Porgy and Bess Program [pdf] - American Repertory Theater

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GEORGE GERSHWIN Music George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn on September 26, 1898, and began his musical training when he was 13. At 16 he quit high school to work as a “song plugger” for a music publisher, and soon he was writing songs himself. “Swanee,” as introduced by Al Jolson, brought George his first real fame and led to his writing a succession of 22 musical comedies, most with his older brother, Ira. The Gershwins’ shows include Lady Be Good; Oh, Kay!; Strike Up The Band; Girl Crazy; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Of Thee I Sing. From his early career George had ambitions to compose serious music. These ambitions were realized in some of his masterpieces, among them “Rhapsody In Blue,” “Concerto In F,” “An American In Paris” and “Second Rhapsody.” In the late ’20s George became fascinated by the DuBose Heyward novel Porgy, recognizing it as a perfect vehicle for opera using jazz and blues idioms. George’s “folk opera” Porgy and Bess opened in Boston on September 30, 1935, and had its Broadway premiere two weeks later. In 1937 George was at the height of his career. While working on the score of The Goldwyn Follies in Hollywood, he collapsed, and on July 11, died of a brain tumor. He was not quite 39 years old. DUBOSE HEYWARD Librettist/Lyricist DuBose Heyward (1885–1940) was a native and life-long resident of Charleston, South Carolina. Although born into modest economic circumstances, he was of an old Charleston family and his ancestors were prominent members of Charleston society, one of whom, Thomas Heyward, Jr., was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence. In the early 1920s, Heyward co-founded the Poetry Society of South Carolina and co-published Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country, which established his reputation as an American poet. In 1923 Heyward married Dorothy Hartzell Kuhns (1890–1961), whom he had met the previous year at the MacDowell Colony, an artists’ retreat in New Hampshire, and who was an aspiring author from Ohio. He then devoted himself full-time to writing. The first major result of this effort was the novel, Porgy, published with great success in 1925. In his 2000 biography of Heyward, James Hutchisson describes Porgy as the first major southern novel to present African Americans realistically and without condescension. Dorothy inspired, and collaborated in, the transformation of Porgy 32 AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER Creative Team into a play, which ran a total of 367 performances on Broadway. The Heywards later collaborated with George and Ira Gershwin in the creation of the opera, Porgy and Bess, contributing the libretto, based largely on the play, and co-writing many of the songs. Heyward’s many other works include the novel, Mamba’s Daughters, which he, together with Dorothy, transformed into a play. Mamba’s Daughters successfully opened in New York in 1939, with Ethel Waters in the cast; a 1997/1998 production was awarded an Obie, and was also presented at the 1999 Spoleto Festival in Charleston. Among his other works were the play, Brass Ankle, the novella, Half Pint Flask, and the novel, Peter Ashley, all of which portray the lives of African Americans in Charleston and the surrounding low country. He also wrote (for his daughter, Jenifer) Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, which became an American classic children’s book, and the screenplays for the movie versions of Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones, starring Paul Robeson, and Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth. IRA GERSHWIN Lyricist Ira Gershwin, the first songwriter to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize, was born in New York City on December 6, 1896. In 1917 The Evening Sun published his first song (“You May Throw All The Rice You Desire But Please Friends, Throw No Shoes”). Four years later Ira enjoyed his first major stage success, Two Little Girls in Blue, written with another Broadway newcomer, Vincent Youmans. In 1924 Ira and his brother, George, created the smash hit Lady Be Good and went on to continue their remarkable collaboration through a dozen major stage scores, producing such standards as “Fascinating Rhythm,” “The Man I Love,” “S’ Wonderful,” “Embraceable You,” “I Got Rhythm,” “But Not For Me” and others far too numerous to mention. During his long career, Ira also enjoyed productive collaborations with such songwriters as Harold Arlen, Vernon Duke, Kurt Weill, Burton Lane and Jerome Kern, with whom he created his greatest song hit of any one year, “Long Ago And Far Away.” Ira Gershwin died on August 17, 1983, in Beverly Hills, California. SUZAN-LORI PARKS Adapter/Additional Scenes A.R.T.: The America Play. Named one of Time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” Ms. Parks’ plays include The Book of Grace, In the Blood (2000 Pulitzer Prize finalist),
creative team (continued) Venus (1996 OBIE Award), The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Father Comes Home from the War Part I: The Union of My Confederate Parts, Fucking A, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (1990 OBIE Award for Best New American Play), and Topdog/Underdog (Broadway) for which she won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama becoming the first African-American woman to do so. Ms. Parks has a leading acting role in The Making of Plus One, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. She’s written screenplays for Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Girl 6, written for Spike Lee, and adapted Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, which premiered on ABC’s “Oprah Winfrey Presents.” In 2007, her project 365 Days/365 Plays was produced in over 700 theaters worldwide, creating one of the largest grassroots collaborations in theater history. Parks’ first novel, Getting Mother’s Body, (Random House, 2003) is set in the west Texas of her youth. A student of James Baldwin, with whom she credits the launch of her interest in playwriting, Ms. Parks is a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient, and has been awarded grants by the National Endowment of the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts. She is recipient of a Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Award, a CalArts/Alpert Award, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant and is an alumna of Mount Holyoke College and New Dramatists. Her work is the subject of the PBS film The Topdog Diaries. Ms. Parks is at work on her second novel and her Ray Charles musical, Unchain My Heart, is scheduled to premiere on Broadway within the coming year. She teaches at NYU, and is currently performing her experimental solo show, Watch Me Work at the Public Theater, where she serves as Master Writer Chair. Please visit Suzanloriparks.com. DIEDRE L. MURRAY Musical Adapter A.R.T.: Best of Both Worlds (composer). Pulitzer Prize finalist, two-time OBIE Award winner, innovative composer, cellist, and producer. In the 1970s and 1980s, she pioneered the use of the cello as a jazz and new world music instrument touring extensively worldwide. Musical and theater works: Unending Pain, a choral/chamber work (co-presented by the Performance Garage and the Whitney Museum of American Art); Let’s Go Down to the River, a score for octet, Willasau Jazz Festival in Switzerland; The Eves of Nhor, a string trio for National Dutch Radio and De Effenaar Festival in Eindhoven Holland; Kamerados, for mixed ensemble, The Women’s Improviser Festival in New York; Five Minute Tango, a score for the inaugural concert at the Danny Kaye/Sylvia Fine Playhouse, performed by the Manhattan Brass Quintet; The Conversation for the Seattle-based New Performance Group at the Walker Arts Center in Minnesota; You Don’t Miss the Water, a musictheater piece, in collaboration with noted poet Cornelius Eady, produced by the Music-Theatre Group (MTG); FANGS; Women In The Dunes, a dance piece created by Blondel Cummings for the Japan Society; the jazz-opera Running Man, for which she wrote the original story and score, and book with Cornelius Eady, Here Theatre in New York City (two OBIE Awards, finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); music arrangements for Eli’s Coming (OBIE Award), Vineyard Theatre; In 2006 Ms. Murray composed the music for the Music Theater Group/Kathryn Walker production of the Rage of Achilles and the Odyssey which was performed at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe; The Blackamour Angel, an opera written by Carl Hancock Rux, Bard College; an adaptation by Diane Paulus of James Baldwin’s Another Country, Columbia University; an adaptation of The Voice Within with Marcus Gardley, Harlem Stage and the Apollo Theatre. Current projects include a new musical, Sweet Billy and the Zooloo’s, with writer Lynn Nottage, for Colored Girl Productions; and Patient Zero, book by Cornelius Eady for the Music Theater Group for a production scheduled for 2012. Ms. Murray has received numerous grants and awards for her work as a composer. She received a B.S. degree from Hunter College in ethnomusicology, and has appeared on over 100 recordings as a cellist. DIANE PAULUS Director Artistic Director of the A.R.T., where her directing credits include: Prometheus Bound, Death and the Powers: The Robots’ Opera (premiered in Monaco in September 2010), Johnny Baseball, Best of Both Worlds and The Donkey Show, a disco adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ran for six years Off-Broadway. Her recent theater credits include The Public Theater’s revival of HAIR on Broadway (2009 Tony Award winner for Best Revival of a Musical, nominated for eight Tony Awards including Best Director, as well as winner of a Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Drama League Award for Best Revival of a THE GERSHWINS’ PORGY AND BESS 33
Page 3 and 4: Contents SEPTEMBER 2011 12 Artistic
Page 5 and 6: ackstage (continued) Zimmerman’s
Page 7 and 8: atrical history and bring them forw
Page 9 and 10: identify with Porgy. I’m rooting
Page 11 and 12: Miles Davis and Nina Simone, popula
Page 13: Charlie Haydock, CFA Chief Investme
Page 17 and 18: Cast (in order of appearance) Clara
Page 19 and 20: ADDITIONAL STAFF Dialect Coach.....
Page 21 and 22: Courtesy of Ira and Leonore Gershwi
Page 23 and 24: ALLISON BLACKWELL Woman of Catfish
Page 25 and 26: cast (continued) pearances include
Page 27 and 28: cast (continued) BRYONHA MARIE PARH
Page 29 and 30: orchestra (continued) LEO EGUCHI Ce
Page 31: orchestra (continued) GREG NEWTON T
Page 35 and 36: creative team (continued) and Misal
Page 37 and 38: creative team (continued) JULIE BAL
Page 39 and 40: A.R.T./MXAT Institute For Advanced
Page 41 and 42: annual fund donors (continued) $1,0
Page 43 and 44: A.R.T. EDUCATION EXPERIENCE & COMMU
Page 45 and 46: Staff AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER ST
Page 47 and 48: guide to local theater (continued)
Page 49 and 50: guide to local theater (continued)
Page 51 and 52: SLASHER, Apollinaire Theatre Compan
Page 53 and 54: Direct from its sold-out run at the
Page 55 and 56: guide to cambridge dining (continue
Page 57 and 58: guide to cambridge dining (continue
Page 59 and 60: ELL RADCLIFFE YARD CAMBRIDGE ST GAR
Page 62 and 63: Dining Out NUBAR If you were famili

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