Download Vanya - Goodman Theatre

ROBERT FALLS, Artistic Director | ROCHE SCHULFER, Executive Director
presents
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA
AND SPIKE
By
CHRISTOPHER DURANG
Directed By
STEVE SCOTT
Set Design by
CHARLIE CORCORAN
Costume Design by
AMY CLARK
Lighting Design by
ROBERT PERRY
Original Music and Sound Design by
RICHARD WOODBURY
Casting by
ADAM BELCUORE, CSA
Dramaturg
NEENA ARNDT
Production Stage Manager
DONALD E. CLAXON*
Stage Manager
KATHLEEN PETROZIELLO *
cast
IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Vanya
Sonia
Cassandra
Masha
Spike
Nina
Ross Lehman*
Janet Ulrich Brooks*
E. Faye Butler *
Mary Beth Fisher*
Jordan Brown*
Rebecca Buller*
Assistant Director: Adrian Abel Azuedo
Setting: A Farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Time: Present
There will be one 15-minute intermission.
Understudies never substitute for a listed player unless an
announcement is made at the beginning of the play.
Wesley Daniel—Spike; LaNisa Frederick—Cassandra;
Meighan Gerachis*—Sonia; Ted Hoerl—Vanya;
Meghan Reardon—Nina; Hollis Resnik*—Masha
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is presented by
special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
New York.
The video and/or recording of this performance by any
means whatsoever are strictly prohibited.
Goodman productions are made possible in part by the
National Endowment for the Arts; the Illinois Arts Council,
a state agency; and a CityArts 4 program grant from the
City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special
Events.
Goodman Theatre is a constituent of the Theatre
Communications Group, Inc., the national service
organization of nonprofit theaters; the League of Resident
Theatres; the Illinois Arts Alliance and the American Arts
Alliance; the League of Chicago Theatres; and the Illinois
Theatre Association.
Goodman Theatre operates under agreements between the
League of Resident Theatres and Actors’ Equity
Association, the union of professional actors and stage
managers in the United States; the Society of Stage
Directors and Choreographers, Inc., an independent
national labor union; the Chicago Federation of Musicians,
Local No. 10-208, American Federation of Musicians; and
the United Scenic Artists of America, Local 829, AFL-CIO.
House crew and scene shop employees are represented by
the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees,
Local No. 2.
*Denotes member of Actors’ Equity Association, the union
of professional actors and stage managers in the United
States.
notes
Why Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike?
I first encountered the unique talents of Christopher
Durang more than four decades ago, when he was a
graduate student at the Yale School of Drama and I was an
undergraduate at the University of Illinois. I was 20 years
old; Durang was 24. A friend of mine was a new grad
student at Yale, and I went to New Haven, Connecticut to
visit. While I was there, I dropped in on a performance of
one of Durang’s early cabaret pieces, one in which he was
also performing. It was a strange, surreal and altogether
captivating experience—intensely smart, wildly funny and
unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I was impressed and
intrigued, and immediately read a number of his student
plays, including The Idiots Karamazov, which he had
written with Albert Innaurato and which later became one
of his first hits. Years later, as the artistic director of the
Wisdom Bridge Theatre in Rogers Park, I produced The
Idiots Karamazov as well as another of his early works,
Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.
Since then, Durang has amassed a sizeable critical and
popular following for a body of work that has been
variously described as absurdist, iconoclastic and
hilariously surreal. Although he has found success (as both
an actor and a writer) in the worlds of film and television,
it is in the theater where he has thrived. Like many great
comic writers, his greatest works (which include Beyond
Therapy, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Baby with the
Bathwater and Betty’s Summer Vacation) are comprised of
equal parts devastating wit and impending darkness; but
there is also a pervasive hope and guileless innocence that
lifts his work out of the merely absurd into the palpably
human. Durang himself cites a wide variety of writers and
genres as his inspirations: Bertolt Brecht, Noël Coward,
Tennessee Williams, Federico Fellini, James Thurber, Lewis
Carroll, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and Frank
Loesser and the films of Charlie Chaplin and Billy Wilder.
But these disparate sources have created a playwright who
is authentically, proudly offbeat—and has become one of
the great playwrights of the contemporary American
theater.
His latest play, the Tony Award-winning Vanya and Sonia
and Masha and Spike, has brought him widespread
acclaim, and deservedly so; it contains much of the loopy
wit and idiosyncratic vision that marked his early works,
but uses those elements to explore the universal themes of
sibling rivalries, middle-aged regret and the complexities
of a culture evolving faster than the people it surrounds.
My longtime Goodman associate Steve Scott has
assembled a dream cast for this Chicago premiere
production, and I am delighted to once again introduce
audiences to an artist who is a true original and to the offkilter, absurdly funny yet peculiarly recognizable world of
Christopher Durang.
Robert Falls,
Artistic Director
notes
Laughing it Off: the Life and Work of
Christopher Durang
By Neena Arndt
“I like to mix the serious with laughter,” explained
Christopher Durang in a 1998 interview—and indeed,
“zany” and “offbeat” are the sorts of adjectives most
commonly applied to Durang’s plays; since the 1980s the
66-year-old playwright has been known as one of theater’s
most idiosyncratic comic writers. The characters in his
plays—which include a woman who claims to have
invented cheese, a boy who spends his days examining a
collection of glass cocktail stirrers and a woman who keeps
a hedgehog in her privates—may seem either extreme or
non-realistic. But beneath these undeniable oddities,
Durang’s people are alternately hopeful and despairing;
pointedly ironic and gleefully open-hearted; and achingly,
often hilariously, human.
Born in New Jersey to an architect father and stay-at-home
mother, Durang met with sorrow and dysfunction early in
life. Due to an Rh incompatibility between Durang’s
parents’ blood types, the couple’s three subsequent
children died hours after birth; in typical 1950s fashion the
couple buried their grief and attempted to move on from
the tragedies. Perhaps as a result, Durang’s
father’s drinking escalated, as did his mother’s daily
admonishments for him to stop. This resulted
in constant household tension and eventually (when
Durang was 13 years old) a separation, which
Durang experienced as “a relief.” His parents formally
divorced six years later.Fortunately, the brighter moments
of his childhood included trips to New York to see plays
and musicals with his mother, writing a two-page riff on an
I Love Lucy episode that was performed by his second
grade class and collaborating with an eighth grade friend
to write a musical that his school (much to his surprise)
produced. Later, while pursuing a degree in English at
Harvard University, Durang penned the ambitiously titled
The Nature and the Purpose of the Universe, which earned
him a spot at the Yale School of Drama. While pursuing an
MFA in playwriting at Yale, he co-wrote The Idiots
Karamazov (with Albert Innaurato), which was produced
professionally by Yale Repertory Theatre. It starred
Durang’s classmate Meryl Streep as the 80-year-old
translator Constance Garnett, who tries to translate
Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, but in her senility
conflates it with Anton Chekhov, Eugene O’Neill and 20th
century pop culture. Shortly after his Yale graduation,
Durang collaborated with composer Mel Marvin to write the
musical A History of the American Film. For this work, the
young Durang was honored with a Tony Award nomination
for Best Book of a Musical. During the late 1970s, Durang
also collaborated with Yale classmate Sigourney Weaver to
co-author and co-perform a satiric cabaret, Das Lusitania
Songspiel, which simultaneously lampooned and honored
the work of theater and cabaret legends Bertolt Brecht and
Kurt Weill, among others. Das Lusitania Songspiel became
a late-night cult hit, earning Durang and Weaver Drama
Desk Award nominations.
In the early 1980s, Durang scored one of the biggest hits
of his career: Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.
In the play, Sister Mary Ignatius, assisted by her seven-
year-old student Thomas, explains the tenets of
Catholicism. The arrival of several of Sister’s former
students—who, like the Catholic school-educated
playwright, learned their catechism in the 1950s and ‘60s
and are now adults—soon proves Sister’s teachings had
little effect on her classes: one student had two abortions,
another a child out of wedlock, a third abuses both alcohol
and his wife and the fourth is gay. In the ensuing action,
Durang examines what he perceives as the gap between
Catholic doctrine and the practicalities of real life.
Critics lavished praise on the production. The New York
Times’ Frank Rich wrote that the play “remains funny and
controlled even in its most savage moments.” Some
hardline Catholics were not amused, however, and the
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights attempted to
shut down productions in a number of cities. Such national
figures as Phil Donahue and Charles Kuralt explored the
controversy, and news coverage of the dispute came from
such disparate organizations as The New York Times and
Entertainment Tonight. Ticket sales soared due to the
ensuing publicity. Durang himself remarked that the play
“is often viewed gratefully by lapsed Catholics. And more
secure believing Catholics can accept the play as criticism
and agree with much of it, even all of it.”
The prolific Durang wrote steadily through the 1980s,
penning such works as Beyond Therapy, Baby with the
Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo and Laughing
Wild. He also worked periodically in television and film as
both an actor and writer, creating a sketch for Carol
Burnett, writing (with Wendy Wasserstein) the screenplay
for House of Husbands and playing a put-upon executive in
The Secret of My Success. In 1994 he was invited to cochair, with playwright Marsha Norman, the Playwriting
Program at the Juilliard School. He still teaches at the
highly selective program today, and now boasts former
students with noteworthy playwriting successes, including
David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole, Good People), Katori
Hall (The Mountaintop) and Noah Haidle, whose play
Smokefall opened the Goodman’s 2014/2015 Season. In
the late 1990s and 2000s, Durang’s new works included
Betty’s Summer Vacation, Miss Witherspoon, Mrs. Bob
Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge and Why Torture is Wrong,
and the People Who Love Them. His earlier plays became
staples in high school and college theater departments;
students appreciated his cheerful unconventionality, absurd
humor and slightly loopy outlook.
In his latest play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,
which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013, Durang
makes use of the same distinctive wit that made him
famous, but these dramatic tools now serve as a means of
addressing such sobering ideas as middle-aged regret, the
prospect of aging alone, the travails of being a has-been
and the arguably worse scenario of being a never-was.
While these may seem like prime ingredients for tragedy,
in Durang’s deft hands they transform seamlessly into
hilarity.
profiles
JANET ULRICH BROOKS* (Sonia) returns to Goodman
Theatre, where she previously appeared in The Seagull, A
True History of the Johnstown Flood and Teddy Ferrara.
She is a company member of TimeLine Theatre, where her
credits include the Apple Family plays That Hopey Changey
Thing and Sorry, The How and the Why and Jeff Awardnominated performances in 33 Variations, A Walk in the
Woods, All My Sons, When She Danced, Not Enough Air
and Weekend. Other Chicago credits include To Master the
Art at Broadway Playhouse; South of Settling at
Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Ten Chimneys at
Northlight Theatre; The Original Grease and Speech &
Debate at American Theater Company; Failure: A Love
Story at Victory Gardens Theater; Golda’s Balcony (Jeff
Award) at Pegasus Players and work with About Face
Theatre, Writers Theatre and Strawdog Theatre Company.
Television credits include Chicago Fire, the ABC pilot
Doubt, Boss, Underemployed and The Playboy Club. Film
credits include Divergent, Conviction, Polish Bar, One
Small Hitch, I Heart Shakey, Fools, Market Value and the
shorts For a Good Time and Kanzler. Ms. Brooks was the
first recipient of the Ed See Outstanding Theatre Alumnus
Award from the University of Central Missouri.
JORDAN BROWN* (Spike) returns to Goodman Theatre,
where he previously appeared in Brigadoon (Jeff Award
nomination) and the 2012 production of A Christmas Carol.
Chicago credits include White Guy On The Bus (Northlight
Theatre); Iphigenia in Aulis (Court Theatre); In the
Company of Men (Profiles Theatre); The Fall of
Heaven (Congo Square Theatre Company); The Pitmen
Painters (TimeLine Theatre) and Sense and
Sensibility (Northlight Theatre). Off-Broadway, he played
Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing (Theatre Row in the
Beckett Theatre). In Baltimore, he appeared in A Skull in
Connemara (Centerstage Theatre). Mr. Brown’s television
credits include Sirens and Crisis. He is a graduate
of the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts.
REBECCA BULLER* (Nina) returns to Goodman Theatre,
where her previous credits include The Seagull and an
understudy role in A True History of the Johnstown Flood.
Chicago credits include Hesperia (Writers Theatre);
Iphigenia 2.0 (Next Theatre); All My Sons and Dolly West’s
Kitchen (TimeLine Theatre Company); The Cherry Orchard
(Strawdog Theatre Company); Boys & Girls (Theatre
Seven of Chicago) and Cut to the Quick (Side Project).
Regional credits include The Diary of Anne Frank
(co-production with Indiana Repertory Theatre and Pioneer
Theatre in Utah); Metamorphoses (Swine Palace) and Ariel
View (New York International Fringe Festival). Television
and film credits include The Playboy Club, Sirens, Man of
Steel, and the upcoming Batman V. Superman: Dawn of
Justice.
E. FAYE BUTLER* (Cassandra) returns to Goodman
Theatre, where she most recently appeared in Pullman
Porter Blues during the 2013/2014 Season. Previous
Goodman credits include Crowns, Ain’t Misbehavin’, A
Christmas Carol and Purlie. Chicago credits include An
Issue of Blood at Victory Gardens Theater; Hairspray and
Thoroughly Modern Millie at Marriott Theatre; The Little
Foxes, La Bête and Caroline, or Change at Court
Theatre; Crumbs from the Table of Joy at Steppenwolf
Theatre Company; Seussical! at Chicago Shakespeare
Theater; Could It Be Magic? The Barry Manilow
Songbook at Mercury Theater; Hello, Dolly!, Hot
Mikado and Sophisticated Ladies at Drury Lane Theatre
and Black Pearl Sings, Ella and Dinah Was at Northlight
Theatre, among others. National and regional tours
include Mamma Mia!, Dinah Was, Ain’t Misbehavin’,
Nunsense, Don’t Bother Me and I Can’t Cope. Regionally,
she has appeared in Trouble in Mind, Polk County,
Oklahoma! and Pullman Porter Blues at Arena Stage in
Washington, D.C.; Dancing with the Holy Ghosts at the
New York Film and Play Festival; Saving Aimee and The
Gospel According to Fishman at Signature Theatre; The
Wiz at La Jolla Playhouse; Once on This Island at
Baltimore’s Centerstage; Purlie at Pasadena Playhouse and
Pullman Porter Blues at Seattle Repertory Theatre. She is
the recipient of six Jeff Awards, four Black Theater Alliance
Awards, a Kathryn V. Lamkey Award, an After Dark Award,
a John Barrymore Award, a Rockford Area Music Industry
Award, two Helen Hayes Awards, an Excellence in the Arts
Award, a Black Excellence Award for Pullman Porter Blues
and an Ovation Award. Ms. Butler was the recipient of the
2011 Sarah Siddons Society Leading Lady Award; was
named a 2012 Lunt Fontanne Fellow and was inducted into
the National Women in the Arts Museum in Washington,
D.C., in November 2012.
MARY BETH FISHER* (Masha) most recently appeared at
the Goodman in The Little Foxes. Ms. Fisher made her
Goodman Theatre debut in Marvin’s Room in 1993. Since
then, she has been a frequent collaborator at the
Goodman, appearing in The Night of the Iguana, Light up
the Sky, Design for Living, Spinning Into Butter, Boy Gets
Girl, The Guys, The Rose Tattoo, Heartbreak House, Dinner
with Friends, The Clean House, Frank’s Home, Rock ‘n’
Roll, The Seagull, God of Carnage and Luna Gale. Chicago
credits include Dead Man’s Cell Phone, The Dresser and
The Memory of Water (Steppenwolf Theatre Company);
Angels in America, Three Tall Women, The Year of Magical
Thinking (Jeff Award), The Wild Duck, What the Butler
Saw, Arcadia, Travesties and The Importance of Being
Earnest (Court Theatre); The Taming of the Shrew
(Chicago Shakespeare Theater); The Laramie Project, The
Little Dog Laughed and Theatre District (About Face
Theatre); The Marriage of Figaro (Remy Bumppo Theatre
Company); My Own Stranger (Writers Theatre) and White
Guy on the Bus and Away (Northlight Theatre). New York
credits include Frank’s Home (Playwrights Horizons); Boy
Gets Girl (Drama League honoree, Drama Desk and Lucille
Lortel nominations), The Radical Mystique and By the Sea,
By the Sea, By the Beautiful Sea (Manhattan Theatre
Club); The Night of the Iguana (Roundabout Theatre
Company); Extremities (Westside Arts) and Are You Now
or Have You Ever Been? (Promenade Theatre). Regional
credits include the West Coast premiere of the Goodman
Theatre production of Luna Gale (Kirk Douglas Theatre)
and the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl’s Dear Elizabeth
(Yale and Berkeley Repertory Theatres). Television and
film credits include Chicago Fire, Chicago Code, State of
Romance, Without a Trace, Numb3rs, Prison Break, NYPD
Blue, Profiler, Early Edition, Formosa Betrayed, Dragonfly
and Trauma. Ms. Fisher received the 2010 Chicago’s
Leading Lady Award from the Sarah Siddons Society and
was named Best Actress in Chicago magazine’s “Best of
Chicago” issue (2010). She was an inaugural LuntFontanne Fellow at the Ten Chimneys Foundation
representing Goodman Theatre and was a Beinecke Fellow
at Yale University.
ROSS LEHMAN* (Vanya) returns to Goodman Theatre,
where he appeared in A Christmas Carol, Stage Kiss, The
Rover, Wings, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore and A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum (Jeff Award). Chicago
credits include the Major General in The Pirates of
Penzance, Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, Edna Turnblad in
Hairspray, Max Bialystock in The Producers and Ko-Ko in
Hot Mikado (Jeff Award) at Marriott Theatre; Ragueneau
in Cyrano De Bergerac, Ford in The Merry Wives of
Windsor, Jacques in As You Like It, Feste in Twelfth Night
and Dudley/Dromio in The Comedy of Errors at Chicago
Shakespeare Theater; She Loves Me, As You Like It, and
Bach at Leipzig at Writers Theatre; Mizlansky/Zilinsky Or
Schmucks, The Man Who Came to Dinner and One Flew
Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at Steppenwolf Theatre Company
and Uncle Vanya, A Man of No Importance (Jeff Award),
The Dresser (After Dark Award), Syncopation, Sugar,
Waiting for Godot, Amadeus and Where’s Charley? (Jeff
Award) at Apple Tree Theatre. He appeared as Captain
Andy in Show Boat at the Lyric Opera. On Broadway, Mr.
Lehman appeared as Trinculo in The Tempest (with Patrick
Stewart), Harding in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
Hysterium in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum and in Epic Proportions. He teaches acting at Loyola
University.
CHRISTOPHER DURANG (Playwright) won the 2013 Tony
Award for Best Play for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike. His works include A History of the American Film
(Tony nomination, Best Book of a Musical); The Actor’s
Nightmare; Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You
(Obie Award); Beyond Therapy; Baby with the Bathwater
(Playwrights Horizons); The Marriage of Bette and Boo
(The Public Theater, Obie Award and Dramatists Guild Hull
Warriner Award); Laughing Wild (Playwrights Horizons);
Durang/Durang (an evening of six plays at Manhattan
Theatre Club); Sex and Longing (Lincoln Center Theater);
Betty’s Summer Vacation (Playwrights Horizons, Obie
Award); Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge (City
Theatre in Pittsburgh); Adrift in Macao (a musical written
with composer Peter Melnick, at Philadelphia Stage
Company); Miss Witherspoon (McCarter Theatre and
Playwrights Horizons, Pulitzer Prize finalist) and Why
Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Loved Them (The
Public Theater). Mr. Durang has a BA from Harvard
University and an MFA in playwriting from the Yale School
of Drama. Since 1994, he and Marsha Norman have been
co-chairs of the playwriting program at the Juilliard
School. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild’s council
and lives in Pennsylvania.
STEVE SCOTT (Director) is the producer of Goodman
Theatre, where he has overseen more than 200
productions; he is also a member of the Goodman’s Artistic
Collective. Goodman directing credits include Horton
Foote’s Blind Date; Rabbit Hole; Binky Rudich and the
Two-Speed Clock and No One Will Be Immune for the
David Mamet Festival; Dinner with Friends; Wit; the world
premiere of Tom Mula’s Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol; A
Midsummer Night’s Dream (co-directed with Michael
Maggio) and the 2011 and 2012 editions of A Christmas
Carol. Other recent directing credits include Yellow Face,
The DNA Trail and Yohen (Silk Road Rising); American
Myth (American Blues Theatre); The Mandrake (A Red
Orchid Theatre); Red, Clybourne Park, Elemeno Pea, Elling,
A Delicate Balance, Lettice and Lovage and Shadowlands
(Redtwist Theatre); Souvenir and Black Pearl Sings
(Northlight Theatre); The Beauty Queen of Leenane,
Buried Child and Dealer’s Choice (Shattered Globe
Theatre); Frozen (Next Theatre Company); A Midsummer
Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing (St. Lawrence
Shakespeare Festival); The Teapot Scandals of 1923 and
Falsettos (Porchlight Theatre); The Grapes of Wrath, A
Streetcar Named Desire, Execution of Justice, Ah,
Wilderness!, God’s Country and Judgment at Nuremberg
(Theatre Conservatory at Roosevelt University’s College of
Performing Arts, where he is a faculty member); and a
number of productions for Eclipse Theatre (where he is an
ensemble member) including Lynn Nottage’s Intimate
Apparel, Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman in Mind, Arthur Miller’s
After the Fall, John Guare’s Six Degrees of
Separation, Rebecca Gilman’s Boy Gets Girl, Keith Reddin’s
Big Time, Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite and Lanford Wilson’s
The Moonshot Tapes. He has directed for a variety of other
companies including Theatre Wit, the Buffalo Theatre
Ensemble, National Jewish Theatre, Theatre at the Center,
Lifeline Theatre, Organic Touchstone Theatre and the Lyric
Opera Center for American Artists. Mr. Scott has served on
panels for Theatre Communications Group, the Society of
Stage Directors and Choreographers, United States Artists,
the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the Chicago Council on
Fine Arts, the Illinois Arts Council, National Endowment for
the Arts and the Pew Charitable Trust/Philadelphia Theatre
Initiative. He is a member of the Jeff Committee’s Artist
and Technical Team, a board member of Season of
Concern, artistic advisor for Silk Road Rising and an
associate artist with Chicago Dramatists and Collaboraction
theater companies. He was one of six resident directors for
WBEZ’s series Stories on Stage, and has contributed
articles to a variety of publications including the
Encyclopedia of Chicago. Mr. Scott is the recipient of six
Jeff Award nominations, an After Dark Award, the Illinois
Theatre Association’s Award of Honor and Eclipse Theatre
Company’s Corona Award. As an actor, he most recently
appeared in the Next Theatre’s production of Are You Now
or Have You Ever Been…? (Jeff Award for Outstanding
Ensemble).
CHARLIE CORCORAN (Scenic Designer) returns to
Goodman Theatre, where he previously served as
associate scenic designer for Finishing the Picture and
Other Desert Cities. Off-Broadway credits include Billy and
Ray (Vineyard Theatre); The Emperor Jones (Hewes
Design Award nomination), Port Authority, The Weir, The
Freedom of The City and The Field (Irish Repertory
Theatre); Craving for Travel (Peter J. Sharp Theatre);
Smash (Julliard School); The Last Smoker in America
(Westside Theatre); A Perfect Future (Cherry Lane
Theatre); The Late Christopher Bean (TACT); Sophistry,
The Black Monk and The Bully Pulpit (Beckett Theatre) and
Entrances and Exits (Primary Stages). Regional credits
include The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro
(McCarter Theatre); Absurd Person Singular (Two River
Theatre); The Night Watcher and Without Walls (Center
Theatre Group) and Fallen Angels (Shakespeare Theatre of
New Jersey). Opera credits include Fidelio (Santa Fe
Opera); The Bartered Bridge and Cosi Fan Tutte (coproduction of Metropolitan Opera and Julliard Opera); Don
Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro (Julliard Opera) and
The Magic Flute (Music Academy of the West). Television
credits include Believe and Madam Secretary.
AMY CLARK (Costume Designer) Broadway costume
designs include A Night with Janis Joplin and Chaplin
(Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award
nominations). Other recent designs include Heathers the
Musical (New World Stages); the 145th and 144th editions
of Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus; Chaplin (St.
Petersburg, Russia); My Life is a Musical (Bay Street
Theater); Hello Dolly (The MUNY); Kiss Me Kate
(Barrington Stage Company); Noises Off (Pittsburgh Public
Theater); Somewhere (Hartford Stage); On Your Toes
(City Center Encores!) and The Little Mermaid (Paper Mill
Playhouse). Ms. Clark received the 2012 Theatre Hall of
Fame Emerging Artists Fellowship. She holds an MFA in
costume design from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
ROBERT PERRY (Lighting Designer) previously
collaborated with Goodman Theatre on Drowning Crow
during the 2001/2002 Season. Other Chicago credits
include Love’s Labor’s Lost (Chicago Shakespeare Theater,
Jeff Award nomination). Off-Broadway credits include Lost
Lake directed by Dan Sullivan (Manhattan Theatre Club);
Crowns (Second Stage, Vivian Robinson Audelco Award);
Boston Marriage (The Public Theater); Reefer
Madness (Variety Arts Theatre); Iphigeneia at Aulis (Pearl
Theatre Company); An Adult Evening with Shel Silverstein,
The Water Engine (Drama Desk Award nomination), Sexual
Perversity in Chicago and The Hothouse (Atlantic Theater
Company); For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide
when the Rainbow is Enuf (American Place Theatre)
and Kingdom of Earth (The Drama Dept.). Regional credits
include Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Arena
Stage); Coriolanus (The Shakespeare Theatre); A Doll’s
House (Hartford Stage); The Night of the Iguana (Dallas
Theater Center); The Skin of Our Teeth (California
Shakespeare Festival, Dean Goodman Choice Award) and
The Glass Menagerie and Crumbs from the Table of
Joy (Yale Repertory Theatre). Mr. Perry holds an MFA from
the Yale School of Drama and BFA from North Carolina
School of the Arts.
RICHARD WOODBURY (Composer/Sound Designer) is
the resident sound designer at the Goodman, where his
credits include music and/or sound design for The Little
Foxes; stop. reset.; Rapture, Blister, Burn; Ask Aunt
Susan; Luna Gale; Measure for Measure; Teddy Ferrara;
Other Desert Cities; Crowns; Camino Real; A Christmas
Carol; Red; God of Carnage; The Seagull; Candide; A True
History of the Johnstown Flood; Hughie/Krapp’s Last
Tape; Animal Crackers; Magnolia; Desire Under the Elms;
The Ballad of Emmett Till; Talking Pictures; The Actor;
Blind Date; Rabbit Hole; King Lear; Frank’s Home; The
Dreams of Sarah Breedlove; A Life in the Theatre;
Dollhouse; Finishing the Picture; Moonlight and Magnolias;
The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?; Lobby Hero and many others.
Steppenwolf Theatre Company credits include Slowgirl;
Belleville; Middletown; Up; The Seafarer; August: Osage
County; I Just Stopped By to See the Man; Hysteria; The
Beauty Queen of Leenane; The Memory of Water; The
Libertine and others. Broadway credits include original
music and/or sound design for Desire Under the Elms;
August: Osage County; Talk Radio; Long Day’s Journey
into Night; A Moon for the Misbegotten; Death of a
Salesman and The Young Man from Atlanta. Mr.
Woodbury’s work has also been heard at Stratford
Shakespeare Festival in Canada; London’s Lyric and
National theaters; in Paris and at regional theaters across
the United States. Mr. Woodbury has received Jeff, Helen
Hayes and IRNE Awards for Outstanding Sound Design
and the Ruth Page Award for Outstanding Collaborative
Artist, as well as nominations for Drama Desk (New York)
and Ovation (Los Angeles) Awards. Mr. Woodbury has
composed numerous commissioned scores for dance and
has performed live with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and
Merce Cunningham Dance companies.
NEENA ARNDT (Dramaturg) is the associate dramaturg at
Goodman Theatre. In six seasons, she has served as
production dramaturg for more than 20 productions,
including Robert Falls’ productions of Measure for Measure,
The Iceman Cometh and The Seagull, David Cromer’s
production of Sweet Bird of Youth and the world premiere
of Rebecca Gilman’s Luna Gale. She has also worked with
the American Repertory Theater, Milwaukee Repertory
Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, the New Harmony
Project and Actors Shakespeare Project, among others.
Ms. Arndt has taught at Boston University and DePaul
University. She holds an MFA in dramaturgy from the
A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at
Harvard University, and a BA in linguistics from Pomona
College.
ALDEN VASQUEZ* (Production Stage Manager) has
stage-managed 24 productions of A Christmas Carol and
more than 70 productions at Goodman Theatre. His
Chicago credits include 14 productions at Steppenwolf
Theatre Company, including the Broadway productions of
The Song of Jacob Zulu (also in Perth, Australia) and The
Rise and Fall of Little Voice. His regional theater credits
include productions at American Theater Company,
American Stage Theater Company, Arizona Theatre
Company, Ford’s Theatre, Madison Repertory Theatre,
Manhattan Theatre Club, Northlight Theatre, Peninsula
Players Theatre, Remains Theatre, Royal George Theatre,
Trinity Repertory Company and the Weston Playhouse. He
teaches stage management at DePaul University, is a 31year member of Actors’ Equity Association and a US Air
Force veteran.
KATHLEEN PETROZIELLO* (Stage Manager) returns to
the Goodman Theatre, where she was previously a stage
manager for Two Trains Running, Brigadoon, Venus in Fur,
A Christmas Carol (2013 and 2014), Sweet Bird of Youth
and Joan Dark (performed in Linz, Austria). Other credits
include The Wheel, The Birthday Party, Time Stands
Still, Sex with Strangers, Fake and Of Mice and Men at
Steppenwolf Theatre Company; The Great Fire, The Last
Act of Lilka Kadison, Trust, Our Future Metropolis,
Argonautika and Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single
Day at Lookingglass Theatre Company; Death of a
Salesman, Avenue Q and A Number at the Weston
Playhouse Theatre Company; Panic and Final Curtain at the
International Mystery Writers Festival and the Chicago
productions of Altar Boyz and Million Dollar Quartet.
ROBERT FALLS (Goodman Theatre Artistic Director) has
been the artistic director of Goodman Theatre since 1986.
From 1977 to 1985, he was the artistic director of Wisdom
Bridge Theatre. Most recently, Mr. Falls reprised his
critically acclaimed production of The Iceman Cometh,
featuring the original cast headed by Nathan Lane and
Brian Dennehy, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Last
fall, he directed Rebecca Gilman’s Luna Gale at the Kirk
Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles, as well as a new
production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni for the Lyric Opera of
Chicago. Other recent productions include Measure for
Measure and the world and off-Broadway premieres of
Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian. Next season at the
Goodman, Mr. Falls and Goodman Playwright-in-Residence
Seth Bockley will co-direct their world premiere adaptation
of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666, and Mr. Falls will also direct the
Chicago premiere of Rebecca Gilman’s Soups, Stews, and
Casseroles: 1976. Among Mr. Falls’ other credits are The
Seagull, King Lear, Desire Under the Elms, John Logan’s
Red, John Robin Baitz’s Three Hotels, Eric Bogosian’s Talk
Radio and Conor McPherson’s Shining City; the world
premieres of Richard Nelson’s Frank’s Home, Arthur Miller’s
Finishing the Picture (his last play), Eric Bogosian’s Griller,
Steve Tesich’s The Speed of Darkness and On the Open
Road, John Logan’s Riverview: A Melodrama with Music
and Rebecca Gilman’s A True History of the Johnstown
Flood, Blue Surge and Dollhouse; the American premieres
of Alan Ayckbourn’s House and Garden; and the Broadway
premiere of Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida. Mr. Falls’
Broadway productions of Death of a Salesman and Long
Day’s Journey into Night received seven Tony Awards and
three Drama Desk Awards.
ROCHE EDWARD SCHULFER (Goodman Theatre
Executive Director) is in his 35th season as executive
director. On May 18, 2015 he received the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the League of Chicago Theatres.
In 2014, he received the Visionary Leadership Award from
Theatre Communications Group. To honor his 40th
anniversary with the theatre, Mr. Schulfer was honored
with a star on the Goodman’s “Walkway of Stars.” During
his tenure he has overseen more than 335 productions,
including close to 130 world premieres. He launched the
Goodman’s annual production of A Christmas Carol, which
celebrated 37 years as Chicago’s leading holiday arts
tradition this season. In partnership with Artistic Director
Robert Falls, Mr. Schulfer led the establishment of quality,
diversity and community engagement as the core values
of Goodman Theatre. Under their tenure, the Goodman
has received numerous awards for excellence, including
the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater,
recognition by Time magazine as the “Best Regional
Theatre” in the US, the Pulitzer Prize for Lynn Nottage’s
Ruined and many Jeff Awards for outstanding achievement
in Chicago area theater. Mr. Schulfer has negotiated the
presentation of numerous Goodman Theatre productions to
many national and international venues. From 1988 to
2000, he coordinated the relocation of the Goodman to
Chicago’s Theatre District. He is a founder and two-time
chair of the League of Chicago Theatres, the trade
association of more than 200 Chicago area theater
companies and producers. Mr. Schulfer has been
privileged to serve in leadership roles with Arts Alliance
Illinois (the statewide advocacy coalition); Theatre
Communications Group (the national service organization
for more than 450 not-for-profit theaters); the Performing
Arts Alliance (the national advocacy consortium of more
than 18,000 organizations and individuals); the League of
Resident Theatres (the management association of 65
leading US theater companies); Lifeline Theatre in Rogers
Park and the Arts & Business Council. He is honored to
have been recognized by Actors’ Equity Association for his
work promoting diversity and equal opportunity in Chicago
theater; the American Arts Alliance; the Arts & Business
Council for distinguished contributions to Chicago’s artistic
vitality for more than 25 years; Chicago magazine and the
Chicago Tribune as a “Chicagoan of the Year”; the City of
Chicago; Columbia College Chicago for entrepreneurial
leadership; Arts Alliance Illinois; the Joseph Jefferson
Awards Committee for his partnership with Robert Falls;
North Central College with an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts
degree; Lawyers for the Creative Arts; Lifeline Theatre’s
Raymond R. Snyder Award for Commitment to the Arts;
Season of Concern for support of direct care for those
living with HIV/AIDS; and the Vision 2020 Equality in
Action Medal for promoting gender equality and diversity in
the workplace. Mr. Schulfer is a member of the adjunct
faculty of the Theatre School at DePaul University, and a
graduate of the University of Notre Dame where he
managed the cultural arts commission.
FOR VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE:
DANA STRINGER, Stage Management Intern; MICHELLE BENDA, Assistant
Lighting Designer; ADRIAN AGUILAR, People’s Champ Personal Training;
MARLEE LGARNER, Production Assistant