Becomes A Woman Program

MINT THEATER COMPANY

MISSION

MINT THEATER COMPANY finds and produces worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten. We create new life for these plays and their authors through research, dramaturgy, production, readings, and a variety of enrichment programs. We extend that life by preserving our work—through publication, our online archives, and with broadcast quality video recordings.

GRETCHEN ADKINS

JONATHAN BANK

MARY CRAWFORD

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

JOHN P. HARRINGTON

KATHRYN SWINTEK

MINT STAFF

Producing Artistic Director......Jonathan Bank

Associate Producer...........Matthew McVey-Lee

Financial Management Services.......Arts FMS

Director of Development….........Lauren Siegel

Development Associate

Wendolyn Sims-Rucker

Marketing Associate...................Shay Thomas

Publicity….............David Gersten & Associates

Auditor…......................Lutz & Carr, CPA’s, LLP

PRODUCTION STAFF

Production Management......................Intuitive Production Management

Production Manager….........Robert Signom III

Production Manager Scott H. Schneider

Technical Director Keith Adams

JOHN YARMICK

In Memoriam

CIRO A. GAMBONI

Assistant Light Designer / Programmer

Xiangfu Xiao

Associate Sound Designer…........Alex Brock

Master Electrician…...................John Anselmo

Associate Master Electrician…...Chris Robinson

Assistant Master Electrician….Jamie Johnson

Electricians….............................Jordan Acosta, Martin Bodenheimer, Cullen Chaffin, Janeill Cooper, Jeffrey D’Ambrosio, Nikeem Deleon, Sam Eisner, Nick McCulloch, Matt Morris, Nancy Valladares, Mack Woods

Carpenters…...........Kyle Driggs, David Orenge, Zack Glass

Audio Supervisor…........................Nate Krogel

Board Operator................................Roy Chang

Production Assistant…..............Bob Homeyer

COVID Compliance Supervisor........John Lant

Casting Director……...........Stephanie Klapper

Casting Assistants............................................

Hershey Vazquez Millner, Emma Balk

Company Liaison……......................Grant Allen

SPECIAL THANKS

Set Construction….....Hillbolic Arts & Carpentry

Props Assistants....Rhys Roffey, Paul Birtwistle

Assistant Costume Designer..........................

Nicole Brooks Sanwandee

Tailors.........Caroline La Porta, Jonathan Waters

Wig Provided by...…......................Ali Pohanka

Wardrobe & Wig Supervisor...Linnea Soderburg

Eric Colton, Stephanie Chen, Rani Haywood, the Tom O’Conner Consulting Group, Ret. Det. Pat Storino and Paul Michael Hoza of the NYPD for their help with 1920s NYC police history. John Toguville, Jon Ferreira, and the NYCC Box Office Staff

MINT THEATER COMPANY

by BETTY SMITH

Directed by BRITT BERKE

JONATHAN BANK, Producing Artistic Director presents with

DUANE BOUTTÉ, CHRISTOPHER REED BROWN, JEB BROWN, GINA DANIELS, ANTOINETTE LaVECCHIA, JILLIAN LOUIS, JACK MASTRIANI, JASON O’CONNELL, EMMA PFITZER PRICE, SCOTT REDMOND, PEARL RHEIN, MADELINE SEIDMAN, PHILLIP TARATULA, PETERSON TOWNSEND, TIM WEBB

Set

VICKI R. DAVIS

Props

CHRIS FIELDS

Costumes

EMILEE McVEY-LEE

Casting

Lights

MARY LOUISE GEIGER

STEPHANIE KLAPPER

Music Director

EMMA WEISS

Production Stage Manager

JEFF MEYERS

Illustration

STEFANO IMBERT

Associate Producer

MATTHEW McVEY-LEE

Intimacy & Fight Director

CHA RAMOS

Sound & Original Music M. FLORIAN STAAB

Dialects & Dramaturgy

AMY STOLLER

Production Management

INTUITIVE PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

Assistant

Stage Manager

ARTHUR ATKINSON

Assistant

Stage Manager

MIRIAM HYFLER

Graphics

HEY JUDE DESIGN, INC

Publicity

DAVID GERSTEN & ASSOCIATES

THIS PRODUCTION IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY:

The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

ABOUT THE PLAY

“Taking to the Medium:”

Betty Smith, American Playwright by

Maya Cantu

Like the tenement-born “Tree of Heaven” inspiring its title, Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn endures through generations as one of the biggest bestsellers of the twentieth century. Yet, while Smith found her greatest fame as a novelist, she was most passionate about her work in the theatre. As described by Carol Siri Johnson, “Smith played an important role in the largely undocumented world of noncommercial theatre of the 1920s and 1930s” through her work with three influential university playwriting departments and with the Federal Theatre Project. The author of over 70 one-act and full-length dramas, Smith commented in 1937: “I write plays because I’d rather do that than anything else in the world.” Smith’s plays share with her novels a focus upon working-class women persevering through poverty to craft their own narratives of self-determination, often fueled by their engagement with reading and books.

Smith was born as Elizabeth Lillian Wehner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on December 15, 1896. She based the Nolans in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn upon her complex relationships with her German American immigrant parents: the idealistic Johnny and pragmatic Catherine. Smith recalled of her childhood in Brooklyn, “It was exciting, churning, bewildering, ever-changing and overcrowded.” Her family’s economic hardship compelled her at fourteen to leave school and take her first job: as a “leaf-putter-onner” in an artificial flower factory. Yet she delighted in “prowling around” the “gay and carnivally” world of five-and-ten cent stores, and immersed herself in books and theater. Smith reminisced, “I had one objective: To get together a dime a week to see the Saturday matinee at one of the three Brooklyn stock companies in our neighborhood.” She proceeded to take playwriting classes at the Jackson Street Settlement House, where she fell in love with aspiring law student George Smith. Resuming her high school education in 1916, Elizabeth Wehner dreamed of becoming a writer. However, the need to work day shifts for a high-paying new job, detecting forgeries for the postal service, compelled her to drop out of high school—and in 1919, she married Smith.

The couple’s marriage brought Elizabeth Wehner Smith to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After George graduated and moved with his wife around the state as a practicing lawyer, Elizabeth focused on raising their two young daughters, Nancy and Mary. In 1928, they moved back to Ann Arbor, where George pursued a Master’s degree in political science and Elizabeth won the status of a special student. Although she was unable to count her coursework toward a degree, due to not having finished high school, Smith was permitted to audit three courses a semester, including playwriting and journalism. During this time, she helped support her family by writing articles for publications ranging from The Detroit Free Press to Modern Romance.

ABOUT THE PLAY

Under the name of Elizabeth W. Smith, the writer progressed from painful feelings of not belonging to increasing confidence as one of the most acclaimed student playwrights at the University of Michigan. The school’s newspaper, The Michigan Daily, commented in 1930 that Smith, “through consistently mature work in Play contests and other wise, has built up for herself a large following on the campus.” She developed her skill and versatility as a playwright under the tutelage of Professor Kenneth Thorpe Rowe, later the teacher of Arthur Miller. Rowe selected two of Smith’s one acts for The University of Michigan Plays of 1929-1930 anthology. With Wives-in-Law, Smith concocted a “light forceful comedy, pleasantly satiric in purpose” about two women teaming up to outwit a cheating husband. By contrast, in The Day’s Work, Smith wrote a piercing drama about medical corruption that the Daily called a “strikingly original use of the one-act form; being a hard, brutal attitude of the author successfully symbolized by a situation realistically caught.” For 1930’s Jonica Starrs, “an extremely entertaining comedy” for which Smith also designed the sets, she won the Division of English’s Long Play Contest.

The next year, Becomes a Woman was chosen as a winning play of the University of Michigan’s prestigious Avery Hopwood Award. For the play, Smith won a $1,000 prize, although the university archives list the prize-winning play as Francie Nolan. Smith changed the title to Becomes a Woman when she applied for a copyright in 1931, but she did not change the name of the play’s protagonist. The play, exploring socially transgressive themes that likely limited its chances for production in the early 1930s, marked the first time Smith employed the name Francie Nolan. When a dozen years later, a younger and more innocent Francie became famous in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as an autobiographical stand-in for the author herself, Smith might possibly have chosen the name as an homage to the character in her unproduced play.

The 1931 Hopwood Award led to an invitation from the legendary playwriting teacher George Pierce Baker to study with him at Yale University’s Department of Drama, founded in 1925. Expanding her skills in multiple aspects of theatrical production, Smith acted in productions such as Volpone (where she played Lady Would-be), and continued to write plays such as the 1932 one-acts Mannequin’s Maid and Blind Alley, and the full-length Candy Farm (produced at the Detroit Playhouse, and under the revised title of Sawdust Heart, at Hoboken, NJ’s Stevens

Betty Smith

ABOUT THE PLAY

Theatre). To her frustration, once again, Smith was unable to receive a degree. After finishing at Yale (and separating from Smith, the first of three husbands), the playwright earned her living from selling one-acts, even as success in the commercial Broadway theater proved elusive.

Smith’s fortunes changed in 1935, when she found work as an actor and play reader with the Federal Theater Project. In 1936, Smith and her romantic partner and collaborator Bob Finch successfully sought FTP positions at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; she was lured by the opportunity to study playwriting with Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paul Green and the drama department’s founder Frederick Koch. As an advocate for community-centered folk drama, Koch ran “the most successful small theater in the South—the Carolina Playmakers,” as described by Johnson. He also presided over a distinguished writers’ group that included Green, Thomas Wolfe, and the Mexican American playwright Josefina Niggli. To Smith’s disappointment, the FTP canceled its planned production of King Cotton, Smith’s collaboratively written Living Newspaper play exploring the effects of rural poverty on Southern workers. Nevertheless, she thrived artistically in Chapel Hill, writing award-winning plays like 1937’s So Gracious is the Time and editing anthologies such as 1942’s Non-Royalty One-Act Plays for All-Girls Casts. The latter included At Liberty, one of the earliest published plays by Tennessee Williams.

The influence of regionally specific folk plays, combined with Smith’s reading of Wolfe’s coming-of-age novel Of Time and the River, inspired her to begin work on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith later commented, “I don’t think I could have written a novel about Brooklyn if I hadn’t gotten away.” Despite grants from the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild, Smith’s precarious finances also proved a motivation for the book’s writing. As The Brooklyn Daily Eagle profiled Smith in 1943, “For two years she arose at 6 in the morning to devote one hour a day to completing it. The first draft was completed in a year and then it was rewritten four times. She did the final copying to save the typist’s fee.”

The critically acclaimed 1943 publication of that novel transformed Smith’s life, as she became a national celebrity. According to The New York Times (in 1963), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn went into 37 printings, was translated into 16 languages and adapted into an acclaimed 1945 film directed by Elia Kazan (a former classmate of Smith’s at Yale). Smith’s close friend Josefina Niggli, who suggested the title of the book, commented: “I think Tree, stylistically and emotionally, is one of the great books of this generation.”

Smith focused her subsequent output upon biographically informed novels, including Tomorrow Will Be Better (1948) and Maggie-Now (1958). Though now best known for her fiction, Smith continued to write for the stage. In 1943, she began And Never Yield, an adapted drama following a Mormon woman’s marriage in nine-

ABOUT THE PLAY

teenth-century Utah. Smith commented: “I’m happy about the play—even happier than about the novel [Tree], because I feel at home in my own field.” Although the play did not materialize in a planned Broadway production directed by Mike Todd, it was produced (as First in Heart) at Yale’s Department of Drama in 1947. In 1951, Smith earned her first and only Broadway credit as the co-librettist of the Broadway musical adaptation of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Of her work with George Abbott (like Smith, a former playwriting student of George Pierce Baker), she commented: “I think it was one of the most amiable collaborations in dramatic history.” In her final novel, 1963’s Joy in the Morning, inspired by Smith’s time at the University of Michigan, the protagonist longs to write for the stage. Smith channeled herself in young playwright Annie Brown: “She took to the medium heart, soul, and mind.” After some years of illness, Smith died of pneumonia at a convalescent home in Shelton, CT on January 17, 1972 at the age of seventy-five.

In a 1959 letter to her granddaughter Candace, Smith reflected on her legacy: “I, your grandmother, never went beyond the 8th grade. I educated myself by sitting in on college courses when I could, by reading everything I could get my hands on. And without undue modesty, I am a world famous writer. A hundred years after I’m dead, people will still be reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” Yet it was Smith’s keen dramatic skill, honed at the University of Michigan, at Yale, and at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, that vitally informed her novels. As Carol Siri Johnson observes, “The craft of playwriting was essential to Smith: it was her practiced ability to transcribe the nuances and variations of common American speech that formed her characteristic style.” Even as Tree remains deeply implanted in the cultural imagination, Smith’s plays throb with language and characters as “exciting, churning and ever-changing” as her native borough, and invite rediscovery by new generations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Johnson, Carol Siri. “The Life and Work of Betty Smith, Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” PhD Dissertation, City University of New York, 1994.

Yow, Valerie Raleigh. Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Chapel Hill, NC: Southern Sky Press, 2010.

MAYA CANTU Since 2013, Maya has worked on sixteen productions at the Mint. She is the author of the book, American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). For her essay “Beyond the Rue Pigalle: Recovering Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith as ‘Muse,’ Mentor, and Maker of Transatlantic Musical Theater,” published in Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity, Maya was selected as the 2020 recipient of the American Theatre and Drama Society’s Vera Mowry Roberts Research and Publication Award. Maya teaches at Bennington College, and received her D.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama.

MUSIC NOTES

by Amy Stoller

The script of Becomes a Woman includes many song titles, mostly not direct matches to known songs. Playwright Betty Smith may have used them as placeholders, or remembered the titles imperfectly. I was tasked with finding good candidates, and here are the results. Not all will be heard in our production, as I found more than one option for one of the songs. The titles in boldface are given as they appear in the original typescript.

“Left Alone.” For this, I found several possible inspirations: “Left All Alone Again Blues” (1920, lyrics by Anne Caldwell, music by Jerome Kern, from The Night Boat); “All By Myself” (1921, words and music by Irving Berlin, first performed in his 1922 Music Box Revue); “All Alone” (1924, words and music by Irving Berlin, featured in his 1924 Music Box Revue). The last of these is a “standard,” recorded by everyone from Al Jolson to Miss Piggy. A line from its lyrics, “All alone by the telephone” has taken on a life of its own.

“Mean Family Blues”/“Me and My Family Blues.” This was a real poser. I’m grateful to music historian David Seatter, who, after much digging, unearthed one possibility: “Family Trouble Blues” (1922, words and music by Olman J. Cobb). This was first recorded by Lizzie Miles (the “Creole Songbird”), with Clarence Johnson at the piano.

The “classical music” one character complains of is “The End of a Perfect Day.” Officially titled “A Perfect Day” (1909, words and music by Carrie Jacobs-Bond), it was a tremendously popular parlor song from the time of its publication in 1910. So, not exactly “classical”—just popular music of one generation earlier.

“He’s my Man.” (or “I Must have that Man”.) [Smith offered us options—or couldn’t remember which one she wanted?] The obvious inspiration for the first title is “My Man”/“Mon Homme” (1920, original French lyrics by Jacques-Charles and Albert Willemetz, music by Maurice Yvain; English lyrics by Channing Pollock). Fanny Brice had a huge hit with the 1921 recording of her English-version Ziegfeld Follies performance. She recorded it again in 1927, and her radio performance in 1928 was also recorded. The second title, “I Must Have that Man” (1928, lyrics by Dorothy Fields; music by Jimmy McHugh) is one of several hits from Lew Leslie’s revue Blackbirds of 1928.

“I Don’t Owe Nothing to Nobody.” Surely a reference to Nobody (1905, lyrics by Alex Rogers; music by Bert Williams.) This became Williams’ signature song, and was recorded by him in 1906 and again in 1913. It remained popular into the 1930s.

You can find recordings of all of these at https://tinyurl.com/BaWmusicresearch.

CAST & SCENES

ACT ONE

A late Saturday afternoon in June. Kress’ Dime Store on DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn.*

Francie Nolan...................................................................EMMA PFITZER PRICE

Tessie .GINA DANIELS

Florry ..PEARL RHEIN

Woman .JILLIAN LOUIS

First Man ........TIM WEBB

Second Man...........................................................................JACK MASTRIANNI

Flapper.................................................................................MADELINE SEIDMAN

Solitary Man .....JEB BROWN

Mr. Malloon.............................................................................PHILLIP TARATULA

Leonard Kress Jr............................................................PETERSON TOWNSEND

Collegiate Youth.....................................................................SCOTT REDMOND

Jimmy O’Neil........................................................CHRISTOPHER REED BROWN

Max.........................................................................................JASON O’CONNELL

ACT TWO

An early Monday evening, three months later. The Nolan kitchen, Bushwick.

Francie Nolan..................................................................EMMA PFITZER PRICE

Ma Nolan.....................................................................ANTOINETTE LaVECCHIA

Frankie Nolan.......................................................................................TIM WEBB

Johnny Nolan.........................................................................JACK MASTRIANNI

Pa Nolan...........................................................................................JEB BROWN

Tessie.............................................................................................GINA DANIELS

Leonard Kress Jr............................................................PETERSON TOWNSEND

ACT THREE

The same, the following June.

Francie Nolan...................................................................EMMA PFITZER PRICE

Agent.......................................................................................PHILLIP TARATULA

Tessie..............................................................................................GINA DANIELS

Max........................................................................................JASON O’CONNELL

Leonard Kress Sr........................................................................DUANE BOUTTÉ

Leonard Kress Jr..........................................................PETERSON TOWNSEND

*Act One is set in Kress’s Dime Store. S.H. Kress & Co. was one of America’s larger fiveand-ten chains. In the 1920s, S.H. Kress had two branches in Harlem, but never opened a store in Brooklyn. The Kress store in this play, and both Leonard Kress Sr. & Jr. are fictional and unrelated to Samuel Henry Kress who never married, and had no children, or his 5-1025¢ stores. In 1929, Kress founded the S.H. Kress Foundation which “devotes its resources to advancing the study, conservation, and enjoyment of the vast heritage of European art, architecture, and archaeology from antiquity to the early 19th century”.

WHO’S WHO: CAST

DUANE BOUTTÉ

(Leonard Kress Sr.)

Broadway: Parade and Lincoln Center’s 1994 Tony Awardwinning revival of Carousel. Select OffBroadway: Discord (Primary Stages); Civil Sex (Public Theater); The Bubbly Black Girl and The Heliotrope Bouquet (Playwrights Horizons). Regional: Goodman Theatre, Arena Stage, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Oregon Shakespeare, Dallas Theatre Center, Denver Center, Alliance, McCarter, Seattle Rep and more. TV: “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” “Sex and the City,” “A Year in the Life,” and more going back to guest appearances on “What’s Happening Now.” He stars in the films Stonewall and Brother to Brother. Directing credits: Neil LaBute’s Appomattox (world premiere, Summer Shorts), LOL (Algonquin Prod.), Home (Rep Stage), The Merry Wives of Windsor (Worcester Shakespeare), Stalag 17 (Fresno), The Winter’s Tale and Everybody (Brooklyn College), Othello (Stella Adler), Fences and Cabaret (Illinois State University). Boutté was composer for Lyin’ Up a Breeze (GCP, Fresno), and Caravaggio Chiaroscuro (La Mama).

DuaneBoutte.com

CHRISTOPHER

BROWN (Jimmy O’Neil, u/s Frankie Nola, First Man, Johnny Nolan) is honored to make his Off-Broadway debut with the Mint Theatre

Company and this incredibly kind and honest cast and crew. He is a native New Yorker, so he is “naturally quite” thrilled to be working on a Bk original in NYC. Chris studied at New York University and has performed regionally in shows including Richard III, The Matchmaker (People’s Light), What Would Crazy Horse Do?, Welcome to Fear City (Kansas City Rep), Macbeth (Park Avenue Armory), Uniform Justice (TE’A Intersections International). His film and television credits include Greatest Beer Run Ever, Down Low, “Elementary,” “Mysteries of Laura,” and “Get Christie Love. He would like to thank his fiancé and family for their tremendous ongoing care and support.

JEB BROWN (Pa Nolan, Solitary Man, u/s Leonard Kress Sr.) made his Broadway debut at age 10 as a no-neck monster in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; originated the role of ‘70s music mogul Don Kirshner in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical; and survived the original cast of SpiderMan: Turn Off the Dark. Other Broadway: Ring of Fire, Time Stands Still, High Fidelity, I’m Not Rappaport, Aida, Bring Back Birdie, Grease. Off-Broadway he’s appeared in Whisper House (The Civilians), Scotland PA (Roundabout), The Undeniable Sound of Right Now (WP), Romantic Poetry (MTC), Terms of Endearment (The Directors Co), Game Show (45 Bleeker.) He stars as the titular character in the award-winning indie film Beau (spring festivals and upcoming.) Other film: My America (Hal Hartley); The

WHO’S WHO: CAST

Namesake (Mira Nair); Salt (Philip Noyce); Renaissance Man (Penny Marshall); I’ll Do Anything (James L Brooks). Favorite TV: “Little America,” “The Good Fight,” “Elementary,” “The Path,” “Prodigal Son” “Neon Joe: Werewolf Hunter,” “Star Trek: Deep Space 9,” and “Law & Order SVU.” Founder of LA’s Evidence Room Theatre Project; member of the Yale Whiffenpoofs; Brooklyn born; currently in Brooklyn with Elyse, Eleanor and Nicky.

GINA

DANIELS

(Tessie) Broadway: Network, All The Way. Selected other theatre (NY, International and Regional): Park Avenue Armory, CSC, New World Stages, Wuzhen Theatre Festival, Paper Mill Playhouse, Studio Theatre, Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, American Players Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Indiana Repertory Theater, Utah Shakespeare Festival, Syracuse Stage, Portland Center Stage, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Arden Theatre, TheaterWorks, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival, Delaware Theatre Company, Baltimore Center Stage, Geva Theatre Center, and Pittsburgh Public Theater. In 10 seasons as a company member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Gina appeared in over 30 productions, originated roles in a dozen world premieres and ran Shakespeare’s gamut from Perdita to Portia to Puck. She can be heard in the Next Chapter

podcasts of King Lear and The Winter’s Tale as well as the narrator of many an audiobook. Film/television credits include “The First Lady,” “FBI,” “Manifest,” Lapsis, and “Orange is the New Black.” www.gina-daniels.com

ANTOINETTE

L a VECCHIA (Ma Nolan, u/s Woman)

Broadway: Torch

Song, A View From The Bridge. Off-Broadway: The Portuguese Kid (MTC), Two Point OH (59E59), Mamma Roma & How to be a Good Italian Daughter... (Cherry Lane), String of Pearls (Primary Stages), Kimberly Akimbo (MTC), Magic Hands

Freddy (Soho Playhouse). Regional: Secondo (TheaterWorks), The True (Capital Rep), Ah Wilderness (Hartford Stage), Project Dawn (People’s Light), The Blameless (Old Globe), A Comedy of Tenors (McCarter Theatre/Cleveland Play House), I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (TheaterWorks, George St. Playhouse, Cincinnati Playhouse, Asolo Rep), Electric Baby (Two River), Tough Titty (Williamstown). TV: “Mad About You” (reboot), “Bull,” “The Deuce,” “FBI,” “Blindspot,” “L&O: SVU,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Sopranos.” Film: Team Marco, Deliver Us From Evil, Delirious. Education: MFA Tisch/ NYU, Moscow Art Theatre, Philippe Gaulier. Member: Dramatist Guild, Drama League Fellow. Awards: Fox Fellowship, The Anna Sosenko Grant, CT Critics Circle Award, BroadwayWorld. com CT Best Actress Award.

WHO’S WHO: CAST

JILLIAN LOUIS

(Woman, u/s Tessie, Florry, Flapper) is thrilled to support this beautiful show, team and company.

Broadway: It Shoulda Been You; Tour: Cheers; Off-Broadway: Soul Doctor, Chick Flick, Midnight Street; Regional: Walnut Street, North Shore, Denver Center, Cape Playhouse, Casa Manana, Florida Rep, Florida Studio, many many more; Concert/Cabaret: Town Hall, Buxton Opera House, Symphony Space, Cabaret 313, 54 Below. TV/ Film: “Law & Order: SVU,” “Show Me A Hero,” “Mount Joy.” Jillian teaches through a number of organizations, has an album and solo concerts coming soon and has participated in the development of roughly 200 new works. IG: @jillian.louis.nyc JillianLouis.com

JACK MASTRIANNI

(Johnny Nolan, Second Man, u/s Jimmy O’Neil) is very excited to be making his debut at the Mint Theater.

Broadway/New York: A Christmas Story (Scut Farkus, OBC), Radio City Christmas Spectacular (Patrick), The Butcher Boy (Irish Rep). Regional: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Lou Adler, Neil Sedaka), A New Brain (Gordon), Wizard of Oz (Scarecrow), Into the Woods (Jack), Altar Boyz (Abraham). Jack is a graduate of the Musical Theatre program at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance. Many thanks

to Stephanie Klapper, Britt Berke, John Mara/Mara Entertainment, and Corbin Balzan. Love to mom, dad, and Matt. For Grandma Lawton. Jackmastrianni. com @jackmastrianni

JASON O’CONNELL (Max) Off-Broadway: Judgment Day (Park Avenue Armory), Pride and Prejudice (Primary Stages), Happy Birthday, Wanda June (Wheelhouse Theater), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (The Pearl), Sense and Sensibility (Gym at Judson), The Seagull (Sheen Center), The Saintliness of Margery Kempe (Duke on 42nd St), and Jason’s own solo show, The Dork Knight (Abingdon Theatre Company, Cherry Lane Theatre, Joe’s Pub, etc.). NYIT Award - Outstanding Lead Actor (Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s Don Juan in Hell). Regional: Syracuse Stage, Hartford Stage, Two River Theater, Cape Playhouse, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Kansas City Rep, Arkansas Rep, American Players Theatre, Florida Studio Theatre, Delaware Theatre Company, Great Lakes Theater, and others. TV: HBO’s “Search Party,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” In addition to The Dork Knight, Jason’s writing credits include the solo show Fat and Scant of Breath, or Stabbing at Hamlet and a small cast adaptation of Cyrano , co-written with Brenda Withers. Directing credits include Cyrano’s World Premiere at Amphibian Stage. www.jason-oconnell.com

WHO’S WHO: CAST

EMMA PFITZER

PRICE (Francie Nolan) is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut with Mint Theater Company. Emma appeared in productions of Major Barbara, Black Snow, A Bright Room Called Day, As You Like It, and The Cherry Orchard among others at The Juilliard School, where she received her B.F.A. in Drama. Other theatre includes Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Yale Repertory) and Steel Magnolias (Virginia Theatre Festival). She recently appeared in Showtime’s “American Rust.” Originally from Kentucky, Emma is a Governor’s School for the Arts Scholar of Drama. She is beyond grateful to be bringing Betty Smith’s powerful work to life.

SCOTT REDMOND

(Collegiate Youth, u/s Max, Agent, Leonard Kress Jr.) is a New York-based actor, most recently seen on the national tour of Daniel Fish’s Oklahoma!. Additional recent credits include Ride the Cyclone (Alliance Theatre, original cast recording), Freedom Riders (NYMF, original cast recording), Bayard (El Museo Del Barrio), Fat Kid Rules the World (Theatre Row), and “After Forever” (Amazon Prime). BFA Acting, UConn. scottredmondactor.com @notscottredmond. Endless thanks to friends and family!

PEARL RHEIN (Florry, u/s Ma Nolan) is an actor, writer, multi-instrumentalist, and composer based in New York. She was in the original Broadway cast of Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 and in The Public/Shakespeare in the Park’s The Taming of the Shrew directed by Phyllida Lloyd. Other theater highlights include playing Jo March in Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Little Women at The Dallas Theater Center, and the NYC revival of Nightclub Cantata by Elizabeth Swados. Pearl has also originated characters in new musicals at Irish Rep and People’s Light Theater in Malvern, PA. TV: “Succession” (HBO), “Bull” (CBS), “The Blacklist” (NBC), “Younger” (TVLand). Pearl plays over 15 instruments, and is currently writing a musical (or something) about Amelia Earhart. Big thanks to Avalon Artists Group and Forte Artist Management. Proud member of Ring of Keys & Maestra. Follow @pearlrhein, pearlrhein.com.

MADELINE SEIDMAN (Flapper, u/s Francie Nolan) Theatre: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Christians, One Man, Two Guvnors (Chautauqua). New play development with Rattlestick, Clubbed Thumb, and New York Theatre Workshop. TV: “A League of Their Own.” BA: Williams College. MFA: Yale School of Drama, 2022.

WHO’S WHO: CAST

PHILLIP TARATULA

(Mr. Malloon, Agent, u/s Pa Nolan, Solitary Man) Broadway: The Skin of Our Teeth (LCT). National tour: What the Constitution Means to Me. NY theatre credits include: Empire Travel Agency (Woodshed Collective); The Lily’s Revenge (HERE Arts Center); Riddle of the Trilobites (New Victory). Regional: Two River, Humana Festival, Portland Stage, Tuacahn, Gulfshore Playhouse, Huntington, O’Neill Playwrights Conference, Williamstown Theatre Festival, more. Opera: Die Fledermaus (Metropolitan Opera); The Soldier’s Tale (Castleton). Film/TV: Almost Love “And Just Like That,” “Dr. Death,” “High Maintenance,” “FBI,” “For Life,” “The Outs.” BFA, Boston University School of Theatre.

PETERSON

TOWNSEND (Leonard Kress Jr.) is happy to be returning to Mint Theater Company, where he was last seen as Freddy Tennant in their production of Chains. He has also performed in various productions at the Metropolitan Opera such as Fire Shut up In My Bones, Porgy & Bess, Rigoletto, and Turandot. Other credits include America 2.1The Sad Demise… (Barrington Stage); Antigone (Baltimore Center Stage); A Christmas Carol, Ms. Bennet - Christmas at Pemberley, Satchel Paige & the KC Swing (St. Louis Rep); Swimming in the

Shallows (Kitchen Theatre); Twelfth Night (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre); A Raisin in the Sun, Cinderella, Our Town, History Boys (Arden Theatre); Hospital (Axis Theatre); A Lesson Before Dying, North Star (Triad Stage); and The Lost Colony (Waterside Theatre). TV/film credits include: “Invasion” (Apple TV+); “Prodigal Son” (Fox); “Law & Order SVU,” “L&O: CI,” “L&O: Prime” (NBC); “The Good Fight,” “Elementary,” “The Code” (CBS).

TIM WEBB (Frankie Nolan, First Man, u/s Colligate Youth) OffBroadway debut! Tim is so honored to be in this incredible company. Recent credits include: Newsies at the Gateway Playhouse (Morris Delancey), Grumpy Old Men at Plaza Theatrical (Lo), and the National Tour of A Charlie Brown Christmas (Swing: U/S Charlie Brown). Tim would like to send big hugs and thanks to Britt, Jonathan, BWA, and all his family and friends that continue to support him along the way. Pace MT 2020.

ARTHUR ATKINSON (Assistant Stage Manager) is thrilled to be back with the Mint Theater family! Prior Mint productions: The Daughter-in-Law, The Fatal Weakness, The New Morality. Traveled this past fall to Tottori, Japan for the Bird Theatre Festival with Theatre Breaking Through Barriers’ production of Brecht On Brecht . Recent NYC theatre productions: The Year of Magical Thinking (Keen Company), Liz Swados’s Nightclub Cantata at the Cell Theatre, Paradise Lost (FPA), Cagney - The Musical at

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC STAFF

the Westside Theatre; many shows at the Irish Rep, York Theatre, Directors Company, Cape Playhouse, et al. Toured internationally in Fiddler on the Roof starring Topol, then Harvey Fierstein and Theodore Bikel. A proud member of Actors Equity Association. Love to Lisa.

MIRIAM HYFLER (Assistant Stage Manager) is excited to work with the Mint again! Recent credits: The Rat Trap, Chains (Mint Theater), Twelfth Night (Music Theatre Wichita), hang, Time Stands Still (Shakespeare & Company), Shanghai Sonatas (Master Players Concert Series), In The Heights (Park Playhouse), Death of a Driver (Urban Stages), On Blueberry Hill, Maz and Bricks (Origin Theatre/Fishamble), Three Small Irish Masterpieces, It’s A Wonderful Life, Woman and Scarecrow (Irish Rep), The Dingdong (Pearl Theatre), author Directing author (La Mama), How to Break (HERE), Henry V (New York Classical Theatre), Cymbeline, Capsule 33 (Barrow Street Theater), I Call My Brothers, The Sonic Life of a Giant Tortoise, Ludic Proxy (The Play Company), several seasons with Phoenix Theatre Ensemble, Pan Asian Rep, and New Century Theatre. Love to @orangefreddyg.

JEFF MEYERS (Production Stage Manager) was in a play once. He played the Captain in the Grand Junction, Colorado, high school production of Carousel. He then turned to stage management. He is very pleased to be continuing his collaboration with Mr. Bank having previously worked on fifteen Mint productions including The Rat Trap, Chains, The Daughter-in-Law, Conflict, Hindle Wakes, Fashions For Men and

Ernest Hemingway’s The Fifth Column His New York highlights also include Beyond Therapy and Happy Birthday (TACT), Painting Churches and Marry Me A Little (Keen Company), Amazons and their Men (Clubbed Thumb), Orange Flower Water and Adam Rapp’s Stone Cold Dead Serious (Edge Theater Company), Hamlet (CSC), Critical Darling (New Group) and Greg Kotis’ Eat The Taste (Barrow St. Theatre). Regional highlights include Dracula (Triad Stage) and ten summer seasons with The Theater at Monmouth. His union of choice is AEA, and he dedicates this and every performance to his Mom and Dad.

BRITT BERKE (Director) Off-Broadway directorial debut Recent projects: Anne Carson’s Antigonick (Torn Out Theater), watch me (New York Theatre Workshop, Adelphi Residency), DOGS (Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep), Promenade in Concert (The Public Theatre’s Fornés Marathon), Liberian Girl in Brooklyn (Mabou Mines), and Round Room (Origin Theater’s 1st Irish Festival - Best Director nom). Assistant directing credits include The Skin of our Teeth (Tony nom) and Mud/ Drowning (Obie Award). She is a member of the Roundabout Directors Group and an alumna of the MTC Directing Fellowship. Britt holds a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University, where she received the Kenneth Janes Prize for Outstanding Intellectual and Artistic Achievement. Associate Member, SDC. brittberke.com.

VICKI DAVIS (Sets) USA 829. Previously at the Mint: The Rat Trap, The Mountains Look Different, The Price of Thomas Scott, Suitcase Under the Bed, The

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC STAFF

Lucky One, Women Without Men, The Fatal Weakness, Katie Roche, Rutherford and Son, Temporal Powers, Wife to James Whelan, The Fifth Column, The Skin Game, The Lonely Way, Echoes of the War, Far and Wide, The Voysey Inheritance, Miss Lulu Bett, Welcome to Our City, August Snow & Night Dance, and The House of Mirth. Off-Broadway: Adobe, AMAS, Blue Heron, HB Studio, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, The Ontological, LaMaMa, Folksbiene, New Yiddish Rep, Henry Street Settlement, Kings County Shakespeare, Bronx Opera, Bel Canto Opera, Wings, WPA, Playhouse

91. Regional theater and opera: Laguna Playhouse, Arena Stage, The Alliance, Milwaukee Rep, Dallas Theater Center, Spooky Action, Starlight Kansas City, Madison Rep., The Barter, Capital Rep., Passages, Georgia Shakespeare, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Utah Opera, Kansas City Opera, Omaha Opera, Theater of the Stars, Boston Lyric Opera, Lake George Opera Festival, Chester Theater, and Music Theater North.

EMILEE M c VEY-LEE (Costumes) is thrilled to be making her NYC design debut working on this beautiful “found” play Becomes A Woman. Emilee’s costume associate work was seen in 24 productions at Playwrights Horizons, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Off-Broadway production of A Strange Loop. Prior to moving to NY Emilee spent 8 years at the Santa Fe Opera as the Costumes Collections Manager. Other Santa Fe Opera credits include: Design Assistant on Don Pasquale (Laurent Pelly Design) and Griselda (Dunya Rumicova design). Selected costume design credits include Elixir of Love, Words and Music (Santa Fe

Opera Education Department). Chapter Two, Death of a Salesman, Buried Child, Our Town, American Buffalo, Trip to Bountiful, and Rabbit Hole (Iron Weed Productions). Antigone (TheatreWorks). Eurydice (SCRAP Productions). Sound of Music, Crazy for You (Little Theater on the Square). Peter Pan (Tuacahn). Emilee would like to thank her daughter Liza and husband Matthew, whom she met stage left in Neverland, for their support. As well as Jonathan Bank for this opportunity.

MARY LOUISE GEIGER (Lighting) Mint: Conflict. Broadway: The Constant Wife (American Airlines Theatre). OffBroadway: Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, Good Television, The New York Idea (Atlantic Theatre), Until the Flood (Rattlestick); X, Or Betty Shabazz v. The Nation (Acting Company); Nat Turner in Jerusalem, Forever, Oedipus at Palm Springs (New York Theatre Workshop); Kindness, Blue Door, The Busy World is Hushed (Playwrights Horizons); Mabou Mines Dollhouse, Red Beads (Mabou Mines). Regional: ACT, 5th Avenue, Goodman, Huntington, Steppenwolf, Milwaukee Rep, Guthrie, Pioneer, Cleveland Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Center Theatre Group, LA Opera among others. Training: Yale School of Drama, Faculty: NYU Tisch. www.mlgeiger.com

M. FLORIAN STAAB (Sound) is a composer and sound designer based in Brooklyn NY. Staab was born and raised in Germany and received a BA from Oberlin College and MFA from UIUC/ Krannert Center. He is an associate artist with Sinking Ship Productions. His designs have been heard at the

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC

Public Theater, Irish Rep, Trinity Rep, City Theatre Pittsburgh, Center Theatre Group, Mint Theater, Pearl Theatre, Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Drama League, New Saloon, the cell, Partial Comfort, Keen Company, Chicago Opera Vanguard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Most recently, Staab recorded, mixed and designed several virtual productions and narrative fiction podcasts, and directed Bill Irwin’s On Beckett/In Screen for the camera. www.florianstaab.com

CHRIS FIELDS (Props) is excited and proud to be joining the gang at the Mint Theater for a fifth time ( Conflict, The Price of Thomas Scott, The Mountains Look Different, Chains), and so glad to be working with Vicki Davis again. He was previously Props Master at Shakespeare & Co., Barrington Stage Company, Flat Rock Playhouse, Contemporary American Theater Festival, several Off-Broadway shows, and the musical Anna Karenina at Circle in the Square. He was the Associate Props Master at the Public Theater for several years. As a craftsperson he helped create the original costumes for The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, as well as the goat for the original production of Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?. Among his proudest accomplishments is six arrests and an Obie Award as a member of ACTUP. (If you haven’t heard of them, Google it.) So much thanks to my family and friends who make this crazy life in the theater possible.

EMMA WEISS (Music Director) is a music director, educator, and vocal coach from New York City. She holds an MA in Musical Theater Music Directing from the

STAFF

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Emma has music directed productions, concerts, and cabarets in New York at Radio City Music Hall, Joe’s Pub, Feinstein’s 54 Below, The Django, The Duplex, and The Tank. She has worked regionally at the Weston Playhouse, Seattle Rep and Parallel 45 Theatre. Emma is currently on faculty at Friends Seminary and has music directed productions and classes at independent schools and universities throughout New York City.

CHA RAMOS (Intimacy & Fight Director) (she/ella) is a multidisciplinary theater artist with a metric montón of books, swords, and altars in her NYC apartment. She is an intimacy & fight director, dramaturg, playwright, performer, and instructor. Notable credits include: intimacy and fight direction for Dom Juan at the Fisher Center at Bard College; associate intimacy direction for COMPANY on Broadway; dramaturgy for new works by José Rivera and Leslie Ayvazian; performing with the Vixens En Garde all-female sword-fighting Shakespeare comedy troupe; teaching intimacy and stage combat in-person and online; and ongoing development of her three original plays. More info at www.CallMeCha.com

AMY STOLLER (Dialect Design

& Dramaturgy) has helped Mint casts suit words to actions for nearly 40 productions—most recently The Rat Trap and last season’s Chains and The Daughterin-Law. Also this season: Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at American Repertory Theater (Cambridge, MA). Last season: Jodi Long’s American Jade (premiere; Bucks County Playhouse); the Scottish musical Islander (Playhouse 46, NYC);

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC STAFF

Ann (Cape May Stage); Fires in the Mirror (Theatrical Outfit, Atlanta, GA). Amy works frequently with Anna Deavere Smith; projects to date include Notes from the Field and Let Me Down Easy (each on stage and screen) among others. A third-generation native New Yorker, Amy dedicates her work on this production to the memories of her grandparents and her brother Adam. www.stollersystem.com.

INTUITIVE PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT (Production Management) is a New York-based theatrical production firm specializing in Off-Broadway, opera, dance and live events. Founded by Robert Signom III and Scott H. Schneider, Intuitive brings superior production values and personalized support to each performance. www.intuitiveprodmgmt.com

ROBERT SIGNOM III (Production Manager) has been working in production for over twenty years. As Production Manager, he has worked for Boston Lyric Opera, Heartbeat Opera, Opera Naples, Tri-Cities Opera, Signature Theatre, Gotham Chamber Opera, Aspen Opera Theatre Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, HERE Arts Center, NJPAC, and others. He is an Eagle Scout, the Curator of America’s Packard Museum, and a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

SCOTT H. SCHNEIDER (Production Manager) has been Production Manager for Bronx Opera Company for fifteen seasons. Other credits include The Preacher and the Shrink and An Error of the Moon (Beckett Theatre), The Megile of Itzik Manger and KulturefestNYC (National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene), She Loves Me (Caramoor), Marie Galante (Opera

Francais de New York), Darkling (AOP), and Joy (Actors’ Playhouse). Stage Manager for opera and theatre, OffBroadway, regional, and on tour. Former treasurer Stage Managers’ Association; graduate Wesleyan University; Artistic Director Bad Dog Productions.

KEITH ADAMS (Technical Director) worked as the Technical Director/ Facilities Manager of Theatre Row for the past 17 years (June 2022). Prior to that, Keith worked at George Street Playhouse and Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, NJ. Some of his favorite shows he’s had the pleasure to have worked on include: Play On! (Crossroads), The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (Ambassador Theatre), Claudia Lazlo (GSP), Wilderness of Mirrors (GSP), Tick, Tick...Boom! (GSP), Let Me Sing (GSP), and most recently, The Rat Trap (Mint Theatre Company). Keith enjoys splitting his time between Intuitive and various projects with friends. Keith values the many professional relationships developed with countless people over the past 20+ years in theatre.

STEPHANIE KLAPPER (Casting Director). Stephanie’s award-winning work is frequently seen on Broadway, off-Broadway, regionally, on concert stages, film, television, and streaming media. Select recent credits include The Rat Trap; Chains; The Daughter-in-Law (all for Mint); The Lucky Star; Goldie, Max, & Milk; and The New Golden Age (all three for the Volt Festival at 59E59); Grace, the musical (Ford’s Theatre), Cymbeline (NYCT) Elf Quest, the audio movie, Ranked, the musical/HBO Documentary; Candide (Cincinnati Symphony/Philadelphia

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC STAFF

Orchestra). Stephanie, along with her exceptional team, is dedicated to continuing to expand and champion diversity, equity, and inclusion in the business and is passionate about arts education. Member of the National Board of Governors for Casting Society and Board Member for Casting Society Cares. Co-host of the podcast Someone’s Thunder. For Bob and Florence.

ARTS FMS provides outsourced financial management services to nonprofit arts groups, focusing on long-term fiscal health and sustainability and helping organizations focus on mission fulfillment. Arts FMS serves a variety of arts organizations with a particular focus on the performing arts. www.artsfms.com

DAVID GERSTEN & ASSOCIATES (Press Representatives) has served as press representatives and marketing consultants on Broadway and off for over twenty-five years. In addition to Mint (since 1995), current clients include several not-for-profit theaters including Godlight Theatre Company, NAATCO, and Red Bull Theater, among others. David is VicePresident and a Trustee of ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers (IATSE), where he also serves as the Off-Broadway Steward. He is a member of the Off-Broadway League and co-founder/Vice-President of the Off-Broadway Alliance.

MATTHEW McVEY-LEE (Associate Producer) is a producer and director. He has worked with Mint Theater Company on Chekov/Tolstoy: Love Stories, The Daughter-in-Law, Chains and The Rat

Trap as well as the streaming of Katie Roche, Conflict, Women Without Men, Hindle Wakes, and many more. Favorite authors featured at Mint Theater are Teresa Deevy, Hazel Ellis, Elizabeth Baker, Miles Malleson, and George Kelly. Previously he was the Associate General Manager with Aaron Grant Theatrical, an off-Broadway general management firm where he worked on many projects including Love for Sale, Van Gogh’s Ear, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Bulldozer the Musical, Stranger Sings!, and others. Select directing credits include the murder mystery Truffles, Cassandra (Theater 3), Eurydice (SCRAP) and the development of Drew Morrison’s Goner.

JONATHAN BANK (Producing Artistic Director) has been the artistic director of Mint Theater Company since 1995, where he has unearthed and produced over 50 lost or neglected plays, some of which he has also directed. Some favorites include Wife to James Whelan by Teresa Deevy, Yours Unfaithfully by Miles Malleson, The New Morality by Harold Chapin, Mary Broome by Allan Monkhouse, the American professional Premiere of The Fifth Column by Ernest Hemingway, and Maurine Dallas Watkins’s So Help Me God! starring Emmy Award-winner Kristen Johnston. That production received four Drama Desk nominations, including Outstanding Revival and Outstanding Director. Bank spearheaded Mint’s ambitious fourplay, two-book Teresa Deevy Project, dedicated to reclaiming the lost voice of “one of the most undeservedly neglected and significant Irish playwrights of the 20th century” ( The Irish Times ).

WHO’S WHO: ARTISTIC STAFF

In a feature article about the project in America Magazine, Andrew Garavel wrote “Thanks are due to Jonathan Bank and the Mint Theater for bringing such a distinctive voice from the past so satisfyingly into the present.” Under Bank’s leadership the Mint has earned an international reputation as the source for high-quality revivals of forgotten works and has become, in the words of The New York Times’ Jason Zinoman, “the leading New York entrepreneur” of the neglected play business. In his review of Mint’s 2018 production of Conflict by Miles Malleson, Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal described Jonathan Bank as “one of a handful of theater artists in America whose name is an absolute guarantee of quality.”

MINT THEATER COMPANY was founded in 1992. Jonathan Bank became artistic director in 1995 and began to shape the company’s mission, focusing on neglected plays from the past. Since then, the Mint has introduced theatergoers to dozens and dozens of terrific forgotten plays, by

authors as renowned as Hemingway and Tolstoy, and as obscure as Teresa Deevy and Allan Monkhouse. In the words of New York Times critic Ben Brantley, Mint Theater is the “resurrectionist extraordinaire of forgotten plays.” The Mint takes great pride in the many successful productions, from the first major success in 1999: the American premiere of The Voysey Inheritance by Harley GranvilleBarker, to the four-time Drama Desknominated So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins in 2009, to London Wall by John van Druten in 2014 and Fashions for Men by Ferenc Molnár in 2015—both of which were broadcast on WNET Thirteen’s “Theater Close-Up.” Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal wrote that Mint has “a near-perfect track record of exhuming forgotten plays of the previous century that deserve a happier fate.” In 202021, Mint offered free streaming from their extensive library of three-camera archival recordings, reaching an international audience of grateful theatergoers stuck at home, while paying union salaries & benefits to over 100 artists.

UNDERSTUDIES Understudies never substitute for listed performers unless a specific announcement is made at the time of the performance.

Frankie Nolan, First Man, Johnny Nolan..........................CHRISTOPHER BROWN

Leonard Kress Sr................................................................................JEB BROWN

Woman...........................................................................ANTOINETTE LaVECCHIA

Tessie, Florry, Flapper......................................................................JILLIAN LOUIS

Jimmy O’Neil............................................................................JACK MASTRIANNI

Mr. Maloon..............................................................................JASON O’CONNELL

Max, Agent, Leonard Kress Jr...................................................SCOTT REDMOND

Ma Nolan..........................................................................................PEARL RHEIN

Francie Nolan.......................................................................MADELINE SEIDMAN

Pa Nolan, Solitary Man.............................................................PHILLIP TARATULA Collegiate Youth.....................................................................................TIM WEBB

MINT DONORS

We’re grateful for the ongoing support from our loyal community of donors. This list represents total donations of $250 or more from January 1, 2022 to January 24, 2023. For questions regarding your support or to update your donor listing, please contact giving@minttheater.org.

CRÈME DE LA CRÈME:

$25,000+

Howard Gilman Foundation

The Shubert Foundation

The Dorothy Strelsin Foundation

CRÈME DE MINT:

$10,000 - $24,999

Robert Brenner

Virginia Brody

Gail P. Gamboni

Mental Insight Foundation

Lorna Power

Jerome Robbins Foundation

Royal Little Family Foundation

Wallace Schroeder

Ted Snowdon Foundation

David Stenn

The Michael Tuch Foundation

John J Yarmick

SILVERMINT:

$5,000 - $9,999

Gretchen Adkins

Judith Aisen & Kenneth Vittor

Axe-Houghton Foundation

Mary & Bruce Crawford

Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

Nicholas Firth

Charles & Judith Freyer

John & Janet Harrington

Marta Heflin Foundation

David L. Klein Jr. Foundation

Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation

Lucille Lortel Foundation

Southwind Foundation

Sukenik Family Foundation

CHOCOLATEMINT:

$2,500 -$4,999

Anonymous

Louis Alexander

Kenneth & Carole Boudreaux

Christopher Joy & Cathy Velenchik

Brian & Roselle Kaltner

Martin & Maude Meisel

H-N Raisler Fund

The Petros and Marina Sabatacakis Foundation

Kathryn Swintek & Andre Dorra

Mary Ellen & Karl Von Der Heyden

Francis Williams

Steven Williford

SPEARMINT:

$1,500 - $2,499

Joseph Bell & Peter Longo

Jon Clark & Ryan Franco

William Downey

Ruth Friendly

Frederick Meyer

Dorinda Oliver

Mr. Pancks’ Fund at The Chicago Community Trust

John Q Smith

Stella Strazdas & Hank Forrest

Burton & Sue Zwick

PEPPERMINT:

$750 - $1,499

Anonymous (3)

Actors’ Equity Foundation

David & Kim Adler

Steven Allen & Caroline Thompson

Linda & Lloyd Alterman

Barbara Berliner & Sol Rymer

Paul Blackman

John Carley & Pia Lindstrom

Julie Cushing Connelly

George & Susan Crow

Ellen Curtis

Bonita Dorland

Judy Evnin

Ted Ferrara & Roxanne Gleason

Agnes M. Gautier

Charles & Jane Goldman

Michael Herko & Robert Bennett

Sigrid A. Hess

Hickrill Foundation

Virginia Josephian

William Kable

Sarah-Ann Kramarsky

David & Mary Lambert

The Lambs Foundation

Lianne Lazetera

Barbara & John Lehman

Claire Lieberwitz & Arthur Grayzel, MD

Douglas Liebhafsky & Wendy Gimbel

Tom Mandia

Barbara Manning

Lisa Martorella & Summer E Moulton

Doris & David May

John Moroney

Mark & Georgia Munsell

Jane & Saleem Muqaddam

George Robb

Sharon Rowlands

Kathy Moses Salem

Benjamin Segal

Ronald Shaw

Robert Sinclair

Louis Spitalnick

Gary Stern

Anne Teshima

Susan Vice

Mary Wight

Sara Zion

DOUBLEMINT:

$250 - $749

Anonymous (13)

Carmen Anthony

Arts FMS

Laure Aubuchon

Bert C. Bach

Stacy Banks

Judith E Barlow

Mary (Robin) Baskett

Jeanne Bergman & Anna Kramarsky

Robert & Ellie Berlin

Alvin Berr

Nidia Besso

Clinton F. Best

Joseph Biernat

Andrew Blackman & Susan Buttenweiser

Steven Blier & James Russell

Stephen Bogardus

Dr. & Mrs. Jeffery S. Borer

James Brenner

Bebe & Douglas Broadwater

Diane Broccolino

Jane Burgin

Lois A Burke

Elaine & Martin Buss

Paul & Katie Buttenwieser

Peter Cameron

Vincent Carbone

Russell Charlton & Julie Norwell

C. L. Christensen

Steven Coe

Ira Cohen

Peggy Correa

Mihaela Cosma

Audrey Coughlan

Tandy Cronyn

Stuart & Sue Davidson

Ann DeInnocentiis

Carolyn E. Demarest

Clarence J. & Constance Denne

Denny Denniston & Chris Thomas

Jamie deRoy

Francisco Diaz

Thomas Dieterich

PeggyJo Donahue

Caroline Donhauser

Douglas Dooley

Joan Drelich

Kevin Duffy & D.G. Weber-Duffy

Emily T Dunlap

Judith Eschweiler

Ellen Estes

Barbara Farrar & Tom Evans

William Farris

Linda Feinstone

Howard Feldman

James Feldman & Natalie Wexler

Lisa & William Finkelstein

Robert & Helena K. Finn

Barbara G. Fleischman

Charles Forma

Carol & Burke Fossee

Lawrence Franks

Nicholas Garaufis & Betsy Seidman

Mary J Geissman

Joseph Goldberg

Gloria Goldenberg

Margaret L Goodman

Diane Graham

Kris & Marc Granetz

Sally Graudons

Eleanor & Martin Gruber

George & Antonia Grumbach

Robert Hall

Lynne Halliday

Henry Hecht

Carol Hekimian

Reily Hendrickson

Claire Hinchcliffe

MINT DONORS

Dale Hodges

Mary Hoholick

Janet Holwell

Harriet & Elihu Inselbuch

Jocelyn E Jacknis

James W Jackson

Laura & Gary Jacobs

Wendy & David Johnston

Henry & Flora Joy

Gregory & Mary Juedes

Carol Katz

James Kelly

Martin Kesselman & Linda

Irenegreene

Paul Knieriemen

Lucy Kraus

Leonard Kreynin & Louise R. Radin

George Laforest

Dennis Lalli

William & Robert Lang

Albert Leizman

Jay Lesenger

Stanley & Carol Levy

Eva Lichtenberg & Arnold Tobin

Paul Lubetkin & Joyce Gordon

Dayna Lucas

Joan M Lufrano

Robert & Jean Markley

Lorraine Matys

Cheryl & Harris May

Thomas McDonald

Catharine McHugh

John David Metcalfe

Jonathan B Miller

Betsy Miller & Stuart Sucherman

Susan & Joel Mindel

Ann Miner

Karen Osler Moran

Frank Morra

John & Michelle Morris

Monica Mullin

Virg & Bob Nahas

Daniel A. Napolitano

Asha & Devdutt Nayak

Tricia Newell

Greenway O’Dea

Patricia O’Shea

Stephanie Olmsted

David C. Olstein

Sally Parry & Bob McLaughlin

Brinton Taylor Parson & Francis C. Parson, Jr

James Periconi

Alice Perkins

Terry Davis Perl

Virginia W. Pfeiffer

Isaac Pollak

Judith Quillard

Maria Sarath Ragucci

Susan D. Ralston

Cordelia & David Reimers Fund

Tom Repasch

Peter Robbins & Page Sargisson

Mark Rossier

Thomas & Lynn Russo

Win & Mary Rutherfurd

Judy & Sirgay Sanger

Caroline Schimmel

Daphne & Peter Schwab

Marilyn & Joseph Schwartz

Joe Sherman

David Shields

Robert A. Shivers

Shelley & Joel Siegel

Joyce Silver

Marilyn Singer & Steve Aronson

Barbara Smith

Anthony & Patricia Smith

Elise & Alan Sosenko

Sandra & Graham Spanier

Shondell & Edward Spiegel

Martha S. Sproule

Alec Stais & Elissa Burke

Bob & Sherry Steinberg

Susan Stockton

Pamela Stubing

Larry E. Sullivan

Craig & Deborah Sutton

Douglas Tarr

Jane Tate

Janet & Udi Toledano

Mark Tomasko

Charles & Susan Tribbitt

Martha Van Hise

Bob Volin

Jacob Waldman

Daniel & Judith Walkowitz

John Michael Walsh

Richard Watson

Patricia White

Anita & Byron Wien

Frank Wolf & Stephen Abel

Trudy Wood & Jacob Goldberg

Susan Zappone & Mitchell Bacharach

Michael S. Rosenberg President & CEO

Susan Neiman VP & CFO

Julie Mason Groob .............................. VP & COO

Tia Powell Harris VP, Education & Community Engagement

Stanford Makishi VP & Artistic Director, Dance Programs

Molly Meloy VP, Marketing & Communications

Naomi Weinstock VP, Development

Maya Gonzalez Executive Assistant to the President & CEO/VP & COO

PROGRAMMING

Lear deBessonet Artistic Director, Encores!

Mary-Mitchell Campbell Music Director, Encores!

Clint Ramos Producing Creative Director, Encores!

Jenny Gersten Producer of Musical Theater

Josh Clayton Director of Music Administration

& Score Restoration

Adrian Alea Creative Associate, Encores!

Jeanine Tesori .............................. Creative Advisor

Jack Viertel Consulting Producer for Musical Theater

Cathy Eilers Associate Director, Dance Programs

Mia Silvestri Coordinator, Dance Programs

Nia Sadler Dance Programming Apprentice

GENERAL MANAGEMENT

Jessica Perlmeter Cochrane General Manager

Amy Eingold Assistant General Manager

Elmes Gomez Artist Services & Company Manager

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT

Thomas Mygatt Director of Audience Engagement & Sales

John Toguville ...........................Box Office Treasurer

Jon Ferreira Assistant Box Office Treasurer

Naomi Warner Customer Care Associate Manager

Ashley Vasquez Customer Care Associate

Erin Finnegan McCarthy Customer Care Associate

BUILDING MANAGEMENT

Jay Dority ............. Director of Facilities & Capital Planning

Gabby Goldstein Facilities Manager

Krystal M. Ramroop Facilities Assistant

Maria Cortez Operations Assistant

Max Perez Chief Engineer

DEVELOPMENT

Heather Gallagher Director of Development

Jessica McEwen

Director of Individual Giving

Susan Strebel Director of Special Events & Development Operations

William Gfeller Institutional Giving Manager

Brittney Woolley Individual Giving Officer

Ivan Huang Manager of Donor Information

HUMAN RESOURCES

Michael Hartwyk ............... Director of Human Resources

Judith A. Disla Human Resources Coordinator

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Don Lavis Director of Information Technology

Rodney Morris Desktop Support Specialist

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Joe Guttridge ............ Communications & Editorial Director

Cody Andrus Director of Marketing

Ben Miller Website Manager & Video Producer

Jessica Goldschmidt Copywriter

Jasmine Thorson Designer

Sara Garcia Communications & Marketing Coordinator

Catherine Hunt Digital Marketing Coordinator

Austin Spero .......................... Social Media Manager

Kaelyn Johnson Marketing Apprentice

PRODUCTION & VENUE OPERATIONS

Carlos Dolan Director of Production & Venue Operations

Julie Shelton-Grimshaw Assistant Director of Production

Nadine Love Assistant Director of Rentals & Venue Operations

Tim Thistleton Technical Director

Sophia Pesetti . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assistant Production Manager

Alison Jaruzelski Production & Rentals Assistant

Gerry Griffin Head Carpenter

Evan Vorono Head Electrician

Justin Malone Head Properties

Caroline Conoly House Manager

Alex Johnson House Manager, Stage I & II

Samara Finkle ............. Assistant House Manager Stage I & II

Sydnee Davis Production Management Apprentice

OUTSIDE SERVICES

Kauff McGuire & Margolis LLP Counsel Shelby Silverman

Mulligan Security Corp Building Security

Lutz & Carr, Fred Martens, CPA ... Certified Public Accountants

DeWitt Stern Group Insurance Brokers Sweet Hospitality Group ..................Lobby Refreshments SweetHospitalityGroup.com

Medical Consultant Bernard Camins, MD

CREDITS

D&B Audiotechnik Loudspeaker Systems

DIRECTORY OF THEATER SERVICES

OFFICES: 212.247.0430, Mon – Fri, 10am – 6pm Security Desk, Lost & Found

Randall Simmons Individual Giving .

. & Special Events Coordinator

Brian Bizier Institutional Giving Assistant

Theresa Regan ..................... Individual Giving Assistant

Matt Sanger Research Assistant

Nikita Shrimanker Development Apprentice

EDUCATION & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Loureannie Reynoso- Augustus ........ Senior Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Manager

Seth Laidlaw ................Director of Planning & Operations

Sarah Kutnowsky Senior Manager, Career Pathways & Community Engagement

Shaleah Adkisson Education Manager, School Programs

Malaikia Sims-Winfrey Education Apprentice

FINANCE

Alexander Frenkel ................................Controller

Andrea Williams Senior Payroll & Benefits Manager

Quin Bommer Finance Manager

For tickets and performance info, email us at info@NYCityCenter.org or call 212.581.1212 Mon – Sat Noon – 8pm, Sun Noon – 7:30pm NYCityCenter.org

MAINSTAGE SERVICES

BARS: Orch., Grand Tier level

CHECK ROOM, BOUTIQUE: Orch., Grand Tier level

RESTROOMS: every level

ELEVATORS: East and West sides of building

Gender diversity is welcome at New York City Center. Please use the restroom that best aligns with your personal gender identity or expression.

New York City Center is accessible to people with disabilities and has a hearing augmentation system. See the House Manager for assistance.

Resuscitation masks and latex gloves are available at the House Manager’s office. New York City Center is a heart safe facility. Visit NYCityCenter.org/PlanYourVisit for our latest health, safety, and ticket policies.

Mint Production History

The Rat Trap, 2022

By Noël Coward

Chains, 2022

By Elizabeth Baker

The Daughter-In-Law 2022, 2003

By D.H. Lawrence

Chekhov/Tolstoy

Love Stories, 2020

By Miles Malleson

The Mountains Look Different, 2019

By Micheal Mac Liammoir

The Price of Thomas Scott, 2019

By Elizabeth Baker

Days to Come, 2018

By Lillian Hellman

Conflict, 2018

By Miles Malleson

Hindle Wakes, 2018

By Stanley Houghton

The Suitcase Under the Bed, 2017

By Teresa Deevy

The Lucky One, 2017

By A.A. Milne

Yours Unfaithfully, 2017

By Miles Malleson

A Day by the Sea, 2016

By N.C. Hunter

Women Without Men, 2016

By Hazel Ellis

The New Morality, 2015

By Harold Chapin

Fashions for Men, 2015

By Ferenc Molnár

The Fatal Weakness, 2014

By George Kelly

Donogoo, 2014

By Jules Romains

London Wall, 2014

By John Van Druten

Philip Goes Forth, 2013

By George Kelly

A Picture of Autumn, 2013

By N.C. Hunter

Katie Roche, 2013

By Teresa Deevy

Mary Broome, 2012

By Allan Monkhouse

Love Goes to Press, 2012

By Martha Gellhorn & Virginia Cowles

Rutherford & Son, 2012

By Githa Sowerby

Temporal Powers, 2011

By Teresa Deevy

A Little Journey, 2011

By Rachel Crothers

What the Public Wants, 2011

By Arnold Bennett

Wife to James Whelan, 2010

By Teresa Deevy

Doctor Knock, 2010

By Jules Romains

So Help Me God!, 2009

By Maurine Dallas Watkins

Is Life Worth Living?, 2009

By Lennox Robinson

The Widow, 2009

By D.H. Lawrence

The Glass Cage, 2008

By J.B. Priestley

The Fifth Column, 2008

By Ernest Hemingway

The Power of Darkness, 2007

By Leo Tolstoy

The Return of the Prodigal, 2007

By St. John Hankin

The Madras House, 2007

By Harley Granville-Barker

John Ferguson, 2006 By

St. John Ervine

Susan and God, 2006

By Rachel Crothers

Soldier’s Wife, 2006 By Rose

Franken

Walking Down Broadway, 2005 By

Dawn Powell

The Skin Game, 2005 By John

Galsworthy

The Lonely Way, 2005 By Arthur

Schnitzler

Echoes of the War, 2004 By J.M.

Barrie

Milne at the Mint, 2004 Two Plays by A.A. Milne

Far and Wide, 2003 By Arthur

Schnitzler

The Charity That Began at Home, 2002

By St. John Hankin

No Time for Comedy, 2002 By S.N.

Behrman

Rutherford & Son, 2001 By Githa

Sowerby

Diana of Dobson’s, 2001 By Cicely Hamilton

The Flattering Word & A Farewell to the Theater, 2000 By George Kelly & Harley Granville-Barker

Welcome to Our City, 2000 By Thomas Wolfe

Miss Lulu Bett, 2000 By Zona

Gale

The Voysey Inheritance, 1999 By Harley

Granville-Barker

Alison’s House, 1999 By Susan

Glaspell

The House of Mirth, 1998

By Edith Wharton & Clyde Fitch

Mr. Pim Passes By, 1997 By

A.A. Milne

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1997 By George

Aiken

Quality Street, 1995 By J.M.

Barrie