RED by John Logan (2021)

S E C O N D S TAG E PRODUCTION

2020/2021

Jeffrey S. Reeves, President & CEO

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER

Elizabeth Wallace Theater APRIL 8 –11, 2021

Theater Sponsors MARGARET & TOM KLOET

DIRECTOR

Whitaker Gannon

Show Sponsor MARY & JON GREENWELL

*Member of the Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Arts Center is a member of Theatre Communications Group (TCG), the national organization for the American theatre.

SCENIC DESIGNER

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Nichole Nelson

Brian Riley

COSTUME DESIGNER

SOUND DESIGNER

Melanie Green

Marlo Griffith

STAGE MANAGER

Ginger M. James* RED premiered at the Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London on December 3, 2009, Michael Grandage, Artistic Director.

Original Broadway Production Produced by Arielle Tepper Madover, Stephanie P. McClelland, Matthew Byam Shaw, Neal Street Productions, Fox Theatricals, Ruth Hendel/Barbara Whitman, Philip Hagemann/Murray Rosenthal and The Donmar Warehouse.

Rothko Seagram Mural Panels used with permission. © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

THE VIDEOTAPING OR MAKING OF ELECTRONIC OR OTHER AUDIO/OR VISUAL RECORDINGS OF THIS PRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTING RECORDINGS OF ANY MEDIUM, INCLUDING THE INTERNET, IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED, A VIOLATION OF THE AUTHOR'S RIGHTS AND ACTIONABLE UNDER UNITED STATES COPYRIGHT LAW. Please finish all food and beverages before entering the theater. While in the theater, please silence all electronic devices; in case of emergency you may leave them and your seat number with the house manager.

Cast List ALPHABETICAL

Kurt Rhoads* Lau'rie Roach*

Mark Rothko Ken

Add'l Production Board Operator Sound Engineer Deck Chief

Jenny Rider Marlo Griffith Julia Hughes

Deck Crew Wardrobe Projection Artist

Danny Dunn David Louder Tyler Petrich

Setting Rothko's New York Studio, 1958.

Biographies ALPHABETICAL

Kurt Rhoads*

Lau'rie Roach*

MARK ROTHKO

Kurt is so grateful to return to work at the Arts Center for LIVE THEATRE! Past performances here include Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird; Drummond in Inherit the Wind and Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice.

During the pandemic, he has done a number of new projects with his wife, actress Nance Williamson. They recorded an audiobook (UNFLAPPABLE by Suzi Gilbert), recorded Friar Laurence and the Nurse for NO FEAR Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and shot an episode of The Walking Dead. Kurt also taught Acting Shakespeare workshops at Westchester Community College. This summer he is performing in The Tempest at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. So happy to be back at HHI!

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KEN

Lau’rie (Luh-Ree) Roach or Re for short is originally from Atlanta and has worked with the Alliance Theatre: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Slur; True Colors Theatre Company: Exit Strategy; and the North Carolina Black Repertory Company: The Legend of Buster Neal in Boone, Charlotte, and Winston-Salem, NC. Re is thrilled to work with the Arts Center of Coastal Carolina and work alongside such amazing and talented people.

Whitaker Gannon DIRECTOR

Whitaker Gannon is overjoyed to be directing the Arts Center’s production of RED. Whitaker has been Assistant Director for Legally Blonde, Murder on the Orient Express, Kiss Me, Kate, and Neil Simon’s Rumors at the Arts Center. She also directed the streamed production of ChipandGus for the Arts Center earlier this year. Whitaker

studied theatre and directing at Wake Forest University, where she directed several works including Us/Them and Laughtracks, an annual comedy production. As a performer, Whitaker’s Arts Center shows included Les Miserables (Gavroche), The Who’s Tommy (Young Tommy), South Pacific (Ngana), 42nd Street, Anything Goes, and Hairspray.

Whitaker’s Wake Forest University theatrical acting credits include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Bright Room Called Day, and Spring Awakening.

Heartfelt gratitude to Jeffrey, Richard, Ginger, and the entire Arts Center family.

Brian Riley

LIGHTING DESIGNER

has been a scenic and lighting designer for more than 30 years, having designed more than 180 productions. Before coming to the Arts Center, he was the technical director and principal designer for Trustus Theatre in Columbia. Favorite designs include Two Trains Running, Fences, A Shayna Maidel, Jesus Christ Superstar, Angels in America, The Merchant of Venice and Macbeth. For the Arts Center, Brian designed the lighting for numerous shows, favorites including: Driving Miss Daisy, Hello Dolly, South Pacific, 9 to 5, Chicago, Xanadu, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Leading Ladies, Sister Act, The Color Purple, Newsies, Evita, Amadeus, An American in Paris and Murder on the Orient Express. He also co-designed the scenery for Cole with Sabrinna Cox. He has also designed lighting for productions at Main Street Youth Theatre, Christian Academy and Hilton Head Prep.

Special thanks to my lovely wife Sabrinna for making me laugh and for all that she is.

Nichole Nelson SCENIC DESIGNER

Recent design credits include ChipandGus, Kiss Me, Kate, Evita, Mamma Mia!, Grease, Newsies, and An American in Paris. Other credits include scenic designs for Houston's Alley Theatre, including the U.S. premiere of Alan Ayckbourn’s Henceforward, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Maine State Music

Theatre, Fort Worth's Shakespeare in the Park, the Fulton Theatre and Casa Mañana, Portland Stage Company, Seattle Repertory Theatre's Second Stage, Intiman Theatre and Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre.

Marlo Griffith SOUND DESIGNER

is excited to be making her Arts Center debut as a designer! Marlo has been at the Arts Center since October 2016 as the Audio Assistant and she is thrilled to be designing this fabulous show. Her previous Arts Center credits include Noises Off, Kiss Me, Kate and Sister Act as sound engineer.

She holds a BFA in Design & Technical Theatre from Wichita State University.

Other sound design credits at school include Chicago, Core of Temptation, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, and You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Thank you: Jeffrey, Brian, Aaron, and Whitaker for this opportunity!

Melanie Green COSTUME DESIGNER

is delighted to continue working for Arts Center, having recently designed for Noises Off. Recent credits include Murder for Two at Gretna Theatre and Sunday In The Park With George and Side Show at Temple University. She received her MFA in Costume Design from Temple University in 2019.

Ginger M. James* STAGE MANAGER

Most recently stage managed the Arts Center's production of Noises Off. She has also been the Stage Manager for over 69 Arts Center productions. For four summers, she was the Stage Manager for Opera North and for the previous 17 summers she was the Resident Stage Manager for The Cape Playhouse, America's Oldest Professional Summer Theatre. She is continually amazed by her latest and ongoing "production," raising her daughter, Morgan Quinlan.

Many thanks to Alana for her faith in me; to Peggy for her steadfast friendship and to JB for helping to look inside. Blessed Be.

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Mark Rothko

SEPTEMBER 25, 1903 – FEBRUARY 25, 1970

Born Marcus Rotkovitch in the town of Dvinsk, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, Mark Rothko immigrated to the United States with his family at the age of ten, settling in Portland, Oregon. A gifted student, Rothko attended Yale University on scholarship from 1921-23, but disillusioned by the social milieu and financial hardship, he dropped out and moved to New York to "bum around and starve a bit." A chance invitation from a friend brought him to a drawing class at the Art Students League where he discovered his love of art. He took two classes there but was otherwise self-taught. Rothko painted in a figurative style for nearly twenty years, his portraits and depictions of urban life baring the soul of those living through The Great Depression in New York. The painter Milton Avery offered Rothko both artistic and nutritional nourishment during these lean years. In the 1930s, Rothko exhibited with The Ten, a close-knit group of nine (!) American painters, which included fellow Avery acolyte, Adolph Gottlieb. Success was moderate at best but the group provided important incubation for the Abstract Expressionist school to come. The war years brought with it an influx of European surrealists, influencing most of the New York painters, among them Rothko, to take on a neo-surrealist style. Rothko experimented with mythic and symbolic painting for five years before moving to pure abstraction in the mid 1940s

and ultimately to his signature style of two or three rectangles floating in fields of saturated color in 1949. Beginning in the early 1950s Rothko was heralded, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, Franz Kline and others, as the standard bearers of the New American Painting--a truly American art that was not simply a derivative of European styles.

By the late 1950s, Rothko was a celebrated (if not wealthy) artist, winning him three mural commissions that would dominate the latter part of his career. Only in the last of these, The Rothko Chapel in Houston was he able to realize his dream of a truly contemplative environment in which to interact deeply with his artwork. RED presents a fictionalized account of Rothko’s frustrated first attempt to create such a space in New York’s Four Season’s restaurant. Rothko sought to create art that was timeless; paintings that expressed basic human concerns and emotions that remain constant not merely across decades but across generations and epochs. He looked to communicate with his viewer at the most elemental level and through his artwork, have a conversation that was intense, personal and, above all, honest. A viewer’s tears in front of one of his paintings told him he had succeeded. While creating a deeply expressive body of work and garnering critical acclaim, Rothko battled depression and his brilliant career ended in suicide in 1970.

Special Thanks ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIET Y

MARGARET & TOM KLOET

MARY & JON GREENWELL

THE MARK ROTHKO ESTATE

HILTON HEAD GLIDDEN

SHANNON & DAN STR AT TON

THIS PRODUCTION IS PART OF OUR SECONDSTAGE SERIES:

SMALLER PRODUCTIONS THAT TELL A BIG STORY.

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