Different
Stages
Presents
The
Goat or, Who is Sylvia?
by
Edward Albee
Director Norman
Blumensaadt
Set
Design Laura
Sandberg
Light
Design Amanda
Harris
Costume
Design Marann
Faget
Sound
Design Frank
Benge
Stage
Manager TJ
Moreno
Assistant
Director Jeanette
Bellemeur
CHARACTERS
AND CAST
Stevie Rebecca Robinson
Martin Tom
Chamberlain
Ross Frank Benge
Billy Trey Deason
Place:
A living room.
Time:
The present.
THE
GOAT IS PERFORMED WITHOUT AN INTERMISSION.
The Goat or, Who, is
Sylvia?
is produced by special arrangement
with Dramatist’s Play
Service
Originally produced on Broadway by
Elizabeth Ireland McCann, Daryl Roth,
Carol Shorestein Hays, Terry Allen Kramer, Scott Rudin,
Bob Boyett, Scott Nederlander, Sine/ZPI
THE PRODUCTION
COMPANY
FRANK
BENGE (Ross Tuttle) This is Frank’s 5th show for Different Stages. He has
appeared previously in 365 Plays/365 Days,
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Austin Critic’s Table Award Best Supporting
Actor Nomination), An Ideal Husband
(ACoT B. Iden Payne Award Best Actor Nomination) and Fuddy Meers. He has most recently been seen as Falstaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Teddy in Arsenic and Old Lace for SBCT in Round
Rock and in Scottish Rite’s Christmas melodrama The Plight Before Christmas. He is honored to be working with such
an incredible cast for one of his favorite directors. It’s the perfect birthday
present.
NORMAN
BLUMENSAADT (Producer) is the
Producing Artistic Director for Different Stages. Among the numerous shows that he has directed, a selection of
just some the 39 plays he has directed are The
House of Bernarda Alba, An Ideal
Husband, The Misses Overbeck, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Appointment
with Death, The Beard of Avon and The Hollow. 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. This
season he directs The Goat or Who is
Sylvia and The Constant Wife –
two plays about husbands, wives and infidelity.
TOM
CHAMBERLAIN (Martin) is happy to be home with Different Stages where he
portrayed his first dysfunctional husband, Frank Hyland in 1991's The Show-Off, and his last, Frank
Sweeney in 2004's Molly Sweeney. It is also where he began his queer association
with goats, also as that wacky Frank Sweeney, though those were piebald
Iranians. So this appearance as Martin Gray has a certain symmetry. Tom also stars as the icily efficient bad
guy in the indie film thriller Isolation
slated to appear in the 2007 LA Film Festival.
A full-time filmmaker, he is co-producing a documentary on small towns
in Texas called Six Man, Texas and is
in post-production on a Santa Claus documentary featuring Austin's own Karl
Anderson.
TREY
DEASON ( Billy) is a recent BFA theatre graduate from Southwestern University
and is making his debut at Different Stages. While at Southwestern, he appeared
in the productions of Hair, The Tony Kushner Project, Le Bourgeois Avant-Garde, Oleanna, and A Man of No Importance among others. In addition, he has worked as
a playwright, having two one-acts performed at Southwestern, Human Sketches and Dominatrix and Rape.
His work outside of college has included three productions with the Gilbert and
Sullivan society of Austin, including playing Ko-Ko in their recent production
of The Mikado, and serving as an
acting intern with at Zachary Scott Theatre. He most recently performed at Zach
in a workshop production of a new musical, City
Life.
MARANN FAGET (Costume Designer) is excited to be working with
Different Stages for the fourth time. Her costumes for Different Stages
production of 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
Magnolia. INTERNATIONAL CREDITS:
Greece: Chios Civic Theater: Kidnapping
of the Pope, Arsenic and Old Lace. Marann has four children and
one granddaughter, resides in Austin, and loves to play poker.
AMANDA HARRIS (Light Design) is a
Senior BFA Lighting Design student at Texas State University-San
Marcos. Recently she worked as the Assistant Master Electrician at
The Illinois Shakespeare Festival and the Assistant Lighting Designer and
Master Electrician for Texas State's production of The Night of the Iguana. In the spring she will be designing
Texas State's Much Ado about Nothing.
Next summer she will be in Stratford studying Shakespeare with the Royal Shakespeare
Company. This is her second production with Different Stages.
REBECCA ROBINSON (Stevie) has been
acting and dancing in Central Texas for the past ten years. She is thrilled to
be performing again with Different Stages, having last appeared with them as
the sinister Mrs. Chevely in An Ideal
Husband, and also as Alma in Summer
and Smoke. Most recently, Rebecca traveled to South Carolina for a run of the new play Charlie Cox Runs with Scissors, after
choreographing the delightfully campy Psycho
Beach Party for Arts on Real. She
would like to thank her bestfriends and biggest fans, Robert & Maryann and
sends much love to Sykes.
LAURA SANDBERG (Scenic 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.
PRODUCTION
STAFF
Light Operator/Sound Operator T.J. Moreno
Set Construction Laura
Sandberg, Tom Chamberlain,
Norman Blumensaadt
Properties Laura
Sandberg, Norman Blumensaadt
Graphic Artist Sarah Seaton
Photographer-Publicity Brett
Brookshire
Production Photographer Michael
Brock
Program A.J. Lewis
Publicity Carol
Ginn, Norman Blumensaadt, Scott Tesh
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Edward F. Albee was born in Virginia on March 12th 1928, adopted
by Reed and Frances Albee. His father was part owner of the Keith-Albee
vaudeville circuit. Edward was raised in luxury, in the family's Larchmont
mansion, also occupied by Mrs. Albee's mother to whom he became very attached.
Grandma Cotter, to whom he dedicated his 1960 play The Sandbox, left him a trust fund that enabled him to strike out
on his own. Since his parents spent winters in Florida and Arizona, Edward's
grade school education was frequently interrupted and at age eleven he was sent
to the first of several boarding schools (one of which was a military academy
he hated and likened to a concentration camp), with Choate the one where he
felt most nurtured and began writing (poems, stories, plays). He ended his
formal education after a year and a half (1946-47) Trinity College in Hartford,
Connecticut.
Albee's first job was writing continuity dialogue for radio station
WNYC. After leaving his parents' home to settle in Greenwich Village he spent
years holding a variety of jobs -- including three years as a Western Union messenger.
They supplemented his trust and were chosen because they were dead ends and
would not interfere with his primary vocation: writing.
His artistic endeavors were filled with frustration. He lived for
nearly half a year in Italy where he wrote a novel which has never been
published. W. H. Auden whom he met in New York, read some of his poetry and
suggested that he write pornographic verse as an exercise to improve his style.
In New Hampshire he met Thornton Wilder who advised him to turn his efforts toward
drama upon which Albee steeped himself in everything even mildly important.
On his thirtieth birthday in 1958, he quit his job with Western
Union and wrote The Zoo Story in
three weeks. After being rejected by several New York producers, the play had
its premiere at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt in Berlin on September 28, 1959.
Four months later it was paired with Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the
Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Its reception was favorable and
won Albee the recognition as a formidable talent. In 1960 it won the Vernon
Rice Memorial Award in 1960.
Albee's first major "hit" was Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which opened at Broadway's Billy
Rose Theater on October 3, 1963, starring Uta Hagen and Arthur Hill as the
battling George and Martha. It ran for 664 performances and was made into a
popular film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Like Eugene O'Neill
Albee nabbed three Pulitzers, for A
Delicate Balance in 1966, Seascape
in 1975 and Three Tall Women in 1991.
Today Albee remains active, writing, producing and directing his
plays, as well as teaching at the School of Theatre of the University of
Houston and giving lectures on his work at colleges around the country.
ABOUT THE PLAY
(Notes Toward a Definition
of Tragedy)
The subtitle of The Goat or Who is Sylvia? clearly implies, along with the title, that a goat serves a principle role in the modern drama, with traditional roots. Tragedy derives from the ancient Greek word tragoidia, which literally means goat song. This definition of tragedy possibly originated from a time when the chorus in ancient Greek plays danced either for a goat as a prize or around a goat, which was then sacrificed to the gods (Greek drama derived from celebrations of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and fertility). Beside this symbolic animal being a prime influence in the story, The Goat or Who is Sylvia? Contains other elements of Greek tragedy. For example, in the ancient dramatic form, a play’s main character is usually a man of high status who holds a position of power. What made these characters so alluring was that when they fell from authority, they fell hard, and their ruin would usually affect the fate of those around them. Watching a man who has it all one moment and then loses it the next is more tragic than watching someone who has moderate clout sink even lower. Furthermore, since those in leadership positions are supposed to be invulnerable, their making mistakes because of such ordinary attributes as pride and lust makes the upper class more like common folk. Not only is their descent from the top more dramatic, but is also reminds us that regardless of how much prestige we have, we’re all simply human beings.
Martin, one of the main characters in The Goat, is an architect who has reached the pinnacle of his career. This esteemed authority is also happily married to Stevie, and they have a gay teenage son whom they love and support. But when Martin reveals a secret that rocks his family and also has the potential to destroy his prestigious career, we witness a great man tumble from grace.
Such tremendous revelations trigger heightened emotional responses, another characteristic The Goat shares with Greek tragedy. When the foundations of a tranquil, successful life are suddenly ripped away from people, their responding to the shock with intense feeling is not surprising. Although most of the characters in The Goat are initially content and jovial, their moods quickly darken once Martin’s disturbing secret is discovered.
The dire complication—such as a troubling secret being revealed, an adulterous affair being discovered, or an unjustified murder being committed—that instigates such strong emotions often motivates a character to commit some sort of sacrifice at the end of a Greek tragedy. The sacrificial murder is frequently violent, though the actual brutal act almost always occurs off stage, and the motive for the killing is usually to seek revenge. Although the reasons for and the methods of the sacrifices may differ, they have a common impact: the main character or another central figure is emotionally devastated by the slaughter.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND SPECIAL THANKS
Lisa Scheps and the
play! Theater Group, Russ Wiseman & Dougherty
Arts Center, Austin Circle of Theaters, Ann Ciccollela and Zackary Scott
Theater , Sarah Seaton, Live Oak Residential Treatment Facility, Phil
Judah, and the lovely and charming Pepper.
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
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
Audience Level
$20-$99
Miriam Rubin, David Smith & Tom White,
M.D., Rebecca Robinson, Reba Gillman, Charles Ramirez Berg, Dianne Herra
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. Susan Lori
Parks 365 Play/365 Days 2007: Edward Albee’s The Goat or
Who is Sylvia. Peter Shaffer’s Lettice and Lovage, W. Sommerset
Maugham’s The Constant Wife.