prologuemagazine for members fall 2014

Inside American Revolutions Commissions

Lynn Nottage: When the Jobs Leave Town

Stan Lai: Utopia, Martial Law and Chinese History

1 introducing the 2015 season 2015 Season Prologue The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Angus Bowmer Theatre magazine for members Much Ado about Nothing Fall 2014 William Shakespeare Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz Editor Catherine Foster Guys and Dolls Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser; Design book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows Craig Stewart Directed by Mary Zimmerman Contributing Writers Fingersmith World Premiere Catherine Foster, Senior Editor Adapted by Alexa Junge Judith Rosen, Freelance Writer and Dramaturg from the book by Sarah Waters Eddie Wallace, Membership and Sales Manager Directed by Bill Rauch Rob Weinert-Kendt, Freelance Writer Mark Dundas Wood, Freelance Writer Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land U.S. Premiere Stan Lai Production Associate Directed by Stan Lai Beth Bardossi

Sweat World Premiere, American Revolutions Proofreaders A co-commission with Arena Stage Pat Brewer Lynn Nottage Amy Miller Directed by Kate Whoriskey

Oregon Shakespeare Festival Thomas Theatre Artistic Director: Bill Rauch Pericles Executive Director: Cynthia Rider William Shakespeare Directed by Joseph Haj P.O. Box 158 Long Day’s Journey into Night Ashland, OR 97520 Eugene O’Neill Administration 541-482-2111 Directed by Christopher Liam Moore Box Office/Membership 800-219-8161; 541-482-4331 The Happiest Song Plays Last Box Office/Membership fax 541-482-8045 Quiara Alegría Hudes Membership email: Directed by Shishir Kurup [email protected]

Allen Elizabethan Theatre www.osfashland.org Antony and Cleopatra William Shakespeare Mission Statement Directed by Bill Rauch Inspired by Shakespeare’s work Head Over Heels World Premiere and the cultural richness of the Script by Jeff Whitty; United States, we reveal our music and lyrics by the Go-Go’s Directed by Ed Sylvanus Iskandar collective humanity through illuminating interpretations The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas, of new and classic plays, adapted by Charles Fechter deepened by the kaleidoscope Directed by Marcela Lorca of rotating repertory. 2015 opening weekend: February 27–March 1. ©2014 Oregon Shakespeare Festival

2 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival Prologue The Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Contents From the Membership and Sales Manager magazine for members Eddie Wallace Fall 2014

Editor 4 Voices of Revolution Catherine Foster American Revolutions uses a multitude of voices to tell America’s Design story onstage—and it’s showing Craig Stewart the theatre world that it’s possible to dream big. Contributing Writers By Catherine Foster Catherine Foster, Senior Editor Judith Rosen, Freelance Writer and Dramaturg 8 When the Jobs Leave Town Eddie Wallace, Membership and Sales Manager Lynn Nottage’s latest play takes Rob Weinert-Kendt, Freelance Writer a searing look at the de-industrial Mark Dundas Wood, Freelance Writer revolution in a struggling town. By Catherine Foster Production Associate Beth Bardossi 10 Utopia and Martial Law Onstage Still Risking How a crazy theatrical combo of a Proofreaders farce and a tragedy became one of Pat Brewer the best-known plays in the Welcome to the upcoming 2015 season, the 80th anniversary of the Oregon Shakespeare Amy Miller modern Chinese language. Festival! By Stan Lai Oregon Shakespeare Festival With every anniversary, we remember our founder, Angus Bowmer, and what a creative Artistic Director: Bill Rauch 12 The Musical Travels of Pericles and bold risk-taker he was. “Gus” was brave and ambitious enough to envision a Executive Director: Cynthia Rider Like Pericles, composer Jack Shakespeare festival in a small Southern Oregon town that could, in time, become a Herrick’s score will take a journey treasured cultural destination for theatre lovers from all over the country. One also P.O. Box 158 from folksy to techno, with a little wonders about the resistance he encountered when he presented OSF’s first non- Ashland, OR 97520 Celtic thrown in. Shakespeare plays. (For you history buffs, it was You Can’t Take It with You in 1939 at Administration 541-482-2111 By Rob Weinert-Kendt the Holly Theatre in Medford.) No doubt more than a few letters crossed his desk Box Office/Membership 800-219-8161; complaining that he’d lost his way. 541-482-4331 13 A Victorian Play with a Modern Heart Box Office/Membership fax 541-482-8045 Alexa Junge’s challenge in adapting That sense of risk and opportunity continues to inform our work today. No one could Membership email: Fingersmith was to trim down the have known when Bill Rauch and Alison Carey announced the American Revolutions: [email protected] huge book while still staying true the U.S. History Cycle commissioning project in 2008 that one of its early successes, to the characters’ needs and wants. Robert Schenkkan’s All the Way, would go on to win the first Tony Award for Best Play www.osfashland.org By Judith Rosen in OSF’s history.

Mission Statement 14 Wishes Do Come True . . . In the 2015 season, we’ll be inspired by stories of people who risk it all with no hope of Director Mary Zimmerman, knowing the outcome. It may be the risk of truly exposing oneself to the possibility of Inspired by Shakespeare’s work used to transforming ancient tales, love, as we see with Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing, Sky Masterson and the cultural richness of the now takes on Guys and Dolls— and Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls and the young lovers of Fingersmith and Head Over a different kind of enchantment. Heels. Risk proves tragic for the title characters in Antony and Cleopatra, while a broken United States, we reveal our By Mark Dundas Wood family finds that love is not enough to save them in Long Day’s Journey into Night. collective humanity through 15 Shake Your Booty illuminating interpretations Edmund Dantès risks his life to avenge his false imprisonment in The Count of Monte Head Over Heels is an exuberant Cristo. The title character of Pericles travels the world to simply survive and protect of new and classic plays, new musical mash-up that the lives of those he loves. Yazmin risks opening her home to her Philadelphia expresses director Ed Sylvanus deepened by the kaleidoscope neighborhood residents, and opening her heart to a lover, in The Happiest Song Plays Iskandar’s motto: “Where the play Last. The characters in Sweat and Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land find that the violent of rotating repertory. is the party.” fluctuations of the worlds around them force them into actions that will alter their By Eddie Wallace lives forever.

Thank you for your support, your generosity and your willingness to travel with us on the perilous, hilarious, tuneful, thrilling and tragic adventures of the 2015 season. Let us be inspired to be brave, adventurous and bold in our own journeys.

This Prologue is printed on recycled paper. All photos by Jenny Graham unless otherwise credited. 3 American Night (2010): René Millán and Stephanie Beatriz The Liquid Plain (2013): June Carryl and Kimberly Scott

American Revolutions uses a multitude of voices to then a limited four-month engagement on Broadway this year. tell America’s story onstage—and it’s showing the It was a huge success, winning numerous awards, including theatre world that it’s possible to dream big. Tony Awards for Best Play and Best Actor, and recouping its $3.9 million investment just days after its 100th performance. It made By Catherine Foster history by breaking all box office records for a straight (non- musical) play on Broadway. merican Revolutions: the United States History Cycle is making waves. Big ones. Not bad for a dream A In 2006, Bill Rauch was sitting in his house in Los Angeles, Since 2008, OSF’s ambitious 10-year program of commissioning contemplating what he might do as OSF’s new artistic director, 37 plays (the same number in OSF’s Shakespeare canon) has were he lucky enough to get the job. He wondered, what would made two dozen commissions. OSF has produced five of them: Shakespeare do? American Night (by Richard Montoya and Culture Clash, 2010), Ghost Light (Tony Taccone, with Jonathan Moscone, 2011), Party “Shakespeare addressed the anxieties of his age—about who People (UNIVERSES, 2012), All the Way (Robert Schenkkan, 2012) would replace the childless monarch, Elizabeth—by dramatizing Caption caption caption and The Liquid Plain (Naomi Wallace, 2013). Lynn Nottage’s Sweat past episodes of the transfer of power in his country’s history,” will run in 2015. Rauch says. “How could we address the anxieties of our age and create new paths to the future by dramatizing moments And the regional theatre world is paying attention. American of change in our own country’s history? The United States was Night has had four productions around the country. Ghost Light started by an act of revolution. What are the other moments of played at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2012 and Party People explicit or implicit revolution that we need to remind ourselves will run there this fall. The Liquid Plain is scheduled for Off- of as we continue to engage in the difficult and beautiful experi- Broadway’s Signature Theatre next spring. ment that is our nation?”

But perhaps the most heralded of all is All the Way, which is OSF’s At the time, he and Alison Carey were working at Cornerstone first appearance on Broadway. Bill Rauch directed the play, with Theater Company, which they’d co-founded in 1986. Rauch and a different cast that starred Bryan Cranston, for its pre-Broadway Carey were used to bringing together different groups of people tryout at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge and to have conversations about big topics, like faith, and then

4 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival Ghost Light (2011): Tyler James Myers Party People (2012): Steven Sapp writing plays from what emerged from those conversations. So In conceiving the program, however, Carey left room for OSF this felt like a logical next step. They had many conversations to gently steer writers to areas of special interest to the with artists, historians, producers and OSF audiences about the company. This year’s class will be writing three of these focused program’s shape and design. Others told them that producing commissions: Dominique Morisseau about African Americans historical plays—which by definition require a lot of exposition— during the Civil War; Dan O’Brien about Americans’ relationship can be challenging. Rauch found, however, that “most people with guns; and an as-yet-unnamed writer on how the choices we loved the idea from the get-go.” have made in the past affected our natural world.

“The only thing that matters is that we In 2010, Carey hired Julie Felise Dubiner, a dramaturg with a degree in history and knowledge of the regional theatre world get good plays.” as associate director. Dubiner says she doesn’t know any other — Alison Carey program in the country that is as large as OSF’s, or as successful. “I think part of the reason why we are getting more producible When Rauch was hired at OSF, Carey came up from LA to plays out of our program,” Dubiner says, “is because we are establish American Revolutions. In the early days of determining directing passion instead of just saying, ‘Go off and write a thematic structure for the program, the idea of setting one something and tell me how it worked out for you.’ The writers play during the term of each president was first explored, then we’ve had so far have really cottoned to that idea and built on it discarded. So was the idea of one play for each decade. They in magnificent ways.” found that whenever they tried to make the assignment too specific, playwrights tended to write to those exact parameters, What do they look for in choosing writers? Diversity of style, life rather than about what moved them. The call to writers became experience, subject matter and voice. “We look for people who something both specific and loose: Write about a moment of seem comfortable in delivering exposition, because it’s hard,” change in American history. says Carey. “Generally, a lot of our writers have already written plays about history, like Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel, 2006, “The only thing that matters is that we get good plays,” says and Ruined, 2010). Or you look at someone like Quiara Alegría Carey. “We came up with a frame that left the decision-making Hudes (Water by the Spoonful, 2014; The Happiest Song Plays Last, about what the art should be to the playwright. They could 2015), who has not written a lot of strictly history plays, but she follow their passions. And that has seemed to work.” has a specific voice and such a very specific storytelling style that you can imagine her doing it easily.” 5 All the Way (2012): President Lyndon Johnson (Jack Willis) gives Sen. Hubert Humphrey (Peter Frechette) the legendary “Johnson treatment.”

Supporting writers All the playwrights so far have had a relationship with either a OSF gives playwrights as much time as they need to write their professional historian or somebody knowledgeable about the plays and provides a variety of support. “Some say, ‘I want to historical period they’re writing about. Naomi Wallace used two come here for two weeks and just sit in the apartment and look for The Liquid Plain. “Working with such brilliant historians as at the trees,’ and we can do that,” says Carey. “Rhiana Yazzie Marcus Rediker and Robin D. G. Kelley was invaluable for me in was sent on a research trip to Virginia and Massachusetts, my writing process. Rediker’s The Slave Ship: A Human History because that’s what she needed. UNIVERSES toured the country contains a story about a murder that becomes central to my interviewing surviving members of the Black Panthers and Young play. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination Lords. Lisa Loomer spent some time at the University of Texas was inspirational in thinking about how our limited democratic because it connected with the content of her play.” processes have been dreamed into something more truly just by people who have the least.” Writers are also allowed to have as large a cast as they need for their play—something unheard of in regional theatre. “I think a American Revolutions also provides an annual retreat, American lot of playwrights, especially the younger ones, will probably tell Conversations, that usually convenes in New York. Playwrights you that in recent years they have had plays passed on that were who’ve already had their work produced at OSF can enlighten the more than five people, more than four people, more than three newcomers. Writers are also encouraged to visit Ashland and see people,” says Dubiner. “So for us to specifically commission them shows and meet the company. Being on the OSF campus helps and say, 9 doesn’t scare us, or 17 is possible, is really inspiring to the artists learn more about what makes the company tick, see the artists.” the shows in rep and meet as many people as possible before they start writing.

6 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival “I think it helps that the playwrights are able to really talk to together many of the great scholars of this time period. OSF and one another and have a joint sense of ownership of the program Penumbra are jointly sponsoring a symposium.” and to take care of each other as they go through the process of meeting an institution as specific as OSF,” says Carey. For the two LBJ plays, OSF commissioned All the Way and Seattle Repertory Theatre, with which Robert Schenkkan has When the play is fairly far along, it’s given a workshop. OSF a relationship, commissioned The Great Society. Seattle Rep is supplies actors, dramaturgs, rehearsal time and theatre space to co-producing both plays, which will run in repertory there— bring the script to the next level. All The Way from November 14 to January 4, 2015, and The Great Society from December 5 to January 4, 2015. Bill Rauch will The playwrights acknowledge the benefits of American direct both. Revolutions’ largesse. “I’ve now been working with OSF and Bill for a decade,” says Robert Schenkkan. “I remain so appreciative of Funding this relationship and so grateful to the staff and the artists and As the saying goes, “none of this would have been possible the audience and the Board of OSF that has made this possible. without the support of. . .” That American Revolutions exists at all It’s hard to see how this work would have happened otherwise.” is one of those strokes of amazing theatre luck. Soon after OSF submitted the initial grant application to The Collins Foundation “We are going to encounter plays that in late 2007, the global financial meltdown struck. OSF did get its funding, Carey says, but if The Collins Foundation had waited we love that we cannot produce. But even a month, “American Revolutions simply would not have if they have other artistic homes, then happened. Every foundation in America was dramatically cut.” that’s great.” Since then, numerous funders have stepped up to support this —Alison Carey endeavor, including The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Edgerton Foundation’s 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 New Play Awards; Lynn Nottage says she doesn’t think she ever would have taken The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation; National Endowment for the journey of exploring the lives of laid-off industrial workers in the Arts; New England Foundation for the Arts; The Kinsman Pennsylvania if she hadn’t had the commission for Sweat. “Alison Foundation and The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. Carey has been integral to that process,” she says. “She’s been a (For a complete list, please visit wonderful presence and dramaturg and producer of the project www://osfashland.org/american-revolutions) from its inception. American Revolutions gave me the frame to really pursue this story.” “American Revolutions is groundbreaking theatre and an important addition to the American repertoire of plays,” says Co-commissions and co-productions Dr. Brad Edgerton, president of the Edgerton Foundation. “The From the beginning, the design of the program was to involve Edgerton Foundation is proud to have supported four of the other theatres, says Carey. “We know we cannot produce 37 plays productions, and we commend OSF for continuing to produce in a timely fashion. And we have no desire to take someone’s world premiere plays in these trying economic times.” beautiful play and stick it in a drawer in case we can fit it in five years from now. We are going to encounter plays that we love “We’re a very stable program at this point,” says Carey. “I can see that we cannot produce. But if they have other artistic homes, us needing to expand just because of the number of plays we then that’s great.” have to support, but so far, it’s good.”

Sweat is a co-commission with Arena Stage. The March, by She marvels at the program’s success. “A straight play about Frank Galati (adapted from the novel by E. L. Doctorow), was a American political and legislative history was on Broadway, co-commission with Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago, setting a record for highest ticket sales for a new play in its last which premiered it in 2012. When another theatre decides to week and outselling the musicals. It’s fantastic! This is a play that co-commission a play, OSF pays the entire commission cost and reminds audiences of what people are capable of in this world; the co-commissioning theatre pays for the development that that change is possible, that progress is the legacy of the best happens within its walls. Different rules apply if the play is a part of our country. And it says to people—theatre people and co-production.“The March was not a co-production,” Carey says, not—you can do this. This is what we are capable of as a field, so “so we did not contribute to the production. Whereas when we did don’t back down and don’t stop imagining, and don’t make your Ghost Light, we commissioned it and did all the development, then world smaller, because you can make it really big. That’s what all it became a co-production between us and Berkeley Rep later.” American Revolutions plays, and the program itself, can do.”

The playwrights can choose which theatres to be co-commission partners. Dominique Morisseau, for example, has a relationship with the Penumbra Theatre, in St. Paul, so OSF approached Penumbra’s co-director Lou Bellamy to co-produce her play. “This topic [African Americans in the Civil War] is one of the great passions of Lou’s life,” Carey says, “and he is bringing

7 When the Jobs Leave Town city that symbolized what was happening in America, a city that had gone from industrial powerhouse to abject poverty. That city, she found, was Reading, Pennsylvania, the home of the Reading Railroad, once one of the most powerful railroads in the country.

“I think we’re undergoing one of the greatest revolutions in our history,” she says. “In 50 years we’ll look back on this time and Lynn Nottage’s latest play takes a searing look at the understand that fully.” de-industrial revolution in a struggling town. Reading began to go through a precipitous decline in the 1970s, By Catherine Foster which began with the collapse of the railroad. In the mid-’80s, several key sectors in manufacturing began to falter. In the weat, an American Revolutions commission, got its start with 1990s and early 2000s, in the wake of the North American Free a late-night email from Lynn Nottage’s close friend, a single Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the steel and textile industries began motherS of two. to significantly erode and jobs were sent overseas. States also started to adopt “right-to-work” laws that inhibited union power. “She said she was completely broke; she was having a very Currently, 40 percent of the people in Reading live below the difficult time making ends meet and had reached a level of poverty line, which is considerably above the national average. It desperation,” Nottage recounts in an interview at OSF. Her friend has a 50 percent high school graduation rate. Though the city is wasn’t asking for a handout, but said she wanted her close beginning to see some economic growth, the 2011 census singled friends to understand her circumstances. “ ‘I just need some out Reading as “the poorest city in America.” guidance. I need a shoulder to lean on just because I’m going through a very, very hard time.’ ” “I wanted to find out how could this happen so quickly,” Nottage said. “And how could the revolution I’m looking at—the The email broke Nottage’s heart. “I’d known this woman de-industrial revolution—change America so absolutely that you extremely well, and I had no idea the depths of her despair. have people stuck in the towns, trapped, simply because they She lives two doors down from me, and it made me realize that don’t even have enough money to move.” probably most of us are living two to three doors away from someone who is either in poverty or on the verge of poverty, Nottage began visiting Reading in early 2012. With assistant and that’s the nature of the culture we’re living in right now.” Travis Ballenger and an army of interns, she conducted a wide range of interviews over two years, starting with Reading’s first The Occupy Wall Street movement was just beginning. “We had African-American mayor, who had been recently elected. Then no sense of what this was. All we knew was that there were they included the police department, the United Way and people these people in Zuccotti Park sitting there and saying, ‘99 percent living in shelters. They spoke to a dozen workers at union offices of us are suffering while the 1 percent are continuing to get and found more on the picket sites. “I think workers just want to richer and richer.’ So my friend said, ‘Let’s go over there.’ ” go on record to say that there are so many folks like them who are struggling,” she says, “and the fact that anyone is willing to The two walked in circles and chanted. Later, her friend said, listen gives them a sense of hope.” “I actually feel a little better. Nothing has happened, but I feel better to know that at least there is a voice to what I’m feeling, She was most touched by a session with some workers who had and I’m not by myself.” been locked out of their factory for 93 weeks. “They were largely middle-aged men who had been working up to 40 years. It was The collapse of Reading their entire identity. They were making metal tubing. When they The incident prompted Nottage to think deeply about how were 18 or 19 years old, they began probably at minimum wage, poverty was shifting the American narrative that hard work and in some cases had worked themselves up to $45 an hour.” is all it takes to become successful. She wanted to write about a

8 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival Creating Social Sculpture Then, one Monday, the men arrived to find half the equipment had been shipped out overnight. In that moment, half those jobs were gone. It soon got worse. Management “When we were interviewing people slashed workers’ pay to $15 an hour, cut benefit packages and increased work days. Even in Reading, I began to feel like a car- that wasn’t enough: Management locked them out. The workers picketed for 93 weeks, petbagger who was feeding off their knowing they would never set foot back into that plant but determined to make a misery and then leaving and capital- symbolic gesture. “I was really quite moved,” Nottage recalls, “because these are people— izing on it. It’s not going to do the eco- white, middle-class, blue-collar men—who had traditionally been on the opposite side of nomically strapped city a lot of good if I the divide from me, this African-American artist living in Brooklyn, and I thought, for the create a piece of work that talks about first time, we’re standing eye to eye. They understood what it meant to be marginalized them from a distance, but doesn’t by your own culture. They spoke quite compassionately about their fellow workers and directly engage the community. So, we eloquently about their situations and about directions they felt America should be going.” came up with this idea of doing a social sculpture—a piece of performance art “I know it’s not a new story, but I feel like it is very much that combines activism, community and art, something that can live in the the narrative of today.” heart of Reading. It will be a piece of —Lynn Nottage art that puts the people who most need to be in dialogue into the same When the workers stayed on strike, management brought in replacement workers— space. This way they can directly expe- young Latinos and men from the surrounding counties who for years had wanted to rience and explore what’s happening get hired but were shut out because of the union and nepotism. The deal those workers to their neighbors in a visceral way. got was even worse: no contracts, no benefits. “They can work these guys to death for six months and then say ‘Bye-bye,’ ” Nottage says. “It’s really cruel out there, what these Reading is a fragmented city with factories are doing.” a great racial and economic divide; people live in close proximity, but Severed friendships in very different communities. We Those events are mirrored in Sweat. A group of longtime co-workers and friends meet thought, what if we can create this in a bar to complain, rant and commiserate about the rapidly declining situation in the installation that invites people into the factory. Because of the strike, Oscar, the bar’s Dominican busboy, has an opportunity to same space so that they can bear wit- finally work at the plant—as a scab. For him, it’s an immigrant’s dream of getting ahead. ness to what’s happening to the entire But the locals who have been working at the plant for so long regard his crossing the town and recognize that their narrative picket line as tantamount to treason, and the tension spreads to violence. is a communal one, not just about their small insular community but about “I know it’s not a new story, but I feel like it is very much the narrative of today,” Nottage a larger Reading community that is says. “It’s not just the narrative of steelworkers, it’s the narrative of people in white-collar collectively experiencing the impact of jobs, who had this assumption that they had taken all the necessary steps to assure their the economic downturn. job security, and then one day they wake up and everything they know is gone. I know many people like that. We live with a level of uncertainty in America that we haven’t In October, we’re going to bring a known, at least in my lifetime.” creative team to Reading for four days, where we will collaborate with the In the world of Sweat, the co-workers are a racial mix of black, white and Latino. “I’m just community, and begin to discuss how representing what I saw,” Nottage says. “In Reading, there are people who have worked to create a piece of art that not only in those factories who had relationships and friendships that crossed color lines. The play reflects community, but is also a vital isn’t about race, but the conversation isn’t absent. It’s part of the subtext of the piece. part of the community. We’re hoping But it is a play about class.” we can build a model for art-making that you can then be used in other cit- Nottage’s last play for OSF was Ruined, in 2010, which was based on interviews with ies, where we invite a team of diverse Congolese women in refugee camps who had been raped during ongoing military filmmakers, visual artists, theatre conflicts. A play with that subject matter could have been a grim slog to sit through, artists and trans-media artists to im- but Ruined was leavened with humor, humanity and hope and has since gone on to be merse themselves in a community and performed around the country. then create a collaborative piece of art that helps bring the community into “What I’m trying to do is get at the heart of the story, because as a playwright I’m dialogue. interested in healing,” she says. “I hope when you leave my plays, somehow the spirit has gone through some subtle transformation. I think it’s true of Ruined. I think it’s true of The goal is to leave the city with this Intimate Apparel (2006). There’s a spiritual alchemy that goes on, that when you leave, piece of art that would continue to ex- you’re not quite sure what you’ve experienced, but you have a different relationship to ist and reflect the story of the commu- the community.” nity as it evolves. Reading still thinks of itself in the past tense, and we very much want to help the community find a present-tense narrative.” 9 —Lynn Nottage Li Yan Li

Utopia and Martial Law Onstage Blossom (Xie Na), Tao (Yu Entai) and Master Yuan (He Jiong) in the 2006 Beijing production, directed by Stan Lai. How a crazy theatrical combo of a farce and a tragedy became one of the best-known plays in the modern Chinese language.

rominent Taiwanese director and playwright Stan Lai wrote graduation ceremony of some kindergarten! We’re sitting in the Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land for his theatre company in audience, wondering what is going on, and our friend is going 1986.P In the play, the casts of two very different plays accidentally nuts on the stage. She is shouting, “This place is mine, this is my show up on the same stage for their dress rehearsals. One, Secret time.” The parents and kids start coming in and we are watching Love, is a tragedy set in 1949 and the 1980s, and the other, The all of this. This is what happened and still can happen in our part Peach Blossom Land, a farcical historical play. Lai recently came of the world. to OSF to talk about his play, which he will also direct. An edited transcript of that discussion follows. If you had asked me in 1986 if we would still be doing this play in 2014, I would say, “You’re crazy!” The play has endured, and The history of the production through many quirks of history it has become probably the Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land was the second play of our best-known play in the modern Chinese language. We toured it then-new theatre group, Performance Workshop, which will be in America in Mandarin Chinese in 1991. In 1992, we made a fi lm 30 years old next year. Many people call our group the catalyst for with that cast and added a Mandarin fi lm superstar so that the modern theatre in Taiwan, which also makes it a catalyst for all of fi lm crossed over into popular culture. The one copy of that fi lm Chinese-speaking theatre. The fi rst play we did we thought was was shown at a fi lm festival in China. Many of my friends from a highly experimental two-man show about a dying tradition of China, like movie stars, etc., saw the fi lm through that print. The stand-up comedy in Chinese, but it turned out to be a hit. The Chinese government confi scated our print, but then somehow it audiotape of that performance sold 2 million copies in Taiwan, was shown, and everybody made videos of it and distributed it which only had 20 million people. Immediately, our theatre group everywhere and people bought them. It was like an underground was on the map. thing to be able to see Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land in China in the 1990s. In 1986, we came up with Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land. The inspiration for writing this play came when we were attending For almost 30 years now, people have been performing this play. the dress rehearsal with a friend who was an avant-garde theatre The fi lm version has been going around everywhere. We started artist. She was trying to fi nish her dress rehearsal at about 5:00 performing in China in 2006 with some known stars in the cast in the afternoon. Suddenly, we saw these people who weren’t who loved the play and wanted to do it. That production is still part of her cast come onstage and go about their business. They being performed. Every year, we come together to do a 10-city moved the piano on and put up a banner that announced the tour of it. In Taiwan, it has iconic status.

10 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival The story behind the play We wrote it at a very delicate time in our history when martial law had not been lifted. I often think, what does a foreign audience need to know to be able to Cheng-tai Tsai understand this play? When I made the film, which went around to international film festivals, I had two pieces of introduc- tion at the top of the show. One of them explained 1949. This is when the Chinese civil war ended and the Communists took over China and the Nationalists moved to the island of Taiwan. If you don’t know that, the play doesn’t mean that much.

My parents and the parents of all of our cast went through 1949, which is for

Chinese people in Taiwan deeply affect- Yun (Brigette Lin) and Jiang (Chin Shi-chieh) in the 1992 film ing, hugely significant. About two million let anyone know about their place. Of version of The Peach Blossom Land. people—including my father, who was a course, he does. Then people all go to look diplomat—crossed the Taiwan Straits in for it, and they can’t find it. All of us in that year to run away from the war, which, Taiwan and China memorized this piece as basically, they lost. The slogans were: schoolkids. When I was thinking about us- “We’re going to have a military maneuver ing it in Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, and the U.S. is going to help us fight back I revisited it for the first time since junior and we are going to take over because high school. You can memorize it, but you we need to drive out the Commies.” Of don’t see the nuances until you grow up. I course, it never happened and those was questioning what actually is “utopia” people got old. and what is so special about Peach Blos- som Land. The way the poet describes it is The story of Secret Love is like a lot of that it is very normal—with fields, chick- stories that I know from my father’s ens and dogs. The people were refugees generation. Families and lovers who were from a previous war centuries before separated in 1949 didn’t get to see each they came into this place. The fisherman other for the rest of their lives, or until tells them stories of this dynasty and 1986, when people started saying, “The that one and they sigh, “Wow, so much two sides aren’t talking and what the has happened that we don’t know.” To hell, I am going to go back myself.” This is me, to say that utopia is no knowledge Stan Lai something very difficult for an Ashland of history, that is a pretty scathing repre- audience to understand. You couldn’t call, sentation of Chinese history, which was high-rises, and you are losing all of and a letter would never be delivered. You brutal 1,000 years ago and more brutal these things you don’t even know about. just didn’t know what happened to your today. For this production, we’ve changed the family or loved ones. In 1988, Taiwan lifted location to Ashland. The in-joke among martial law and people could officially On mixing comedy and tragedy us would be that the Peach Blossom Land start traveling from China to Taiwan. To Shakespeare was the master at putting actors weren’t supposed to go to the Bow- this day, I can leave my home at 7 in the comedy and tragedy together. That’s why mer but maybe they were supposed to be morning and be in Shanghai rehearsing I thought if I had a chance I would try to part of the Green Show or something like with actors at 10. It has been a long jour- put a comedy and a tragedy onstage at that. The premise is that the Secret Love ney, but we are here now. the same time and see what happens. I director has been commissioned by OSF to would not have ever written just Secret do this semi-autobiographical work about The second thing you should know is that Love. That would be a very corny, senti- himself and he is given a mixed-race cast, A Chronicle of the Peach Blossom Spring is mental sort of thing. With a comedy or which he doesn’t know how to handle. He one of the most famous pieces of classical farce next to it, you have a frame that is thinks everyone should be Asian. These Chinese literature. It is a beautiful short interesting for our times, which were very are the things we are adapting to the piece written more than 1,000 years ago disjointed. Our experience in Taiwan was a environment here. by the poet Tao Yuanming. Tao wrote time of modernizing buildings, arts and about a fisherman who finds this idyllic theatre. You are seeing the city rebuilt into land. The residents there tell him not to

11 The Musical Travels of Pericles Like Pericles, composer Jack Herrick’s score will take a journey from folksy to techno, with a little Celtic thrown in. By Rob Weinert-Kendt

casual theatregoer wandering into a production of fisherman’s chanty with lyrics that are largely Herrick’s invention. Shakespeare’s Pericles without a playbill or prior knowledge “I grazed freely over the material,” says Herrick, who has done mightA think it was a forgotten Homeric epic. That’s not too far off: scores for Haj’s Hamlet at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Wash- Shakespeare harked back to the Greeks with this fantastical ington, D.C., and who, with his old-time string band the Red Clay picaresque narrated by a chorus. And the best productions of Ramblers, has scored shows by Sam Shepard and Bill Irwin. Pericles make a case for it as a kind of timeless epic theatre that echoes down through the centuries, to the beginning of storytell- A play made for song ing and song, and right back up to the present. Pericles all but mandates a musical element: Its opening words are “To sing a song that old was sung.” For Haj, this framing Director Joseph Haj’s upcoming produc- suggested “the troubadour tradition, the tion of Pericles, which opens in the Thom- Homeric tradition, a folk tradition. The as Theatre in late February, brings its own sea is in the ears of all the characters in history with it. It will be partly based on a this play.” Though the play’s action spans 2008 staging Haj did at PlayMakers the Mediterranean, with the title charac- Repertory Company in Chapel Hill, North ter hurled over decades from Antioch to Carolina, where he’s producing artistic North Africa and back, and the play’s vi- director. The OSF production will have sual design evokes a “pan-Mediterranean a new cast and some new designers, style,” Haj says. “What didn’t seem right but Haj plans to bring along a few key to Jack and me was to make some pseudo- PlayMakers associates to help recreate Mediterranean soundtrack.” their original vision: scenic designer Jan Chambers, video designer Francesca Indeed, Herrick’s Pericles score, he says, Talenti and, perhaps most significantly, ended up “fairly eclectic, somewhat folksy, composer Jack Herrick, who is refashion- somewhat techno,” employing sampled ing his earthy/ethereal score for the new music alongside live instruments. His own production. deep background in Americana and Appa- Jack Herrick lachian folk surfaces in some Celtic-sound- Herrick will be on hand through most of the rehearsal process, ing passages. Explains Herrick, “Those styles are perfectly modern as his score is no mere press-play prerecorded underscoring but and current, but they sound antique—or at least emotionally take a song-heavy and very present character in the staging. Indeed, us back through the years.” Herrick himself performed the score live in the North Carolina run, along with some cast members as singers and instrumental- This suggestive, non-exotic approach fits with Haj’s mandate. ists. Part of his job in the coming rehearsal/re-composing process “We leaned rather intentionally away from anything that felt will be to teach the score to an onstage musician and some heroic or chivalric,” Haj says, instead interpreting the wild, Odys- cast members. sean journey of the title character as the story of “an Everyman, an ordinary person, trying to move his way through a life.” “About 50 percent of the previous score we really like, and the rest we’ll work on,” Herrick says. “We tend to want to increase the Though Herrick says he much prefers the specificity and purpose amount of music in it; we’ve even given some thought to making of writing music for the theatre as opposed to “just writing a it a musical, but I guess we backed up to a ‘playsical’—a play song,” not every marriage of theatre and music is foreordained. with songs.” “You can’t just take a play and throw the band onstage,” he says. “You have to have a reason. But with Pericles, it’s a no-brainer.” Those songs include settings of the opening invocation and other bits of narration by Gower, the play’s conveniently omniscient chorus, as well as an interpolated Shakespeare sonnet and a

12 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival A Victorian Play with a Modern Heart Alexa Junge’s challenge in adapting Fingersmith was to trim down the huge book while still staying true to the characters’ needs and wants. By Judith Rosen

riter Alexa Junge picked up Fingersmith when a friend rec- First, you cut. But what? ommended it and then—propelled into its startling, vivid After pitching her project to OSF and getting stage rights to the Wworld of Victorian con artists and thieves—barely put it down book, Junge faced her first creative hurdle in deciding what to until its 500 pages were done. cut. “That’s any adapter’s dilemma,” she notes: “How do I want to spend my time on the stage? What scenes do I want to see? She knew right away that she had to turn Sarah Waters’ Man Can I serve the plot as it is, or do I have to simplify?” Fingersmith, Booker Prize–nominated novel into a play. The stage version of with its intricate, twisting story and its large cast of characters, Fingersmith will have its world premiere at OSF in 2015. posed a particular challenge.

“The characters were so alive, She wondered briefly if she I could see them and hear them could do what the Royal all speak,” Junge said during a Shakespeare Company did with recent interview at OSF. “Their Nicholas Nickleby in 1980: needs were urgent, life or death. Elisabeth Caren capture the work’s richness in a And the many different points massive, six-hour, two-day of view, so mesmerizing in the production. She gave up that book, felt innately theatrical. idea quickly; “Everyone I Every scene felt like a seduction.” proposed it to blanched.”

Adapting a book that betrays Instead she set priorities by as well as seduces, and contains focusing first on the emotional several dramatic plot twists was needs of the characters. “When a challenge that she delighted I write, I have to connect emo- in. Not only are we being told a tionally with each character’s story, we’re being directly spoken story, to feel its every beat,” Alexa Junge to by the characters, so that we she says. “Then I focus on the think we’re part of that story. We have to shift our thinking and significant beats in the action.” shift our hearts, but we can’t disengage; the characters are stand- ing there in front of us, working to win us to their perspective. She was aware that staying true to the novel—its spirit and They need us. They live and breathe because we’re there. And as aims—might mean changing it. “You can’t sit with characters for we give to them and the story, we take from them in turn.” ages, the way you can do in the book,” says Junge. “So to articu- late their stories, you sometimes have to reframe them in a way Junge delighted in making the story’s romance part of this active that an audience can more immediately understand and feel.” engagement. Seeing a forbidden love grow opens our eyes to lives But as she built in or fleshed out motivations for selected char- we don’t know we’ve been blind to, she says. “Waters reclaimed acters, she aimed to make them an outgrowth of what was in the Victorian novel by creating a narrative within it that could the book, not a wholesale change. She saw signs that she was on never exist in its day. Now I get to make theatrically present the right track when, watching auditions, she couldn’t remember something that was forbidden, unnamed, while still being true whether the scene being read was in the book or not. to the time and the roles people had to play. You may think you know what this story is, but you don’t. It’s much more interesting “It’s that thing an adaptation does,” she says. “It’s different, but than you think. It’s much more complicated as well.” it feels of a piece with the original work and its world. It keeps essential what’s essential, but it also makes the work new.”

13 Do Come True... Director Mary Zimmerman, used to transforming ancient tales, now takes on Guys and Dolls— a different kind of enchantment. By Mark Dundas Wood

rban missionary Sarah Brown from Guys and Dolls—the Chicago-based Zimmerman has repeatedly turned to storybook 1950 musical based on stories by Damon Runyon—believes worlds, often with “presto-change-o” plot points, throughout steadfastlyU that true love is out there, fated for her, and that her career. In 2012 she directed The White Snake, an adaptation she’ll recognize her white knight instantly when he arrives. “I’ll of an ancient Chinese legend, for OSF. Her most famous work, know when my love comes along . . .” she sings. “I’ll know, as I run Metamorphoses, was a stage adaptation of Ovid’s myths. to his arms, that at last I’ve come home safe and sound.” Developed at Northwestern University and the Lookingglass Theatre Company, of which she is a longtime member, the play The sentiments of Frank Loesser’s song “I’ll opened on Broadway in 2002 and earned Know” are nearly interchangeable with Zimmerman a Tony Award for direction. those in ballads written for Walt Disney’s She also developed stage versions of “The Snow White (“Someday my prince will come Arabian Nights,” Homer’s “Odyssey” and— . . .”) and Sleeping Beauty (“I know you! I more recently—Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle walked with you once upon a dream. . .”). Book” stories (for Disney Theatricals).

But that shouldn’t be surprising. Guys and Although she has directed opera and Dolls is in good company with a number of revamped Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, mid-20th-century American stage musicals Zimmerman has never directed a with a fairy-tale sensibility. My Fair Lady is classic American musical—until now. based on George Bernard Shaw’s take on Unsurprisingly, she’s begun the process by the myth of “Pygmalion and Galatea,” but examining the original Runyon stories used also calls to mind “Cinderella.” Funny Girl by writers Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows gives us the Ugly Duckling transformed to a for the show’s book. Guys and Dolls is Ziegfeld Follies swan. Once Upon a Mattress, customarily presented in a post-World War meanwhile, goes directly to Hans Christian II setting, but Zimmerman is rethinking Mary Zimmerman Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea” for its that: “The stories on which Guys and Dolls is libretto. based were written and set squarely in the 1930s—the heyday of gangsters and ‘dolls.’ The OSF production will push more toward Gangsters with heart that era.” In an interview at OSF in June, Director Mary Zimmerman said she recognizes Guys and Dolls’ connection with the worlds of Music director Doug Peck is concocting an effervescent, early-jazz storytellers like Andersen. “For all its milieu of Damon Runyon orchestration of the Loesser score. Wrote Peck, in an email: “Many and the back-alley world of New York City, Guys and Dolls is, in the of the songs of Guys and Dolls have become jazz standards end, a sort of brilliant, complex fairy tale,” she said. “It’s a world in in their own right—“If I Were a Bell,” “I’ve Never Been In Love which the gangsters aren’t particularly dangerous, and the ‘doll’ Before,” “Luck Be a Lady,” “My Time of Day,” etc.—and it’s exciting Adelaide—the burlesque performer—wants nothing more than a to be able to acknowledge the double life these classic tunes house full of children and a white picket fence. A great deal of its have led when scoring them in the context of the show.” charm resides in how essentially sweet these rough-and-tumble characters and story turn out to be in the end.” Zimmerman emphasized that the original stories and the show both have a “defiantly exuberant” energy. Theatregoers need not The reformation of Guys and Dolls’ gamblers Sky Masterson worry about being enshrouded in Hooverville gloom. “You know, (Sarah’s love interest) and Nathan Detroit (Adelaide’s guy) is gangsters and showgirls do very well during the Depression,” she familiar territory for Zimmerman: “Radical transformation or said. “The spirit of the stories and the show is very, very high.” transfiguration is a big theme in a lot of what I’ve done. This is that in more human and realistic terms. There is radical transformation and transfiguration of these two characters, Nathan and Sky, away from their gambling ways.” 14 Prologue | Oregon Shakespeare Festival Shake Your Booty Head Over Heels is an exuberant new musical mash-up that expresses director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar’s motto: “Where the play is the party.” By Eddie Wallace

ust off your dancing shoes, because you are cordially invited disguises to win those they love, and—just maybe—everything to Head Over Heels, a deliciously inventive musical-literary will work out fine in the end. Dmash-up in the Allen Elizabethan Theatre in summer 2015. Head Over Heels is the unlikely pairing of Sir Philip Sidney’s 16th-century A party aesthetic tragicomedy Arcadia (freely adapted by playwright Jeff Whitty with Whitty wrote the piece with only one director in mind—Ed a decided emphasis on the comedy) with the music of 1980s pop Sylvanus Iskandar. An OSF directing fellow for two seasons, icons the Go-Go’s, creators of such hits as “Our Lips Are Sealed,” Iskandar is a fast-rising New York–based director making a “Vacation” and “We Got the Beat.” name for himself with what he terms “inclusive” productions. His latest If a mash-up is defined as “a mixture or triumph is The Mysteries, a five-and-a- fusion of disparate elements,” then the half-hour dramatization of the Bible marriage of Sidney’s Renaissance prose featuring a cast of 54 and written by a to the soundtrack of an all-female band cadre of 48 playwrights, including Whitty. that rose out of the 1970s Los Angeles TheaterMania praised The Flea Theater punk scene to become a chart-topping production as “breathtaking in its scope pop band might be considered a mash-up . . . a radical reclamation that can be on steroids. What makes it work is Oregon appreciated by believers and nonbelievers native Whitty’s intense love of both halves alike.” of the artistic equation. Food, drink and a convivial party “I remember reading Arcadia in grad atmosphere are part of any Iskandar school at the University of Oregon and production—what he has called his thinking this would be a wonderful “socially inclusive party aesthetic.” In his story to put onstage,” Whitty, the Tony New York shows, the actors and crew greet Jeff Whitty and Ed Sylvanus Iskandar Award–winning author of Avenue Q and you at the door, tear your ticket and serve The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler (OSF, 2008), said in an OSF you a cocktail before transforming seamlessly into their roles, only interview. “I kept waiting for someone to do an adaptation of it, to return again at intermission with your dinner. “I create theatre and no one did.” from the fundamental belief that the story is rendered more profoundly by the recognition and empathy for the human effort Meanwhile, Whitty’s agent told him the Go-Go’s catalog had behind the piece of art,” says the director. become available and would be an ideal vehicle for a Broadway jukebox musical—and that Whitty should write the book. In a How Iskandar’s aesthetic will translate to the 1,200-seat light-bulb moment that perhaps could only occur in Whitty’s Allen Elizabethan Theatre is an exciting challenge involving irreverent and creative mind, Head Over Heels was born. OSF departments from Artistic to House Management to the Green Show. Audiences may come from a themed Green Show “One day, I put together a three-page document saying this is performance and be welcomed by an actor who escorts them to what the show could be,” Whitty said. “Use the Go-Go’s catalog, hear the pre-show concert being performed by the house band. A but set it to my version of Arcadia. People got excited, I got longer-than-usual intermission may feature a bit of disco dancing committed, and a 15-page treatment became a 55-page treatment in the Bill Patton Garden, or karaoke singing in the balcony or because I got so into writing the dialogue in meter and mashing it maybe just conversations with actors and crew who are strolling up with the songs.” through the theatre.

For Shakespeare lovers, the plot of Arcadia will feel familiar. A visit Iskandar’s foremost goal is for everyone to have a delightful, to an oracle results in dire predictions, a worried duke fears he will engaged, utterly unique experience in the theatre. “What I imagine be cuckolded and his throne usurped, young lovers resort to is that you are walking into a party that’s in full swing, and you get to choose your own adventure over the course of the entire night.” 15 Shakespeare at Sea IV

Come sail away with us to the Canary Islands on the Queen Mary 2 in 2015!

ravel with OSF to the Canary Islands, a place of geologic splendor, rich history and great cultural charm. Our Tjourney also takes us to the island of Madeira, with its UNESCO-reserve forests, and we’ll sample some of Lisbon’s big-city fun as well.

We invite you to join Dr. Lue Morgan Douthit and company members Rex Young and Miriam Laube aboard the Cunard Line’s Queen Mary 2 for this 12-day excursion! Bookings for the cruise and program start at $6,000 per person.

Won’t you join us? December 3–15, 2015 Departing from Southampton, traveling to Portugal and Spain and returning to Southampton.

For booking information, please call Neil Bauman at 650-787-5665, or email [email protected]. For program details please email [email protected].

We look forward to traveling with you for Shakespeare at Sea IV!

Top: Tenerife Bottom: Canary Islands 16