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Resource Guide WORLD PREMIERE | SEP 28 – 0CT 22 Resource Guide Marin Theatre Company Performance Resource Guides are intended to enrich your theatre experience by offering insight to the play and inspiring intellectual discovery through key background information. The guide offers notes on historical or cultural context as well as information on the artists. We hope this guide enhances your enjoyment of the performance! MARINTHEATRE.ORG | 397 MILLER AVE, MILL VALLEY | 415.388.5208 MTC Resource Guide | Thomas and Sally Student Matinees at Marin Theatre Company At MTC, we believe that theatre offers our community the By Thomas Bradshaw chance to share in the act of imaginative storytelling – live, in person, in the moment. For audiences and performers alike, TABLE OF CONTENTS theatre is a creative act, and we believe that sharing in a creative act inspires personal growth and brings people 2 . Student Matinees at MTC together. MTC’s Expanded Programs open up opportunities for people of all ages and all communities to participate in the 3 . Theatre Etiquette joyous, challenging, and inspiring process of theatre. 4 . Show Synopsis The Student Matinee series is a key component of MTC’s Expanded Programs and a fantastic opportunity for young 5 . .Character Descriptions people in Marin and the Bay Area. MTC’s Student Matinees are 6 . Dramaturgical Materials special weekday morning performances of plays we’re presenting in our regular season – the same plays that are 12 . Suggestions for Classroom Exercises delighting audiences, earning rave reviews, and contributing to the cultural fabric of our community. This is a unique 13 . .Play Review Worksheet opportunity for students to experience accomplished artists 14 . .2017-18 Season Student Matinees telling compelling stories in an intimate professional theatre. Student matinee performances for Thomas and Sally begin 15 . MTC Education Programs at 11:00 AM at our theater in Mill Valley. Each performance is 16 . MTC Mission Statement & History followed by a lively question-and-answer session with the cast and often the director. MTC can send a teaching artist into the school to prepare the students for the production with a series Contact us at [email protected] of participatory workshops. These workshops might include or by phone at (415) 322-6026. acting exercises, group games designed to immerse the students in a particular historical period, and discussions of MTC EDUCATION STAFF: challenging issues raised in the play. Ashleigh Worley Director of Education To bring a group to a student matinee performance, contact Hannah Keefer Resident Teaching Artist Grace Helmcke Education Intern Haley Bertelsen at (415) 388-5208. Our discounted ticket pricing for student matinee performances is never more than Common Core Anchor Standards addressed in this performance and educators’ guide include: $15 per ticket. This guide is intended to give a brief preview of Thomas and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.R Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Sally including a summary of the play and a bit of dramaturgy. We’ve also included a selection of suggestions for classroom CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W Text Types and Purposes exercises designed to deepen the students’ experience of the CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL Comprehension and Collaboration productions. Additional materials for this play as well as for CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L Vocabulary Acquisition and Use upcoming student matinees are available on the MTC website. 2 marintheatre.org Thomas and Sally | MTC Resource Guide | Theatre Etiquette When you are in the audience for a play, you’re not just Wait until intermission or the end of the show to talk with watching and listening – you are an important part of the your friends. Talking during a performance, even in whispers, show! This may seem obvious, but the actors on stage are right is very distracting. there in the same room as you. They can hear every noise the It’s not okay to take photos or video inside the theatre. audience makes: laughter, whispers, gasps, coughs, and candy Be respectful of the space; keep your feet off the seats wrappers. Actors can sense whether the audience is caught up and the edge of the stage. in the play, whether they’re bored, and even what kind of sense The program (sometimes called the playbill) contains lots of humor this particular audience has. And here’s the exciting of information about the production. It will always list the part – the actors change their performances from day to day to names of the actors and the characters they are playing, as fit what kind of audience is in the theatre. Here are a few tips well as the playwright, director, the stage manager, the on how to be a good audience, and how to get a great designers, and everyone else who worked on the play – performance from the actors. sometimes this can be a whole lot of people! Most programs Respond honestly to what happens onstage. It’s always will also include biographies of all these people, as well as okay to laugh if something is funny – it lets the actors know information about the play and the world in which it takes that the audience gets the joke! place. Look at the program before the play and during Be absolutely sure that your cell phone is turned off. A intermission; it can be distracting for the people around you if ringing cell phone distracts the audience as well as the actors. you read the program while the play is being performed. Also, the light from your cell phone screen is almost as At the end of the play, the actors will return to the stage to distracting as the sound of the ringer – no texting, no checking take a bow (this is called the curtain call). This is your chance the time on your phone. to thank them for their performance with your applause. If you If a play is longer than about an hour and a half, there will particularly liked a certain actor, it is appropriate to cheer. If usually be an intermission – a ten-minute break for you to you loved the show, you can let everyone know by giving the use the restroom and get a snack or drink of water before the actors a standing ovation! play begins again. If you use your cell phone during It’s worth repeating: please be sure your cell phone is intermission, remember to turn it off when you return to the turned off and stays off. The actors and everyone in the theatre. audience will appreciate it. marintheatre.org 3 MTC Resource Guide | Thomas and Sally Synopsis Thomas and Sally starts in the present day, with two ancestry and descent from their owner’s father-in-law university students debating whether or not statues of securing them stations and privileges far above the American founders who owned slaves should be pulled others enslaved there, leading to conflict. down. One of them, Simone, has a story to tell—she’s Jefferson, meanwhile, has his hands full: drafting the descended directly from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Declaration of Independence, founding the United Hemings, a woman whom he held as a slave. States, and fielding offers of diplomatic posts abroad. As Simone’s tale leaps to life, we find ourselves in the He finally agrees to serve as the U.S. minister to France, Virginia Colony in 1735, where an English sea captain, and departs for Paris, taking one daughter (Patsy) and Captain John Hemings, is trying to buy his own one enslaved person (James Hemings) with him. daughter out of slavery. This daughter is the child of When he calls for his other daughter (Polly) to come past a liaison he’d had with an African enslaved woman; join them in France, she arrives with a surprising because slavery was inherited from the mother, the chaperone: 14-year-old Sally Hemings, an enslaved girl, child was born enslaved. Hemings’ plan fails, leaving James’ sister. As Jefferson hosts dinners and talks his daughter, Betty, in bondage to slave-holding revolution with notables like the Marquis de Lafayette, plantation owner John Wayles. the two Hemingses discover that slaves are legally free Betty grows up enslaved to this man, doing in France; they are planning their next move when Sally housework and minding his children. Twenty-six years discovers something that will change her mind—and the pass, and Wayles, now grieving his third dead wife, course of history. turns to Betty for comfort…and sex. Betty’s children, The play closes with the debate that rages all around including Robert, James, and Sally, are all born into Thomas and Sally’s relationship: Sally’s consent and slavery—and on Wayles’ death, they and their mother agency. She was slave—could she give or withhold consent? are inherited as property by Martha Wayles Jefferson How does today’s concept of consent apply to lives lived (Wayles’ daughter), and her new husband, a lawyer 300 years ago? She was also a teenager—was she exploited, named Thomas Jefferson. when the legal marriage age in Virginia during her lifetime When the Hemingses arrive at Monticello, the was 10 years old? Or were there other factors at play in the Jefferson plantation, they are set apart; their half-white relationship between Thomas and Sally? Set design rendering by Sean Fanning. 4 marintheatre.org Thomas and Sally | MTC Resource Guide | Character Descriptions Karen/Abigail Adams/Patsy (Rosie Hallett*) Thomas and Martha Jefferson. When we first meet her, she is Karen - an 18-year-old eight years old, has been separated from the family she has student at a liberal arts lived with since she was three, and forced to make a college in Vermont.
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