Download CLYBOURNE PARK by Bruce Norris

Pittsburgh Public Theater’s Education and Outreach programs are generously supported
by BNY Mellon Foundation of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Additional funding for all
youth education programs has been provided by The Grable Foundation and Dominion.
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 1
Contents
The Characters ..................................................................................................................... 3
Synopsis ............................................................................................................................... 4
About the Playwright – Bruce Norris ................................................................................... 5
An Interview with Bruce Norris, Clybourne Park playwright, conducted by Rebecca Rugg,
Artistic Producer of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company ......................................... 6
A Raisin in the Sun: The Inspiration for Clybourne Park ...................................................... 8
Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun: Four New Plays – edited by Rebecca Ann Rugg and
Harvey Young .......................................................................................................... 10
If These Walls Could Speak: Clybourne Park and Racism on America’s Stages ................ 12
President Obama and Bev Have Ideas for Hope and Change ........................................... 14
Gentrification ..................................................................................................................... 16
Meet the Cast .................................................................................................................... 17
Meet the Director .............................................................................................................. 20
Theater Etiquette............................................................................................................... 21
Pennsylvania Academic Standards .................................................................................... 22
Pennsylvania Common Core Standards ............................................................................ 23
References ......................................................................................................................... 24
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 2
The Characters
Act I - 1959
Russ: A man selling his house in the Clybourne Park neighborhood of Chicago
Bev: Russ’ wife
Kenneth: Russ and Bev’s son, a Korean War veteran
Francine: Russ and Bev’s housekeeper
Jim: A neighborhood church minister
Albert: Francine’s husband
Karl: Russ and Bev’s neighbor who represents The Community Association
Betsy: Karl’s wife
Act II - 2009
Tom: A lawyer representing the Property Owners Association
Lindsey: A woman who, with her husband, is buying Russ and Bev’s old home
Steve: Lindsey’s husband
Kathy: Lindsey and Steve’s lawyer
Lena: A member of the Property Owners Association and relative of the family who
bought the house from Russ and Bev
Kevin: Lena’s husband
Dan: A contractor working on the home
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Synopsis
Reprinted by permission of Center Theatre Group’s Education and Community Partnerships Department,
written by Ronald McCants.
Clybourne Park is set in one house in two separate years: 1959 and 2009. In Act One, it’s
1959 and Bev and Russ are in the process of moving out of their modest bungalow in
Clybourne Park, a completely white neighborhood in Chicago. The house and
neighborhood have painful memories for them: there are many rumors going around
the neighborhood about their son and his actions during the Korean War, and Bev and
Russ want to escape the whispering and criticism. When they receive a visit from their
neighbor Karl, a member of the Clybourne Park Neighborhood Association, telling of the
neighborhood’s concerns about the new family moving in, Bev and Russ refuse Karl’s
request to cancel the deal as they have a different perspective on things since their
community has abandoned them.
Act II opens up 50 years later in the same bungalow where a meeting and discussion is
taking place about the house. Clybourne Park is now a predominantly black community.
Two of the people at the meeting are Lindsey and Steve, who are buying the house with
plans to tear it down and build a more modern home. However, Lena, a member of the
Property Owners Association and a relative of the black family who bought the house
from Russ and Bev, argues against the house being demolished because she feels it’s an
important part of the neighborhood’s history. The discussion between Lindsey, Steve,
Lena, her husband, and a couple of lawyers soon changes from renovation to racial
issues and tensions begin to rise.
The playwright, Bruce Norris, makes this interesting observation about the play: “In
Clybourne Park, the first act is a tragedy and the second part is a comedy because the
people in the first act all understand each other much more than the people do in the
second act. In the second act everyone makes assumptions.”
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Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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About the Playwright – Bruce Norris
Other plays include The Infidel (2000), Purple Heart (2002), We All Went Down to
Amsterdam (2003), The Pain and the Itch (2004), The Unmentionables (2006), and A
Parallelogram (2010), all of which had their premieres at Steppenwolf Theatre in
Chicago. Two new plays, titled The Low Road and Domesticated, respectively, will
premiere in 2013 at the Royal Court Theatre in London and at Lincoln Center Theatre in
New York. His work has also been seen at Playwrights Horizons (New York), Lookingglass
Theatre (Chicago), Philadelphia Theatre Company, Woolly Mammoth Theatre
(Washington, D.C.), Staatstheater Mainz (Germany), and the Galway Festival (Ireland),
among others. He is the recipient of the Steinberg Playwright Award (2009) and the
Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama (2006), as well as two Joseph Jefferson Awards
(Chicago) for Best New Work. As an actor he can be seen in the films A Civil Action and
The Sixth Sense, and the recent All Good Things. He lives in New York.
Bruce Norris
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 5
An Interview with Bruce Norris, Clybourne Park
playwright, conducted by Rebecca Rugg, Artistic
Producer of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company
[Rebecca Rugg]: Clybourne Park is a very complex play about race, among other
topics. The experience of watching it, and I’ll speak here as a white person, is quite
complicated.
[Bruce Norris]: Well, I think the most interesting question that has been put to me about
it was the one you put to me last time we talked, which was “did you write this play for
white people?” Remember?
RR: Yeah, and you said yes.
BN: And I said yes.
RR: And I was totally shocked. I was sure you were going to say no.
BN: No, I think it is a play for white people. It’s a play about white people. It’s about the
white response to race, about being the power elite, about being the people who have
power in the race argument, and what that makes us in the present day - the
contortions that makes us go through. Because on the Left we really, really like to deny
the power that we have. We don’t want to seem like we’re powerful and have the
largest army in the world. We want to pretend that we don’t. So, while the play is about
white people, it’s even better if there are black people in the audience because it makes
white people even more uncomfortable.
RR: I’ve heard you say elsewhere, that Clybourne Park is inspired by Karl Linder, who,
before he was yours, was Lorraine Hansberry’s character in A Raisin in the Sun.
BN: I saw A Raisin in the Sun as a film in probably 7th grade. Interestingly our Social
Studies teacher was showing it to a class of all white students who lived in an
independent school district the boundaries of which had been formed specifically to
prevent our being integrated into the Houston school district and being bused to other
schools with black students.
So I don’t know whether our teacher was just obtuse or crafty and subversive but she
was showing us a movie that basically in the end – because Karl doesn’t come in until
the second act -- is really pointing a finger at us and saying we are those people. So I
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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watch it at twelve years old and I could realize even then that I’m Karl Linder. To see
that when you’re a kid and to realize that you’re the villain has an impact. For years I
thought I wanted to play Karl Linder but then as time went on I thought it’s really an
interesting story to think about the conversation that was going on in the white
community about the Younger family moving into Clybourne Park. It percolated for
many years and that’s how I ended up writing this play.
Bruce Norris with his 2011 Olivier Award
for Best New Play
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 7
A Raisin in the Sun: The Inspiration for Clybourne Park
Clybourne Park was inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun and
picks up where her play left off by looking at two clashing viewpoints on what it means
to be neighborly in a place which different people want to call “home.” Hansberry, an
African-American woman, based her play on her family’s experience of facing harsh
legal opposition when they planned to move into a house her father bought in an allwhite neighborhood. After living in a small apartment for generations, the play’s family,
the Youngers, finally moved into their own house that Mama Younger bought using her
late husband’s life insurance money. The house she buys, however, is in the all-white
Clybourne Park neighborhood. A Raisin in the Sun became a film in 1961 and starred
Sydney Poitier and Ruby Dee, both of whom also starred in the Broadway production.
The civil rights movement was going strong in America at the time of Hansberry’s
productions.
In the new Clybourne Park, we meet Russ and Bev Stoller, the white homeowners who
decided to sell their house. It's still 1959, and in Act I, Karl Linder, the head of the
Neighborhood Association, wants to stop the sale because he's discovered the buyers
are black.
Ruby Dee (Ruth Younger), Sydney
Poitier (Walter Younger), Claudia
McNeil (Lena Younger), and Diana
Sands (Beneatha Younger)
A Raisin in the Sun
1961 film
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was named from a line
in the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
“Harlem”
By Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream
deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Reimagining A Raisin in the Sun: Four New Plays – edited
by Rebecca Ann Rugg and Harvey Young
from http://www.reimaginingraisin.com
This collection of contemporary plays
continues the conversation of race and
neighborliness that was begun by
Lorraine Hansberry in her 1959 play A
Raisin in the Sun. Each play in the
volume, including Bruce Norris’
Clybourne Park, uniquely explores the
meaning of community through the
lenses of race and social and economic
justice.
Neighbors by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Have you seen the new neighbors? Richard
Patterson is not happy. The family of black actors
that has moved in next door is rowdy, tacky,
shameless, and uncouth. And they are not just
invading his neighborhood—they’re infiltrating his
family, his sanity, and his entirely post-racial
lifestyle. This wildly theatrical, explosive play on
race marks the major debut of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Living Green by Gloria Bond Clunie
Meet Angela and Frank Freeman, hardworking parents
who moved out of the old neighborhood years ago to
give their children, Dempsey and Carol, what they never
had - access to great schools and well-manicured lawns.
Trouble is, Frank is worried he and Angela may have
traded away their children’s identity as African
Americans in the process. With Carol about to graduate
from high school, Frank suggests they move back to the
city, and join a few families who are trying to make a
difference. Angela, however, is too worried about safety. “Thanks,” she says, “but I like
life.” Newly energized with the sense of community generated by the Million Man
March, the Freemans make plans to sell their home, just as they take in 16-year-old
Shondra, a bright girl raised in the projects. Can their newfound idealism survive the
very real challenges Shondra brings into their home?
Etiquette of Vigilance by Robert O'Hara
Over 50 years have passed since Travis and
his parents became the first black family to
integrate Chicago’s segregated Clybourne
Park neighborhood. Now Lorraine, Travis’s
only daughter and the first in her family to
attend college, is buckling under the
pressure of her family’s long deferred
dream. In this contemporary
reconsideration of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, O’Hara’s poignant new play
imagines what might have happened to the beleaguered Younger family—and asks us to
consider the wounds still healing from the days of city-sanctioned segregation.
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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If These Walls Could Speak: Clybourne Park and Racism
on America’s Stages
The topic of race is something that Americans often aren’t sure how to discuss. It has
always been challenging to approach this topic with openness and understanding. There
are hundreds of years of history and misunderstanding and deeply held prejudices that
make the conversation so challenging. While Clybourne Park shows that the content of
the race conversation has not changed much over the last 50 years, there have been
many creative attempts to engage in discussion through books, plays, films, and music.
Sydney Poitier starred in the 1967 film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner alongside
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. In this film, the daughter of an upper-class white
family returns home with her new fiancé who happens to be black. Though she was
raised to accept all people as equal, and though her fiancé is a very successful doctor,
her parents have a hard time accepting that she has fallen in love with a black man. At
this time in American history, interracial marriages were still frowned-upon and were
even illegal in at least a dozen (mostly Southern) states. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
won the Academy Awards for Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn) and Best Original
Screenplay.
The 1989 film Do The Right Thing, which was written, produced, and directed by Spike
Lee, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film takes place on a
hot summer day in a black neighborhood in Brooklyn as tensions rise among the
residents, local teenagers, the police, and the local Italian restaurant owner and his
family. The controversial film ends with a riot in the street and leaves the audience to
wonder if the main character, Mookie, did the right thing, and whether the life of a
black man or the property of a white man is more important. That same year the award
for Best Picture went to Driving Miss Daisy which was based on the off-Broadway play of
the same name by Alfred Uhry (produced at Pittsburgh Public Theater in 2002, also
directed by Pamela Berlin). Daisy looks at an unlikely friendship that develops between
a wealthy Southern Jewish woman, Miss Daisy, and the African-American man, Hoke,
who her son hires to be her driver. The film takes place in the years between 1948 and
the mid-1970s at a time when the South was still deeply segregated. As their friendship
develops, Miss Daisy (and the audience) learns some hard facts about what life as a
black man was like at that time.
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Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Renowned Pittsburgh playwright August Wilson wrote what is
known as the “Pittsburgh Cycle,” which is a series of 10 plays
that are all set in a different decade and set in Pittsburgh’s Hill
District neighborhood. Wilson won Pulitzer Prizes for two of
the plays, 1987’s Fences, and 1990’s The Piano Lesson. His
plays offered white Americans “a different way to look at
black Americans,” he said in an interview. Wilson’s characters
August Wilson
may be a person working a menial job that white Americans see
every day, but who experiences the same kind of feelings and situations in his or her
own life. Wilson continued, “Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as
theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.”
August Wilson’s writing was influenced by the writings of James Baldwin who was born
in 1947 and grew up very poor in New York City. His writings dealt with the personal
difficulties faced by black Americans and other minority social class groups when trying
to integrate into society. He wrote many essays about the unrest of the 1960s and the
Civil Rights Movement, such as “The Hard Kind of Courage” and the book-length essay
The Fire Next Time, and became a very vocal spokesman for the movement. Time
magazine put Baldwin on the cover in the spring of 1963 and stated, “There is not
another writer who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of
the racial ferment in North and South.”
The song “Accidental Racist” by Brad Paisley and featuring LL Cool J is one recent
contribution to the public discourse on race. In it Paisley sings that as a white man from
the South, he is “Tryin' to understand what it's like not to be.” LL Cool J’s rapped lyrics
offer a response to the country singer’s words by saying, “Dear Mr. White Man, I wish
you understood/What the world is really like when you're livin' in the hood.” The song
immediately received an overwhelmingly negative response on the Internet. (Gawker
called it a “Real, Horrible” song; a Time music contributor says it’s impossible to be an
accidental racist and hopes to “never hear [the] horrible song again”) In a USA Today
article, however, Paisley expressed his belief that the purpose of art is to “promote
discussion,” and that he hopes this song will inspire people to be honest with each other
and explore those hard questions. LL Cool J considered it “bold and courageous” for
Paisley to release this song. He said, “If he's willing to take that bold step to bring about
some healing, bring about some dialogue, get people to talk, especially at this time in
America, I'm with it 100%.”
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 13
President Obama and Bev Have Ideas for Hope and
Change
excerpts from “Post-Racial Farce” by Frank Rich, NY Magazine, May 20, 2012.
The play’s 52-year-old author, Bruce Norris, is white. He has already won the Pulitzer
Prize for this work and next month could win the Tony, too. Though Clybourne Park
didn’t arrive on Broadway until this spring, it has been a cultural fixture during much of
the Obama presidency. Norris started writing Clybourne in 2006, before Obama ran for
president. He tweaked the script slightly after his ascension. “Even though I was a
supporter,” the playwright said when I spoke to him recently, “I listened to his speech of
hope and change, and I thought to myself, ‘Good luck.’” That pessimism led him to add a
line for the character of Bev, a white fifties housewife even more sheltered than Betty
Draper from the America outside her immediate domain. “I really believe things are
about to change for the better,” she says. Bev’s naïve declaration of hope, delivered in
the play’s coda, seems laughably delusional after the audience has bathed in two hours
of mayhem among the white and black characters, none of it happily resolved. However
well meaning, she’s a fool destined to be mowed down by historical forces she doesn’t
remotely understand or anticipate.
Both halves of the play are about a fight over a plain little house in the (fictional)
neighborhood of Clybourne Park. In 1959, a three-generation black family from a ghetto
on the South Side has just purchased it and is preparing to move in—over the objections
of a neighborhood association that wants to keep its enclave lily-white. By 2009, that
battle over integration is half-forgotten ancient history. Clybourne Park, like so many
other urban neighborhoods nationwide, had long ago turned black in the wake of
wholesale white flight to the suburbs. The house has since devolved into a graffitidefaced teardown, battered by decades of poverty, crime, drugs, and neglect. But lo and
behold, the neighborhood is “changing” again. A young white suburban couple is
moving back into the rapidly gentrifying Clybourne Park. It’s convenient for work, and
there’s a new Whole Foods besides. The only hitch is that middle-class AfricanAmericans in the present-day neighborhood association are as hostile to white intruders
as their racist white antecedents were to black home­buyers 50 years earlier.
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Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Following its Off Broadway premiere at Playwrights Horizons in early 2010, Clybourne
Park has been produced in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; London (where
it won the Tony equivalent, the Olivier); and Obama’s own town of Chicago. Chicago is
also where the play is set, in two very different American eras 50 years apart—1959 (Act
I) and 2009 (Act II). Or nominally different, anyway. Clybourne Park says that when it
comes to race in America, not that much has changed over the past half-century, the
historic arrival of an African-American family in the White House notwithstanding.
Clybourne Park
Broadway Playbill, 2012
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
Page 15
Gentrification
Dictionary.com
gen·tri·fi·ca·tion
noun \jen-trY-fY-kā-shYn\, jen-truh-fi-kay-shu n
In Act II of Clybourne Park, the characters’
discussion begins to hint at the possibility of white
gentrification occurring in the neighborhood if
Lindsey and Steve buy the house and demolish it to
build something bigger. As the definition of
“gentrification” suggests, the possibility exists that
once Lindsey and Steve move in, other upper- or
middle-class people would follow suit, thus
pushing away former residents as property values
become too high for them to afford to stay.
Urban Dictionary
Definition of GENTRIFICATION
When "urban renewal" of lower class
neighborhoods with condos attracts
yuppie tenants, driving up rents and
driving out long time, lower income
residents. It often begins with
influxes of local artists looking for a
cheap place to live, giving the
neighborhood a bohemian flair. This
hip reputation attracts yuppies who
want to live in such an atmosphere,
driving out the lower income artists
and lower income residents, often
ethnic/racial minorities, changing the
social character of the neighborhood.
It also involves the "yuppification" of
local businesses; shops catering to
yuppie tastes like sushi restaurants,
Starbucks, etc... come to replace local
businesses displaced by higher rents.
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Definition of GENTRIFICATION
the buying and renovation of houses
and stores in deteriorated urban
neighborhoods by upper- or middleincome families or individuals, thus
improving property values but often
displacing low-income families and
small businesses
Sentence using GENTRIFICATION
Renovation and gentrification have
already pushed up rents.
Root word: GENTRIFY
renovate so as to make it conform to
middle-class aspirations
Synonyms for GENTRIFY
bring up to date, fix up, mend,
modernize, overhaul, rehabilitate,
renovate, repair, restore, resume,
resuscitate, revitalize, revive
Some positive effects of gentrification include a
reduction in crime, increased property values,
increased support of local businesses, and an
increase in social mix. On the other hand, negative
effects include resident displacement due to rent
and price increases, loss of affordable housing, and
community resentment and conflict. The negative
effects are worrisome to the characters in
Clybourne Park.
The term “gentrification” was coined by British
sociologist Ruth Glass in 1964. She used the
example of London and its working class districts to
describe the arrival of middle-class people that
resulted in displacing lower-class and working
people.
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Meet the Cast
BRAD BELLAMY (Russ/Dan) is a member of the Ensemble
Studio Theatre and was formerly an artist in residence at
Manhattan Punch Line. Brad's most recent New York
appearances were in the Off-Broadway productions of March
Madness, Alphabetical Order, and the Drama Desknominated So Help Me God. He played Stefano in the 400th
anniversary production of The Tempest. Regional credits
include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Atlanta's Alliance, Cleveland Play House, Dallas
Theatre Center, Denver Center, Long Wharf, and Pittsburgh Public among others. His
film appearances include Ira and Abby, Burning Point, Tied to a Chair, The Adventures of
Arthur Conan Doyle, and A Kiss for Jed Wood. On television he's been seen as the special
musical guest in ABC's "On the Edge," with Rodney Dangerfield in "It's Not Easy Being
Me," "30 Rock," "Law & Order SVU," "Conviction," and commercials for AARP, Snickers,
Sprint, Wendy's and many others.
BJORN DuPATY (Albert/Kevin) Theater: Julius Caesar, A
Comedy of Errors (The Acting Co.), Myrna in Transit (EST),
The Sugar House at the Edge of the Wilderness (Ma-Yi
Theater Co.) Bjorn is a lifetime member of Ensemble
Studio Theatre and holds an MFA from Rutgers
University. Film/TV: "All My Children," "Zero Hour."
www.bjorndupaty.com
MEGAN HILL (Betsy/Lindsey) is delighted to make her
Pittsburgh Public debut. Recent and favorite credits include:
The House of Von Macrame (The Management/Bushwick Starr),
The Bird and the Two Ton Weight (EST/Unfiltered Fest), Hand to
God (EST), DisQuiet (undergroundzero), Cut (The Management),
Robert Wilson's The Watermill Quintet (Implied Violence/The
Guggenheim), Lonesome Winter (which she co-wrote with
Joshua Conkel), The Sluts of Sutton Drive (EST/Unfiltered Fest),
Fissures at the Humana Festival (Actors Theatre of Louisville), The Little Dog Laughed
(Intiman Theatre), Stupid Kids (Empty Space Theatre). She has also worked at The Lark,
New Dramatists, Primary Stages, Rising Phoenix Rep, San Francisco Playhouse, Studio
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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43, Stein/Holum, The Arden, Incubator Arts, Target Margin, Seattle Children's Theater,
Seattle Shakespeare Company, Book-It Rep, Theater Seven Chicago, among others.
Megan is a company member of The Management and Ensemble Studio Theatre (EST).
She holds a BFA in Acting and Original Works from Cornish College of the Arts and an
MFA from American Repertory Theatre/Moscow Art Theatre IATT at Harvard University.
You can watch her web series "ME+U" at www.meplusu.tv.
TIM McGEEVER (Karl/Steve) is thrilled to be returning to Pittsburgh Public where he was
last seen in 2010's The Time of Your Life. Pittsburgh
audiences will also remember Tim from Time Stands Still at
City Theatre. Tim has appeared on Broadway in Les Liasion
Dangereuses (with Laura Linney), Don't Dress for Dinner, and
Cyrano DeBergerac, all at the Roundabout. Off-Broadway
credits include The Common Pursuit (Roundabout), Chaucer
in Rome (Lincoln Center), The White Devil (BAM), Lifegame
(Improbably UK), Tartuffe (The Public), Fully Committed
(Cherry Lane), and more. Tim played Zazu in the national
tour of The Lion King. He has worked with many NYC
companies and more than 20 regional theaters. Tim has appeared in several
independent films but is most excited about the upcoming Progression. It is set in
Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood and was made by many of the Steel City's most
creative artists and film-making professionals. Tim trained at Juilliard.
JARED McGUIRE (Jim/Tom/Kenneth) New York credits include: The Secret Catcher and
The Last Day (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Leave the Balcony
Open and Photograph 51 (3LD), In the Middle of the Night (EST
Marathon), The Rubber Room (NYC Fringe Festival), and The
Memorandum (Abingdon Theater). Regional: Master Harold
and the Boys at Palm Beach Dramaworks and Cape May Stage,
Speech and Debate (American Theatre Company, regional
premiere), the films SubterraNYa and Last Night With The Boys,
as well as many collaborative presentations at the
Southhampton Writers Conference including Three Farces and
a Funeral (with Alan Alda), Seagull in the Hamptons (with Harris Yulin), and Wild Animals
You Should Know (directed by Joe Mantello).
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Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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chandra thomas (Francine/Lena) is thrilled to be making her
Pittsburgh Public Theater debut. Originally from New York,
chandra's theater performances include contemporary and
classic works Off-Broadway, in New York, and regionally at
Classical Theatre of Harlem (AUDELCO nomination), Public
Theater, Women's Project Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, Delaware
Theatre Company (Barrymore Award nomination), Cincinnati
Playhouse, Ensemble Studio Theatre, among others. Some of
her television credits include "The Good Wife" and "Too Big to
Fail." Her film credits include the upcoming features Labor Day
and Sweet Lorraine. chandra is also a writer and producer.
Recent productions include Standing At... (Downtown Urban
Theatre Festival, Heideman Award finalist), Forgive to Forget (Solo Flight Festival), and
LOVE/YOUTH Project, a collaborative theatrical response of professional artists to the
violence against LGBTQ youth. chandra is co-founder of viBe Theater Experience, a nonprofit performing arts education organization empowering teenage girls in New York
City. MFA: Columbia University. More at www.chandrathomas.com and @truechandra.
LYNNE WINTERSTELLER (Bev/Kathy) Broadway: A Grand Night for Singing (Roundabout),
Annie (Uris). Off-Broadway: Revisiting Wildfire, Closer Than Ever
(Drama Desk "Best Actress" nomination), Richard Cory (NYMF
"Best Actress" Award), The Mistress Cycle, I Wrote a Letter to My
Love, Nunsense, Gifts of the Magi, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The
Grass Harp. Regional: Circle Mirror Transformation (St. Louis Rep
- Kevin Kline Award), Dinner With Friends (Alley), Lend Me a
Tenor and Rumors (Walnut St.), M. Butterfly (Syracuse Stage),
Scenery (Saugatuck Mason Str. - world premiere). Regional
Musicals: Sunset Boulevard, The Light in the Piazza, The Ghost &
Mrs. Muir (LA Ovation "Best Actress" nomination), Kiss Me Kate,
42nd Street, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Television: "Law & Order: CI," "Total Security," "Big
Brother Jake," "Chapelle's Show," plus numerous commercials. Original Cast Recordings:
Closer Than Ever, A Grand Night for Singing, Broadway Sings Christmas, Lost in Boston
III, Unsung Musicals II (Varese Saraband label). www.lynnewintersteller.com
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Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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Meet the Director
PAMELA BERLIN (Director) has directed five
previous productions at Pittsburgh Public
Theater: RED, A Moon for the Misbegotten,
Talley's Folly, Driving Miss Daisy, and Tea. New
York credits include: Steel Magnolias (also L.A.,
Chicago, and National Tour), To Gillian on her
37th Birthday (Circle in the Square), The
Cemetery Club (Broadway), Joined at the Head
(Manhattan Theatre Club), The Family of Mann
and Red Address (Second Stage), Black Ink and
Elm Circle (Playwrights Horizons), Snowing at
Delphi, Club Soda and Peacetime (WPA), Close
Ties (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Regionally she
has directed at the Long Wharf, Kennedy Center, Huntington, Seattle Rep, Pasadena
Playhouse, Portland Stage, Virginia Stage, TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. Opera credits: La
Traviata, Rigoletto, Madame Butterfly, Lucia di Lammermore, Eugene Onegin, A
Midsummer Night's Dream, Of Mice and Men. Pamela teaches at the Mason Gross
School of the Arts at Rutgers University and served for six years as President of the Stage
Directors and Choreographers Society, a national labor union.
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Theater Etiquette
Things to remember when attending the theater
When you visit the theater you are attending a live performance with actors that are
working right in front of you. This is an exciting experience for you and the actor.
However, in order to have the best performance for both the audience and actors there
are some simple rules to follow. By following these rules, you can ensure that you can
be the best audience member you can be, as well as keep the actors focused on giving
their best performance.
1. Turn off all cell phones, beepers, watches etc.
2. Absolutely no text messaging during the performance.
3. Do not take pictures during the performance.
4. Do not eat or drink in the theater.
5. Do not place things on the stage or walk on the stage.
6. Do not leave your seat during the performance unless it is an emergency.
If you do need to leave for an emergency, leave as quietly as possible and
know that you might not be able to get back in until after intermission.
7. Do clap—let the actors know you are enjoying yourself.
8. Do enjoy the show and have fun watching the actors.
9. Do tell other people about your experience and be sure to ask questions and
discuss the performance.
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Pennsylvania Academic Standards
Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening
1.2 – Students read, understand, and respond to essential content in a variety of informational
texts and documents.
1.3 – Students analyze the characteristics and effectiveness of the play, the use of literary
elements, and the use of literary devices.
1.4 – Students compose dramatic scenes where they work to construct dialogue, develop
character, and outline plot.
1.6 – Students listen critically; respond with appropriate questions, ideas, information, or
opinions; and demonstrate awareness of audience using appropriate volume and clarity in
speaking presentations.
1.9 – Students analyze the techniques of media messages to evaluate how they influence
society.
Civics and Government
5.1 – Students apply examples of the rule of law as related to individual rights and the common
good, and will analyze the principles and ideals that shape the United States government.
5.2 – Students analyze citizens’ rights and responsibilities, and analyze citizens’ roles in the
political process toward the attainment of goals for individual and public good.
5.3 – Students explain how government agencies create, amend, and enforce policies in
governments, and analyze the influence of interest groups in the political process.
Economics
6.1 – Students analyze how choices are made because of scarcity, and explain how incentives
cause people to change their behavior in predictable ways.
6.5 – Students define wealth, and analyze how risks influence business decision-making.
Geography
7.3 – Students explain the human characteristics of places and regions according to population,
culture, settlement, economic activities, and political activities.
7.4 – Students compare and contrast the effect of people on the physical region across regions
of the United States.
History
8.1 – Students compare patters of continuity and change over time, applying context of events;
students compare the interpretation of historical events and sources, considering the use of
fact versus opinion, multiple perspectives, and cause and effect relationships.
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8.3 – Students compare the role groups and individuals played in the societal, political, and
economic development of the U.S., and interpret how conflict and cooperation among groups
and organizations have impacted the growth and development of the U.S.
Arts and Humanities
9.1 – Students know and recognize elements and principles of the theatre art form; identify and
use comprehensive vocabulary within the theatre art form; communicate a unifying theme or
point of view through the theatre production; explain the function and benefits of rehearsal
and practice sessions; and know where arts events, performances, and exhibitions occur and
how to gain admission.
9.2 – Students explain the historical, cultural, and social context of a work of art; analyze a work
of art from its historical and cultural perspectives; and know and apply appropriate vocabulary
used between social studies and the arts and humanities.
9.3 – Students evaluate works in the arts and humanities using a complex vocabulary of critical
response.
Career Awareness and Preparation
13.1 – Relate careers to individual and personal interests, abilities, and aptitudes.
13.4 – Identify and describe the basic components of a business plan.
Pennsylvania Common Core Standards
On July 1, 2010, the Pennsylvania State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State
Standards in English language arts and mathematics. The regulations pertaining to these
standards took effect upon their publication in the October 16, 2010 edition of the Pennsylvania
Bulletin. The transition to Common Core will begin during the 2010-2011 school year, with full
implementation by July 1, 2013.
English Language Arts
CC.1.3 – Reading Literature: Students read and respond to works of literature – with an
emphasis on comprehension, making connections among ideas and between texts with a focus
on textual evidence.
CC.1.5 – Speaking and Listening: Students present appropriately in formal speaking situations,
listen critically, and respond intelligently as individuals or in group discussions.
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/current_initiatives/19720/common_core_state_standa
rds/792440
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Pittsburgh Public Theater
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“Driving Miss Daisy (play).” Wikipedia.com. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 27 February 2013.
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Pittsburgh Public Theater
Clybourne Park
2012-2013 Season
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