07-10 Skinners Box.qxp_Gp 3.qxt 6/30/17 8:58 AM Page 19 Lincoln Center Festival lead support is provided by American Express July 10–12 Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College Improbable Opening Skinner’s Box NorthNorth AmericanAmerican pPremiereremiere Adapted from the book by Lauren Slater Directors Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson Set Design Laura Hopkins Lighting Design Nigel Edwards Sound Design Adrienne Quartly Approximate running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes, with no intermission This performance is made possible in part by the Josie Robertson Fund for Lincoln Center. Commissioned by Wexner Center for the Performing Arts. Co-commissioned by Lincoln Center Festival and the Brisbane Festival. Co-produced by Northern Stage and West Yorkshire Playhouse. Public support for Festival 2017 is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. 07-10 Skinners Box.qxp_Gp 3.qxt 6/30/17 8:58 AM Page 20 LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2017 OPENING SKINNER’S BOX Cast Alan Cox Stephen Harper Tyrone Huggins Morven Macbeth Kate Maravan Paschale Straiton 07-10 Skinners Box.qxp_Gp 3.qxt 6/30/17 8:58 AM Page 21 LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2017 OPENING SKINNER’S BOX A Note from the herself. She put herself into the stories she Artistic Directors tells and in doing so created controversy among some of the people she wrote about. We have tried to include an aware - What makes for a great story? All of us ness of that in our adaptation without taking would all say something different, but we sides. We leave it to our audience to decide like it when somewhere it addresses an whether she is a reliable witness. important question; when there are sur - prises along the way, but the kind of sur - What is clear is that Slater shares our fasci - prises that, when you look back, are not nation with the power of the stories that surprising at all; and of course, whatever these experiments and experimenters tell. the story seems to be about, it’s really about something else—something much What finally convinced us that this was a bigger and more important, something that book we should adapt for the stage was kind of blows your mind. her introduction: Opening Skinner’s Box features ten great “…Psychological experiments are fascinat - psychological experiments, but it’s really a ing because at their best they are com - collection of ten remarkable stories. pressed experience, life distilled to its poten - tially elegant essence, the metaphorical test The experiments themselves are extraordi - tube parsing the normally blended parts so narily theatrical, but Opening Skinner’s Box you might see love, or fear, or conformity, also opens up the stories behind each or cowardice play its role in particular cir - experiment: the people who made them cumscribed contexts. Great psychological and opposed them, the knowledge they exper iments amplify a domain of behavior uncovered, and the backlash they pro - or being usually buried in the pell-mell of voked. These ten short stories, taken col - our fast and frantic lives. Peering through lectively, are one way of telling the story of this lens is to see something of ourselves.” the twentieth century and the struggle to understand who we are and what we are Because that also pretty much sums up really like as a species. what theater is trying to do. Of course, the other story threading its way through the piece is that of Lauren Slater —Phelim McDermott and Lee Simpson 07-10 Skinners Box.qxp_Gp 3.qxt 6/30/17 8:58 AM Page 22 LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2017 OPENING SKINNER’S BOX About the Artists Nigel Edwards (Lighting Design) has designed 26 shows for Forced Enter - Phelim McDermott (Co-Director) is a tainment since 1990. Other credits include founding member and co-artistic director of the premieres of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed , Improbable. He has been directing and per - Crave , and 448 Psychosis ; and Roberto forming since 1984, when he co-founded Zucco , The Mysteries , Victoria , The derek derek with Julia Bardsley. Pro - Tempest , and Troilus and Cressida for the ductions with Improbable include the multi RSC; and Debbie Tucker Green’s Dirty award-winning 70 Hill Lane, Lifegame, Butterfly , Trade , and Stoning Mary . Dance Animo, Coma, Spirit, Sticky, Cinderella, The work includes 50 Acts , Dance Dance Dance , Hanging Man, Theatre of Blood (a collabora - Desert Island Dances , ten shows for tion with the National Theatre), and The Remote Control, and designs for Wendy Tempest . He directed the acclaimed Philip Houstoun. Operas include Jenufa (Welsh Glass operas Satyagraha, The Perfect National Opera), The Maids (English National American, and Akhnaten in collaboration Opera), and Hansel and Gretel (Opera North). with English National Opera. He is lighting designer for Ryuichi Sakamoto and has designed for and toured with Jeff Lee Simpson (Co-Director) is a founding Beck, Diamanda Galás, Carsten Nicolai, and member and co-artistic director of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Improbable. He’s been a croupier, a cinema projectionist, and a breakfast DJ. Since Adrienne Quartly (Sound Design) has then—along with his work with worked on The Crucible (Selladoor/ Improbable—he’s become a member of the Luxembourg); Rose (Home, Manchester); Comedy Store Players, has written plays, Cuttin’ It and The Container (Young Vic); I appeared in sitcoms, and performed in TV Am Thomas (Told by an Idiot/National dramas and films. His real name is Len. Theatre Scotland); Bad Jews (Theatre Royal Haymarket); Splendour (Donmar Ware - Laura Hopkins (Set Design) was born in house); A Tale of Two Cities and Body of Kansas City, raised in Bangkok and Norwich, an American (Royal and Derngate, and has been based in London for 25 years. Northampton); A Raisin in the Sun (Sheffield She graduated with a degree in interior Crucible); Ghost Train, Too Clever, and You architecture in 1988 and went on to study at Can’t Take It With You (Royal Exchange, Motley Theatre Design, led by Percy Harris. Manchester); Sex and the Three Day Week As well as creating experimental and (Liverpool Playhouse); Inside Wagner’s devised productions (many in collaboration Head (Royal Opera House); Grand Guignol with director Pete Brooks) at the Institute of (Southwark); Every Last Trick (Spymonkey); Contemporary Arts, Barbican, Tate Britain, Get Happy, And the Horse, and Fräulein and non-theater spaces, she has also Julie (Barbican); Chekhov in Hell (Soho); The designed Shakespeare productions for the Importance of Being Earnest (Hong Kong Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Arts Festival); Rings of Saturn (Cologne); Company; classic drama at the National Stockholm (Frantic Assembly); Thomas Theatre; new writing at the Royal Court; Hobbes (Royal Shakespeare Company); musicals big and small; costumes for dance Woyzeck (St Ann’s, Brooklyn); The Painter pieces at Sadler’s Wells and the Volksoper, (Arcola); 93.2 FM (Royal Court); The Fastest Vienna; and opera sets for English National Clock (Hampstead); and Faustus, School for Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, Scandal, Volpone, and The Duchess of Malfi New Israeli Opera, and New Zealand Opera. (Stage on Screen). 07-10 Skinners Box.qxp_Gp 3.qxt 6/30/17 8:58 AM Page 23 LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2017 OPENING SKINNER’S BOX Alan Cox (Performer) trained at London Boy (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Fences Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. His (Liverpool Playhouse and Garrick Theatre, recent theater work includes Forty Years London); Noughts & Crosses, Always On (Chichester), The Divided Laing Orange, Fall of the Kingdom Rise of the Foot (Arcola), City Stories (St. James Studio), Soldier (RSC); I Was A Rat! (Teatro Kismet, Kingmaker (Arts Theatre), Playing with Birmingham Rep, New Wolsey, Nottingham Grown Ups (Brits Off Broadway), and Playhouse); and Electra (Old Vic, Sonia Cornelius (Finborough). In the U.S., he Freidman). For Improbable, he played toured in Frost/Nixon and The Caretaker Prospero in The Tempest (Northern Stage). and appeared on Broadway in Translations In New York, he was in King Lear (RSC) and (Manhattan Theater Club). He was in the his own play The Honey Man (Judy Owen London premieres of Longing and The Ltd. and Birmingham Rep). He has written Rubinstein Kiss (Hampstead), Found in the 12 commissioned plays, including text for Ground (Wrestling School), and The Earthly pieces by Phoenix and RJC dance compa - Paradise (Almeida). His TV and film work nies. He has often appeared on the radio includes The Good Wife, Lucan, John and in television and film. Adams, Housewife 49, Mrs. Dalloway, An Awfully Big Adventure , and Young Morven Macbeth (Performer), a core Sherlock Holmes . He is a regular impro - member and performer with imitating the viser with Ken Campbell’s School of Night. dog, worked with the company on Nocturnes (U.K. premiere), The Train (U.K. Stephen Harper (Performer) is an associ - premiere), A Farewell to Arms (U.K. and ate with Told by an Idiot and works on their European Tour), The Zero Hour (U.K. Tour), education projects. He was in Get Happy Six Degrees Below the Horizon (U.K. Tour), (Told by an Idiot), Don Quixote (Little Kellerman (U.K. and European Tour), and Soldier), One Snowy Night (Discover in Hotel Methuselah (U.K., European, and Stratford), The Mouse and His Child and International Tour). Other theater work The Merry Wives of Windsor (RSC), Mass includes Horizontal Collaboration (Fire Exit, Observation (Almeida Theatre ), Inspector The Traverse), LeanerFasterStronger Sands, We Love You City (The Belgrade (Crucible Theatre), Look Back in Anger Theater), and War Horse (National Theatre (Carpe Diem, The Rose Theatre, Bankside), and West End).