43nd Season • 417th Production JULIANNE ARGYROS STAGE / APRIL 22 - MAY 13, 2007 David Emmes Martin Benson PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR presents the world premiere of SYSTEM WONDERLAND BY David Wiener Myung Hee Cho Lap-Chi Chu Tom Cavnar Martin Noyes SCENIC AND COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN SOUND DESIGN FIGHT DIRECTOR John Glore David Leavenworth Erin Nelson* DRAMATURG PRODUCTION MANAGER STAGE MANAGER DIRECTED BY David Emmes Larry and Dee Higby, HONORARY PRODUCERS System Wonderland was commissioned and developed by South Coast Repertory. System Wonderland • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P1 CAST OF CHARACTERS (In order of appearance) Jerry ...................................................................................... Robert Desiderio* Evelyn ............................................................................... Shannon Cochran* Aaron ............................................................................................. John Sloan* SETTING A house on the coast of Los Angeles county. LENGTH Approximately two hours with one 15-minute intermission. PRODUCTION STAFF Casting .............................................................................. Joanne DeNaut Production Assistant ................................................ Jennifer Ellen Butler Videographer ................................................................ Victor Mouledoux Assistant Videographer ..................................................... Chip Tompkins Stage Management Intern ..................................................... Emily Krech Assistant Lighting Designer ............................................. Johnny Bradley ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Film and Video Department of Orange Coast College 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. Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance. * Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers. Official Airline P2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • System Wonderland In the Navel of a Fruitfly BY JOHN GLORE eorge S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly’s irresistible. The disillusioned playwright’s motives — Merton of the Movies follows its wide-eyed, to gain a measure of revenge? to expose the sordid title character from small-town Illinois to truth behind the glamour and glitz? to turn lemons of Hollywood, where the movie-crazy Merton bitter experience into the lemonade of high comedy? aims to become a serious film-maker; but he — don’t always yield dramatic gold, however much soon discovers that the battle between art the result may soothe the writer’s bruised ego. and commerce all too often makes the people who But the best Hollywood plays turn out not to be make movies behave badly. Kaufman and Connelly about Hollywood, at bottom. Instead they use the wrote the play in 1922, before the advent of talkies, volatile, competitive, high-stakes dynamic of Gbut even at that early date, Tinseltown’s reputation for Hollywood to turn up the temperature on human tomfoolery made it a fertile field for comedy. stories that could and do happen in Kaufman worked that field again with Moss Hart in many other, more their classic, Once in a Lifetime (1930): a hapless New York playwright gets chewed up and spit out by the machinery of the studio system after ordinary settings. Like any business where the potential to make billions is shadowed by the even greater potential to go down in run-ins with flames, Hollywood runs primarily on fear: decisions many of the familiar types — are usually based on a desire to avoid cataclysmic the megalomaniacal producer, the catty gossip failure. And fear is one of the principal fuels for both columnist, the self-important director — that have comedy and drama. So take a fraught situation — a become frequent targets in a legion of subsequent relationship or set of relationships seething with Hollywood plays both serious and satirical. tension — drop it into the Hollywood pressure-cooker A chat-room for theatre people yields a list of and the human stuff is more apt to boil over in two dozen titles with ease — from The Big Knife by interesting ways. Clifford Odets to Sam Shepard’s Angel City to David We can also thank Hollywood for the fact that Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow — plays that find deliciously the people who have swum successfully in its shark- unsavory fodder in Hollywood, in its denizens and the infested waters often have amusing or interesting system by which movies are made and careers are things to say about their experience. Here’s a launched or destroyed. For any playwright who has sampling. had dealings with the Hollywood dream factory, the e— % —f temptation to throw poison-tipped darts at its venal, back-biting, soul-corroding ways seems almost You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart. Above, left to right, Fred Allen, William Faulkner, Greta — Fred Allen Garbo, David Mamet, Cesar Romero, Ben Hecht and Lil- lian Gish. e— % —f System Wonderland •SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P3 Hollywood is a place where a man can get stabbed in It’s said in Hollywood that you should always forgive the back while climbing a ladder. your enemies — because you never know when — William Faulkner you’ll have to work with them. e— % —f — Lana Turner e— % —f If only those who dream about Hollywood knew how difficult it all is. Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool. — Greta Garbo — Liv Ullmann e— % —f e— % —f You know, when I first went into the movies Lionel If my books had been any worse, I should not have Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any my father and finally he played my husband. If he better, I should not have come. had lived I’m sure I would have played —Raymond Chandler his mother. That’s the e— % —f way it is in Hollywood is like life, you face it with the sum total of your equipment. — Joan Crawford Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older. — Lillian Gish e— % —f The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as Hollywood is the backdrop of my family, and I dubious as tissue-paper cuff links. know that the movie business is incredibly cruel as — Ben Hecht you get older. e— % —f — Jamie Lee Curtis e— % —f We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of I’m yet another resource-consuming kid in an course, it is. overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent — David Mamet by Hollywood and Madison Avenue, poised with my e— % —f cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you’re old and weak. Well, you know what they say in Hollywood — the — Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) most important thing is being sincere, even if you have to fake it. e— % —f — Cesar Romero e— % —f Scriptwriting is the toughest part of the whole racket, the least understood and the least noticed. In Hollywood — in Hollywood, you’re as good as — Frank Capra your last picture. e— % —f — Erich von Stroheim Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only Left to right, Erich von Stroheim, Lana Turner, Liv Ullman, competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around. Raymond Chandler, Joan Crawford, Frank Capra and Jamie Lee Curtis — Herman Mankiewicz to Ben Hecht P4 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • System Wonderland SHANNON COCHRAN ROBERT DESIDERIO JOHN SLOAN Evelyn Jerry Aaron Artist Biographies *SHANNON COCHRAN (Evelyn) Sweet Charity, My Fair Lady and *ROBERT DESIDERO (Jerry) is mak- previously appeared at SCR in the Baby (Joseph Jefferson Award ing his SCR debut. He has ap- Pacific Playwrights Festival reading nominations for all three) at Mar- peared in Down the Road and The of System Wonderland. Theatre riott Theatre, Lincolnshire; Three Disputation at Tiffany Theatre, credits include Private Lives at Ways Home at Victory Gardens Love Letters at Coronet Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre; Bug at the Theater; The Nerd at the Royal Room Service at Pasadena Play- Barrow Street Theatre for which George Theatre; and The Elephant house, Herself as Lust at Play- she received an Obie and a The- Man at Playhouse on the Square. wrights Horizons, Chisholm Trail atre World Award; 93 Acres of Film credits include The Substance at Manhattan Theatre Club and Barley at the Taper New Works of Things Hoped For, Star Trek: The Indian Wants the Bronx at the Festival; Space at Mark Taper Nemesis, The Ring and The Babe. Charles Playhouse, as well as nu- Forum; Morning Star, The Man Television appearances include a merous productions at Boston Who Came to Dinner, Picasso at recurring role on “Star Trek: Deep Shakespeare Company and the the Lapin Agile, Inspecting Carol, Space Nine”; guest starring roles New Jersey Shakespeare Festival. Your Home in the West and Step- on “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Strong Film and television credits include ping Out at Steppenwolf Theatre Medicine,” “The Office,” “Without The Princess and the Cabbie, Oh Company; Bug at the Gate The- a Trace,” “Law & Order: SVU,” God! You Devil, Gross Anatomy, atre, London; Henry IV, What the “Frasier,” “Gilmore Girls,” “The Sopranos,” “The Jeff Foxwor- Butler Saw and Happy End “Touched by an Angel,” “Grosse thy Show,” “Murder, She Wrote,” (Joseph Jefferson Award nomina- Pointe,” “ER” and “NYPD Blue”; “Cheers,” “Knots Landing,” “Heart tion) at the Court Theatre;