Yale Cabaret: Marry Me a Little

A Note from the Cab Team

There’s an argument to be made that Stephen Sondheim is more than a composer and lyricist—he’s a playwright. Together, his songs create a shared world in which the most crystallized parts of our humanity are illuminated. Looking back to our chosen color for our season, very peri, we hope to emerge from isolation and take on a new understanding of our physical world. Love is one of the constants that transcends physicality and connects our disparate. So much has changed in these past few years, but the dates and holidays and emotions, like love, remain constant. It’s February again, and the perfect time for this reimagined classic. With Black History Month present and a post-Valentine’s Day flair, this production of MarryMeaLittle celebrates a Black queer joy that we can all admire, cherish, and feel seen in. Musicals are a colorful world that asks us to open up in order to travel to a whole new world. For this performance, we invite you to listen, witness, and celebrate a joy written by a playwright, composer, lyricist who demonstrates an endearing vulnerability tucked in the most familiar parts of our shared worlds

-Jason, Kayodè & Ashley

A Note from the Director

Thank you all for coming to experience a dream come true!! Growing up as a Black Queer person, I was constantly reminded (directly and indirectly) that love was not for me and that I didn’t deserve it. My Jamaican family reaffirmed this. My Christian upbringing reaffirmed this. The media I consumed reaffirmed this; and I believed that it was true. That all changed for me in 2005 when I saw a show about successful Black Queer men on television called Noah’sArc . That show had everything: fashion, friendship, comedy, and best of all, it had Black men unapologetically loving other Black men with their entire selves! For the first time in my life, I felt seen. At that moment, I knew that I wanted to create art that made other people feel the way I felt from watching Noah’sArc.

Over the years, I’ve dedicated my art to telling stories of Black Queer and Trans people and their communities through theatre, music, and dance. Don’t tell anyone I told you this…but I’m a hopeless romantic. Shows like MarryMeaLittleare my absolute favorite to create because I get to feel that feeling I felt back in 2005. My hope is that another Black Queer person is sitting in the audience having that feeling for the first time, too.

-Kemar Jewel

MarryMeaLittle

By Stephen Sondheim

Conceived & Developed by Craig Lucas & Normal Rene

PRODUCED BY

Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

CREATIVE TEAM

Director & Choreographer Kemar Jewel

Music Director Jake Hurwitz*

Stage Manager Adrian Alexander Hernandez

Set Designer Patrick Blanchard

Lighting Designer(s) David DeCarolis & Doaa Ouf

Costume Designer Caroline Tyson*

Sound Designer Evdoxia Ragkou

Technical Director Luanne Jubsee*

Assistant Director(s) Doaa Ouf & Carson White*

Associate Dramaturg Ramona Li*

Intimacy Director Andrew Aaron Valdez

CAST

Laurént G. Williams* Dash Perry*

*Yale Cabaret Debut

Special Thanks

Megan Birdsong, B. Entsminger, Terrance Embry, Eric M. Glover, Tarell

Alvin McCraney, Suzu Sakai, Aaron-Michael Sobers, Kyle Stamm, Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, Nilan, Graham Zellers, & The Drama League

MarryMeaLittleis presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI).

All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com

MarryMeaLittlewas produced Off-Broadway by Diane de Mailly in association with William B. Young

Originally produced by the Production Company

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

Mikayla Johnson

Website Designer

Kayodè Soyemi

Producing Artistic Director

Kayodè Soyemi

Production Managers

Producing Artistic Director

Ashley M. Thomas

Leo Surach & Cameron Waitkun

Collaborators

Community Engagement a.k. payne

Marketing Associate

Roman Sanchez

Anchor Spa x Yale Cabaret

Chef Kendall Thigpen

Cabaret Assistant

Ramona Li

Advisory Board

Stage Management

Nakia Avila

Theater Management

Fanny Abib-Rozenberg

Dramaturgy

Lily Haje

Sound

Evdoxia Ragkou

Scenic

Cat Raynor

Projections

John Horzen

Technical Design

Eugenio Saenz Flores

Lighting

Jiahao (Neil) Qui

Directing

Garrett Allen

Danielle Stagger Acting Lucas Iverson

Playwriting

Costumes

Kyle Artone

Board of Directors

Chair

Wendy Davies

Jacob Basri

Samanta Yunuen Cubias

Eric M. Glover

L.T. Gourzong

Doug Robinson

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 2022 and beyond.

Our Supporters

Honorary Season Producer ($7,500+)

Indira Etwaroo & The Benevity

Community Impact Fund

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

Santino Blumetti

Brian Tyree Henry

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

Wendy Davies

R. Lee Stump

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

Nina Adams & Moreson Kaplan

Joan Channick

Eric M. Glover, PhD

James G. Hood

Bennett Pudlin & Ann Judd

Bill & Sharon Reynolds

Elaine Ring

Show Sponsors ($500-$999)

Audrey Conrad

Betty & Josh Goldberg

Jim & Eileen Mydosh

Anne Renner

Enthusiasts ($250-$499)

James A. Bundy & Anne Tofflemire

Sarah Cain

Pamela C. Jordan

Corby S. Kummer

Erin Rocha

What’s Next

Cab 9

February 23-25th

Udo

Written & Proposed by Abigail Onwunali & Nomè SiDone

A Nigerian immigrant couple trying to create roots in a new country begin trying for a baby. What should be a simple process of love making amongst husband and wife turns into a tumultuous, life altering night of betrayal, submission and pain. Is their love strong enough to keep them anchored to each other? Or will they admit defeat, disappointing not only themselves but everyone back home?

AND ANNOUNCING OUR LAST THREE SHOWS

Cab 10

March 2-4th

Dr.Ride’sAmericanBeachHouse

By Liza Berkenmeier

Proposed by Rebeca Robles

It’s 1983, the evening before Dr. Sally Ride’s historic space flight. Hundreds of miles from the launch, a group of women with passionate opinions and no opportunities sit on a sweltering St. Louis rooftop watching life pass them by. Their uncharted desires bump up against American norms of sex and power in this intimate snapshot of queer anti-heroines.

Cab 11

March 30-April 1st

EveryBrilliantThing

By Duncan MacMillan

Proposed by Malachi Beasley & Alexis Woodard

“You’re seven years old. Mom’s in the hospital. Dad says she’s ‘done something stupid’. She finds it hard to be happy. You start a list of everything that’s brilliant about the world. Everything worth living for.”

Cab 12

April 20-22nd

Tobie

Proposed & Adapted by Lily Haje

An adventure-romance of quasi-Biblical proportions. A Symbolist fever dream. A poetic celebration of object performance. Freely translated and adapted from Maurice Bouchor’s 1889 puppet play, Tobie is a story of growing up, of falling in love and finding yourself, and of defeating the fish demon trying to sleep with your girlfriend.