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Home , Almeida Theatre, Ambassador Theatre Group, August Lindberg (actor), Charlene McKenna, Colin Callender, Cumberland Theatre

BAM 2015 Winter/Spring Season #IbsensGhosts

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board

William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board

Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board

Karen Brooks Hopkins, President

Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer BAM Harvey Theater Apr 11, 18, 25, May 2 at 2pm Apr 7—11, 14—18, 21—25, 28—30, May 1 & 2 at 7:30pm Apr 5, 12, 19, 26, May 3 at 3pm

Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission

Almeida and Productions By Season Sponsor: Adapted and directed by

Design by Lighting by Peter Mumford Sound by John Leonard BAM 2015 Theater Sponsor Casting by Cara Beckinsale CDG

Leadership support for BAM’s presentation of Ghosts Associate director Elena Araoz provided by Betsy and Ed Cohen/Areté Foundation With , Billy Howle, , Leadership support for Scandinavian programming Brian McCardie, Charlene McKenna provided by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation

Major support for theater at BAM provided by: The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation The Francena T. Harrison Foundation Trust Stephanie & Timothy Ingrassia Donald R. Mullen Jr. The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc. The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The SHS Foundation

Cast

Lesley Manville

Billy Howle Will Keen

Brian McCardie Charlene McKenna Ghosts

CAST, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE Regina Engstrand Charlene McKenna Jacob Engstrand Brian McCardie Pastor Manders Will Keen Helene Alving Lesley Manville Oswald Alving Billy Howle

Adapted and directed by Richard Eyre Production manager Simon Sturgess Design by Tim Hatley Costume supervisor Rachel Woodhouse Lighting by Peter Mumford Wig creator/Hair designer Angela Cobbin Sound by John Leonard stage manager Laura Draper Casting by Cara Beckinsale CDG Deputy stage manager Jenefer Tait Associate director Elena Araoz Production electrician Stephen Andrews Literal translator Charlotte Barslund Production photography Hugo Glendinning American stage manager R. Michael Blanco

General Management—Fiona Stewart for Sonia Friedman Productions

This adaptation of Ghosts was first presented by the at the Almeida Theatre, , on September 26, 2013 and subsequently transferred to Trafalgar Studio 1 in the West End of London, on December 17, 2013. The West End production was produced by Sonia Friedman Productions and Almeida Theatre with , Tanya Link Productions and JFL Theatricals /GHF Productions, in association with 1001 Nights.

The actors are appearing with the permission of Actors’ Equity Association. The American stage manager is a member of Actors’ Equity Association.

IBSEN PRODUCTIONS AT BAM

An Enemy of the People, 1960 fall , 2006 fall Players-on-Tour, American Academy of Dramatic Arts National Theatre of Bergen/ Norwegian Theatre of , , 1981 spring | BAM Theater Company , 2011 spring A Doll’s House, 1991 spring Abbey Theatre () of , 2013 spring | BAM Peer Gynt, 1993 spring Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden , 2013 fall Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Germany) Ghosts, 2003 spring Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden A Doll’s House, 2014 spring | (UK)

Nora (A Doll’s House), 2004 fall Ghosts, 2015 spring | Almeida Theatre (UK) Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Germany) LECTURES , 2006 spring Theatre Company (Australia) BAMtalk: Re-imagining Ibsen for the 21st Century with Marvin Carlson, Eric Stubø, Joan Templeton, 2006 fall Hedda Gabler, 2006 fall Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Germany) Edward Howard Griggs Lecture: A Doll’s House— Ibsen the Teacher, 1939 spring The Wild Duck, 2006 fall National Theatre of Norway, Oslo Ghosts Lesley Manville. Photo: Hugo Glendinning

GHOSTS

Ibsen wrote Ghosts in 1881 while in Rome. A run of 10,000 was first printed in December of that year by his publisher, Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag (). Ibsen had suspected it would be controversial, but it caused much outcry due to its treatment of topics including the church, free love, and venereal disease. In fact, booksellers refused to display it, foregoing the need to reprint it until 1894. It was nonetheless first produced theatrically in 1882 in Chicago, performed in Norwegian for an audience of Scandinavian immigrants. It was first produced in in 1883 by August Lindberg’s company in Helsingborg, Copenhagen, and . Its Norwegian premiere, in Christiania (Oslo), was critically praised and ran for at least 75 performances at the Mølldergadens Theater.

HENRIK IBSEN (1828—1906)

Ibsen, the eldest of five children, was born in the coastal town of Skien, Norway into a family that fell into poverty when he was eight. He worked in an apothecary, writing and painting in his spare time, and wrote his first play, Catilina, in 1850. He was employed in theaters in Christiania and Bergen, counting among his jobs poet and director, and began fully focusing on writing in 1862; he spent the next decades in Italy and Germany. After a number of verse plays, including and Peer Gynt, he wrote 12 monumental prose plays, including many presented in theaters throughout the world and at BAM in recent years.

—Susan Yung A Note from the Director Richard Eyre. Photo: John Haynes

Ibsen said of Ghosts that “in none of my plays the impression that the characters exist is the author so completely absent as in this last independently of the writer and have come to .” years later, when he was 61, Ibsen life spontaneously. “Sitting in judgement on met an 18-year-old Viennese girl and fell in love. oneself” means mediating one’s ideas, emotions, She asked him to live with her; he at first agreed and anxieties through one’s characters, who in but, crippled by guilt and fear of scandal (and their turn have to absorb the subject matter into perhaps impotence as well), he put an end to their bloodstream—in the case of Ghosts: moral the relationship. Emilie became the “May sun cowardice, patriarchy, class, sex, hypocrisy, of a September life” and the inspiration for the heredity, incest, and euthanasia. In that sense character of Hedda Gabler, even if Ibsen himself Helene Alving, the protagonist of Ghosts, is as contributed many of her characteristics with his much an autobiographical portrait as Hedda: fear of ridicule, his apparent repulsion with the yearning for sexual freedom but too timid to reality of sex, and his yearning for emotional achieve it, fearing the wrong moral choice, freedom. Perhaps his disavowal of authorial longing for love. “Ghosts had to be written,” said presence in Ghosts was a little disingenuous. Ibsen. “I could not let A Doll’s House be my last word. After Nora, Mrs. Alving had to come.” When he was working on the play he wrote this to a friend: “Everything that I have written is Ibsen’s great women characters—Nora, Hedda, most minutely connected with what I have lived Rebecca West, Hilde Wangel, Petra Stockmann, through, if not personally experienced… for every Helene Alving—batter against convention and man shares the responsibility and the guilt of repression. Some, like Nora, triumph; others, the society to which he belongs. To live is to war like Helene, fail. Ibsen empathizes, actually with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in identifies, with women both as social victims judgement on oneself.” and as people. “If I may say so of an eminently virile man, there is a curious admixture of the The audience for a play has to be left with woman in his nature,” said the 18-year-old A Note from the Director

James Joyce. “His marvellous accuracy, his faint 1883, in Norway, where the reviews were traces of femininity, his delicacy of swift touch, and it ran for 75 performances. Even the King of are perhaps attributable to this admixture. But Sweden saw it and told Ibsen that it was not a that he knows women is an incontrovertible fact. good play, to which, in some exasperation, Ibsen He appears to have sounded them to almost responded: “Your Majesty, I had to write Ghosts!” unfathomable depths.” In the Lord Chamberlain, the official Yet in spite of—or is it because of?—his censor, banned the play from public performance sympathy for women and morbid view of the but there was a single, unlicensed “club” state of society, you emerge from Ghosts with performance in 1891 on a Sunday afternoon at a sense of exhilaration, albeit underscored by the Royalty Theatre. It detonated an explosion the conclusion that it’s impossible to achieve of critical venom: “The experience of last joy in life. In the face of the bones of true demonstrated that the official ban placed upon experience, you feel that the great enemy, apart Ghosts as regards public performance was both from social repression and superstition, is to be wise and warranted”; “The Royalty was last night bored with life and indifferent to its suffering. filled by an orderly audience, including many “The voice of Henrik Ibsen in Ghosts sounds ladies, who listened attentively to the dramatic like the trumpets before the walls of Jericho,” exposition of a subject which is not usually said the great political activist, Emma Goldman. discussed outside the walls of an ”; “It is “Into the remotest nooks and corners reaches a wretched, deplorable, loathsome history, as all his voice, with its thundering indictment of our must admit. It might have been a tragedy had it moral cancers, our social poisons, our hideous been treated by a man of genius. Handled by an crimes against unborn and born victims.” As with egotist and a bungler, it is only a deplorably dull Chekhov, Ibsen sees boredom and indifference play”; “revoltingly suggestive and blasphemous”; as insidious viruses that infect all society. “a dirty deed done in public.”

Ghosts was written when Ibsen was living In case we bask in the glow of progress and in Rome between the spring and autumn of the delight of feeling ourselves superior to our 1881. It was customary to publish plays before predecessors, it’s worth remembering that the they were performed, and the play appeared response to ’s Saved in 1965 in bookshops in Denmark in December. He and ’s Blasted 30 years later was anticipated its reception: “It is reasonable to remarkably similar. suppose that Ghosts will cause alarm in some circles; but so it must be. If it did not do so, Shortly after Ibsen’s death in 1906, the director it would not have been necessary to write it.” Max Reinhardt asked the painter Edvard Munch He wasn’t to be disappointed. There was an to design the set for the production of Ghosts outcry of indignation against the attack on that was to open his new intimate theater in religion, the defense of free love, the mention of . Munch had no experience of stage design incest and syphilis. Large piles of unsold copies but helped the actors by doing sketches of the were returned to the publisher, the booksellers characters in different scenes, expressing what embarrassed by the presence of the book on was going on in their minds. He designed a set their shelves. that surrounded realistic Biedermeier furniture with an expressionistic setting, walls of sickly Ghosts was sent to a number of theaters in egg-yolk yellow fading to ochre. “I wanted to Scandinavia, who all rejected the play. So it stress the responsibility of the parents,” he said, was first performed by Danish and Norwegian “But it was my life too—my ‘why?’ I came into amateurs in a hall in Chicago in May 1882 for an the world sick, in sick surroundings, to whom audience of Scandinavian immigrants. The play youth was a sickroom and life a shiny, sunlit was staged in Sweden the following year and this window—with glorious colors and glorious production then appeared in Denmark and, in late joys—and out there I wanted so much to take Who’sA Note Whofrom the Director

part in the dance, the Dance of Life.” as a play about a physical disease and forgotten Munch, profligate and alcoholic, feared syphilis that the disease is both real and a metaphor for a as much as he feared madness. It’s often rotting society. A producer commissioned it with said that Ibsen misunderstood the pathology a view to presenting it in the West End. It didn’t of syphilis, that he thought—as Oswald is get produced because, like a troll appearing told by his doctor—that it was a hereditary above a mountain, another production popped disease passed by father to son. It’s much more up and waved it away. probable, given that he had friends in Rome who were scientists (including the botanist I worked from a literal version by Charlotte J.P. Jacobsen who translated Darwin into Barslund, and I tried to animate the language Norwegian), that he knew that the disease is in a way that felt as true as possible to what passed on through direct contact with a syphilis I understood from them to be the author’s sore in the sexual act, and that pregnant women intentions —even to the point of trying to capture with the disease can pass it to the babies they cadences that I could at least infer from the are carrying. He knew too that it’s possible for Norwegian original. But even literal translations a woman to be a carrier without being aware of make choices and the choices we make are it, and perhaps he wants us to believe even that made according to taste, to we live Helene knows she is a carrier. It’s a matter of in and how we view the world. All choices interpretation. are choices of meaning, of intention. What I have written is a “version” or “adaptation” or Which is, of course, what lies in the process of “interpretation” of Ibsen’s play, but I hope that directing a play and translating it: it’s a matter it comes near to squaring the circle of being of making choices. The first choice—and the close to what Ibsen intended while seeming first indication of the difficulty of rendering any spontaneous to an audience of today. play into another language—is what title to give the play. When the play was first translated The last play I directed for the Almeida Theatre into English by (who later, with was The Dark Earth and the Light Sky, about the Harley Granville-Barker, wrote a prospectus for poets Edward Thomas and Robert Frost. If there a National Theatre), Ibsen disliked the title. The is a poem that comes to mind when I think of Norwegian title, Gengangere, means “a thing Ghosts, it is Frost’s poem Fire and Ice: that walks again,” rather than the appearance of a soul of a dead person. But Againwalkers Some say the world will end in fire, is—forgive the pun—an ungainly title, Revenants Some say in ice. is (a) awkward, and (b) French, whereas Ghosts From what I’ve tasted of desire has a poetic resonance to the English ear. I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I wrote this version of Ghosts six years ago when I think I know enough of hate I was waiting for a film to be financed and was To say that for destruction ice all too aware of the insidious virus of boredom. Is also great For some reason I couldn’t stop thinking of And would suffice. Oswald’s “Give me the sun…” and I read the play, not having seen it for at least 20 years, —Richard Eyre with a sense of discovery: I had remembered it Who’s Who

LESLEY MANVILLE (Helene Alving) (BBC); Sherlock (Harswood Films); Frankenstein Theater includes: Ghosts (Almeida/West End; (Davis Entertainment); Love and Other Disasters Olivier Best Actress Award); Grief (Olivier Best (Skyline); Silk (BBC); Foyles War (ITV); and Actress Nomination); Her Naked Skin; Pillars Elizabeth I (Company Pictures). of the Community; The Alchemist; His Dark Materials (National Theatre); Six Degrees of BRIAN McCARDIE (Jacob Engstrand) Separation; (Old Vic); Theater includes: Ghosts (Almeida/West End); Some Girls (Gielgud); Top Girls (New OBIE A Doll’s House (National Theatre Scotland); A Award); ; The Pope’s Wedding; Number; The Mercy Seat; Gagarin Way (Prime Falkland Sound; American Bagpipes; Three Cut Theatre); Street Angels (Half Moon); The Jim Sisters; Rita, Sue and Bob Too; Borderline Jones Story (Cumberland Theatre); Wind (Royal Court); The Wives’ Excuse; Les Liaisons (Partisan Theatre Co); Off the Tracks ( Dangereuses; ; Philistines (Royal Festival); Damaged Goods (Arches Theatre); Life Shakespeare Company); (Greenwich of Stuff (Traverse Theatre); Sex Comedies (Old Theatre); and ( Red Lion/Tron). Television includes: Outlander; Theatre). Television includes: Mum; River; The The Three Musketeers; City; The Crash; Go-Between; Fleming; An Adventure in Space MI High; ; Doors Open; Vexed; Case and Time; Mayday; Cranford; North & South; Histories; Line of Duty; The Accused; Taggart; Bodily Harm; Other People’s Children; Promoted Anywhere But Here; River City; Kiss of Death; to Glory; The Cazalets; David Copperfield; Rebus; Shameless; The Whistleblowers; Painted Lady; The Bite; Holding On; Little Warriors; Lilies; Low Winter Sun; Murphy’s Law; Napoleons; Real Women; Tears Before Bedtime; The Bill; Tinsel Town; Kavanagh QC; Kidnapped; A Statement of Affairs; Top Girls; Grown-Ups; Waterfront Beat; EastEnders; Forget About Me; and The Firm. Film includes: Mr. Turner, Still Life; Murder Most Horrid; Doctor Finlay; ; ; Molly Moon: and Rik Mayall Presents. Film includes: Filth; The Incredible Hypnotist; Ashes; Spike Island; For Those in Peril; Sleepyhead; Soulboy; The Another Year (Critics Circle Best Actress Award, Damned United; Solid Air; Mr. Barrington; NBR Best Actress Award, BAFTA and BIFA Beyond City Limits; Rituals and Resolutions; Best Supporting Actress Nomination); Clone; A 200 Cigarettes; Speed 2; Ghost and the Christmas Carol; Sparkle; All or Nothing (Critics Darkness; and Rob Roy. McCardie trained at Circle Best Actress Award); Topsy-Turvy; Secrets Rose Bruford College. and Lies; High Hopes; and . CHARLENE McKENNA (Regina Engstrand) BILLY HOWLE (Oswald Alving) Theater includes: Ghosts (Almeida/West End); Theater includes: The Little Mermaid ( Old The Eleventh Capital (Royal Court); Lonesome Vic); , Dr. Faustus, Cold Comfort Farm, West (The Lyric, Belfast); Romeo & Juliet; and and Pericles (while training). Television includes: (The Garage, Monaghan). Cider with Rosie; Glue; Vera; and New Worlds. Television includes: A.D.: The Bible Continues; Ripper Street Series 1-3; Skins Redux: Pure; WILL KEEN (Pastor Manders) Misfits; Raw; Sirens; Law and Order: UK; Theater work includes: Ghosts, Waste, Tom and Being Human; ; The Fixer; The Viv, and Five Gold Rings (Almeida Theatre); Whistleblowers; Single Handed: Stolen Child; Quartermaine’s Terms (Wyndham’s Theatre); The Old Curiosity Shop; Kitchen; Prosperity; Hysteria, Don Juan, and Man and Superman and 99–100. Film includes: A Boy Called Dad; (Theatre Royal Bath); Huis Clos and Kiss of the Dorothy Mills; Porcelain; Middletown; The Tiger’s Spiderwoman (); Tale; Small Engine Repair; and Breakfast on and The Changeling (); The Pluto. McKenna received the IFTA Television Arsonists (The Royal Court); The Rubinstein Kiss Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role for Raw ( Theatre); , and the Award for Outstanding Actress in a , and Hove Miniseries at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival for her (National Theatre). Film and TV work includes: performance in The Whistleblowers. (Company Pictures); The Musketeers Who’s Who

RICHARD EYRE (director) Chalk Circle (National Theatre); Drawing the Theater includes , Kafka’s Dick, Edmond Line (Hampstead); Quartermaine’s Terms; (Royal Court); Comedians, , The Don Quixote (Royal Ballet); ; Beggar’s , The Government Inspector, Betty Blue Eyes; ; ; The Changeling, The Voysey Inheritance, Racing ; ; The Demon, Richard III, Night of the Iguana, White Crucible (Broadway); ; Three Lives Chameleon, , Napoli Milionaria, Sweet of Lucie Cabrol; Out of a House Walked a Bird of Youth, , John Gabriel Man (Complicite); Singin’ in the , My Borkman, Amy’s View, , The Invention Fair Lady (Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris). Opera of Love, , The Reporter, The includes: La Traviata (Vlaamse Opera); Observer, Welcome to Thebes, Liolà (National Figaro (Aix-en-Provence); Love for Three Theatre); (Broadway); Mary Oranges (); , Orpheus in the Poppins (West End/Broadway); Private Lives Underworld, The Return of Ulysses (Opera (West End/Broadway); A Flea in Her Ear (Old North); Ariadne auf Naxos, Il Trovatore Vic); The Last of the Duchess (Hampstead (Scottish Opera). Film includes: , Theatre); , Quartermaine’s , Notes on a Scandal. Exhibitions include: Terms (West End); The Last Cigarette, The Vivienne Westwood, a London Fashion; Diaghilev Pajama Game (Chichester Festival Theatre and and the Ballet Russes (V&A). He received the West End); Betty Blue Eyes, Stephen Ward Olivier Award for and Private Lives (West End); his own adaptations of Ghosts and the Tony Award for Private Lives and Shrek (Almeida and West End), Les Mains Sales, the Musical. Hedda Gabler (Almeida and West End); The Dark Earth and the Light Sky (Almeida). Opera: PETER MUMFORD (lighting) La Traviata (ROH); Le Nozze di Figaro (Aix- For the Almeida: The Dark Earth and the Light en-Provence); Manon Lescaut (Festspielhaus, Sky; Parlour Song; ; Hedda Gabler; Baden-Baden); Carmen, , Le nozze di Cloud Nine; The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?; Earth Figaro (). TV: The Insurance and the Great Weather; The Storm; Venice Man, Country, , Suddenly Last Preserved; The Winter Guest; The School for Summer, Changing Stages, Henry IV Parts I Wives. For BAM: King Lear. Theater includes: and II. Film: The Ploughman’s Lunch, Iris, Stage Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Beauty, Notes on a Scandal, The Other Man. Donkey Heart, Stephen Ward, Top Hat, Absent He is the author of Utopia and Other Places, a Friends, , The Lion in memoir; National Service, a journal of his time Winter, The Misanthrope, An Ideal Husband, at the National Theatre, and Talking Theatre, Carousel, (West End); Love conversations with theater people. What Do I and Information (Minetta Lane Theatre, NYC); Know?, published in 2014, is about people he , Vincent in Brixton, Private Lives, has known and worked with. He was director of Stanley (Broadway); Cock (Duke Theater, NYC); the National Theatre from 1988—97 and has Other Desert Cities, Pygmalion, The Entertainer, received numerous awards. He was knighted Richard II (Old Vic Theatre); Drunk Enough to in 1997 and was made a Fellow of the Royal Say I Love You (Public Theater); The Wolf at the Society of Literature in 2011. Door, Circle Mirror Transformation, Love and Information, Jumpy, Our Private Life, Sucker TIM HATLEY (design) Punch, Cock, The Seagull, Drunk Enough to Say For the Almeida: Mrs. Klein; Chatsky; Puntilla I Love You, Dying City (Royal Court); King Kong & His Man Matti, and Play About the Baby. (Regent Theatre, Melbourne); Bull, Theater includes: 3 Winters, Great Britain, (Sheffield Crucible); Wonderland, The Last of Timon of Athens, Welcome to Thebes, Rafta the Duchess (); A Streetcar Rafta, Present Laughter, Henry IV, The Named Desire (Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis); Talking Cure, Vincent in Brixton, Humble Scenes from an Execution, All’s Well That Ends Boy, Stanley, Hamlet, Sleep with Me, Darker Well, , Exiles (National Theatre). Face of the Earth, Flight, The Caucasian Opera and dance include: Carmen (Miami City Who’s Who

Ballet); Katya Kabanova ( Lyric Opera); (Royal Court); Ladies in Lavender (Northampton Manon Lescaut (Baden Baden); Werther, Theatre Royal/Tour); Calendar Girls (West End/ Madama Butterfly, Faust, Carmen, Peter UK Tours); Stevie, Seminar, Farewell to the Grimes, 125th Gala (Metropolitan Opera); La Theatre, The Last of the Duchess, Skane, Traviata, La Cenerentola (Glyndebourne); The The Mystae (Hampstead Theatre); Here, The Damnation of Faust, Lucrezia Borgia, Elegy for Lady from the Sea, The Snow Queen, As You Young Lovers, Punch and Judy (also Geneva); Like It, (Rose Theatre, Kingston); Bluebeard’s Castle, Madam Butterfly (English Taking Sides, Collaboration, Rattigan’s Nijinsky, National Opera); Faster, E=MC2 ( , , and many Royal Ballet); Pelléas and Mélisande (Mariinsky); others (Chichester Festival Theatre); Ecstasy The Soldier’s Tale, Pierrot Lunaire (Chicago (Hampstead Theatre/West End); The Silver Symphony); Eugene Onegin (LA Opera/Royal Tassie, The Cripple of Inishmaan, Druid Synge Opera House); (Minnesota Opera); (Druid Theatre/US Tour/New York). Carmen (also set design); Petrushka (Scottish Ballet); Il Trovatore (Paris); Fidelio, Two Widows, CARA BECKINSALE CDG (casting) Don Giovanni, The Ring (Scottish Opera); The Theater includes: Mr. Foote’s Other Leg, Raving Midsummer Marriage (Chicago Lyric Opera); The (Hampstead Theatre); Chariots of Fire (West Bartered Bride (). Mumford End second cast); (West received the 1995 Olivier Award for Outstanding Yorkshire Playhouse); The Judas Kiss, The Last Achievement in Dance for The Glass Blew of the Duchess (Hampstead Theatre). Television In (Siobhan Davies) and Fearful Symmetries includes: Witless, Home and Away, Big Bad (Royal Ballet), the 2003 Olivier Lighting Award World, Coma Girl, Stella, Vexed, A Touch of for The Bacchai (National Theatre), the Knight Frost, The Time of Your Life, The State Within, of Illumination Award in 2010 for Sucker Punch Beneath the Skin, Recovery. Film includes: Heart (Royal Court), and the Helpmann and Green of Lightness, Forget Me Not, Gin and Dry, Dyatlov Room Awards for Best Lighting for King Kong Pass Incident, Creation, The Nutcracker, The in 2013. He recently directed and designed a Secret of Moonacre, Mr. Bean’s Holiday, Good. concert version of The Ring Cycle for Opera North. ELENA ARAOZ (associate director) JOHN LEONARD (sound) Productions include Mac Wellman’s Wu and Leonard has designed sound for more than Horrocks (Sleeping Weazel at ArtsEmerson), 100 productions at the Almeida Theatre. For Architecture of Becoming (Women’s Project), the Almeida: The Turn of the Screw, The Dark The Power (Beijing), Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Earth and the Light Sky, Filumena, The Master Mentor Project), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera Builder, Becky Shaw, , North), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Prague Rope, , Waste, , Shakespeare Company), Falstaff (Brooklyn Big White Fog, Dying for It, Hedda Gabler, Philharmonic), Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Macbeth, Rock, Hamlet, , Opera), Sir ’s La traviata (New Richard II, , King Lear, and many York City Opera), and off-Broadway productions more. Other theater includes more than 100 of two Carl Djerassi plays, The Fever Chart productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company; (Underground Railway Theatre), The Company Grief, Detroit, 2000 Years, Rocket to the Moon, We Keep (Boston Playwright’s Theatre), Thirst: a , Cocktail Sticks, The Power of Yes, On spell for Christabel (HERE), The Price (Northern the Ledge, Much Ado About Nothing, England Stage). Araoz has worked extensively with Sir People Very Nice (National Theatre); The Duck Jonathan Miller as choreographer and associate House (West End); director, including multiple productions at BAM. ( Playhouse/UK Tour); The Guinea Currently, she is a 2015 Fellow at New York Pig Club (York Theatre Royal); Moon Tiger, A Theatre Workshop, an Audrey Resident at New Little Hotel on the Side (Theatre Royal, Bath); Georges, and a Beatrice Terry Artist-In-Residence A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (Rose Theatre at The Drama League where she is writing Kingston/Liverpool Playhouse); Birthday, an adaptation of The Odyssey that has been Who’s Who Will Keen and Lesley Manville. Photo: Hugo Glendinning Will Keen

commissioned by Theatre and which R. MICHAEL BLANCO (American stage she will also direct. elenaaraoz.com manager) has been the stage manager at BAM for Karole Armitage’s The Predator’s Ball; CHARLOTTE BARSLUND (literal translation) Jonathan Miller’s St. Matthew Passion and Così Barslund translates Scandinavian plays and fan tutte; Playing Shakespeare USA with John novels. Her translation of ’s Barton; Sydney Theater Company’s White Devil The Pelican was broadcast on BBC Radio 3. She and Hedda Gabler; Donmar Warehouse’s Uncle translated ’s version of Ghosts Vanya/; the RSC’s Don Carlos, by Henrik Ibsen, which was performed at the A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hecuba; Barbican. Her translation of the Norwegian crime Watermill/Propeller’s Merchant of Venice; novel Calling Out for You! by Karin Fossum was Vesturport Theatre’s Metamorphosis and Faust: nominated for the 2005 Gold Dagger Award by A Love Story; the Young Vic’s A Doll’s House; the British Crime Writers’ Association. Her Chichester Festival Theatre’s King Lear; Pan translation of I Curse the River of Time Pan Theatre’s Embers; Théâtre de la Ville’s Six by Per Petterson was shortlisted for the Characters in Search of an Author; and Royal Independent 2011 Foreign Fiction Award. Court Theatre’s Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby. At Other translated novels include: A Fairy Tale the Metropolitan Opera: Kirov Ballet, Bolshoi by Jonas T. Bengtsson; Black Sky, Black Sea Ballet, and ’s Le Martyre de Saint by Izzet Celasin; Dinosaur Feather by Sissel- Sebastian. Jo Gazan; When the Dead Awaken by Steffen Jacobsen; Machine and The Brummstein by Peter Adolphsen; Death Sentence by Mikkel Birkegaard; the crime novels Pierced, Burned and Scarred by Thomas Enger, and The Son by Jø Nesbo. Producers

PRODUCER FOR ALMEIDA THEATRE Artistic Director ALMEIDA THEATRE Associate Director The Almeida exists to launch the next generation of Artistic Associate Jenny Worton British artists onto the world stage. A small room with Producer Lilli Geissendorfer an international reputation, the Almeida began life as Producer (Maternity Cover) Daniel Schumann a literary and scientific society—complete with library, Head of Finance Tania Clark lecture theater, and laboratory. From the beginning, Director of Development Sally Noonan our building existed to investigate the world. Today, we Director of Marketing Jane Macpherson make brave new work that asks big questions: of plays, Director of Marketing (Maternity Cover) Mark Sutcliffe of theater and of the world around us. We bring together Head of Production James Crout the most exciting artists to take risks; to provoke, Director of Projects Samantha Lane inspire, and surprise our audiences; to interrogate Front of House Manager Dervla Toal the present, dig up the past, and imagine the future. Box Office ManagerTina Farguson Whether new work or reinvigorated classic, whether in Bar Manager Hannah Woolhouse our theater, on the road, or online, we make live to excite, enliven and entertain. The Almeida was last at BAM in 2000 with Richard II and Coriolanus featuring .

PRODUCER AND GENERAL MANAGER FOR SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS Producer Sonia Friedman SONIA FRIEDMAN PRODUCTIONS (SFP) Assistant to Sonia Friedman Heather Mason SFP is a West End and Broadway theater production Executive Director Diane Benjamin company responsible for some of the most successful Executive Producers Donna Munday, Pam Skinner theater productions in the past few years. Sonia Associate Producers Lucie Lovatt, Fiona Stewart Friedman and her company have initiated and produced Assistant General Manager Lil Lambley over 140 new productions and won numerous Olivier Marketing Manager Charlotte Twining and , including a record-breaking 14 at Production Coordinators Charlotte Bath, David Nock the 2014 Olivier Awards (Best New Musical, Best General Management Assistant Max Bittleston New Play, Best Revival of a Musical, and Best Revival Development Assistant Lydia Rynne of a Play, among others). Ghosts is one of four recent Production Assistants Jessica Norman, Teddy Rose collaborations with the Almeida Theatre including Office AssistantImogen Clare-Wood King Charles III, 1984, and . Other recent Literary Associate Jack Bradley SFP productions include The Book of Mormon, The Finance Director (Productions) Gerry Blair Nether, The River, Electra, , Production Accountant Melissa Hay Sunny Afternoon, , Twelfth Night/Richard Payroll and Accounts Sarah Inkley III, Merrily We Roll Along, , Jerusalem, Production Account Assistant Kim Bonarski Betrayal, The Children’s Hour, La Cage aux Folles, The Chief Executive Officer (New York)David Lazar Mountaintop, La Bête, , , The Sonia Friedman Productions Board Helen Enright, Norman Conquests, Boeing-Boeing, and many others. Sonia Friedman, , Forthcoming productions include as Hamlet, Farinelli and the King starring Mark FOR THE PRODUCTION Rylance, and The Musical. It Accounting Services has also recently been announced that Sonia Friedman Production Insurance W&P Longreach and ’s will Wigs provided by Angela Cobbin collaborate with JK Rowling on a new stage play to Costumes provided by Cosprop be based on the stories. Sonia Friedman Additional Costumes made by Kirsty Reid and Colin Callender have previously worked together Scenic Construction Souvenir on the six-part BBC adaptation of ’s Wolf Draughtsman Will Bowen Hall, and are executive producing the upcoming BBC Fight Director Bret Yount production of starring SFP Visa Consultant and Ian McKellen. For a full list of SFP’s theatre credits, Entertainment Visa Consultant, Lisa Carr please visit soniafriedman.com. SFP is a subsidiary Special Thanks of the Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG)—the world’s Peter Huntley, Corinne Young, Frankie Zambra number one live-theater company. Interview with the designers

Photo: Hugo Glendinning Charlene McKenna and Brian McCardie. Charlene McKenna

In a family home amid the misty fjords of 1880s view of mists and fjords is seen through layers Norway, long-held secrets begin to emerge. of the house in our production… and I wanted Ghosts Designer Tim Hatley and Lighting Designer to explore fully the rising dawn during the last Peter Mumford share how they created a visual moments of the play which are so painful. language for Ibsen’s drama of light and shadow. What was it about the painter Hammershøi that What were your initial impressions of the captured the team’s imagination as a design atmosphere of Ghosts? Did any visual reference reference? How does his work relate to Ibsen’s points immediately come to mind when you read it? style of writing?

Tim Hatley: I was intrigued by the layers and the Tim Hatley: The ability to convey atmosphere unravelling of the web of what was going on through composition, color, and light is wonderful with the characters. I immediately imagined a in this work. Ibsen does the same thing with dark house, closed off from the world, whose language. His plays are full of composition, color, walls knew the truth behind them. I became and light when you read them. interested in the way we could see into the house. The walls in our set are both transparent Peter Mumford: Just look at the cool use of and reflective. I looked at artists such as light in his paintings: almost monochrome, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Edvard Munch, and but in fact a color palette all his own. They other Scandinavian painters, along with period are very theatrical but also very Ibsen; they architecture and fashions. have the same sensibility as the play. We as a creative team use these references as a way of Peter Mumford: It has a dark beauty, like an communicating with each other, not to copy but Ingmar Bergman film—reflections and shadows to show what we are thinking. —memories that haunt one’s thoughts—exactly what Tim has given me as a canvas. Theater is a uniquely collaborative art form with a director, set designer, costume designer, Light is a strong theme throughout Ghosts. What lighting designer, sound designer, composer— parts of the script are most relevant to what you and sometimes choreographer and video have created for this production? designer as well. It’s a huge thing to combine all these forces, so having references gets everyone Tim Hatley: The fact that it is set in Norway, on the same page—and then it evolves from the light is already of a particular kind. The there.