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Steel Magnolias by ROBERT HARLING Directed by LISA ROTHE

Steel Magnolias by ROBERT HARLING Directed by LISA ROTHE

McGuire Proscenium Stage / Oct 26 – Dec 15, 2019

Steel Magnolias by directed by LISA ROTHE

PLAY GUIDE Inside

THE PLAY Synopsis, Setting and Characters • 4 Responses to • 5

THE PLAYWRIGHT About Robert Harling • 7 On Writing Steel Magnolias and Its Legacy • 8

CULTURAL CONTEXT Southern Writers • 10 Type 1 Diabetes • 12 In the Community • 13 People, Places and Things in the Play • 15

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION For Further Reading and Understanding • 18

Guthrie Theater Play Guide Copyright 2019

DRAMATURG Carla Steen GRAPHIC DESIGNER Akemi Graves CONTRIBUTORS Rosie Jablonsky, Morgan Holmes, Carla Steen Guthrie Theater, 818 South 2nd Street, , MN 55415 EDITOR Johanna Buch

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2 \ GUTHRIE THEATER PHOTO: THE CAST OF STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN)

“I would rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”

– Shelby to M’Lynn in Steel Magnolias

About This Guide

This play guide is designed to fuel up on a play before you see it DIG DEEPER your curiosity and deepen your onstage. Or perhaps you’re a fellow If you are a theater company understanding of a show’s history, theater company doing research and would like more meaning and cultural relevance for an upcoming production. information about this so you can make the most of your We’re glad you found your way production, contact Resident theatergoing experience. You might here, and we encourage you to Dramaturg Carla Steen at be reading this because you fell in dig in and mine the depths of this [email protected]. love with a show you saw at the extraordinary story. Guthrie. Maybe you want to read

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SETTING A beauty salon in Chinquapin, , in the 1980s.

CHARACTERS Truvy, the owner of a beauty salon Annelle, Truvy’s assistant in the salon Clairee, the grande dame widow of the former mayor M’Lynn, a socially prominent career woman Shelby, M’Lynn’s daughter and bride-to-be Ouiser, a wealthy curmudgeon

PHOTO: NICOLE KING AND AUSTENE VAN IN STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN) Synopsis

Truvy’s salon in Chinquapin, she’s recovered. Shelby’s health “When I was a kid, the Louisiana, is a gathering place is fragile because she’s diabetic, mystique of the beauty and sanctuary for a close- which makes M’Lynn worry about parlor was that guys knit group of women from the her daughter’s choices and the neighborhood. Recently widowed physical toll Shelby’s body may were never allowed. Clairee is adjusting to life without not be able to bear. You didn’t know what her husband, who was the town’s went on in there, and former mayor. Ouiser, a wealthy Over the next few years, as Clairee curmudgeon, finds any excuse fills the void left by her husband’s they all came back to bicker and complain. Truvy death, Annelle embraces life in different somehow. has hired young Annelle just Chinquapin and Ouiser strikes up in time to get Shelby and her a new friendship, Truvy’s salon I realized this mother, M’Lynn, ready for Shelby’s remains at the center of their hermetically sealed wedding later that day, and the lives and becomes an oasis when environment would be women’s excitement fills the tragedy strikes. beauty shop with gossip, warmth the best place to have and familiarity. these women express When the normally friendly their true feelings.” Shelby suddenly becomes cranky, everyone realizes her blood sugar – Robert Harling, quoted in has dropped, and the women fuss Garden & Gun, April/May 2017 over her and give her juice until

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critiques. And we don’t lose sight of the real focus of the play, which is how these women relate to each other.

Ted Shaw, “Play transports you to Louisiana salon,” The Windsor (Ont.) Star, November 29, 1996

Like a hummingbird flitting among the bougainvillea, the two-hanky warhorse Steel Magnolias just shouldn’t fly. It’s talky, contrived and manipulative. But it works. …

The play traces preparations for the wedding of the youngest customer, the birth of her first child and some life-threatening illnesses, all lubricated with shrieks of laughter

PHOTO: NICOLE KING, MELISSA MAXWELL AND ADELIN PHELPS IN STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN) and a plethora of hugs — sort of a Eudora Welty take on Our Town.

Inexplicably, this collection of Responses to archetypes sidesteps stereotyping, even if they are cut out of a Steel Magnolias Montgomery Ward’s catalog. All seem realistic if eccentric individuals, like the crusty biddy Mr. Harling has a grasp of local Alternating between humor and who says “I’m not crazy. I’ve just language, as in [Truvy’s] remarks, pathos, Steel Magnolias is a marvel been in a very bad mood for 40 many of which seem filtered of controlled energy and verbal years.” Playwright Robert Harling through the imagery of her interplay. Truvy’s Beauty Shop is excels at witty pronouncements profession. “I always wanted to go where old and relatives tossed off effortlessly by this sextet to Baltimore,” she says, “because I meet to gossip, commiserate, as if they were the Deep South heard it’s the hairdo capital of cajole, and enjoy each other’s chapter of the Algonquin the world.” … company. They can literally let their Round Table. hair down at Truvy’s. … “Steel Magnolias” is at its most Bill Hirschman, “These Magnolias Still perceptive in offhand moments, Anyone who has seen the movie … Steely,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, May 15, as when one woman, caught up but isn’t familiar with the original 2003 in her own problems, says, “I just play will be surprised at the lack of can’t talk about it,” and the others men. Harling had to open up the reflexively respond in unison: “Of script for the screen and include course you can.” “Steel Magnolias” the husbands, boyfriends, and ex- is an amiable evening of sweet lovers who figure in the women’s sympathies and smalltown chatter. beauty shop discussions.

Mel Gussow, “Stage: ‘Steel Magnolias,’ A But the play is more effective Louisiana Story,” , March because of the absence of men. It’s 27, 1987 more fun imagining them from the women’s colorful descriptions and

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Shampoo. Set. And cry. rich, she admits. “That’s why I serve it over ice cream to cut This isn’t the age-old lingo of the sweetness.” cosmetology (unless you are talking about a really bad hair day) Like a lot of Southern cooking, this but the essential formula of Robert play … doesn’t stint on the sugar. Harling’s weepy broad comedy But of course, as experienced Steel Magnolias. … bakers know, without a pinch of salt, sugar can be just plain cloying. But as the new True Colors Theatre The batter for Steel Magnolias … staging suggests, Steel Magnolias may not cook up into haute cuisine, is more than just a caricature-ish but it has just enough salty, sour, “Perms of Endearment” about bitter and umami, along with the a particular type of breathless sweet, to engage the entire palate. I Southern belle who sits by the challenge the most sophisticated of country-club pool in the mornings you not to cry at the end. and swaps recipes for cheese straws and chicken salad in Margaret Gray, “Fine Southern charm,” the afternoons. … Times, April 26, 2019

For True Colors, director Kent PHOTO: SALLY WINGERT AND MELISSA MAXWELL IN STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN) Gash has placed African American women in the pivotal roles of Truvy and her assistant Annelle — and the good news is that it’s not this big PC thing (like, say, putting the first black Martha in Virginia Woolf or doing an African American Glass Menagerie). Such smart casting may be a psychological breakthrough for . To be sure, it’s the kind of ahead-of-the- curve thinking that makes ’s True Colors a strong local asset and a national player.

Wendell Brock, “Salon humor ‘Steel’ sharp,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 24, 2004

In the first scene of the play Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s 1987 love letter to small-town Southern women, two Louisiana friends share favorites from their recipe boxes. Cuppa Cake is so straightforward, it doesn’t even require an index card: “It’s a cuppa flour, a cuppa sugar, a cuppa fruit cocktail with juice, and you mix and bake at 350 till gold and bubbly,” [Clairee] says. Yes, it’s

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About Robert Harling

Before launching a successful stage Immediately bridging a career from Harling made his directorial debut and screenwriting career, Robert stage to screen, Harling adapted with The Evening Star, which he Harling graduated from Tulane his original play into the popular also wrote for the screen based on University School of Law, but film of the same name, starring Larry McMurty’s novel. The Evening instead of taking the bar exam, he , , Daryl Star reunited Shirley MacLaine opted to become an actor in New Hannah, Shirley MacLaine, Dolly and Jack Nicholson and also stars York City. After years of productive Parton and . , Bill Paxton, Miranda work as an actor in voiceovers and Richardson, Marion Ross and commercials, Harling was inspired Over the years, Harling has become Scott Wolf. The Evening Star is to write the highly acclaimed stage a much sought-after screenwriter. the continuation of the beloved play Steel Magnolias, which was Other credits, to name a few, and acclaimed movie Terms based on events from his personal include , which is based of Endearment. life. Steel Magnolias continues to on Harling’s acting experience and thrive in theatrical productions also stars Sally Field along with Sourced and edited from Dramatists Play throughout the world. Robert Downey Jr. and Whoopi Service, Inc. Goldberg, and The First Wives Club, starring , and .

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PHOTO: SALLY WINGERT, ADELIN PHELPS, AMY VAN NOSTRAND AND AUSTENE VAN IN STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN) On Writing Steel Magnolias and Its Legacy

Harling grew up in Natchitoches, and dialysis, did little to help. She as he remembered them from his Louisiana, the oldest settlement died during minor surgery in 1985, childhood. “I always thought the from the Louisiana Purchase, with at the age of 33. Afraid his two- women in my community were two younger siblings. He wrote year-old nephew would never so witty and clever,” he says. “It the play after his sister, Susan, know who his mother was, Harling was like a witty one-upmanship died from complications of Type 1 started writing. “All I wanted to do [between them]. In a lot of ways, diabetes. He’d been in New York for was have somebody remember her,” they talked in bumper stickers.” He eight years at that point, a period he says. worried that the real-life Ouiser, a during which Susan had married character defined by her cranky and decided to start a family, He started the tale as a short and brutally honest nature, would despite doctors’ concerns that story — “that lasted about half a recognize herself and take offense, doing so could seriously jeopardize morning” — before switching to but as women from his hometown her health. dialogue, a format he felt more began to see the play, “they all said comfortable with as an actor. … they were Ouiser.” Shortly after giving birth to a baby boy in 1983, Susan’s circulatory [T]he play features an all-female Maria Carter, “The Heartbreaking Real-Life system and kidneys began to fail. A cast, portraying characters Harling Story Behind ‘Steel Magnolias,’” Country kidney transplant from her mother, modeled after his mom’s friends Living, July 28, 2017

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In an exclusive interview with As we were going into production, Part of the magic of film is that MailOnline, Robert [Harling] Michael and Kathy Weller asked me people know — they don’t know reveals: “Susan died in the fall of what my parents thought about the me — but they know the story. 1985. Pat, my ex-brother-in-law, play, and I said I hadn’t told them. They know the actresses, they remarried five or six months after It was the only time I’d ever seen know that it’s been told, they know her death, and the first time I heard Kathy get riled at me. I said, “It’s that it lives, they know it’s been my nephew call this other woman got to be a painful thing for them. translated into a zillion languages, ‘mama’ was when I said, ‘No — We’ll do the play, it’ll come and and the fact that this very simple Susan can’t disappear.’ go, and they won’t know anything story of a small American town and about it.” I was just chicken. Kathy its community of women reaches I guess I started writing the play said, “You weren’t there through all out and speaks to everyone around about six months later. It came of that pain, you didn’t watch your the world … what writer wouldn’t out very, very fast. I wrote the child die. If there is one moment love that universality. first version in 10 days. I was just of joy to be gained out of this trying desperately to get the experience, you cannot deny them Robert Harling, in a video interview at the language and capture exactly that. If you don’t tell them, I will.” 10th TCM Classic Film Festival, accessed on how the women spoke. I wanted YouTube, April 13, 2019 to celebrate my sister; it was a They came to New York to visit a time of tumult and the way it took week before we went into rehearsal, off, who knew. I never, in a million and I got up some courage. They Guests noshed on an armadillo- years, thought it would even get were just flummoxed — I wasn’t a shaped cake at the Cajun music- produced when I was writing it.” writer. When Mama asked me if filled wedding reception, shot she could read it, I said, “You don’t at the sprawling historic house “Steel Magnolias writer on the real story want to. It’s about you and Susan that served as the film’s family behind the Hollywood hit,” DailyMail.co.uk, and the whole thing.” But she’s a home. The armadillo cake was part March 28, 2014 Steel Magnolia — she was going to of Susan’s wedding, “but it was read it. I gave her the script, and basically a sheet cake cut into the Susan was incredibly supportive I’d walk past and she’d be sobbing, silhouette of an armadillo,” after I came to New York. She and I felt terrible. Afterward, I said, Harling says. was familiar with my frustration in “Mom, we’ll just kill it, I can’t put you terms of auditions, and she used to through this.” And she said, “It’s The elaborate, three-dimensional say, “You know what really makes wonderful because it’s true.” She movie version, complete with a me mad is the fact that I can’t do just closed it and that was it, end long tail, was rendered in red velvet anything for you. … I don’t know of topic. cake. The cake has a cult following how to help you, and I wish I could.” and has been recreated repeatedly Even when she was sick, she’d Robert Harling, quoted in “Thirty Years of by fans. come home from the hospital and Steel Magnolias” by Julia Reed, Garden & make a box of brownies and send Gun, April/May 2017 “If I only leave one thing behind as them to me. … my legacy, it is the armadillo cake,” Harling says. “If I had been able The last time I talked to Susan was to patent the armadillo cake, I’d on her birthday, October 7, [1985]. be jetting around the world in my She was on dialysis and they were private plane. I have seen some going to put in some shunts to amazing ones.” facilitate it, and that required some minor surgery. I actually had to get Bryan Alexander, “‘Steel Magnolias’ wedding off the call because I was going to mixes fact, fiction,” USA Today, May 20, an audition. She said, “Good luck,” 2019 and they rolled her down to the operating room. She never woke up, and I told her story. …

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Southern Writers

Most contemporary writers raised the autobiographical Black Boy one’s identity, remains a striking in the South and who aspire to and the novel Native Son. Born characteristic of the Southern be serious writers still live under near Natchez, Mississippi, he was literary imagination, black and the long, intimidating shadow brought up in Memphis, lived for a white.” of William Faulkner, the “Dixie time as a young man in Chicago, Special” as Flannery O’Connor and died an expatriate in in Charles E. Claffey, “Does the ‘Southern once dubbed him. Some think of 1960 at 52. Writer’ Really Exist,” Boston Globe, themselves as very much Southern December 9, 1986 writers — extensions in a long and And Ralph Waldo Ellison, born in distinguished tradition. Others Oklahoma City and who studied resent the term; they consider for three years at the Tuskegee At a time when dramatists from it a restricting and artistically Institute in Alabama before going many parts of this country are unflattering appellation. to New York in 1936. … grappling with contemporary issues, major playwrights from Southern writer: The term can In his introduction to The History the South are still turning back evoke the stereotyped Margaret of Southern Literature, Professor the clock for their themes and Mitchell images of magnolias, Louis D. Rubin Jr. of The University inspirations. Family and home, courtliness, mint juleps sipped of North Carolina at Chapel the cornerstones of Southern on the porches of once-splendid Hill wrote: life for generations, have taken a plantations. But there is also the severe beating, as everywhere in South that embraces the rural “The facts are that there existed recent times, but they still exert Georgia of Erskine Caldwell’s in the past, and there continues a profound hold. In separate comically grotesque Jukes family; to exist today, an entity within conversations, several major Georgian Carson McCuller’s the American society known as playwrights suggested that no bizarre Southern Gothic; Thomas the South, and that for better or matter how far they have traveled Wolfe’s Asheville, North Carolina; for worse the habit of viewing from their roots down South — … Reynolds Price, whose first novel one’s experience in terms of one’s and no matter how much the A Long and Happy Life, published relationship to that entity is still a home sites have changed — the a few months before Faulkner’s meaningful characteristic of both voices and stories of their early death in 1962, won him the writers and readers who are or years remain the wellsprings of William Faulkner award for the have been part of it. The historical their work. … best novel of the year — along circumstances that gave rise to with critics’ charges that he was that way of thinking and feeling The experiences of a childhood a Faulkner imitator. have been greatly modified. Yet in in Natchitoches, Louisiana, shape the year 1984 ... to consider writers Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias. Then there is the first generation and their writings as Southern Now in his late 30s, Mr. Harling has of black Southern writers born still involves considerably more spent 10 years in Manhattan and, into a region of almost-inbred than merely a geographical through the demands of his work racism and discrimination, such grouping. History, as a mode for as a successful commercial actor, as Richard Wright, author of viewing one’s experience and lost every trace of regionalism. …

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Though some of his characters The play spans the first two interview. “Growing up, I tried “take contemporary journeys,” years of Shelby’s marriage and to not be a part of it, even in Mr. Harling said, a lot of Southern motherhood from the viewpoint of Louisville, which is the upper drama today, “with a costume Truvy’s patrons. Over the course South; I wanted to rebel against change, could be 1942.” of the two acts, we get to know that because I guess I was used to these eccentric Southern women seeing the negative side of things. Steel Magnolias seems to owe as they are with their hair wet and I was always feeling that there was much of its immense popularity … in rollers. As the title suggests, sort of this backwardness to it. to the humorous banter between what exists beneath the gentle characters. “The way Southerners speech pattern, the nonstop If you’re a black Southerner, you communicate,” Mr. Harling said, charm and the ubiquitous smile is definitely have a different story “is in the rattling on. You ask my a soul as strong as steel and twice than a white Southerner — it’s not father which gas station to go to, as resilient. all magnolias and hospitality and and he’ll tell you a long story.” … mint juleps. When I left, I began Leah D. Frank, “Southern Women in a Small to think that some of the things Perhaps … the plays defining Town,” The New York Times, July 22, 1990 that people in the north kind of today’s South, whether from white take for granted — they assume or black authors, will embody that there is this sort of unity or the South not as a place but as A sense of place. An obsession melting pot in places like New sensibility — a depth of involvement with the past. A connection to the York — and you think, ‘Well, wait with language, family and regional land. A history of race relations as a second — you’re not all that history, wherever Southerners, turbulent as the violent summer different than some of the race increasingly mobile, may roam. storms. Family life that, like our relations in the Southern states.’” food, can hold us in its often Roy Hoffman, “Brash New South Is Still a delicious, sometimes unhealthful, “It wasn’t really until going to Stranger to Its Dramatists,” The New York and always magnetic allure. (Fried college and coming back with Times, July 2, 1989 Snickers bars, anyone?) These some friends of mine, and one qualities define the South — and of them who had grown up in its literature. Connecticut and she was talking Whether or not a factual about oh, how amazing it was to difference exists between Building on the tradition of be in Kentucky and how beautiful Southern women and the rest of revered Southern writers like it was. It was just something I’d us, a mythology of the Southern William Faulkner and Flannery never really thought about until woman does exists. O’Connor, a new anthology of my friend said it, and then I began short stories with a Louisville to notice it through different This myth incorporates beauty connection offers a kaleidoscopic eyes and began thinking, ‘Oh, it is pageants and buttermilk biscuits, view of what it means to be actually beautiful and there is such wide-brimmed hats and lace Southern, in stories that meditate, a thing as Southern hospitality.’ collars, magnolias and mint juleps. above all, on what it means to People don’t let people fall Most of all, it gives us a character be human. through the cracks the way they with a sugar-sweet smile and an would in other places.” indomitable will. New Stories From the South 2008 (Algonquin Books), guest-edited Joanna Richards, “Southern draw,” In this literary version, the this year by acclaimed fiction Louisville Courier-Journal, August 29, 2008 Southern woman is also always writer and Louisvillian ZZ Packer, slightly goofy, or at least she aims to collect the year’s best seems so to far-more-staid short fiction by writers from Northerners. She is featured in the South. … plays by , in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Crimes “I’ve thought of myself as of the Heart by Beth Henley and, Southern pretty much forever, most recently, in Steel Magnolias even though I was born in by Robert Harling. … Chicago,” Packer said in an

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Type 1 Diabetes

Overview Shelby most likely delivers insulin Symptoms of Hypoglycemia Type 1 diabetes is a condition by injection into fatty tissue Shelby experiences a bout of in which a person’s pancreas (stomach and back of the arms hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, does not produce insulin, the are popular spots) via a syringe in the first scene of Steel Magnolias. hormone necessary for the body or, possibly, an insulin pen, which Hypoglycemia is caused by too to metabolize and absorb glucose. has an insulin cartridge and a little food, too much insulin or extra Formerly known as juvenile onset needle tip. The first insulin pen was exercise. Its onset may be sudden diabetes, Type 1 diabetes can introduced in 1985. and can progress to insulin shock manifest at any age. if not treated. Treatment includes Too much insulin will lower blood the introduction of sugar, usually a In non-diabetics, insulin is naturally glucose levels below the target juice or soda, if the diabetic secreted when blood sugar range and potentially put a person is conscious. levels go up after eating and into hypoglycemia, which can slows down when glucose levels also result in a diabetic coma. Too Mild drop. When the pancreas stops much insulin may be the result of Hunger working, there is no insulin and misjudging the amount needed Dizziness therefore no glucose regulation, to counteract carbs; exercise and Irritability so glucose continues to build in stress (or the birth control pill Behavior changes the bloodstream. In order to try in Shelby’s case) can also affect Anxiety and clear the system of the excess the dose of insulin that should Weakness or fatigue glucose, diabetics will become be delivered. When Shelby is Sweating thirsty, drink a lot and then urinate particularly active, she might burn Rapid heartbeat a lot. But that doesn’t work. more glucose than she would Shakiness Eventually glucose can build up normally so a regular insulin dose Paleness so high that the body will begin to would be more than she needed Stomachache shut down, and the person goes and could send her glucose into a diabetic coma. levels plummeting. Severe Irrational behavior Diabetics manually regulate Shelby’s health issues that lead Blurred vision their glucose by checking levels her doctor to discourage her from Slurred speech several times a day, via a finger getting pregnant is specific to her; Seizures prick and blood glucose meter, there is no reason that an otherwise Coma and administering correctives healthy diabetic who tightly accordingly. (Or via a continuous manages their blood sugar cannot Sourced from Children’s Hospitals and Clinics glucose monitor, but that is carry a healthy baby to term. of Minnesota technology not likely available to Shelby in the 1980s.) Low blood sugar means that carbohydrates are necessary to get more glucose into the system. High blood sugar means insulin is necessary to bring the level down.

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In the Community

PHOTO: THE CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM OF STEEL MAGNOLIAS AT CURL POWER SALON (KATIE HAWKINSON)

To help create director Lisa MORGAN HOLMES: One of my first when I encountered people who Rothe’s inclusive vision for hair memories is sitting on my didn’t love curly hair. Truvy’s Louisiana beauty Barbie Caboodles case while my mom brushed my hair into twists. MH: Yes! When I was younger, my shop, the Guthrie partnered What was your first hair memory? hair was a big deal. Especially in with Rosie Jablonsky, the South. “The bigger the hair, the owner of Curl Power Salons, ROSIE JABLONSKY: My mother closer to God.” Having long, thick who happily offered her would brush my hair and put it in hair was treasured, but straight expertise and curl-thusiasm two neat French braids. I hated was the style. It took so long to to the Steel Magnolias cast having it brushed, but I loved the wash and hot comb or flat iron ease of my braids because I was and creative team. Artistic my coils straight. I spent hours at a super active kid. My mom loved the salon with my mom. Now, I Assistant Morgan Holmes my long, curly hair and was very wear my hair short and curly. How interviewed Rosie about positive about it. She always told did your relationship to identity, hair, mantras and more. me curly hair was beautiful, so I community and culture shape your was surprised (and disappointed) relationship with your hair?

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PHOTO: KATIE HAWKINSON CULTURAL CONTEXT

RJ: My hair links me to various parts acceptance and to help them see appointment she had at Curl Power. of my identity. I’ve gone from short their intrinsic beauty and worth, Our salon mission of curl expertise, to long to asymmetrical and played just as they are. inclusion and self-love clicked with with every bright rainbow color. As her, and she appreciated how her a young, queer person, I used to MH: What a perfect transition to stylist listened to her hair concerns, feel like my haircut was a not-so- Curl Power. Tell me about wishes and past traumas with subtle indicator of my identity, but your salons! salons regarding her curly hair. it’s also a fun creative outlet. My Of course, I was ecstatic to learn hair helps me feel at home in my RJ: You deserve to be yourself, and about partnership opportunities body and express my insides on the your hair is part of you. At Curl because Steel Magnolias is one outsides. Having an art medium on Power, we want to help you do that of my favorite movies and pink is my head has always helped me feel in a healthy, practical and joyful my signature color! I was invited like me. When I discovered that my way. We have salons at Franklin and to do hair for and with the Steel wavy-curly hair could look pretty, Nicollet and 50th and France. Curls Magnolias cast and creative team my hair suddenly connected me and their people are our priority at at Curl Power, and it was such a to my Jewish community in a way both locations. Expect a luxurious pleasure. I love this show and had that my face never did. I’ve often specialty service served up in a the sweetest time talking about heard, “You don’t look Jewish!” sweet space where folks who do hair and history and our lives with Having a community of people who or don’t feel like they “belong” in a the cast — just like regular clients! all kvetch (Yiddish for “complain”) salon can feel right at home. Because what we offer is pretty or even joke about hair in the same unique, our goal in partnering with way can be incredibly bonding. But We offer curly haircuts, styling, the Guthrie is to let people know I also want to bring people out of a lots of information and hands- about Curl Power, what we do and place of constant self-deprecation on education about taking care how it’s possible and powerful to and bring curl love into those of curly, wavy and coily hair, embrace your natural texture no conversations. transitioning to your natural hair matter what that texture is. All hair and keeping it healthy. We also is good hair. MH: Tell me more about “curl love.” specialize in color services specially How is that part of your designed to keep the health and hair philosophy? integrity of your hair while giving you all the flamboyance or subtlety RJ: You shouldn’t have to change you desire. We love rainbow hair who you are to make anyone else color as well as silver/gray hair more comfortable. You shouldn’t color transitioning. For the past have to be something you aren’t two years, we’ve served “curlies” so that the world will deem of all ages through our Curl you worthy of existing. Beauty Camp — a unique hands-on standards are a mighty cultural workshop for parents and children force that put significant pressure to focus on healthy and happy on all of us to look a certain way. curl care at home. This year, we I get that. But I also believe in added a Teen Curl Camp to help creating the world we want to live young people start their self-care in, and one way to do that is to journeys with new skills and more stop apologizing for who you are. confidence. And we are proudly Hair texture, body size, skin color, part of the LGBTQIA+ community physical ability, age and gender and will happily show up at events expression are all areas where with extra glitter — just ask us! we scrutinize ourselves through the lens of what we are told is MH: What has it been like working beautiful. I think hair is an amazing with the Guthrie? tool for self-expression. My goal and mission with Curl Power RJ: [Director of Community Salons is to provide space for my Engagement] Rebecca Noon clients as they journey toward self- reached out to us after an

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People, Places and Things in the Play

PEOPLE

Cher An American pop singer born An actor who produced a in 1946. It was just a rumor that series of exercise videos she had a rib removed. beginning in 1982 with “Jane Fonda’s Workout.”

Elizabeth Taylor Princess Di A British-American actress The former Diana Spencer (1932–2011) who was a movie (1961–1997), who in 1981 star from age 12, when she married Britain’s Prince Charles appeared in American Velvet. to become Diana, Princess Her career included playing of Wales. She consequently Cleopatra, Maggie in Cat on a became one of the most famous Hot Tin Roof and winning two people in the world. Oscars for BUtterfield 8 and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Later in life, she was known for her philanthropy and Princess Grace activism amidst the height The American actress Grace of the AIDS epidemic. Kelly (1929–1982), who married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, in 1956. Jaclyn Smith An American actress who was one of the original angels on the television show “Charlie’s Angels,” which ran until 1981. She was a model and spokesperson for Max Factor Wayne Newton during the 1980s. An American singer born in 1942 known as “Mr. Las Vegas.”

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 15 CULTURAL CONTEXT

PHOTO: MELISSA MAXWELL, ADELIN PHELPS, AUSTENE VAN AND NICOLE KING IN STEEL MAGNOLIAS (DAN NORMAN)

PLACES

Baton Rouge Monroe lunches and banquets for its The capital of Louisiana, A city in Ouachita Parish in members and serves as a rental approximately 180 miles southwest northern Louisiana, which had location for events and weddings. of Natchitoches [pronounced a population of approximately NACK-a-dish]. 57,000 people when it reached its Tickfaw peak in 1980. It is approximately A very small town in Tangipahoa Chinquapin 100 miles east of Shreveport and 75 Parish that is northwest of A fictional community based on miles northeast of Natchitoches. New Orleans and southeast of Natchitoches, a city of 18,000 Natchitoches. in northwest Louisiana and the New Orleans hometown of playwright Robert The largest city in Louisiana, West Monroe Harling. located 260 miles southeast of West Monroe and Monroe are the Natchitoches on the Mississippi “Twin Cities of Louisiana.” The two Dry Prong River as it makes its way to the Gulf cities are divided by the Ouachita A village in Grant Parish in central of Mexico. New Orleans is home to River, with West Monroe on the Louisiana, approximately an hour the largest Mardi Gras celebration west bank and Monroe on the east southeast of Natchitoches and two in the country. bank. West Monroe’s population in hours southeast of Shreveport. 1980 was approximately 15,000. Petroleum Club in Shreveport LSU A private club founded in 1948 Zwolle Louisiana State University, located by employees of the oil industry A small town in Sabine Parish that in Baton Rouge. (draftsmen, geologists and is west of Natchitoches, south of engineers). Located on the top Shreveport and close to the Texas- two floors of the Mid-South Towers Louisiana border. since 1969, the club offers events,

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THINGS “Empty is the head that wears the Pepto-Bismol crown” A bright-pink medicine used to Baptist Book Store in Shreveport A play on a quote from relieve upset stomach, nausea and The Baptist Sunday School Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, in heartburn. Board of the Southern Baptist which King Henry says, “Uneasy lies Convention owned and operated the head that wears the crown.” a chain of bookstores called Baptist Book Stores. In the 1990s, groom’s cake they were rebranded to LifeWay A wedding tradition rooted in Christian Stores. Victorian England and picked up in the American South. It was “Circus of the Stars” originally an alcohol-infused An annual TV event that ran fruitcake and later expanded to on CBS from 1977 to 1994 where include chocolate and red velvet Piggly Wiggly celebrities performed circus- cake. It was often boxed and given A chain of grocery stores like acts. to guests as a wedding favor. Today, founded in 1916 by Clarence it represents the personality and/or Saunders in Memphis. They were hobbies of the groom and is served the first “self-service” grocery whenever the hosts want to serve stores where customers could it, often alongside the wedding cake. pick their own products from the shelves rather than having clerks pick items for them.

soup to nuts A phrase meaning everything, completely, from beginning to end.

Deputy Dawg An animated cartoon character created by Terrytoons who starred on a TV series of the same name from 1959 to 1962. The show magnolias featured a dog as a sheriff’s deputy A species of evergreen tree found in a Southern town. Despite his in North and South America as own incompetence, Deputy Dawg well as parts of Asia. They have always got the bad guy. big, waxy leaves and large, fragrant flowers that can be white, yellow, Spoolies dialysis pink or purple. Magnolias are the A brand of hair curlers dating back The manual removal of toxins from state flowers of both Louisiana to the 1950s that use heat to curl the body when the kidneys are and Mississippi. the hair. no longer able to do so. Dialysis is usually performed three times Mardi Gras Valium a week and each session can take Also known as Fat Tuesday, The brand name for diazepam, an several hours. Mardi Gras is the end of the anti-anxiety drug. Carnival season, which begins “A dirty mind is a terrible thing to on January 6 (sometimes called waste” Epiphany or Twelfth Night) in A play on the United Fund slogan, the Christian church calendar. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.” Mardi Gras is the day before Ash Wednesday, which is the official earping start of Lent (the six weeks Another word for vomiting. before Easter).

GUTHRIE THEATER \ 17 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For Further Reading and Understanding

EDITIONS OF THE PLAY Ted Lewis, “Playwright Robert Harling talks about ‘Steel Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, Magnolias,’” nola.com, July 15, 2019. Garden City, New York: The Fireside Theatre, 1986. Julia Reed, “Thirty Years of Steel Magnolias,” Garden & Gun, April/ Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling, May 2017. Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1988 (acting edition). WEBSITES

FILMS JDRF (Type 1 diabetes research, funding and advocacy) Steel Magnolias, directed by www.jdrf.org . Screenplay by Robert Harling. With Olympia Dukakis, American Diabetes Association Sally Field, , Shirley www.diabetes.org MacLaine, and Julia Roberts, 1989. National Kidney Foundation www.kidney.org Steel Magnolias, directed by Kenny Leon. Teleplay by Sally VIDEO Robinson. With , Adepero Odyue, Condola Rashad, NBC’s “Today Show” interviews Phylicia Rashad, and Alfre Robert Harling about the film's Woodard, 2012. 25th anniversary, 2013. www.today.com/video/ ARTICLES today/56341099

Maria Carter, “The Heartbreaking Real-Life Story Behind ‘Steel Magnolias,’” Country Living, July 28, 2017.

Audrey Farley, “Steel Magnolias Is a Beloved Weepy With a Dark Side,” The Atlantic, July 15, 2019.

Robert Harling, “An Inside Look at Steel Magnolias From Robert Harling,” Garden & Gun, April 26, 2018.

Roy Hoffman, “Brash New South Is Still a Stranger to Its Dramatists,” The New York Times, July 2, 1989.

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