SHARP BULLETIN

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PLAYWRIGHT’S WRITING ABOUT THINKING DOROTHY DAY AND THE PERSPECTIVE ABOUT GOD CATHOLIC WORKER Heidi Schreck reflects on the problem of for- Adam Greenfield on Schreck's work, from her be- Sarah Lunnie on the career of this unlikely Cath- giveness and how it's shaped her plawriting. ginnings in Seattle to the PH stage. olic in her Backstory, "Life is a Banquet." FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR DEAR FRIENDS,

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. –The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something. –Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw

Grand Concourse is probably the most recognizable place name in the Bronx (next to Yankee Stadium). Built at the turn of the century at the height of the City Beautiful movement, taking fifteen years to construct, its Alsatian architect modelled it on the Champs-Élysée, only on an even grander scale. Yet the Bronx itself, despite gradual improvement, still stands in some people’s minds as a symbol of urban blight. Heidi Schreck’s play, Grand Concourse, evokes both of these associations. Set in a soup kitchen in a church managed by a progressive, secularly-dressed nun, the play depicts the world where idealism and reality meet head on. With only four characters, the play represents a remarkably broad spectrum of players in this struggle. The nun, Shelley, seems totally grounded and matter-of-fact but her relationship to her own faith seems faintly unsettled. Her other employee is a cheerful, somewhat rambunctious working-class Latino man. And the one “customer” we meet is a garrulous, off-kilter homeless man with a fascinating back story. Into this mix steps a young volunteer, who seems by turns zealot, trouble-maker, with a hint of Eve Harrington. Each of these people is exactingly, humanely drawn, and their stories are compelling and surprising. Somehow as the story unfolds, this world feels like a microcosm of America. The collision of idealism with reality creates a moral muddiness. Char- ity is not straightforward. The underlying motives of the charitable transaction are as opaque as any other human interaction. In the course of the play, Shelley discovers this truth applies even to herself. Self-knowledge becomes as imperative as selflessness.

The word “concourse” does not just suggest intersection; it also suggests passage. These characters all come together in search of something, but each also inevitably passes through on a journey to somewhere else. And Shelley’s journey is implicitly rooted in her sense of spirituality. In most plays I can think of about religious faith—including Major Barbara, quoted above, or A Man for All Seasons, or from the Playwrights Horizons canon, Saved, 100 Saints You Should Know, or The Busy World Is Hushed—the satisfaction of the seeker’s quest seems endemically tied to an event of disillusionment. And the crisis of disillusionment that strikes Shelley seems particularly shattering. But we never feel Shelley is waylaid from her journey. What she experiences feels tied to what the great Christian existentialist Theologian Paul Tillich wrestled with in The Courage To Be, also quoted above. True faith seems to need to accommodate doubt, perhaps even to spring from doubt. And it needs to accommodate our humanity. It’s hard to account for the expansiveness we feel at the end of Grand Concourse. A description would not only give it away; it would also be inadequate.

Adam Greenfield is exactly right in his article within when he says the actor Heidi Schreck is the same person as the writer Heidi Schreck. I met Heidi the writer about the same time Heidi the actor performed in Circle Mirror Transformation for us. In the years since, Heidi the writer’s production opportunities have significantly increased, but Heidi the actor has worked virtually non-stop, to the point of interfering with playwright Heidi’s schedule. As a champion of playwrights, I’ve found myself teasing her a little: “Heidi, you’re a great writer. You owe it to yourself to be just a writer the next time you’re produced.” I am thrilled to be the one to give her that opportunity by producing this amazing play.

TIM SANFORD ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

The Sharp Theater Bulletin is generously funded, in part, by the LIMAN FOUNDATION 2 Photo by Christine Gatti PLAYWRIGHT’S PERSPECTIVE

When I was in middle school, a family friend—I’ll call him Mr. Hornby— and small ways. Having worked in soup kitchens and for social justice asked my parents if he could borrow a thousand dollars. Mr. Hornby had organizations both in my hometown and here in the city, I was interested divorced his wife and lost his job and he needed the money to get his in writing about the provisional families that spring up in places where car fixed. A thousand bucks was a lot to us—this was the 1980s and my people gather explicitly to care for one another—to help and to seek parents were public school teachers saving to send two kids to college— help. There is a great deal of affection and humor and... well, love in these but they scraped it together and gave it to Mr. Hornby, who was genuinely situations, which also means that so much can go horribly wrong. Emma, grateful. Then Mr. Hornby got in his Buick, which was not actually broken, Oscar, Frog, and Shelley become a weird little family during the course of and drove eleven hundred miles from our little town in Washington state to this play, and, like any real family, they have the power to both heal and Las Vegas, where he lost the money at a blackjack table. harm one another.

It was an agonizing night around the dinner table. My parents bickered The problem of forgiveness was also on my mind as the play started to take about how they were going to pay the mortgage and whose stupid idea shape—or at least my problem with forgiveness. I realized that I wasn’t had it been to loan Mr. Hornby money in the first place. I got the same sure I understood it, at least not in a practical, real-life way. I respect tight feeling in my stomach that afflicts me to this day when money is it as a concept and have certainly been in need discussed in serious tones. I was young enough to believe that our family of giving and receiving it—I’ve been a Mr. was doomed. And yet, later that evening when Mr. Hornby called to ask my Hornby in certain situations—but I wasn’t parents for $500 more so he could drive home from Las Vegas, there was sure I actually knew how to do either, not no discussion. My parents drove down to the Western Union and wired it without a certain amount of pretending. to him. And so the thorny relationship that forms between Shelley and Emma And though I was angry with Mr. Hornby for running away with “my” became my way to work that out, money, I was also secretly thrilled by my parents’ reckless generosity. to test out the possibilities, and It made the world feel just a tiny bit gentler. Plus, Mr. Hornby did come hopefully begin to navigate a kind of home, and even though he never paid my parents back, I made it to college path toward grace. anyway, where I learned about the great Catholic activist Dorothy Day, who said: “The gospel has taken away our right forever to distinguish between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” HEIDI SCHRECK JULY 2014 I am not a Catholic. I am a Presbyterian-raised agnostic, but discovering Dorothy Day was a watershed moment for me and led me to study (and revere) a number of other great Catholic women, among them Flannery O’Connor, Hildegard von Bingen, Sister Mary Corita Kent, and Juliana of Heidi Schreck is Playwrights Horizons’ Tow Founda- Norwich. This play owes a debt to all of these women, and the character of tion Playwright in Residence for the 2014/2015 Shelley—a progressive nun in the spirit of the Nuns on the Bus—has, in season. Special thanks to the Tow Foundation for many ways, modeled her life after Day’s. supporting Heidi’s residency while she develops and produces Grand Concourse. Grand Concourse is set in a soup kitchen in part because of Day, who started the Catholic Worker, and also in homage to my parents, who ran Grand Concourse is the recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New American Plays award. a home for displaced kids and devoted their lives to service in both big

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HEIDI SCHRECK is a playwright and two-time Obie Award-winning actor. “The Good Wife,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and Her first play, Creature, was produced in New York by New Georges and Showtime’s “Nurse Jackie,” where she also Page 73 and directed by Leigh Silverman; her second, There Are No More works as a writer. Heidi is Playwrights Big Secrets, directed by Kip Fagan, premiered at Rattlestick Playwrights Horizons’ first Tow Foundation Playwright Theatre, and was a New York magazine and Time Out New York Critic’s in Residence. pick. Most recently, Long Wharf Theatre produced her dark recession- era comedy, The Consultant, also directed by Fagan. A former Page 73 Playwriting Fellow and Sundance artist, Heidi is currently working on commissions for South Coast Repertory Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club/ Sloan Foundation, and True Love Productions. Grand Concourse marks her return to Playwrights Horizons after appearing as an actor in Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation (Theatre World Award) in 2010. She has also performed extensively at theaters such as The Public (Shakespeare in the Park), Manhattan Theatre Club, Two-Headed Calf, The Foundry, Clubbed Thumb, The Women’s Project, The Roundabout, Williamstown, Berkeley Rep and Center Theatre Group. On television, Heidi has appeared on

3 Photo by Zack DeZon CASTING ANNOUNCED

QUINCY TYLER BERNSTINE PH: Mr. Burns, a post-electric play; Far From Heaven. BOBBY MORENO OFF-BROADWAY: Year of the Rooster, Hand to God (EST); BROADWAY: In the Next Room. OFF-BROADWAY: Neva (Public, Lortel nom.); Red-handed Otter (Playwrights Realm). FILM & TV: How He Fell in Love, Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling (Atlantic), Ruined (MTC, Obie Award). “The Good Wife,” “Law & Order.” FILM & TV: Red Hook Summer, Rachel Getting Married. LEE WILKOF PH: Assassins. BROADWAY: Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Odd ISMENIA MENDES PH: Your Mother's Copy of the Kama Sutra. OFF Couple, Kiss Me Kate (Tony award nom.). OFF-BROADWAY: Little Me -BROADWAY: Much Ado About Nothing (Public/NYSF), Family Furniture (Encores!). FILM & TV: “Ally McBeal,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Hart to (Flea). FILM & TV: Deal Travis In. Graduate of The Juilliard School. Hart,” Asylum Seekers, The Grey Zone, This Boy's Life, Leaves of Grass.

BACKSTORY LIFE IS A BANQUET

As she prepared to receive her first sacraments in ity for what she perceived as its lack of concern with 1927, Dorothy Day must have seemed an unlikely social justice. But, overflowing with religious feeling Catholic. She was thirty years old, unmarried, a new after the birth of her daughter Tamar, she became mother, living in a cottage on Staten Island she’d determined that her child should be Catholic. Tamar’s bought with her own money three years earlier when baptism was a joyous occasion for Day; her own con- Hollywood bought the film rights for a novel she’d version was more painful. Since her lover would not published. Called The Eleventh Virgin, the thinly veiled convert and was philosophically opposed to marriage, autobiography chronicled a youthful love affair and an becoming Catholic meant giving up their relationship. early pregnancy that ended, when Day was twenty- Even as she received the sacraments of baptism, rec- one, with an abortion. (She would later refer to it only onciliation and communion, she was still tormented as “a very bad book.”) She’d spent her twenties mak- by personal and spiritual ambivalence. ing a living as a journalist, writing for radical Social- ist papers including the New York Call, The Masses, But the independence of mind, radical politics, and and The Liberator. Twice she had been jailed: first in profound desire for real experience that made Doro- Washington, D.C. for participating in a suffrage dem- thy Day an unlikely Catholic were perhaps also the onstration, and later in Chicago on mistaken suspicion very traits that made her a remarkable one. Rather of prostitution, for her presence at night in what po- than abandon her political commitments, Day became lice deemed a “disorderly house.” (It was, in fact, the determined to find a way to incorporate them into headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World.) the practice of her new faith. In 1932, upon returning Her friends were writers and artists and intellectuals. from a trip to Washington, D.C. to cover the Hunger Her present lover, a biologist who worked in the city March for Commonweal and America magazines, Day but spent his weekends with her at her cottage, was met Peter Maurin. He had a vision for a program that Dorothy Day an anarchist and an atheist. synthesized Catholic doctrine with progressive social action, and together they founded the Catholic Worker Day herself had rejected religion as an opiate for much movement. of her young adult life, and was critical of Christian- (CONTINUED ON BACK COVER)

IN THE DIRECTOR'S CHAIR

KIP FAGAN most recently directed the World Dohrn, Cipher by Cory Hinkel, Recess and Roadkill Confidential by Sheila Premiere of Heidi Schreck's The Consultant at Callaghan, The Young Left by Greg Keller, Nelson by Sam Marks, and the Long Wharf Theatre. Recent: Bull Durham, a new premiere of Christopher Durang's Not a Creature Was Stirring. musical at The Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, GA. At the Rattlestick Theatre in NYC: The Revisionist Regional credits include: A Permanent Image by Samuel D. Hunter, Caravan with Vanessa Redgrave, and Asuncion (both Man, a musical by Tommy Smith and Gabriel Kahane (Williamstown), Venus written by and starring Jesse Eisenberg), in Fur (George Street Playhouse and Philadelphia Theater Company), Maple There Are No More Big Secrets by Heidi and Vine (City Theatre, Pittsburgh), Circle Mirror Transformation (Marin Schreck, How to Make Friends and Then Theatre Co.), Small Tragedy (Playwrights Center, MN, world premiere), Kill Them by Halley Feiffer, That Pretty The Waverly Gallery (Empty Space Theatre), Neighborhood 3: Requisition Pretty by Sheila Callaghan. Other NYC of Doom and Michael Von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards Credits: Jack's Precious Moment by (Humana) and many plays with Printer's Devil Theatre in Seattle, which he Samuel D. Hunter, Reborning by Zayd co-founded. Kip was a 2003–2004 NEA/TCG directing fellow and the 2007 Bill Foeller directing fellow at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

4 Photo by Zack DeZon THE AMERICAN VOICE WRITING ABOUT THINKING ABOUT GOD

Noticing an upswing of plays on and off Broadway that were written by actors, human failure is not only funny and deeply forgivable, but also inevitable. Her the New York Times offered that “there are lots of reasons why actors might most recent play, The Consultant (2014), zeroes in on a rapidly sinking New York want to flex new muscles, trying their hand at creating their own characters pharmaceutical ad company, where Amelia, an awkward, young grad student instead of interpreting ones created by others,” in an editorial that manages enthusiastically coaches Jun Suk, a brilliant designer with crippling anxiety, on to belittle actors, playwrights, and actor-playwrights. “Appearing in plays both his presentations. But when Jun Suk collapses in an alcohol-induced coma, good and bad can be a fine apprenticeship in how to write and how not to Amelia learns that the help she’s been so committed to giving isn’t the same write a play, at least for actors who can see beyond the limits of their own as the help he needs. Though Amelia feels the call, it’s not always clear how lines. (And, to be sure, there are many actors who probably never do.)” I can to be good. understand how the crossover between acting and writing might seem unusual to someone unfamiliar with making plays; in most fields, one necessarily “Very few writers are writing about thinking about God,” Anne Washburn narrows one’s focus toward a niche. But theater is intensely collaborative, and wrote in an introduction to the publication of Creature. “Schreck is not writing the best artists have a handle on the entire storytelling mechanism. So it's about God—always a difficult character to incorporate directly into a play— no surprise that Heidi Schreck’s playwriting reflects the same self-searching, and she is not writing about belief or dogma, per se… She’s writing here as she self-deprecating, open-hearted elegance we've seen from her in performance often does, directly or indirectly, about religious feeling which is, more than on stages all over New York; Heidi the playwright is the same artist as Heidi anything else, the yearning for transfiguration, for certainty, for cleanliness, for the actor. mystery, for enormity, for union, for distinction.” Insightful as ever, Washburn articulates the core of Heidi’s characters. What Margery Kempe shares with …I admit it feels especially meaningful to get this introduction right because Amelia and Nina and Jun Suk is a surge of “religious feeling,” as opposed to Heidi’s been in my life for the better part of two decades; I officiated her religion—a messy, private, deeply idiosyncratic yearning for goodness that wedding to Kip Fagan (see illustrations), and they performed E.M. Forster comes without a roadmap. And her characters’ failure to locate themselves and David Byrne at mine. I met these guys in Seattle in the ’90s, when they within it is her bittersweet point. In the same piece, Washburn points to were members of Printer's Devil, the ambitious, madly talented ensemble Flannery O’Connor’s introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann (1961), a piece of famous for attracting playwrights to Seattle to crash on sofas, drink Olympia writing so damn apt that I have to indent it: beer, and receive excellent productions and development of their work. My first introduction to Heidi was in a Printer's Devil show that she also wrote. Most of us have learned to be dispassionate about evil, to look it in the Backwards Into China (1998) chronicled her time teaching English in Siberia, face and find, as often as not, our own grinning reflections with which we grappling with a foreign landscape where appearances are deceptive, do not argue, but good is another matter. Few have stared at that long perceptions get scrambled and her stymied attempts to grow into her life there enough to accept that its face too is grotesque, that in us the good is were as heartbreaking as they were funny. A few years later, she directed her something under construction. The modes of evil usually receive worthy play Stray (2001), a tense fable in which two sisters flee a vicious past to begin expression. The modes of good have to be satisfied with a cliché or a again, only to find their new home no less damaging. smoothing down that will soften their real look.

The residents of Heidi's plays are driven by an ache to expand into a new life, Grand Concourse strikes me to get life right. They're adrift, temporary, in flux, longing to live more fully, as an apotheosis, a play that as if on a journey to become the version of themselves they know they're is quintessentially Schreck, destined to become, but not knowing what that might look like. “I have a locating our struggle with recurring dream,” she said in a 2009 Brooklyn Rail interview, “in which I'm in grace among volunteers in my apartment and then I discover that the apartment has a secret room. And a Bronx soup kitchen. The when I open the door to the secret room I'm so happy because I realize it's characters we meet are in been here the whole time. I've always had this extra room.” Her characters pursuit of the good within are restless, yearning to be good and to do good—to find grace—but they're them; they’re trying to scrub stuck contending with a world that obscures the path. And she adores them themselves clean. Again for it, writing the contours of each bump in the road with evident love for their and again, I find myself Heidi Schreck and Kip Fagan, outraged by the terms of human failings. Her plays suggest a deep faith in our capacity for revelation, astonished, caught off guard the marriage contract... but a loving skepticism about our ability to make good on this: a deficiency she by the searing honesty and manages to make hilarious. “I have great fondness for people who attempt overwhelming compassion things they can't possibly succeed at,” she told Adam Szymkowicz in a 2009 this play ultimately leads us interview. toward—not just considering the trajectory of Heidi’s Heidi's play Creature (2009) is the chronicle of a medieval Englishwoman writing to date, but also who aspires to become a saint, but whose insatiable appetites and spiritual knowing her as a terrific actor vanity make her possibly history's most unlikely candidate. Loosely based and a longtime pal. As Shelley, on the life of 15th-century baroness Margery Kempe, who after surviving a our protagonist, confronts treacherous childbirth saw visions of the Devil and Jesus, this funny, thorny the limits of her goodness, and deeply human play follows her desperate, stumbling, lovingly-told the obligation she feels to ..but love wins the day. spiritual odyssey. And in There Are No More Big Secrets (2010), Gabe, an herself is equally as strong as American expat from Putin’s Russia, returns with his new wife Nina, a hard- the obligation she feels to her bitten journalist-provocateur with a stubborn spiritual resolve. As he struggles faith. The mystery continues to reconnect with friends, Nina introduces an unexpected paranormal event to loom large, and darkly, but that breaks open the limited, familiar lives they inhabit—inspiring a hunger for we can only be humans. self-change which ultimately proves more confounding than anything else. In both of these plays, transcendence is just out of reach. “I’m interested in this ADAM GREENFIELD Leadership support for the New Works idea that somebody can have an authentic experience and still not be able Lab is generously provided by the Time to live authentically,” Heidi told the Brooklyn Rail, and her plays suggest that DIRECTOR OF NEW PLAY DEVELOPMENT Warner Foundation.

5 HELP US FEED THE HUNGRY KEEP SMILING!

The setting of Grand Concourse Don’t forget: when you shop online in a Bronx soup kitchen reminds us that there are more than 2 through Amazon, you can also sup- million New Yorkers facing hun- port Playwrights Horizons! ger each year. City Harvest, New York City’s first food rescue pro- gram, helps feed over 300,000 Just go to smile.amazon.com and people in NYC each week, and they serve over 500 emergency select Playwrights Horizons as your food programs annually. Dur- charity. Thank you! ing the run of Grand Concourse, Playwrights Horizons’ staff, art- ists and audiences will do our part to help by holding a food drive.

Please consider bringing a can, box or bag of non-perishable food when you come to see Grand Concourse. (No glass bottles, please.) Just look for the donation basket in the Sharp Theater lobby. Thank you in advance for your donation!

PERFORMANCE CALENDAR GRAND CONCOURSE

SUN MON TUES WED THURS FRI SAT POST-PERFORMANCE OCTOBER 17 18 DISCUSSIONS 7:30 PM 7:30 PM PPDs with the creative team have been scheduled for the following dates: 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM < 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:00 PM 7:30 PM WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29 26 27 28 29 30 31 NOVEMBER 1 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM < 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2 7:00 PM 7:30 PM Following the matinee

We hope you can take part in 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 this important aspect of our < 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM play development process. 7:00 PM 7:30 PM

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Indicates post-perfor- < 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM mance discussion 7:00 PM 7:30 PM 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM We recommend Grand 7:00 PM 7:30 PM Concourse for audiences aged 14+. 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 2:00 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 7:30 PM 2:00 PM 7:00 PM 7:30 PM 30 2:00 PM 7:00 PM

6 HELPFUL INFORMATION

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MEMBERS PATRONS: You may order up to two TAX DONATIONS Your ticket to GRAND CONCOURSE tickets for $50 each. SUBSCRIBERS AND PATRONS: If you (reg. $60) is $35 for all performances. GenPH MEMBERS: A maximum of are unable to exchange for another per- six membership tickets may be used formance, PH will issue a receipt for a

Listed below are local businesses that have agreed to participate in Playwrights Horizons’ Neighborhood Busi- ness Circle. All generously offer a discount on their services to you, our patrons, subscribers, and donors. When you come to our area, please patronize these businesses, and be sure to show your season I.D. card when you NEIGHBORHOOD DISCOUNTS order or make your purchase. *These restaurants have given generously to Playwrights Horizons. We encourage you to support them.

44 & X EMPIRE COFFEE & TEA L’ALLEGRIA THEATRE ROW DINER ZUNI 622 10th Avenue 568 9th Avenue 623 9th Avenue 424 West 42nd Street 598 9th Avenue New American Coffee and Treats Italian Diner Contemporary American (212) 977–1170 (212) 268–1220 (212) 265–6777 (212) 426–6000 (212) 765–7626 Mention PH and receive a 15% discount on all products 10% discount on entire check 10% discount on purchase. 10% discount on purchase. complimentary fallen chocolate excluding cups of coffee. when paying in cash. Unavailable soufflé with dinner. on Friday & Saturday. *WEST BANK CAFE ETCETERA ETCETERA 407 West 42nd Street ABOVE 352 West 44th Street LANDMARK TAVERN American SPECIALTY ITEMS At The Hilton Times Square Italian/Mediterranean 626 11th Avenue (212) 695–6909 234 West 42nd Street (212) 399–4141 Contemporary American Complimentary glass of house DRAMA BOOK SHOP Contemporary American 10% discount on purchase. (212) 247–2562 wine with entrée, per person. 250 West 40th Street (212) 642–2626 10% discount on purchase. (212) 944–0595 10% discount on lunch or dinner. HK CAFÉ WESTWAY DINER 10% discount 523 9th Avenue LITTLE TOWN NYC 614 9th Avenue (some items excluded) BANGKOK HOUSE American 366 West 46th Street Diner 360 West 46th Street (212) 947-4208 Contemporary Brewpub (212) 582–7661 Thai 20% discount, or free drink with (212) 677-6300 10% discount on purchase. HOTELS (212) 541–5943 dinner, or free dessert with dinner. 15% discount on entire check. 10% discount on purchase. YUM YUM 3 YOTEL IL PUNTO RISTORANTE THE MEAT FACTORY STEAKHOUSE 658 9th Avenue 570 10th Avenue BROADWAY JOE STEAKHOUSE 507 9th Avenue “Brazil Brazil” Thai and Vietnamese (646) 449-7775 315 West 46th Street Italian 330 West 46th Street (212) 956–0639 Discounts vary per season American Steaks & Seafood (212) 244–0088 Brazilian Steakhouse 10% discount on purchase. (212) 246–6513 Complimentary dessert with (212) 957–4300 20% discount on lunch or dinner. purchase of an entree. 10% discount on entire check YUM YUM BANGKOK PARKING when paying in cash. Discount 650 9th Avenue *CHEZ JOSEPHINE KAVA CAFÉ unavailable on Friday & Saturday. Thai MANHATTAN PARKING 414 West 42nd Street 470 West 42nd Street (212) 262–7244 475 West 41st Street. French Cafe SARDI’S 10% discount on purchase. (212) 594–1925 (212) 239-4442 234 West 44th Street $15 flat rate for 6 hours. Complimentary glass of house 10% discount on purchase. American Traditional ZEN PALATE Download the discount coupon wine with dinner. (212) 221–8440 663 9th Avenue in the “Plan Your Visit” section of Reservations suggested. Complimentary glass of house Vegetarian our website or ask for a coupon wine with entrée. Reservations (212) 582–1669 at the concessions counter during suggested. 10% discount on take-out and your visit. delivery.

7 416 West 42nd Street • New York, NY 10036

BOOK YOUR TICKETS NOW FOR GRAND CONCOURSE Written by HEIDI SCHRECK Directed by KIP FAGAN OCTOBER 17–NOVEMBER 30, 2014 Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater

This is the second of six productions in the 2014/15 Season. #GrandConcoursePH

BACKSTORY LIFE IS A BANQUET (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4)

Their movement was to all people. Although the movement was engaged, often through direct ac- Christian and essen- tion, with both domestic and international politics—particularly the politics tially anarchic. Its of labor—the Catholic Worker’s philosophy was, at its core, a deeply per- foundational beliefs sonal one, placing the greatest value on the fellowship that arises among included an embrace of small communities breaking bread together. “We cannot love God unless we the personalism of the love each other, and to love we must know each other,” Day wrote in her now Catholic tradition and iconic autobiography, The Long Loneliness. “We know Him in the breaking of a mutual personal of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not obligation to tend to alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a the needs of others crust, where there is companionship.” (yes, Day would argue, you are your brother’s Dorothy Day continued to work for the movement until her death in 1980. At keeper). This obliga- their 2012 annual meeting, the Catholic bishops of the United States unani- tion would be enacted mously recommended her for canonization. She had already been recog- by daily practice of the nized by the Vatican as a “servant of God.” For her part, she’d laughed at the Christian works of mer- notion of her own sainthood during her life. “I feel that I have done nothing cy; by the establishment of a network of houses of hospitality, to supply for well,” she reflected in The Long Loneliness, “But I have done what I could.” the immediate relief of the needy; and by the foundation of group-owned farming communes, where community members would work according to Today the Catholic Worker claims more than 200 local communities, each their ability and receive according to their need. Day and Maurin also es- operating autonomously to provide social services in accordance with their tablished a newspaper, The Catholic Worker, to be sold for just one cent per faith and with the Worker’s progressive mission. The Catholic Worker is still copy—“to make it so cheap that anyone could afford to buy,” wrote Day. She being published by the movement’s two New York houses; you can pick one financed the first printing in May, 1933 with her own money. By 1936, its up for a penny a copy. circulation was 150,000 and growing.

The people of the Catholic Worker movement were animated by a sense of SARAH LUNNIE their own relative privilege, and an attending responsibility to be of assis- tance to their brothers and sisters—a designation they felt applied equally ASSOCIATE LITERARY MANAGER

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