A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

PORTLANDCENTERSTAGE Presents

A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Chris Coleman With Demetrius Grosse and Deidrie Henry

May 14 – June 19, 2016 Artistic Director | Chris Coleman

PORTLANDCENTERSTAGE Presents

A Streetcar Named Desire By Tennessee Williams

Directed by Chris Coleman With Demetrius Grosse and Deidrie Henry

Scenic and Costume Lighting Designer Sound Designer Designer Ann G. Wrightson Casi Pacilio G.W. Mercier

Dialect Coach Fight Director Production Mary McDonald- John Armour Dramaturg Lewis Barbara Hort, Ph.D.

Stage Manager Production Assistant New York Casting Mark Tynan* Kristen Mun Harriet Bass

Local Casting Rose Riordan and Brandon Woolley

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

A Streetcar Named Desire is presented by special arrangement with Samuel French, Inc. on behalf of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee.

The version of the text used in the production was originally edited by Emily Mann and kindly approved by the University of the South; it was first presented with an all-black cast on Broadway in April 2012.

Performed with one intermission.

The photo, video or audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited.

CAST LIST Dana Millican*...... Eunice Anya Pearson...... Creola Demetrius Grosse*...... Stanley Keith Eric Chappelle*...... Mitch Kristen Adele*...... Stella Deidrie Henry*...... Blanche Bobby Bermea*...... Steve Gilberto Martin del Campo*...... Pablo Blake Stone...... A Young Man/A Vendor/Ensemble Sofia May-Cuxim...... A Mexican Woman/A Nurse/Ensemble David Bodin...... A Doctor/Ensemble

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

A LETTER FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR By Chris Coleman

The mind sees an object The mind desires the object The object is out of reach Anger arises

This truth about the fundamental nature of the mind has been articulated by spiritual teachers from the East for a millennia. In Tennessee Williams’ world, desire is an elemental force that sweeps away everything in its path.

Blanche and Stanley both contain enormous rivers of desire. Neither has an outlet large enough to fully or safely give expression to that force. Both were born to dominate. And they find themselves thrust together in a two-room apartment, in the sweaty, noisy, over-ripe and un-airconditioned world that is New Orleans in the summer. Maybe things will work out smoothly, but ...

By the time Williams wrote Streetcar — sitting in his apartment in the French Quarter — his beloved sister, Rose, had been in a mental institution for over a decade. A girl of delicate sensibilities, she had begun having psychotic episodes of an overtly sexual nature in her late teens. For her mother, the severely puritanical and passive-aggressive Edwina, the episodes felt like a personal assault. For her combustible and deeply frustrated father, C. C., they were a source of complete bafflement.

For Tennessee, Rose’s unraveling proved a source of sheer terror. Here, the one person (besides his beloved grandfather) he had most felt a connection to through his youth, the one person he felt actually understood him, had come completely unhinged. Surely that fate lay in store for him.

This terror haunted Williams’ steps every moment of his life.

Three years prior to sitting down to write Streetcar, after a particularly offensive and violent episode with Rose, Williams’ mother approved a frontal lobotomy for his sister. “A head operation,” she called it.

Williams’ natural restlessness compounded. He drank too much, he couldn’t stay in one place for more than a few months, he slept with too many people. The only solace, the only outlet that allowed his demons to find some satisfaction, some form of quiet, was writing. Sitting at the typewriter he entered another world. No matter how late he’d been out the night before, no matter how much he’d had to drink, the fingers hit the keys of the typewriter, and another world emerged. He often didn’t exit that world until six or eight hours later.

We revisit a play like Streetcar because there is something fundamental about the truth it excavates. Something thrilling about the power it continues to exert.

CAST BIOGRAPHIES

Kristen Adele Stella Kristen Adele is thrilled to make her Portland Center Stage debut. Off-Broadway and regional credits include Desire (59E59 Theaters); In the Red and Brown Water (Curious Theatre Company); A Raisin in the Sun (Clarence Brown Theatre); A Christmas Carol (Hartford Stage); Jackie and Me (Denver Center for the Performing Arts); Myrna in Transit (Ensemble Studio Theatre); Clybourne Park (Geva Theatre Center and Cleveland Play House); and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (Shadow Theatre Company). Her most recent television credits include Orange is the New Black, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife and The Mysteries of Laura. She is the program director of ArtChangeUS.com and earned her M.F.A. from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She would like to thank her beautiful family, Terrance, Roberta, Kitchens-Tritto and the Nicolosi & Co. team for their tireless support, and many thanks to Chris for this once in a lifetime opportunity! KristenAdele.net

Bobby Bermea Steve Bobby Bermea is the artistic director of Beirut Wedding World Theatre Project and BaseRoots Theatre Company, a founding member of Badass Theatre Company and a member of Sojourn Theatre. He received a Drammy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Lead Role for Ogun in The Brother/Sister Plays (Portland Playhouse) and another Drammy, for Supporting Actor, for his work as Asagai in A Raisin in the Sun at Artists Repertory

Theatre. Bermea has appeared at La MaMa in New York, Center Stage in Baltimore, VORTEX Repertory Company in Austin, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, and in Seattle at Intiman Theatre, ACT, The Group Theatre, Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, AHA! Theatre, The Empty Space Theatre and The New Mercury Theatre. In Portland, Bermea has performed with BaseRoots Theatre, Teatro Milagro, Jewish Theatre Collaborative, Cygnet Productions and Tygres Heart Shakespeare Company. Bermea is excited to be making his return to the PCS stage.

David Bodin A Doctor/ Ensemble This is Dave's Portland Center Stage debut, and he's very grateful to be here. He has been involved in a number of Portland productions in recent years. Favorites include: The Road to Mecca at Profile Theatre (Supporting Actor Drammy Award), One Flea Spare at Shaking the Tree Theatre, Eurydice at Artists Repertory Theatre, The Uneasy Chair at CoHo Productions, Twelfth Night at Portland Shakespeare Project, Noises Off at Third Rail Repertory Theatre, and many others. He has appeared on Grimm, Leverage, Nowhere Man and several independent films, as well as in many commercials years ago, where he usually played a bland, confused consumer with a smart and beautiful wife. It is a role he now plays in real life. He received his training at Illinois State University.

Gilberto Martin del Campo Pablo Gilberto Martin del Campo, born in Mexico, is a federally certified court interpreter and graduate of The Portland Actors

Conservatory. He has been part of the Portland theater scene for the past 10 years, appearing in productions with Miracle Theatre, Northwest Classical Theatre Collaborative and Artists Repertory Theatre, where he is a resident artist. He adapted, directed and co-produced Lee, Adam & Sam, based on John Steinbeck's East of Eden, for Cerimon House, and co-wrote and directed the play That Was The River, This Is the Sea with Claire Willett. He participated in the successful inaugural production of Badass Theatre Company’s staging of INVASION!. Film and television projects include Not Dead Yet, Management, Duende: Suit of Lights, Leverage, and The Recordkeeper for Bigpuddlefilms.com. Gilberto is proud to have his last performance in Portland at PCS, as he is moving to New Mexico to start a staff interpreter position with the Federal Courts.

Keith Eric Chappelle Mitch Keith Eric Chappelle is based in New York City, and has most recently been seen at The Public Theater as Banquo in Macbeth. Other recent New York credits include Balthasar in The Comedy of Errors, Hastings in Richard III and Lord Longaville in Love’s Labor’s Lost. His Broadway credits include Moving Man in the recent production of A Raisin in the Sun at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and Poet/Soldier in Cyrano de Bergerac at the Richard Rogers Theater. His regional theater credits include the title role in Ion for Washington D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, the role of Elegba in Abbey Theatre’s production of The Brothers Size, and as Oshoosi in McCarter Theatre Center’s production of The Brothers Size. He has appeared on the television series Madame Secretary, Blue Bloods, Law and

Order, Person of Interest and The Good Wife. This production marks his Portland Center Stage debut.

Demetrius Grosse Stanley Portland Center Stage debut. Off-Broadway/Regional: Black Angels Over Tuskegee (NAACP Theatre Award), The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry (NAACP Award nominee), The Blue Room, The Oedipus Plays, The Merchant of Venice, The Birthday Present 2050, No Exit, Spunk!, Master Harold ... And The Boys. Repertory: Richard II, Twelfth Night. TV: Game of Silence, Banshee, Justified, Westworld, ER, Heroes. Film credits include: Straight Outta Compton, Saving Mr. Banks, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, This is Martin Bonner (Sundance Audience Award), The Inheritance, Studio, A Quiet Fire (AOF Award), Samaria (DGA Award). B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University. To my loving and devoted wife, Ashley-Nicole: a champagne-supernova of love to you and our beautiful children! To the Grosse, Kubwa and Bethel family: You are the streetcar of my desire.

Deidrie Henry Blanche Regional: Raisin in the Sun and Parade (Center Theatre Group), Coming Home (The Fountain Theatre), Yellowman (The Fountain Theatre; winner of Best Actress Award from NAACP, Ovation Award, Backstage Garland Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critic Circle Award), American Night: The Ballad of Juan Jose (Yale Repertory Theatre), Ballad of Emmett Till (Goodman Theatre), Yellowman (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), As You Like It, Three Sisters, Wit, Hamlet, Seven

Guitars, among others (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Closer (Portland Center Stage), Blues for an Alabama Sky (Alliance Theatre, Hartford Stage, Arena Stage, Boston’s Huntington Theatre). Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in Blues for an Alabama Sky and winner of Backstage Bistro Award (New York) for Outstanding Vocalist and Cabaret Debut for her cabaret, What a Day for a Daydream. Television: series regular on NBC’s new Game of Silence, The Riches, Criminal Minds, Justified, Glee, CSI and others. Film: Beyond the Lights and Beautiful Boy.

Sofia May-Cuxim A Mexican Woman/A Nurse/Ensemble Sofia began singing zarzuela at the age of 5. She has acted, danced, sung and written plays in many languages. She started learning English at 18, then Russian, Armenian, French and recently, Mandarin. She is from Mexico City, where she studied a B.A. in Dramatic Literature at UNAM. She has received awards in Mexico and Los Angeles for acting, singing and producing. In her hometown, she performed for over 15 years, and then worked with the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts, Words Across Cultures, and bilingual companies in Los Angeles. Since moving to Portland in 2009, she has been in eight Miracle Theatre productions, and with Post5 Theatre, Fertile Ground, Portland Actors Ensemble, Well Arts Institute and Theatre Diaspora. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Drammy in 2015. This is her debut with PCS. She thanks Chris Coleman for the opportunity, and her dad, Gonzalo, for always promoting her love of the arts.

Dana Millican Eunice Dana Millican is delighted to make her Portland Center Stage debut. She has worked with Artists Repertory Theatre (world premieres of Ithaka, The Lost Boy); CoHo Productions (‘night, Mother); Corrib Theatre (The Hen Night Epiphany); Northwest Classical Theatre Company (Twelfth Night, Othello and King John, for which she received a Drammy Award for Actress in a Supporting Role); Portland Shakespeare Project (The Turn of the Screw, King Lear and As You Like It); Profile Theatre (Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Fifth of July); Shaking the Tree Theatre (Suddenly, Last Summer). While in New York, Ms. Millican appeared in the world premiere of Lanford Wilson’s Sympathetic Magic (Off-Broadway, Second Stage Theatre). TV: recurring roles on Grimm (NBC) and Portlandia (IFC); Leverage (TNT), Final Witness (ABC). Film: The Architect (Parker Film Company), C.O.G. (Forty Second Productions). Web Series: The Benefits of Gusbandry, One Bird at a Time. She has a B.A. in Theatre from Arizona State University. DanaMillican.com

Anya Pearson Creola Anya Pearson is delighted to be making her debut at Portland Center Stage in A Streetcar Named Desire. She was recently seen as Rebecca in Profile Theatre’s production of The Call. She is an actress, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, poet and writing coach. A graduate of the prestigious William Esper Studio in New York City, she is thrilled to be making Portland her home again. She is the author of the choreopoem Made to Dance in Burning Buildings, a fusion of poetic text, and violent

and visceral contemporary dance, which poses the question: How do we heal from trauma? She believes that through the transformative power of performance and literary arts, she will be able to effect meaningful change in the world.

Blake Stone A Young Man/A Vendor/Ensemble Blake is very happy to be making his PCS debut with A Streetcar Named Desire. Credits include Fiddler On the Roof (Broadway Rose Theatre Company), Heathers – the musical (Staged!/Triangle Productions!), Dogfight (Staged!), Tunde's Trumpet (Boom Arts), Cheaper by the Dozen (Elgin Opera House) and Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird (MidValley Theatre Company). Blake is pleased to add this production of Streetcar to his list of credits, and he is honored to share the stage with such a talented and accomplished cast. Blake would like to thank his friends and family for their overwhelming support as he chases the dream — and of course, a big thanks to Chris Coleman for this very exciting opportunity. When Blake is not on stage, he works at an animation studio, writing children's cartoons and internet games.

FEATURE I Paper Moons and Plastic Theater: the Enduring Vitality By PCS Literary Manager Benjamin Fainstein

When A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in 1947, Americans were working to reestablish normalcy amid the lingering dread of nuclear warfare. Despite burgeoning postwar prosperity,

Depression-era economic anxiety persisted. The country was catching its breath and renewing its confidence after decades of tumult and loss. Veterans, like the men of Streetcar, were returning to civilian life, hungry for opportunity. Traditional gender roles were slowly shifting as a result of the millions of jobs created for women during the war. In the Deep South, the effete ruling class saw less-baffluent citizens gunning to supplant them through hard work and sheer force of will. The poetic bravura and moral incertitude of Streetcar, driven by an engine of robust sexuality, theatricalized the evolving American landscape. Williams gave theatergoers an explosion of immediacy unmatched by the musical comedies at other Broadway houses. The pervasive sense of instability rippling through the play hit close to home, and few sparring partners have maintained the legendary status of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski.

When Blanche first mentions her family’s genteel Mississippi plantation Belle Reve (French for “beautiful dream”), her neighbor Eunice remarks that “a place like that must be awful hard to keep up.” These words prove ominous, and Blanche’s world of romantic illusions begins to crumble. As she vies with Stanley for the affection of her sister Stella, Blanche’s secrets are exposed and her identity dismantled. With the name Belle Reve, Tennessee Williams subtly forecasts this gathering storm: In French, the feminine adjective “belle” does not agree with “rêve,” a masculine noun. This discrepancy suggests that the plantation was likely christened Belle Rive (a feminine noun meaning “shore”) before colloquial pronunciation eroded it to “rêve.” Scholar Felicia Hardison Londré links this linguistic slippage to the whole of Blanche’s tragedy, writing that “what

had been a solid shore is now but an evanescent dream of lost splendor.”[1]

Before Streetcar confirmed him as one of America’s most artful playwrights, Tennessee Williams was best known for his elegiac coming-of-age drama The Glass Menagerie, an innovative “memory play” structured around flashbacks conjured by its narrator, Tom Wingfield. In his notes on that play, Williams expresses a craving for a theater that is more “atmospheric” than realistic. With Streetcar, Williams hit his mark. In The Glass Menagerie, the shifts between realistic and expressionistic modes are self-conscious and coolheaded, punctuated by Tom’s direct addresses between scenes. The temperature of Streetcar, in contrast, is scorching. Williams’ dialogue darts from soaring lyricism to gritty slang, and he fuses the planes of poetry and reality. In doing so, he grants symbolic significance to each element of the storytelling, from color and shadow to music, weather and architecture. The play adheres to his goal of a “plastic” theater that does not eschew its “responsibility of dealing with reality,” but through consummate theatricality provides a “penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are.”

In Streetcar, as in other plays, Tennessee Williams scavenged his personal life for dramatic substance. Two of his iconic thematic obsessions are the repercussions of suppressed sexual desire and the challenges faced by people living with mental illness. His relationship with his beloved sister, Rose, was forever altered after she was institutionalized following a frontal lobotomy intended to treat her schizophrenia. Tennessee harbored a lifelong grief over Rose’s fate while simultaneously

struggling with his own mental health, addictions, and the stigma against homosexuality. Williams conjured Blanche DuBois, a fictional vessel through whom he could explore the potentially catastrophic consequences of these issues. He then plunged Blanche into a New Orleans that is both authentic and mythic, complicating the clash of reality and reverie that rages within and around her. Williams’ rendering of the city he knew so well provides a lush backdrop of sweltering heat, cultural fusion, incessant music, and a maddening lack of privacy. The noise and people on the streets of New Orleans sweat and swoon in step with the malevolent pas de deux inside the DuBois- Kowalski apartment. And nearly seventy years since its composition, Streetcar remains ready for the dance.

[1] Londré, Felicia Hardison. “A streetcar running fifty years.” The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Ed. Matthew C. Roudané. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 45-66.

FEATURE I A “False City” of Mist & Mold: Locating A Streetcar Named Desire By Helen C. Jaksch

When Blanche arrives at Stella and Stanley’s doorstep, she tells Eunice: “They told me to take a streetcar named Desire, and then transfer to one called Cemeteries and ride six blocks and get off at — Elysian Fields!” Tennessee Williams openly admits taking poetic license with the geography of Streetcar; a literal

adherence to these directions would not lead you anywhere in 1947 New Orleans. 632 Elysian Fields is a real address, not in the iconic French Quarter, but in the Faubourg Marigny just a few blocks away.

Faubourg translates to “false city” and is the traditional French word for a suburb just outside the walls of the city proper. Divided by Esplanade Avenue and the Louisville & Nashville Railroad tracks, the French Quarter and Marigny were sister neighborhoods. And while the streetcar lines (including the one named Desire) stitched them together, the architecture, residents and atmospheres were very different. In the late 1940s, the French Quarter was bustling, bright, and being groomed for the growing tourist economy. It was filled with two-story brick and stone buildings and ornate wrought-iron stairs and balconies. This neighborhood was somewhat diverse, but it was still upper- class. The Marigny, on the other hand, was part of the “immigrant belt” that emerged in the early 1900s when vast acres of swampland were drained, drawing many white residents away from the city’s center. With African Americans, whites, and immigrants of Sicilian, Greek, Irish, Filipino, Mexican, Polish and Chinese descent living with and around each other, the area was a kaleidoscopic mixture of cultures and people. This lower- and working-class neighborhood was populated by traveling salesmen, tradesmen, dock workers and returning soldiers. The houses here were weathered and wooden with carved gables and front porches. If the French Quarter was the sophisticated sister, the Marigny was the scrappy one.

It is this Marigny that is the neighborhood of Williams’ play. Unlike the French Quarter, it stands in stark contrast to the

romantic columns and grandeur of the DuBois’ Belle Reve plantation. In these shotgun-style houses, named for the fact that you could shoot a bullet from the front door straight to the back, there is no privacy to nurture secret desires or nurse blossoming shame. You see everything, even things you do not want to see — especially things you do not want to see. Humidity causes the pristine paint on the exterior of the houses to peel constantly, exposing the layers beneath all the way down to the bare wood. Facades cannot be maintained.

The grass grows through cracks in the sidewalks; what’s below the surface will not stay hidden. The playwright said that Streetcar is about the “ravishment of the tender, the sensitive, the delicate, by the savage and brutal forces of modern society.” By setting his play in the middle of the people and architecture of the Marigny neighborhood, Williams creates a catastrophic collision of the misty Old South and earthy post-war America where Blanche and everything she symbolizes are roughly swept away in the winds of change.

Originally published by Yale Repertory Theatre, 2013.

CREATIVE TEAM BIOGRAPHIES

Tennessee Williams Playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) explored passion with daring honesty, and forged a poetic theater of raw psychological insight that shattered conventional proprieties and transformed the American stage. The autobiographical The Glass Menagerie brought what Mr. Williams called “the catastrophe of success,”

a success capped by A Streetcar Named Desire, one of the most influential works of modern American literature. An extraordinary series of masterpieces followed, including Vieux Carré, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Chris Coleman Director Chris joined Portland Center Stage as artistic director in May, 2000. He directed the Off-Broadway debut of Threesome at 59E59 Theaters (a production that had its world premiere at PCS and was also presented at ACT-Seattle). Before coming to Portland, Chris was artistic director at Actor’s Express in Atlanta, a company he co-founded in the basement of an old church in 1988. Chris returned to Atlanta to direct the world premiere of Edward Foote at Alliance Theatre in 2015. He also directed Phylicia Rashad and Kenny Leon in Same Time Next Year at True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, in 2014. Favorite PCS directing assignments include Ain’t Misbehavin’, Three Days of Rain, Threesome, Dreamgirls, Othello, Fiddler on the Roof, Clybourne Park, Sweeney Todd, Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline (which he also adapted), Anna Karenina, Oklahoma!, Snow Falling on Cedars, Ragtime, Crazy Enough, Beard of Avon, Cabaret, King Lear, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Man and Superman, Outrage, Flesh and Blood and The Devils. Chris has directed at theaters across the country, including Actor’s Theater of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT- Seattle, The Alliance, Dallas Theatre Center, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and Center Stage in Baltimore. A native Atlantan, Chris holds a B.F.A. from Baylor University and an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon. He is currently

the board president for the Cultural Advocacy Coalition. Chris and his husband, Rodney, are the proud parents of an 18-lb Jack Russell/Lab mix, and a 110-lb English Blockhead Yellow Lab.

G.W. Mercier Scenic and Costume Designer Portland Center Stage scenic designs are Dreamgirls, Fiddler on the Roof (PAMPTA Award, Best Set Design), Anna Karenina, Sunset Boulevard, Ragtime, Grey Gardens, Guys and Dolls, Cabaret, West Side Story and The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow. In San Francisco, he was honored with the Bay Area Critics Award for Outstanding Scenic Design for Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life at ACT and the Theatre Bay Area Award for Outstanding Scenic Design for Tarell McCraney’s Head of Passes at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and currently running at The Public Theater, both directed by Tina Landau. In New York, he proudly received the Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award for Outstanding Talent and Vision in Design. G.W. Mercier thrives on collaborating with amazing writers, composers, directors, partner designers and actors, creating original work or making established shows seem new.

Ann G. Wrightson Lighting Designer Ann G. Wrightson is so pleased to be back at Portland Center Stage, where she has designed Oklahoma, Fiddler on the Roof (PAMTA Award) and Anna Karenina. She designed the Broadway production of Souvenir and was a Tony nominee for her work on the Tony Award-winning August: Osage County, which she designed for Broadway, London, Sydney and the National Tour. Recent projects include A Moon for the

Misbegotten for the Theatre Royal Waterford in Ireland and Geva Theatre Center in Rochester, Domesticated at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and Georama (world premier) and Disgraced at Repertory Theatre of St Louis. Other work has been seen at many regional theaters, including Guthrie Theater, Alliance Theatre, Arena Stage, Cleveland Play House, Weston Playhouse Theatre Company, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Indiana Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. Awards include an IRNE Award for Best Lighting, Backstage Garland Award for Magic Fire at Oregon Shakespeare Festival and an AUDELCO nomination.

Casi Pacilio Sound Designer Casi’s home base is Portland Center Stage in Portland, Oregon, where her recent credits include Great Expectations, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Three Days of Rain, Cyrano, The People’s Republic of Portland, Threesome, Dreamgirls (PAMTA Award) and The Last Five Years; Other Desert Cities, Vanya and Sonia, A Small Fire and Chinglish with composer Jana Crenshaw; and nine seasons of JAW. National shows: Holcombe Waller's Surfacing and Wayfinders; Left Hand of Darkness, My Mind is Like an Open Meadow (Drammy Award, 2011), Something’s Got Ahold Of My Heart and PEP TALK for Hand2Mouth Theatre. Other credits include Squonk Opera’s Bigsmorgasbord-WunderWerk (Broadway, PS122, national and international touring); I Am My Own Wife, I Think I Like Girls (La Jolla Playhouse); Playland, 10 Fingers and Lips Together, Teeth Apart (City Theatre, PA). Film credits include Creation of Destiny, Out of Our Time and A Powerful

Thang. Imagineer/maker of the Eat Me Machine, a dessert vending machine.

Mary McDonald-Lewis Dialect Coach Mary McDonald-Lewis has been a working artist since 1979 as a SAG-AFTRA voice actor and on-camera performer, and in theater for much longer as an actor and director. MaryMac has been a dialect coach since 1999, and is house coach for Hallmark Hall of Fame, the series Leverage, Grimm and others. Film, television and stage clients range from overnight sensations to Drammy, Obie, Emmy and Oscar winners, and include a Knight of the British Empire. She is blessed to be a resident artist, speech and text director at Artists Repertory Theatre and house coach at Portland Center Stage, and is just thrilled to say this is her 25th show as coach at PCS. MaryMac thanks Finnegan, Sullivan and Flynn for always wagging their tails when she comes home from telling her tales. marymac.com

John Armour Fight Director John is an actor and fight director who has been choreographing violence for more than 25 years. He is based in Portland, Oregon, where he choreographs for many local theater companies and teaches throughout the region at colleges, high schools and middle schools. John’s work has been seen regularly on stage at Portland Opera, Portland Center Stage, Artists Repertory Theatre, Oregon Children’s Theatre, Miracle Theatre and many others. John’s work has twice been recognized within the Portland theater community for Best Fight Design.

Barbara Hort, Ph.D. Production Dramaturg Barbara Hort, Ph.D., has maintained a private practice in Portland for over 25 years, working primarily from the psychological perspective developed by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. At the invitation of Chris Coleman, Dr. Hort has served as a dramaturg on the PCS productions of Sweeney Todd, Clybourne Park, the 2013 JAW festival, Fiddler on the Roof, Othello, Dreamgirls, Threesome, Three Days of Rain, Ain’t Misbehavin’, and now, A Streetcar Named Desire, providing material on the psychological dynamics of the play that can be used by the artists who are creating the performance.

Mark Tynan Stage Manager Imagine being in a room full of artists, watching the birth of an idea, a movement given purpose, a sentence, phrase, scene, act given life. Then imagine that room translating to the stage with lighting, sound, costumes, scenery and props, then you can imagine what Mark’s job is like. Special thanks to the phenomenal PCS production assistants, Marialena DiFabbio, Stephen Kriz Gardner, Bailey Anne Maxwell and Kristen Mun, who help keep the vision attainable. Prior to PCS, Mark toured nationally and internationally with musicals including Dreamgirls, The King and I with Rudolf Nureyev, How to Succeed …, Grand Hotel, The Phantom of the Opera, Rent and Jersey Boys. Other Portland credits include several summers with Broadway Rose Theatre Company in Tigard. Regional credits include Alley Theatre (Houston, TX), La Jolla Playhouse (La Jolla, CA) and Casa Mañana Theatre (Fort Worth, TX).

Kristen Mun Production Assistant Kristen Mun is originally from Hawaii and graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.F.A. in Stage Management. This is her third season at Portland Center Stage, where previous credits include: production assistant on Each and Every Thing, Forever, The Santaland Diaries, Three Days of Rain, Threesome, Lizzie, and 2nd production assistant on Fiddler on the Roof. Outside of Portland, she has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Repertory Theatre and Actors Theater of Louisville. In Portland, she has worked as a production assistant and stage manager with other theater companies, such as Artists Repertory Theatre (And So It Goes …, Red Herring), Oregon Children’s Theatre (A Year With Frog and Toad, Charlotte’s Web, Ivy and Bean, Junie B. Jones) and Broadway Rose Theatre Company (Oklahoma!). Outside of stage managing, Kristen is also a fight choreographer and stage combat teacher.

SPONSOR STATEMENTS

Argyle Winery Argyle Winery is proud of its long relationship with Portland Center Stage, an organization that has “always depended on the kindness of strangers” to provide programming that enriches our community through the arts. We’re looking forward to this production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Don and Mary Blair It's been a glorious 2015-2016 season at Portland Center Stage, bookended by two giants of the American theater canon - Wilder's Our Town in September and now Williams’ Streetcar to play us out. We congratulate all the hard-working artists and staff members at PCS for a season 'Well Done' and feel privileged to play a small part in helping PCS bring stories to life. Bravo!

Curtis Thompson, MD and Associates We are thrilled to be a corporate sponsor of this excellent and timeless play, and we cannot wait to see Portland Center Stage’s interpretation!

Dedre J. Marriott Tennessee Williams has created a medley of indelible cast members in Streetcar who replicate his own family and friends. Director Chris Coleman once again combines seasoned national stage and screen actors with fine local talent to play these richly depicted characters. Please sit back and enjoy with me Williams' master crafted 1947 timeless theater piece, A Streetcar Named Desire.

Moda Everyone understands exercise is good for you. But at Moda we believe being healthy involves stretching more than your muscles. An evening with Tennessee Williams is a Zumba class for your mind.

Drs. Ann Smith Sehdev and Paul Sehdev The cherry on top of a great season and decade at the Gerding Theater! Join us in our support of PCS as we welcome the next stellar season at the Armory!

Steven and Deborah Wynne Live theater, drama you can see and hear and feel, is so exciting. For us, no other art form comes close. We’re honored to help bring to the PCS stage one of the great American plays.

LEAD CORPORATE CHAMPION

Umpqua Bank Actors take chances. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. But none of these actors would be on stage tonight without taking chances. It's part of growth, and we're all made to grow. That's why we're such a proud supporter of Portland Center Stage. Let this performance inspire you to take the chances that power your own growth.