D is c G o v u e id r e y WRITTEN by ADAPTED by FREDERICK KNOTT JEFFREY HATCHER DIRECTED by DAVID IRA GOLDSTEIN P.L.A.Y. (Performance = Literature + Art + You) Student Matinee Series 2014-2015 Season 1 Table of Contents Dear Educators, Synopsis . 2 America Welcome to the new season and the new school year. in 1944 . 5 One of the main challenges in preparing students for a play with Frederick any sort of historical context is to help them to realize that even Knott and The Con though a story may be set seventy years ago, it can still have any Jeffrey Man . 5 number of relevances to their own lives and situations today. I have Hatcher. 2 an eighteen-year-old son and know full well that something from twenty years ago may seem like yesterday to me but, to him, it may “You Can Even as well have happened during the days of the Roman Empire. Setting Wait Finish Him Off Until Dark Here If You And so it is with Wait Until Dark. How does a play set in a in 1944. 2 Want To ...” . 6 basement apartment in Greenwich Village at the height of World War II in 1944 matter at all to a teenager in Rochester in 2014? What do the lives of a recently-blind woman, her war-damaged The Wait Until “You Have To husband and a group of con men have to do with how we live our Dark Cast . 2 Be Brave.” . 7 lives now? The answer, in a word, is plenty. “This play,” says Wait Until Dark director David Ira Goldstein, “is Wait Until Dark: Coping With about darkness and light, about the hidden and the seen.” And when A Production The Loss are any of those things ever absent from our lives? “By setting the play History . 3 Of Sight . 8 during the war,” Goldstein continues,” the characters have an outside pressure ... the threat of sudden death from the war hangs over Photography in Designing several of them.” Again, how many of us have lives devoid of outside Wait Wait Until pressures? Perhaps not as life-and-death as on the battlefield, but Until Dark . 3 Dark: pressure nonetheless. And a quick glance at any newspaper headline The Set. 9 will tell you that the world is full of pressure right now. Post-Traumatic We know, of course, that your students are facing their own pressures Stress Designing —educational, personal, familial, financial — and are just learning Disorder . 3 Wait Until how to withstand those pressures, how to understand the nuances and Dark: The learn to make them work in their favors. It’s an understanding that Costumes . 10 Wait Until Dark’s Susan Hendrix displays over and over. We could all Elements of learn a thing or two from her about dealing with pressure. Film Noir . 4 Resources. 10 As always, we thank you for bringing your students to Geva and for affording them the experience of live theatre. We can’t wait for them The Draft and to see this show. Rationing . 5 Sincerely, Participation in this production and supplemental activities suggested in this guide support the following NYS Eric Evans Learning Standards: Education Administrator A: 2, 3, 4; ELA: 1, 2, 3, 4; SS: 1 [email protected] (585) 420-2035 Cover image: Scenic Designer Vicki Smith’s renderings for Wait Until Dark. “The world’s a dangerous place. I’m holding out my hand for you.” – Sam 2 The Cast SYNOPSIS Susan and Sam Hendrix are a married couple living in Greenwich Village in New York City. Susan is recently blind, the result of a car accident just over a year and a half earlier. Sam, a photographer who had served overseas in the Marines during World War II, seems to suffer from a form of Post- Traumatic Stress Syndrome from his time in the militray. The couple met in a hospital (she was there after her car accident; he was in the psychiatric ward.) They married and now live fairly ordinary lives – that is, until they get swept up into a sinister situation. Sam accidentally acquires a seemingly ordinary doll that is the object of desire of some very menacing people. A mysterious woman slipped the doll into Sam’s bag during a train ride. She is later murdered in Sam and Susan’s apartment when she goes to retrieve the doll. The next day, three con men (Roat, Mike Talman and Carlino) work together to retrieve the doll from the apartment. Roat orchestrates the con and poses as a crazy old man (and later the man’s son.) Mike is a con man who poses as an old Marine friend of Sam’s. Carlino is an ex-cop who uses his badge to commit cons. The con men call Sam away from home under the guise of business, leaving Susan in the home alone. They manipulate her into trusting Mike and convince her that the police have implicated Sam in the murder because of a doll in his possession. Susan works with Mike to find the doll. Susan becomes suspicious of the men and teams up with a Gloria, a 12 year old girl who lives in an upstairs apartment. Gloria often comes to their apartment to help with chores and to escape her alcoholic mother. Susan and Gloria strategize to catch the men in their con. When Susan sends Gloria to safety, she is left alone in the apartment and works on a plan to protect herself. She ends up in a game of cat and mouse with one of the con men and must fight for her life. u FREDERICK KNOTT AND JEFFREY HATCHER Frederick Knott did not write many plays — Write Me a Murder (which would eventually become Alfred Hitchcock’s film Dial M for Murder) is the only other play aside from Wait Until Dark listed in his recent Playbill biography — but his work is regularly seen in stock, amateur, regional and touring productions around the world. Frederick Knott died Dec. 17, 2002. Jeffrey Hatcher is a playwright, adapter and screenwriter. He wrote the stage play Compleat Female Stage Beauty, which he later adapted into a screenplay, shortened to just Stage Beauty. He co-wrote the stage adaptation of Tuesdays with Morrie with author Mitch Albom. He is also the author of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Ella and a large number of other plays and adaptations. u SETTING WAIT UNTIL DARK IN 1944 When asked why he chose to set his adaptation of Wait Until Dark in 1944 as opposed to the original’s 1966 setting, playwright Jeremy Hatcher replied, “There’s something wildly white and Above, from top suburban about the people who live there [Susan and Sam’s neighborhood]. It doesn’t have any of to bottom: the 60s vibe at all. Once we decided it should take place in the mid-1940’s, then a lot of men are away Brooke Parks (Susan); Remi at war and the men who are left behind…some are broken and some are dangerous. It opened up a Sandri (Sam); lot of possibilities.” The director Matt Shakman, who headed up the first production of Hatcher’s Ted Koch script, added, “The whole world of women at this time are left alone, with the criminals and the (Roat); Peter Rini (Mike); draft dodgers, so it heightens that sense of the men are away and who’s there to protect? So it’s the Craig Bockhorn story of this woman who seems to be your ultimate victim. Then, by the end of the play, she’s the (Carlino); Lauen Schaffel (Gloria) ultimate survivor.” u “Find that doll. Before they do.” – Susan 3 WAIT UNTIL DARK : A PRODUCTION HISTORY Wait Until Dark, opened in February, 1966, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City before moving to a number of other theatres and concluding its run of 374 performances. Another production enjoyed a two year run on London’s West End. The play received a Broadway revival in 1998, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where it ran for 97 performances. A subsequent 2003 London revival was then followed by a UK tour, where the setting was changed to London’s Notting Hill district. On October 16, 2013, a revised version by Jeffrey Hatcher opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. The story was backdated to 1944. Wait Until Dark was also adapted into a film version in 1967 starring Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and Jack Weston. Hepburn was nominated for both the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Actress, and Zimbalist was nominated for a Golden Globe in the supporting category. u PHOTOGRAPHY IN WAIT UNTIL DARK The use of photography equipment - cameras as well as film developing materials - in Wait Until Dark serves a number of different roles. It allows Sam to continue to persue his love of photography in a much less hostile and dangerous atmosphere than the battlefields of World War II while simultaneously providing a theraputic outlet for him to manage the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (or PTSD) that he experiences as a result of his military service. He has gone from capturing horrific war-related images to offers to shoot beautiful Italian actresses. The photography equipment proves equally as important to Susan who has learned how to use the various devices in her time with Sam, particularly the brightness and power of the various flashes. As Susan contends with Mike Talman, Carlino, and Roat, pay attention to how she employes the photography equipment.