Geva Guide: Spring 2015

SPRING 2015 GOING GREEN

How Little Shop writer Howard Ashman grew a classic

THE BEST MEDICINE

Comedy in the Mainstage gets the laughter flowing

ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE The Stage Door Project takes the spotlight

AT THE SUMMIT

A student’s journey to The Mountaintop

THE NEXT BIG THING Crafting the Fielding Studio Series

PLAYTIME

Planning the Geva Season

THE SON HOUSE PROJECT

Honoring the blues legend

DISCOVER LEARN CONNECT DO JANUARY - MAY 2015 www.GevaTheatre.org | (585) 232-4382

SEE ALL 3 FOR

$84

$79 for existing Mainstage Subscribers

The Fielding Nextstage Studio Series is a collection of contemporary plays by some of America’s hottest writers.

Enjoy great storytelling in the intimate 180-seat Nextstage.

G N I H T E M DO SO

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UDIO SERIES

AGE ST T S T X E N G FIELDIN

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SPRING 2015 As spring marks a time of rebirth and rejuvenation in nature, it also represents a period of heightened creation at Geva Theatre Center. From the selection and announcement of the next season to the premiere of new plays, the theatre is buzzing with activity and opportunities for you to engage with the country’s top professional artists making great theatre with the Rochester community. This spring, you’ll find seven stage productions – the fun, family musical Little Shop of Horrors; the world premieres of Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant, Women in Jeopardy! and The Road to Where; the thoughtful and awe-inspiring dramas A Body of Water and The Mountaintop; and the hilariously funny, Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

Geva Theatre Center is dedicated to creating lasting and memorable relationships between patrons and artists, and your experience at Geva can be as varied or as deep as you desire. The Geva Guide is your passport to a customized and entertaining journey that will fill you with joy, surprise, curiosity, excitement and pride in the quality of professional theatre made right here in Rochester.

Connect with friends new and old, learn how your theatre is made, participate in the birth of a new play, or discover a platform to share your thoughts in one of Geva’s many community engagement programs. You can go behind-the-scenes to explore backstage or the creative process, network with other theatre lovers, or simply enjoy a special night out. It’s your theatre, home grown.

There is something for everyone at Geva, so we invite you to do something fresh and exciting: Do Geva.

Tom Parrish Executive Director

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Mark Cuddy Artistic Director

About this guide

MAGIC IN THE MAKING

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Geva Theatre Center is more than just a venue for live entertainment. In addition to over 450 performances each year, Geva offers many other ways that you can connect with artists and your community. Throughout this guide, we’ve highlighted some upcoming events, grouped them with other offerings that might interest you, and noted some of the key aspects with an icon key like the one you see below. If you have any questions about an event, you can get more information at www.GevaTheatre.org or by calling the Box Office at (585) 232-4382. We’d love for you to discover a new way to engage with your theatre!

Tour the Little Shop set and ask questions at Geva’s annual open house.

January 19, 3pm-7pm No reservations required www.GevaTheatre.org

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

2

impression on him. He even wrote a thinly-veiled take-off of the film, called The Candy Shop. “Yes,” he wrote decades later. “I was a teenage plagiarist.”

By the age of 28, Ashman was the artistic director of the WPA Theatre in New York City, where he began to work with composer Alan Menken. Together, they decided to revisit that man-eating plant movie: Ashman would write and direct, Menken would compose. Early efforts hewed very closely to the Corman movie until, as Menken recalled, Ashman landed upon the notion that Little Shop could be “the dark side of Grease.” The 60’s-style musical should start with a bubblegum rock flavor, but a Phil Spector “Wall of Sound” influence would emerge as the story moved toward a new Earth-threatening conclusion in line with the period’s more earnest horror films.

With this framework in place, Ashman and Menken crafted a musical comedy that was truly its own animal. A Greek chorus of street urchins joined the cast, each named after a black 60’s girl group: Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon. The story became more farcical and more Faustian. The movie’s shrill little flytrap was reborn as the intimidating, bass-voiced, R&B-belting “Audrey II.” The flytrap was no longer an earthly crossbreed, but a monster from outer space. Perhaps most notably, the minor role of a dentist was expanded into a sadistic villain with a bad habit for laughing gas. This last addition was much to the chagrin of Alan Menken’s parents—the family trade was dentistry!

Menken’s father was even the president of an organization that promoted the use of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.

From a longer article by Dan Jones To read the full article, visit www.gevajournal.wordpress.com “In almost every musical ever written,” Howard Ashman, Little Shop of Horrors’ book writer, lyricist, and original director, once said in a rare interview, “there’s a place; it’s usually about the third song of the evening. Sometimes it’s the second, sometimes it’s the fourth, but it’s quite early, and the leading lady usually sits down on something… and sings about what she wants in life. And the audience falls in love with her, and roots for her to get it for the rest of the night.” Ashman – who introduced the world to an R&B-belting flytrap, a flatwarecollecting Mermaid and a jazz-singing Genie – always knew exactly what he wanted in life. He wanted to tell stories.

As a child, Ashman devoured books, films and Broadway cast albums and re-interpreted them for his family. He cast his sister in makeshift shows like “Scenes from Gypsy” and introduced her to his favorite movies when they came on afternoon TV. One of these was a Grade-Z science fiction comedy shot by prolific schlock director Roger Corman in just two days. It was called The Little Shop of Horrors, and it made a lasting

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Ashman’s earnest approach to off-the-wall material is what makes Little Shop perhaps the most unique musical comedy of the 1980’s. This quality is best embodied by the character of Audrey. Ashman described her with great specificity. “If you took Judy Holiday, Carol Channing, Marilyn Monroe and Goldie Hawn, removed their education and feelings of self-worth, dressed them in spiked heels and a low-cut black dress, and then shook them up in a test tube to extract what’s sweetest and most vulnerable—that’d be Audrey.” When Audrey sings “Somewhere That’s Green,” the number in which she poignantly expresses her hope for a suburban family life, people laugh because the words that ring like poetry to her (“a fence of real chain link,”“the Pine-Sol-scented air”) are mundane and unromantic to the audience. But audiences are also moved Howard Ashman on the set of Little Shop

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BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Get the inside scoop on the creation of live theatre, and engage directly with the playwrights, directors, designers, actors and technicians who make the art you see onstage.

MAGIC IN THE MAKING

Sunday Salon

Prologue

Tour the Little Shop set and ask questions at Geva’s annual open house.

January 19, 3pm-7pm No reservations required

Discuss the play with the cast after select performances.

Follows Second and Fourth Sunday Matinees

Meet an actor and hear a lively, informative pre-show talk.

Prologue starts 1 hour before each Mainstage show

www.GevaTheatre.org

More info: www.GevaTheatre.org

More info: www.GevaTheatre.org

Costume renderings for Little Shop of Horrors

by Jennifer Caprio

JANUARY 13 - FEBRUARY 15

because, although Audrey’s dream sounds comically humble, it is still an impossible prayer for escape and happiness. Audiences don’t laugh at her; they cheer for her.

14/15 WILSON MAINSTAGE SERIES

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Little Shop of Horrors owed much of its original Off-Broadway success to Menken’s earworm melodies and the handmade spectacle of the alien flytrap, brought to life by “Sesame Street” Muppeteer Martin P. Robinson. But Little Shop’s main architect was undoubtedly Howard Ashman. In his brief career, Ashman helped to breathe life into a series of musicals and animated films (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast among them) that audiences still want to revisit time and again. His lyrics encouraged children to approach the world before them with humor, intelligence and compassion for others. His carefully chosen words taught viewers to accept the peculiarities of their own hearts without shame or compromise. Through his work, Howard Ashman demonstrated that big and beautiful words could appeal to a wide audience without a note of condescension. Those words reached around the world, and they planted something that wasn’t there before.

Book by Howard Ashman | Music and Lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman | Directed by Sean Daniels

A man-eating plant steals the show in this delightfully demented, charming and tuneful family musical favorite.

With Support from Yum & Yuk Books

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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Bruce Jordan

Wendy MacLeod

This spring, the ESL Federal Credit Union Wilson Mainstage Series features two contemporary comedies – the world premiere of Women in Jeopardy! by Rochester native Wendy MacLeod and Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, directed by Bruce Jordan, co-creator of Shear Madness and member of the first Geva acting company. Geva asked them to share their perspectives on how to make people laugh.

How would you define comedy?

WM: I once read that “comedy begins in the kitchen and ends up under the stars.” Our lives are grounded in the mundane – SAT scores and Fun Runs, Bundt pans and book clubs – until suddenly they’re not. In Women in Jeopardy!, the three women begin in the kitchen, but then embark on an adventure that leads them into the remote, starlit canyons of Utah. They pack their granola bars, put on their hiking shoes, and set out to save their friend.

BJ: I’ve always heard that incongruity is the essence of comedy.

Something’s funny when it is inappropriate or out of place. I think in the theatre, most good comedy is based in situation and character. A lot of comedy comes out of desperation, and need, and not getting what you need.

Which often means that we’re laughing at the characters, not with them. Do successful comedies have to be mean to their characters?

BJ: The audience has to like the people in order for them to be funny. We have to like Vanya, we have to like Sonia, so that their situation means something to us and so we understand the irony of the situation that they’re in and, eventually, the humor of it.

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WM: In Women in Jeopardy!, I think I’m making fun of us, not them.

Bruce, what does a director do to make a play funny?

BJ: I’m a believer that comedy has a musicality to it. One of the things I always do is make sure that the actor understands why a certain word in a line has to be stressed, or why they have to get to the end of the line quickly. The set-ups and the punchlines of comedy always happen at the ends of sentences.

If it takes too long to get to certain things, people either become distracted or they get to the laugh before you do. A lot of times you’ll get a laugh the third time that something is mentioned. That means that the third time has to be different from the first and second time. And that’s part of the musicality.

It has to be rising emotion. Some actors need help in getting those elevations. Also, I think the stage movement is very important to a comedy. For instance, if you want to deliver a zinger to somebody, it’s frequently better to zap the person, then raise your eyebrows and turn away.

Wendy, when you’re working on a new play, how do you know that what you’re writing is funny?

WM: I think I’m pretty funny, in a wry, understated way. But after a reading of my newest comedy Slow Food at the Kenyon Playwrights Conference, a friend of mine came up to me and said: “Where did that come from? I mean you’re funny, but you’re not that funny.” Women in Jeopardy! was the first play

CONNECT

WITH YOUR COMMUNITY

Attending the theatre can be a great opportunity to share an experience with friends or make new ones. Meet, mix and mingle!

YoPro Night

Out at Geva

Sunday Senior Social

Party with other Young Professionals at a special pre-show reception.

First Thursday of each ESL Mainstage Series production

Mingle with the LGBTQ community in a pre-show reception.

Stay after the show for a dessert reception just for seniors.

Second Thursday of each ESL Mainstage Series production

Third Sunday matinee of each ESL Mainstage Series production

Mention “YoPro” when you call.

Mention “Out at Geva” when you call.

Mention “Senior Social” when you call.

on to the first time I saw Vanya. It has incredible heart, and it becomes very funny.

I ever cast while I was still writing it, and it was tremendously helpful having these actors’ voices in my head. I could write to their unique comic strengths, and I knew I was on track whenever I brought new pages into rehearsal and the actors laughed as they read them over.

WM: I recently directed an athletic college production of my play The Ballad of Bonnie Prince Chucky, and my students asked where I got the idea to use a mini-trampoline. And I realized I got the idea from the New Vaudevillians, specifically from Bill Irwin’s Regard of Flight, which American Playhouse filmed in 1983. As for favorite comedies, they are various and some are not what you’d immediately classify as comedies: Waiting for Godot, The Birthday Party, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Aliens, Thom Pain: Based on Nothing, The Norman Conquests and Six Degrees of Separation.

What are your favorite comedies?

BJ: I love directing Neil Simon. I’m sorry that he seems a little passé sometimes. I think he’ll have a nice comeback at some point. One of the things about it is how wonderfully he writes his dialogue for comic actors. It’s always so easy to memorize because it is the way you would talk if you were that funny.

And they have a heart. And that’s also what I was so turned

FEBRUARY 24 - MARCH 22

MAY 5 - MAY 31

14/15 WILSON MAINSTAGE SERIES

14/15 WILSON MAINSTAGE SERIES

By Christopher Durang | Directed by Bruce Jordan

By Wendy MacLeod | Directed by Sean Daniels

A visit from Masha and her hot boy-toy Spike incites a madcap family reunion in this laugh-out-loud comedy.

Divorcées Mary and Jo suspect their friend may be dating a serial killer dentist in this fun and flirtatious new comedy.

With Support from:

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With Support from:

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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All the world’s a

Craig Kober and Julia Johnston in the Stage Door Project

Dave Mason and Alexis McGuinness In Geva’s Almost, Maine

“Seeing the Thing” - a scene from Pittsford-Sutherland High School’s Stage Door production of Almost, Maine, and the same scene in the 2009 Geva Production.

“It’s such a beautiful, effective way to learn - like skiing with an expert skier. The collaboration was so effective - this was super-fantastic!” - Past Stage Door Participant Geva has conducted Stage Door: Our Town and Stage Door: Almost, Maine. Now, continuing Geva Theatre Center’s mission of placing its stagework at the crossroads of artistic excellence and community engagement, Stage Door: Little Shop! – an opportunity for Rush-Henrietta Senior High School students to perform on Geva’s Mainstage in a “shared” production of Little Shop of Horrors.

Little Shop of Horrors, in addition to being part of Geva’s season, will also be part of Rush-Henrietta High School’s (RHHS) season. RHHS’s directing team, headed by Michael Pincelli, will cast roughly 14 young actors and recruit an equal number of students interested in design, technical theatre and marketing to join a creative team that mirrors Geva’s. Pincelli will also serve as Director Sean Daniels’ Assistant Director for Geva’s Little Shop, where he will frequently participate in Geva rehearsals.

Fueled by their work at Geva, the RHHS directing team will return to their school to direct students in their own production of Little Shop. The young actors from the RHHS company will participate in an acting workshop and mentoring partnership with Geva artists. They will meet their professional actor counterparts from the Geva production, become email pen pals with those adult actors, sit in on Geva rehearsals, share character insights over dinner with the adult company, and attend performances of Little Shop at Geva. The 9 production students – one each focused on lighting, sound, scenery, costumes, props, puppetry, stage management, wardrobe and dramaturgy – will share their ideas with Geva’s professional design team and shadow the department they are reflecting.

Geva’s marketing staff will exchange ideas with the RHHS marketing team made up of young journalists and graphic designers, who will get involved in poster design, playbill

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creation, publicity and community engagement efforts so that RHHS can share the discoveries in this process within their own community as well. This unique collaboration culminates when the students return to Geva to polish their show, working with Geva’s crew to incorporate the existing lighting, sound and scenic elements created for Geva’s professional Little Shop production into their student production. The students will then perform their own version of Little Shop on the Geva Mainstage, with Geva’s full technical support.

Imagine being a young artist with a passion for acting, design, production or marketing. For these students, the Stage Door Project is an incredibly thrilling and extremely rare opportunity to connect with a nationally recognized regional theatre and learn from a professional, who does for a living just what they’d love to do one day! By embracing this young company from the community, they receive an unforgettable and priceless experience, and Geva has the privilege of learning with – and from – their energy and insights into youthful love and humor.

The Stage Door: Little Shop performance is Tuesday, February 10 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $14 and can be purchased online or through the Geva Box Office.

February 10, 7:30pm Stage Door

Rush-Henrietta students perform their own Little Shop of Horrors in the Mainstage.

Support for the Stage Door Project:

Guido and Ellen Palma Foundation

and even gets to read the role of Martin Luther King, Jr. from a small section of the script before discussing with a group of his classmates how opinions of iconic public figures are affected when people learn of their humanity and private lives.

The artist-educator leads a discussion about magical realism using movies and paintings with which Michael is familiar. He’s excited to experience how it will all happen onstage. The next day, his teacher hands out an article from the Discovery Guide.

Michael is asked to read the article; consider fear, bravery and if there is a cause for which he would sacrifice his own life; and then write a response about what he supposes King’s last night at the Lorraine Motel in Tennessee was like.

On Wednesday morning, the bus drops Michael and his classmates off in front of Geva. He takes a playbill, and an usher shows his group to their seats. Michael is impressed by the details of the set, which looks like a real motel room.

Throughout the performance, Michael is captivated by the story and the stagecraft that helps to tell it. After the show, the actors and a member of the crew come back onstage and answer questions from students in the audience. Most of the students have questions for the actors about their rehearsal process or what it is like to play such a beloved figure, but Michael chooses to ask the crew person a technical question about how a particular moment in the play is handled backstage. As he leaves the theatre, Michael spots flyers for Geva’s Stage Door Design Project and puts one in his pocket.

Every season, thousands of local students experience live theatre through Geva’s Education programming. Here’s what one such student’s journey to The Mountaintop might look like.

In early October, an 11th grade teacher receives a brochure from Geva’s Education Department outlining the details of the five productions in the 2014-2015 P.L.A.Y. (Performance = Literature + Art + You) Student Matinee Series. Scanning the brochure, she stops at an unfamiliar title – Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop.

She reads the synopsis, followed by a brief list of the play’s curriculum connections, which include the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Civil Rights movement; and the dichotomy of public image vs. private life. Intrigued by the play’s dynamic content and how fluidly it seems to plug into her juniors’ curriculum, she calls the Education Department to book tickets.

As a Rochester City School District teacher, she learns about Geva’s Passport Program, which allows her to bring her two social studies classes to The Mountaintop for free.

On Friday morning, the actress playing the role of Camae arrives in Michael’s classroom to extend the conversation started at the post-show talkback. She spends 45 minutes answering questions and sharing a lively discussion about some key issues in the play. A few days later, his experience at the theatre still on his mind, Michael realizes that he has a different perspective on Martin Luther King, Jr. than he did before and lingering thoughts of enrolling in the Stage Door Design Project next year to learn more about scenic design.

Just over a week before the performance, the teacher attends a Teacher Workshop at Geva to help her prepare the students for their theatre visit. At this meeting, she receives a complimentary ticket to preview the show that night, meets one of the actors in the cast, is given a 10-page Discovery Guide created by Geva’s education staff and filled with information about the show that she can tailor into lesson plans for her students, peeks in on the set, and learns about the free in-class Discovery Workshops, which she decides to book for her classes. This is where the student’s journey begins.

MARCH 31 - APRIL 26 14/15 WILSON MAINSTAGE SERIES

By Katori Hall | Directed by Skip Greer

On Monday morning, Michael walks into his first period social studies class. Someone at the front of the classroom introduces himself as an artist-educator from Geva Theatre Center, there to prepare the class for their upcoming performance of The Mountaintop. Michael has never seen a play before. He learns what the show is about, why it is relevant to him, a few exciting things about what the scenery looks like and how it works,

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. confronts his doubts and legacy in a soul-stirring reimagining of his last night on earth.

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With Support from:

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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EVENTS CALENDAR SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

SATURDAY

JAN 11

12 Blood Drive 8am-1pm

13 SHOP 7:30pm

14 SHOP 7:30pm West Side Town Night

15 SHOP 7:30pm YoPro Night 6pm

16 SHOP 8pm

17 SHOP 2pm Open Captioning SHOP 8pm

18 SHOP 2pm SHOP 7pm Stylist Sunday Rochester Town Night

19 The Mountaintop Sale Open House 3pm-7pm VIP Tour

20 SHOP 6pm

21 SHOP Student Matinee SHOP 7:30pm East Side Town Night 1

22 SHOP 7:30pm OUT at Geva 6pm East Side Town Night 2

23 SHOP 8pm GCI 8:30pm

24 SHOP 4pm GCI 8:30pm SHOP 8:30pm

25 SHOP 2pm Sunday Salon SHOP 7pm East Side Town Night 3

26

27

28 SHOP Student Matinee SHOP 7:30pm

29 SHOP 7:30pm

30 SHOP 8pm

31 SHOP 4pm SHOP 8:30pm

FEB 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10 KCL 7pm Stage Door Project SHOP 7:30pm

11 SHOP 2pm KCL 7pm SHOP 7:30pm

12 SHOP Student Matinee KCL 7pm SHOP 7:30pm

13 KCL 7pm SHOP 8pm

14 KCL 2:30pm SHOP 4pm KCL 7:30pm SHOP 8:30pm

15 SHOP 2pm KCL 3pm

16

17

18 KCL 7pm

19 KCL 7pm Sign Interpreted

20 KCL 7pm

21 KCL 2:30pm KCL 7:30pm

22 KCL 3pm

23

24 JEP 7:30pm

25 JEP 7:30pm West Side Town Night

26 JEP 7:30pm YoPro Night 6pm

27 JEP 8pm GCI 9:30pm

28 JEP 2pm Open Captioning JEP 8pm GCI 9:30pm

MAR 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Hornets’ Nest 7pm

JEP Meet+Greet SHOP 7:30pm

SHOP 2pm Audio Description Senior Sunday Social SHOP 2pm Sunday Salon KCL 3pm SHOP 7pm

JEP 2pm JEP 7pm Stylist Sunday Rochester Town Night JEP 2pm Sunday Salon JEP 7pm East Side Town Night 3

15 JEP 2pm Audio Description Senior Sunday Social JEP 7pm

16

22 JEP 2pm Sunday Salon BODY 3pm

23

SHOP | Little Shop of Horrors JEP | Women in Jeopardy!

9

Career Day 10am

New Season Announcement

SHOP 7:30pm

JEP 6pm

SHOP 7:30pm

JEP 7:30pm East Side Town Night 1

KCL 7pm SHOP 7:30pm Sign Interpreted

JEP 7:30pm OUT at Geva 6pm East Side Town Night 2 STA 7:30pm

KCL 7pm SHOP 8pm

MTN Meet+Greet STA 7:30pm JEP 8pm

KCL 2:30pm SHOP 4pm KCL 7:30pm SHOP 8:30pm

STA 2pm JEP 4pm STA 7:30pm JEP 8:30pm

10 JEP 7:30pm

11 JEP 7:30pm

12 JEP 7:30pm

13 JEP 8pm GCI 8:30pm

14 JEP 4pm JEP 8:30pm GCI 8:30pm

17 JEP 7:30pm

18 JEP 2pm JEP 7:30pm

19 BODY 7pm JEP 7:30pm Sign Interpreted

20 BODY 7pm JEP 8pm

21 BODY 2:30pm JEP 4pm BODY 7:30pm JEP 8:30pm

24 BODY 7pm

25 BODY 7pm

26 BODY 7pm

27 BODY 7pm

28 BODY 2:30pm MTN Tech Talk BODY 7:30pm

MTN | The Mountaintop KCL | Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant

BODY | A Body of Water ROAD | The Road to Where

www.GevaTheatre.org | (585) 232-4382

GCI | Geva Comedy Improv VSMS | Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike

Show Opening Night

STA | Second Time Around

Dates, times, shows and artists subject to change.

Visit www.GevaTheatre.org for the most up to date information.

JAN - MAY 2015 SUNDAY

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

MAR 29

30

5

6

7

12 MTN 2pm Sunday Salon MTN 7pm East Side Town Night 3

13

14 MTN 7:30pm

15 MTN Student Matinee MTN 7:30pm

19 MTN 2pm Audio Description Senior Sunday Social MTN 7pm

20

21 MTN Student Matinee MTN 7:30pm

26 MTN 2pm Sunday Salon ROAD 3pm

27

3

4

BODY 3pm

MTN 2pm BODY 3pm MTN 7pm Stylist Sunday Rochester Town Night

ROAD 3pm

Plays in Progress 7pm

Regional Writers 7pm

Regional Writers 7pm

THURSDAY

31 MTN 7:30pm

APR 1

2

8

9

BODY 7pm MTN 7:30pm West Side Town Night

BODY 7pm Sign Interpreted MTN 7:30pm YoPro Night 6pm

FRIDAY 3

SATURDAY 4

BODY 7pm MTN 8pm

MTN 2pm Open Captioning BODY 2:30pm BODY 7:30pm MTN 8pm

10 MTN 8pm GCI 8:30pm

11 MTN 4pm MTN 8:30pm GCI 8:30pm

16

17 MTN 8pm

18 MTN 4pm MTN 8:30pm

22 MTN 2pm MTN 7:30pm

23 ROAD 7pm MTN 7:30pm Sign Interpreted

24 ROAD 7pm MTN 8pm

25 ROAD 2:30pm MTN 4pm ROAD 7:30pm MTN 8:30pm

28 ROAD 7pm

29 ROAD 7pm

30 ROAD 7pm

MAY 1

2

5

6

7

8

9

MTN 6pm Essie Calhoun Diversity Award Presentation

VSMS 7:30pm

MTN Student Matinee MTN 7:30pm East Side Town Night 1

ROAD 7pm VSMS 7:30pm West Side Town Night

MTN Student Matinee MTN 7:30pm OUT at Geva 6pm East Side Town Night 2

ROAD Open Rehearsal MTN 7:30pm

ROAD 7pm

ROAD 7pm Sign Interpreted VSMS 7:30pm YoPro Night 6pm

ROAD 7pm VSMS 8pm

ROAD 2:30pm ROAD 7:30pm

VSMS 2pm Open Captioning ROAD 2:30pm ROAD 7:30pm VSMS 8pm

12 VSMS 6pm

13 VSMS 7:30pm East Side Town Night 1

14 VSMS 7:30pm OUT at Geva 6pm East Side Town Night 2

15 VSMS 8pm

16

18 Director’s Forum Dinner

19 VSMS 7:30pm

20 VSMS 7:30pm

21 VSMS 7:30pm

22 VSMS 8pm

23 VSMS 4pm VSMS 8:30pm

25

26 VSMS 7:30pm

27 VSMS 2pm VSMS 7:30pm

28 VSMS 7:30pm Sign Interpreted

29 VSMS 8pm GCI 8:30pm

30 VSMS 4pm VSMS 8:30pm GCI 8:30pm

10 VSMS 2pm ROAD 3pm VSMS 7pm Stylist Sunday Rochester Town Night

11

17 VSMS 2pm Sunday Salon VSMS 7pm East Side Town Night 3 24 VSMS 2pm Audio Description Senior Sunday Social VSMS 7pm

Hornets’ Nest 7pm

31 VSMS 2pm Sunday Salon

To these select performances

*Cannot be combined with other discounts, call for details.

First Wednesdays, 7:30pm First Sundays, 7pm Second Wednesdays, 7:30pm Second Thursdays, 7:30pm Second Sundays, 7pm

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SAVE 10% ON TICKETS*

West Side Night Rochester Night East Side Night 1 East Side Night 2 East Side Night 3

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Town Nights

SAVE THE DATE

Young Writers 3pm VSMS 4pm VSMS 8:30pm

SUMMER CURTAIN CALL JUNE 12 at 6pm

Greece, Chili, Spencerport, Hilton Rochester, Henrietta, Irondequoit Pittsford, Webster East Rochester, Victor, Mendon, Honeoye Falls Penfield, Brighton, Perinton

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

10

the NEXT BIG THING

Crafting the Fielding STUDIO SERIES

Where Stories Come From

“I woke up one morning while I was writing a completely different kind of play with the premise for this play in my head, “ Lee Blessing, who wrote A Body of Water, told the Guthrie Theatre in 2005 when the play premiered. “No idea where it came from, really. I had a few years earlier gone through a divorce, and that’s an experience that can make a person wonder how well they know their partner or themselves.”

Nora Cole, playwright and a performer of Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant, was surprised to find, while taking care of her elderly aunt, a collection of letters tied up in a ribbon from her aunt’s fiancé during World War II. “I just found the letters so fascinating. They were written so eloquently, all from the point of view of a very educated man in a segregated military, and his observations and experiences. That was what initially compelled me.” Two years ago, Nora brought the idea of the story to Artistic Director Mark Cuddy, and when Geva received a grant to host her as a resident artist through the Fox Foundation Fellowship for Actors, Geva staff began working with Nora to research the context of the story.

Broadway performer and writer Cass Morgan maximizes the storytelling power of music as she connects with her ancestors in The Road to Where. “When I first started working on what would become The Road to Where, it was a random bunch of stories, and then songs written from those stories, derived from unresolved issues in my life and memories that wouldn’t let go of me,” she comments. “I didn’t know what the piece was, or what I was trying to say. Some of it worked, but mostly I found it unsatisfying. I put it away and thought I was through with it.

Then, three years ago this piece began.”

Hearing the Play

“After you’ve written a play for a while, you really can’t hear it anymore,” says Blessing. “You know you can read it and it’s fine

A young woman pines for the love of her life, a soldier stationed at the Tuskegee Air Field during World War II. Another travels through Ireland, searching for the stories of her ancestors. A man and a woman wake up one morning, not recognizing each other, or the home in which they wake.

These are the stories that comprise this year’s Fielding Studio Series. While these three pieces have very different origins, their journeys from the playwrights’ pens to Geva’s stage are actually quite similar.

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Playwright Cass Morgan workshops The Road to Where at Geva in 2013

Support for Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant:

Nora Cole and Geva Theatre Center are participants in the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships, funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group.

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Check out something you’ve never seen before.

It might just be the next big thing – and if it is, you saw it here first!

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DISCOVER SOMETHING NEW plays in progress

Regional Writers Showcase

Young Writers Showcase

Plays In Progress: A reading of a play so new we don’t even know what it is yet!

Readings of plays by Rochester-area writers, selected in cooperation with Writers & Books.

Short plays by Rochester area students aged 13-18.

April 13, 7pm

April 27 and May 4, 7pm

May 16, 3pm

Free, but reservations are required

Free, but reservations are required

Free, but reservations are required

because it suits all the synapses in your brain, but the problem is you’re not writing it for you.”

That is the driving impulse behind the work of Geva’s new play programming. Through workshops and play readings, Geva aids in the creation of compelling stories – stories that impact the way people think about the world around them. Perhaps Lee Blessing said it best in an interview for The Dramatists Guild Quarterly when he pondered, “How is this [play] going to affect the way an audience thinks, feels, dreams about a particular subject, a particular feature of the perceptual world around us? What can this play do to make them deal with it in a way they haven’t before? Because affecting the audience is why one writes a play to begin with.”

That’s where new play development workshops come in.

During a workshop, the playwright hears the play read by actors, both in rehearsal and in front of an audience. The audience is critical in this step – sitting in the midst of an audience, a writer can listen to how people receive the play, when the play loses their attention, when they are enthralled or confused. Although artists generally don’t like to think of their work as a “product,” the process is similar to research and development departments in other business industries. In product development, a new creation is tested, revised and re-tested over and over, and then a beta-version is tested by a small group of people outside of the creative team. Then the creation is probably revised again, and eventually, it’s launched to great fanfare. A play goes through many of the same steps– it’s created, shared with a small team, revised, shared again, revised again, until it finds its first production.

Blessing workshopped A Body of Water at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, and Morgan and Cole workshopped their plays in Geva’s Festival of New Theatre. Cass Morgan’s The Road to Where was greatly impacted by the workshop.

As a result of that experience in 2013, the play has a new title, an additional musician, one less song, and a crystallized story.

After four days of rehearsing Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant this fall, Nora Cole commented, “To sit at the table, to hear it, and to have the director and the dramaturg, David Schweizer and Jenni Werner, give me feedback – I didn’t really know what I had before I got here. I’ve gone home every night to rewrite or make cuts. So it’s been extremely informative to have this process. I know that this project would not be where it is now if I did not have this opportunity and the support I’ve had from Geva over the last two years.”

FIELDING NEXTSTAGE STUDIO SERIES

February 5 - february 22

By Nora Cole

march 19 - april 5

By Lee Blessing

april 23 - may 10

By Cass Morgan

The Fielding Nextstage Studio Series is supported in part by:

Gouvernet Arts Fund at the Community Foundation Entercom Marketing Results Group

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For tickets, call (585) 232-4382 Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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PLANNING A GEVA SEASON It is tempting to think that planning a season is a straightforward process, with a clear beginning, middle and end – but that would be far from the truth!

Selecting the productions Geva will create here in Rochester each year is an incredible balancing act. Imagine being a circus tightrope walker, but instead of walking in a straight line, the tightrope takes you in a spiral, slowly revolving towards safety as you pick up and discard items on your journey.

That’s a little like planning a theatre season! scripts read annually by literary staff

Starting Out

Led by Artistic Director Mark Cuddy, the journey begins with a world full of possibilities. Geva might select a new work or a classic or a comedy or a drama or a musical or on and on and on. The core artistic team gathers to discuss what’s happening in the world, and how Geva might respond theatrically. And then team members suggest plays and playwrights and begin voluminous reading.

Geva takes great care in the order of the season – balancing production and budget considerations, tone, style, and the point of view of each piece. Each production slot in the Geva season has its own personality, and as plays are discussed, the artistic team takes that into consideration. Consider the Wilson Mainstage season: the first show of the season says boldly, “Welcome back to Geva!;” the second production is usually smaller in scale in anticipation of the production demands of the annual return of A Christmas Carol; the third show, which is in January, is usually the most attended show of the season, and is often a comedy or musical; the fourth and fifth shows of the season help Geva create a sense of balance and a diversity

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scripts read by core artistic team of voices; and the final show is the culmination of the season, and launches the audience into summer.

The Nextstage season is quite different. In the fall, Geva hosts shows during the Rochester Fringe Festival before producing the annual Festival of New Theatre in October. The Festival of New Theatre is an opportunity to develop new plays with playwrights in residence, and for audiences to participate in the creation of new stories. For the last several years, November has featured Colleen Moore performing as “Sister” in the Late Nite Catechism series. The Winter/Spring Fielding Studio Series completes the Nextstage season. The Studio Series is comprised of three contemporary plays with an emphasis on character and story that might include a writer or actor exploring a new way of storytelling, a thought provoking approach to a subject, or maybe just a story that requires a more intimate venue.

The Heart of the Journey

As the artistic team reads and falls in love with plays, a possible season starts to emerge. In addition to artistic considerations,

plays discussed by core artistic team the team weighs practical needs and the availability of specific artists. Geva also has resident directors, each of whom must be enthusiastic about the projects they’ll direct in the coming season. As the first draft of the season begins to take shape, Literary Director Jenni Werner applies for the production rights for the plays. The rights to perform a play are either held by a licensing clearing house (such as Samuel French or Dramatists Play Service) or by the playwright’s agent. The terms of the license are negotiated, and Geva agrees to pay a certain royalty (percentage of the ticket proceeds) to the writer. Other terms vary, but the one constant on every license is that Geva’s artists must agree not to change a single word of dialogue in the play. It is possible that the production rights to a play or

SPEAK

Ask a question, make a suggestion or join the discussion! Geva is your theatre, and your voice matters. Be part of the conversation!

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YOUR MIND THE HORNETS’ NEST

Geva comedy improv

Sunday Salon

Debate polarizing questions raised by a play reading.

Inspire a story and laugh out loud as it comes to life!

Discuss the play with the cast after select performances.

January 26, 7pm May 11, 7pm

Tickets are $10

Follows Second and Fourth Sunday Matinees

Free, but reservations are required

www.GevaComedyImprov.org

More info: www.GevaTheatre.org

musical are unavailable because the play is scheduled for a New York City production or a national tour. Simultaneously, Production Director Matt Reinert prepares an expense budget for the materials and artists needed for each play under serious consideration, and the rest of Geva’s senior staff begins to

Geva’s Core Artistic Team

plays considered seriously enough to prepare budgets

Mark Cuddy Artistic Director

Jenni Werner Literary Director

Matt Reinert Production Director

Sean Daniels Director of Artistic Engagement

read and respond to the “short list.” Marketing Director Kevin Sweeney works with Executive Director Tom Parrish to set goals for ticket sales. Director of Development Bonnie Butkas examines the plays for their ability to interest underwriting support. Sometimes this process takes plays off the table – if the cost to produce a show is too high or the anticipated ticket sales or fundraising potential are too low, the artistic team goes back to the drawing board to propose a new season.

Skip Greer Director of Education

season plays selected across both stages

It’s not just about how good a play is. The artistic team factors a host of other considerations into their decision, including:

The Anticipated Announcement

All of this planning happens between September and February each year, and Geva announces the upcoming season to press, donors and subscribers in March. Yet the announcement is not the final step – it’s really just the first step on the journey towards a successful production. And no production is complete until the audience is in their seats, playing their vital role in making live professional theatre together with artists right here in Rochester.

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Classic or new work Plays in Geva’s R&D pipeline Familiarity of title or play American voices or world voices Cultural and stylistic diversity Plays with an educational interest Genre – Musical/Comedy/Drama Political/social context Time period/setting Profanity and adult content

Design challenges Cast size Housing availability Funding/sponsorship possibilities Availability of production rights Production staff impact Artist availability Ticket sales potential Student matinee potential

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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Before there was Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton or Bonnie Raitt, there was Eddie “Son” House, one of the original Delta bluesmen. Now considered a giant in the world of the blues, he spent a significant portion of his adult years in almost total obscurity until his rediscovery in the Corn Hill neighborhood of Rochester in the early summer of 1964.

This rediscovery led to the revival of his career and introduced his singular voice to a new generation of musicians and music-lovers.

“If the blues were an ocean distilled... into a pond...and, ultimately into a drop...this drop on the end of your finger is Son House.

It’s the essence, the concentrated elixir.”

- Dick Waterman Son House’s former manager

In honor of Son House’s enduring influence, Geva will host “Journey to the Son: A Celebration of Son House”, a fourday festival in August 2015, supported in part by the Max and Marian Farash Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. This event will include musical performances, the presentation of academic papers and a reading of a Gevacommissioned play based on Son’s life written by the Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Keith Glover.

Son House never set out to be a musician. Because of his upbringing in a religious household, his early years were dominated by the church and by plans to become a preacher.

House initially abhorred the blues as “one of the wrongest things in the world to be doing …” because of the violent and sexual themes of so many of the songs. While in Clarksdale, Mississippi, however, House heard a guitar player using a small glass bottle on the strings of his instrument and had a sudden epiphany: he “believe[d] he want[ed] to play one of them things,” realizing that he could “make the guitar say what I say.”

This discovery, of course, was in direct contrast to his religious background. “You can’t,” Son would often tell audiences, “hold God in one hand and the devil in the other.”

Soon after, House began to play at Saturday night plantation dances, which were often rough affairs full of drunken patrons with loaded firearms. It was at these frolics where House would make one of his indelible contributions to the blues – his mentoring (of sorts) of the legendary Robert Johnson. Tiring of the chaos of the dances, though, House decided to stop “fooling with those country balls” and, following a friend’s lead,

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moved to Rochester to work for a company making military equipment used in World War II. It was then that House decided he “wouldn’t fool with playing anymore.” And he didn’t - until his rediscovery in June of 1964.

the guitarists who have been influential throughout his career.

Chief among those influences was Son House. “By the time I was about 18 somebody played me Son House’s ‘Grinning In Your Face’ [and] that was it for me,” recalls White. “This spoke to me in a thousand different ways. I didn’t know that you could do that just singing and clapping, and it meant everything.

It meant everything about rock and roll, everything about expression, creativity and art. One man against the world, and one song.”

By the early 1960’s, young, predominantly white college students set about criss-crossing the country in search of the artists responsible for the works that had long fascinated them. Three such determined record collectors (including Dick Waterman, House’s eventual manager) followed a trail that included stops in Boston, Memphis (twice) and Mississippi before meeting House at his apartment building on Greig Street.

Word of his rediscovery spread quickly through the blues world. It also galvanized the blues community in Rochester as younger players began to seek House out for instruction and tales of his early years. Many of these musicians, such as John Mooney and Brian Williams (as well as Joe Beard, a friend and neighbor of Son’s), are still active locally, nationally or internationally and speak fondly of their time with House.

To these musicians, House was the embodiment of the blues and, equally important, a direct link to previous generations of bluesmen. Son House’s influence can still be felt in Rochester and the music world in general. Rochester’s The Beale New Orleans Grille and Bar, for example, hosts a weekly open mic night named after House (and the painted power box across the street from The Beale features one of the most iconic images of Son).

Future generations will continue to hear about Son House and his works. The 2009 documentary It Might Get Loud, for example, features three prominent and highly-influential guitar players, including Jack White, formerly of the group The White Stripes. During the film, White expresses his deep affection for

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Support for “Journey to the Son: A Celebration of Son House”:

Reservation Required

Discussion

Nextstage Performance

Free Event

Donor Exclusive

Mainstage Performance

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SCENE@GEVA N ews from YO U R T heatre

Photo by John Schlia

Front & Center: The Campaign for Geva Campaign Co-Chairs Ted Boucher and Dave Fiedler announce a $10 million campaign to transform and update the building.

The Philip Seymour Hoffman Scholarship Fund Nannette Nocon gives a lead gift to establish an endowed scholarship fund to benefit up-and-coming artists at Geva.

Front & Center: The Campaign For Geva Renderings of the cafĂŠ and lobby. For more information, visit www.GevaTheatre.org

Photo by Immagine: Life Captured

New Apartments for Geva’s Guest Artists County Executive Maggie Brooks, Mayor Lovely Warren, Actor Patrick Noonan, Patrick Dutton of Dutton Properties and Senator Joe Robach at the press conference.

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Geva Theatre Center 75 Woodbury Blvd.

Rochester, NY 14607

Non - Profit U.S. Postage PAID Rochester, NY Permit #482

SPRING 2015

JANUARY - MAY 2015 www.GevaTheatre.org | (585) 232-4382

14/15 Season Little Shop Of Horrors

JAN 13-FEB 15

Katherine’s Colored Lieutenant Women In Jeopardy!

A Body Of Water

FEB 5-feb 22

FEB 24-mar 22

MAR 19-apr 5

The Mountaintop The Road to Where

mar 31-apr 26 APR 23-may 10

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

In the Wilson Mainstage In the Fielding Nextstage

MAY 5-MAY 31

Sean Patrick Reilly, Nicole Lewis and Constance Macy in Good People | Photo by Ken Huth