DEAR ELIZABETH (presented by WP Theater)

LISA McNULTY Producing Artistic Director

MAUREEN MOYNIHAN Managing Director

presents the New York premiere of

Week One Cast: October 26-31

KATHLEEN CHALFANT

POLLY NOONAN

Scenic Design

ANTJE ELLERMANN Lighting Design

MARY LOUISE GEIGER

HARRIS YULIN Costume Design

ANITA YAVICH Sound Design

JILL BC DU BOFF EMILY AUCIELLO

Production Stage Managers

C. RENEE ALEXANDER BERNITA ROBINSON Production Manager

STEVE ROSENBERG Casting

KELLY GILLESPIE

Press Representative

VIVACITY MEDIA GROUP LESLIE BADEN PAPA WHITNEY HOLDEN GORE

DEAR ELIZABETH was commissioned by Yale Repertory Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut James Bundy, Artistic Director, Victoria Nolan, Managing Director and received its first public performance on November 30, 2012 DEAR ELIZABETH uses letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell that were published as a part of WORDS IN AIR: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. We are also grateful to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the use of selected poems by Bishop and Lowell.

FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The great poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell were great friends, and they wrote more than eight hundred pages of letters to each other.

When I was on bed rest, pregnant with twins, a friend gave me the book of their collected letters, Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. I could not put the letters down. I hungered to hear them read aloud. I particularly longed to hear letter number 161—Lowell’s most confessional letter to Bishop, and I think, one of the most beautiful love letters ever written. In it, he says, about not asking Bishop to marry him: “But asking you is the might have been for me, the one towering change, the other life that might have been had.”

Reading these eight hundred pages—these strands of two lives intersecting, rarely meeting—I thought: Why do I find this narrative so compelling? I was desperate to know how the “story” would come out—how each life would progress, how the relationship would end.

But I also loved how the letters resisted a sense of the usual literary “story”—how instead they forced us to look at life as it is lived. Not neat. Not two glorious Greek arcs meeting in the center. Instead: a dialectic between the interior poetic life and the pear-shaped, particular, sudden, ordinary life-as-it-is-lived.

Life intrudes, without warning. Bishop’s great love and partner, Lota, commits suicide without warning. Bishop has multiple asthma attacks, and often needs to be hospitalized for alcoholism and depression. Lowell had bipolar disorder and often found himself quite suddenly in a sanatorium. Bishop and Lowell’s carefully built, Platonic poetic worlds are intruded on constantly by the vagaries of life and the body. And through such sudden disturbances, their letters were like lanterns sent to each other across long distances.

Bishop lived in Brazil most of her life, and Lowell lived in New York, Boston, and London. Their friendship was lived largely on paper, though they met up at crucial times.

Bishop was in New York when Lota committed suicide, and she stayed at Hardwick and Lowell’s apartment. They paid for her ambulance ride through Central Park, the result of a bad fall she took, perhaps induced by too much drink, after Lota’s suicide. Bishop was plagued her whole life by alcoholism; at one point a friend eliminated all the liquor in her house and Bishop was reduced to drinking rubbing alcohol and ended up in the hospital.

There is, in the letters, an extraordinary dialectic between Lowell’s more confessional mode and Bishop’s formal restraint. Her skeptical attitude toward the confessional, however, didn’t keep her from loving Lowell’s poetry. They both carried each other’s poems in their minds and in their pockets. Lowell carried Bishop’s “The Armadillo” (a poem she dedicated to Lowell) in his wallet, a kind of talisman for how a poem ought to be. Lowell wrote “Skunk Hour” for Bishop, as well as many sonnets and a poem called “Water,” about a seminal weekend the two of them spent in Maine.

After Lowell divorced Jean Stafford in July 1948, he visited Bishop in Maine. It’s a visit they would both return to again and again in their letters and in their poetry. It’s impossible to reconstruct exactly what happened; we know from letters and poems that they spent the weekend together, at one point standing waist high in water, and Bishop said to Lowell, “When you write my epitaph, you must say I was the loneliest person who ever lived.” Bishop wrote later that they were: “Swimming, or rather standing, numb to the waist in the freezing cold water, but continuing to talk. If I were to think of any Saint in his connection then it is St. Sebastian—he stood in a rocky basin of the freezing water sloshing it over his handsome youthful body and I could almost see the arrows sticking out of him.”

Soon after, they had a drunken weekend at Bard where many poets were gathered. Bishop wrote to another friend, “Saturday night was worst—a really drunken party, I’m afraid, with everyone behaving very much the way poets are supposed to.” In another account, Bishop remembers that she and Hardwick had helped a drunken Lowell back to his room, taken off his shoes and tie, loosened his shirt, upon which Hardwick said, “Why, he’s an Adonis!” and Bishop said, “from then on I knew it was all over.”

We also know from their friend Joseph Summers that at the end of the Bard weekend, “He and Elizabeth seemed to be very much in love that weekend. Another friend reports, “She told us at one point she loved Cal more than anybody she’d ever known, except for Lota, but that he would destroy her.” And from another friend: Lowell “was one of the few people Bishop addressed in her poems. She said that he had proposed to her, and she had turned him down.” Apparently her greatest regret was not having a child, and she considered having one with Lowell early on, but worried about the history of mental illness in both of their families.

The gaps between their letters, the mysterious interludes in which Lowell and Bishop actually saw each other, leaves much to the imagination. These silences between the letters fascinated me as much as the letters themselves. But rather than invent dialogue for these interludes in which they actually met, I felt it important to let Bishop and Lowell speak only in their own words. Bishop’s reserve, and her insistence on not mixing fact and fiction, was always with me as I arranged the letters. All the words from the play are taken from their letters and from their poetry.

Bishop and Lowell had unerring, consummate ears, and they wrote poetry for a time when Lowell could command massive crowds in Madison Square Garden. I offer this arrangement, then, in the spirit of a contemporary hunger to hear poetry out loud. I think we are starved for the sound of poetry. I wonder if Bishop and Lowell are among the last great people of letters to write out their lives in letter form. Their letters become almost a medieval church constructed in praise of friendship. Our culture is inundated with stories of romantic love. We understand how romantic love begins, how it ends. We don’t understand, in neat narrative fashion, how friendship begins, how it endures. And yet life would be unbearable without friendship.

FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Joan Marcus

I first met Sarah Ruhl almost twenty years ago, when she was studying poetry and playwriting at Brown, and I was Julia Miles’ literary manager at Women’s Project.

Sarah’s professor, Paula Vogel, that brilliant connector of people, thought we should meet, and like all sensible folk, Sarah and I tend to do whatever Paula thinks is best.

Sarah sent me one of the acts of what would become Passion Play, and I remember marveling at the brilliant, deeply original and theatrical mind on the page, and trying to reconcile it with the modest, quiet young woman in front of me.

That first meeting began a conversation that has never really ended, continuing through multiple institutions, cities, productions, relationships and children to bring us right back to where she and I began.

Our conversation about Dear Elizabeth started last year, my first as Artistic Director of WP. We both loved the beautiful serendipity of opening WP’s residency at the McGinn/Cazale Theater with a play about one of the 20th Century’s most important poets (Bishop hated being called a female poet). We also liked the idea of inviting some of our favorite actors to christen this new theatrical home, in an open model where the cast rotates weekly. Sarah wrote the play with the intention that it might be staged in a number of different forms, and so we tried to find a way of working on Dear Elizabeth that best suited this particular moment and space, while keeping the focus on Bishop and Lowell’s glorious language. Luckily, we found the perfect partner in crime in the blisteringly talented director, Kate Whoriskey, who dove fearlessly into this crazy experiment alongside our brilliant designers and collaborators to strip the production down to its essence.

Elizabeth Bishop compared herself to a sandpiper, running down the edges of different countries and continents, never able to find a place to settle. WP has been similarly nomadic for the last few years, but we have finally found our home, and are thrilled to welcome you here to see Dear Elizabeth, and so many more plays to come.

CAST

(in alphabetical order) Week One: October 26 – 31

Elizabeth Bishop .................. Kathleen Chalfant Stage Manager .................... Polly Noonan Robert Lowell ...................... Harris Yulin There will be one 15 minute intermission.

KATHLEEN CHALFANT (Elizabeth) BROADWAY: Angels in America (Tony and Drama Desk nominations), Racing Demon, Dance With Me. OFF-BROADWAY: Wit (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, Connecticut Critics Circle, and Obie Awards), A Walk in the Woods (Drama Desk nomination), Tales from Red Vienna, Miss Ovington & Dr. Dubois, Somewhere Fun, Red Dog Howls, Painting Churches, Talking Heads (Obie Award), Vita & Virginia, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Spalding Grey: Stories Left to Tell, Bloomer Girl, Nine Armenians (Drama Desk nomination), Far Away, Twelve Dreams, Henry V (Callaway Award). OTHER NY CREDITS: The Vagina Monologues, True History and Real Adventures, Phaedra in Delirium, Iphigenia and Other Daughters, Endgame, The Party, Sister Mary Ignatius…, The Investigation of the Murder in El Salvador. LONDON & LOS ANGELES: Ovation Awards for both Wit and Red Dog Howls.

SELECT REGIONAL THEATRE: McCarter, Berkley Rep, Guthrie, Long Wharf, Yale Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Hartford Stage, Mark Taper Forum, ATL, Sundance Lab. FILM: Isn’t it Delicious?, R.I.P.D., The Bath, In Bed With Ulysses, Lillian, Duplicity, The People Speak, Lackawanna Blues, Perfect Stranger, The Last New Yorker, Second Guessing Grandma, Dark Water, Kinsey, Laramie Project, Random Hearts, A Price Below Rubies, Murder and Murder. SELECT TELEVISION Recurring on “The Affair,” “The Strain,” “The Americans,” “House of Cards,” “Rescue Me,” “The Book of Daniel,” “The Guardian,” “Jo,” “Law and Order” and “One Life to Live”; also “Madam Secretary,” “Forever,” “Heartbreaker,” “Elementary,” “Mercy,” “Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight” (HBO), “Benjamin Franklin,” “Lackawanna Blues” (HBO), “Georgia O’Keeffe” (Lifetime), “Voices from the White House” (PBS), “A Death in the Family” (PBS), “Storm of the Century”. AWARDS: 1996 OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, 2004 Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance, 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Professional Women. She has received the Drama League and Sidney Kingsley Awards for her body of work and holds an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Cooper Union.

POLLY NOONAN (Stage Manager) has worked on many of Sarah Ruhl’s plays, including In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play (Victory Gardens Theatre, Jeff nomination), Late, A Cowboy Song (Piven Theatre Workshop), Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Helen Hayes nomination; Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Mosaic Theatre), Passion Play (Arena Stage, Helen Hayes nomination; Goodman Theatre, After Dark Award, Jeff nomination; Yale Rep Theatre, Epic Theatre Ensemble), Eurydice (Madison Repertory Theatre; Piven), Melancholy Play (Piven; Echo Theater Company), and Orlando (Piven; The Actors’ Gang). Her other credits include A Brief History of America (Drama League Directors Project), Careless Love (Soho Rep), Brilliant Traces, American Voices (Piven); Methusalem, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Balcony (New Criminals); Ajax (Theater of War); and development of new work at Sundance, Geva Theatre Center, New Dramatists, Soho Rep, Sewanee and REDCAT. Film credits include Welcome to Me, Novocaine, High Fidelity, Arizona Dream, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Polly is on the cover of the Lemonhead’s album It’s a Shame About Ray and can be heard on track 11 of Lovey.

HARRIS YULIN (Robert) Recent appearances include Hamlet (Claudius) at the Classic Stage Company, Tennessee William’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Chattaqua Festival and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman at the Gate Theatre, Dublin. Mr. Yulin has appeared on Broadway in Hedda Gabler, The Price, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Visit, A Lesson from Aloes, and Watch on the Rhine. His offBroadway credits include Raindance at Signature Theatre; Don Juan in Hell at Symphony Space; Richard Nelson’s Frank’s Home (Obie Award), James Lapine’s Fran’s Bed, Steve Tesich’s Arts and Leisure at Playwrights Horizons; Tina Howe’s Approaching Zanzibar at Second Stage; King John, Richard III, A Midsummer Night’s Dream at New York Shakespeare Festival; and Mrs. Warren’s Profession at Roundabout. Regional credits include Arthur Miller’s last play, Finishing the Picture at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago; a recent appearance in the title role of King Lear at New Jersey Shakespeare Festival; The Talking Cure at Mark Taper Forum; Tartuffe at the Guthrie and Arena Stage; Henry V at Hartford Stage; and The Tempest at Shakespeare & Co. Mr. Yulin’s directing credits include The Glass Menagerie with Amy Irving at Guild Hall, East Hampton; Joe Pintauro’s Men’s Lives at the Bay South, Sag Harbor; Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful at the Signature Theatre, winner of four Lortel awards (Production, Actress, Featured Actress, Direction), which, after an extended run, went on to the Goodman Theatre; Horton Foote’s The Prisoner’s Song at Ensemble Studio Theatre; Conor McPherson’s This Lime Tree Bower at Primary Stages; Don Juan In Hell in London (Riverside Studios) and in New York (Symphony Space); Steve Tesich’s Baba Goya (Second Stage); Adele Shank’s Winter Play at Second Stage; Candida at the Shaw Festival; and The Front Page and The Guardsman at Long Wharf.

His television credits include The Blacklist, HBO’s Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight, Mister Sterling, 24, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Frasier (Emmy Nomination), and La Femme Nikita (Emmy Nomination).

His film credits include Liv, The Oppenheimer Strategies, The Family Fang, A Short History of Decay, Candy Mountain, End of the Road, Fur, The Place Beyond the Pines, The Emperor’s Club, Training Day, The Million Dollar Hotel, The Hurricane, Looking for Richard, Murder at 1600, Multiplicity, Clear and Present Danger, and Scarface.

SARAH RUHL (Playwright) Sarah Ruhl’s plays include The Oldest Boy; In the Next Room; or The Vibrator Play; The Clean House; Passion Play; Dead Man’s Cell Phone; Melancholy Play; Eurydice; Orlando, Late: a cowboy song; Dear Elizabeth; and Stage Kiss.

She has been a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and a Tony Award nominee. Her plays have been produced on Broadway at the Lyceum by Lincoln Center Theater, off-Broadway at Playwrights’ Horizons, Second Stage, and at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. Her plays have been produced regionally all over the country, often with premieres at Yale Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theater, the Goodman Theater, and the Piven Theatre Workshop in Chicago. In 2014 she was the second most produced playwright in the country. Her plays have also been produced internationally and have been translated into over twelve languages. Originally from Chicago, Ms. Ruhl received her M.F.A. from Brown University where she studied with Paula Vogel.

She has received the Susan Smith Blackburn award, the Whiting award, the Lily Award, a PEN award for mid-career playwrights, and the MacArthur “Genius” award. You can read more about her work on www.SarahRuhlplaywright.com. Her book of essays “100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write” was published by Faber and Faber last fall. She teaches at the Yale School of Drama, and she lives in Brooklyn with her family.

KATE WHORISKEY (Director) Kate Whoriskey most recently directed Lynn Nottage’s Sweat at Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Other productions include Ping Pong and Manahatta at the Public through Public Studio, Ruined and Tales from Red Vienna at Manhattan Theatre Club, How I Learned to Drive at Second Stage, The Piano Teacher at the Vineyard Theatre, Oroonoko at Theatre for A New Audience, the world premiere of Fabulation and Inked Baby at Playwrights Horizons, and Massacre by Jose Rivera at the Labyrinth Theatre Company (of which she is a member).

Internationally, she directed Magdalena at the Chatelet Theatre in Paris and Teatro Muicipal in Sao Paolo. Regionally, she directed Ruined, Vigils, Heartbreak House, The Rose Tattoo and Drowning Crow for The Goodman, The Tempest at Shakespeare Theatre, the world premiere of Intimate Apparel, The Piano Teacher, Life is a Dream, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Antigone, and The Clean House at South Coast Repertory, and Master Builder at the American Repertory Theatre. Nominated for a Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel for her work on Ruined, she has also directed at the Huntington, The Geffen, Baltimore Center Stage, Perseverance Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Sundance Theatre Lab, The Fisher Center and The Eugene O’Neill Center.

ANTJE ELLERMANN (Scenic Design) Off Broadway designs include: I’m Looking for Helen Twelvetrees, The Belle of Amherst, The Open House (Signature Theatre), Hamlet (Theatre for a New Audience), Liberty City, (New York Theatre Workshop) and Nine Parts of Desire (Manhattan Ensemble Theatre). Regionally Ms Ellermann’s work has been seen at: Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Berkeley Rep, Steppenwolf, Williamstown, NY Stage & Film, Trinity Rep, Huntington Theatre Company, Arena Stage, Denver Center, Cleveland Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Geffen Playhouse, MoMA, Bard Summerscape and Pittsburgh Opera Center. Award nominations include: Connecticut Critics Circle Award (The House that will not Stand), Helen Hayes Award, Ovation Award and Lucille Lortel Award (Nine Parts of Desire), Emmy Award: “Becoming American”).

ANITA YAVICH (Costume Design) Broadway credits: Fool for Love, Venus in Fur, Chinglish, and Anna in the Tropics. New York: Big Love, Kung Fu, Golden Child, Iphigenia 2.0 (Signature Theatre), The Oldest Boy (Lincoln Center Theater), The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence (Playwrights Horizons), Tales From Red Vienna and The Explorers Club (MTC), The Legend of Georgia McBride, The Submission and Coraline and The Wooden Breeks (MCC), Lives of the Saints and All in the Timing (Primary Stages), The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Orlando, Venus in Fur, New Jerusalem, and Texts for Nothing (CSC), Measure For Pleasure, Kit Marlowe, The Winter’s Tale, Civil Sex, and Pericles (NYSF/ The Public), and Macbeth, Coriolanus, and Svejk (Tfana). Opera: Cyrano de Bergerac (La Scala, The Metropolitan Opera, and Royal Opera House), Les Troyens (Met Opera), and she was the puppet and costume designer for The Sound of Music (Salzburger Marionette Theatre). 2006 OBIE Award.

MARY LOUISE GEIGER (Lighting Design) Women’s Project: Jump/Cut Broadway: The Constant Wife (American Airlines Theatre). New York: Forever, Oedipus at Palm Springs, Architecture of Loss (NYTW); Bauer (59E59), My Mother has 4 Noses (Duke); Killing of Sister George, Natural Affection, Beyond Therapy (TACT, Beckett Theatre); This Bitter Earth, Les Carillons (NYCB); Good Television, The New York Idea (Atlantic Theatre Company); Kindness, The Blue Door, The Busy World Is Hushed (Playwrights Horizons); The Mornini Strad, Olive And The Bitter Herbs (Primary Stages); Mabou Mines’ Dollhouse, Red Beads (Mabou Mines); Violet Fire (Bam Next Wave Festival, National Theatre, Belgrade). Regional: CTG, Cleveland Playhouse, Long Wharf Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse, Huntington Theatre Company, Studio Theatre, San Francisco Ballet. Awards: Helen Hayes, IRNE, NYSCA. Training: Yale School of Drama. Faculty: NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

JILL BC DU BOFF (Sound Design) Broadway: Hand To God, The Heidi Chronicles, Disgraced, Picnic, Wit, Other Desert Cities, Good People, The Constant Wife, The Good Body, Bill Maher: Victory... OffBroadway: Lincoln Center, MTC, Atlantic, Vineyard, MCC, Playwrights Horizons, The Public, Second Stage, NYTW, WP, Cherry Lane, Signature, Clubbed Thumb (Affiliate Artist), Penguin Rep. Regional: Bay Street, La Jolla, The Alley, ATL, Williamstown. Radio: New

Yorker Radio Hour, Studio 360, Naked Radio, RadioLab. Drama Desk and Henry Hewes nominations. Awards: Ruth Morley Design Award, OBIE for Sustained Excellence, Lilly Award. Jill is the Audio Producer for The New Yorker Magazine and The New Yorker Radio Hour. Adjunct Professor; Sarah Lawrence College. Love to Adam.

EMILY AUCIELLO (Sound Design) Select New York: Signature Theatre, HERE Arts Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre, New Ohio, JACK, Dixon Place, NY Fringe. Select Regional: Two River Theater, Delaware Theater Center, TheaterWorks Hartford, Penguin Rep, Central Square Theater, Berkshire Fringe, Surflight Theatre. Love to Alex.

KELLY GILLESPIE (Casting) Credits include: Bright Half Life (Women’s Project); Seven Guitars, 4000 Miles, Dot, The Roommate, and Eat Your Heart Out (Actors Theatre of Louisville); Out of the City (Merrimack Rep); The Good Person of Szechwan (Foundry & Public Theaters); Melancholy Play, A Map of Virtue, The Zero Hour and Monstrosity (13P); Photograph 51 (E.S.T.); as well as the 2007 season for the Dorset Theatre Festival, and six seasons for Off-Broadway’s Keen Company. She is Resident Casting Director for off-Broadway’s TACT, and Associate Casting Director for Manhattan Theatre Club.

C. RENEE ALEXANDER (Production Stage Manager) PSM for The Apollo Theater Presents: Get on the Good Foot A Celebration of Dance 2015 Germany Tour. PSM/Production Supervisor for The Glass Menagerie and Production Supervisor for A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Masterworks Theatre Company 2015. SM for The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington, DC: Oedeon Herod Atticus, Athens, Greece; The Oedipus Plays featuring Avery Brooks and Earle Hyman, directed by Michael Kahn. PSM for Cultural Center of the Philippines for the Mai-Yi Theatre Company’s Flipsoid performed during the Philippine Centennial Celebration.

BERNITA ROBINSON (Production Stage Manager) Ms. Robinson is happy to be a small part of Dear Elizabeth. Stage management credits include: The Last Two People on Earth (Mandy Patinkin, Taylor Mac tour), Liberty, Hereafter, Inventing Mary Martin, Julie Taymor’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tfana), A Few Good Men (Pioneer Theatre), Ring of Fire (Alabama Shakespeare), On Golden Pond (tour), Richard Chamberlain’s Scrooge. Among Broadway credits are Thurgood, A Moon for the Misbegotten, and Man of La Mancha. Proud and very active member of Actors’ Equity Association.

VIVACITY MEDIA GROUP (Press Representative) Founded by veteran press agent Leslie Papa (President) and Whitney Holden Gore (VP), former executives of The Hartman Group. Broadway: On Your Feet and Tony Award Nominated new musicals - Rock of Ages, American Idiot, Bring It On and Legally Blonde; Tony-nominated 2012 revival of Evita (Ricky Martin); Romeo and Juliet (Orlando Bloom) and more. Off Broadway: Disenchanted!, Heathers: The Musical, SeaWife and more. Upcoming: Beaches and Nerds.

LISA MCNULTY (Producing Artistic Director) Lisa is in her second season as Producing Artistic Director of Women’s Project Theater. Lisa comes to WP from MTC, where she served as Artistic Line Producer for eight seasons, working on more than 30 productions both on and off Broadway, including plays by

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Lynn Nottage, Sarah Treem, Harvey Fierstein, and Tarell Alvin McCraney, among many, many others. Lisa has a long history with WP Theater. She was originally hired by the company’s founder, Julia Miles, as the Literary Manager from 1997-2000, where she dramaturged work by María Irene Fornés, Julie Hébert, and Karen Hartman, among others, and in 2004, she returned to WP as its Associate Artistic Director. From 2000-2004 she was McCarter Theater’s Producing Associate, and her independent producing career includes projects with Sarah Ruhl, Todd Almond, Lucy Thurber and Lear Debessonet.

MAUREEN MOYNIHAN (Managing Director) Maureen started her career in Chicago working for the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and commercial producer Fox Theatricals. Prior to joining WP Theater, Maureen spent over a decade working for Blue Man Productions in several positions including serving as their Executive Director for five North American Productions.

Since moving to New York, she has worked for several nonprofit and commercial organizations including Manhattan New Music Project, York Theatre Company and the immersive theatrical experience Queen of the Night.

WOMEN’S PROJECT THEATER (WP) is the nation’s oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing and promoting the work of female theater artists at every stage in their careers. WP Theater supports female-identified theater artists and the world-class, groundbreaking work they create, and provides a platform where their voices can be heard and celebrated on the American stage.

Founded in 1978 by visionary producer, Julia Miles, WP has been the launching pad for many of our nation’s most important theater artists. Eve Ensler, María Irene Fornés, Katori Hall, Pam MacKinnon, Lynn Nottage and Leigh Silverman, among many, many others, all found early artistic homes here. Throughout its 38 year history, WP has produced over 600 main stage productions and developmental projects, and published 11 anthologies of plays. No other producing institution in the country can claim this kind of ongoing history of advocacy and support for women in the theater, and we look ahead to the next generation of artists who will also begin their careers here.

WP Theater accomplishes its mission through several fundamental programs: the WP Lab, a two-year mentorship and new play development program for women playwrights, directors, and producers; the Playwright In Residence commissioning program; the Developmental series; and the Main Stage series, which features a full season of Off-Broadway productions written and directed by extraordinary theater artists.

“RedFarm is indeed groundbreaking” – TimeOut New York Need a reservation at RedFarm in the Upper West Side? Popular restaurant RedFarm doesn’t take reservations but your ticket confirmation for WP’s DEAR ELIZABETH is your ticket in! You’ll enjoy walking in to your very own table at RedFarm as well as a tasty treat from the kitchen. Enjoy!

Be sure to mention DEAR ELIZABETH when booking and show your confirmation upon arrival. Red Farm is conveniently located a few doors away from WP Theater at 2170 Broadway between 76th and 77th Streets. Subject to availability after 9pm. Offer valid until December 5, 2015

​ or WP Theater and chocolate lovers alike, F WP thanks Diageo for partnering with WP Theater by providing GODIVA Chocolate Liqueurs for our special events.

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS Arlene Scanlan, Co-Chair Casey Kemper, Co-Chair & Treasurer Cassandra Del Viscio, Secretary Sandy Ashendorf Fernando Garip Leigh A. Giroux, Esq. Jessica R. Jenen Donald J. Loftus Kelly Miller Onute Miller Stephen M. Rosenberg, Esq. Nancy Schmidt David Singleton Craig Thompson Lisa Timmel S. Jean Ward, Esq. Tina Chen, Chair Emerita Annette Green, Chair Emerita Jann E. Leeming, Chair Emerita Pat Schoenfeld, Chair Emerita Julia Miles, Founder & Artistic Director Emerita

FOUNDERS’ CIRCLE Jann E. Leeming, Chair Sallie Bingham Jennifer Chambers Marya Cohn Annette Green Joan Vail Thorne WP Theater would like to express a special note of thanks to the Royal Little Family Foundation for providing major annual support to WP. Their generous gift has made it possible for WP to establish a new home at the historic McGinn/Cazale Theatre.

Leadership support of WP Theater is generously provided

by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program, The Emma A. Sheafer Charitable Trust, New York Community Trust, Shubert Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, and Time Warner Foundation.

WP Theater productions are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

WOMEN’S PROJECT THEATER STAFF Producing Artistic Director LISA McNULTY Managing Director MAUREEN MOYNIHAN Marketing Manager C. Nana-Oye Addo-Yobo Business Manager Diana Bilbao Development Team Advance NYC: Yasmine Falk, Michelle Karem, Molly Murphy

Sarah Dell’Orto Press Representative Vivacity Media Group, Leslie Baden Papa & Whitney Holden Gore Director’s Lab Liaison Shelley Butler Producer’s Lab Liaison Stephanie Ybarra Playwrights-in-Residence Laura Eason Andrea Kuchlewska Dominique Morisseau Lynn Rosen Stefanie Zadravec Management Assistant Lilla Goettler Artistic Interns Rachel Abrams Cristina Angeles Elena Burger Lilla Goettler General Interns Jennifer Haley Grace Merriman Kaitlin Race Laura Troshynski Legal Counsel Leigh A. Giroux, Dumler & Giroux

Timothy Stephenson, Kirkland & Ellis

Hunter Murdock, Kirkland & Ellis Financial Services Patricia Taylor Banking & Investments JP Morgan Chase, Merrill Lynch Payroll Services Castellana Services, Inc. Auditors Schall & Ashenfarb Insurance C&S International Insurance Brokers Graphic Design Heather Honnold Ted Stephens, Numad Group Website Design Gold Rush Creative & Christy Briggs Videography Bajan Brownstone Productions LLC, Erik Pearson Printing Services Consulair, Inc./Shield Press IT Consultant Syzygy 3, Inc. Office Cleaning Mikhail Onate

WP LAB

2014-2016 Time Warner Foundation Fellows Playwrights Sarah Burgess Monet Hurst-Mendoza

Martyna Majok Riti Sachdeva Susan Soon He Stanton Directors Adrienne Campbell-Holt Lee Sunday Evans Sarah Krohn Danya Taymor Tamilla Woodard Producers Rachel Karpf Reidy Pearl Kermani Kristen Luciani Liz Olson Rachel Sussman DEAR ELIZABETH PATRONS

Please remember to turn your phones and all electronic devices off for the duration of the performance.

After the show, TURN THOSE PHONES BACK ON and please help us spread the word by Telling Your Friends about your experience at WP Theater. Text, Tweet, E-mail, and Post All Things #DearElizabethPlay and #WPTheater.

STAFF FOR DEAR ELIZABETH Company Manager DIANA BILBAO Production Stage Manager C. RENEE ALEXANDER Production Stage Manager BERNITA ROBINSON Production Manager Steve Rosenberg Technical Director Scott Palmer Assistant Director Sarah Wansley Assistant to the Playwright Lilla Goettler Assistant Scenic Design David Valentino Assistant Costume Design Jenny O’Donnell Assistant Lighting Design Christina Watanabe Props Master Ellie Engstrom Box Office Manager Scotty Arnold House Managers Emily Padden, Scotty Arnold Production Carpenter Chris Caimano Production Electrician Victoria Miller Audio Head Angel Soriano Production Photography Joan Marcus Videography Bajan Brownstone Productions LLC, Erik Pearson Wardrobe Supervisor John Michael Crotty Light and Sound Board Operator Aaron Rabinowitz

SPECIAL THANKS The playwright wishes to thank Les Waters, Harriet Lowell, Yale Rep, James Bundy, Mary Beth Fisher, Tom Nelis, Jefferson Mays, Jonathan Galassi, Rebecca Taichman, Jessica Hecht, Williamstown Theater Festival, Polly Noonan, Blair Brown, The Poetry Foundation, Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Lisa Rothe.

WP would like to thank David Zinn for the gimlet eye and lobby leg up; Scott Laule, Lily Fairbanks and Peter Grimes for providing the world on a string; Bethany Weinstein, Joshua Helman, Florie Seery and Lindsey Brooks Sag for the ear and the advice; Kate Dale and Doug FIlumena for their gracious access; Jill McLaughlin for the poetical boost; Bruce Ostler and Aislinn Frantz for the belief and the aid, and last, but truly entirely not least to Jonathan Galassi, Harriet Lowell and Amanda Schoonmaker for the keys to the kingdom.

CREDITS Scenery printed by Rose Brand, Secaucus, NJ. Sound equipment provided

by Production Resource Group, LLC. Theatre signage by King Displays.

Photo Cherry Jones by Zachary Maxwell Stertz.

WARNING: The photographing or sound recording of any performance or the possession of any device for such photographing or sound recording inside this theatre, without the written permission of the management, is prohibited by law. Violators may be punished by ejection and violations may render the offender liable for money damages.

In case of an emergency immediately notify a member of our Front of House staff for assistance.

Smoking in prohibited inside the theater and building.

RESTROOMS AND SPECIAL SERVICES The ladies’ room is in the fourth floor lobby. The men’s room is located off the third floor landing. Wheelchair seating is available for all performances but must be reserved in advance through the box office. For more information on WP Theater, please visit WPTheater.org or call (212) 765-1706.

The Actors and Stage Managers employed in this production are members of ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.

The Director is a member of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union.

United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829, is a labor union and professional association of Designers, Artists and Craftspeople.

WP THEATER SUPPORTERS WP Theater gratefully acknowledges these donors who currently support the Theater’s activities with generous contributions. We receive a number of donations under $100 not listed here, and for these, too, we are deeply grateful. $50,000+

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program Howard Gilman Foundation Royal Little Family Foundation Time Warner Foundation

$10,000-49,999

Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Jennifer Chambers/MCJ Amelior Foundation National Endowment for the Arts, Art Works NYC Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature Procter & Gamble Shubert Foundation TSB Limited

$2,500-$9,999

Arkay Foundation Bank of America Foundation Tina Chen Collegiate Asset Management Corp.

Melinda Gomez Annette Green John Golden Fund Hargrove Pierce Foundation Casey & Mary Kemper Tom Kirdahy Productions Stephanie & William Lenchinsky Lucille Lortel Foundation M&T Charitable Foundation Robin & Dara Miles Kelly Miller Onute Miller Muriel Siebert Foundation P&G Prestige Parlux Ltd. Paul and Jenna Segal Family Foundation Rodale, Inc. Stephen Rosenberg/Bertrum Richard Cohen/ Inez Benjamin Foundation Rudin Foundation David Singleton Theodore A. Rapp Foundation Craig Thompson Joan Vail Thorne V&L Marx Foundation, in honor of Joan Vail Thorne

$1,000+

Christopher Cormier Tyne Daly John Demsey Jill Dolan Justin Dubler Lisa Eatroff Arkay Foundation Leigh Giroux Barbara Goldsmith Stephan Golux David Helpern David Henry and Kathryn Hwang Jessica Jenen

William Kinn Jann E. Leeming & Arthur D. Little Susan Lerner Kathryn C. Mayer Terrence McNally Onute Miller Helen Mills Westly Morris Enid Nemy The Puffin Foundation, Ltd. Judy Rubin Denise Spillane Marlo Thomas Lisa Timmel Charlynn Walker S. Jean Ward Claudia Weill Mildred Weissman Margaret Whitton Deborah Zeigler

$500+

Steve Birnbaum Claire Cannon Christopher Marya Cohn Nancy Crown Karen Drechsler Nina Eisenman Lucia Hwong Gordon Jane Greenman Derek Hester Irena Mausner Susan Bernfield & Claude Millman Niclas Nagler Alison Pace Mickey Rolfe Daryl Roth Nancy Schmidt Catherine Schreiber Sharon Seelig Laura Sequenzia Susan Shin Abigail Rose Solomon Alec Stais Carolyn Tastad

$100+

Dina Bakst Laura Carr Bandrowski Tanya Barfield Martin Barrett Jessica Bauman Elizabeth Bennett Jennifer Geer & Guillermo Bilbao Jerome Blake Jeb Brown Georgia Buchanan Cynthia Caminiti Karen Carpenter Megan Carter Terrence Christgau Robert Coven Dennis Curran Anthony D’Agostino Blythe Danner Mary Davis Lear DeBessonet Erma Duricko Elizabeth Engelman Diana Espino Eleanor Fink Edward and Lori Forstein Trina Foster Jeffrey Friedberg

Ashley Gatterdam Alan Ginsberg Francine Goldberg Alvia Golden Lynne Greene Russel T. Hamilton Barbara Hanrehan Barbara G. Harris Ludovica Villar-Hauser Marian Heard Julie HĂŠbert Beth Holland Karen Hoover Joan Hornig Liz and Alan Jaffe Elaine Jurumbo Carol Keane Isobel Konecky Mark Kreitman Bill and Anne Krupman Fred Lanzetta Don Lasker Patricia H. Lin Lorraine Liscio Margaret Lupardo Celia Lustgarten Gwen Marcus Nancy Martinek Melissa Maxwell Faith Menken Maria Mileaf Robin & Dara Miles Kelly Miller Joan Monk Joseph Myers Ivan Oransky Cheryl Palmer Karen Parks Brian Perman Mer Rainwater Lidia Ramirez Arlene Rubenstein Arlene Scanlan Jolie Schaffzin Mary Schlosser Pat Schoenfeld Russell and Marie Skillman Isabel Sloane Myra Lucretia Taylor Cori Thomas John Tobin Daniella Topol Cassandra Del Viscio Barbara Von Borstel Nela Wagman Sandra Webster Inez Weinstein Pat Werblin Steven Wexner Robin Zarel David Zinn

NEW FESTIVAL. NEW VOICES. NEW PLAYS. A festival of 5 new works from the WP Lab. PLAYWRIGHTS

Sarah Burgess Monet Hurst-Mendoza Martyna Majok Riti Sachdeva Susan Soon He Stanton

DIRECTORS

Adrienne Campbell-Holt Lee Sunday Evans Sarah Krohn Danya Taymor Tamilla Woodard

PRODUCERS

Rachel Karpf Reidy Pearl Kermani Kristen Luciani Liz Olson Rachel Sussman

MARCH 24-APRIL 23 SUBSCRIBE TODAY & SAVE ALL SEASON!

WPTHEATER.ORG OR CALL 212-765-1706 SUBSCRIBE BY NOV. 20.

STAY CONNECTED WITH WP THEATER FOLLOW US ON TWITTER:

@WomensProject #WPTheater #DearElizabethPlay

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October 26-December 5 Starring a Rotating Cast of Luminaries including

Becky Ann Baker

David Aaron Baker

Kathleen Chalfant

Rinde Eckert

Cherry Jones

Mia Katigbak

Ellen McLaughlin

Polly Noonan

Peter Scolari

J. Smith-Cameron

John Douglas Thompson

Harris Yulin

COME SEE THEM ALL! OCTOBER 26 – 31

Kathleen Chalfant, Harris Yulin & Polly Noonan

NOVEMBER 2 – 7

J. Smith-Cameron, John Douglas Thompson & Polly Noonan

NOVEMBER 9 – 14

Becky Ann Baker, Peter Scolari & Polly Noonan

NOVEMBER 16 – 21

Cherry Jones, David Aaron Baker & Polly Noonan

NOVEMBER 23 – 28

Ellen McLaughlin, Rinde Eckert & Polly Noonan

NOVEMBER 30 – DECEMBER 5

Mia Katigbak, Polly Noonan & more to be announced

PURCHASE TICKETS TO ADDITIONAL WEEKS AND SAVE! WPTHEATER.ORG