Download A free Outreach Touring Production

Agatha Christie’s
T HE S ECRET A DVERSARY
A Tommy and Tuppence Adventure
World premiere adaptation by David Hansen
Directed by Lisa Ortenzi
A free Outreach Touring Production
T HE S ECRET A DVERSARY
Written by David Hansen
Directed by Lisa Ortenzi
producing artistic director • Charles Fee
production manager • Chris Flinchum
scenic design • Terry Martin
costume design • Esther Montgomery Haberlen
sound design • Richard Ingraham
dance choreographer • Carli Taylor Miluk-Markiewitz
combat choreographer • Kelly Elliott
properties • Terry Martin
assistant director • Chennelle Bryant-Harris
set construction • Mark Cytron, Terry Martin & Lindsay Loar
costume shop manager • Esther Montgomery Haberlen
assistant costume shop manager/draper • Leah Loar
rehearsal stage manager • Diana Lehotsky
dialect coach • Chuck Richie
Tommy
Tuppence
company • Debbie Cluts, Ray Caspio, James Rankin,
Brittni Shambaugh Addison & Devon Turchan
Renderings by Esther Haberlen
education staff • Kelly Schaffer Florian, David Hansen & Lisa Ortenzi
THE OUTREACH TOURING PRODUCTIONS
a chronology
2016
2015
2014
2013
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
The Secret Adversary
The Great Globe Itself
Seven Ages
Double Heart
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Twice Told Tales of the Decameron
On the Dark Side of Twilight
Two By Chekhov
Seeing Red
Before the Storm
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
Seven Ages
Ten In One
Met by Moonlight
Stumble
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
Straight on ‘til Morning
The Way You Look Tonight
To Be Young, Gifted and Black: A Portrait of
Lorraine Hansberry In Her Own Words
Brother Can You Spare a Dime: The Social
Conscience of the American Musical
Landscape With Figures: Two Mississippi
Plays
The World of Sholom Aleichem
The Mask
The Last Yankee
Splendid Mummer
People Who Led To My Plays
The Dearest of Friends
The Boar and The Marriage Proposal
THE COMPANY
Deborah Cluts (Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley) is thrilled to be working with the Education
Department of Great Lakes Theater again in her debut with the touring production!
Previously, Deborah was an Actor-Teacher with Great Lakes Theater for four years. Since then she
has directed, taught, and performed at numerous other theaters including: Cleveland Play House,
Talespinner Children’s Theatre, Cleveland Public Theatre, Geauga Lyric Theater Guild, Aurora
Community Theater, Brecksville Theater on the Square, and True North Theatre. Deborah took a
brief hiatus from performing with the birth of her son Griffin last year and is thrilled to be
returning to the stage! She would like to thank her family for picking up the babysitting duties and
David and Lisa for casting this “old bean.” She hopes her fellow Agatha Christie fans enjoy the
show! Ray Caspio (Boris, Julius Hersheimmer, Conrad) is a performance and teaching artist whose
original work explores identity and the performer-audience relationship. He conceived and
performed TingleTangle during his tenure as Associate Artistic Director of Theater Ninjas, where
performer-creator credits include The Turing Machine (co-writer), Code: Preludes, The
Excavation, Ninja Days @ the Cleveland Museum of Art and Telephone. He recently starred in
Cleveland Public Theatre/Playhouse Square’s The SantaLand Diaries. Ray teaches for Playhouse
Square, the Cleveland Museum of Art and MetroHealth Arts-in-Medicine. He created the Uncle
Toots web series, which he is developing into a performance piece. Ray received a 2016 Creative
Workforce Fellowship, a program of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture. Funding for
the Fellowship program is made possible by the generous support of Cuyahoga County residents
through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. raycaspio.com
Brittni Shambaugh Addison (Rita Vandemeyer, Annette, Young Woman, Jane, Hotel Maid) is
beyond thrilled to be part of this year's outreach tour with Great Lakes Theater! She recently
moved to Cleveland from Honolulu, Hawaii, where she was a member of the Professional Acting
Company with the Honolulu Theatre for Youth and an adjunct professor at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa, teaching Beginning Directing and Beginning Acting. Since relocating to
Cleveland in August, she has performed with Cleveland Play House in the Classroom Matinee
productions of Kicked and No Silly Season, as well as with Cleveland Public Theatre in the world
premiere production of Incendiaries. She holds a BA in Theatre and an MFA in Directing, and
currently works as the Education Associate at CPH. Some of her favorite acting credits include
Terri in Handler, Carly in Reasons to be Pretty, Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, Del Scarlet in A
Bollywood Robin Hood, and The Fool in King Lear.
James Alexander Rankin (Whittington, Carter, Servant, Sir James, Bellman, Zelig) is overjoyed
to be working with Great Lakes again. Some of his past credits include, Double Heart, The
Mysterious Affair at Styles, and The Great Globe Itself all of which are past outreach tours. James
has also worked with Ensemble Theatre on The Iceman Cometh, Beyond the Horizon, The Great
Gatsby, and will be playing Ginger in Jerusalem . He has also worked with Dobama Theatre,
Cleveland Public Theatre, Tri-C Western Campus, CVLT, Clague Playhouse and various other
theaters around Cleveland. James is very grateful for this opportunity, he would like to thank David
H, Robert E, Lisa O, John and Helen R, Ian H, Celeste C, Nathan M, and his cats. Thank you all
and I hope you enjoy the show.
Devon Turchan (Tommy Beresford) is pleased to work with Great Lakes Theater once again as he
did as a child in productions of A Christmas Carol and Gypsy. He earned his BS in Journalism
from Ohio University and continues to work in that field as well as in performance. Theatre credits
include Cleveland Opera Theater's A Streetcar Named Desire, Claude in Hair at Near West
Theatre, Talespinner Children’s Theatre, TrueNorth Theatre and Kringle’s Inventionasium.
Lisa Ortenzi (Director) serves as the Director of Educational Programming for Great Lakes Theater.
Outreach Tour directing credits include: Ten in One, The Decameron, The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
and Double Heart which was chosen for the 2013 New York International Fringe Festival. Lisa is the
recipient of a 2013 NY Fringe Overall Excellence Award in Directing and the 2006-2007 President’s
Award for her service to Great Lakes Theater. In the Cleveland area, Lisa serves as adjunct faculty at Baldwin
Wallace University. Lisa has also served as the Education Director/Artistic Associate of the Cleveland Youth
Theatre, directed for the Cleveland Public Theatre, Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Baldwin Wallace University,
Lorain County Community College and a variety of Community Theaters and High School Drama
programs. Lisa holds BAC degrees in Theatre and Radio/TV/Film from Bowling Green State University and a
Master’s in Directing from Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts.
Terry J. Martin (Scenic Design) is thrilled to be designing this year’s outreach tour. Regional credits include
Scenic Design, Scenic Artist and Props for such companies as Cleveland Opera, GLT, Cleveland Institute of
Music, Kent State University, Baldwin Wallace University, Tri-C West, Berea Summer Theatre, Lyric Opera
Cleveland, Ensemble Theater, Dobama, Bad Epitaph Theater Co., Cleveland Public Theatre and Cleveland
Ballet. NYC credits include Circle Repertory Theater and Lincoln Center Institute (Associate Artistic
Director). Terry is a graduate of Wittenberg University. Esther M. Haberlen (Costume Design) is Costume Director for GLT and its sister companies Idaho
Shakespeare Festival and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival. Regional Design Credits include Cleveland Public
Theatre, Cleveland Institute of Music, Case Western Reserve MFA Acting Program, Chagrin Falls Performing
Arts Academy, Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, Dobama Theatre, Willoughby Fine Arts Association, Beck
Center for the Arts, and Cleveland Opera Theater. Other regional production credits include the Chautauqua
Conservatory Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theatre and The Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. Esther holds a BFA in
Theater Production & Design from State University of New York – Fredonia.
Richard Ingraham (Sound Design) has designed sound for numerous theaters in the area and around the
country. Recent sound designs include Peter and the Starcatcher for Dobama Theatre, Death and the Maiden for
Mamaí Theatre and American Idiot at Beck Center. Richard works as an AV Systems Designer for Westlake
Reed Leskosky and has served as a show control programmer and installer for several clients, including Royal
Caribbean Cruise Lines and as a consultant to software developers for live performance including Stage Research
and Richmond Sound Design. He has also taught sound design and related coursework at The Carnegie Mellon
School of Drama and The University of Evansville Theatre Department.
Annette
Julius
Boris
Rita
Vandemeyer
Sir James
Renderings by Esther Haberlen
On Adaptation by David Hansen, playwright
So an apprentice goes to Michelangelo seeking guidance and instruction. He says,
“Master, how were you able take a formless slab of marble and transform it into
something as soul-touchingly beautiful as David?”
“It was easy,” said Michelangelo. “I chipped away everything that didn’t look like
David.”
Creating a play from a novel requires much the same philosophy. True, the source
material, in this case a novel by Agatha Christie, is hardly a raw material. The Secret
Adversary is already a complete, well-made work of art in its own right. My task as
playwright-adaptor was to look into the book and to chip away everything that
wasn’t a one-hour play capable of being performed by five actors.
Four years ago, when Great Lakes produced an outreach tour of Christie’s first
novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the task was simpler. Much of the important
action takes place in and around a single house. In my adaptation of that novel, I decided that all the action of the play
could take place entirely in and around that house. Events which occurred in other places (for example, in the
neighboring village) could be referred to or told directly to the audience by the narrator of the novel, Captain Hastings.
Unlike most of Christie’s most popular works, however, Adversary is not a murder mystery. Murder occurs, true, but it
is not central to the tale. The young adventurers, Tommy and Tuppence, are caught in an international intrigue. The
action takes place in numerous locales throughout London, in a village as far away as Liverpool – the prologue to the
book is even set on the deck of the ill-fated RMS Lusitania!
Adaptation therefore requires deciding which moments would be the best to dramatize – to be performed onstage –
which can be alluded to or told as a story, and which can be dropped entirely from the narrative. Answering these
questions first can then aid in deciding which characters will be included, and which actors will perform them.
In The Mysterious Affair at Styles, it was important not to eliminate too many characters, because a compelling murder
mystery requires several possible suspects. The Secret Adversary requires its suspects as well. More importantly,
however, we needed to maintain the sense that London is an international center, and that the stakes are global.
One final and very important consideration pertains to the difference between one’s relationship to a book and to a
play. A reader may read a novel at their own speed, even going back and forth through the pages to clearly understand
the narrative. A play happens at one constant pace with no opportunity to “rewind” the action. In the case of a mystery
tale, the playwright must be important clues are not too subtle for an audience to catch the first time, because there is
no going back.
Great Lakes Theater’s team of designers and performers have, through their combined talents, taken this slimmeddown adaptation and expanded upon it to create the illusion of Christie’s complete novel. We hope you delight in
meeting our young adventurers and thrill to their encounter with The Secret Adversary.
David Hansen (playwright) is Great Lakes Theater's Education Outreach Associate. David has written the GLT
outreach touring productions The Great Globe Itself, Double Heart (The Courtship of Beatrice and Benedick), On the
Dark Side Of Twilight and an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The Mysterious Affair at Styles. Other works include
Rosalynde & The Falcon, Adventures In Slumberland and his award-winning solo performance I Hate This (a play
without the baby). This summer David will be directing GLT’s mini-tour of Twelfth Night (As Told By Malvolio) in
partnership with Cleveland Public Library as part of First Folio: The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare. David is a
member of the Cleveland Play House Playwrights’ Unit and the Dramatists Guild of America. davidhansen.org.
AGATHA CHRISTIE’S DETECTIVES
Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
(1921) introduced detective Hercule Poirot. The mustachioed
Belgian sleuth would appear in some 30 novels, including The
Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient
Express (1934) and Death on the Nile (1937). The final Poirot
novel was Curtain (1975). On screen, a string of actors
portrayed Poirot, starting with Austin Trevor in Alibi (1931).
Albert Finney earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his
portrayal of Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (1974).
Peter Ustinov played Poirot in a half-dozen movies, including
Death on the Nile (1978) and Appointment with Death (1988).
Since 1989, the English actor David Suchet has portrayed
Christie’s fictional detective on the British TV series Poirot.
Another famous Christie creation, sleuth Jane Marple,
appeared in some earlier short stories but made her novel
Hercule Poirot
debut in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). The tweedy
Great Lakes Theater
Miss Marple, featured in a dozen books, first appeared on the
big screen in Murder, She Said (1962), starring the Academy Award-winning English actress Margaret
Rutherford. Angela Lansbury took on the roll of Miss Marple in The Mirror Crack’d (1980) which co-starred
Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson. Lansbury went on to star as the crime-solving mystery writer Jessica
Fletcher, a character reportedly inspired in part by Miss Marple, in the popular TV series Murder, She Wrote
(1984 – 1996). Helen Hayes and Joan Hickson are among the other actresses to play Miss Marple.
However, it is the set of married detective and adventures, known as Tommy and Tuppence, who perhaps
best represent the real-life Agatha Christie. As Introduced in her second novel, The Secret Adversary (1922),
Thomas Beresford and Prudence “Tuppence” Cowley are
young adults. Unlike Poirot and Marple, they aged with their
author, appearing in four novels and numerous short stories,
marrying, having children, growing into retirement by their
final appearance in Postern of Fate (1973).
The Beresfords’ adventures have been depicted on the small
screen a number of times. In the early 1980s the BBC
produced the Agatha Christie’s Partners In Crime series,
featuring James Warwick and Francesca Annis as Tommy and
Tuppence. The characters also made an appearance in an
episode of the series Marple called By the Pricking Of My
Thumbs (2006), starring Geraldine McKeown as Miss Marple
and the Beresfords performed by Anthony Andrews and Greta
Scacchi. Most recently, the BBC created a new series in 2015
– also titled Partners In Crime – starring David Williams and
Jessica Raine.
From History.com, Wikipedia.org
Tommy and Tuppence
Arthur Ferrier, Grand Magazine (1923)
REFERENCES IN “THE SECRET ADVERSARY”
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner, and at one point was the
largest passenger ship in the world. On May 7, 1915, a German UBoat, (submarine), torpedoed the Lusitania and sunk it, killing
nearly 1,200 passengers and crew members.
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (V.A.D.) system was founded in
1909, and was a unit of nurses who provided aid for soldiers. This
group was most active during World War I and II throughout the
British Empire.
World War I took place between July 18, 1914 and November 11,
1918. Post-war Britain was struck with many political, economic,
image from The Sinking of the Lusitania
and societal problems; and the joyous mood of a country that just Still
Dir: Winsor McCay (1918)
experienced great military triumph was extremely short-lived.
Bolshevists were supporters of Lenin who later became the members of the
Russian Communist Party.
The Labour Party (UK) is a political party founded in 1900. It was a party
founded on supporting working-class people, in opposition to the conservative
parties of 1920’s Britain.
The King’s Counsel (UK) is a lawyer selected to serve the British Crown.
Faust is the protagonist of a German legend; in which he is successful but unhappy with his life so he makes a pact with the Devil. Through this pact, he
exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.
General strikes first appeared in the mid-19th century as an organized protest
in which the majority of workers in a city, region, or country refuse to conduct
their labor.
The Ritz Hotel opened on June 21, 1921; every detail displayed
wealth and status. During the “Roaring Twenties,” this hotel was wildly popular and many famous guests roamed its halls.
British Intelligence during and post WWI included two different
agencies, SIS (MI6), and MI5. SIS provided the British government
with foreign intelligence, while MI5 provided the government with
internal British intelligence.
Morituri te Salutamus, translates to, “We who are about to die salute
thee”, and was most famously and originally said by Emperor Claudius, (11BC-54 AD), of Rome. This saying was then carried on and became a popular saying for Roman Gladiators.
Many thanks to Heather Cochran for her editorial assistance.
Faust and Mephistopheles
Painting: Eugene Delacroix (1827-1828)
The Wallace Collection
GREAT LAKES THEATER
The mission of Great Lakes Theater, through its main stage productions and its
education programs, is to bring the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to
the widest possible audience in Northern Ohio. Since its inception in 1962,
programming has been rooted in Shakespeare, but the company’s commitment to
great plays spans the breadth of all cultures, forms of theater, and time periods,
including the 20th century. GLT’s commitment to classic theater is magnified in the
education programs that surround its productions, its matinees for student audiences
and its in-school residency program developed to explore classic drama from the
theatrical point of view. A not-for-profit theater company led by Producing Artistic
Director Charles Fee that performs six productions annually, including A Christmas
Carol, GLT currently performs in the Hanna and Ohio Theatres.
SURROUND SUPPORTERS
The GAR Foundation
The Nord Family Foundation
The GAR (pronounced “jee-ay-är”) Foundation
was born out of the financial success and growth
of Roadway Express, Inc. and its chairman and
major shareholder, Galen J. Roush in 1967. The
name “GAR Foundation” is an acronym for
“Galen and Ruth.”
The Nord Family Foundation, in the tradition of its
founders, Walter and Virginia Nord, endeavors to
build community through support of projects that
bring opportunity to the disadvantaged, strengthen
the bond of families, and improve the quality of
people’s lives.
Currently, The GAR Foundation is the largest
foundation in Summit County and one of the
largest in Northeast Ohio. Charitable priorities
include education, the arts, social services and
activities that are judged for the general good of
the community.
The Nord Family Foundation is interested in
programs that strengthen families and improve
public service. Grants are awarded in the fields of
health and social services, education, arts and
culture, and civic affairs. High priority is given to
programs that address the needs of economically or
socially disadvantaged families. Projects that
attack root causes of social problems are also of
special interest.
From the beginning, the Foundation’s
philanthropic emphasis concentrated on
Northeastern Ohio with a preference for
activities in Akron. The area of giving changed
in 1995. Primary consideration is now being
given to organizations located in Summit
County, Ohio. Organizations in adjoining
counties (Cuyahoga, Medina, Portage, Stark and
Wayne counties) are given secondary
consideration.
The Foundation awards grants in several
geographic areas, but most are made to
organizations within Lorain County, Ohio or
projects that will have an impact there. Grants that
specially address the Foundation’s mission and
themes are also made in Cuyahoga County, Ohio;
Denver, Colorado; Columbia, South Carolina;
Boston, Massachusetts; and very selectively to
national organizations.
SURROUND PROGRAMMING IS ALSO PRESENTED THROUGH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF:
The George Gund
Foundation