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Mary Bacon Joyce Cohen Shannon Harrington Kate Middleton Aedin Moloney Alexa Shae Niziak Kellie Overbey Dee Pelletier Beatrice Tulchin Emily Walton Amelia White
PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
MANAGING DIRECTOR
JEN SOLOWAY
— PRESENTS —
SETS VICKI R. DAVIS COSTUMES MARTHA HALLY LIGHTS TRACI KLAINER POLIMENI ORIGINAL MUSIC & SOUND JANE SHAW PROPS JOSHUA YOCOM CASTING JUDY BOWMAN DIALECTS & DRAMATURGY AMY STOLLER PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER KATHY SNYDER ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER JAIME McWILLIAMS PRODUCTION MANAGER CHRIS BATSTONE ILLUSTRATION STEFANO IMBERT GRAPHICS HEY JUDE DESIGN, INC. ADVERTISING THE PEKOE GROUP PRESS DAVID GERSTEN & ASSOCIATES
JANUARY 30 THROUGH MARCH 26 AT NEW YORK CITY CENTER STAGE II 131 W 55TH STREET
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A LIMITED NUMBER OF HALF-PRICE TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE IN CERTAIN LOCATIONS FOR EACH PERFORMANCE. (REGULAR PRICE $55; $6.50 PER TICKET SERVICE CHARGE, PLUS $1 FACILITY FEE APPLIES TO ALL ORDERS.)
PERFORMANCES Tue-Sat at 7:30pm Sat & Sun at 2:30pm
Wed. Matinee: 2/24 and 3/23 at 2:30pm
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“Remarkably Fine” Dublin Opinion, 1938
Now Performing at New York City Center Stage II 131 West 55th St.
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THIS PRODUCTION IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY: The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
By public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
“One of the Most Absorbing Plays Ever Written in Ireland.” Evening Mail, 1938 A workplace drama laced with biting humor, Hazel Ellis’ Women Without Men is set in the teacher’s lounge of a private girls boarding school in Ireland in the 1930s. Jean Wade is an enthusiastic young teacher new to the school; she soon finds herself popular with the students and at odds with her quarrelsome colleagues—especially the antagonistic Miss Connor. When Miss Connor’s life’s work, a history of “beautiful acts” through the ages, is found torn to shreds, Jean is the most likely suspect. With evidence mounting against her and animosity in the air, will Jean fight for her career, or will she be beaten by the pettiness and jealousy that thrives in the school’s cloistered environment? Hazel Ellis began her theatrical career as a member of the acting ensemble of the Gate Theatre in Dublin. Her first play as author—a study of Lord Byron titled Portrait in Marble—opened at the Gate in 1936. Reviewing that production, the Irish Times noted, “Dublin is able to welcome a good play by a new Irish author—a sufficiently rare occurrence, and one which suggests that Irish drama is about to take a turn for the better.” Her only other play, Women Without Men, was produced at the Gate Theatre in 1938. “Here is a very young author and this is her second play, yet she had the wisdom to give us one of the finest pieces of true realism we have seen in Dublin,” wrote The Irish Tatler and Sketch. The Evening Herald echoed the praise: “Clever characterization, witty dialogue and a serious vein go to make Women Without Men one of the outstanding successes of the present season.”
“There is not a dull moment in Women Without Men” Evening Herald, 1938
Despite acclaim, the play was never published or revived. Instead, a typescript of Hazel Ellis’ witty study of workplace tension gathered dust for 77 years—until Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank found the eye-catching title while scanning through the catalog of the Dublin Gate Theater Archives at Northwestern University. Women Without Men continues Mint’s concerted effort to produce the work of forgotten female dramatists. “Although the Mint Theater Company is justly lauded for its rehabilitation of forgotten works, I don’t think Jonathan Bank’s outfit gets enough credit for its unwavering dedication to women writers,” wrote Elizabeth Vincentelli of the New York Post in 2012. “For me, it’s the plays written by women that have resonated the most. Maybe because the pay-off is sweeter: These women had descended into an obscurity even more pitch-black than that of the male writers produced by the Mint—if it’s hard for female writers to make it to the stage, it’s even harder for their works to be revived.” Mint has introduced theatergoers to plays by Cicely Hamilton, Susan Glaspell, Rachel Crothers, Githa Sowerby, Teresa Deevy, and others. We’re thrilled to be adding Hazel Ellis to our list of extraordinary—but shamefully neglected—female playwrights. Fittingly, our production of Women Without Men will feature a cast and creative team entirely made up of women. Jenn Thompson directs a cast of 11 female actors, and the production will feature sets by Vicki R. Davis, costumes by Martha Hally, lights by Traci Klainer Polimeni, and sound by Jane Shaw.
A BIOGRAPHY OF
HAZEL ELLIS By Maya Cantu
The author of two “remarkably fine” plays marked by their “subtle characterization” (The Tatler) and incisive “delicacy of treatment” (The Dublin Opinion), Hazel Ellis cut a bright swath through the Irish theatre, during her brief career as a playwright. Starting as an actress with the Gate Theatre, Ellis enjoyed great successes with her richly observed ensemble dramas Portrait in Marble (1936) and Women Without Men (1938), before virtually disappearing from the Dublin stage at the age of thirty. The daughter of Arthur B. Ellis and his wife Florence, Hazel Beatrice Ellis was born on November 20, 1909 in Rathmines, a middle-class South Dublin neighborhood where her father worked as a solicitor. As a teenager, she attended the French School of Bray, in suburban Dublin. A private girls’ boarding school respected for the quality of its liberal arts and musical education, strictly run by its small female staff, the French School later supplied Ellis with the imaginative basis for Women Without Men. After graduating from the French School, Ellis attended Trinity College. “A young, attractive, golden haired girl” (as described by The Evening Mail), the soft-spoken Ellis blossomed as an actress with Trinity’s Elizabethan Society Players, playing Ophelia in Hamlet.
enrichMINT events
ENRICHMINT EVENTS ARE SUPPORTED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE NEW YORK COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES AND THE MICHAEL TUCH FOUNDATION. All events take place immediately after the performance and usually last about fifty minutes. They are free and open to the public. Speakers and dates subject to change without notice.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 31 after the matinee: PANEL DISCUSSION: WOMEN WORKING IN THEATER (WITH AND WITHOUT MEN) FEATURING THE CREATIVE TEAM OF WOMEN WITHOUT MEN AND MODERATED BY LUDOVICA VILLAR-HAUSER
A recent study by the League of Professional Theatre Women found that less than 35% of creative jobs Off and Off-Off-Broadway during the 2014-2015 season were held by women. The all-female creative team of Women Without Men will discuss their careers in the theater, as well as their experience working on this production in a discussion moderated by Ludovica Villar-Hauser, Founder of Works by Women & Co-Secretary of the League of Professional Theatre Women.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13 after the matinee: A SCHOOL FOR LADIES: EDUCATION IN 1930S IRELAND MAUREEN O. MURPHY, HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY
Maureen Murphy is Professor of Curriculum and Teaching, and Co-Director of the undergraduate Irish Studies minor at Hofstra University. Professor Murphy is a past president of the American Conference for Irish Studies and a past chair of the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures. Her discussion will provide social and historical context for the play, and will focus on the history of education in Ireland.
CHRIS MORASH, TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
In 1929, Ellis became a company member of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Earning particularly strong praise for her comic acting, Ellis appeared in supporting roles in a wide variety of plays at the Gate: ranging from The Cherry Orchard and Denis Johnston’s Expressionist satire The Old Lady Says No!, to Mary Manning’s comedy of manners Youth’s the Season and a tongue-in-cheek revival of the melodrama Sweeney Todd.
Chris Morash returns to the Mint for his fifth year, to conduct three talks. Chris currently holds post as the Seamus Heaney Professor of Irish Writing at Trinity College Dublin. Chris is the author of Mapping Irish Theatre: Theories of Space and Place, A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 (winner of the 2003 Theater Book Prize), A History of the Media in Ireland, and Writing the Irish Famine. He is co-editor of Mint’s publication Teresa Deevy Reclaimed: Volume I, as well as the forthcoming Volume II.
In 1936, Ellis stunned the Dublin theatre world with her emergence as a playwright. As an Evening Mail profile described her, “Miss Ellis is so quiet and unassuming that nobody would have expected that beneath it all, she was quietly arranging the substance of her play.” Portrait in Marble traced Lord Byron’s relationships with his wife and his mistress, Lady Caroline Lamb, as well as his friendship with the Irish poet Thomas Moore. The period drama impressed critics as the twenty-five year old actress’s first effort: “Its admirable clearness and skill might be envied by a more experienced playwright,” observed The Irish Times.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27 after the matinee: HAZEL ELLIS AND DUBLIN’S GATE THEATRE
Ellis continued to develop her craft with the innovative, all-female Women Without Men. Set in the fictional Malyn Park Private School, Women Without Men joined Christa Winsloe’s 1930 German play Mädchen in Uniform (or Girls in Uniform; produced at the Gate in 1934) and Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour in the popular 1930s’ genre of girls’ school dramas, while setting off Ellis’s distinctive voice as a chronicler of Dublin women. “The play also marks another step forward in Irish drama,” the Evening Herald declared. Seemingly on the verge of a major playwriting career, Ellis stepped behind the closed curtains of domestic life—though her two marriages were turbulent. Her love for the theater remained intact, however. She continued to perform in local productions in Dalkey and Mill Hill, London, where she eventually relocated. After a long illness, she died at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, on April 10th, 1986.
While Dublin’s Abbey Theatre was Ireland’s best known theatre internationally in the early years of the twentieth century, some of the most interesting theatre in Ireland in the 1930s was actually produced at the Gate Theatre in Dublin—where Women Without Men was first performed in 1938. This talk will look at the theatre, the people, and the ideas that formed the context for that first production.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28 after the matinee: WOMEN WITHOUT THEATRE? IRISH FEMALE PIONEERS OF THE 1930s The Irish Constitution of 1937 was clear about the role of women in society: “The State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.” And yet, women played an important part in the theatre culture of the time. This talk will look at some of these female pioneers, and will explore the issues faced by women in Irish theatre then and today.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 29 AT 6:30PM AMERICAN IRISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY 991 5TH AVE. (BETWEEN 80TH & 81ST STREETS)
THE 1916 RISING AND THE IRISH THEATRE This talk will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, by looking at some of the ways in which the Irish theatre, and its people, helped shape the events the culminated in Easter Week, 1916. This talk will be followed by a reception with light refreshments. Seating is very limited. For reservations please call 212.315.0231.