Kurt Beattie Carlo Scandiuzzi Artistic Director Executive Director ACT – A Contemporary Theatre presents Opening Night September 16, 2010 Seasonal support provided by: A Contemporary Theatre Eulalie Bloedel Schneider Foundation Artists Fund The 2010 Mainstage Season is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Buster Alvord. THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS By David Rambo Drawn from the life and letters of Ann Landers With the cooperation of Margo Howard Originally produced by The Old Globe, San Diego, California Jack O’Brien: Artistic Director Louis G. Spisto: Executive Director THE LADY WITH ALL THE ANSWERS is presented by arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc. in New York. encoreartsprograms.com A-1 WelcomE to ACT I stumbled on Ann Landers’ column one day when I was an eleven-year-old kid on Long Island, leafing through our daily TABLE OF CONTENTS Newsday. Up until then I’d never cared much about anything in the paper other than Yankee box scores, but she hooked me A-1 Title Page with a bizarre letter. A woman wrote in about how much she A-2 Welcome to ACT loved her husband, but for one alarming habit of his: when he drank martinis, his preferred cocktail, he couldn’t help taking A-3 The Company out the olives, shaking the booze off, then stuffing them up his nose. Dear Ann, what am A-4 Up Next I to do about this, the woman wanted to know. I remember laughing so hard I fell on the floor. I don’t remember Ann’s reply. I think, on occasion, she just printed a letter for her A-5 Director’s Note reader’s amusement. But from that moment on, I became a fan, in spite of myself. A-6 Program Notes In the 1950s and early 1960, when newspapers were still numerous and Now, in an age of doctoral A-8 Who’s Who distinct, Ann Landers was a cultural degrees, accredited gurus, A-10 Giving Message presence. She was the popular member and oceans of information, of a group of middlebrow press A-11 Ongoing Support, Special Thanks, personalities and columnists like her Landers might seem quaint, Special Fund Donors sister Abby and the longshoreman and even under qualified. philosopher Eric Hoffer. They were A-12 Community Partners & Patrons the everyday psychologists and advisors sprung from the post-war populist heart of American society, ministering to an outwardly conformist and inwardly crazy America. A-13 ACT Circle of Donors Their wisdom had the ring of common sense, of intelligence tempered by life. Despite A-16 Board of Trustees, their commercial obligation to entertain, the tone of their ruinations had a democratic ACT Staff inclination, an unspecialized hard won decency, like a good country doctor who’s heard it all. Unlike showbiz and gossip columnists Louella Parsons and Walter Winchell, who were fundamentally contemptible, a coven of gleeful destroyers and liars in the political service of media thugs like William Randolph Hearst, Landers and her cohorts aimed to help people. Now, in an age of doctoral degrees, accredited gurus, and oceans of information, Landers might seem quaint, and even under qualified. But I think we should remember that she respected and took seriously the real pain and confusion of her readers in the letters they wrote. She considered her answers with the aid of experts and did her best with wit and care to help them. What I love most about David Rambo’s “The Lady With All The Answers” is its heart. It captures the struggle of a throaty, optimistic soul like Ann Landers trying to answer the difficult challenges of her life and ours with the truth. And, with a bit of humor when appropriate, how she somehow made us feel that we were capable of changing ourselves and the world for the better. Kurt Beattie Artistic Director A-2 ACT THEATRE ThE COmpany Cast Julie Briskman Eppie Lederer ("Ann Landers") prOduction Team Valerie Curtis-Newton Director Martin Christoffel Scenic Designer Melanie Taylor Burgess Costume Designer Robert Aguilar Lighting Designer Brendan Patrick Hogan Sound Designer To come/holding space Assistant Lighting Designer JR Welden Stage Manager Verhanika Wood Production Assistant Setting: The study of a luxurious high-rise apartment in Chicago, late June 1975 Running Time: Two hours. There will be one intermission. The Actors and Stage Managers in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Audience members are cordially reminded to silence all electronic devices such as cell phones, watch alarms, and pagers prior to the performance. All forms of photography and the use of recording devices are strictly prohibited. Please do not walk on the stage before, during or after the show. ACT operates under agreements with the following: encoreartsprograms.com A-3 Welcome to Our Home! (L to R) Anne Allgood in Das Barbecü, photo by Chris Bennion; Mark Siano & The Freedom Dancers, photo by Stephen Vest; Judd Hirsch in Below the Belt, photo by Chris Bennion; Cast of A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light, photo by Kevin Kauer; Nick Garrison in NEW VOICES, photo by Victoria Lahti. As we continue the 2010 season of Mainstage plays, we want Seattle Dance Project, Mark Siano & The Freedom Dancers, to recognize, salute, and THANK the people that make Young Playwrights Festival, Moisture Festival, New Century this possible: YOU, our audience. Your attendance at ACT Theatre Company, KT Niehoff / Lingo Dance, Short Stories represents an important gesture of support, for which we are Live, Pinter Fortnightly, and RAWSTOCK to name just a few. very grateful. 2010 at ACT is unique in that through our Our vision of becoming Seattle's downtown center for the arts Central Heating Lab initiative, we have grown our mission is certainly becoming a reality. And how is this all possible? beyond Mainstage plays, to also produce for our community a Because of YOU, our dear audience. And for that, we are vibrant variety of live entertainment spanning theatre, music, forever grateful. film, dance, visual art, and more. Since early January, our stages THANK YOU for supporting us and our vision for have lit up with partner artists such as 14/48, Shadow & Light, contemporary arts! Up next at ACT — A theatre of new ideas Oct 15 – Nov 14 A gleefully gruesome comedy from the Oscar-nominated author of In Bruges. tickets on sale now! (206) 292-7676 | www.acttheatre.org | 700 Union Street, Downtown Seattle A-4 ACT THEATRE A Brief History of by Stephanie Advice columns timm Advice columns can be tracked as far He afterwards went to Eton, and he affirms back as 1693, when the first British that the whippings there were not half so women’s magazine, The Ladies’ Mercury, severe as thos of his governess. promised to answer questions relating —Yours obediently, M. Walker to love with the “zeal and softness becoming to the sex.” According to It was also popular for general magazines Guardian reporter Kathryn Hughes, during the Victorian period to run all the readers were instructed to send competitions with prizes for the best letter. in details of baffling instances of male The grandmother of all advice behavior like prospective fiancés taking columnists was Dorothy Dix, a too long to propose, to a coffee house pseudonym used by Elizabeth Meriwether near St. Paul’s and wait for “the Ladies Gilmer, the daughter of a well-connected Society” there to crack the code, or at Southern family who had come to least come up with some bracing advice Tennessee from Virginia who was largely Eppie Lederer visiting wounded soldiers in Viet Nam. about not bothering. While most of the topics contained in advice columns were about women’s One out of four people in this country issues, they were popular in men’s periodicals as well. The Athenian Mercury is mentally unbalanced. think of your targeted ordinary people from middle three closest friends; if they seem ok, and lower classes. Complaints in the magazine about a “Knot of Apprentices then you're the one. misbehaving with a servant maid of no good reputation” were frequent. The Sir, —On this subject, and in reply to the self-educated. Gilmer’s first columns magazine warned apprentices that such mother who complains of her untoward were amusing, literate social satire, many behavior risked “scandal and danger” to boy, I would advise her to read the remarks geared to early women’s issues. They their reputations, and the termination of of a young gentleman in the supplemental were an instant success, and readers indenture could be ruinous to a young conversazione of the Englishwoman’s began writing to Dorothy Dix for advice. man prospects, and were a threat to his Domestic Magazine for April last, and then In 1917 a national syndicate picked “Fame, Estate, Body and ‘tis to be fear’d she will find a cure for her troublesome son. up Dorothy Dix. By the 1930s she was Soul and all.” After innumerable whippings had failed, the receiving 400 to 500 letters a day. Even In the Victorian period, some governess took it into her head to dress him after achieving wealth and fame, she magazines printed entire letters that in his sister’s clothes, which, though the feat answered each of her letters personally. offered opinion rather than advice, was accomplished after much kicking and Beatrice Fairfax, another name though for the most part, the practice plunging, had the desired effect; and he tells inextricably linked to the lovelorn genre, was to print only the answers to readers’ us that whenever he transgressed or failed was Marie Manning who originated letters, leaving out the question, or only in his lesson, if his governess rang the bell, her column in 1898.