The Fifth Column

THE FIFTH COLUMN

ADIRECTED PLAYBY BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY JONATHAN BANK WITH:

A PLAY BY

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

JAMES ANDREASSI, HEIDI ARMBRUSTER, KELLY AUCOIN, RYAN DUNCAN, RONALD GUTTMAN, JOHN HAYDEN, JOE HICKEY, CARLOS LOPEZ, NED NOYES, MARIA PARRA, JOE RAYOME, NICOLE SHALHOUB, TERESA YENQUE

DIRECTED BY

JONATHAN BANK

NYSCA

This production is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Production design support provided by the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Foundation. Marketing support provided by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JONATHAN BANK GENERAL MANAGER SHERRI KOTIMSKY

SETS VICKI R. DAVIS COSTUMES CLINT RAMOS LIGHTS JEFF NELLIS SOUND JANE SHAW PROPS SCOTT BRODSKY DRAMATURGY JUAN SALAS ASSISTANT DIRECTOR JERRY RUIZ DIALECTS AMY STOLLER ASSISTANT LIGHTING DESIGNER BEN KRALL ASSISTANT COSTUME DESIGNER HUNTER KACZOROWSKI PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER LINDA HARRIS ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER JEFF MEYERS PRESS REPRESENTATIVE DAVID GERSTEN & ASSOCIATES ILLUSTRATION STEFANO IMBERT GRAPHICS HUNTER KACZOROWSKI CASTING STUART HOWARD, AMY SCHECTER & PAUL HARDT BOX OFFICE MANAGER COLLEEN T. SULLIVAN

(212) 315-0231 WWW.MINTTHEATER.ORG CALL, ORDER ONLINE, OR VISIT US IN PERSON AT: 311 WEST 43RD STREET, STE. 307 NEW YORK, NY 10036 $45 FOR PERFORMANCES FEBRUARY 26th - MARCH 9th $55 FOR PERFORMANCES MARCH 11th - APRIL 20th

PERFORMANCES BEGIN FEBRUARY 26TH TUESDAY - WEDNESDAY - THURSDAY AT 7PM FRIDAY - SATURDAY AT 8PM SATURDAY - SUNDAY AT 2PM

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Monday – Friday 12-6pm Beginning Feb. 25th: Monday – Saturday 12-6 Sunday 12-3pm

SURROUND EVENTS Discussions follow the performance, last approximately 50 minutes and are open to the public free of charge. Dates and speakers are subject to change. If you are attending the show on a different date but want to join us for one of our discussions, please feel free to do so.

March 2nd “Philip Rawlings: Professional Agent”

PERFORMANCES BEGIN FEBRUARY 26TH

TUES - WED - THURS AT 7PM, FRI - SAT AT 8PM, SAT - SUN AT 2PM TO ORDER TICKETS CALL (212) 315-0231 OR VISIT OUR BOX OFFICE ONLINE: WWW.MINTTHEATER.ORG

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Professor Gerald Weales from University of Pennsylvania is a drama specialist, critic, and author or editor of a great many books, including “Revolution, a Collection of Plays”. Weales will discuss THE FIFTH COLUMN’s depiction of a professional agent working for the Comintern in a political and literary context.

March 8th “The Fifth Column In Context”

Professor Arthur Waldhorn is the author of “A Reader’s Guide to Ernest Hemingway” and “Ernest Hemingway, A Collection of Criticism,” as well as coeditor of “Hemingway and Faulkner in Their Time”. He is Professor Emeritus of English at the City College of New York.

March 9th “The Abraham Lincoln Brigade”

Anne Taibleson, Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) will talk about the history of the North American role in the Spanish Civil War.

March 15th “Madrid, 1936-1939”

Juan Salas, Dramaturg for THE FIFTH COLUMN and a doctoral candidate at N.Y.U., will discuss daily life in Madrid during the war.

March 16th “THE FIFTH COLUMN on Broadway”

Jonathan Bank will discuss how it happened that the Theater Guild produced Hemingway’s play on Broadway in an “adaptation” by Benjamin Glazer.

March 22nd “The real fifth column in the Spanish Civil War”

Professor Noël Valis from Yale University will discuss THE FIFTH COLUMN and the real “fifth column” in the Spanish Civil War. Professor Valis is the author of numerous books as well as the editor of the recently released “Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War”.

April 5th “Typewriter Soldiers: The Uncivil Wars of Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn” Verna Kale is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Penn State. Her dissertation traces the evolution of the woman war correspondent in America.

PHOTO BY ROBERT CAPA/MAGNUM PHOTOS

THE FIFTH COLUMN RNEST HEMINGWAY

D BY JONATHAN BANK

THE FIFTH COLUMN is a hot-blooded romance played out against a backdrop of treachery and intrigue during the Spanish Civil War. Philip Rawlings is a counter-espionage agent working for the Republic. When he falls for Dorothy Bridges, a remarkable girl who inspires a passion that he’s never felt before, his commitment to the cause is seriously tested.

“A profoundly moving and convincing drama….Mr. Hemingway speaks a bold word for the truth in dialogue that blazes with sincerity.”

THE STORY THE FIFTH COLUMN is the dramatic, sexy and surprisingly funny story of the private and political passions of Philip Rawlings, a counter-espionage agent working for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The beating heart of the play is a romance between weary, shell-shocked Rawlings and Dorothy Bridges, a journalist in over her head professionally and head-over-her-heels personally. Against a backdrop of treachery and danger, Dorothy and Philip take solace in each other’s arms and dream of peace and pleasure—a dream that threatens Rawlings’s commitment to the cause.

Hemingway wrote THE FIFTH COLUMN in 1937 while in Madrid as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Franco’s army had four columns advancing on the city and a “Fifth Column” of hidden fascist sympathizers within the city using terrorist tactics to bring down the government. Hemingway’s fictional hero is fighting these insurgents.

THE AUTHOR

Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, 1940

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THE FIFTH COLUMN rings out with a battle-scarred truth as one would expect from Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel and Pulitzerprize winning author of A Farewell to Arms and ForWhom the Bell Tolls and a celebrated war correspondent.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most influential and important voices in American fiction, famous for his short, declarative sentences and no-nonsense prose.

From the 1920’s until his death from a selfinflicted gunshot wound, Hemingway captivated the public with his oversize personality and dramatic exploits as well as his powerful short stories and novels. Whether running with the bulls in Pamplona, hunting big game in Africa or reeling in marlin off the Florida Keys, Hemingway had a huge appetite for adventure, competition and exhibitions of strength and courage.

THE FIFTH COLUMN THE WAR IN SPAIN The story of Civil War in Spain from 1936 to 1939, was more than that of an attempted coup d’état of the newly elected, progressive government (Republicans or Loyalists) by army officers led by Franco and allied with wealthy landowners and a conservative clergy (Rebels or Nationalists). The conflict in Spain became the first battle in the war against fascism.

Hitler and Mussolini offered the rebels both troops and supplies while the democratic governments of France, England and the U.S. adopted a policy of non-intervention.

Some 40,000 passionate and liberalminded individuals from across the world volunteered in Spain, hoping to prevent the spread of fascism throughout Europe. They formed the International Brigades, armed in part with the aid of the Soviet Union.

Hemingway’s play tells the story of some of these brave volunteers—members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade—and of one comrade who escaped from the Nazi’s to fight them in Spain.

Directed by Jonathan Bank

THE FIFTH COLUMN ON BROADWAY Until now, the only production of the play was of a bastardized version in 1940, billed as: “adapted by Benjamin Glazer from the published play by Ernest Hemingway.”

A number of producers were interested in the play when it first became available—but, for various reasons, no one was able to make it happen. One signed a contract but died in a plane crash before the ink was dry. Another took an option but it lapsed when he was unable to raise the money.

Hemingway became impatient—he was eager for the play to be seen (or read) when it was most timely so he let Scribner’s publish the play in the fall of 1938.

After another series of unfortunate missteps with would-be producers, the Theatre Guild finally took the play in the fall of 1939—after the war in Spain was over. They wanted changes that would reflect the outcome of the war and serve the Guild’s “crusade against fascism.” Hemingway was preoccupied with finishing his great novel of the war in Spain, ForWhom the Bell Tolls, and he allowed Benjamin Glazer, a Hollywood man who had written the screenplay for A Farewell to Arms to “adapt” the play—to his everlasting regret. Hemingway declined even to see this production.

“A profoundly moving

and convincing drama” Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, 1940

WRITING THE PLAY THE FIFTH COLUMN was forged under fire on the front line. “While I was writing the play the Hotel Florida, where we lived and worked, was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells. So if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it. If it is a good play, perhaps those thirty shells helped write it.” When Hemingway left his room during the day, the play was stashed inside a rolled up mattress for safety. “When you came back and found the room and the play intact you were always pleased.”

While writing the play Hemingway was having an affair with Martha Gellhorn, who eventually became his third wife. She was in Madrid as a journalist, also living in the Hotel Florida.

Spain’s Civil War was the first of many conflicts that she covered in her storied career. Gellhorn; tall, blond and glamorous, served as the model for THE FIFTH COLUMN’S Dorothy Bridges.

By Ernest Hemingway

FROM TOP: HEMINGWAY WITH GELLHORN, 1940; WITH SPANISH SOLDIERS, 1937.

BOTH ROBERT CAPA/MAGNUM PHOTOS.

HEMINGWAY’S POLITICS Hemingway was an outspoken supporter of the Republican cause, but his play is not propaganda. “Some fanatical defenders of the Spanish Republic,” Hemingway wrote, “will criticize the play because it admits that Fifth Column members were shot. They will also say, and have said, that it does not present the nobility and dignity of the cause of the Spanish people. It does not attempt to. This is only a play about counter-espionage in Madrid…if it has a moral, it is that people who work for certain organizations have very little time for home life.”

Even in its diluted state, Hemingway’s muscular brilliance was evident and the production was greeted with enthusiasm. “THE FIFTH COLUMN pierces closer to the chaotic agony of the contemporary world than anything we have had this season,” wrote Brooks Atkinson in The NewYork Times.

THE FIFTH COLUMN AT THE MINT Beginning on February 26th 2008, Mint Theater Company will present THE FIFTH COLUMN as it was originally written—a moving drama by one of literature’s most powerful voices.

Don’t miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Premiere of Ernest Hemingway’s only full-length play!

IN 1937 ERNEST HEMINGWAY WROTE HIS ONLY PLAY. BEGINNING FEB. 26TH YOU CAN FINALLY SEE IT. New York, NY Permit No. 7528

311 West 43rd St. Suite #307 New York, NY 10036 www.minttheater.org

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