11 TWO TRAINS RUNNING 12 Cast Information 14 Director’s Notes by Timothy Douglas 16 Artist Biographies 33 THE THANKSGIVING PLAY 34 Cast Information 36 Playwright’s Notes by Larissa FastHorse 37 Artist Biographies ALSO INSIDE 30 Coming Next 57 Patron Information Photo of Philip Paul (right); photo of Barbara Chisholm as Misery’s Annie Wilkes (right); and photo of Ayana Workman as Mary Bennet and Andrew Fallaize as Arthur de Bourgh (right) by Tony Arrasmith/Arrasmith & Associates. Visual for The Second City — It’s Not You, It’s Me provided by The Second City. All other marketing visuals by Tony Arrasmith/Arrasmith & Associates. Box Office: 513-421-3888 ∙ OH, IN, KY Toll-Free: 800-582-3208 Telecommunications Device for the Deaf: 513-345-2248 www.cincyplay.com Program Advertising Sales: 866-503-1966 Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park is a proud member of the League of Cincinnati Theatres. ADVERTISING Onstage Publications Advertising Department 937-424-0529 | 866-503-1966 Email: [email protected] www.onstagepublications.com This program is published in association with Onstage Publications, 1612 Prosser Avenue, Dayton, Ohio 45409. This program may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. Onstage Publications is a division of Just Business, Inc. Contents ©2019. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. 5 • IN THIS ISSUE NOTES FROM BLAKE & BUZZ August Wilson is a giant of the American theatre, and we are thrilled to produce another of his masterworks, Two Trains Running, in the Marx Theatre this spring. Led by our associate artist and nationally renowned Wilson interpreter, Timothy Douglas, Two Trains Running takes us back to Wilson’s beloved Hill District neighborhood in Pittsburgh — this time amidst the tumult of the late 1960s, where ordinary people find themselves swept up in a rapidly changing world. Timothy has assembled a talented cast of Wilson veterans to bring this world to life with poetic language and emotional truth. Another unique story unfolds in the Shelterhouse Theatre in The Thanksgiving Play, but this one is told through laughter and biting satire. Four well-meaning, liberal adults gather in an elementary school to create a politically correct play that balances the American Thanksgiving story many of us have been taught with the lived realities of Indigenous people. The hilarious results allow us to laugh at ourselves and the many ways that we try too hard to do and say the right thing but still somehow miss the mark. Written by Larissa FastHorse, this is the first play by a Native American playwright ever produced at the Playhouse. It’s no accident that diverse stories grace our stages more often these days. The Playhouse belongs to everyone, and we want to reflect the world around us. Over the past seven seasons, we’ve programmed a wide variety of diverse work. From African-American stories like Safe House and August Wilson’s Jitney to the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Disgraced to contemporary Latinx works like Native Gardens and In the Heights, we strive to reflect the ever-changing world in which we live. The road to understanding is paved with familiarity, and it broadens everyone’s view to see the world through someone else’s eyes for a few hours. Diversity serves us all. Thank you for joining us to celebrate the many stories that make up this American moment. Blake & Buzz Blake Robison Buzz Ward Artistic Director Managing Director 7 • EXECUTIVE NOTES CINCINNATI PLAYHOUSE IN THE PARK Blake Robison Buzz Ward Artistic Director Managing Director August Wilson’s TWO TRAINS RUNNING Presented by MOE & JACK ROUSE and RANDOLPH WADSWORTH Director Timothy Douglas Set Designer Tony Cisek Costume Designer Kara Harmon Lighting Designer Michael Gilliam Composer/Sound Designer Matthew M. Nielson Casting Director Stephanie Klapper, CSA March 2 – 30, 2019 Robert S. Marx Theatre Design Sponsor: Honorary Producer: Leon Meyer Artist Sponsor: Artist Sponsor: Artist Sponsor: Artist Sponsor: Rosemary and Mark Schlachter Robert S. Marx Theatre Season presented by: Season Sponsor of New Work: The Rosenthal Family Foundation Marx Season Design Sponsor: Additional support provided by: Originally Produced on Broadway by Yale Repertory Theatre (Stan Wojewodski, Jr., Artistic Director), Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre (Gordon Davidson, Artistic/Producing Director) Herb Alpert/Margot Lion, Scott Rudin/Paramount Pictures, and Jujamcyn Theaters (James H. Binger, Chairman; Rocco Landesman, President; Paul Libin, Producing Director; Jack Viertel, Creative Director); produced in association with Huntington Theatre Company (Peter Altman, Producing Director; Michael Maso, Managing Director), Seattle Repertory Theatre and Old Globe Theatre (Jack O’Brien, Artistic Director; Thomas Hall, Managing Director) Originally mounted by Yale Repertory Theatre (Lloyd Richards, Artistic Director; Benjamin Mordecai, Managing Director) August Wilson’s Two Trains Running is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC. CAST (in speaking order) Wolf Jefferson A. Russell* Memphis Raymond Anthony Thomas* Risa Malkia Stampley* Holloway Michael Anthony Williams* Hambone Frank Britton* Sterling Chiké Johnson* West Doug Brown* Production Stage Manager Jenifer Morrow* Second Stage Manager Brooke Redler* Stage Management Intern Rachel Twardzik Time: 1969 Place: Pittsburgh Two Trains Running will be performed with an intermission. Additional Production Staff Associate Director C. Renee Alexander Assistant Director Katie Baskerville Additional Props Crew Emily Hertzer Additional Carpenter Daniel Bradburn *Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. This theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States and with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees-Local No. 5. Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park receives partial funding from the Ohio Arts Council, a state agency created to foster and encourage the development of the arts and to preserve Ohio’s cultural heritage. Funding from the Ohio Arts Council is an investment of state tax dollars that promotes economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. TWO TRAINS RUNNING • 12 Director’s Notes By Timothy Douglas “You got to be right with yourself before you can be right with anyone else.” — August Wilson The works of August Wilson endure because we, as a theatre-going public, have yet to fully absorb the singular brilliance of this profoundly and authentically American playwright. And just when we feel we’ve digested a meaningful portion of his laser-focused representation of what it is to be black in America, it’s in the genuine humanness rooted in all of his characters — “sung” with open-throated abandon — that increasingly reflects our own evolving humanity and compels us to expand the capacity of our listening ears and heart to more deeply experience Wilson’s American Century Cycle of plays. In my revisiting Wilson’s plays, which has become a perpetual practice for this theatre director, I’m ever fascinated by how they continue to reveal their bottomless genius with a perpetual and galvanizing force. Without fail, they speak directly to — and become a mouthpiece for — the prevailing issues of these past 35 years, and I believe they will continue to do so for generations to come… always the telltale sign of world classics. While preparing to direct this production of Two Trains Running, its designation as a 1960s revolutionary’s story inspires my 2019 mind to thematically resound with the watch cry, #BlackLivesMatter. And yet when I imagine the Marx stage peopled with the play’s community of strong and loquacious African-American men, my focus redirects to the equally compelling #MeToo, and instantly I’m besotted with Risa’s clarifying voice and her ability to fully hold her own as the eye within the male-dominated storm of expressed oppression and survival. For me, it is Risa’s informed desires, nestled within her innate resilience — and complete with her scars literally exposed — that offers an anchoring hope for humanity in the way that only an evolved woman can. I dedicate this production to all of Wilson’s women… For though they may be far fewer in number to their male counterparts, theirs is an exponential journey of actualization often achieved through their deafening silence. TWO TRAINS RUNNING • 14 FRANK BRITTON Theatre, where he played Vershinin in The Three Sisters, LeBret in Cyrano de Bergerac and Egeus in (Hambone) A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Dr. John Prentice in Frank is honored to make Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner at Indiana Repertory his Cincinnati Playhouse in Theatre and Geva Theatre Center; Ghost of the Park debut and to return Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol at the to a role he played in 2014 Milwaukee Repertory Theater; and Crooks in Of at Round House Theatre in Mice and Men, another co-production between the Bethesda, Maryland. Off-off Milwaukee Repertory Theater and Arizona Theatre Broadway credits include Shape Company. His New York credits include A Time To Kill (La MaMa e.t.c.), regionally and Manhattan Theatre Club’s Wit on Broadway; with Firehouse Theatre (Richmond, Virginia) and and off-Broadway in Lost In The Stars at New York Virginia Shakespeare Festival (Williamsburg, City Center’s Encores! and Ruined, co-produced Virginia). He is a native of Washington D.C., a by the Manhattan Theatre Club and Goodman graduate of the National Conservatory of Dramatic Theatre. Chicago credits include Goodman Arts and a 17-year veteran of the D.C. theatre Theatre’s Meet Vera Stark and Sizwe Banzi is Dead scene, having appeared in productions at Arena at Court Theatre. He was also in Steppenwolf Stage, The Studio Theatre, Round House Theatre Theatre Company’s productions of The Crucible, and Imagination Stage, among others.