Different
Stages
Presents
A
Number
by
Caryl Churchill
Director Robert
Tolaro
Assistant
Director T.J.
Moreno
Set
Design Ann
Marie Gordon
Light
Design Tara
Bonds
Stage
Manager Amy
Lewis
Dramaturg C. Denby
Swanson
CHARACTERS
AND CAST
Salter Norman Blumensaadt
Bernard
1, 2 and Michael
Marc Balester
Place:
A room in the not too distant future
A
NUMBER IS PERFORMED WITH NO INTERMISSION.
Approximate running time 60 minutes.
We invite the audience to a discussion of the
play with dramaturg C. Denby Swanson following the performance
Produced by special arrangement
with Samuel French, Inc.
THE PRODUCTION
COMPANY
MARC BALESTER (Bernard) Marc always has fun with Different Stages,
for whom he last appeared as Edward DeVere, Earl of Oxford in The Beard of Avon. His other DS appearances include Edmund
Tyrone in Long Days Journey Into Night and
the god Ganesh in A Perfect Ganesh. Among the roles he counts as favorites
are Garry Lejuene in Noises Off, Charlie
Fox in Speed the Plow, Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, and Charles
Condamine in Blithe Spirit. What he likes best in his life is
spending time with his wife Nora and his son Bud. He is half Italian. His people are from Avellino and reveal little. He invites you to make up your own interesting
fact about him. No prize will be
offered. His obsession with bears has
led to his appearance in no fewer than thirty productions of A Winter’s Tale.
NORMAN BLUMENSAADT (Salter) is the Producing
Artistic
Director
for Different Stages. As an actor he has
worked in Shakespeare Festivals in Odessa, Tx., Madison, New Jersey and Dallas,
Tx. For Different Stages he has recently
appeared in The Miser, Arms and the Man and
The Playboy of the Western World. Amond the numerous shows that he has
directed are The House of Bernarda Alba,
An Ideal Husband, The Beard of Avon, The Hollow and The Constant Wife. In celebration of his long and outstanding work
in the Austin theater scene, the Austin Circle of Theaters bestowed upon Norman
the 1998 Deacon Crain/John Bustin Award.
His production of The Goat orWho
is Sylvia won the 2006-2007 ACOT Award for Best Production of a Drama. Next he directs J.B. Priestly’s thriller An Inspector Calls.
ROBERT
TOLARO
(Director) His Austin credits include Lettice
and Lovage and The Hasty Heart for
Different Stages, The Gin Game and I Ought
to be in Pictures for Onstage Theatre, Othello
and Great Expectations for St.
Edward’s University, and productions for the Austin Shakespeare Festival, including
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merry
Wives of Windsor, A Comedy of Errors, and Much Ado About Nothing.
When not directing, Robert is a professional Equity stage manager and
actor, currently working for the Greater
Tuna shows, A Ride With Bob with
Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, and Menopause
the Musical in Dallas. He recently played Lord Caversham in An Ideal Husband for Austin Shakespeare. He received an Emmy Award for Best Director
for his signed and voiced production of Moliere’s The Miser which aired on
National PBS stations. He will be directing Greater
Tuna in Hartford, Connecticut for the Bushnel Performing Arts Center this
summer.
T.J.
MORENO
(Assistant Director) jumped at the opportunity to work with Bob and
this talented pair of actors and wants to thank them all for making this a
great experience. For Different Stages he recently stage managed The Goat or Who is Sylvia? and performed
in Agatha Christie's Appointment With
Death and The Hollow..
AMY LEWIS (Stage
Manager) is a graduate of McMurry University with
a BFA in acting and directing with a minor in lighting. She has appeared in many shows in the four
years she has lived in Austin including, Bitten
– a Zombie Rock Odyssey, Bride of Slapdash and The Automat with Loaded Gun Theory, Dracula at the Bastrop Opera House, All in the Timing, Sister Mary Ignatious Explains it All For You, Time
Flies and Shakespeare in Hollywood with
Sam Bass Theatre, The Laramie Project with
City Theatre, and The Playboy of the Western
World, The Hollow and Mrs. Bob
Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge with Different Stages. She is very grateful to the Austin theatre
community for embracing her so warmly.
ANN
MARIE GORDON (Set Design) is the
resident designer at The Vortex. Her
designs for St. Enid and the Black Hand won
a B. Iden Payne Award. Recent Vortex
designs include Bell(e) (B. Iden
Payne nomination) and The Dragonfly
Princess. She has also designed for
Arial Dance Theatre and the Rude Mechanicals.
For Different Stages, she has designed Life and Limb, The Beard of Avon, Lettice and Lovage, The Miser and
Stop Kiss.
ACORN
DESIGNS, LLC (Sound Design) is a Sound
Design and Consulting firm with over 30 years of experience in theatre sound
design and concert sound and has recently moved into retail sales. Acorn Designs was founded by Sound Designer
Jeff Miller to provide an affordable sound alternative for the non-profit
arts. Jeff served as Sound Engineer on
the Broadway & National Tours of: A Chorus Line, Zorba, South Pacific, Singin’
in the Rain and The Mystery of Edwin
Drood. He has also done sound for
numerous films, videos, national commercials, and industrial shows. Jeff’s regional credits for Sound Design
include: Zachary Scott Theatre’s Little Shop of Horrors, Master Class,
Circumference of a Squirrel, Evita, Blues in the Night, The Taffetas, Forever
Plaid, The Piano Lesson, Jack and Jill, Rockin’ Christmas Party, Sylvia, All I
Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Born Yesterday, Sisters Rosensweig,
Shear Madness, Keely and Du, and Buddy:
The Buddy Holly Story, for Capitol City Playhouse’s Always…Patsy Cline, Austin Theatre for Youth’s The Hardy Boys and the Mystery of the Haunted House and The Velveteen Rabbit, Summer Stock
Austin’s West Side Story, Second Youth
Family Theatre’s Wiley and the Hairy Man and
Theatre at the J’s A My Name is Alice,
Cabaret, Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, You’re A Good Man,
Charlie Brown, Frog And Toad, Suessical, and Singin’ In The Rain. Jeff
has also worked as a sound engineer for Forever
Plaid, Beehive, and Soul
Sisters. Jeff has degrees in electrical
engineering and computer science. He is
an accomplished musician who plays the tuba and string bass.
Tara
Bonds (Lighting Design) Tara, a graduate of Texas State University-San
Marcos, has been a theatre teacher for seven years, and currently is head
director at C.D. Fulkes Middle School in Round Rock. Her mother, director
Lynn S. Beaver, pushed Tara onto the stage at the age of twelve, and she has
been involved on and off stage ever since. When not acting or directing
(or running after her eighteen month old daughter, Avery), she loves to work on
lighting design. Her design work includes Romeo and Juliet at
Sam Bass Community Theatre, All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
at the Palace Theatre, and Different Stages' Appointment with Death
at the Vortex. Tara would like to thank her husband Richard for supporting her
in all her theatrical endeavors.
C.
Denby Swanson (Dramaturg) is a graduate of Smith College, the National
Theatre Institute, and the University of Texas Michener Center for Writers. She
is a former William Inge Playwright in Residence, Jerome Fellow and McKnight
Advancement Grant recipient. Her work has been commissioned by the Guthrie Theater;
featured in the Southern Playwrights Festival, the Women Playwrights Project,
the Estro-Genius Festival, the Lark Theater’s Playwrights Week, PlayLabs 2002,
New York Stage & Film (through P73), Culture Project’s IMPACT Festival, the
Playwrights Center’s Writer/Director Lab, and the Icicle Creek Theater
Festival; and produced by Salvage Vanguard Theater, The Drilling Company, and
15 Head a Theater Lab. She is published by Smith & Kraus, Heinemann,
Accompany Publishing, and Playscripts, Inc. Her short play The Potato Feast received a Susan Smith Blackburn Houston Special
Prize in honor of the award’s 30th anniversary in 2008. She is a former
Artistic Director of Austin Script Works, and on the faculty at Southwestern
University. In 2007 and 2008 she was the NEA/TCG Playwright in Residence at
Zach Scott Theatre Center, working on a new play about Austin blues club owner
Clifford Antone.
PRODUCTION
STAFF
Light Operator/Sound Operator Amy Lewis
Set Construction Ann Marie
Gordon
Graphic Artist Sarah Seaton
Photographer-Publicity Brett
Brookshire
Program Norman
Blumensaadt
Publicity Carol
Ginn, Norman Blumensaadt
Mailing List Emily
Erington
Email Guru Martina
Olhauser
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Playwright Caryl Churchill was born on 3 September 1938 in London and
grew up in the Lake District and in Montreal. She was educated at Lady Margaret
Hall, Oxford, where she read English. Downstairs, her first play, was
written while she was still at university, was first staged in 1958 and won an
award at the Sunday Times National Union of Students Drama Festival. She
wrote a number of plays for BBC radio including The Ants (1962), Lovesick
(1967) and Abortive (1971). The Judge's Wife was televised by the
BBC in 1972 and Owners, her first professional stage production,
premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the same year. She was
Resident Dramatist at the Royal Court (1974-5) and spent much of the 1970s and
1980s working with the theatre groups 'Joint Stock' and 'Monstrous Regiment'.
Her work during this period includes Light Shining in Buckinghamshire
(1976), Cloud Nine (1979), Fen (1983) and A Mouthful of Birds
(1986), written with David Lan. Three More Sleepless Nights was first
produced at the Soho Poly, London, in 1980. Top Girls brings together
five historical female characters at a dinner party in a London restaurant
given by Marlene, the new managing director of 'Top Girls' employment agency.
The play was first staged at the Royal Court in 1982, directed by Max
Stafford-Clark. It transferred to Joseph Papp's Public Theatre in New York
later that year. Serious Money was first produced at the Royal Court in
1987 and won the Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy of the Year and
the Laurence Olivier/BBC Award for Best New Play. More recent plays include Mad
Forest (1990), written after a visit to Romania, and The Skriker
(1994). Her plays for television include The After Dinner Joke (1978)
and Crimes (1982). Far Away premiered at the Royal Court in 2000,
directed by Stephen Daldry. She has also published a new translation of
Seneca's Thyestes (2001), and A Number (2002), which addresses
the subject of human cloning. Her new version of August Strindberg's A Dream
Play (2005), premiered at the National Theatre in 2005.
Caryl Churchill
lives in London. Her latest play is Drunk Enough to say I Love You?
(2006), which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre in Winter 2006. In January 2009, Churchill wrote a ten minute
history of Israel, ending with the Israeli
attack on Gaza, to be performed free at the Royal Court Theatre,
with a collection for Medical Aid
for Palestinians. The play, Seven Jewish
Children — a play about Gaza, was then published online, for
free download and use. Churchill stated: "Anyone can perform it without
acquiring the rights, as long as they do a collection for people in Gaza at the
end of it".. This play has been widely criticised as being anti-semitic although
Churchill has denied the charge.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SPECIAL THANKS
Russ Wiseman
& Dougherty Arts Center, Latifah Taormina
& Austin Circle of Theaters, Bonnie Cullum, The Vortex Rep
Different Stages, Inc. has been a
community-based organization since its inception in 1981 and incorporation in
1984. It produces works by playwrights
whom we believe to be defining forces in theatre. We seek to entertain with performances that
reveal life in all its comedy, tragedy and intensity; and we hope to educate by
choosing plays that provide exceptional insight into the human condition. By challenging ourselves as artists and our
audiences as participants, we endeavor to provide the community with vigorous
and exciting live theatre.
Board of Directors: Karen Jambon T.J. Moreno, Norman Blumensaadt Operating
Board: Norman E. Blumensaadt, Sarah
Seton, Royce Gehrels, and Paula Ruth Gilbert.
Funding and Donations
Director Level $5000+
The
City of Austin
Actor Level $1000 - $5000
Karen
Jambon & Jennifer Underwood, Jack Grimes, Ameriprise Financial
Stage Manager Level $500-$999
Craig
Kanne
Designer Level $250-$499
Irene
Dubberly, Sarah & David Seaton, Royce Gehrels, Bruce McCann, Emily and Kent
Erington, Connie McMillan, Harvey Guion, Ann Bower
Stage Hand Level
$100-$249
Steven
Kinslow, Diane Herrera, John & Betty Wood, Andy & Renee Brown, Roy
& Leona Kaskin, Annette Sherman, Keith Yawn, Pamela Bates, Marla Boye,
Melanie & Travis Dean, The Pfizer Foundation, Bonnie & Frank Cahill,
Tom White, David Smith and Anonymous.
Audience Level $20-$99
Mary Alice Carnes, Patricia
Bennett, Cade & Al Minder, Gerald Moore, Paula Gilbert, Richard Collins,
Kelly Slupek, Cecilia Berg, Miriam Rubin, M.D., Rebecca Robinson, Reba Gillman,
Charles Ramirez Berg, Dianne & Donna Le Roy, Richard Collins
IN-KIND DONATIONS
Mary Alice Carnes, Sarah Seaton
This
project is funded in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division
and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.
DIFFERENT STAGES’ REPERTORY
Begun as Small
Potatoes Theatrical Company
1981: August Strindberg’s Creditors
and The Stronger. 1982:
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. 1983: George Bernard Shaw’s Candida;
Anton Chekhov’s The Brute, Swan Song, and Celebration. 1984: Luigi Pirandello’s Right You Are (If You
Think You Are); Jane Martin’s Talking With… 1985: Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9; William
Shakespeare’s As You Like It; Carl Sternheim’s The Underpants;
Michael Weller’s Moonchildren. 1986:
Amlin Gray’s How I Got That Story; William Shakespeare’s The
Winter’s Tale; Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon. 1987: Michael Weller’s Loose Ends;
Aristophanes’ The Wasps; Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart; Arthur
Schnitzler’s Anatol. 1988:
Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon; Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk
Wood; Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky; Jean Racine’s Phaedra;
Jean-Baptiste Molière’s The Misanthrope.
1989: Caryl Churchill’s Fen; Charles
Ludlam’s The Artificial Jungle; William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of
Venice. 1990: Eric Overmeyer’s On
the Verge; Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night; Milan
Kundera’s Jacques and His Master; Tom White’s The Trouble with Tofu;
William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
1991: George Kelly’s The Show-Off; George
Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession; Keith Reddin’s Life and Limb;
Mozart/Lorenzo da Ponte’s Così fan Tutte; Jean-Baptiste Molière’s The
Learnèd Ladies. 1992: Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman
in Mind; Carlo Gozzi’s The Raven; Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck;
Charles MacArthur’s Johnny on a Spot; George Farquhar’s The
Recruiting Officer. 1993:
Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good; Charles Ludlam’s The
Secret Lives of the Sexists; Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending. 1994: Constance Congdon’s Tales of the Lost
Formicans; William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline; George M. Cohan’s The
Tavern; Marlayne Meyer’s Etta Jenks.
1995: Pierre Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love;
Tom Stoppard’s Travesties; Larry Kramer’s The Destiny of Me;
Alexander Ostrovsky’s The Diary of a Scoundrel. 1996: Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest; Agatha
Christie’s Black Coffee; William Congreve’s The Way of the World. 1997:
Terrence McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh; Dorothy Parker’s Here We
Are; Alan Ayckbourn’s Drinking Companion; Terrence McNally’s Noon;
George M. Cohan’s Seven Keys to Baldpate; Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the
Paycock. 1998: Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia;
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon; Giles Havergal’s Travels with my Aunt;
Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. 1999: Edit Villareal’s My Visits with MGM;
Jean-Baptiste Molière’s The Hypochondriac (tr. Martin Sorrel); Edward Percy and Reginald Denham’s Ladies
in Retirement; Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. 2000: Peter Parnell’s The Rise and Rise of
Daniel Rocket; Ann Ciccolella’s Fruits
and Vegetables; George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly’s Merton of the
Movies; Martin McDonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan. 2001: Milcha
Sanchez-Scott’s Roosters; George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple;
J. B. Priestly’s Dangerous Corner; Tennessee Williams’ Summer and
Smoke. 2002: Ann Ciccolella’s Madame
X; David Linsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers; Agatha Christie’s The
Unexpected Guest; Federico Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. 2003:
Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation; Horton Foote’s The
Traveling Lady, William Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona;
Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. 2004: John Patrick’s The Hasty Heart;
Tom White’s The Misses Overbeck; Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney,
George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man.
2005: William Shakespeare’s Pericles,
Prince of Tyre; Edit Villareal’s Marriage is Forever; Agatha
Christie’s Appointment with Death; John
Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. 2006: Two into War (The Gifts of War
and The Retreating World); Amy Freed’s The Beard of Avon;
Agatha Christie’s The Hollow. Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob
Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge. 2007: Edward Albee’s The Goat or
Who is Sylvia. Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage, W. Sommerset
Maugham’s The Constant Wife. 2008:
Tennessee Williams’ Garden District: Something Unspoken & Suddenly Last Summer, Diana Son’s
Stop Kiss; Tom White’s What I Want Right Now. George Bernard
Shaw’s Getting Married. 2009: Christopher Durang’s Miss
Witherspoon,