Different Stages
Presents
Garden
District
by Tennesse
Williams
Something
Unspoken
And
Suddenly Last
Summer
Director Norman
Blumensaadt
Set Design Laura
Sandberg
Light Design Bill
Peeler
Costume Design Marann
Faget
Sound Design Frank
Benge
Stage Manager Jess
Cohen
Assistant Director Jeanette
Bellemeur
CHARACTERS AND CAST
Something Unspoken
Miss Cornelia Scott
Sharon Elmore
Miss Grace Lancaster Sarah
Seaton
Location: Cornelia Scott’s house
Meridian, Mississippi
Suddenly Last Summer
Mrs. Venable Jennifer
Underwood
Dr, Cukrowicz Errich
Petersen
Miss Fox Hill Sarah
Seaton
Mrs. Holly Paula
Ruth Gilbert
George Holly.
Paul Soileau
Catherine
Holly Kathleen
Fletcher
Sister
Felicity Sharon
Elmore
Location: Mrs.
Venable’s Garden, New Orleans, Louisiana
ONE INTERMISSION
SOMETHING UNSPOKEN and
SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER are presented by arrangement with Dramatists Play Services
on behalf of the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennesee.
THE PRODUCTION
COMPANY
NORMAN
BLUMENSAADT (Director) 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 Arms
and the Man and The Playboy of the Western World and The Miser. Among the numerous shows that
he has directed, a selection of just some the 41 plays 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 or Who is Sylvia? won
the 2006-2007 ACOT Award for Best
Production of a Drama. This summer he
directs the premiere of Austin playwright Tom White’s What I Want Right Now
SHARON ELMORE (Cornelia Scott –
Something Unspoken, Sister Felicity – Suddenly Last Summer) Sharon’s last performance with Different Stages was as
Lady Angkatall in The Hollow, for
which she won ACOT’s B.Iden Payne Award
for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama.
Sharon’s roles have run the gamut from Lady Macbeth to Sister Mary
Ignatius who…Explains It All To You. Other favorite roles include Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, Queen Eleanor in The Lion in Winter, Dotty in Noises Off, Sister in Wallspaper Psalms, Mrs. Beckoff in Torch Song Trilogy, and the Stage Manager
in Our Town (yes, I know it’s a man’s
role, but I got to play it as a mysterious shaman!) Sharon’s had the privilege
and joy of performing at the Dallas Theatre Center, Theatre Three, Stage West,
Ft. Worth Scott Theatre, Addison Theatre Center, and many of Austin’s theater
companies….going back years and years and years.
MARAN FAGET (Costume Designer) is
excited to be working with Different Stages for the sixth time. Her costumes
for Different Stages production of The
Constant Wife and The Beard of Avon
were nominated for an ACOT Award. AUSTIN CREDITS: Pro-arts Collective, Austin
Lyric Opera, Sam Bass Theater, Storie Productions, Refraction Arts’ critically
acclaimed Philomel Project, One World
Theatre: Groucho (starring Gabe
Kaplan), Zachary Scott Theater, and Oracle Theater REGIONAL CREDITS:
Colorado: Windsor Community Playhouse: A Delicate Balance, Ten
Little Indians, Relatively Speaking. Bas Bleu Theatre: The Caretaker, Trifles.
Minnesota: Resident Costume Designer (1989-1995) at Rochester Community
College: Spoon River Anthology, Veronica's Room, Lunacy, Tobacco Road, Luv. Rochester Civic
Theater: A Shayna Maidel. Rochester
Repertory Theatre: Lone-star, Laundry and Bourbon, Agnes of God,
Private Wars. Feast and Footlights Theater: Steel Magnolias. INTERNATIONAL CREDITS: Greece: Chios Civic
Theater: Kidnapping of the Pope, Arsenic and Old Lace. Marann has four children and one granddaughter, resides
in Rochester, MN, and is now the resident costume designer for the Rochester
Civic Theatre.
KATHLEEN FLETCHER (Catherine Holly –
Suddenly Last Summer) Kathleen has been
actively involved in Austin theatre for the past two years, and she has relished
every moment! She has been nominated for five B. Iden Payne Awards, and
has won two. Some of her favorite theatre companies to work with include:
Pollyanna Theatre Company, Shrewd Productions, Yellowtape Construction Company,
the Vestige Group, Vortex Repertoire, City Theatre Company, and now Different
Stages! Many many thanks to this incredibly talented cast and crew!!! I
love you all!
PAULA
RUTH GILBERT (Mrs. Holly – Suddenly Last Summer)
Paula
Ruth Gilbert, honored by the Austin Circle of Theaters, Best Ensemble for Medea at the Vortex, always wanted to
act. It is her destiny, she thinks. A week after her birth, her great
grandmother wrote a letter to her grandmother saying, “…I like her name. Paula
Ruth. Sounds like an actress.” Destiny.
Definitely. Or possibly addiction.
Toss-up there. She has been working with Different Stages since 1981. She’s
played a variety of nasty folks, some sympathetic ladies, and a Wasp. Thank you
Norman for your faith.
Thank
you, Cast, for yours, and thank you Mesko for yours.
WILLIAM (BILL)
PEELER (Light Designer) has over 30 years experience as a theatrical lighting
designer, holding both national and international credits including Uncle Vanya with the National Theatre Company of Costa Rica, a four-year
stint lighting the International Bluegrass Music Awards Show, in addition to Trying and Men of Tortuga for the Asolo Rep in Sarasota, Florida. Among his
Austin area credits are the world premier productions of Sonny's Last Shot at the State Theatre, Austin, Texas, A Ride With Bob featuring Grammy award
winning Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel, culminating in a run at the Kennedy
Center in Washington, D.C., and seven previous shows for Different Stages. For
the last six summers, Bill’s design work, involving both conventional and
automated lighting, has been seen in San Jose, Costa Rica while serving as a
director and faculty member with the Institute for Digital-Performing Arts.
ERRICH
PETERSEN (Dr. Cukrowicz – Suddenly Last Summer)
Errich
Petersen is very excited to be in his third Different Stages Production.
He also starred in Pericles and
in Tom White's original play, The Misses
Overbeck. Errich was last seen in the B. Iden Payne nominated The Women of Lockerbie at City Theatre
Company. A few of the other theatres Errich has worked for include The Vortex,
Naughty Austin and Yellow Tape Construction Co.
LAURA
SANDBERG (Set Designer) has been designing scenery and lighting around
Austin for many years now; as much as her very demanding dogs and
cats can tolerate, and her day job as a ‘computer geek’ permits. Well OK,
maybe a little more than her job really permits, but who can resist challenges
such as this one? Other favorite design projects have included A Perfect Ganesh, Gary Grinkle's Battles with Wrinkles, The Hobbit, The Snow Queen, A Funny Thing Happened on the
Way to the Forum, Mad Forest, King
Stag, and Allen Robertson's Beauty
and the Beast. Last season she
designed the sets for Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s
Wild Christmas Binge and The Goat or
Who is Sylvia?
SARAH
SEATON (Grace Lancaster – Something Unspoken, Miss Foxhill – Suddenly Last
Summer) is proud to be making her fourth appearance with Different Stages, and
would like to thank Norman and Jeannette for the opportunity. She was
last seen as Gerda Cristow in the Different Stages production of The Hollow, for which she received a B.
Iden Payne Award nomination. Favorite roles include the Widow Quin in The Playboy of the Western World, also with
Different Stages, and Meg Magrath in Crimes
of the Heart for OnStage Theater Company. She dedicates her performance to
her parents, Don and Marge Hauck, in honor of their 50th wedding anniversary,
and would like to thank her husband David for his abundance of love, support
and patience. Sarah also thanks the wonderful cast and crew of Garden District. She is honored to
work with such gracious and talented people.
PAUL
SOILEAU (George Holly – Suddenly Last Summer)
is quite fond of Tennessee Williams, and is very
pleased to be working with Different Stages in this fine production of Suddenly
Last Summer. He is a graduate of Loyola University of New Orleans, has trained
with the British American Drama Academy, and has spent most of his professional
time in New York and New Orleans before moving here to Austin, Texas. Mr.
Soileau is currently producing and starring in all things concerning his alter
ego, Ms. Rebecca Havemeyer (rebeccahavemeyer.com), as well as a few other
eccentrics who mingle in his mind. He would like to thank Miss Kathleen Fletcher
for giving him the kick.
JENNIFER
UNDERWOOD (Violet Venable): Jennifer’s
last Different Stages production was as Lotte Schoen in Lettice and Lovage Other Different Stages productions include Queen
Elizabeth in The Beard of Avon, Catherine Petkoff in Arms and the Man, Mrs. Siezmagraff in Betty’s Summer Vacation for which she
won the B. Iden Payne Award as Outstanding Actress in a comedy, the title role
in The House of Bernarda Alba, Gertie
in Fuddy Meers, Mrs. Dudgeon in The Devil’s Disciple, Kate in The Cripple of Inishmann, Kate in All My Sons and Norma in The Misses Overbeck. Other Austin area productions include Kate
Mundy in Dancing at Lughnasa, Bessie
in Marvin’s Room, Elizabeth in The Petition, Betty in The Effect
of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon-Marigolds, Evie in The Gingerbread Lady
and Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,
Geneva Musgrave in Dearly Beloved.
PRODUCTION STAFF
Stage Manager Jess Cohen
Stage Crew Ursula
Linska, Jennifer Martinez
Carpentiers
Ann
Marie Gordon, Elaine Jacobs
Web Master Martina
Ohlhauser
Properties Norman
Blumensaadt,
Costume
Construction Marann Faget
Graphic Artist Sarah Seaton
Photographer-Publicity Brett
Brookshire
Program Norman
Blumensaadt
Publicity Carol
Ginn, Norman Blumensaadt, Martina Ohlahauser
Email Guru Scott
Tesh
Box Office Manager TJ
Moreno
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Thomas Lanier Williams was
born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. The second of three children,
his family life was full of tension. His parents, a shoe salesman and the
daughter of a minister, often engaged in violent arguments that frightened his
sister Rose.
In 1927, Williams got his
first taste of literary fame when he took third place in a national essay
contest sponsored by The Smart Set magazine. In 1929, he was admitted to the
University of Missouri where he saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts and decided to become a
playwright. But his degree was interrupted when his father forced him to
withdraw from college and work at the International Shoe Company. There he
worked with a young man named Stanley Kowalski who would later resurface as a
character in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Eventually, Tom returned to
school. In 1937, he had two of his plays (Candles
to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind)
produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938, he graduated from the University
of Iowa. After failing to find work in Chicago, he moved to New Orleans and
changed his name from "Tom" to "Tennessee" which was the
state of his father's birth.
In 1939, the young
playwright received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant, and a year later, Battle of
Angels was produced in Boston. In 1944, what many consider to be his best play,
The Glass Menagerie, had a very
successful run in Chicago and a year later burst its way onto Broadway. The
play tells the story of Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling
mother Amanda who tries to make a match between Laura and the gentleman caller.
Many people believe that Tennessee used his own familial relationships as
inspiration for the play. His own mother, who is often compared to the
controlling Amanda, allowed doctors to perform a frontal lobotomy on Tennessee's
sister Rose, an event that greatly disturbed Williams who cared for Rose
throughout much of her adult life. Elia Kazan (who directed many of Williams'
greatest successes) said of Tennessee: "Everything in his life is in his
plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award
for best play of the season.
Williams followed up his
first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such
plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer
and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino
Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire,
and reached an even larger world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into
major motion pictures. Later plays which were also made into motion pictures include
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (for which he
earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955), Orpheus
Descending, and Night of the Iguana.
Tennessee Williams met and
fell in love with Frank Merlo in 1947 while living in New Orleans. Merlo, a
second generation Sicilian American who had served in the U.S. Navy in World
War II, was a steadying influence in Williams' chaotic life. But in 1961, Merlo
died of Lung Cancer and the playwright went into a deep depression that lasted
for ten years. In fact, Williams struggled with depression throughout most of
his life and lived with the constant fear that he would go insane as did his
sister Rose. For much of this period, he battled addictions to prescription
drugs and alcohol.
On February 24, 1983,
Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City
residence at the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri. In addition
to twenty-five full length plays, Williams produced dozens of short plays and
screenplays, two novels, a novella, sixty short stories, over one-hundred poems
and an autobiography. Among his many awards, he won two Pulitzer Prizes and
four New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SPECIAL THANKS
Russ Wiseman
& Dougherty Arts Center, Austin
Circle of Theaters, Jennifer Underwood and Sharon Elmore for rehearsal space,
Julie Write
and Leslie Hollingsworth, Second Youth Family Theater, Royce Gehrels, Scott
Schroeder, Peter Beilharz, Jim Cartwright, Immortal Performances, Kyle Sigrest,
Rochester Civic Theatre for rental of costumes
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
Stage Manager Level $500-$999
Craig Kanne,
Jack Grimes, Ameriprise Foundation
Designer Level $250-$499
Royce
Gehrels, Bruce McCann, Emily and Kent Erington,
Connie McMillan, Harvey Guion
Stage Hand
Level $100-$249
Karen
Kuykendall, Irene Dubberley, Sarah & David Seaton Keith Yawn, Pamela Bates,
Marla Boye, Melanie & Travis Dean, Anonymous, Ann Bower, The Pizer
Foundation, Bonnie & Frank Cahill
Audience Level
$20-$99
Miriam Rubin, David Smith & Tom White,
M.D., Rebecca Robinson, Reba Gillman, Charles Ramirez Berg, Dianne Herra,
Rodney & Donna Le Roy
IN-KIND DONATIONS
Mary Alice
Carnes, Sarah Seaton
This project is funded and supported in part by the
City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas
Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts,
which believes that a great nation deserves great art.
