My Wandering Boy

43rd Season • 416th Production SEGERSTROM STAGE / MARCH 30 - MAY 6, 2007 David Emmes Martin Benson PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR presents the world premiere of MY WANDERING BOY by Julie Marie Myatt Christopher Acebo Shigeru Yaji Lonnie Rafael Alcaraz SCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN Paul James Prendergast Austin Switser Dara Weinberg SOUND DESIGN VIDEO COORDINATOR ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Megan Monaghan Jeff Gifford Randall K. Lum* DRAMATURG PRODUCTION MANAGER STAGE MANAGER DIRECTED BY Bill Rauch The Playwrights Circle - HONORARY PRODUCERS Bette & Wylie Aitken • Steve & Toni Berlinger • Edward F. & Susan K. Gotschall Matthew E. & Bernice L. Massengill • John & Sue Murphy • Roger & Marion Palley Tom Rogers & Sally Anderson • Nola Schneer • Laurie Smits Staude • Richard P. & Jane Taylor My Wandering Boy • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P1 THE CAST (in order of appearance) John .......................................................................................... Brent Hinkley* Liza Boudin .......................................................................... Elizabeth Ruscio* Wesley Boudin ........................................................................ Richard Doyle* Detective Howard .............................................................. Charlie Robinson* Sally Wright ................................................................................... Purva Bedi* Rooster Forbes .......................................................................... John Cabrera* Miranda Stevens ....................................................................... Veralyn Jones* SETTING America. The present. LENGTH Approximately two hours including one 15-minute intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Assistant Stage Manager ................................................. Chrissy Church* Casting .............................................................................. Joanne DeNaut Stage Management Intern ............................................... Kristin Calhoun Assistants to the Scenic Designer ... Ken Mackenzie, Shannon Scrofano Assistant to the Lighting Designer .......................................... Mat Stovall Costume Design Assistant .................................................... Merilee Ford Please refrain from unwrapping candy or making other noises that may disturb surrounding patrons. The use of cameras and recorders in the theatre is prohibited. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the theatre. Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. Media Partner Official Airline P2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • My Wandering Boy Song of the Open Road Walt Whitman, published in Leaves of Grass, 1900. 1 Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road, I am larger, better than I thought; Healthy, free, the world before me, I did not know I held so much goodness. The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose. All seems beautiful to me; I can repeat over to men and women, You have done Henceforth I ask not good-fortune - I myself am good such good to me, I would do the same to you. fortune; Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, I will recruit for myself and you as I go; need nothing, I will scatter myself among men and women as I go; Strong and content, I travel the open road. I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them; The earth - that is sufficient; Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me; I do not want the constellations any nearer; Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and I know they are very well where they are; bless me. I know they suffice for those who belong to them. 11 (Still here I carry my old delicious burdens; Listen! I will be honest with you; I carry them, men and women - I carry them with me I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough wherever I go; new prizes; I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them; These are the days that must happen to you: I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.) You shall not heap up what is call’d riches, 5 You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or From this hour, freedom! achieve, From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d - imaginary lines, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction, before you Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute, are call’d by an irresistible call to depart, Listening to others, and considering well what they You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mock- say, ings of those who remain behind you; Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of answer with passionate kisses of parting, the holds that would hold me. You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you. I inhale great draughts of space; The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. My Wandering Boy • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P3 Through Emmett’s Eyes There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown. Henry David Thoreau, in a letter to Harrison Blake You have completely dropped away from all who love and care about you. Whatever it is – whoever you’re with – do you think this is right? Billie McCandless, in a letter to her son Chris, quoted in Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer All photos by Julie Marie Myatt, Playwright P4 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • My Wandering Boy Men go to admire the high mountains and the great flood of the seas and the wide-rolling rivers and the ring of Ocean and the movements of the stars; and they aban- don themselves! The Confessions of St. Augustine It should not be denied… that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west. Wallace Stegner, American West My Wandering Boy •SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P5 andering Aengus The Song Of W eats by William Butler Y I went out to the hazel wood, We sha pe clay into a pot, Because a fire was in my head, but it is the emptiness inside tha And cut and peeled a hazel wand, t holds w hatever w And hooked a berry to a thread; e want. And when white moths were on the wing, ch. 11, tr. Stephen— Tao Te Mitchell Ching, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught a little silver trout. When I had laid it on the floor , I went to blow the fire aflame, But something rustled on the floor Listening to a Flute in Yellow Crane Pavillion And some one called me by my name: It had become a glimmering girl by Li T’ai-po, translated by Sam Hamil With apple blossom in her hair . I came here a wanderer Who called me by my name and ran thinking of home, And faded through the brightening air remembering my far away Ch’ang-an. Though I am old with wandering And then, from deep in Yellow Crane Pavillion, Through hollow lads and hilly lands. I heard a beautiful bamboo flute I will find out where she has gone, play "Falling Plum Blossoms." And kiss her lips and take her hands; It was late spring in a city by the river. And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. But now I was three miles into The only thing to do was to get the industrial jungle of L.A. in out of L.A. According to my friend’s mad sick sniffling smog night and instructions I stood on my head, using had to sleep all that night by a the wire fence to prevent me from wire fence in a ditch by the tracks falling over. It made my cold feel a being waked up all night by rackets little better. Then I walked to the of Southern Pacific and Santa Fe bus station (through tracks and side switchers bellyaching around, till streets) and caught a cheap bus twen- fog and clear of midnight when I ty-five miles to Riverside. Cops kept breathed better (thinking and pray- looking at me suspiciously with that ing in my sack) but then more fog and big bag on my back. Everything was far smog again and horrible damp white away from the easy purity of being with cloud of dawn and my bag too hot to Japhy Ryder in that high rock camp sleep in and outside too raw to stand, under peaceful singing stars. nothing but horror all night long, ex- cept at dawn a little bird blessed me. — Jack Kerouac,The Dharma Bums P6 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • My Wandering Boy You Do Not Come By Fang Gan The road is long, and east or west, I have no-one to ask, The cold has come, but I’ve no place to send your cold weather clothes. When you left, we’d just planted the tr ee befor The tree already bears a nest, the person’ e the hall, Interim s not returned. By Edna St. Vincent Millay (an excerpt) You are not here. I know that you are gone, And will not ever enter here again. And yet it seems to me, if I should speak, “I, too, would fain set down something Your silent step must wake across the hall; besides facts. Facts should only be as If I should turn my head, that your sweet eyes the frame to my pictures; they should Would kiss me from the door. — So short a time To teach my life its transposition to be material to the mythology which I This difficult and unaccustomed key! — am writing; not facts to assist men to The room is as you left it; your last touch — make money, farmers to farm prof- A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself itably, in any common sense; facts to As saintly — hallows each simple thing; tell who I am, and where I have been or Hallows and glorifies, and glows between what I have thought: as now the bell The dust’s grey fingers like a shielded light.

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