Craftsman bbyy BBruceruce GGrahamraham 20/21 season STREAMING ON DEMAND MARCH 2 – 28, 2021 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 Welcome ..........................................................3 From the Dramaturg............................... 4-8 Johannes Vermeer ................................... 4 The Netherlands and World War II .....7 From the Artistic Director .........................9 From the Director .......................................10 Who’s Who ................................................11-17 About the Lantern ...................................... 18 Thanks to Our Donors ......................... 19-31 Annual Fund .............................................. 19 Ticket Donations ....................................26 Our poster art for The Craftsman is Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window by Johannes Ian Merrill Peakes as Joseph Pillel in The Craftsman Vermeer (1659), courtesy of the Staatlichen All production photos by Mark Garvin Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany. ©2021 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY / WWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORG WELCOME 3 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY Charles McMahon Stacy Maria Dutton ARTISTIC DIRECTOR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR presents CraftsmanThe A World Premiere by Bruce Graham Meghan Jones Kayla Speedy SCENIC DESIGNER COSTUME DESIGNER Shannon Zura Christopher Colucci LIGHTING DESIGNER SOUND DESIGNER Janelle Kauff man Rebecca Smith PROJECTION DESIGNER STAGE MANAGER DIRECTED BY M. Craig Getting SPECIAL THANKS The Craftsman is part of Plays from the Lantern Archives, a new program celebrating some of the fi nest productions from recent Lantern seasons, brought vividly back to life on screen. This world premiere performance was professionally fi lmed with a live audience in November 2017. The Craftsman was commissioned and developed through the Lantern’s New Works Program. © 2021. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. FURTHER DISTRIBUTION OF THIS PRESENTATION BY DOWNLOADING, RE-STREAMING, REPOSTING, BROADCAST, TELECAST, OR IN Anthony Lawton as Han van ANY OTHER MANNER OR MEDIUM, IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED, A VIOLATION OF THE Meegeren in The Craftsman CREATORS’ RIGHTS, AND ACTIONABLE UNDER APPLICABLE COPYRIGHT LAW. ©2021 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY / WWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORG FROM THE DRAMATURG 4 “Would you—in your role as critic and scholar—call this painting a national treasure?” “All Vermeers are.” —The Craftsman Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is central to The Craftsman. Though he never appears onstage, his work drives nearly every character to action, particularly art dealer Han van Meegeren. Now considered one of the Dutch Old Masters, among the company of artists like Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, and Frans Hals, Vermeer was essentially ignored until the 1860s. Who was Vermeer, and why is his work so cherished now, more than 300 years after his death? Vermeer was born in Delft, a bustling city in the Netherlands. His father was a successful weaver and art dealer, and the young Vermeer would have been exposed to many great paintings through his father’s business. In 1653, Vermeer converted to Catholicism to marry Catharina Bolnes, with whom he had eleven children. Beyond that, little is known of Vermeer’s youth or career. We do not know how he came to be a painter, where he studied, or who his teachers were. There are theories, including his spending time in Italy to learn from Caravaggio’s paintings, or studying under important Delft artists, but none of these positions can be View of Delft (1660-1663) and The Little Street (1657-1661), both views of Vermeer’s hometown. ©2021 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY / WWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORG FROM THE DRAMATURG 5 confi rmed by the historical record. All we have are his masterful paintings, and even those works are shrouded in mystery. Rembrandt – perhaps the greatest of the Dutch Old Masters – was stunningly prolifi c, leaving behind hundreds of paintings and thousands of drawings. But a mere 34 confi rmed Vermeer paintings survive today, with The Procuress (1656; possible the attribution of three more still up Vermeer self-portrait in the left fi gure) for debate. Scholars estimate perhaps another ten existed at one point and are either lost or destroyed, bringing the maximum tally of his paintings to just 47. This scarcity of paintings contributed both to Vermeer’s obscurity in life and to his celebration in posterity. There were too few paintings during his short life to earn him fame, and the ones he left behind when he died at age 43 were kept by private collectors or attributed to other artists. In 1866, The Milkmaid (1657-1661) a French painter-critic investigated these false attributions and published enthusiastic descriptions of Vermeer’s paintings. The rarity of Vermeer’s work was now special, making the paintings precious. His popularity skyrocketed at the turn of the 20th century when new Vermeers were discovered, and his niche treasures became international sensations. Once his paintings were fi rmly enshrined among the masterpieces of his contemporaries, nowhere The Girl with a Wine Glass (1659-1662) ©2021 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY / WWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORG FROM THE DRAMATURG 6 was his work more valued than in the Netherlands, his home. By the beginning of World War II, Holland was hungry for Dutch cultural treasures that would separate them from the Germans. Vermeer’s masterpieces became a particular symbol of Dutch pride, and museums featuring his paintings hid them away for safekeeping, to ensure they would remain in Holland where they belonged through the upheaval the war would bring. Other than their scarcity, what made Vermeers so distinctive? His work is characterized by painstaking attention to detail, which perhaps contributed to his small output. His paintings are also Girl with a Pearl Earring (1655-1657) especially prized for their treatment of light, often shining from a window to the left of the subject. His subjects, too, are celebrated, as he often painted domestic scenes of women living lives recognizable to Delft citizens. Each one is deeply expressive, eliciting sympathy and a sense of relationship with the viewer. The paintings are enlivened by Vermeer’s extraordinary use of color, especially blues and yellows. Over 250 years, Vermeer’s work transformed from curiosities to art sensations to emblems of Dutch pride at a time of foreign occupation. Though Vermeer did not live to see it, there was ultimately a terrifi c fervor – and a market – for his paintings as the world struggled through a second Great War. The Astronomer (1668) ©2021 LANTERN THEATER COMPANY / WWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORG FROM THE DRAMATURG 7 The Netherlands and World War II The Amsterdam of The Craftsman is a city emerging from a war it never expected to be a part of. During the First World War, the Netherlands remained neutral, and the country hoped to retain that status when the Second World War broke out. Germany’s assurances that the Dutch would be left alone proved false, however, and in 1940 the Nazis occupied the country after just fi ve days of fi ghting. The Dutch Resistance, of which The Craftsman’s Captain Pillel was a member, sprang up quickly. Though the Germans initially treated the Netherlands with more care than other occupied countries,countries, hoping to woo the Dutch into becoming AryanizedAryanized,, thousands of Dutch citizens formed ragtag Resistance cells. They were purposefully scattered,scattered, with no central command and little communication between ggroupsroups in an eff ort to protect their anonymity.anonymity. BByy the time the war was over, nearlynearly evereveryy town in thethe NetherlandsNetherlands was homehome to a Resistance cell.cell. Their action was largely nonviolent: forgingforging paperwork, printing newspapers, distributing stolen ration coupons, or – most perilously – smuggling Jewish families,families, downed Allied airmen, and other people into safesafe hiding places. Dutch industryindustry alsoalso resisted,resisted, staging thethe onlyonly anti-pogrom stristrikeke in an occupiedoccupied country whenwhen tthehe mostmost oppressive laws against Jews were enacted. Some, though, did resist violently; telegraphtelegraph stations and railroads were blown uup,p, ration centers were burburgled,gled, and schoolschool girls dressed as fi rst aid workers rode their bicyclesbicycles through the heart of town, passingpassing out grenades.grenades. DDELVEELVE IINTONTO TTHEHE PPLAYLAY WWITHITH LLANTERNANTERN SSEARCHLIGHTEARCHLIGHT EExplorexplore VVermeer’sermeer’s wwork,ork, ggoo bbehindehind tthehe sscenescenes wwithith pplaywrightlaywright BBruceruce GGraham,raham, learnlearn aboutabout thethe sciencescience ofof artart authentication,authentication, ttestest yyourour kknowledgenowledge wwithith oourur oonlinenline qquiz,uiz, aandnd llotsots mmore.ore. llanterntheater.org/searchlightanterntheater.org/searchlight ©2021©2021 LANTERNLALANTERRN THEATERTHEATER COMPANYCCOMPANY / WWW.LANTWWW.LANTERNTHEATER.ORGERNTHEATER.ORG FROM THE DRAMATURG 8 Despite the Resistance eff orts and the slow ratcheting of the German oppression, the Dutch people suff ered signifi cantly. The Netherlands lost 75% of its Jewish population. And in Amsterdam, the last winter of the occupation would prove to be harrowing. In September 1944, the Dutch railway industry went on strike. The German occupiers retaliated by cutting off all food deliveries to the western part of the country, and the already meager rations quickly ran out. By November, an exceptionally harsh winter set in, and Amsterdam was hit especially hard. During this so-called Hunger Winter, many of the four million residents of Amsterdam