Intimate Apparel
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39th Season • 380th Production SEGERSTROM STAGE / APRIL 11 - MAY 18, 2003 David Emmes Martin Benson PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR presents the World Premiere of INTIMATE APPAREL by LYNN NOTTAGE Scenic Design Costume Design Lighting Design Sound Design WALT SPANGLER CATHERINE ZUBER SCOTT ZIELINSKI LINDSAY JONES Composer Arranger/Piano Coach Dramaturg Associate Production Dramaturg REGINALD ROBINSON WILLIAM FOSTER MCDANIEL JERRY PATCH RHONDA ROBBINS Production Manager Stage Manager Casting TOM ABERGER *RANDALL K. LUM JOANNE DENAUT/JUDY DENNIS Directed by KATE WHORISKEY Honorary Producers JEAN AND TIMOTHY WEISS Intimate Apparel is produced in association with Center Stage Irene Lewis, Artistic Director; Michael Ross, Managing Director Produced in association with administered by Theatre Communications Group Intimate Apparel • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P1 CAST OF CHARACTERS (In order of appearance) Esther ..................................................................................... *Shané Williams Mrs. Dickson ......................................................................... *Brenda Pressley George Armstrong .................................................................... *Kevin Jackson Mrs. Van Buren ............................................................................ *Sue Cremin Mr. Marks .............................................................................. *Steven Goldstein Mayme ....................................................................................... *Erica Gimpel SETTING Manhattan, 1905 LENGTH Approximately two hours and 15 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Assistant Stage Manager ................................................ *Vanessa J. Noon Dialect Coach ....................................................................... Sarah Felder Assistant to the Set Designer ...................................... Hector Fernandez Assistant to the Lighting Designer ................................... Heather Gilbert Costume Design Assistant ........................................................ Julie Keen Stage Management Intern ................................................. Amber Thomas Deck Crew ........................................................... Jeff Ham, Bobby Weeks Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. 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. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. Official Airline P2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • Intimate Apparel The Panama Canal: A Hard Road to an Easy Route he labor force came from one could see a “certain and unjus- would be no difference in the effi- every part of the world—97 tified cruelty” in forcing “poor half- ciency of one group as compared countries according to the fed fellows” to work eight to ten to another. records—but the unskilled hours in such heat, wrote an ob- “The West Indian, while slow, pick-and-shovel workers server in Outlook magazine. “Until has learned many of the trades were nearly all black men, you have tried to do a good 15 and many of them have developed andT it was Barbados that supplied minutes work with a pick and into first-class construction men,” the majority…. shovel during the rainy season, wrote Robert Wood in his final of- All workers were given a con- you can have no idea of the ex- ficial report. “The bulk of the tract by which they received free haustion that tropical heat brings building work on the Canal has passage to Colon, Panama, and even to the laborer who is used to been done by West Indian carpen- were guaranteed free repatriation, it.” ters, masons and painters, and to- if they so chose, after 500 working ward the end of the construction days (roughly a year and eight period the West Indian remained The Panama Canal was officially opened months). The total number of men on the job as steadily as… the from Barbados was nearly 20,000. on August 15, 1914, by the passing of the American.” Wages were ten cents an hour, SS Ancon. At the time no single effort in For the first ten months of 1906 ten hours a day, six days a week. American history had exacted such a price the actual death rate among white Segregation by color, long an un- in dollars or in human life. The American employees was 17 per thousand. written rule on the railroad as well expenditures from 1904 to 1914 totaled But among the black West Indians as in Panamanian society in gener- it was 59 per thousand. Black la- $352,000,000, far more than the cost of al, became established policy. borers, those understood to be There were separate mess halls for anything built by the U.S. Government to suited to withstand the poisonous blacks. Housing, schools, hospi- that time. climate, were dying three times as talization were separate and by no Together the French and American fast as the white workers … the means equal…. costs totaled $639,000,000. It took 34 chief killer among black people Work of any kind was extreme- years from the initial effort in 1880 to ac- was pneumonia. Malaria, the sec- ly scarce on the vastly overpopu- ond worst killer, took 186 lives, all tually open the Canal. Over 80,000 per- lated island of Barbados. The but 12 of whom were West Indian mass of the populace, black and sons took part in the construction, and Negroes…. desperately poor, survived primari- over 30,000 lives were lost in both French Generally, the West Indian ly on a few months of planting and and American efforts. worker was soft-spoken, courte- harvest on the sugar plantations, ous, sober, very religious, as near- when an able-bodied man could ly everyone came to appreciate. earn 20 cents a day, the same Records show the crime rate, as earned in Panama in two hours. The West Indians did become well as the incidence of alcoholism So for every man who was picked increasingly proficient with tools and venereal disease among the to go to Panama there were five or and at working in unison and in black employees was abnormally more others eager for the chance. association with heavy machinery, low during the construction years. The comparative inefficiency as many of them would recount af- Approximately 80 percent of the and technical ignorance of the terward with pride. The replace- black workers were illiterate. West Indian workers became a ment of their traditional high- source of aggravation for American starch, low protein diet (chiefly This article is taken from David engineers and foremen, prone to rice and yams) with more nourish- McCullough’s The Patch Between scoff at any black man who had a ing meals improved the output of the Seas (Simon & Schuster, 1977). singsong British accent…. Still, the West Indians. In time there Intimate Apparel •SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P3 Rags to Riches: Black Musicians Improvise a Way to Independence agtime, the first black music and in Europe, through new theater Syncopation is the continuous of the United States to achieve forms by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt superimposition of an irregular wide commercial popularity, Weill, among others. rhythm overtop of a regular one… was a pervasive and profound Ragtime, as a written and pub- Although syncopation is essentially of influence on the shape of lished musical form, communicated African origin, its combination with American music, changing the both black folk styles of playing and the European musical system ac- Rconcept of the popular song and black conceptions of art music. counts for the essential uniqueness of popular dance styles. It was dissemi- Whereas earlier forms of black ragtime. nated and thoroughly appreciated in music—work songs, plantation This was the first significant Europe, directly influencing such gi- songs, spirituals, and minstrel ants of modern music as Claude De- tunes—existed essentially in perfor- bussy, Erik Satie, mance, ragtime was conceived and An Intimate Glossary Igor Stravinsky, executed as a written piano form. Appliqué – a sewing technique in which fabric Darius Mil- It was possible, in the ragtime patches are layered on a foundation fabric, haud, and years of 1895-1915, to hear ragtime then stitched in place by hand or machine. Paul Hin- performed by Scott Joplin, Louis Barbados – West Indies island nation in the Chauvin or Tom Turpin, and it was Caribbean, situated about 100 miles east of also possible to obtain full and accu- the Windward Islands. Also known as rate scores of classic ragtime. Rag- Bimshire. time effected a total musical revolu- tion, the first great impact of black Cambric – a fine, thin, white linen fabric. folk culture on the dominant white Chiffon – a sheer fabric, especially of silk. middle-class culture of America. William J. Schafer and Crepe de Chine – a soft fine or sheer clothing Johannes Riedel, The Art of crépe, especially of silk. Ragtime, LSU Press, 1973 Duppy – a ghost or spirit. ❂ ❂ ❂ Above, Flamboyant tree – a showy tropical tree widely planted for its immense racemes of scarlet Scott Joplin rag, strictly speaking, is about 1904 and orange flowers. and Louis Chau- an instrumental, synco- vin about 1906. pated march and follows Heliotrope – a variable color of moderate to A reddish purple. the same formal conventions demith—just as it as the march. Ragtime, how- Mangroves – tropical maritime trees or shrubs influenced a genera- ever, is a much