THE SHIFT A LIVE READING VIA ZOOM MAY 8 AT 8PM 2019–20 SEASON
YALE SCHOOL OF DRAMA James Bundy, Dean Victoria Nolan, Deputy Dean Chantal Rodriguez, Associate Dean Kelvin Dinkins, Jr., Assistant Dean
PRESENTS
THE SHIFT By Margaret E. Douglas Directed by Logan Ellis Creative Team Scenic Designer
Stephen Marks Costume Designer
Meg Powers
Lighting Designer
Nicole E. Lang
Sound Designer
Bailey Trierweiler Projection Designer
Matthias Neckermann Production Dramaturg
Patrick Denney Stage Manager
Amanda Luke
Cast
in alphabetical order Aaron
Mihir Kumar Steph
Maggie McCaffery Jess
Maia Mihanovich Jeff
Reed Northrup Steve
Thomas Pang Erin
Madeline Seidman Red Shift Poet
Jessy Yates
Supported by The Benjamin Mordecai III Production Fund.
Setting
Artistic Staff
A bunker deep-beneath Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Assistant Scenic Designer
The Shift is read through without an intermission.
Assistant Costume Designer
Special Thanks
Rebecca Adelsheim, the O’Brien Family, Sophie Siegel-Warren
Miguel Urbino Travis Chinick
Assistant Lighting Designer
Jiahao Qiu
Assistant Sound Designer/Engineer
Noel Nichols
Production Stage Manager
THE BENJAMIN MORDECAI III PRODUCTION FUND, established by a graduate of the School, honors the memory of the Tony Award-winning producer who served as Managing Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, 1982–1993, and as Associate Dean and Chair of the Theater Management Department from 1993 until his death in 2005. Yale University acknowledges that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring and continuing relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.
Fabiola Syvel
Assistant Stage Manager
Andrew Petrick
Production Staff Production Manager
Shannon Csorny
Associate Safety Advisor
Laurie Ortega-Murphy
Administration Associate Managing Director
Caitlin Volz
Assistant Managing Director
Madeline Carey
Management Assistants
Sarah Cain Samanta Yunuen Cubias House Manager
Jason Gray
Yale School of Drama productions are supported by the work of more than 200 faculty and staff members throughout the year.
How to Be Happy Underground In January 1962, the pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead offered one of the most titillating theories for post-apocalyptic survival of the atomic era. To ensure the continuity of human progress, she imagined that a rotating, international cross-section of the most productive members of society would be placed within a network of strategic, secure bunkers. This proposed underground utopia was bolstered by another group that Mead’s mid-century moment charged with the most reproductive potential: newlyweds. Thus, humanity’s future would be assured, built upon a puritanical drive for maximum productivity and hetero-normative correlation of the future with the child. But, like, what if the people living in this bunker, just… didn’t? The Shift takes Mead’s premise and joyfully drags it through a dive bar in Western Massachusetts. The best and the brightest have been herded together from an internet job post. Rather than high-minded ideals of advancing the human race, the millennials of Margaret E. Douglas’s play grapple with everyday worries such as health insurance and the ever-present force of FOMO. And rather than the straight couples of Mead’s vision, the space is populated by at least one confirmed bachelor(ette). The staff of this back-up bunker actively fails at living up to the expectations that government bureaucracy has tried to place upon them, but they just shrug and play some Gameboy. Rather than a world-ending roadblock, this gesture highlights the ability of failure to showcase that there is not simply one way to exist in the world. Rather than the dream world of scientists and bureaucrats, The Shift creates a glorious space where outcasts and oddballs can come together and just be themselves, at least for seventy-three days. —PATRICK DENNEY, PRODUCTION DRAMATURG