Yale Cabaret: Tobie

A Note from the Cab Team

For our last show of the year, we end back to the beginning of what theater is truly about. We go back to simpler, more innocent times when our we suspended our imagination for the sake of play as children. We start our last show with puppets an innocent inanimate object that takes on whatever look or shape or perspective we prescribe it. It becomes shaped by whatever kind of storytelling captures us in the moment. As we reflect on our season, it’s only fitting that we gather around closely and allow ourselves to believe, imagine, and dare I say, “sniff” our way back to a kind of intimacy that theater is all about. For our last show of the year, we thank you. We thank all our artists and collaborators and supporters and the community for continuing to show up for us. This year, we lovingly named ourselves Parachute: A Soft Landing. As promised, the ride has not always been smooth, but the views have been breathtaking. We couldn’t have asked for a better year. And now, that we’ve launched, it’s time for our arrival—please enjoy this playful touchdown, Tobie,which is representative of the softest landing we could have imagined.

-Jason, Kayodè & Ashley

A Note from the Translator/Director

To be perfectly honest, I can’t quite believe we are all here. I met Tobiein Fall 2021, a semester full of uncertainty and skepticism, while taking Paul Walsh’s Translation class. Initially, I approached the task of translating this play with a lot of doubts, mostly about my own abilities. But Tobiehas no time for doubt. It is a play in which magic is unequivocally real and the impossible happens every day. It has an elegantly declamatory angel and a crudely hilarious demon, slapstick humor and reverent expressions of faith. Without an English translation available, each page I translated of Maurice Bouchor’s 1889 Symbolist adaptation of the BookofTobit(an apocryphal Old Testament text) brought giggles of confusion, cackles of delight, and head-scratching discoveries:

The fish did WHAT? The feast description is how many pages? Shakespeare gets a mention? What is happening?! Without doubt, Tobieis a really weird play. It is also a rather simple story. At its heart is Tobie, our easily overwhelmed hero, who just wants to be a good son and a good man. Buffeted back and forth by divine and demonic forces, he is trying to do his best, to make his family proud, and to be brave enough for love.

I have loved working on this play. From the first pages we aloud in class, through the year of jokingly and then not so jokingly imagining staging it here at the Cab, to these last few weeks of working with this incredible team and experimenting with puppets, it has brought me enormous joy.

I hope it will do the same for you.

-Lily Haje

Tobie

Translated and Adapted by Lily Haje from Maurice Bouchor

PRODUCED BY

Roman Sanchez & Mikayla Stanley

CREATIVE TEAM

Director Lily Haje

Assistant Director Clementine Rice*

Stage Manager Adrian Alexander Hernandez

Scenic Designer(s) B Entsminger & Patrick Blanchard

Lighting Designer(s) Neil Qiu, Doaa Ouf, & Yichen Zhou

Sound Designer Bryn Scharenberg

Puppet Design Lily Haje & Company

Mask Design Nicholas Orvis

Backstage Run Crew M.L. Roberts

Technical Director(s) ATD Collective

Lobby Display Clementine Rice*

Show Sponsor Paul Walsh, Nina Adams & Moreson

Kaplan

CAST

Sophia Carey

Natalie King

Nicholas Orvis

Madeline Pages

Doug Robinson

Liam Bellman-Sharpe

*Yale Cabaret Debut

Special Thanks

Faith Zamblé, Yichen Zhou, Kate Baker, Simon Toop, Helen Haje, Paul Walsh & Fall 2021 Translation, Micah Ohno, ATD Collective (Cian Freeman, Luke

Tarnow-Bulatowicz, Luanne Jubsee, & Kim Zhou)

Mission

Yale Cabaret 55 is a transition; a space to place your art and watch it transform. We do not suggest that your art begins or ends with us, but it will change with us. We invite our community to take risks with us. Failure is not an option; it is an illusion. Like Pantone Color of the Year: Very Peri, we know that “as we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways.” We seek to be a holding space to explore these changes. Cabaret 55 is a shared experiment of what it means to come back to theater.

Values

• The Cab is a studio

• The Cab is a space for trial and error

• The Cab is a space for fellowship

• There is no utopia, only risk and commitment

• There are no assignments, only invitations

Land Acknowledgement

The state of Connecticut and Yale University occupy the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, Quinnipiac, and other Algonquian speaking peoples. We honor and respect their continued relationship with and stewardship of this land, and we acknowledge that Yale University, Yale Cabaret, and those affiliated have benefited from the oppression of these Nations.

Labor Acknowledgement

Yale University does not exist independently from the centuries of forced labor and economic extraction of enslaved people, primarily of African descent, on which this country was built. We are indebted to their labor and their unwilling sacrifice, and we must acknowledge the ongoing violence inflicted on Black and brown people and the resulting impact and generational trauma still felt today.

Leadership Team

Executive Artistic Director

Jason Gray

Graphic Designer

Producing Artistic Director

Kayodè Soyemi

Production Managers

Producing Artistic Director

Ashley M. Thomas

Leo Surach & Cameron Waitkun Collaborators

Community Engagement

Anchor Spa x Yale Cabaret

Mikayla Johnson

Website Designer

Kayodè Soyemi

a.k. payne

Marketing Associate

Roman Sanchez

Chef Kendall Thigpen

Cabaret Assistant(s)

Anne Ciarlone

Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

Advisory Board

Stage Management

Nakia Avila

Theater Management

Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

Dramaturgy

Lily Haje

Playwriting

Danielle Stagger

Sound Evdoxia Ragkou

Scenic

Cat Raynor

Projections

John Horzen

Acting

Lucas Iverson

Technical Design

Eugenio Saenz Flores

Lighting

Jiahao (Neil) Qui

Directing

Garrett Allen

Costumes

Kyle Artone

Board of Directors

Chair

Wendy Davies

Jacob Basri

Samanta Yunuen Cubias

Eric M. Glover

L.T. Gourzong

Linda-Cristal Young

About the Cab

In 1968, the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale students established a basement performance venue in the former home of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity at 217 Park Street. Envisioned as an alternative outlet for drama school students’ creativity and experimentation, Yale Cabaret became a forum for our expanded New Haven communities, whom we invite to gather around food, drink, conversation, fellowship, and artistry.

Since its founding, the Cabaret has remained in continuous operation, including pivoting to virtual performance during the 2020/21 season. The Cab has produced hundreds of plays, old and new, alongside musicals and musical revues, comedy shows, dance, performance art, and genre-defying performance.

Our supporters have made this storied history happen. With their partnership, we continue this tradition into 2023 and beyond.

Our Supporters

Honorary Season Producer ($7,500+)

Indira Etwaroo & Apple

Parachuter ($5,000-$7,499)

Santino Blumetti

Brian Tyree Henry

Champion ($2,500-$4,999)

Wendy Davies

Tarell Alvin McCraney

R. Lee Stump

Partners ($1,000-$2,499)

Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan

Joan Channick

Eric M. Glover, PhD

Lindy Lee Gold

James G. Hood

Bennett Pudlin & Ann Judd

Bill & Sharon Reynolds

Elaine Ring

Show Sponsors ($500-$999)

Audrey Conrad

Betty & Josh Goldberg

L.T. Gourzong

Caroline V. Gray

Jim & Eileen Mydosh

Anne Renner

Enthusiasts ($250-$499)

James A. Bundy & Anne Tofflemire

Sarah Cain

Pamela C. Jordan

Corby S. Kummer

Erin Rocha

Florie Seery

Thanks for coming out this season!