resident Fight Choreographer David Gibbs — Press Rep Original Set Design………………………………John C. Scheffler Leslie Feffer — Website Designer Additional Set Design & Execution…………… Randall Parsons Elliot Lanes — Resident Stage Manager Lighting…………………………………………..Debra Leigh Siegel Melissa Lin — Resident Graphic Designer Costumes………………………………………...Adam Coffia Jennifer-Scott Mobley — Resident Actor, Dramaturg & Assistant Incidental Music/Composer/Arranger………….Joe Gianono Director Sound Designer…………………………………David Schulder Mark D. Ransom — Resident Actor Assistant Director/Dramaturg………………………………………Vanessa R. Bombardieri Debra Leigh Siegel — Resident Lighting Designer Stage Manager…………………………………..Elliot Lanes* David B. Thompson — Resident Costume Designer Assistant Stage Manager……………………….Jenny Greeman* Fight Choreographer……………………………Michael G. Chin Jen Wiener — Resident ASM Choreographer for Ballet and Provocative Dance……..Liz Vacco Tango Choreographers………………………….Argen-Tango Dancers Special Thanks on this production: Postcard Illustration…………………………….Serena Huang • Herbert B. Blodgett • Anton Gazenbeek, Dance Postcard Design………………………………….Melissa Lin Voice of Mary Hemingway…………………………….Jenny Greeman* • Dr. Annette J. Saddik Historian Marketing & Promotions…………The Pekoe Group./Amanda Pekoe & Kerry Minchinton • Nancy Milford • Fred W. Todd Press Representative……………………………..DARR Publicity • Jennifer-Scott Mobley • Mark Ransom • Materials for the Arts, NYC • Julia Ramirez There will be one 15-minute intermission * Please turn off all cell phones and Department of Cultural • John Greiner pagers. Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department • Jay Duckworth, Prop of Education Master for the Public *Member of Actors’ Equity Association/Equity Approved Showcase Theater • Dale Hunt • Mary Bowman Clothes For a Summer Hotel is produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service on behalf of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. 10 This is not a production of the Hudson Guild Theatre. 3 CAST & CREW Liz Vacco (Choreographer for Ballet and Provocative Dance) is a Peter J. Crosby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) has appeared in numerous Brooklyn-based performer and choreographer. Since graduating from Yale in 2000, she has been active in the New York theater and dance productions in New York and at regional theatres. Most recently, communities, performing and working with Les Freres Corbusier, The he played Dr. Jekyll in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at Maine’s Public Collapsable Giraffe, Fovea Floods, Floating Brothel, Sidra Bell Theatre. Other featured roles: Father Flynn in Doubt, Anthony Dance and at St. Ann's Warehouse, P.S. 122, Lincoln Center's Clark Wilding in Enchanted April, and Walker/Ned in Three Days of Rain. Studio Theater and the Hangar Theater. Liz is also a founding He has originated roles in new works with companies such as New member and the Managing Director of the non-profit performance Voices Theatre Ensemble, Target Margin Theater, and the New York collaborative, Immediate Medium. She has contributed to all IM Theatre Workshop. Peter serves as Managing Director for The CRY works since 2002 as a collaborator, choreographer and performer. HAVOC Company. He received his MFA in Acting from the National She teaches dance, theater and yoga to children at Discovery Theatre Conservatory. Programs, Let's Dance Brooklyn and through the New York City Kristen Vaughan (Zelda Fitzgerald) was most recently seen as the Ballet. first papally sanctioned female priest in Mac Roger’s episodic play Mother Sacramento with Gideon/Vampire Cowboys and in HB Argen-Tango Dancers™ (Tango Choreography) Vittoria Natale and Studios’ The Living Room Plays. She played Rachel in David Ian Guillermo Elkouss, have been teaching, choreographing and Lee’s Sleeper with Small Pond Productions, and was a New York performing Argentine Tango for the past 10 years, with a Innovative Theater Award Leading Actress nominee for her work as certification from Escuala de Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sunny in Mill Fire with Retro Productions. She also played Nadine They have been featured