eatre at UBC Presents September 30 to October 9, 2010 Frederic Wood Theatre September to Oober , - : pm Frederic Wood eatre, UBC Preview, Sept. Tickets: | | Call -- Photo: Tim Matheson Tim Photo: theatre.ubc.ca Come and enjoy a night out en français! presents Une Maison face au nord by Jean-Rock Gaudreault October 20-23, 2010 “One of the top 10 plays of the past decade” © Jean Brland Toronto Eye Weekly 2010-2011 SEASON: SUBSCRIBE TODAY! INFO/BOX OFFICE: 604-736-2616 - [email protected] www.seizieme.ca 10 11 VAncouVER EAST culTuRAl cEnTREe after You can now the quake buy your Haruki Murakami Theatre at Tickets Oct 13 - 23 from $15! Based on “Honey Pie” & “Superfrog Saves Tokyo” from the novel after the quake by Haruki Murakami. UBC tickets Adapted for the stage by Frank Galati thecultch.com 604.251.1363 online! Produced by Pi Theatre & Rumble Productions Illustration by Edward Kwong The Leon and Thea Koerner Sponsored by Thanks to Foundation theatre.ubc.ca Follow Theatre at UBC http://www.twitter.com/TheatreUBC on the web! http://www.flickr.com/theatre_ubc http://www.facebook.com/TheatreUBC http://www.youtube.com/TheatreUBC The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux Translated by Maurice Valency Directed by Stephen Heatley September 30 to October 9, 2010 Frederic Wood Theatre The University of British Columbia Department of Theatre and Film Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication The Madwoman of Chaillot : a Theatre at UBC companion guide / by Jean Girau- doux; translated by Maurice Valency. Compiled and edited by Jennifer Suratos. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-88865-847-0 1. Giraudoux, Jean, 1882-1944. Folle de Chaillot. 2. Valency, Maurice, 1903-1996. I. Suratos, Jennifer, 1975- II. Theatre at UBC PQ2613.I74Z7258 2010 842’.912 C2010-906303-1 Welcome Director’s Note Live theatre is all about communion—shar- I’ll bet we all have a madwoman (or her male good enough writer to realize the brilliance of ing human experience across time, across counterpart) tucked away somewhere in our the idea. the space between audience and stage, and lives. Many years ago, when I was working within the audience, too: communally experi- for a YM-YWCA summer camp, I met the As a graduate student at the University encing sympathy and laughter, empathy and new camp nurse for the first time. The entire of Alberta one frozen Edmonton winter, I anger, pain, love. The Madwoman of Chaillot, camp staff was in their teens and early twen- directed a Giraudoux one act that cemented written in Nazi-occupied Paris during one of ties but this nurse was ancient – at least 50. my love for this man’s dramatic genius. In the darkest times of the last century, talks Even in the wilderness, she insisted on always it, a shy young woman meets a ragged man directly about all those things in profoundly wearing her white nurse’s cap. I assumed (who turns out to be Apollo in disguise) who comic ways. What does it mean to live in a she was just stuffy. One day at lunch, before encourages her to get ahead in the world by civilized community? What are the values I knew much about her, she was talking telling people, despite what they look like, that make our lives worth living? How do we about love. I thought I would show her how that they are beautiful. It works. She even know what’s really crazy and what’s sane? clever I was and quoted a particularly sappy tells the chandelier how beautiful it is and movie of the day. “Well, we all know that it lights up! At the public critique for this Some of those questions also lie at the very love means never having to say you’re sorry.” production, I was asked, rather snippily, why heart of what the United Way is all about: Without missing a beat, she nailed me with on earth I had chosen to direct this play. The communion and community, the values that a very stern gaze and said, “Don’t bullshit only answer I felt I could give was “to get create and sustain a civil society, empathy me, preppy.” She had totally side-swiped through an Edmonton February.” across the divides that separate us from one me with another quote from the film. I knew another. Theatre at UBC and the Department then that I was in the presence of an inspired So, The Madwoman of Chaillot has been on my of Theatre and Film are proud to support madwoman. She drew us all into her den of “to direct” list for a long time. I am so thank- UBC’s 2010 United Way campaign with pro- madness that summer, hosting nightly foot ful that this talented and ebullient group ceeds from this production. soaking parties, doing imitations of the camp of graduating actors has come along and director’s children, screaming across the presented the perfect company to tackle this We’re also very proud of our 2010-11 season, field on hot days to make sure we took lots of delightful and ambiguous play. I am grate- our most international in years. We’re pre- salt. She always made things fun despite the ful to the Fabulous Fifteen, the crackerjack senting work originating from France (Mad- fact, which I learned much later, that she had design team, the devoted production crew, woman) and Australia (Circa), the United endured an abusive marriage to an alcoholic our top of the line professional staff, and my States (Dead Man’s Cell Phone) and Russia, via husband. At the time we were together, always-supportive colleagues for making this England (Wild Honey). Our Canadian plays though, I would not have been surprised to such a creative and positive adventure. We come from Quebec (The Madonna Painter) see her pull a dinner bell out of her bosom have learned a lot about the play over the 5 and from a unique collaboration between art- and call for her bones and her gizzard. weeks of rehearsal and I am very glad to be ists in BC and China (Jade in the Coal). Talk able to share our journey with you. about a liberal arts education! We’re nothing I first met the Madwoman of Chaillot as if not cosmopolitan. an undergraduate theatre student and was Stephen Heatley immediately taken with the off-kilter way in Enjoy the show and the season. And give which she addressed the world. As a twenty- generously. something, I felt a constant struggle between the exigencies of being an adult and the deep Jerry Wasserman desire to ignore those responsibilities (a Head, Department of Theatre and Film struggle I happily maintain to this day). The Countess Aurelia gave me hope that a life of eccentricity was possible. The play also touched my interest in all things whimsical. Reading Giraudoux’s play inspired me to write a play myself about how our environ- ment and the universe will rebel against us if we succumb to dullness. I wish I had been a Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944) Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was born in the village of Bellac in the Lim- ousin region in western France. He completed his studies at L’École Normale Supérieure and traveled extensively in his youth. In 1906 he spent a year in the United States, where he worked as a French instructor at Harvard. When he returned to France, Giraudoux served as a diplomat and government official. He served in World War I, was wounded twice (first at Alsace and later in the Dardanelles), and became the first writer ever to be awarded the Legion of Honor. At the start of World War II he served as Minister of Information, but retired in January 1941. Giraudoux died in 1944 and is buried in the Cimetière de Passy in Paris. As a dramatist, Giraudoux wrote 15 plays including Tiger at the Gates in 1935, Ondine in 1939, and The Madwoman of Chaillot, which was published and produced a year after his death in 1945. As a writer of prose, he wrote five novels, numerous short stories, and essays on both literary and political studies. In their introduction to the play in Contemporary Drama: Eleven Plays, editors E. Bradlee Watson and Benfield Pressey write: “Listening “I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole uni- to Giraudoux can be a rich experience. He seizes the imagination verse is listening to us – and that every word we say echoes whether his work is read or seen; his own liveliness and fertility of to the remotest star.” mind stimulates liveliness and fertility in the audience’s mind and - Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot emotion even without startling theatricality.” Sources: course, not a verbal thing at all. Not words which are poetically con- Pressey, William Benfield and Ernest Bradlee Watson, eds. Contem- ceived, but poetry which is dramatically conceived. I mean a poetry porary Drama: Eleven Plays, American, English, European. New York: that plays.” Scribner, 1956. http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Theatre/Giradoux/giradoux. Adding to his long list of accomplishments and talents, Valency shtml. adapted opera librettos, published novels, and spoke seven languag- http://www.basicfamouspeople.com/index.php?aid=1820. es. He won two New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards for The Mad- woman of Chaillot (1948) and The Visit (1958). He died in Manhattan at the age of 93. In his New York Times obituary, Mel Gussow writes: “In his adaptations, Mr. Valency demonstrated the language of a poet Maurice Valency (1903 – 1996) and the dramatic comprehension of a working playwright, placing his own signature on diverse works while also keeping faith with the Born in New York in 1903, Maurice Valency was a playwright, adapter, spirit of the original.