Theatre at UBC Presents October 1 to 10, 2009 Frederic Wood Theatre Theatre at UBC presents for two nights only: Shirley Valentine Starring Nicola Cavendish A Special Benefit Performance for Theatre at UBC Student Scholarships November 29 & 30, 7:30 pm Frederic Wood Theatre Talk Backs after each performance! Nicola Cavendish in the Centaur Theatre Production of Shirley Valentine. Photo by Yanick MacDonald. UBC Theatre alumna Nicola Cavendish is generously gifting her per- Tickets are $50 with a limited number formances to the Theatre Program with proceeds from the two shows to go towards UBC Theatre student scholarships, including the newly of student tickets available for only created Bill Millerd Endowment. $15. All proceeds to Theatre at UBC Don’t miss Nicola as she reprises one of her most famous roles as Shirley Valentine. This unique and intimate stage presentation is an Student Scholarships. “unplugged” version of the production, showcasing Ms. Cavendish’s talents without the trappings of set and costumes. Nicola Cavendish is one of Canada’s most distinguished and beloved Call 604-822-2678 or purchase actresses. She first played the role of Shirley Valentine at the Vancou- ver Playhouse in 1989 and has since performed it more than 600 times directly from the Theatre at UBC Box across Canada, winning both the Jessie Richardson Award (Vancouver) and Dora Mavor Moore Award (Toronto) for best actress in the role. Office in the Frederic Wood Theatre Maclean’s Magazine called her Shirley “brilliant.” The Toronto Star gave her revival 4 stars out of 4 in 2009 and said, “Nicola Cavendish lobby, open from 10 am to 4 pm deserves every bit of the thunderous, totally spontaneous standing ovation the audience greeted her with on opening night. This is acting Monday through Friday. of a rare beauty and you miss it at your own peril.” Willy Russell’s Shirley Valentine is a one-woman play about a neglected Liverpool housewife who makes a break from her mediocre existence More details at theatre.ubc.ca with a life-changing trip to a Greek island. First performed in 1986, the play won Best Actress awards in London and on Broadway for English actress Pauline Collins, who also starred in the popular 1989 film. MK-Woyzeck Adapted from the works of Georg Büchner Conceived and Directed by Tom Scholte October 1 to 10, 2009 Frederic Wood Theatre The University of British Columbia Department of Theatre and Film Greetings from UBC Theatre and Film Welcome to the exciting opening show of our 2009-10 season. Tom Scholte’s MK-Woyzeck adapts one of the most extraordinary scripts in the history of theatre from one of its most remarkable playwrights. Only 23 when he died in 1837, German writer Georg Büchner left a small but rich legacy of plays that significantly shaped the dramatic movements of naturalism and expressionism over the next century: Danton’s Death, Leonce and Lena, and his unfinished Woyzeck, often considered the first masterwork of modern drama. Büchner’s posthumous manuscript of Woyzeck consisted of an unedited collection of fragmentary scenes, their proper order unclear. Consequently, producers and directors of the play have had the liberty to decide which scenes to include and which to omit, and in what order to present them. The result is a powerful drama of madness, militarism, medical experimentation and murder existing as a blank slate on which every subsequent adaptation, production and generation has written its own meaning. I was immensely fortunate to be able to play the role myself in 1975 in the wonderful old Dorothy Somerset Studio (now our costume shop) in the basement of this building. The production was mentored by Georg Büchner the Department’s late beloved theatre historian Peter Loeffler and directed by MFA student Gordon McCall, who went on to co-found Vancouver’s Touchstone Theatre and serve as artistic director of Director’s Note Montreal’s Centaur. The cast included one of Canada’s finest future documentary filmmakers, Nettie Wild, and a young woman who would soon be one of our very best actresses, Nicola Cavendish. (Nicola will be directing our production of The Laramie Project in November.) While I may have taken the extreme liberty of adapting Georg Two decades later, Woyzeck was produced again at UBC, here on the Büchner’s timeless masterpiece, Woyzeck, I remain well aware that Frederic Wood stage, starring BFA acting student Camyar Chai who has no words of mine could ever come close to expressing the anguished gone on to great theatrical success as an actor, director and producer. ruminations at the play’s core as well as those penned by the author So save tonight’s program: in a few years at least one of the students himself in an oft-quoted letter to his fiancée: in it will likely be famous! “I felt as though utterly crushed by the hideous fatalism of Speaking of the fragmentary and unfinished, I apologize for the state history. I find in human nature a terrible sameness, in human of our lobby. We hoped our renovations would be completed by now. circumstances an ineluctable violence vouchsafed to all But we’re making progress and will soon be able to host you with fresh and to none. Individuals but froth on the waves, greatness paint, new carpets and furniture, a glorious new sign, a fabulous new a mere coincidence, the mastery of geniuses a dance of concession, and some sparkling outdoor lighting. We are exceedingly puppets, a ridiculous struggle against an iron law that can grateful to Dean of Arts Nancy Gallini for her commitment to the at best be understood but never mastered… ‘Must’ is one creative and performing arts at UBC and the funding to make these of those words by which mankind was damned from the improvements possible. very beginning. The saying, ‘It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh’, is Jerry Wasserman horrifying. What is it in man that lies, murders, steals?” Professor and Head UBC Department of Theatre and Film It was over fifteen years ago that the inspired and inspiring teaching of UBC’s own distinguished Professor Emeritus of Theatre, Dr. Errol Durbach, first ignited in me a burning obsession with Büchner’s Woyzeck that has continued to smolder to this day. It is to him that I dedicate my work on this production. Tom Scholte Director of MK-Woyzeck Assistant Professor UBC Department of Theatre and FIlm Georg Büchner: Biography & Chronology Karl Georg Büchner was born, the eldest of six children, in 1813 in the Woyzeck is a production of his fiercely-lived short life. The unfinished German town of Goddeleau. Büchner’s father was a physician as had script shows evidence of his knowledge of case studies from medical been his grandfather and great grandfather, continuing back to the journals, his political yearning for justice for the working class and his sixteenth century (Price vii). Büchner studied medicine at Strasbour- devotion to literature. It is considered the first German working class gand, eventually writing a thesis on the nervous system of a river fish. tragedy (xviii). It was first published in 1879 and produced for the first He was appointed lecturer at University of Zurich in 1836 at the age of time in Munich in 1931 (xx-xxi). In 1935, Allan Berg composed the opera 23 (xii). Five months later, in February of 1837, he was dead of typhus. Wozzeck based on Büchner’s play and in 1979 Werner Herzog directed a film version (Freeman). In 2000, Tom Waits wrote music for a stage As he was studying the sciences, he also was deeply involved in version of the play by Robert Wilson produced in Copenhagen (Kalb). student political groups and aware of the European revolutions of The ideas and concepts contained in the unfinished script continue to 1830. On his return to Hesse, he found social conditions repressive and inspire creative artists almost 200 years after it was first conceived by worked to bring awareness to the working class (Guthrie 3-4). His first the young Büchner. published work was a pamphlet called The Hessian Courier, written in 1834. Because it encouraged peasant revolt even though it was not Selena Couture widely distributed, the publishers were arrested and Büchner’s rooms MA Candidate were searched. He eventually fled to Strasbourg where he continued UBC Department of Theatre and Film his academic and literary work (5). Sources: However brilliant Büchner’s work in fish anatomy may have been, or Freeman, Amy. “Georg Büchner and Woyzeck: A Brief Biography of the Playwright and passionate his political activities were, he is now principally known for Discussion of His Play.” Suite 101.com July 15, 2009. <http://theatrehistory.suite101.com/ his influential work as a playwright. His interest in the literary life can article.cfm/georg_buechner_and_woyzeck> Sept. 19, 2009. be traced to his youth. When he was on summer holidays from the Gymnasium in Darmstadt, he would spend his days reading Shake- Guthrie, John. “Büchner’s Life Times and Works”. Georg Büchner: Woyzeck. London: speare and philosophy (Price viii). He expressed his passionate views Bristol Classical Press. 1993. 1-5. about revolution by writing a play, Danton’s Death, in secret while he worked at his father’s laboratory. It was published in 1835 but not Kalb, Jonathan. “Song Logic”. Theater. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2003:33(2). 93- performed on stage until 60 years after his death (Guthrie 5). In the 96 <theater.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/33/2/96.pdf > Sept. 19, 2009. year when he was politically exiled in Strasbourg and working to finish his thesis, he also learned English and Italian, translated two plays by Mueller, Carl Richard.