360° Viewfinder: GNIT by Theatre for a New Audience

360° SERIES V I E W F I N D E R : FA C T S A N D P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T H E P L AY, P L AY W R I G H T, A N D P R O D U C T I O N

W W W . T FA N A . O R G

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S 3

"The Self-Unseeing" by Thomas Hardy

Interview: The Line Between Thought and Feeling

Will Eno in Conversation with Jonathan Kalb

Biography: Will Eno

Dialogues: Finding the Point Where Chaos Seeps In

by Martha Wade Steketee

Biography: Henrik Ibsen

Dialogues: "A Liar, Seducer, and Bombastic Self-Deceiver"

Interview: Returning to the Human

John Turturro in Conversation with Will Eno

Interview: Looking for Myself Wherever I Am

Joe Curnutte in Conversation with Johnny G. Lloyd

Interview: Every Moment Reveals Us

by Brian Kulick

Frederick Wiseman in Conversation with Will Eno

Cast and Creative Team

About Theatre For a New Audience 31 Leadership 32

Mission and Programs

Major Supporters

Notes Front Cover: Art by Milton Glaser, Inc. Henrik Ibsen biography by Jonathan Kalb. Will Eno biography courtesy of UTA. This Viewfinder will be periodically updated with additional information. Last updated November 4, 2021.

Credits Gnit 360° | Edited by Peter J. Cook, with Tatianna Casas Quiñonez. Resident Dramaturg: Jonathan Kalb | Council of Scholars Chair: Tanya Pollard | Designed by: Milton Glaser, Inc. Copyright 2021 by Theatre for a New Audience. All rights reserved. With the exception of classroom use by teachers and individual personal use, no part of this Viewfinder may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Some materials herein are written especially for our guide. Others are reprinted with permission of their authors or publishers.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

POEM

"THE SELF-UNSEEING" THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928) Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream; Blessings emblazoned that day; Everything glowed with a gleam; Yet we were looking away! Right: Joe Curnutte (Peter) in Theatre for a New Audience's production of Gnit by Will Eno, directed by Oliver Butler. Below: Joe Curnutte (Peter) and Deborah Hedwall (Mother). Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

GNIT

INTERVIEW

THE LINE BETWEEN THOUGHT AND FEELING

WILL ENO IN CONVERSATION WITH JONATHAN KALB

Joe Curnutte (Peter). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

s previews for Gnit approached in 2020, TFANA Resident Dramaturg JONATHAN KALB spoke with playwright WILL ENO.

whispering and muffled conversation and then a loving but wrong-headed little shove: “You’ll be great, Poem, just get out there.”

JONATHAN KALB Let’s begin with what

As I continued working on Gnit, I realized I had a more personal and complicated relation to Ibsen’s play. I hope I’m a good person and I try every day, but I know there were years and times when I wasn’t and still might not be. And years I turned away from good people and things because I believed I was on this important search. And, maybe I was, but I think I was going on it in a fearful and closed-off way, instead of with both feet on the ground in the real world and with other people. I started thinking about Peer Gynt in that light and with that question: how do we do the long and private work some of us need to do, but not do it at the expense of other people? How do we find ourselves, without turning too far inward or slipping away from the world?

motivated you to adapt Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. You once told me you had a “love-hate relationship” with this play. Can you elaborate? WILL ENO Well, it was love, at first. When I

started my version ten years ago it felt like a formal examination, a kind of theatrical inquiry into this play with such a long and storied theatrical history. I liked the excess and the way it didn’t quite ever fit onto the stage. Which shouldn’t be too surprising since Peer Gynt was originally written as a poem. I think Ibsen put it on the stage eight or ten years after it was initially published. I always sort of pictured a parent pushing a child who doesn’t like acting out into the light. You hear 4

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE LINE BETWEEN THOUGHT AND FEELING I always felt for the character of Solvay, in Ibsen’s play. She disappears for three acts and thirty years or so, and then comes on at the end to forgive him? I have been largely faithful to the original but the things I changed I changed with some vengeance. Now that I think about it, love/hate is probably a good thing to feel for your first or any adaptation, since you want to have strong-enough good feelings to sustain your interest, but enough doubts and misgivings to make some meaningful changes. JONATHAN KALB Gnit is manifestly a Will

Eno play as well as an adaptation. Does Ibsen’s protagonist feel to you like a root or forerunner of one of your main characters? WILL ENO Not strictly, and not by temperament,

but I certainly am more drawn to people and characters who are trying to find their place in

WILL ENO & JONATHAN KALB

the world. I mean that in a fairly real and basic way. When people mention existentialism, I think of—sure—of the French variety, the tilted beret and the cigarette, but I also think of it the way any kid might feel it. As in, “Can anyone see me? Do people know I’m here?” If I’m interested in existentialism at all, I think of it like a kid underneath the dinner table, at a party, wondering if she is visible. And I think, buried in a thicket of Norwegian poetry and Kierkegaardian notions, Peer has some of these simple questions. I like a character who feels thoughts and thinks feelings, from time to time. To say that another way, there is a point at which the line between Thought and Feeling is very thin, and I like characters who live in or at least understand that area. To be very plain, I feel more aligned with the story of Peer, now that the play has been adapted and he’s Peter.

Joe Curnutte (Peter) and Jasmine Batchelor (Solvay). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

GNIT

THE LINE BETWEEN THOUGHT AND FEELING JONATHAN KALB Your Peter, like Ibsen’s Peer, is

WILL ENO & JONATHAN KALB

on a calamitous quest for the “authentic self.” Why is this quest calamitous?

qualities that are fairly common in the human. I include myself, with some pride and some humility, in that group.

WILL ENO Probably because the people who ask

JONATHAN KALB Does your pride mean that you

“Who am I?” are sort of a self-selecting group. They are people for whom the normal categories feel insufficient, or they themselves feel insufficient to the category, so they start off on this search. And a search or a journey is always riskier than not going on those things. Some people say, “Hey, I’m Wade Boggs, end of story.” As for comparisons, Peer arrives at a different conclusion than Peter. I hope and believe that Peter’s story is worse than a calamity but lends itself to something that might ultimately be more actionable, for us, if I may use that word. I think Peter is an amplification of some Joe Curnutte (Peter) and Christy Escobar (Outdoorswoman). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

see a way out of the trap of the self? Does your play point to one? WILL ENO I hope it’s both pride and humility that

would help me see a way out. But there is a model of success in the play, yes, a meaningful approach to finding oneself, along with others, and to living, both in the mystery of the present and in the world of plans and futures. JONATHAN KALB Gnit, like most of your plays,

has a lot of laughter, why one is laughing. thoughts about what think of your humor

but one isn’t always sure Can you share any general you find funny? And do you as satirical?

WILL ENO I don’t think of this play or much of

what I write as satire, for the main reason that I feel very much like a participant and practicer of anything human I might notice and write about. I’m not really a writer who says, “This is who you are—can’t you see it!?” I hope I’m more of a “Do you ever do this?” sort of writer. To not see the whole picture is something that’s potentially funny and is also at the core of being human. Language is an amazing tool for being funny, being so precise as it often is, and also so fleeting and re-tool-able. A great joke by an English comedian, goes something like: “They all laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian; well, they’re not laughing now.” I don’t mean to say that we are stupid and blind, I mean to say that we live in a gorgeously complicated and mysterious universe and, given that, given the difficulties, we do pretty well. If you place any human statement into a field of mathematical infinity, you start to see how the deck is stacked and start to see how much we all deserve a break. One of my favorite jokes is a knock-knock joke that my daughter Albertine and I devised. Nobody gets hurt in it, nobody is the fool. It relies, to get clinical for a second, only on our familiarity with a particular form of joke. It goes: 6

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE LINE BETWEEN THOUGHT AND FEELING Knock knock. Who’s there? Lucy. Lucy who? Haberman. JONATHAN KALB The characters who interact

with your Peter (Mother, Solvay, and Town, for instance) seem to have a different status from those around Ibsen’s Peer. They push back differently against him, seemingly with more agency. Was this recalibration deliberate? WILL ENO Yes. It initially came about because of

the simple difference between being in a poem and being in a play, and then later had more to do with the interrogation of Peter’s (Peer’s, Ibsen’s) project.

WILL ENO & JONATHAN KALB

JONATHAN KALB Does your Peter learn anything

in the end? WILL ENO I think he does. I’m excited for what

those last moments will look and feel like at Polonsky Shakespeare Center and then elsewhere in the world. It’ll be very clear to Peter how the chips have fallen, but what is a little more, maybe, suspended about the moment is we might not be sure what Peter will do with the knowledge he has acquired. We all probably agree that self-knowledge is a good thing, but then there’s the next part, which is how we employ it. How we interpret and employ it. I think—and we’re working toward making them this way—I hope those last moments of the play might be really complicated and true and rich, and something an audience member (meaning human being) can build on and move forward from.

Left: David Shih (Town). Right: Deborah Hedwall (Mother). Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

GNIT

THE LINE BETWEEN THOUGHT AND FEELING

WILL ENO & JONATHAN KALB

JONATHAN KALB Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is in the

WILL ENO I did! I really love working on plays.

“cosmic drama” tradition of Goethe’s Faust and other plays that consider BIG questions about being human by tracing the long arc of one whole, very eventful human life. You’ve written several plays encompassing a whole human life arc. But some critics have felt that the cosmic tradition is obsolete. Do you disagree? Do you feel a kinship with the cosmic tradition?

It’s that thing, of the incredibly mysterious, the lofty, the sort of all-around magic of consciousness, right alongside, just, the total reality of it all, the actual world. Real infinity, timelessness, all that stuff we can do with our minds and hearts, right there alongside all the good old facts: the weight of a hammer, the sound of shoes on a floor, the fact that we can’t see through walls, a white flower against a mossy green background.

WILL ENO There are a lot of problems with

the present age but I like to remember that, theoretically at least, we know more than we’ve ever known, we’re living longer (in certain countries), and we are potentially capable of more than any humans who ever lived. It’s hard, as a living person, to see the whole thing, beginning to end, and to ascribe, while still in the middle of its developments, a meaning to your own capital-L Life. So I think it’s pretty handy, sometimes, to have Art that tries to do that. So, yeah, I guess I do feel a kinship with that approach. I just wrote a play called The Underlying Chris that possibly covers a whole life, and it does it in a way that I hope is formally energized enough and particularized in such a way, so that the way the life is presented is expressive of what the life is. I also just wrote a play called The Plot that only covers a few months in the life of a little piece of land and of a few people with some designs on it, and I see the value in presenting an excerpt and letting that stand for the whole. Even though Gnit is the whole life, it’s also—in some ways—an excerpt, an excerpt of the totality of consciousness, or an excerpt of 19th through 21st century literature. It is possibly a particular curse/blessing (mainly blessing) of the age, and maybe of the Art of Theater, that the excerpt can be seen and felt as the totality, and the totality can be broken apart and reduced (distilled) into the excerpt. JONATHAN KALB Did you just pay a compliment

to theater? 8

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

JONATHAN KALB Many of your plays reflect

on drama and theater (on things like genre, intermission, prologue, pretending, impersonating). You recently told an interviewer that “genres are... expressive of a person’s relationship to the world.” Does the way the play Gnit works express a particular relationship to the world? WILL ENO If you’re doing things right, sometimes

the mechanics of a play bleed right into the philosophy and the feeling of the whole thing. A big challenge with adapting Peer Gynt was, how do you get all that life and stuff and time on stage in a way that is true and also economical, because theater, at its best, is usually an art of economy. How do you get a bunch of townspeople onto a stage, how do you represent Egypt, with the truest feeling, and the simplest means? I think this particular challenge and Gnit’s response to it represent a relation to the world that we all know, a challenge we all know: how do I get the most out of this life, my time in this world, given the means and time and hand I’ve been dealt, etc. How do I make life the most incredible and joyous thing it can be, for the next year, the next ten years, or, while my clothes are in the dryer? • JONATHAN KALB is Professor of Theatre at Hunter College, CUNY, and is TFANA’s Resident Dramaturg. The author of five books on theater, he has worked for more than three decades as a theatre scholar, critic, journalist and dramaturg. He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theater book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (at www.jonathankalb.com).

THE PLAYWRIGHT WILL ENO

laywright Will Eno recently completed the Residency Five Fellowship at the Signature Theatre, which premiered his play Title and Deed in 2012, and The Open House in 2014 and Wakey, Wakey in 2017. Will’s play The Underlying Chris a New York Times Critics Pick, premiered at Second Stage Theatre in October 2019, directed by Kenny Leon, and The Plot premiered at Yale Repertory in November 2019, directed by Oliver Butler.

Playwright Will Eno.

The Realistic Joneses appeared on Broadway in 2014, where it won a Drama Desk Award, was named USA Today’s “Best Play on Broadway,” topped The Guardian’s 2014 list of American plays, and was included in The New York Times’ “Best Theatre of 2014.” The play was recently included in “25 Significant Plays of the last 25 Years” in The New York Times. The French premiere, Juste Les Jones, will be directed for the Paris stage by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.

The Open House won the 2014 Obie Award, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and a Drama Desk Award, and was included in both the Time Out New York and Time Magazine Top 10 Plays of the Year. Title and Deed was on The New York Times and The New Yorker magazine’s Top Ten Plays of 2012. Middletown, winner of the 2011 Horton Foote Award, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre and subsequently at Steppenwolf Theater and many other American theatres and universities. The Canadian premiere, at The Shaw Festival in 2017, received a rapturous response from critics and audiences and was remounted in 2018 in Toronto. Thom Pain (based on nothing) was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was performed by Michael C. Hall in a sold-out revival at the Signature Theater in the fall of 2018. The L.A. premiere was performed by Rainn Wilson at the Geffen Playhouse in 2016, and a film was made from those performances, directed by Will and Oliver Butler. In spring 2019 Will Eno wrote the book for the hugely successful ad campaign Skittles Commercial: The Broadway Musical, which also starred Michael C. Hall. In March 2020 Gnit, Will's adaptation of Ibsen's Peer Gynt, directed by Oliver Butler, was performed four times before closing down for 18 months due to the pandemic. The radio play Life is a Radio in the Dark was recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Will is currently working on several television projects. An essay on Thoreau appears in the book Now Comes Good Sailing, published by Princeton University Press. Performances of Gnit will resume at Theatre For A New Audience in November 2021. GNIT

DIALOGUES FINDING THE POINT WHERE CHAOS SEEPS IN MARTHA WADE STEKETEE

Jasmine Batchelor (Solvay) and Joe Curnutte (Peter). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

This piece by Martha Steketee was originally published as "Will Eno’s Theatrical Rhythms" on HowlRound Theatre Commons, on Dec 10, 2015. It has been edited with the author's permission. Small Town-ish in a Really Good Way

or a heady period of time in the spring of 2014, playwright Will Eno had two productions running simultaneously in New York City, which inspired a 2014 Drama Desk special award for both ensembles and for the playwright. “To the Ensembles of Off-Broadway's The Open House and Broadway's The Realistic Joneses and Will Eno,” the award inscription reads, “Two Extraordinary Casts and One Impressively Inventive Playwright.” Eno recently reflected in conversation that the Drama Desk joint ensemble award was “fun and exciting and a huge surprise and felt really sort of small town-ish in a really good way.” 10

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

The Open House, which in addition to the compound 2014 Drama Desk special award also received 2014 Obie and Lucille Lortel best play honors, has now joined Eno’s other TCG-published works in a spanking new 2015 TCG edition. The clustering of recognition for this play in particular, among Eno’s growing body of produced and published work, is worth some analysis and reflection. Is this a cumulative awareness of, or a giving into, Eno’s view of the world? Did 2014 reflect a kind of final critical understanding of Eno’s subject matter? Are we all finally ready to experience with him, according to his rhythms and speech patterns, the gentle devastation of small town family life? Perhaps yes to all of the above. And with his many accolades, this newly minted fifty-year-old is self-effacing and delightfully appreciative that he’s understood and his work

FINDING THE POINT WHERE CHAOS SEEPS IN is well received. We exchanged emails then met on the phone for an extended chat on a recent afternoon about his new publication, the unfolding of his career, and the gentle and provocative stage worlds he creates. A New England Athlete with Day Jobs Eno is a child of New England with a “sort of a normal background” who thought for a long time he was going to be a professional biker. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts and reared in a set of nearby towns, he went to UMass Amherst after high school (leaving just short of graduation) and was involved in bike racing seriously enough from ages twelve to twenty-two that he trained at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado. “I think it saved me from doing all the stupid adolescent things I ended up doing in my twenties, anyway.” Writing was something he worked on around intense day job hours. In his late twenties he worked on Wall Street “making cold calls for six bucks an hour” and would write at night, which influenced his approach. "I was usually so exhausted (the hours were from 7:30am-6:00pm, at the least) that I couldn't really maintain whatever pose of a human I had usually presented in writing, so I was able to write some new and sort of strange things, that seemed separate from me, but that still had some weird connection. I then studied fiction writing with Gordon Lish and he taught me about writing at the microscopic level and about how to carry yourself as a writer, as a human being." A short play called An American Lies Dying on American Ice, about a hockey player who is seriously injured in the middle of a game and the time-filling response of the announcers, was an early step into his unique style and authorial voice. Small and large tragic things happen, and small and large reactions occur as a result. Eno’s plays are not about explosions (verbal, technological) but about rifts in conversations and human lives, where the chaos stealthily seeps in.

MARTHA WADE STEKETEE

Stage Doors and Chance Encounters: London to New York and Back Again Eno found his way onto US stages through an unsolicited script left at the National Theatre stage door in London. Whether this was 1999 or 2000 is murky in his memory. At the time he was employed as a proofreader of psychology textbooks. "I dropped Tragedy: a tragedy off at the stage door of the National. I wrote some crazy note on the first page of the script with my left hand, and I’m right handed. A month later Jack Bradley, then the literary manager at the National, called up and said: “We’d like to do a reading at the Studio and can I send it to a BBC radio producer?” Christopher Campbell, now the Literary Manager at the Royal Court, was working at the National then too. This whole great life over in London started up from that. The Gate production happened out of the reading at the National Studio." Produced at The Gate in Notting Hill in 2001, Tragedy: a tragedy is about television journalists on-air navigating a twenty-four-hour news cycle covering a sunset that may go on forever. Two years later, The Gate produced Eno’s The Flu Season about inmates and staff in a mental institution. (Both plays are published by TCG in The Flu Season and Other Plays.) Eno’s plays have now appeared on stages in many areas of the US including: Thom Pain (based on nothing) (“stand-up existentialism” at DR2 Theatre in 2005), Middletown (a small town story of neighbors, “delicate, moving and wry amble along the collective road to nowhere,” premiering at the Vineyard Theatre in 2010), Title and Deed (“a haunting and often fiercely funny meditation on life as a state of permanent exile” in 2012, the first of Eno’s Signature Theatre Residency Five productions), The Open House (a conventional living room drama with several twists, his second Residency Five production in 2014) and The Realistic Joneses (a four-hander with suburban neighbors all named Jones, commissioned with a GNIT

FINDING THE POINT WHERE CHAOS SEEPS IN premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre in 2012 and produced on Broadway in 2014). Rhythms on the Page and on the Stage: Stillness and Solitude Will Eno’s plays Thom Pain (based on nothing), a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and Middletown, recipient of the 2010 Horton Foote Prize for Promising New American Play, both deal with daily life’s gentle and devastating interactions. While these awards engendered national and international attention for Eno’s quirky talent, the American first found audiences in England. British audiences were exposed to Eno first, as were the British press. Responses by The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner moved from finding a play “both potentially profound and tedious” (a 2001 production of Tragedy: a tragedy) to “smartalec games with form and style [that] are very witty, youthful and enormously engaging” (a 2003 production of The Flu Season) to “vicious stuff, written in a language so deceptively innocent, so full of platitudes, that you don't realize it has cut you deep until you feel the warm seep of bloody despair” (a 2004 Edinburgh Festival production of Thom Pain (based on nothing)). Reviewers often comment upon the role of stillness, silence, pauses, and nonverbal moments in Eno’s work. Many reviews of his work are full of comparisons to stylistic and linguistic innovators. An enthralled Charles Isherwood reflected in his 2005 review of Thom Pain (based on nothing) on Eno’s language and tone as “jaggedly quirky, crisp and hypnotic.” In a slightly disappointed but still engaged review of Eno’s The Open House in 2014, Isherwood again underscores language and rhythms, pauses, and parsimony: "Wryly humorous and deeply engaged in the odd kinks and quirks of language and its fuzzy relationship to meaning, his plays are also infused with a haunted awareness of, and a sorrowful compassion for, the fundamental solitude of existence." 12

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

MARTHA WADE STEKETEE

What is Eno’s sense of space around the words, pauses and stillness, and his lack of fear of silences? "I think it might come from being a sort of anxious person, with a sort of anxious background, so that there was never any such thing as stillness, really, in my childhood. A room full of still people is almost the most tense and energized thing I can imagine, and so maybe that idea, that stillness is just a different kind of motion, has made it somewhere into my plays." Journeys to Eno’s work The journey of bafflement to quiet entrancement is replicated in a number of critical and personal interactions with Eno’s voice. I asked him whether he found this experience common for those who see his work. "I don't know what journey people take, over the course of a couple plays. Maybe what seems willfully ambiguous, at first, starts to seem like a gift of space to think and feel, later. Something like that? I don't think it's generational. People always get worried about weekday matinees, but I sometimes think people who are a little older can laugh harder at the hard parts of life. Someone said that [The Open House] was about evolution in this real absolute sort of dramatization of Darwinian evolution, in both its gentleness and sort of brutal indifference. Something happening gently is good by me." • MARTHA WADE STEKETEE is a dramaturg, critic, researcher, and theater adjudicator (Chicago’s Joseph Jefferson Awards 20082009, and current chair of New York's Drama Desk nominating committee). She works with playwrights, reviews scripts for programs and competitions, and currently serves as chair of the American Theatre Critics Association executive committee, She was a founding editor of Chance Magazine (“looking at the world through the lens of theater and design”) and serves on two design award committees (Henry Hewes and the new regional ATCA Glenn Loney). Critical and feature writing appears in a range of publications including her own site UrbanExcavations.com. Steketee lives in New York City with an indulgent husband and too many books

BIOGRAPHY HENRIK IBSEN

enrik Johan Ibsen (1828-1906) was a Norwegian playwright, theatre director and one of the most influential playwrights of the modern age. The scion of an impoverished family from an outof-the-way corner of a peripheral country devoid of strong cultural institutions, Ibsen rose to become one of the prime generative forces of modern drama. His father, a prosperous merchant in the small Norwegian port town of Skien, descended into bitterness and alcoholism after his business collapsed in 1834 and his eldest son Henrik’s formal education ceased at age 15 when he was sent to become a pharmacist’s assistant. Miserable and lonely, he became a voracious reader and a keen observer of people. He also, at age 18, impregnated a servant in the shop, 10 years older, and was forced to pay child support for the next 16 years for a son he probably never met. The young Ibsen had strong radical sympathies. He wrote his first play Catiline flush with enthusiasm for revolutionary romanticism after the 1848 European uprisings. After failing his university entrance exams, he took a job at a theater in Bergen, which broadened his horizons by sending him on foreign theatergoing trips. Over the next decade he acquired extensive practical Henrik Ibsen in Munich, circa 1878, courtesy of the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. theater experience—writing, producing and directing many different types of plays. In 1858 he married Suzannah Thoresen who gave birth in 1859 to their only child, Sigurd (later a prominent Norwegian politician). The family’s finances were precarious, and Ibsen was threatened with debtor’s prison. With help from friends and a small government grant, he left Norway in 1864 and lived abroad for the next 27 years. All the plays that established Ibsen’s career were written in exile. He lived aloof from all but the most intimate friends and family in Rome, Dresden and Munich. His epic verse dramas Brand (1866) and Peer Gynt (1867)—both dazzlingly imaginative blends of folklore and psychological observation—won recognition and respect throughout Scandinavia. It was his series of prose dramas written between 1877 and 1899, however, set in middle-class Norwegian homes—including Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, and Rosmersholm—that made him a household name in Europe, receiving prominent productions and sparking passionate debates. A Doll’s House (1879) catapulted him to notoriety, selling out multiple editions, provoking censorship, and becoming a cause célèbre for women’s rights advocates. The revolution in drama that it helped spark reached beyond specific social issues, however, as Ibsen had given the world a new model for a bourgeois drama freed from all its old obligations to idealism. GNIT

DIALOGUES

"A LIAR, SEDUCER, & BOMBASTIC SELF-DECEIVER"

BRIAN KULICK

Above: Henrik Klausen (Peer Gynt) and Sofie Parelius (Aase) at the Christiania Theater, 1876. Photo courtesy of Oslo Museum, TM.T04709. Right: Joe Curnutte (Peter) and Deborah Hedwall (Mother). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

This essay was commissioned by Classic Stage Company for its 2016 production of Peer Gynt, adapted and directed by John Doyle. It is republished here with the permission of the author.

efore there was the Ibsen of A Doll's House and Hedda Gabler, there was the Ibsen of Brand and Peer Gynt. It is his late realist cycle of plays, beginning with A Doll's House and ending with When We Dead Awaken, that nowadays eclipses this early and often theatrically bolder work. It is easy to forget how truly rich and varied this extraordinary Norwegian Dramatist's canon actually is, a theatrical universe that includes comedies, verse tragedies, Roman Emperors, Trolls and even a smattering of ancient Vikings. Ibsen's formative years (1850 to 1864) were spent first at the Det Norse Theater (Bergen) and later at the Christiania Theatre where he became its Creative Director. During this intense period he was involved in the mounting of hundreds of plays. This work was primarily as a director and producer, but interspersed between the standards of the 19th 14

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

Century repertory, Ibsen tried his own hand at playwriting. The fruits of these early efforts were met with little interest from the viewing public and Ibsen ultimately found himself disenchanted with Norway and its theatre scene. In 1864, he took his wife and newborn child to Italy where he would spend the next 27 years in a self-imposed exile. It is in exile that Ibsen would pen his greatest works, beginning with two epic verse plays: Brand (1865) and Peer Gynt (1867). Brand was Ibsen's first great critical and financial success. This five-act verse tragedy focuses on a maverick preacher, aptly named Brand (Norwegian for "Fire"). He is disgusted with the compromised manner in which modern Christians live their lives. His is an "all or nothing" philosophy that can be found in the Old Testament and which demands an unbending life in service to G-d's edicts rather than the more comfortable compromises of the 19th Century Bourgeois society. This ultimately leads Brand and his followers to leave the church they have built and head deep into the mountains to create a "Church without

"A LIAR, SEDUCER, & BOMBASTIC SELF-DECEIVER" limits." But the rigors of such a life are too hard on Brand's followers and he is ultimately left alone to grapple with his failure to change the world. "Does not salvation consider the will of man?" become Brand's dying words and they resonated deeply with critics and audiences alike. Brand became, in a way, the last gasp of the Romantic/Idealist movement and suddenly Ibsen's name was being bandied about in the company of great thinkers and artists who were engaged in a love/hate relationship with Romanticism, a select group which included the likes of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and that young Russian upstart named Dostoevsky. Two years later, on the heels of the success of Brand came Peer Gynt, another five-act verse drama about yet another Nordic iconoclast. It is difficult to talk about Peer without a nod toward Brand since Peer seems to continue Ibsen's ongoing dialogue with the roots of Romanticism and the problematics of the individual versus society. In fact, Peer seems to parody the Romantic, individualistic iconoclast that Brand became for critics and audiences alike. Ibsen's intentions remain somewhat coy in his correspondence in regards to Peer. In January of 1867, Ibsen wrote to his publisher that he had just concluded penning: "A long dramatic poem, part legend, with characters from Norwegian folklore. It will bear no resemblance to Brand and will contain no direct polemics." Perhaps we should take Ibsen here at his word; why shouldn't he, after the relentless high-mindedness of Brand, have something of a lark with PEER? Isn't every author entitled to a little bit of fun after the rigors of an intellectual tragedy like Brand? And yet, one can't help but feel that somewhere in Ibsen's unconscious, Peer is a kind of theatrical objective correlative to the "Brand-ism" that so captivated his newfound audience; hidden within the joy ride of Peer, between his tall tales and escapades with Trolls, there lies the feeling of a continued critique; Brand's grandstanding gives way to Peer's antics, sending up the Brands of the world and calling the import of "The Self ", that great invention of the 19th Century, into question.

BRIAN KULICK

Regardless, something about Peer's irrepressible spirit continues to captivate contemporary audiences. The play has become a mainstay of our dramatic repertory whereas its counterpart, Brand, is left to brood about the fate of mankind on the shelves of countless libraries rather than the stages of our modern theater. No doubt much of Peer Gynt's success has to do with the title character's own protean invention and reinvention of himself and his surroundings. In this sense, Peer is something of a perennial author and the hero of his stories is always, resolutely and unapologetically himself. Fiction is Peer's constant companion and perfect foil to the prosaic nature of truth which can be, let's face it, often lacking in color and variety. Ibsen's Peer is known to "indulge" the truth and embroider the otherwise quotidian world with a tall tale, the taller the better. Why not make an otherwise humdrum Monday morning sound all the more exciting by adding a made-up struggle with a troll or two? Peer's impatient relationship with the quotidian is like that of the author Philip K. Dick who once wrote, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, is still there the next morning." Peer seems forever allergic to the humdrum of the next morning, and it is this predisposition that sends him around the world in search for adventure. This hunger for the "more-ness" of life has placed him in a select pantheon of literary figures that includes Dante's Ulysses, Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Goethe's Faust. The equally irrepressible critic Harold Bloom writes that Peer, "more than Goethe's Faust, is the one 19th Century character who has the largess of the greatest characters of the Renaissance imaginings. Dickens, Stendhal, Hugo, even Balzac have no single figure quite so exuberant, outrageous, vitalistic as Peer Gynt. He merely seems initially to be an unlikely candidate for such eminence. What is he, we say, except a kind of Norwegian roaring boy, marvelously attractive to women, a kind of bogus poet, a narcissist, absurd self-idolater, a liar, a seducer, a bombastic self-deceiver? But this is partly moralizing, all too much like the scholarly rants against Falstaff. True, Peer, unlike Falstaff, is not a GNIT

"A LIAR, SEDUCER, & BOMBASTIC SELF-DECEIVER" great wit (though Peer can be very funny). But in the Yahwistic Biblical sense, Peer the scamp bears the blessing: more life." And perhaps it is this insatiable-ness that is at the root of Peer's theatrical longevity. It sends him around the world but also returns him home. There he must confront his past, his lost love, and a mysterious Button molder who informs Peer that his soul must be melted down with other faulty goods unless he can explain when and where he Below: Henrik Klausen (Peer Gynt) at the Christiania Theater, 1876. Photo courtesy of Oslo Museum, TM.T01431. Bottom: Joe Curnutte (Peter) and Christy Escobar (Woman in Green). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

BRIAN KULICK

was ever truly "himself." And it is here that Peer finds that he is in the same situation as Brand. Both Peer and Brand are held to a final existential accounting, both iconoclasts are asked to justify themselves and, in the end, find justification lacking. Not even the comic register of the play can help Peer escape such an accounting. And so, there they stand, the proverbial rogue and holy man, polar opposites, faced with the same dilemma, the dilemma of their time, our time, all time: justify yourself. This is Ibsen's great question and he continues it, from these epic verse plays that take place on the tops of mountains and in the sands of Egypt, all the way to the well-appointed living rooms of the 19th Century Bourgeois; rooms that still find their way onto our 21st Century stages and questions that still demand answers. • BRIAN KULICK is the current Chair of the Theatre Program at Columbia University’s School of the Arts where he also teaches directing with Anne Bogart. He has been the Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company. His work as a director has been seen at The Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and Playwrights’ Horizons. He is the author of The Secret Life of Theatre, The Elements of Theatrical Expression, How Greek Theatre Works, Staging Shakespeare, and the upcoming Staging the End of The World; Theatre in the Time of Climate Crisis which will be published by Methuen Press.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

INTERVIEW RETURNING TO THE HUMAN JOE CURNUT TE IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHNNY G. LLOYD

Joe Curnutte (Peter). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

uring the 2020 rehearsals for Gnit, playwright Johnny G. Lloyd, then the assistant to Will Eno, sat down with Joe Curnutte, playing the eponymous Peter Gnit, to discuss the process, the play, and the production. JOHNNY G. LLOYD How has your work with

[your theatre company] The Mad Ones as a creator/collaborator/performer influenced your work and process coming into Gnit? JOE CURNUT TE I think what super helps me as

an actor on other projects is, the Mad Ones is very character driven—we make drama, dramedies, comedies that are really character focused, working on the minutiae of human behavior. I like to think we work in uber specificity—we will spend a couple of hours in a given rehearsal on one or two

very small physical moments because we know that has huge resonance. And so, when I then pick up a script to play another character, it makes me hungry to know more about the guts of the character—even more than what’s on the page. With Will [Eno] there, it’s amazing because we talk about the things that you don’t see—what he means by this line or this other line; if they seem to be contradictory, what that is. He’s always keeping me on my toes in an effort to learn more about a character. That hunger for depth of character is what I’ve carried over the most. JOHNNY G. LLOYD Peter Gnit, the title

character of Gnit, is both the protagonist of the GNIT

RETURNING TO THE HUMAN

JOE CURNUT TE & JOHNNY G. LLOYD

piece and somewhat of an anti-hero. How have you crafted his character journey?

surprise? Those two gentlemen’s forces as we’ve been crafting this character have been amazing.

JOE CURNUT TE I’d asked Will a bunch of

JOHNNY G. LLOYD There’s been a lot of talk in

questions at first [about] which parts of this are autobiographical at all, and if so, what. He said a couple of things which are personal to him but that I also found resonance within my own life— just about certain ways that we went through our twenties and thirties and things that happened along the way. I think that helps to ground it, and not look at it as a typical Joseph Campbell’s hero journey which can often seem pat.

the rehearsal room about the ‘Norwegian Farmer’ aesthetic. Can you talk about the idea behind that and how it’s influenced your work?

The anti-hero nature of it is more true to how we walk around the planet as individuals. No one is wholly good or wholly evil—they can present as being a malicious person, but the underpinning there is something that could be excusable just by being a human. A lack of focus; this magpie nature that Peter has in this play, like ‘oh, there’s a shiny thing over there, I want to go see what the shiny thing is,’ and then you become obsessed with the shiny thing and you don’t pay attention to the collateral damage. That’s something that I can identify with. So I think finding the most human qualities in these things, which can seem mythic in proportion and are sort of folk tales—I do think Gnit is an American Modern folktale, which is calling on ancient Norwegian tales—and I think at the core of not seeming like paper dolls up there, is returning to the human thing. And I would say, Oliver has been an amazing person to work with on this too, because, a phrase of his that I’m taking with me as I go into other work is “how do we scuff this up.” As an actor I think you—I, personally, get trapped sometimes in this idea of polish. If it’s something that even resembles classical text, there’s this presentational quality, this forward facing the audience thing, and Oliver is always challenging me and the rest of the cast like, how do we scuff this up, make it more human? What is a little behavior or a little oddity that we throw in there that takes us by 18

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

JOE CURNUT TE This is such a unique piece

because it is—I believe we’re calling it a very rough translation of Peer Gynt, and that couldn’t be more true. It varies from the source text in amazing ways and disregards it towards the second half of the play, and plus we’re not speaking in translated text—it was an English-speaking playwright who wrote modern-day English language for us to say. So, it’s not like there’s pentameter to get over in this piece. But because it still has these elements that seep through the floorboards of this original Norwegian thing, there’s a specific style that the piece takes on. Something that we were talking about towards the beginning is—what would this play be if it was a company of Norwegian farmers who like to put on plays, and they get up on stage and they just like, throw on a coat and they’re a character, and then they take that coat off and they’re another character? It adds this element of the scuff-ness that Oliver talks about, or this non-polished way of doing it, or this like—you can see the seams. It’s prevalent in the stage design and I think it’s prevalent a little bit in the acting—it’s a very unique style that I think we’re all partaking in. So that’s my interpretation of the Norwegian farmer. That idea and aesthetic isn’t necessarily what we’re [exclusively] playing, but I think it’s helped us all create the world inside of the play. • This interview has been edited and condensed. JOHNNY G. LLOYD is a New York-based writer and producer. Johnny was the winner of the Bay Area Playwrights Festival (The Problem With Magic, Is:) and has been commissioned by Clubbed Thumb and Second Stage Theatre. Johnny is a collaborator with Theater in Quarantine and SalonSéance. He is the Director of Artistic Development at The Tank and Producing Director for InVersion Theatre. MFA: Columbia University. jglloyd.com

INTERVIEW EVERY MOMENT REVEALS US JOHN TURTURRO IN CONVERSATION WITH WILL ENO

John Turturro.

ohn Turturro, a writer, director, and Emmy Awardwinning actor, is also a TFANA board member. Over the past several years, Will Eno worked with John on John's television adaptation of Susan Sheehan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Is There No Place On Earth For Me? In 2020, Will asked John some questions, via email, and here are John’s responses. WILL ENO Have you had a lot of run-ins with Peer

Gynt, either performing it or seeing it? JOHN TURTURRO I've always loved Peer Gynt,

reading it, and I've seen some scenes from acting class performed but I've actually only seen it once, at the Yale School of Drama directed by Jan Eliasberg. And it was a very good production and my wife, who I didn't really know at the time but had a crush on, Katherine Borowitz, played all those different roles, including the Troll Queen and she did some outrageous things and of course that

made me even more interested in her and that's my encounter with it. But I've always liked reading it, and reading Brand too which is another poem. WILL ENO Robert Bresson said that there is

“nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art’s form,” and that sometimes makes me think of Peer Gynt, which Ibsen originally wrote as a dramatic poem. Bresson also said “All husbands are ugly.” And, it’s hard to stop, “The sight of movement gives happiness: horse, athlete, bird.” Do you feel like saying anything about any of these? JOHN TURTURRO I agree, I think every movement

reveals us and reveals us best if it's not commanded or willed. When you watch a great dancer, you don't notice the choreography, you feel like they're making it up in the moment. When you're making a film, when you're putting that in a film, it's GNIT

EVERY MOMENT REVEALS US WILL ENO & JOHN TURTURRO those things which kind of provoke the gestures and the words. You can express great things with your hands, with your head, with your shoulders. I almost always feel that the movement is truer than words and that's something, especially when it's unconscious and revealing and somehow graceful. And I think silent movies really show that because those guys are sort of acrobats. WILL ENO When did you first want to be an

actor? Has there been a moment when you didn’t want to be an actor? JOHN TURTURRO I don't know if I can remember

that exactly but it was watching movies on the Million Dollar Movie, which was the same movie five nights in a row, and maybe it was something Christy Escobar (Bride). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

with Edward G. Robinson or James Cagney, Bette Davis, Burt Lancaster. But I think the first time I saw someone look like me was when I saw highlights of Midnight Cowboy, clips from Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and I was really shocked. I was like " Wow, here's a guy who could be in our family!" So that was kind of a light bulb moment for me and then there were actors like Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and that kind of opened my mind to the possibility, even though I was always in love with certain films and film stars. But it was watching those old movies from the 30s, 40s and 50s and kind of living through James Cagney's death in Angels With Dirty Faces, sitting on the couch with my parents. Moment when I didn't want to be an actor: maybe when I hit 50, I was at my doctor's office and I told him I wanted to go back to school and I wanted to study medicine. He talked me out of it, he said it was a long haul and he asked me some pertinent questions, like was I good at science? And I had to answer in the negative. So then he talked to me about what I do and that it's also useful and helpful to people and I said okay, so I resumed. But I think that's why I direct a little bit and write sometimes, to do the things that interest me and things I would like to see. WILL ENO Which is more complex, reality, or the

representation of reality? Which is better? JOHN TURTURRO I think reality is much more

complex and I think in the long run, that's where everything comes from so I would say it's better. The only thing I like about the representation of reality is that it puts it into a form and it tells a story and sometimes it helps you formulate your own strategies in life, but I would vote for reality, even though I spend my life escaping reality— actually not, mining reality. I see myself more as a miner-slash-plumber. WILL ENO Who is your favorite N.Y. Yankee? JOHN TURTURRO My favorite NY Yankee, I

would say growing up it was Thurman Munson and then Derek Jeter. 20

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

EVERY MOMENT REVEALS US WILL ENO & JOHN TURTURRO WILL ENO Realistic, I think, is one of those

hall-of-mirror words that can be hard and even frustrating to define. Realistic: it isn’t reality, but it’s like it, although by definition “reality” is something that truly is, not an approximation of any kind. Saying a play is realistic seems as potentially troublesome as saying a statement is true-like. I’ve always liked the German word unheimlich, unhomelike, as it seems more interesting and expressive to define a thing as being “not like something we know very well,” than to define it as being “like something that is difficult to define.” I may be wandering away from a question here. So: are we happier, or somehow more comfortable, judging the “reality” of a piece of art than we are defining and even living in the actual reality that the piece of art is meant to imitate? JOHN TURTURRO It's kind of a difficult question,

Will. You're talking about reality and then a representation of reality and what's true-like. I think I'm not sure that the reality of a piece of art that we're defining makes me happier than living in the actual reality that the piece of art is meant to imitate. Maybe I err on trying to take my own life experience and put it into something that's constructive and maybe helpful or illuminating or evocative in some way that makes people feel less isolated and alone, and so therefore I feel like I'm doing something productive with it... but not at the expense of reality because you still have to live in reality and not run away from it. I think it's easier not to live in the actual reality, sometimes, depending on how challenging that is.

JOHN TURTURRO I'm not sure about that.

Certainly, some are slyer and better but I'm not sure all are realists. But I will say yes, some are slyer and better and some are just truer. That's my very short answer. WILL ENO Do you recognize the quote “you shall

know the answer by the order of the questions”? I thought maybe it was a Talmudic scholar but I’m not finding anything. Regardless of who said it, and I don’t think it was me, does it mean anything to you? JOHN TURTURRO I think it's interesting, I need

to muse on this for a while. Sounds like a pharaoh or somebody, I don't know—maybe you give the answer by the order of the questions and maybe you get your head handed to you. I'm a little frightened by this question, maybe that's just me. Jordan Bellow (Moynihan). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

I like that German word too, unheimlich, it's not something we know very well and it's something that is difficult to define and I think there are people who are interested in that. I don't think that things are defined, that it's always helpful. I prefer pieces of art, if you want to call it that, to ask the questions and leave you provoked in a good way. WILL ENO To stick with a problematic word for

another moment: all artists are realists, but some of them are much slyer and better at it than others. Is that true? GNIT

EVERY MOMENT REVEALS US WILL ENO & JOHN TURTURRO WILL ENO Have you ever been to Ikea? JOHN TURTURRO Once and that was more than enough. WILL ENO Do you feel your Americanness to any

greater degree when you’re working in another country? Or maybe, to say that in other words, do you feel more yourself when you’re away from home? JOHN TURTURRO Yes, I feel my Americanness

when I work in other countries. I also feel more relaxed when I work in certain countries like France or Italy, but yes. Sometimes in your approach organizationally, but not in other ways— sensibility-wise or in relaxation or food or music, I don't feel my Americanness—but more in how things are organized, I feel that. I feel kind of both because I am both, I've always felt more MidAtlantic than American or Italian. WILL ENO I have been thinking about “the self ”

as I’ve been working on and revising Gnit. It sometimes seems that, just in saying the word “self,” we suddenly take a half-step away from anything

real and findable and alive. Almost in that way that you can’t measure certain particles without altering them. I wonder if “finding the self ” is a by-product of another project altogether, one that is much more engaged with other people and the world? JOHN TURTURRO Yes, I think that finding the

self is more of a byproduct of one that has more to do with other people and the world. I find people who are so isolated and always thinking about themselves, their sense of self is at the expense of another, and I find that, I have to say, somewhat exhausting and insufferable. I think the most interesting thing in life is what happens between people and I think you can find more about yourself that way too, although this can be tiring too if you're always aware of what's going on around you. Sometimes you do need time for reflection so I think you need a little of both but I don't walk around thinking about myself that much, I'm thinking about what I can do and hopefully taking in others around me and the world as much as possible without being overloaded. •

Left: David Shih (International Man). Right: Jasmine Batchelor (Solvay). Photos by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

INTERVIEW LOOKING FOR MYSELF WHEREVER I AM FREDERICK WISEMAN IN CONVERSATION WITH WILL ENO

rederick Wiseman, Oscar-winning film director and TFANA board member, is currently editing his forty-fifth feature film, a look at Boston’s City Hall. Over the past two years, he has been working with Will Eno on Juste les Jones, a French translation (by Daniel Loayza) of Will’s play The Realistic Joneses, which will premiere on a Paris stage soon. Will asked Fred some questions via email. WILL ENO Which is more complex, reality, or the

representation of reality? Which is better? FREDERICK WISEMAN I am hesitant to even try

to answer this question. Reality is infinitely more complex but is formless. The representation of reality is a fiction enclosed in a form and only at its most successful does it begin to suggest the reality from which it was extracted. WILL ENO Do you approach a subject differently

Frederick Wiseman.

make a judgement about “a work of art” (whatever that might be or however it is defined) than dealing with daily life.

or feel a different responsibility when you are working with something “historical,” such as the Comedie Française? How about something that is specifically American versus a foreign subject?

WILL ENO To stick with a problematic word for

FREDERICK WISEMAN I approach all subjects

FREDERICK WISEMAN Yes. Beckett's Happy Days

foreign or domestic the same way. No research. The filming is the research. Shoot a lot of film, usually around 150 hours. Start with no themes or point of view other than the gamble that if I am lucky enough, I will find enough material from which i can construct a film. The film emerges from the editing. I have to study and make selections from the rushes and finally invent a structure which imposes a form on the chaotic world of my thoughts in relation to the formless world of the rushes.

another moment: all artists are realists, but some of them are much slyer and better at it than others. Is that true? is a great example. WILL ENO Do you recognize the quote “you shall

WILL ENO Who is your favorite Red Sox player?

contained in the question posed by the great Talmudic scholar Rabbi Gnosh of Lvov who asked, “If you had a sister would she like soup?"

FREDERICK WISEMAN Jimmy Foxx.

WILL ENO Have you ever been to Ikea?

WILL ENO Are we happier, or somehow more

FREDERICK WISEMAN Yes.

comfortable, judging the “reality” of a piece of art than we are defining and even living in the actual reality that the piece of art is meant to imitate? FREDERICK WISEMAN Always easier for me to

WILL ENO Robert Bresson said that there is

“nothing more inelegant and ineffective than an art conceived in another art’s form,” and that makes me think of Peer Gynt, which Ibsen originally GNIT

LOOKING FOR MYSELF WHEREVER I AM wrote as a dramatic poem. Bresson also said, “All husbands are ugly.” And, it’s hard to stop, “The sight of movement gives happiness: horse, athlete, bird.” Do you feel like saying anything about any of these? FREDERICK WISEMAN No. Too deep for me, who

is always scratching the surface. WILL ENO Do you feel your Americanness to any

greater degree when you’re working in another country? Or maybe, to say that in other words, do you feel more yourself when you’re away from home? FREDERICK WISEMAN Am too busy looking for

WILL ENO & FREDERICK WISEMAN WILL ENO Another question, that I forgot to ask,

though I think I can imagine the twinkle in Fred’s eye as he declined answering: In adapting Peer Gynt, I spent a lot of time and thought on the element/character of the Buttonmoulder, who appears late in the original and threatens to melt Peer’s soul down in a common cauldron with other lackluster souls. The eternal repose of my soul is not something that I or a lot of people I know generally think a lot about. I even grew up with some religion but I still don’t really have this as a living anxiety.

as I’ve been working on and revising Gnit. It sometimes seems that, just in saying the word “self,” we suddenly take a half-step away from anything real and findable and alive. Almost in that way that you can’t measure certain particles without altering them. I wonder if “finding the self ” is a by-product of another project altogether, one that is much more engaged with other people and the world?

So this character has been replaced with a reporter, to whom Peter pitches some story ideas. My thought is that the modern version of Peer’s anxiety might be that we wonder “Will I get an Obituary in the newspaper, or, just a little death notice? Will I be singled out, or just thrown into the common lot of birth, death, and wedding announcements?” Or a version of the idea behind the Jewish greeting of “May your name be inscribed in the Book of Life.” The question would have been some version of, “Do you think about your soul?” Or, “What do we mean when we use the word ‘soul?’”

FREDERICK WISEMAN See answer above.

Or, maybe, “Can the soul, if it exists, change?” •

myself wherever I am to answer question. WILL ENO I have been thinking about “the self ”

Deborah Hedwall (Mother). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION

CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM

JASMINE BATCHELOR (Solvay). Theatre: Measure for Measure (The Public), Mothers (Playwrights

Realm), Continuity (MTC). Film: The Surrogate (nominee: Gotham Award for Breakthrough Actor; nominee: DFCS Award Breakthrough Actor), Journal for Jordan. TV: “New Amsterdam,” “NCIS: New Orleans,” “Law & Order: SVU,” “The Good Fight," “The Affair.” Training: The Juilliard School. JORDAN BELLOW (Stranger 1) is proud to be making his TFANA debut. New York: Ransom (Arts

on Site); Interior (59E59); The Russian and the Jew (The Tank); The Feels...KMS (New Ohio Theatre); Macbeth and Alkestis (The Connelly Theatre). Regional: Westport Country Playhouse; Denver Center; Syracuse Stage; Indiana Repertory Theatre; South Coast Repertory; Florida Studio Theatre. Television: "Dickinson"; "Gotham"; "Orange is the New Black". JOE CURNUT TE (Peter). As a writer and performer with The Mad Ones: Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (Ars

Nova), Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizons, Bushwick Starr), Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War (New Ohio), all of which received Drama Desk and Lortel nominations. The Mad Ones are now in residence at Signature Theater. TV/Media credits include: “The Other Two,” “The Blacklist,” “Blue Bloods,” “The Get Down,” “American Odyssey,” “Person of Interest,” Red Dead Redemption II. CHRISTY ESCOBAR (Stranger 2). Theatre: Beginning Days of True Jubilation (SOCIETY), Queen of Basel

(Studio Theatre), Scissoring (INTAR), Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train (Atlantic), The Great Gatsby (Virginia Stage Company), The Hollow (The Brick), Lady Macbeth and Her Lover (Director’s Company), Bad Jews (Long Wharf ), Murder on the Nile (Dorset Theatre Festival). TV: “Blindspot,” “Dietland.” Film: The Man in the Woods, Who We Are Now, Loser Leaves Town, Anomalous, Under the Lantern Lit Sky. Jordan Bellow (Robber). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

GNIT

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM DEBORAH HEDWALL (Mother). Selected NY Theatre: Sight Unseen (OBIE); Savage in Limbo; Why We

Have a Body; Extremities; Curse of the Starving Class (dir. James Houghton); Fall to Earth; and All My Fathers. Regional: extensive work at Actors Theater of Louisville, Eugene O’Neill Theater Conference, Yale Rep, Long Wharf, Arena Stage, Hartford Stage and Baltimore Center Stage. Selected film/ television: “Shadrack,” “Higher Ground,” “Worth,” “After Yang,” “The West Wing,” “Public Morals,” “Homeland,” “Ray James,” "Mare of Easttown.” DAVID SHIH (Town). Theatre: Henry VI (NAATCO), The Great Wave (Berkeley Rep), KPOP (Ars Nova), Somebody’s Daughter (Second Stage), Awake and Sing! (NAATCO/The Public), Tiger Style! (La Jolla Playhouse), Bike America (Ma-Yi). TV: “Hunters,” “Billions,” “City on a Hill,” “Iron Fist,” “The Path.” Film: Eighth Grade, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Saving Face. Voice of Eddie Toh in Grand Theft Auto V. Performs with Only Make Believe in children’s hospitals. WILL ENO (Playwright) Recent plays include The Plot (Yale Rep), The Underlying Chris (Second

Stage), and The Realistic Joneses (Broadway) which won a 2014 Drama Desk Award and was named USA Today’s Best Play on Broadway. The Paris premiere, Juste Les Jones, will be directed for the stage by documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman. The Open House (Signature Theater) won the 2014 Obie Award, the Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and a Drama Desk Award, and was one of Time Magazine’s Top 10 Plays of the Year. Will wrote the book for the award-winning 2019 Skittles Commercial: the Broadway Musical. He's the proud and lucky father of Albertine, now 7. Jasmine Batchelor (Bartender) and Joe Curnutte (Peter). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM OLIVER BUTLER (Director) (he/him). Broadway: What The Constitution Means To Me (2019 Tony Award

nomination for Best Play); Off-Broadway: collaborations with Will Eno including the first NYC revival of Thom Pain (Signature Theater, starring Michael C. Hall), The Open House (Signature Theater, Lortel Best Play, Obie Award) and The Plot (Yale Rep); world premiere of Jordan Harrison’s The Amateurs (Vineyard Theater). Regional: The Whistleblower (Denver Center), Thom Pain (Geffen Playhouse, starring Rainn Wilson), Legacy (Williamstown), Bad Jews (Long Wharf ), An Opening In Time (Hartford). International: Timeshare (Australia). He is a Sundance Institute Fellow and a Bill Foeller Fellow. Oliver is Co-Artistic Director of The Debate Society, productions include The Light Years (Playwrights Horizons), Jacuzzi (Ars Nova), Blood Play (Bushwick Starr), Buddy Cop 2 (Ontological), Cape Disappointment (PS122), and 4 other TDS plays. He is a member of the faculty at The National Theater Institute. KIMIE NISHIKAWA (Scenic Designer) is a Japanese scenic designer based in NYC. Notable credits: Ain’t

No Mo’ (The PublicTheater), The Headlands (LCT3), Gnit (TFANA), Dr Ride’s American Beach House (Ars Nova), The Light (MCC), Morning Sun (Manhattan Theatre Club). NYC upcoming: While You Were Partying (Soho Rep), Tambo and Bones (Playwrights Horizons). Along with Cha See and Rodrigo Muñoz, Kimie is one of the co-founders of See Lighting Foundation, a grassroots fundraiser committed to supporting immigrant theater artists during the global pandemic. Since October of 2020, Kimie now works in a design collective called dots with Andrew Moerdyk and Santiago Orjuela-Laverde. We approach every project with diversity of thought and burning curiosity and, above all, we believe in the value of the whole being greater than the sum of its individual parts. designbydots.com Joe Curnutte (Peter) and David Shih (International Man). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

GNIT

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM ÁSTA BENNIE HOSTETTER (Costume Designer). Currently: Goodnight Nobody (McCarter). NYC: Mrs.

Murray's Menagerie (The Mad Ones), Usual Girls (Roundabout Underground), Dance Nation (Playwrights Horizons), Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout Underground), The Lucky Ones (Ars Nova), Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizons), Porto (WP Theater), The Wolves (Lincoln Center), John (Signature), Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons). Regional: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Cal Shakes), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (KC Rep), El Coquí Espectacular (Two River), member of Minor Theater, Target Margin Theater, The Mad Ones. AVERY REED (Costume Designer) is a New York-based costume designer working in theatre, film and

dance. She focuses on making work that promotes empathy and curiosity. Recent credits include Water Cooler Siren Song (Little Island); Only Human (St. Clements); Dishwater Blonde (Torn Page); Indeed, Friend! (Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights); Sweeney Todd (Piper Theater); Linthead (SMP); Everybody (RU); The Tempest (Lenfest); All’s Well That Ends Well (FDU); As Is (Baruch); ADMIX (NYCI NYCB); Appalachian Spring (Dance Theater of Harlem); Brut Force (Brut Force LLC); Martin Eden (Kingdom County Productions). MFA, NYU Tisch. averyreed.com AMITH CHANDRASHAKER (Lighting Designer). Wives (Playwrights Horizons); A Human Being, Of

A Sort (Williamstown); The Lucky Ones (Ars Nova); Boesman and Lena (The Signature); Blue Ridge (Atlantic); Cardinal (Second Stage); Twelfth Night (The Public); Fairview (Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep,

Left: Christy Escobar (Anitra). Photo by Gerry Goodstein. Right: Christy Escobar (Woman in Green). Photo by Henry Grossman.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM TFANA); Fire in Dreamland (Public); Her Requiem (LCT3). Opera: The Flying Dutchman (Houston Grand Opera), Falstaff (Opera Omaha), The Scarlet Letter (Opera Colorado), Abduction from the Seraglio (Atlanta Opera). Dance: Alexander Ekman, Liz Gerring, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Rennie Harris, Aalto Ballettt Theatre Essen, Staatstheater Nürnberg, The National Dance Company of Wales, and The Royal New Zealand Ballet. Drama Desk and Henry Hewes awards. LEE KINNEY (Sound Designer) is a sound and music artist working in theatre, film and events.

Broadway: Is This A Room. TFANA: A Doll’s House/The Father. Off-Broadway: Morning Sun (MTC); Is This A Room, Can You Forgive Her? (Vineyard); “Daddy” (The New Group/Vineyard); For All the Women (Soho Rep); Sunday (Atlantic); Thom Pain (Signature); The Light Years (Playwrights Horizons); Homos (Labyrinth). Other projects include work with Google, Virgin Voyages, Swing Left, The Dance Cartel and The Ghostlight Project. Awarded Outer Critics Circle Honors for Outstanding Sound Design, nominated for Lucille Lortel Award, Drama Desk Award and Henry Hewes Design Award. Thanks to Kris. @thisisleekinney. DANIEL KLUGER (Music). Broadway: Oklahoma! (new arrangements and orchestrations), The Sound

Inside; Seawall / A Life, revival of Marvin’s Room; world premiere of Significant Other. Off-Broadway: premieres of Sunday, I Was Most Alive with You, Animal, The Village Bike, Man from Nebraska, Tribes, and Women or Nothing. Film scores: A Christmas Carol (2021); The Courtroom (2021); Duolo (2017); Health to the King (2020); Hello, Again (2017, Orchestrations). In 2021, Kluger launched the music label Archie & Fox Records. www.danielkluger.com J. DAVID BRIMMER Fight Master, SAFD (Fight Director) has choreographed some stuff. Selected

Broadway: Pass Over, Be More Chill, Spring Awakening, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Grace, Speed the Plow, Thérèse Raquin, Long Day’s Journey into Night, NY premieres: Socrates, Hangmen, Yen, Gloria, An Octoroon, The Whipping Man, We are Proud to Present, Blasted, Bethany, Blackbird, Bug, Killer Joe). “Walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.” – George Fox JON KNUST (Properties Supervisor). Selected credits include A Doll’s House, The Father, The Skin

of Our Teeth, The Winter’s Tale and About Alice (TFANA); Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (Broadway), Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek, Big Love, and Appropriate (Signature) and Peter and the Starcatcher (tour). Jon got his start in props at the Williamstown Theatre Festival and graduated from Eastern Connecticut State University. JONATHAN KALB (Production Dramaturg) is Professor of Theater at Hunter College, CUNY, and

is TFANA’s Resident Dramaturg. The author of five books on theater, he has worked for more than three decades as a theater scholar, critic, journalist, and dramaturg. He has twice won The George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. and has also won the George Freedley Award for an outstanding theater book from the Theatre Library Association. He often writes about theater on his TheaterMatters blog (at www.jonathankalb.com). RENEE LUTZ (Production Stage Manager). TFANA: The Winter’s Tale, Skin of Our Teeth, King Lear,

Othello, All’s Well, Merchant of Venice (NY, RSC, National Tour), Measure for Measure, Antony & Cleopatra, etc. Off-Broadway: MTC, Playwrights, Signature, The Public, Primary Stages, etc., and commercial productions. Regional: Barrington Stage (65+ productions), Hartford Stage, Goodspeed, La Jolla, A.R.T., NJ Shakespeare, Berkshire Theatre, etc. She is a trustee of historic FDNY fireboat John J. Harvey. Best credit and longest run: her husband, actor Gordon Stanley. GNIT

THE PRODUCTION CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM DAWN-ELIN FRASER (Dialect Coach). Broadway: The Great Society; Tina—the Tina Turner Musical;

Slave Play; What the Constitution Means to Me; Once on this Island; Waitress; Finding Neverland. OffBroadway: Merry Wives (Public Theater/ Delacorte); Slave Play; Nat Turner in Jerusalem; Sojourners; Her Portmanteau; An Ordinary Muslim; The House that Will Not Stand (NYTW); Fires in the Mirror; By the Way Meet Vera Stark; Our Lady of Kibeho (Signature Theater); Barbeque; Passing Strange (The Public Theater). Regional: Guys and Dolls (Guthrie Theater); Crossing: An American Opera; Waitress (A.R.T); Comedy of Errors (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). Education: MFA, American Conservatory Theater. SARA KADISH (Assistant Stage Manager). Off-Broadway: Timon of Athens, Why?, Soho Rep’s Fairview,

Julius Caesar, About Alice, The Prisoner, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure (Theatre for a New Audience). Regional: Don Juan (Westport Country Playhouse), The Heart of Robin Hood, Rip Van Winkle: Or Cut the Old Moon into Stars (Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival). STEPHANIE YANKWITT, CSA (Casting) (she/her). Upcoming/current theater: Wolf Play (Soho Rep), To

The Yellow House (La Jolla Playhouse), Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Gingold Theatrical Group), an upcoming world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse, as well as ongoing work with Tectonic Theater Project. Film/TV work includes a feature film by Alessandra Lacorazza produced by Alex Dinelaris, and ongoing work with Culture House and the Gotham Film and Media Institute/Independent Film Project. BLAKE ZIDELL & ASSOCIATES (Publicity) is a Brooklyn-based public relations firm representing cultural

institutions, nonprofit organizations, festivals and individuals across a variety of disciplines. Clients include Theatre for a New Audience, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Signature Theatre, Classic Stage Company, The Kitchen, PEN America, Performance Space New York, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, On the Boards, Taylor Mac, Peak Performances, Irish Arts Center, StoryCorps, Stitcher, PlayCo, the Playwrights Realm, Page 73, Photoville and others. Jasmine Batchelor (Solvay) and Deborah Hedwall (Mother). Photo by Gerry Goodstein.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

LEADERSHIP

JEFFREY HOROWITZ (Founding Artistic Director) began his career in theatre as an actor and

appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in regional theatre. In 1979, he founded Theatre for a New Audience. Horowitz has served on the panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, on the board of directors of Theatre Communications Group, the advisory board of the Shakespeare Society and the artistic directorate of London’s Globe Theatre. Awards: 2003 John Houseman Award, The Acting Company; 2004 Gaudium Award, Breukelein Institute; 2014 Alfred Drake Award, Brooklyn College; 2019 Obie Lifetime Achievement Award. (Managing Director) joined Theatre for a New Audience in 2003. She spent the previous ten years devoted to fundraising for the 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Museum. Ryan began her career in classical music artist management and has also served as company manager for Chautauqua Opera, managing director for the Opera Ensemble of New York, and general manager of Eugene Opera. York and general manager of Eugene Opera. She is a Brooklyn Women of Distinction honoree and serves as treasurer of the Downtown Brooklyn Arts Alliance. DOROTHY RYAN

MICHAEL PAGE (General Management & Future Projects Consultant) was TFANA’s general manager

from 2013-2021, where he managed over 30 productions in Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Currently he is the general manager at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Prior positions include the general manager at The Old Globe in San Diego, general manager at the Tony Award-winning Vineyard Theatre and the managing director at Off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre where he managed David Cromer’s landmark production of Our Town. He is also the head of the master of fine arts program in performing arts management at Brooklyn College.

Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage. Photo by Francis Dzikowski/OTTO.

GNIT

ABOUT THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE About Theatre for a New Audience Founded in 1979 by Jeffrey Horowitz, the mission of Theatre for a New Audience is to develop and vitalize the performance and study of Shakespeare and classic drama. Theatre for a New Audience produces for audiences Off-Broadway and has also toured nationally, internationally and to Broadway. We are guided in our work by five core values: a reverence for language, a spirit of adventure, a commitment to diversity, a dedication to learning, and a spirit of service. These values inform what we do with artists, how we interact with audiences, and how we manage our organization. Theatre for a New Audience Education Programs

S TA F F

Founding Artistic Director Jeffrey Horowitz Managing Director Dorothy Ryan General Manager Christa Bean General Management & Future Projects Consultant Michael Page Director of Institutional Advancement James J. Lynes Education Director Lindsay Tanner Finance Director Mary Sormeley Director of Marketing & Communications Jennifer Lam Company Manager Molly Burdick Theatre Manager Steven Gaultney Box Office Manager Allison Byrum Facilities Manager Rashawn Caldwell Marketing Manager Torrence Browne Manager of Humanities / Assistant to Artistic & Managing Directors Tatianna Casas Quiñonez Institutional Support Manager Sara Billeaux Production Coordinator Leon Axt Artistic Associate Peter J. Cook Finance Associate Harmony Fiori General Management Assistants Natalie Ibarra, Priscilla Villanueva House Managers Jonatan Amaya, Coral Cohen Press Representative Blake Zidell & Associates Resident Dramaturg Jonathan Kalb Resident Casting Director Jack Doulin

Theatre for a New Audience is an award-winning company recognized for artistic excellence. Our education programs introduce students to Shakespeare and other classics with the same artistic integrity that we apply to our productions. Through our unique and exciting methodology, students engage in hands-on learning that involves all aspects of literacy set in the context of theatre education. Our residencies are structured to address City and State Learning Standards both in English Language Arts and the Arts, the New York City DOE’s Curriculum Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Theater, and the New York State Common Core Learning Standards for English Language Arts. Begun in 1984, our programs have served more than 135,000 students, ages 9 through 18, in New York City Public Schools city-wide. A Home in Brooklyn: Polonsky Shakespeare Center Theatre for a New Audience’s home, Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is a centerpiece of the Brooklyn Cultural District. Designed by celebrated architect Hugh Hardy, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is the first theatre in New York designed and built expressly for classic drama since Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont in the 1960s. The 27,500 square-foot facility is a unique performance space in New York. The 299-seat Samuel H. Scripps Mainstage, inspired by the Cottesloe at London’s National Theatre, combines an Elizabethan courtyard theatre with modern theatre technology that allows the stage and seating to be arranged in seven configurations. The facility also includes the Theodore C. Rogers Studio (a 50-seat rehearsal/ performance studio), and theatrical support spaces. The City of New York-developed Arts Plaza, designed by landscape architect Ken Smith, creates a natural gathering place around the building. In addition, Polonsky Shakespeare Center is also one of the few sustainable (green) theatre in the country, with LEED-NC Silver rating from the United States Green Building Council. Now with a home of its own, Theatre for a New Audience is contributing to the continued renaissance of Downtown Brooklyn. In addition to its season of plays, the Theatre has expanded its Humanities offerings to include lectures, seminars, workshops, and other activities for artists, scholars, and the general public. When not in use by the Theatre, its new facility is available for rental, bringing much needed affordable performing and rehearsal space to the community.

T H E AT R E F O R A N E W A U D I E N C E 360° S E R I E S

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Board Chair Robert E. Buckholz Vice Chair Kathleen C. Walsh President Jeffrey Horowitz Founding Artistic Director Vice President and Secretary Dorothy Ryan Managing Director Executive Committee Robert E. Buckholz Constance Christensen Jeffrey Horowitz Seymour H. Lesser Larry M. Loeb Audrey Heffernan Meyer Philip R. Rotner Kathleen C. Walsh Josh Weisberg Members F. Murray Abraham* Arin Arbus* Alan Beller John Berendt* Sally Brody Bianca Vivion Brooks* Ben Campbell Robert Caro* Dr. Sharon Dunn* Riccardo Hernandez* Kathryn Hunter* Dana Ivey* Tom Kirdahy* Harry J. Lennix* Marc Polonsky Joseph Samulski* Daryl D. Smith Susan Stockel Michael Stranahan John Douglas Thompson* John Turturro* Frederick Wiseman* *Artistic Council

Emeritus Francine Ballan Sally Brody Dr. Charlotte K. Frank Theodore C. Rogers Jane Wells

THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE

MA JOR SUPPORTERS

Even with capacity audiences, ticket sales account for a small portion of our operating costs. The Theatre expresses its deepest thanks to the following Foundations, Corporations, Government Agencies, and Individuals for their generous support of the Theatre’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs. The 360° Series: Viewfinders has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Viewfinder do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. A Challenge Grant from the NEH established a Humanities endowment fund at Theatre for a New Audience to support these programs in perpetuity. Leading matching gifts to the NEH grant were provided by Joan and Robert Arnow, Norman and Elaine Brodsky, The Durst Organization, Perry and Marty Granoff, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, John J. Kerr & Nora Wren Kerr, Litowitz Foundation, Inc., Robert and Wendy MacDonald, Sandy and Stephen Perlbinder, The Prospect Hill Foundation, Inc., Theodore C. Rogers, and from purchasers in the Theatre’s Seat for Shakespeare Campaign, 2013 – 2015. Theatre for a New Audience’s Humanities, Education, and Outreach programs are supported, in part, by The Elayne P. Bernstein Education Fund. For more information on naming a seat or making a gift to the Humanities endowments, please contact James Lynes, Director of Institutional Advancement, at 212-229-2819 x29, or by email at jlynes@tfana.org. Deloitte and Bloomberg Philanthropies are the 2021-2022 Season Sponsors. Theatre for a New Audience’s productions and education programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the National Endowment for the Arts; Shakespeare in American Communities, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Additional funding is provided by the generosity of the following Foundations and Corporations through either general operating support or direct support of the Theatre’s arts in education programs: PRINCIPAL BENEFACTORS

($100,000 and up) JL Greene Arts Access Fund in the New York Community Trust The Hearst Foundations New York Community Trust The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc. U.S. Small Business Administration LEADING BENEFACTORS

($50,000 and up) The Arnow Family Fund Bloomberg Philanthropies Deloitte & Touche LLP The Polonsky Foundation MAJOR BENEFACTORS

($20,000 and up) The Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Booth Ferris Foundation The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation The Howard Gilman Foundation, Inc. The Hearst Corporation The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP

Latham & Watkins LLP The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation The White Cedar Fund Whiting Foundation SUSTAINING BENEFACTORS

($10,000 and up) Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP The Howard Bayne Fund Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. Debevoise & Plimpton LLP The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Sidney E. Frank Foundation The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP Ingram Yuzek Gainen Carroll & Bertolotti, LLP The J.M. Kaplan Fund McDermott Will & Emery Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison May and Samuel Rudin Foundation Inc. Select Equity Group, Inc. Sidley Austin LLP The Speyer Family Foundation The Starry Night Fund Michael Tuch Foundation, Inc.

PRODUCERS CIRCLE— THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S SOCIETY

($5,000 and up) Axe-Houghton Foundation Geen Family Foundation JKW Foundation King & Spalding LLP Litowitz Foundation, Inc. Lucille Lortel Foundation Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College Richenthal Foundation PRODUCERS CIRCLE—EXECUTIVE

($2,500 and up) Elizabeth and Russell Abbott Foley Hoag LLP Irving Harris Foundation Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP Kirkland & Ellis LLP The Randolph Foundation Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund The Venable Foundation PRODUCERS CIRCLE—ASSOCIATE

($1,000 and up) Actors’ Equity Association The Grace R. and Alan D. Marcus Foundation Stacy Schiff and Marc de la Bruyere

GNIT

W W W . T FA N A . O R G

360° Viewfinder: GNIT

Articles inside

Cast and Creative Team

Interview: Looking for Myself Wherever I Am Frederick Wiseman in Conversation with Will Eno

Major Supporters

Mission and Programs

Leadership

Dialogues: "A Liar, Seducer, and Bombastic Self-Deceiver" by Brian Kulick

Interview: Returning to the Human Joe Curnutte in Conversation with Johnny G. Lloyd

Interview: Every Moment Reveals Us John Turturro in Conversation with Will Eno

Dialogues: Finding the Point Where Chaos Seeps In by Martha Wade Steketee

Biography: Henrik Ibsen

Interview: The Line Between Thought and Feeling Will Eno in Conversation with Jonathan Kalb

Biography: Will Eno

"The Self-Unseeing" by Thomas Hardy