– LEONARD BERNSTEIN
SEPTEMBER 29-30, 2018 | B. IDEN PAYNE THEATRE THIS PLAY WAS ORIGINALLY COMMISSIONED BY TEXAS PERFORMING ARTS, DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND DANCE AND THE COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN.
SEPTEMBER 29 AT 7:30 P.M. SEPTEMBER 30 AT 2:00 P.M.
B. IDEN PAYNE THEATRE F. LOREN WINSHIP BUILDING
THEATREDANCE.UTEXAS.EDU
Jake Brinks – Assistant Director • Ben Truppin-Brown – Sound Designer Sarah Carlson – Stage Manager • Laura Gonzalez – Costume and Prop Designer KJ Sanchez – Director • Anna Skidis Vargas – Assistant Director
Lenny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steve Cuiffo Felicia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Gisela Chípe Sam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Pierson Dawn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Qualee Marshall Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Victor Hugo Jaramillo Beethoven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Caroline Beagles The Volunteers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Caroline Stout, Justin Whitener There will be one 15-minute intermission. POST-PERFORMANCE DISCUSSION There will be a post-performance discussion with members of the creative team on September 29 immediately following the show in the B. Iden Payne Theatre. The videotaping or other video or audio recording of this production is strictly prohibited.
COVER PHOTO: LAWRENCE PEART
CAST (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
NOTE FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT Leonard Bernstein’s often credited with saying “To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan and not quite enough time.” It’s funny. It’s wise. And it’s scalable. The first thought is: Lenny’s talking about an opera or a play. Time drives us to make choices, clinging with terror to our plans. But we also can’t be too precious. If we need the sound of cannons and all we’ve got is a bass drum? Boom. Inspiration. Keep going. It scales down to the microscopic, too. In the midst of the opera is a great aria. In the middle of the aria is a short gliss of high notes. The soprano knows it’s coming, has trained for it, belts it out, and it’s over before it even began. The entire opera can’t be written that impossibly high or ineffably fast. The most sacred moments need to be protected by brevity. We train for hours and days and months and years to be ready in the split second when we’ll need to sing or jump or remain calm. And it works on the largest scale we’ll ever actually encounter: the human lifetime. There are things I plan to do before I die. People I want to convince of my love. Books I want to read. Books I want to reread. Books I want to write. The list goes on and on. And it’s likely already more than half over, at least. One thing I want to make sure I do is to thank the Department of Theatre and Dance, the College of Fine Arts and Texas Performing Arts. It’s been an honor to live with the ideas of Leonard Bernstein; to think about all sorts of things he might have said, or had said to him. He was grand. He could take over a room, or a city, or a news cycle. He wanted to change American music and to change the world. I think Lenny would say of his own life that he had a plan and not quite enough time. Toward this end of this play Felicia Bernstein, Lenny’s partner, proposes that the inverse of this construction—having no plans and all the time in the world—is the secret to relaxation and contemplation. It’s in that spirit we invite you to enjoy this performance. Leonard Bernstein is too large to fit in a theatre. Instead we’re offering some lyrical themes we hope you’ll find your life humming along to months from now as you carry on with your plans in the time you’ve been given.
SPECIAL THANKS Meredith McAlmon and the Fulmore Middle School Orchestra Butler School of Music
The Department of Theatre and Dance is a world-class educational environment that serves as the ultimate creative incubator for the next generation of artists, thinkers and leaders in theatre and performance.
CREATIVE Kirk Lynn (Playwright) is a novelist and a playwright living in Austin, Texas with his wife, poet Carrie Fountain, and their children, Olive and Judah. In 2015, Lynn’s debut novel, Rules for Werewolves, was published by Melville House, currently being adapted for the screen. Lynn teaches playwriting and devising at The University of Texas at Austin and is one of five artistic directors of the Rude Mechs theatre collective. With the Rude Mechs, Lynn has written and adapted many plays including Lipstick Traces, Method Gun and Not Every Mountain, which premiered at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis in 2018. Jake Brinks (Assistant Director) is a director, lighting designer and musician from Sugar Land, Texas. Their directing work at The University of Texas includes The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Open Mic Night and projects from Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. Their previous credits for lighting design include Spring Awakening as well as new plays Daniel/Rose and The Not Knowing. Ben Truppin-Brown (Sound Designer), originally from New England, is an Austin-based sound designer. You may have heard his work in New York City, Chicago, Boston, San Diego, Austin or the Berkshires. Previous credits include sound design for An American Daughter (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Dying for It (Atlantic Theater Company), That Poor Dream (HERE Arts Center) and The Place We Built (The Flea Theater). Sarah Carlson (Stage Manager) is a B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in stage management at The University of Texas at Austin. At Texas Theatre and Dance, she has worked on both The Drowsy Chaperone (2017) and Milton, MI (UTNT (UT New Theatre), 2018). Laura Gonzalez (Costume Designer) is a B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in design and technology (honors) at The University of Texas at Austin. She has designed work for over 25 productions for
both stage and film during her time at the university. Recent work includes ENRON, Transcendence (Texas Theatre and Dance, 2018), La Pastorela, En Memoire and Book of Days. KJ Sanchez (Director) is the founder and CEO of American Records, dedicated to making theatre that chronicles our time. She has directed reimagined classics, new plays and her own documentary plays Off-Broadway and at many of the country’s leading theatres such as The Goodman, The Humana Festival of New American Plays, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Asolo Repertory Theatre and the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. She is the director, co-author and producer of ReEntry, which has toured extensively across the country and abroad. As a playwright, she has been produced at theatres such as Berkley Repertory Theatre, PlayMakers Repertory Company, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Two River Theater, Baltimore’s Center Stage, Frontera Rep, Round House, Cornerstone and Off-Broadway at Urban Stage and HERE Arts Center. As an actor, she performed at Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep and other venues across the country and internationally. Sanchez also provided voices for many characters on Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go! Anna Skidis Vargas (Assistant Director) is an M.F.A. in Directing candidate at The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Performance from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is the founding artistic director of Theatre Nuevo in Saint Louis. She has produced and directed This is Not Funny, Orgullo, Acronyms and HELL, all with Theatre Nuevo, and Luchadora! with Theatre Nuevo in collaboration with Mustard Seed Theatre. As an actor and singer, Vargas has performed with several companies in Saint Louis, receiving two St. Louis Theatre Circle Awards for outstanding performances as “Lizzie Borden” in Lizzie (New Line Theatre) and “Ilse” in Spring Awakening (Stray Dog Theatre).
BY DAN CAFFREY
OCTOBER 10-21, 2018
OSCAR G. BROCKETT THEATRE
TICKETS:
512-477-6060 JOINTHEDRAMA.ORG
CAST
Steve Cuiffo
Gisela ChĂpe
Robert Pierson
Qualee Marshall
Victor Hugo Jaramillo
Caroline Beagles
Caroline Stout
Justin Whitener
CAST Steve Cuiffo (Lenny) creates unique performance, art, theatre and magic. He is an actor and magician who makes solo and collaborative works with other artists and theatre companies. His work incorporates aspects of sleight of hand, misdirection, imitation and re-enactment. Most recently, Cuiffo was the magic director for David Blaine’s Live 2018 American Tour and illusion designer for Geoff Sobelle’s HOME (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Gisela Chípe (Felicia) is an Ecuadorian-American actress, writer and producer from Brazil. Producing credits include Dog Days, This Boy’s Vida, The Graduate Series and Run Carlos Run; acting credits include Diving Normal, Paper Cut, Monogamish, CBS’s The Good Wife and Bel Canto opposite Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe. You may have heard Chípe’s voice in English and Portuguese in ads for the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil on NBC Universal and Univision. Chípe has appeared Off-Broadway as “Nat Turner” in Emancipation (Classical Theatre of Harlem) and Laws of Motion (PS122); as well as Actors Theatre of Louisville (The Humana Festival of New American Plays), Hamlet: Prince of Cuba (Asolo Repertory Theatre), Blithe Spirit (Syracuse Stage), Water By the Spoonful (Studio Theatre), Comedy of Errors (Great Lakes Theatre and Idaho Shakespeare Festivals) and 9 Parts of Desire (Contemporary American Theater Festival), among others. Chípe received an M.F.A. from the University of Delaware’s Professional Theatre Training Program. @giselachipe Robert Pierson (Sam) is an educator, actor, director and musician. His recent stage work includes The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, The Strangerer (Capital T Theatre), Catalina de Erauso (paper chairs), The Bigot (UTNT (UT New Theatre), 2017), The Hotel Vanya (Natalie George Productions), Bright Now Beyond, Pinkolandia, Dream Cabinet and Heddatron (Salvage Vanguard Theater) and The B. Beaver Animation (Rude Mechs). Pierson teaches theatre at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired where
he has directed productions for over 20 years. He writes and plays in the band, The Able Sea. Qualee Marshall (Dawn) is a second-year B.F.A. in Acting major. Last year, she was seen in her first production at Texas Theatre and Dance, MotherWitch (UTNT (UT New Theatre), 2018). Victor Hugo Jaramillo (Boy) is a B.A. in Theatre and Dance major with an emphasis in performer's process at The University of Texas at Austin. He fell in love with acting at the age of 13 at the Camille Playhouse, the community theater in his hometown of Brownsville, Texas. Jaramillo’s credits include “The Genie” in Aladdin, “Lord Montague” in Romeo and Juliet and “Older Billy” in Billy Elliot the Musical. Caroline Beagles (Beethoven) is a third-year B.F.A. in Acting major at The University of Texas at Austin. She recently appeared on stage as “Andy Fastow” in ENRON (Texas Theatre and Dance, 2018) and “Helen Laius/The Bird” in Anon(ymous) (Texas Theatre and Dance, 2017). She is currently assistant directing The Shakespeare Company’s first production, Othello, which opens in December 2018. Caroline Stout (Volunteer) is a third-year UTeach Theatre major at The University of Texas at Austin. She has a background in acting and directing and has been seen in productions with Round About Players and Alpha Psi Omega, including The Velvet Sky and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Stout recently directed Creative Arts + Theatre’s musical What’s My Age Again?: A Punk Rock Musical Review. Justin Whitener (Volunteer) is a fourth-year UTeach Theatre major at The University of Texas at Austin. He was recently seen in Bob Schneider’s music video, Lake Michigan as well as the short film Tuskegee, produced by Radio-Television-Film (UT). Upon graduation, Whitener plans to move to New York City.
2018/19 TE X AS THE ATRE AND DANCE
SEASON
MATAWAN
Dance Repertory Theatre presents
By Dan Caffrey
FORTITUDE
OCTOBER 10-21
MARCH 5-15
Dance Repertory Theatre presents
FALL FOR DANCE NOVEMBER 6-11
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE By William Shakespeare NOVEMBER 14-DECEMBER 2
THE WOMEN OF ________ (a song not song) By I-Chia Chiu
UTNT (UT New Theatre) New plays by M.F.A. Playwriting candidates Curated by Liz Engelman and KJ Sanchez MARCH 14-31
THE COHEN NEW WORKS FESTIVAL Presented by Broadway Bank APRIL 15-19
FEBRUARY 13-17 Titles, dates and venues are subject to change.
TICKETS AND SUBSCRIPTION PACKAGES AVAILABLE AT JOINTHEDRAMA.ORG