2017 - 2018 Spring Spotlight

Haneefah Wood will appear as Haley Walker in Bad Dates

SPRING 2017-2018

SPOTLIGHT

HUNTINGTON UPDATE P. 3 MALA P. 4 BAD DATES P. 6 SKELETON CREW P. 10 TOP GIRLS P. 14 FALL P. 18 IN DEVELOPMENT P. 22 EDUCATION P. 24 UPCOMING EVENTS P. 26 CALENDARS P. 27

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MALA JAN. 6 – 28 IRRESISTIBLE COMEDY

BAD DATES JAN. 26 – FEB. 25 RIVETING & TIMELY NEW PLAY

SKELETON CREW MAR. 2 – 31 DAZZLING CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC

TOP GIRLS APR. 20 – MAY 20 FASCINATING UNTOLD STORY OF ARTHUR MILLER

FALL MAY 18 – JUN. 16

2018 AT THE HUNTINGTON

EXPERIENCES YOU’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER Be transported by the best theatre in Boston, plan a guaranteed date night, or provoke a conversation that will expand your worldview. Join us and let the Huntington inspire, challenge, and excite you!

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NILE HAWVER

POWERFUL PERSONAL DRAMA

STANTEC ARCHITECTURE

Draft rendering of the Huntington Avenue redevelopment project.

HUNTINGTON AVENUE REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT WINS APPROVAL On December 14, 2017 the City of Boston BPDA voted to approve the proposed redevelopment of 254-264 Huntington Avenue, which includes the renovation of the Huntington Avenue Theatre and the theatre’s support wing, as well as a new apartment building next to the theatre.

This approval from the Boston Planning and Development Agency sets in motion a donation by commercial developers QMG Huntington LLC of the historic Huntington Avenue Theatre and its support wing to the Huntington Theatre Company for its ownership in perpetuity. It will also lead to the creation of 14,000 square feet of new cultural space, expanding the theatre at the base of their apartment building, with a 100-year lease for the price of $1.

The Huntington will be responsible for outfitting the new contemporary space, which will serve as the Huntington Avenue Theatre’s new entrance and will provide amenities including increased public gathering spaces, an expansive second floor lobby that will double as an event space and intimate performance venue, and more restrooms! The Huntington will

expand its programming to provide year-round activity in the theatre and lobbies, and will make these new spaces available for use by the community.

“This is a significant milestone for the Huntington. We are now that much closer to realizing our ambition for a state of the art theatre complex that provides modern comforts alongside classic architecture and allows us to expand our programming, serve more people, and take an even greater role in the civic life and cultural vibrancy of our neighborhood,” says Managing Director Michael Maso. “This would not be possible without QMG Huntington LLC, whose generosity will allow the Huntington to do so much more for our community. I remain extremely grateful to Mayor Marty Walsh and his dedicated staff, who were instrumental in helping the Huntington remain on Huntington Avenue, as well as to the Huntington’s extraordinary board members for their leadership, and to the BPDA for its guidance through this process.”

This critical moment would not have been possible without our deep and loyal community of supporters. We are excited to fulfill our bold dream, and we hope we can continue to count on your support as it is fully realized.

For the latest news and information about the Huntington Avenue Theatre, please visit huntingtontheatre.org/FAQ. HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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— THE BOSTON GLOBE

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“Candid, raw, and exhilarating!”

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Funny, brutally honest, and ultimately cathartic, Mala puts a sharp focus on what it means to put our loved ones first, right to the very end, and what happens when we strive to be good but don’t always succeed. Named one of the best plays of the year by The Boston Globe, WBUR’s The ARTery, and DigBoston when it premiered at ArtsEmerson, this powerful one-woman show written by and featuring Huntington Playwright-in-Residence Melinda Lopez (Sonia Flew, Becoming Cuba) dances between a mother’s growing frailty and a daughter’s quest for grace — all set during an epic Boston winter.

“Piercingly honest and exquisitely moving.”

— THE BOSTON GLOBE

“When I saw the sold-out performances of Mala at ArtsEmerson last year, I knew we had to bring this homegrown hit to the Huntington. Melinda Lopez has a frank and funny approach to writing about life and family that is a gift to audiences. In Mala, she’s captured something so honest about what it is to be a daughter.

This is a show to share with someone you love.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS Playwright Melinda Lopez

Director David Dower

FAMILY, LOSS & THOSE LONG BOSTON WINTERS:

A CONVERSATION WITH MELINDA LOPEZ

PLAYWRIGHT MELINDA LOPEZ BRINGS HER ONE WOMAN SHOW MALA (PREVIOUSLY STAGED TO GREAT ACCLAIM AT ARTSEMERSON) BACK TO BOSTON AND TO HER ARTISTIC HOME AT THE HUNTINGTON, WHERE SHE IS PLAYWRIGHT-IN-RESIDENCE. MALA WON THE 2016 ELLIOT NORTON AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING NEW SCRIPT, AND WAS NAMED ONE OF THE BEST PLAYS OF 2016 BY THE BOSTON GLOBE,

WBUR’S THE ARTERY, AND DIGBOSTON. LOPEZ SAT DOWN WITH KAT KLEIN, THE HUNTINGTON’S PRODUCING APPRENTICE, TO DISCUSS THE RETURN ENGAGEMENT OF HER DARKLY FUNNY LOOK AT FAMILY DYNAMICS AND THE UNSENTIMENTAL POETRY OF EVERYDAY LIFE.

Kat Klein: How do you decide which elements from a real event to trim or change? How much artistic license do you feel you are allowed to take with events?

Melinda Lopez: The process for working on something autobiographical is not that different than writing a fictional play.

The emotional truth I was trying to replicate has a claustrophobic feeling, so within all the real events I talk about, I do some condensing of time. The play has license to careen into the past or into the future.

I want the audience to see their own weaknesses, their own mistakes, their own poor choices and not feel like they are alone. Grieving and end of life care can be a very lonely, isolating experience.

How do you prepare to play yourself in a show?

I’m not playing myself. I’m performing in Mala and I talk about Mala like she’s a character. I’m very hard on myself as a character, but that’s what the play needs. The play needs to have this incredibly imperfect protagonist. Mala will say something incredibly insightful and the next minute she’s behaving terribly. I do that on purpose because I don’t want the audience to like her too much, I don’t want them to ever feel sorry for her. I really want the audience to have enough critical distance to laugh at her. I want the play to remind us that however poorly you behaved, I behaved worse, and there’s comradery there. I think you have to laugh. The response from [Artistic Director] Peter [DuBois] was great — he was so moved by it and he just laughed throughout. Peter is a big laugher and you can hear him in the audience, that’s how you know it’s working.

One of my favorite lines in this show is “…this winter, this endless biblical winter.” Can you talk about the significance of keeping the play in the winter of 2015?

The more I make theatre the more interested I am in the local community. It’s important that this play has the feeling of a shared experience, such as we lived through this winter or we lived through the end of something important. I try to bring that spirit into the performance. Anyone who lived through the Boston winter of 2015 knows we survived something together and that kind of hardship makes a community. The hardship of grieving a parent connects you to a community. Suddenly you’re a part of this club that you never wanted to be a part of, you don’t have to speak about your loss but it binds you together in a way. I think that’s all a part of the Mala experience.

This show has been produced in Boston previously and in Minneapolis. How has your relationship to the show changed?

The night before starting rehearsals at the Guthrie I had gone out to grab a bite to eat. I’d been thinking about my mother and how far our story has come. My mother died two and a half years ago and I had this really clear sense for the first time, and it probably should’ve occurred to me long before this, that this play is her final gift to me.

That she gave me this experience. It made me feel really close to her.

SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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Restaurant manager and shoe connoisseur Haley Walker is finally ready to re-enter the dating world.

From the privacy of her bedroom, she relates a series of hilarious tales while preparing for, and recovering from, one dreadful date after another.

One of the most popular shows in Huntington history, this 15th anniversary production of Theresa Rebeck’s sweet and sharp comedy, directed by Jessica Stone (Ripcord) and featuring Haneefah Wood (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) will be the hottest date night in town and a triumphant night out for women of all ages!

Braille

“IRRESISTIBLY CHARMING and bubbling over with good cheer, Bad Dates nevertheless manages to say a touching thing or two about the meaning of life.”

— THE BOSTON GLOBE

“Theresa Rebeck’s succulent and biting comedy will have Boston audiences in stitches as we recall the details of our dating disasters. This wild and smart comedy is the perfect night out on the town for women of all generations and the ideal remedy to combat any kind of winter blues!”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS Playwright Theresa Rebeck

Director Jessica Stone

Actress Haneefah Wood

Haneefah Wood

GIRLS’ NIGHT IN: THERESA REBECK’S BAD DATES “ I honestly had a moment when I thought, if you’re siding with the guy’s ex-girlfriend? It’s not a good date.” – HALEY, BAD DATES When famed playwright Theresa Rebeck started writing Bad Dates, she wanted to explore how many different places you could take one actress in the course of a single evening.

By turns emotional, funny, thrilling, and surprising, Bad Dates takes us into the central character Haley’s bedroom as she dishes and divulges one great story after another. The breadth of emotion that Rebeck captures in the play led New York magazine to call the original production “thoroughly diverting, often touching, and ultimately wise.”

Haley starts off the play in a situation where we have all found ourselves: single, raising a 13-year-old daughter, and increasingly sure that she is in fact working for the Romanian mafia. Five years before, a late-night viewing of the Joan Crawford melodrama Mildred Pierce scared her off of dating altogether, and she has just decided to reenter the scene — but only after catching herself longingly staring at a dinner companion that was arguing for the spiritual rights of bugs.

She tells the audience of realizing with some horror: “The bug guy is looking kind of good. The things he’s saying about bugs are really kind of fascinating. It is then that I realize that maybe it has been too long since I’ve been on a date. When the bug guy starts looking good, it’s time to get out of the house.”

The impulse to re-join the romantic scene leads Haley into a series of bad dates — a crescendo of baffling, bizarre, exciting, and even sexy encounters that form the fabric of this one-woman show. In Rebeck’s skilled comic hands, the stories are more than satisfying and revealing gossip; they are a portrait of Haley’s intelligence, verve, and wit, and a dynamic evening of theatre. “I [wanted to] imbue every movement with immediacy,” says Rebeck. “I wanted it to still be a play; I didn’t want it to be just somebody telling stories up there.”

Bad Dates is successful as a one-woman show because of the deep rapport that Rebeck crafts between Haley and the audience; she talks directly out to the house, without any artifice or pretense. And most importantly, throughout, Rebeck pulls deeply funny streaks through Haley’s story: wry observations on everything from Buddhist philosophy to American individualism. As in all Theresa Rebeck’s plays — including the modern Pygmalion-esque satire Spike Heels and the witty meta-theatrical The Understudy — comedy isn’t just what lightens the characters. The laughs become a source of unique and cockeyed wisdom, one that can lift us out of our perspectives for a moment and put us back a little more like Haley. “Comedy always feels like a defiant response to the trouble of the universe,” Rebeck says. “It seems a redemptive act to me, and necessary to buoy the human spirit.”

– CHARLES HAUGLAND HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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Rebecca Bradshaw: What inspired you to write Haley?

Theresa Rebeck: At the time I had been hanging out with my friend, actress Julie White. One night when we were sitting around making each other laugh, we thought about this idea to do a cable show called “Bad Dates” in that we would interview people about the worst dates they’d ever had, and then we’d do dramatic reenactments of them. That conversation moved into the idea of this one person who hasn’t been dating and decides to start dating again.

T. CHARLES ERICKSON Julie White in the Huntington’s production of Bad Dates (2004)

THERESA REBECK:

THE ART IN CRAFTING A ONE-WOMAN SHOW

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER REBECCA BRADSHAW INTERVIEWS BAD

DATES’ PLAYWRIGHT ABOUT THE EXCITING AND EXACTING PROCESS IN MAKING ONE CHARACTER HOLD HER OWN.

“...there’s a surprise element, there’s a timing element, and for me, there’s a kind of simplicity. And blood on the floor. There’s pain. There’s a lot of pain.

I’m not very interested in jokes, unless they have larger spiritual context.”

– THERESA REBECK

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The play is centered around Haley’s dating life, but the strongest relationship we see is with her daughter, Vera. What was your choice in showcasing a single working mother?

Listen, I know plenty of people who that’s their story, and at a certain point, that romantic dream of having the perfect partner show up falls by the wayside. There is so much life right in front of you. And that life itself becomes more important than that particular dream. I think that is what happened to Haley. I have a friend who doesn’t date very much anymore. She gets asked out a lot, and she said to me, “Euch… it’s so much work. Men are so much work. I got enough to do.” She was from a different generation, but I understood what she meant. I think that’s a little bit of what happened to Haley. But then, I have two kids and you do go through the moment where you realize that your children will move on and the closeness that you have with a child is going to open up. Haley’s at a time where she can think about [dating] again.

I read an article about how you thought of yourself as an “impatient person” and that the words stream out of you like a spigot — was this play a quick write?

No. It took four years. It was the most time I’ve ever spent on a play. The form of a one-person play is very challenging. I felt like I was being dragged backward all of the time. It’s not a form that tells you what comes next, which is what storytelling is all about. Because she is telling the story of what happened to her the night before or last week, there is a kind of drag on the narrative. It became very important for me to have her daughter Vera to talk to or have a box of money under the bed. There are things in the present moment that are pushing her life forward. It took a while to figure that out.

What makes something funny to you? What type of comedy inspires your comedy?

It’s extremely difficult to talk about comedy. Everybody sounds like an idiot when they do it. I will say there are several things to be aware of: there’s a surprise element, there’s a timing element, and for me, there’s a kind of simplicity. And blood on the floor. There’s pain. There’s a lot of pain. I’m not very interested in jokes, unless they have larger spiritual context.

Do you have a shoe you associate with a pivotal moment in life?

Yes, I do. Do you want to know what it is?

Sure, love to!

Well, the shoes I got married in. They’re black with cute beads all over them. And there was also a pair of Frye boots that I lived in when I was an undergraduate. I wore them to graduation, so they show up in all of my graduation pictures.

What are you working on now?

I’m going to DC to direct The Way of the World for the Folger Theatre. And I have a movie coming out in March, starring Angelica Huston and Bill Pullman called Trouble. In terms of writing, I’m working on a commission for Arena Stage about witches — I like that. I’ve always wanted to write about witches, and I never had the courage to do it. So, I’m starting to walk down that road.

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

JIM COX Tyler Lansing Weaks, Haneefah Wood, and Candy Buckley in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2015)

Nancy E. Carroll and Annie Golden in Ripcord (2017)

HANEEFAH WOOD Haley Walker

JESSICA STONE Director

HOMETOWN Washington, DC

HOMETOWN Rochester, New York

PREVIOUSLY SEEN IN Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

PREVIOUS HUNTINGTON CREDITS Director of Ripcord and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike; appeared in She Loves Me, Betty’s Summer Vacation, and Springtime for Henry

WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF DATING/ RELATIONSHIP ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED? Be yourself. Don’t send your representative. If you don’t cook, don’t start now.

WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT (OR YOUR FAVORITE) SHOES IN YOUR CLOSET? I actually don’t have a favorite pair of shoes. But one of the fanciest pairs I have is a pair of Alexander Haneefah Wood McQueen black leather booties that my mom bought me.

WHAT’S THE BEST DATE YOU’VE EVER BEEN ON? The first date of my current relationship. The date lasted longer than twelve hours. We went to the beach, rode bicycles, watched the sun set while listening to our favorite songs, went to the movies and then we just sat in the car listening to music and making out until 2 in the morning. It was heaven.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR CHARACTER HALEY WALKER? I don’t think I would give her any advice. Here’s a woman who is smart and resourceful and is doing the best she can as a single parent. She loves her daughter and takes good care of her. She does some things that are questionable but she tells the truth about it. We can’t all be perfect. I think she’s doing pretty well for herself.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE OR MOST MEMORABLE BOSTON RESTAURANT? IF SO, WHY? I cooked most of my meals when I was in Boston last. BUT, I love a chain restaurant every now and then. Pizzeria Uno’s was my place to go.

WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF DATING/ RELATIONSHIP ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED? Don’t date anyone who doesn’t make you laugh.

WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT (OR YOUR FAVORITE) SHOES IN YOUR CLOSET? I wish I could say my sexy Louboutin something or others. But it’s my sneaks that have arch support and accommodate bunions. I’m clearly not a fun date.

WHAT’S THE BEST DATE YOU’VE EVER BEEN ON? My first date with my (now) husband. It wasn’t a date. We had just finished working together on a show and were out with the cast for a closing night dinner. We started holding hands under the table and now nearly 20 years later, I’m listening to him repair a piece of furniture in our bedroom as I type this.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE THE CHARACTER OF HALEY WALKER? I would tell her to remember not to let her daughter look at a screen for too long. And to take a longer look at the bug guy.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE OR MOST MEMORABLE BOSTON RESTAURANT? IF SO, WHY? Figs. I’ve spent many an hour there with really close friends and it holds a special place in my heart.

SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

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“A very fine new play!

Warm-blooded and astute.”

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— THE NEW YORK TIMES

In the breakroom of the last small auto plant still standing, a makeshift family of workers swap stories, share dreams, and take pride in their work. When confronted with the possibility of the factory closing, power dynamics shift and each is pushed to the limits of survival. Inspired by August Wilson’s Century Cycle, Dominique Morisseau’s bold and compassionate new play is part of her Detroit Project play cycle.

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“Dominique Morisseau has quickly become one of the most important playwrights of her generation.

It’s no wonder critics and audiences have compared her to masters like Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. In this extraordinarily well-crafted play, she masterfully tells a story that examines class and identity with searing brilliance. This is a night at the theatre that will satisfy, and stay with you.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS Playwright Dominique Morisseau

Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian

AN UNSEEN STORY: DOMINIQUE MORISSEAU ON HER HOMETOWN Degenerate. When a white professor at Dominique Morisseau’s alma mater asked the almost entirely white class, “what do you think of when you hear about Detroit,” someone yelled out, “degenerate.”

This exchange happened in Morisseau’s boyfriend’s (now husband) class, and she says that when her husband told her someone had equated Detroit with the word degenerate, “I felt like he had just slapped me.” Morisseau returns to this story as an explanation and moment of passionate inspiration for her Detroit Cycle adding, “I [wrote] three plays about Detroit because I love Detroiters, because I love my family, and because I am practicing self-love.” And the love that Morisseau has for her hometown shines fiercely and brightly in her new play Skeleton Crew.

As a playwright Morisseau is committed to writing plays about people on the fringe of theatre’s usual subjects and audience. She’s also interested in creating exciting roles and characters she’s yet to see on stage and says, “I [write] plays that I [think] should be written, but also plays I [think] actors should be acting in.” Skeleton Crew has four roles “actors should be acting in:” There’s Faye, an older woman a year away from earning sizable retirement benefits; Reggie, the workingclass-turned-white-collar factory foreman, who’s working toward providing the best life for his family without letting his factory’s workers fall to the wayside while doing so; Shanita, a pregnant young woman who’s proud of her job and loves her work; and Dez, a young man trying to save enough money to open his own auto garage.

Likened by The New York Times to “Clifford Odets’ dramas,” “the great Pittsburgh cycle of August Wilson,” and of being “squarely in the tradition of Arthur Miller,” Skeleton Crew is set in the breakroom of a Detroit automobile factory. Inside this breakroom, Morisseau carefully explores the capacity for altruistic love during stressful and “between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place” situations. Because of this premise, the stakes in Skeleton Crew are high, but Morisseau’s smart writing ensures the play never veers into melodrama, giving Skeleton Crew the benefit of truthful, unaffected storytelling.

Morisseau’s characterization and writing of these four characters in Skeleton Crew is so compassionate and free of cliché that it will be hard to leave the theatre without feeling for and appreciating the makeshift factory family by the time the curtain falls. Morisseau cares about the characters — “these are the people I love” — and more importantly, the characters in Skeleton Crew care for each other.

It’s this care that keeps the play from ever becoming depressing or bleak; instead it keeps Detroit’s humanity, resilience, and hope at its dramatic core.

To counter cultural bias against Detroit, Morisseau is drawn to telling stories that explore the humanity of Detroiters through a mix of humor and genuine warmth. Skeleton Crew comes together through a mix of dramatic fictionalization, historical research, and interviews with Morisseau’s family and fellow Detroiters, who as Morisseau puts them “have been some of the kindest, most progressive, most ambitious, most brave, most conscious, most loving, most hardworking people I have ever known.” In Skeleton Crew, she gives names to these traits and expertly weaves in the spirit of the wider Detroit community onto her stages.

This is not a play about degenerates. Skeleton Crew is a play about challenging expectations, written because Morisseau believes, “that what goes into print and what is said over and over about a people starts to become the gospel until it is just as diligently combated with other stories and other perspectives.” So let it be said: Skeleton Crew is a play set in a city of kind, progressive, ambitious, brave, conscious, loving, hardworking people; a play that combats unintentional ignorance and apathy with warm-blooded stories and diverse perspectives; and a play that is well on track to becoming theatre gospel.

– J. SEBASTIAN ALBERDI HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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PAUL SANCYA Ford Focus vehicles are assembled at the Michigan Assembly Plant in 2011

“Is a factory / It can hurt / Hold your hand out / Give a shout / Breathe” – SAMPLED LYRICS IN J DILLA’S “THE FACTORY”

“IS A FACTORY. IT CAN HURT.” THE HISTORY OF DETROIT’S AUTO INDUSTRY

SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

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A 1973 full-size Cadillac rolls down the assembly line in Detroit.

The beginning of Skeleton Crew calls for the sounds of auto plant machinery and Detroit artist J Dilla’s hip-hop. The stage directions tell us that “machinery hum hums. J Dilla beats rock rock rock.

They blend together until we are almost bopping our heads to it… a factory line hymn.” While the characters of Skeleton Crew are the lifeblood of the play, it’s the history of the Detroit automobile industry contrasted with a modern Detroit that provides the humming, rocking backdrop for the characters.

When we think of the auto industry of Detroit, many of us can immediately think of its peak: Henry Ford, the Model T, crowds of assembly line workers. For many of us, that’s about where the list ends. Before she wrote Skeleton Crew, that’s about where it ended for Dominique Morisseau, as well, and she says that “learning the world of the auto industry is like learning a part of Detroit that I never really knew. With [this play] I was like, let me figure this out.”

Positioned on a river between Lake Erie and Lake Huron, Detroit is a natural location for creating and exporting cars. Car manufacturers flocked to Detroit seeking the geographic advantages, but the factories needed workers, and manufacturers needed to give workers a reason to endure the often difficult and dangerous factory-line labor. By the mid-20th century, 15% of working Americans (a large chunk of them Detroiters) were auto industry employees.

This increasing number of workers in the largely unregulated auto industry created pressure. Workers wanted protection, healthcare, unemployment benefits, and retirement plans, but first they needed to unionize. Factory owners opposed unionization because they didn’t want to pay workers more when they were doing the same labor, and factory owners saw unionization efforts as a threat to efficiency.

Tensions escalated into bloody violence, and factories hired private security officers to deal with union sympathizers and dissenters in their factories. Fortunately, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) eventually negotiated contracts with every major auto firm and secured the benefits that auto workers wanted and needed.

Although Skeleton Crew is set in 2008, years after the bloody battle for unionization, Morisseau decided to “reach out to UAW activists and watched documentaries” about the auto industry’s unionization era before writing the play. This union research most affected the character of Faye, a woman in her mid-to-late 50s

who has been working at the factory for 29 years. Morisseau gives Faye a moment that melds the past with the present. Faye chastises one of the younger factoryworkers, Dez, for not being a part of the union or paying his dues and for disrespecting the people who fought hard for his right to unionize. And Faye has the authority and right to educate the younger generations.

Faye’s age puts her at a place where she saw Detroit go from the poster child for American industrial success and opportunity to a hotspot of urban distress. She was there when the auto industry of Detroit fell into freefall. She was there during the brief blip of an upswing in the 1990s. And she was there for return of the freefall.

Her existence in the play blends the start of the industry’s recession with the recession of the play’s present.

And it’s precisely that blending of history with present-time that makes the play so successful. When the play begins, the auto industry is in dire straits and the audience is seeing a group of

TOCCARRA CASH Shanita HOMETOWN Dayton, Ohio HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I was born and raised in Dayton, Ohio where one of the main economies was the auto industry, and where so many people I knew growing up worked for GM. With a twist of fate, I would have been Shanita. She takes great pride in her skill and is passionate about her craftsmanship, her ability to work with her hands to create something vital to people’s lives. She’s also a dreamer, longing for something...more. I can deeply relate to both of these things, with the only difference being that her craft is mechanical and mine is artistic – although the way she speaks about it makes it clear that the work she does is much like an art to her as well.

WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT: DOING RIGHT BY OTHERS, OR DOING RIGHT BY YOURSELF? Doing right by others. When you do that, you automatically end up doing right by yourself, because that good karma will always come back around.

JONATHAN LOUIS DENT Dez HOMETOWN Denville, New Jersey WHY DO YOU THINK SKELETON CREW IS ONE OF THE MOST PRODUCED PLAYS OF 2017? Skeleton Crew is infused with not only a pulsing heart, but also a tenacious spirit. It’s cathartic for people to watch a story about characters fighting to survive during a time of instability. I think a lot of us feel as though the very ground underneath us is shifting a bit in today’s current climate, and it’s helpful to spend time with characters that are dealing head-on with their problems and not running away from them.

WHAT DO YOU TELL YOURSELF WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH? I have a pretty simple mantra I repeat when things get hard:

people — threatened by unemployment — surviving in a small factory. Because it has become about survival; survival for oneself, for one’s family, one’s future, and for the industry. It’s become about surviving and preserving a rickety, rusty, but stubborn and important industry integral to Detroit’s history.

Through the writing of Skeleton Crew, Morriseau shows that you can appreciate the story of the play and the flesh and blood of its heart even if you only have the tiniest seed of familiarity with Detroit’s auto industry; “for the first time, I started writing [a play] before I finished all [of my] research. I thought, ‘I don’t know everything [about Detroit’s auto industry], but I know the story I want to tell.’”

Sometimes an introduction to humming Detroit factory machines and bopping J Dilla hip-hop beats is all you really need to join in and experience the factory-line, human hymn that is Morisseau’s Skeleton Crew.

– J. SEBASTIAN ALBERDI

“This too shall pass.” I think it’s important to hold on to that truth when you’re stuck in a dark time that seems never-ending.

PATRICIA R. FLOYD Faye HOMETOWN Detroit, Michigan HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? Where do I begin? I’m a born and raised, third generation card-carrying union member (my grandfather was a UAW negotiator), Detroit girl, who on occasion has a cigarette at an inappropriate time or in an inappropriate place. I definitely have a maternal dervish in me in regards to both my biological family and the theatre family I’ve collected over the years.

WHAT IS MORE IMPORTANT: DOING RIGHT BY OTHERS, OR DOING RIGHT BY YOURSELF? I don’t believe they are mutually exclusive. I believe in karma.

MAURICE EMMANUEL PARENT Reggie HOMETOWN Born in Washington, DC raised in suburban Maryland (Prince George’s County) HOW ARE YOU LIKE YOUR CHARACTER? I relate to Reggie’s desire to do right by as many people as he can. He’s stuck in the middle of so much. He’s worked so hard to be where he is. He loves and cherishes his community and those that helped him get to where he is. It’s hard when there are so many forces pulling you in different directions, and you are the person in the middle trying to put out fires and keep the peace. Eventually you are no longer able to and that’s where things get really difficult.

WHY IS THIS PLAY IMPORTANT FOR BOSTON AUDIENCES? Besides it being a brilliant piece of theatre, I feel Boston audiences will relate to the central message of resilience of the working class. It’s a perspective we don’t see enough of on stage.

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Career-driven Marlene has just landed the top job at a London employment agency over a male colleague.

To celebrate, she hosts a lavish dinner with a group of famous and adventurous historical women who cheer the successes and bemoan the sacrifices required to be a “top girl” in a man’s world. Caryl Churchill’s groundbreaking masterpiece, originally a rebuke of Margaret Thatcher’s England in the 1980s, remains as relevant and powerful today.

“Very funny and provocative.

A mind-lifting experience.”

— NY POST

Braille

“What do Sheryl Sandberg, Hillary Clinton, and Ivanka Trump have in common? Explore this question with leading American director Liesl Tommy’s take on this 20th-century masterpiece. In her productions of A Raisin in the Sun, Ruined, and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Liesl has connected profoundly with our audience; this production will be her first return to the Huntington since her Broadway directorial debut of Eclipsed. For Top Girls, Liesl has assembled a stunningly talented cast of women who will bring power, passion, and humor to this iconic play.”

Playwright Caryl Churchill

Director Liesl Tommy

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS

35 YEARS LATER: CARYL CHURCHILL & HER STILL-TOO-TIMELY TOP GIRLS Written in 1982, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls has become a classic of contemporary British theatre. Set in Margaret Thatcher’s antiunion and unemployment-stricken England, Top Girls follows a no-nonsense businesswoman named Marlene during the aftermath of her promotion at work. We follow her through an Alice in Wonderland-like dinner party, her life in her new management role, and a visit to her working-class sister’s home. Throughout the course of the play, Marlene reckons with her own issues with class, her relationship with her sister, and the sacrifices she had to make to become a “top girl.” Top Girls’ narrative and themes are straightforward — that is until Churchill masterfully rearranges the play’s timeline to highlight the intersections between sacrifice, selfishness, and personal success, deepening the core of the play.

“Congratulations, my dear,” says the 19th-century explorer Isabella Bird to the 20th-century Marlene after Marlene’s promotion. In the famous first scene of the play, Marlene invites five historical women to a dinner party meant to celebrate her promotion. The party devolves from calm and commemorative into a raucous event, with a little help from bottles and bottles of wine. The women revel in their successes and celebrate how much women have done and how far they’ve come. In the first scene, it feels as if the glass ceiling has finally been smashed because of Marlene’s promotion. Churchill amplifies the jubilant nature of the dinner party by writing realistic dialogue and moments of awesome noise. The dinner party reaches levels that are symphonic in their crescendo of speech and sound, but it always feels controlled, purposeful, and very, very funny.

Churchill’s firm hand over the scene especially shows when she has two or even three of the women speak over each other, while maintaining the scene’s meaning, emotion, and fun.

After the dinner party, the play drops back into reality and the veneer of dreamlike celebration falls apart. Although the transition is jarring, it’s deliberate and a vital part of what makes Marlene’s story — and Top Girls as a whole — so compelling. Marlene goes from a woman who is celebrated by all the women at the dinner party, to a woman who is multidimensional and flawed and ferocious.

Marlene is branded as a “ballbuster” by a woman who thinks her husband should have been promoted to Marlene’s job, and her sister chastises her for giving up too much to become successful, especially at the expense of others. Churchill’s nonlinear storytelling heightens and highlights the moments of dramatic irony found in Marlene’s story and emphasizes the dark underbelly of success.

Because of how much the nonlinear storytelling of Top Girls adds to the story, it’s safe to say that Top Girls wouldn’t be the classic that it is without Churchill’s smart construction.

Churchill is a prolific, theatrical, British heavyweight, having written over 45 plays and been lauded by peers such as Paula Vogel as the “the greatest playwright alive.” As a credit to her craft, Churchill and Tom Stoppard are often framed as contemporaries because of the similarities in the ways in which they create stories. Churchill and Stoppard both use wit and comedy to explore philosophical and social issues, and they’re both a ton of fun to see on stage because of their hard-hitting, funny stories and their epic scope.

Thirty-five years after its debut, Churchill’s Top Girls is still scarily relevant and timely. The ever-current societal issues of class and gender are examined through a cast of multidimensional female characters like Marlene, and Churchill’s confidence with experimentation and theatricality keep the play feeling fresh.

Top Girls remains nuanced and enjoyable, while challenging the expectations society places on women and success. Because of this, Top Girls really is a play written for everyone, from people interested in having visceral reactions to a gripping story, to theatregoers interested in plays as agents for social change and political thought.

So, go, sit back, embrace — and enjoy — the carefully constructed timeline and the laser-sharp exploration of women in history and modern society that is the Huntington’s version of Caryl Churchill’s 1982 classic Top Girls.

– J. SEBASTIAN ALBERDI HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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5.

“But of course a wife must obey her husband.”

– GRISELDA

When Marlene (played by Carmen Zilles, above) earns a promotion at the Top Girls employment agency, she celebrates by hosting a dinner party with five historical women.

Get to know the guests before seeing Marlene’s present and their pasts converge.

TABLE FOR SIX MEET THE HISTORIC

1.

“I always felt dull when I was stationary. That’s why I could never stay anywhere.”

– ISABELLA BIRD

WOMEN OF TOP GIRLS 4.

2.

“There was nothing in my life except my studies. I was obsessed with the pursuit of truth.”

– POPE JOAN

“The first half of my life was all sin and the second all repentance.”

– LADY NIJŌ

3.

“You keep running on and fighting you didn’t stop for nothing. Oh we give them devils such a beating.”

– DULL GRET

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1. ISABELLA BIRD was an explorer and novelist born in the

United Kingdom in 1831. Bird was born a frail and sickly child, so doctors recommended she lead an open-air lifestyle, poising her for travel. In her 73 years, Bird visited Australia, Hawaii, Japan, China, Korea, and more. She wrote about her travels, earning her international fame. Later in life, after the deaths of her sister and husband, Bird studied medicine and resolved to travel as a missionary.

KEVIN BERNE

T. CHARLES ERICKSON

Pascale Armand, Carla Duren, and Zainab Jah in Ruined (2011)

Yvette Freeman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2012)

2. LADY NIJŌ was a Japanese concubine turned

Buddhist nun from 13th-century Japan, recognized for her autobiography, The Confessions of Lady Nijō. She began her work as Emperor Go-Fukakusa’s concubine at the age of 14. Their relationship was strained because Nijō took numerous lovers while working at the palace. Nijō was expelled from the court in 1283, at which time she assumed the role of a Buddhist nun. She wrote her autobiography in the early 14th century.

3. DULL GRET (or Dulle Griet) is a figure of

Flemish folklore famously depicted in Pietar Bruegel the Elder’s 1562 portrait “Dulle Griet.”

Dull Gret is shown marching into Hell clad in male armor as other women loot a town behind her.

It’s believed Bruegel tried to make a joke about noisy, aggressive women in this painting, playing on the Flemish proverb, “One woman makes a din, two women a lot of trouble, three an annual market, four a quarrel, five an army, and against six the Devil himself has no weapon.”

4. POPE JOAN was alleged to have reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church in 9th-century Italy, but most modern scholars believe the story of Joan is fictional. Accounts describe Joan as a learned woman who disguised herself as a man to study in the Vatican with a lover. Due to her abilities, she rose through the ranks and was elected Pope. One day, while making a procession, Joan unexpectedly went into labor. It was revealed that Joan was a woman, and she and her child were stoned to death.

5. GRISELDA is a fictional character from The Canterbury Tales noted for her patience and obedience. Griselda is a peasant woman until the Marquis of Saluzzo decides to court her. The Marquis’ only condition for marriage is that Griselda always obey him. Despite the Marquis dispelling her two children and divorcing her for being unable to bear him a child of status, Griselda maintains trust in her once-husband. At the end of story, the Marquis calls Griselda back and reveals he has been harboring their children all along. The reward for her patience is their family.

– LIAM HOFMEISTER

SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

LIESL TOMMY RETURNS “I first encountered the Huntington when I was in high school when we saw August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.

It was an experience that changed my life and opened up my eyes to what theatre could be and what theatre could do.”

– DIRECTOR LIESL TOMMY Liesl Tommy, one of the country’s most in-demand directors, returns to the Huntington this spring with Caryl Churchill’s contemporary classic Top Girls. Tommy recently became the first woman of color nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play, following her Broadway directing debut of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed (starring Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o). As Huntington audiences will remember, Tommy previously directed highly acclaimed productions of A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson, and Ruined by Lynn Nottage.

What audiences may not know is when Tommy was a student at Newton North High School she attended her first professional theatre production, August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, through the Huntington’s student matinee series. “I had a real passion for the theatre, but I didn’t understand that it could be a profession until I came to see Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” recalls Tommy. “Seeing a play about people of color that was inspiring and full of history and politics and emotion – there wasn’t a lot to see in film and television [at that time] that would make a young black girl feel like they could be a part of that story. It was one of those formative experiences that helped me fit myself into the larger conversation. It was the beginning of me thinking this could be a thing that I did with my life.”

Bringing her experience full circle, the Huntington will recognize Tommy’s distinguished career and long-standing connection to our organization this May at the Spotlight Spectacular gala, where Tommy will be awarded the Huntington’s highest honor, the Wimberly Award.

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“For all the public drama of Arthur Miller’s career, one character was absent: the child he deleted from his life.”

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Arthur Miller, the most celebrated American playwright of the 20th century, was said to be the moral conscience of the nation, but he had a secret: a son born with Down syndrome whom he refused to acknowledge. Renowned reporter Bernard Weinraub explores the fascinating untold story of Miller and his third wife, photographer Inge Morath, and the divide between their public personas and private lives.

— VANITY FAIR

“Arthur Miller wrote many plays about the sins of a father being visited on a son, and as a writer he provided a moral compass for a generation. Bernard Weinraub’s exploration of a playwright iconic to our times is a story that has remained with me since the first time I read the script. I’m proud Boston audiences will be the first to see this show and discover more about a playwright that they thought they knew.”

– ARTISTIC DIRECTOR PETER DuBOIS

Playwright Bernard Weinraub

Director Peter DuBois

BERNARD WEINRAUB’S FALL:

A NEW LENS ON ARTHUR MILLER

When great American playwright Arthur Miller died in 2005, The New York Times wrote in his obituary: “Mr. Miller grappled with the weightiest matters of social conscience in his plays and in them often reflected or reinterpreted the stormy and very public elements of his own life.” But there was one story that Arthur Miller never told, and that even The New York Times did not mention — a son that Miller and Inge Morath had in 1966 named Daniel Miller. This child is not mentioned in Arthur Miller’s autobiography, and was not mentioned at or invited to his parents’ funeral — because Daniel Miller has Down syndrome.

From the view of playwright Bernard Weinraub, Daniel Miller was “deleted” from Miller’s life. Few knew of him, even in Miller’s close circle, until Vanity Fair published a 2007 article detailing Daniel Miller’s life. Weinraub read that piece at the time, and the contradiction of Arthur Miller’s actions stuck with him. If we believe Arthur Miller spoke as the moral conscience of a generation, what do we make of his public and private abandonment of his own son?

How does looking at Arthur Miller’s story spur us to investigate our own moral blindspots? “One can only feel compassion for the pain that Arthur Miller and Inge felt after the birth of Daniel. But Miller’s decision to erase Daniel from his life was a puzzle and a source of criticism in recent years, especially among the parents of disabled children: how could he do this?,” Weinraub says.

Weinraub is quick to note that Miller and Morath were, in some ways, typical parents of their generation in how they dealt with having a child with Down syndrome. Though Down syndrome had been named by physician John Down in 1866, 100 years later, when Daniel Miller was born, doctors still did not know what caused the extra chromosome that is responsible for Down syndrome, nor did they understand how that extra genetic material led to the physical and mental effects of the syndrome on those who have it. Parents were regularly counseled to give up children who had Down syndrome, believing at the time that it was more humane for them to be cared for by specialists. “In the ‘60s, it was very commonplace that doctors recommended — urged — that these children be placed in institutions,” Weinraub says. “Within the next

decade, it changed dramatically where they urged the closing of these same institutions and recommended the child either be taken home or placed in special housing units or foster care and be part of the community — but there had already been a great cost to these institutionalized children’s development, their personalities, and their education.”

Late in Arthur Miller’s life, there was one exception to the exclusion: a will that he revised close to his death that newly included Daniel in the division of the estate. What did the creation of that will say about the shift in Arthur’s psychology over his lifetime? Weinraub set out to dramatize the arc of that change and reversal — from omission to inclusion. “It was important to me that no one see Arthur and Inge as the villans in this situation,” Weinraub says.

“Daniel was the victim. The conditions at the institution where they placed him were so horrific that the government said it had to be closed, and in some way they were all victims. I wanted to know how the Millers lived with that and with each other. In some ways, the play is the story of a marriage confronting a tragedy. There was a sadness and a sense of guilt about both of them, I felt.”

In creating the play, Weinraub, a reporter for many years, has conducted new interviews with individuals close to the real-life situation: social workers, caretakers, and acquaintances who could shed new light on the complicated story of Daniel Miller. Arthur Miller’s greatest plays — All My Sons, The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, and A View from the Bridge — examine the tragedy of the American family, a pathos born from the ethical failures of a nation and of individuals. But in Fall, Bernard Weinraub asks if the most difficult lesson of Miller’s life was left untold. “In speaking to people, I have come to believe that Arthur Miller carried a deep sense of shame about this,” Weinraub says. “He was a very private person, and I don’t want to speak for him. But his great plays were all about fathers and sons: the responsibility of a father and the responsibility of a son. After Daniel Miller was born, he never really wrote about that again. I kept wondering what the effect of this was on him and what he carried with him.”

– CHARLES HAUGLAND HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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ALFRED EISENSTAEDT

Playwright Arthur Miller sits at his typewriter in 1949, the same year he won the Pulitzer Prize for Death of a Salesman.

Arthur Miller and his wife, Inge Morath, at their Roxbury, Connecticut house in 1975.

AN INTERVIEW WITH

PLAYWRIGHT BERNARD WEINRAUB BERNARD WEINRAUB SPENT A CAREER WORKING AS A REPORTER BEFORE SHIFTING HIS FOCUS TO PLAYWRITING. HE TALKS WITH DIRECTOR OF NEW WORK CHARLES HAUGLAND ABOUT HIS APPROACH TO STORYTELLING AND WHAT FASCINATED HIM ABOUT THIS STORY.

Charles Haugland: What interested you in this story?

Bernard Weinraub: Arthur Miller wrote so publicly about right and wrong and how to treat people.

“Attention must be paid.” He told you that you had a responsibility to your children and to people around you. At his memorial service, another writer who spoke said, “he taught us how to behave.” You BERNARD WEINRUAB have all of this on the one hand, and then on the other hand, he deletes his child from his life. That contradiction is what interested me.

The tragic part of all this is that Miller never got to know his son, who by all accounts has grown into a formidable person in his own right, and is adored by people who know him. The sadness is that Miller never realized that he produced a son who was special, and not a source of shame, shame that Miller lived with for 40 years of his life.

How did you discover that as a story for an audience?

I became interested in Miller’s play After the Fall. He had at that point married and then divorced Marilyn Monroe, and while he was writing After the Fall, she killed herself. After the Fall was his most thoroughly autobiographical play. Elia Kazan directed it; they finally reconciled over the House Un-American Activities Commission so that he could direct this play. But it was such a weird play because there’s a character in it based on Elia Kazan, a character based on Arthur Miller, and a character based on his new wife, the German photographer Inge Morath. Then the second act was dominated by this blonde; her name in the play was Maggie and she was a singer,

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but she was dressed to look just like Marilyn Monroe. When the play premiered, Arthur Miller denied it was Marilyn Monroe, which was insane. Everybody mocked him, and the reviews eviscerated him for trampling on her grave by having an actress made up to look and sound just like Marilyn. That capacity for denial made it seem like the place to start this story. And it was during the rehearsals for that play, that Inge Morath was pregnant with Daniel Miller.

What drew you to playwriting originally? What interested you about becoming a writer?

I grew up in New York, and I went to a lot of plays on my own. By the time I was 14 or 15, I wanted to be a playwright. Then I went to college, and was drafted into the army. They put me on a newspaper, even though I had little interest in it. When I got out of the army, I got a job as a copy boy at The New York Times. I found that I liked being in the journalistic world, and had my career not worked out, I would have become a playwright then. But I worked overseas for the Times, and then I covered Hollywood and politics in Washington, DC. When did you start writing again?

I wrote a story for the Times about the controversy over a documentary on PBS called “Who Shall Live & Who Shall Die” about anti-Semitism in the state department and why the US government had not intervened sooner in the Holocaust. I began interviewing some of the men involved in the documentary; at first, I thought it was a novel. But then I took this playwriting course at UCLA and I began writing it as a play called The Accomplices. Then I wrote another play, which was about journalists, Above the Fold. And now I’ve written this play. Playwriting has always fascinated me.

SEE PAGE 27 FOR SHOW PERFORMANCE CALENDAR & EVENT LISTINGS

ARTHUR MILLER TIMELINE 1915 Arthur Miller is born in Manhattan to Augusta & Isidore Miller, both Jewish immigrants from Poland.

1929 Isidore Miller, who had invested extensively in stocks, takes a hard hit in the stock market crash and ensuing Depression.

1940 Miller marries his college sweetheart, Mary Grace Slattery.

BETTMANN

1944 Miller’s play The Man Who Had All the Luck opens on Broadway, but closes after only four performances.

1947 All My Sons becomes an instant hit, winning two Tony Awards and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award.

1949 Death of a Salesman opens to huge acclaim on Broadway. The play wins the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and the Tony Award.

1951 Miller meets actress Marilyn Monroe and they have a brief affair.

1953 The Crucible opens on Broadway. The play shares many themes with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ongoing pursuit of suspected communists.

1956 Miller divorces his first wife and marries Marilyn Monroe. Shortly after the marriage, Miller is called before the House Un-American Activities Committee to testify. Despite immense pressure, Miller refuses to name names.

1961 The Misfits, a movie written by Miller and starring Monroe, premieres. Shortly afterward, the couple divorces. Monroe dies of a drug overdose 19 months later.

1962 Miller marries photographer Inge Morath, whom he met on the set of The Misfits. Their daughter Rebecca is born.

1966 Miller and Morath’s son Daniel is born with Down syndrome, and his parents decide to commit him to an institution.

ELLIOTT ERWITT

Playwright Arthur Miller testifies before a House Un-American Activities subcommittee (1956) Arthur Miller and Inge Morath in 1962 Miller and Marilyn Monroe on set with the cast and director of The Misfits (1960)

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YOUR SUPPORT MAKES IT POSSIBLE!

PLEASE CONSIDER CONTINUING YOUR IMPACT BY MAKING A GIFT AT HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG/DONATE. When you give to the Huntington, you are bringing world-class theatre to life, supporting Boston’s new and diverse voices, and providing access to live theatre and arts education for more than 36,000 students and underserved adults. Thank you!

Over 350 LIGHTS are used to illuminate each production.

Over 2,625 technician hours are required to build, paint, and install the SET & PROPS for a typical production.

PIANOS need to be rented and tuned for all rehearsals and performances of a musical.

Ticket income from AUDIENCE MEMBERS only covers 50% of the Huntington’s operating expenses.

The ORCHESTRA rehearses for a total of 340 hours to prepare for performances.

Collaborating classroom TEACHERS in the August Wilson Monologue Competition residency program are awarded stipends from the Huntington.

The Huntington serves over 30,000 STUDENTS a year with 94% of student participation subsidized or free.

NILE HAWVER

SCHOOLS are provided with curriculum materials, in-classroom theatre instructors, and pre-show workshops completely FREE of charge to prepare students to see a production at the Huntington.

A student matinee of A Little Night Music (2015)

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WELCOME CHIEF DEVELOPMENT OFFICER ELISABETH H. SAXE KATHLEEN O’ROURKE

The Huntington is pleased to welcome Elisabeth H. Saxe as Chief Development Officer. Elisabeth joins the Huntington after serving as the senior vice president for advancement at the Mystic Seaport Museum since 2013. In her new position, she will oversee the Huntington’s comprehensive fundraising efforts, including a campaign to renovate and expand the Huntington Avenue Theatre into a state-of-the-art theatre facility for the Boston community.

“I am delighted to welcome Elisabeth to the Huntington and to benefit from her 38 years of cultural fundraising experience,” says Managing Director Michael Maso. “She is a highly accomplished non-profit professional and I’m certain the Huntington will benefit from her leadership as we embark on our next chapter and enhance our services to artists, students, and Boston audiences.”

Ms. Saxe has a diverse fundraising background, with an area of specialization in the cultural sector. While at Mystic Seaport, she attained a record level of success in fundraising for annual giving, revived their planned giving program, and surpassed their most

“ My goal is to help the Huntington set a course for its future on Huntington Avenue and to deepen relationships with those who can provide philanthropic support...” recent capital campaign goal. She has also held key fundraising positions at Westport Country Playhouse, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and Stepping Stones Museum for Children.

“I am thrilled to join the Huntington — an institution with an illustrious past and vibrant reputation — during this pivotal time for the organization,” says Ms. Saxe. “My goal is to help the Huntington set a course for its future on Huntington Avenue and to deepen relationships with those who can provide philanthropic support to transform the Huntington Avenue Theatre into a premier cultural asset for Boston right here on the Avenue of the Arts. We will work to ensure that the Huntington flourishes, so that the power of its world-class productions can be experienced by audiences for generations to come.”

MONDAY, MAY 7 SAVE THE DATE

2018 SPOTLIGHT SPECTACULAR HONORING TRUSTEE NEAL BALKOWITSCH & DIRECTOR LIESL TOMMY CO-CHAIRS: CAROL G. DEANE, MARIA & DANIEL GERRITY, AND ANN & JOHN HALL

Join us on Monday, May 7, 2018 for the Huntington’s annual million-dollar Spotlight Spectacular fundraiser! One of Boston’s social events of the season, the Spotlight Spectacular will be held again at the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts.

This year, the prestigious Wimberly Award will be presented to Trustee Neal Balkowitsch and Tony Award-nominated director Liesl Tommy.

Don’t miss your chance to be a part of the celebration! Proceeds support the Huntington’s programs including our award-winning youth, education, and community initiatives. Additional details and exciting entertainment will be coming soon.

For more information or to reserve your table: contact Kirsten Doyle, 617 273 1503 or spotlight@huntingtontheatre.org HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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INTRODUCING EPIC:

EMPOWERED PERFORMERS IN CONVERSATION

The Department of Education is proud to announce that Not Waiting on the World to Change has been renamed EPIC: Empowered Performers in Conversation (EPIC for short).

EPIC (Not Waiting) was created by former Director of Education Donna Glick; she was deeply moved by the story of Phoebe Prince, an Irish immigrant living in Western Massachusetts who committed suicide after chronic bullying by her peers. This program was initially intended to serve as an anti-bullying program centered around writing and performance, with the purpose of creating dialogue within schools and communities. The program transitioned from a professional staged reading of Kirsten Greenidge’s play The View from Here, focused on the difficulties facing transgender students, to an entirely student-written production of For Shame last spring, highlighting the effects of underage drinking and its consequences for many student relationships. Each year, with the mentorship of our Education staff, participants have driven the content of discussion, and thus they have identified the themes and issues to be explored in their own creative process.

The continued success of this after school program relies on the willingness of young people to come forward and share some of their most difficult individual experiences, not only in the safety of program sessions, but with a larger audience.

Students, with staff mentorship, have used this program as a springboard for a diverse range of conversations. EPIC will continue to be a student-driven program with flexibility to adapt in the future as students’ needs change and develop.

We’re excited for another EPIC YEAR with our students… pun very much intended! We hope you will join us in the spring at one of our staged readings (dates/times/locations TBA).

For more information on EPIC, please contact Marisa Jones, Education Associate, at mjones@huntingtontheatre.org.

DAVID MARSHALL A workshop performance of For Shame, created by students participating in the Not Waiting on the World to Change program, now titled EPIC: Empowered Performers in Conversation (2017)

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NILE HAWVER

UPCOMING EDUCATION DATES & EVENTS: 2018 STUDENT MATINEES DAVID MARSHALL

TICKETS ARE JUST $15! Performances start at 10am and are followed by lively Actors Forums with members of the cast.

Student groups are also welcome at regularly scheduled performances. Our online curriculum guides are available for use in the classroom and include historical information, interesting facts about the production, lesson plans, and more.

MALA

JANUARY 18, 2018 JANUARY 25, 2018

SKELETON CREW MARCH 15, 2018

MARCH 22, 2018 TOP GIRLS

MAY 3, 2018

DAVID MARSHALL

Seats are filling quickly — contact Meg O’Brien at 617 273 1558 or mobrien@huntingtontheatre.org.

AUGUST WILSON MONOLOGUE COMPETITION MONDAY, JANUARY 29, 2018, 7PM Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA FREE & open to the public! Visit huntingtontheatre.org/awmc to learn more.

POETRY OUT LOUD MASSACHUSETTS SEMI-FINALS SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2018 & SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 2018

DAVID MARSHALL Students are captivated as the orchestra plays the Merrily We Roll Along overture 2017 August Wilson Monologue Competition finalists Fanta Diakite, Laury Teneus, and Medgene Joseph 2017 Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud finalists from across the state Codman students perform in the 2017 Codman Summer Theatre Institute production of Twelfth Night

MASSACHUSETTS STATE FINALS SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2018, 9:30AM Old South Meeting House in Boston All Poetry Out Loud Events are FREE & open to the public. For locations and contest start times visit huntingtontheatre.org/pol

CODMAN ACADEMY 9TH & 10TH GRADE SPRING SHOWCASE FRIDAY, JUNE 1, 2018, 7PM Huntington Avenue Theatre For more information, visit huntingtontheatre.org/codman HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

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UPCOMING EVENTS STAGE & SCREEN AT THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE

Stage & Screen is a collaboration between the Coolidge Corner Theatre and the Huntington and explores the depictions of shared themes in Huntington productions and acclaimed films.

THE LINEUP INCLUDES:

MILDRED PIERCE

MONDAY, JANUARY 29 AT 7PM Join us for a conversation after the film with a special guest from the Huntington’s production of Bad Dates.

In this noir classic and Academy Award-winning film, Mildred (Joan Crawford) is being interrogated by police over the death of her second husband, Monte Beragon. Throughout the film, flashbacks reveal the events leading up to his death as well as Mildred’s relationship with her spoiled and social climbing daughter, Veda (Ann Blyth). An examination of successful and ambitious women and how they survive, Mildred Pierce is still as relevant as ever.

WORKING GIRL

MONDAY, APRIL 23 AT 7PM Join us for a conversation after the film with a special guest from the Huntington’s production of Top Girls.

Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a secretary from Long Island who wants to climb the corporate ladder. When assigned to a new boss Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), Tess learns that not all women in corporate America are supportive of each other. After a misunderstanding with another executive Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), Tess must navigate her ambition and a possibility for love. Working Girl is an 1980s classic about self-discovery, determination, feminism, love, and a whole lot of hairspray.

THE MISFITS

MONDAY, MAY 21 AT 7PM Join us for a conversation after the film with a special guest from the Huntington’s production of Fall.

Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe both made their final film appearances in this modern Western, directed by John Huston from a screenplay

by Monroe’s then-husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller. Divorced and disillusioned, Roslyn Tabor (Monroe) befriends a group of misfits, including an aging cowboy (Gable), a heartbroken mechanic (Eli Wallach), and a worn-out rodeo rider (Montgomery Clift).

Through their live-for-the-moment lifestyle, Roslyn experiences her first taste of freedom, exhilaration, and passion. But when her innocent idealism clashes with their hard-edged practicality, Roslyn must risk losing their friendship ... and the only true love she’s ever known.

TICKETS: $12 ($9 for Huntington subscribers) and may be purchased online at coolidge.org or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.

PERFORMANCE CALENDARS: JAN. – JUNE 2018 MALA S

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MLK, JR. DAY

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7 MOTHER’S DAY

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MAY - JUNE 2018

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AVENUE OF THE ARTS / HUNTINGTON AVENUE THEATRE

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JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2018

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JANUARY - FEBRUARY 2018

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TOP GIRLS

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24 PASSOVER BEGINS

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TICKETS

8PM

8PM

15 ~ds10AM 16 22

S 3

•2PM 8PM

31

•2PM 8PM

MARCH - APRIL 2018

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG 617 266 0800

PRICES Start at $25 35 BELOW $30 for those 35 and under at every performance STUDENTS (25 AND UNDER) & MILITARY $20 GROUPS (10+) Discounts are available for groups of 10 or more,

plus groups have access to backstage tours, talks with artists, and space for receptions. Contact 617 273 1657 or groupsales@huntingtontheatre.org.

SUBSCRIBERS Receive $10 off any additional tickets purchased.

Prices include a $3 per ticket Capital Enhancement fee.

CALENDAR KEY (O) 35 Below Wrap Party (@) ASL-Interpreted (~) Audio-Described (d) Actors Forum (c) Huntington Community Membership Initiative Reception

(f) First Look (h) Humanities Forum (•) Post-Show Conversations (*) Press Opening Night (s) Student Matinee

HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG

27

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UT OF H E TH ND E A R

NT ING CO T TO MP HE N AVE AN ATR & S NU Y E O E

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NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION US POSTAGE PAID BOSTON, MA PERMIT # 52499

SAVE THE DATE FEBRUARY 9 - 11, 2018

2018 BREAKING GROUND FESTIVAL OF NEW WORK Join us for Breaking Ground, the Huntington Theatre Company’s festival of new play readings, a vital part of our new play development program. The festival highlights the work of local playwrights and presents national writers in partnership with the Huntington. Since 2004, Breaking Ground plays have gone on to appear at the Huntington, as well as theatres in Boston, across the country, and internationally. All Breaking Ground readings take place at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA and are FREE and open to the public.

THE LAST BOOK OF HOMER

by José Rivera Directed by Melinda Lopez Friday, February 9 at 8pm

MIKE RITTER

RSVP: HUNTINGTONTHEATRE.ORG/BREAKINGGROUND

WE ALL FALL DOWN

by Lila Rose Kaplan Directed by Melia Bensussen Saturday, February 10 at 8pm THE PURISTS

by Dan McCabe Directed by Billy Porter Sunday, February 11 at 7pm