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He hires a randy young Ukrainian tour guide who takes him on a hilarious road trip in search of the woman’s village, as they confront haunting memo- ries along the way. The Southern California premiere of a stunning adaptation of the beloved novel. “REACHES STRAIGHT INTO THE HEART.” — The New York Times A socially awkward young man asks his neighbor, a Broadway dancer whose career has been sidelined by an injury, to teach him enough dance moves so he can survive an appearance at an awards dinner. What follows is a bumpy road of self-discovery in this sweetly witty and touching romantic comedy. BUY TODAY BUY ONLINE TO GET etcsb.org GREAT CALL BOX OFFICE SEATS! 805.965.5400 SUMMER 2019 Take the next step in performing arts training. MARCH 25 & 26, 2019 AUDITIONS 805.965.5400 x541 www.etcsb.org 4 Exciting New Performance Workshops for Aspiring Performers Ages 9-24 ETC, which became an Equity theater in 1989, is Santa Barbara’s sole professional not-for-profit theater company. The company, which presents five or six plays per season, has produced several American and West Coast premieres, and garnered numerous awards over the years. JONATHAN FOX JILL SELTZER ARTISTIC DIRECTOR MANAGING DIRECTOR IN ASSOCIATION WITH DANA WHITE SARA MILLER McCUNE PRESENT DEATH OF A SALESMAN BY ARTHUR MILLER DIRECTED BY JOSEPH HANREDDY SCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN SE HYUN OH DIANNE K. GRAEBNER LIGHTING DESIGN ORIGINAL MUSIC/SOUND DESIGN/MUSIC DIRECTION JEAN-YVES TESSIER BARRY G. FUNDERBURG CASTING FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY AMY LIEBERMAN, CSA KEN MERCKX DRAMATURGY ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGEMENT BRIAN McDONALD KATE SAUBESTRE* PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGEMENT ABIGAIL STRANGE* ADDITIONAL SPONSORSHIP FROM ELAINE AND HERBERT KENDALL CHUCK AND MISSY SHELDON PETER AND DEBBY STALKER THE 2018–19 SEASON SPONSORED BY LEATRICE LURIA DEATH OF A SALESMAN is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York. The Costume and Sound Designers The Director is a member of the STAGE are members of United Scenic Artists, DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS Local USA 829 of the IATSE. SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union. WELCOME TO ETC Welcome to ETC’s 40th Season! In honor of the occasion, we are thrilled to invite back the founder of ETC, Joseph Hanreddy, to direct. In 1992, I was living in Berlin and working for a theater in the former East, assisting the director on a production of Death of a Salesman. Germany had reunited about a year earlier, and many East Germans were living under capitalism for the first time in their lives. The play was not unfamiliar to East Germans. During the Cold War, Arthur Miller was the most-produced American playwright on East German stages, and Death of a Salesman was often presented to proselytize JONATHAN FOX against America and the evils of capitalism. But now the play ARTISTIC DIRECTOR had a fresh resonance because, in the pains of reunification, East Germans were grappling with unemployment and the loss of a safety net. For me — then and especially now — it’s the play’s gimlet-eyed perception of American values, to wit, the importance placed on being “well-liked,” the equation of wealth with “greatness,” the depiction of the high school football player as heroic, and self-delusion while in pursuit of the American Dream. When Joe and I initially talked about the play, he had the exciting vision of incorporating live music into the action. Part of ETC’s mission is to look at classic plays in a fresh way. Thank you for being with us and enjoy the production! Welcome to the third production of ETC’s 40th season. This season’s opening production of David Ives’s The School for Lies took you back to 1666. And our second production, The Legend of Georgia McBride, was set in Panama City, Florida in the year 2016. At today’s performance you’ll find yourself in post World War II America with Arthur Miller as your guide. Please count on coming to Ensemble Theatre Company’s production for some valuable time travel that brings you right back home. ETC strives to “engage audiences with compelling and thought-provoking theatrical productions.” We think this JILL SELTZER season’s offerings do just that, but we’ll let you be the judge MANAGING DIRECTOR of that. One interesting fact about this production. Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway in 1949 and ran for 742 performances. Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005, fifty-six years to the day from Death of a Salesman’s opening night on Broadway. We hope you enjoy ETC’s production of this timeless American classic. THE CAST IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE WILLY LOMAN ....................................................................HENRY WORONICZ* LINDA.........................................................................................GIGI BERMINGHAM* BIFF ..........................................................................................TREVOR PETERSON* HAPPY ...........................................................................................................ALEX NEE* BERNARD/MUSICIAN (bass clarinet, clarinet) ............... SERGI ROBLES* THE WOMAN/LETTA/MUSICIAN (flute, saxophone, clarinet) .................................................. SARAH SAVIANO* CHARLEY ...............................................................................JOHN P. CONNOLLY* UNCLE BEN ........................................................... PAUL MICHAEL SANDBERG HOWARD WAGNER/STANLEY ....................................MICHAEL BERNARD JENNY/MISS FORSYTHE/MUSICIAN (cello) ............. JENN CHANDLER* Brooklyn, New York 1949 Death of a Salesman will be performed with one 20-minute intermission. Please turn off all electronic devices while in the theater. The video and/or audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited. SPECIAL THANKS: Center Theatre Group Cyder Johnson Brandon Cory Katie Laris Nancy Davidson John and Ruth Matuszeski Eleanor Hitchcock Laura and Geof Wyatt * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara is a professional regional theater employing members of the Actors’ Equity Association and is a constituent member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theater. PRESENTED WITH SUPPORT FROM A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR When I read Death of a Salesman in high school, I wasn’t especially interested in the theater or literature, but the story of the Lomans and parallels to our family hit me hard. At the time, my father was a longshoreman on the San Francisco docks, but previously had been a salesman. Dad was guarded about his early years and I know more about his past now than I did then. He was abandoned by his parents at a very early age, raised by an alcoholic foster mother in Chicago, and he struck out on his own at the first opportunity. When WWII broke out, he joined the Navy, serving in the South Pacific, met and married my mom after he was discharged in San Pedro, and made enough money selling typewriters and adding machines to realize his dream of working for himself. He set up as a realtor in a rented office in Victorville, but sadly, there were few people looking to invest in Apple Valley, the place he had been sure would be the next Palm Springs. He and Mom sold the dream house they’d built almost as soon as it was completed, and we moved to the Bay Area where Dad took a job as a “road man,” traveling the West Coast selling industrial adhesive tapes. After a year, he was let go and his territory given to “younger blood.” At that time, the government was hiring longshoremen to load napalm for the war in Vietnam. Dad hated the war and at his advancing age the work was rough, but after a year of unemployment, he needed a job. Depressed, he spent his evenings alone in his room smoking cigarettes, and held on to the job until he was eligible for a modest pension that, coupled with Mom’s pay as a receptionist, allowed them to get by. Like Willy Loman, Dad dreamed of greater worldly success for his son than he had been able to enjoy, or at minimum, to spare me the pain of his self- perceived failure. He pushed me hard to find a lucrative, secure job. And I chose the theater. Like Willy and Biff, we wrangled until things got uncomfortable, followed by stretches of little or no communication. Eventually Dad’s smoking habit caught up to him; he got sick during the years that I was starting Ensemble Theatre and working as a carpenter until the company had grown enough for me to take a subsistence salary. During one of our last visits, I read to him from some plays that I thought would give him a needed laugh and it brought us closer than we’d ever been. He held my hand, wished me luck, and told me he was happy I’d found something I loved. I’ve enjoyed a long run in my chosen profession, and it has blessed me with a wonderfully rewarding, fulfilling and comfortable life. Happily, my mother was long lived, and my wife and I were able to move her close to us and share much of our lives and work with her.