THE DEFIANT LIFE OF LILLIAN HELLMAN

AVARICE, ECONOMY AND LILLIAN HELLMAN’S DEPICTION OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH

DIVING INTO HISTORY WITH THE LITTLE FOXES COSTUME DESIGNER JENNY MANNIS

A Conversation with stop. reset. Playwright/Director Regina Taylor

May – June 2015

Co-Editors | Neena Arndt, Lori Kleinerman, Michael Mellini, Tanya PalmerGraphic Designer | Cecily PincsakProduction Manager | Michael Mellini

Contributing Writers/Editors | Neena Arndt, Lisa Feingold, Lori Kleinerman, Julie Massey, Michael Mellini, Tanya Palmer, Joe Pindelski, Teresa Rende, Steve Scott, Willa J. Taylor.

OnStage is published in conjunction with Goodman Theatre productions. It is designed to serve as an information source for Goodman Theatre Subscribers. For ticket and subscription information call 312.443.3810. Cover: Image design and direction by Kelly Rickert.

Goodman productions are made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Arts; the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; and a CityArts grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

Written comments and inquiries should be sent to:

The Editor, OnStage Goodman Theatre 170 North Dearborn Street Chicago, IL 60601

or email us at: OnStage@GoodmanTheatre.org

May – June 2015

CONTENTSIn the Albert 2 The Defiant Life of Lillian Hellman

6 Avarice, Economy and Lillian Hellman’s Depiction of the American South

8 Big. Bold. Brilliant. Goodman Theatre’s 2015/2016 Season

10 Diving into History with The Little Foxes Costume Designer Jenny Mannis

In the Owen 13 A Conversation with stop. reset. Playwright/Director Regina Taylor

In the Wings 16 See Daring New Works from the Playwrights Unit

17 Student Success Stories: Engaging the Next Generation

At the Goodman 18 Audience Enrichment Programs

Scene at the Goodman 19 Two Trains Running Opening Night Fame, Fantasy, Food, Adventure Auction

20 The August Wilson Celebration Kick-Off

For Subscribers 21 Plan Ahead: Calendars

VOLUME 31 #4

Artistic Director ROBERT FALLS | Executive Director ROCHE SCHULFER

Why The Little Foxes?Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines; for our vines have tender grapes. – Song of Solomon, ii.15

In an era that spawned some of the great classics of the American stage, Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes is one of the most enduring works of its time. Premiering in 1939 with a cast headed by Tallulah Bankhead, the play was hailed by critics for its mesmerizing plot and memorable characters, and was almost immediately made into an even more successful film, with Bette Davis as the villainous Regina Giddens. Stage revivals have been frequent, featuring some of the greatest stars of modern times: Anne Bancroft, Maureen Stapleton, George C. Scott, Stockard Channing and Elizabeth Taylor, whose first stage appearance came in a much-heralded 1981 Broadway remounting. Hellman’s searing family drama has been a staple of community and college theaters, and has seen a variety of acclaimed regional productions. Why does this story of greed, betrayal and monumental family dysfunctionality continue to fascinate us 75 years after its debut?

Hellman’s play is set in a time and place that were particularly alluring to its first audiences: the old South at the turn of the 20th century, a society still emerging from the ravages of the Civil War and the turbulent years of Reconstruction. Faced with the final collapse of plantation economy, southern entrepreneurs fought to wrest industry from the urban centers of the North, offering cheap land, cheaper labor and the promise of replenished fortunes. The greed that accompanies (or fuels) such economic movements would not have been unfamiliar to the Depression-era audiences of 1939, as would Hellman’s depictions of other social and political challenges in the world of 1900: the restrictions that confronted women, especially before liberation movements of the 1960s and ‘70s; the perceived victimization of the lower economic classes by a tiny minority of the wealthy; and the continued nightmare of racial prejudice which per-sisted unabated into mid-century American society. Although The Little Foxes was on one hand a glimpse at a bygone era of our country’s history, the underpinnings of that period were still ominously evident to the play’s first audiences—and remain so today, bringing an unexpected and unnerving topicality to the story’s melodramatic twists and turns.

In fact, many elements of The Little Foxes may be more shocking to viewers in 2015 than they were originally— the disturbingly casual domestic violence, the equally casual (and often offensive) racist language and actions of the Hubbard clan, the “greed is good” mentality that belies the elegance of the play’s environs. Although these elements may offend the politically correct sensibilities of our own times, they are crucial to the continuing power of the play. Hellman’s story may have taken place a century ago, but it still contains warnings that must be heeded today, of how the heady prospect of success and wealth can infect and distort the human principles that are vital to our survival.

Robert Falls

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FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Robert Falls Artistic Director

The Defiant Life of Lillian HellmanBy Steve Scott

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The turbulent events of playwright Lillian Hellman’s life reflected the vast divisive-ness of America in the 20th century. Born in 1905 into a successful southern family, she grew up in both the sheltered environs of a family-owned New Orleans boarding house and the frenzied chaos of New York City. She reacted harshly against the wealth of her mother’s family, yet enjoyed the luxury it afforded. Jewish by birth, she devel-oped a fascination with African American lore during her childhood and frequented Catholic and Baptist churches more than synagogues. At the age of 20, Hellman married playwright and press agent Arthur Kober, yet spent much of her marriage living apart from her husband and even-tually entered into a decades-long liaison with the married novelist Dashiell Hammett, author of The Thin Man. Her plays and novels strenuously advocated for honesty in a world where lying had lethal consequences; her own memoirs, however, were riddled with half-truths, embellishments and outright fictions. Few writers of her generation were held in higher esteem than Hellman, yet fewer were more reviled. She was, in every sense of the word, an American dichotomy.

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Her taste for adventure came early. After two years of study at Columbia University and New York University (and her subse-quent impulsive marriage to Kober), she embarked on a European odyssey, settling in Germany to continue her education. There she was attracted to a young Nazi student group whose socialist theories mirrored her own. The attraction ended abruptly when the students questioned her religious background and revealed their virulent anti-Semitism. Years later she wrote of the unsettling experience, “Then for the first time in my life I thought about being Jewish.” She fled to the sunnier climes of Hollywood, where she began work as a reader for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There she met and fell in love

with Hammett, then considered a minor writer of mystery novels. Divorcing Kober in 1932, she moved with Hammett back to New York City; with his encouragement

she began to write her own plays, begin-ning with The Children’s Hour in 1934. Based on an obscure account of two 19th century Scottish teachers accused of les-bianism by a student (a factual incident Hellman at first denied knowledge of), the play’s potent mix of skillful plotting, carefully drawn characters and forbidden sexuality made it a critical and popular hit for nearly two years on Broadway.

Following the success of The Children’s Hour, Hellman returned to Hollywood, taking a job as a screenwriter at Goldwyn Pictures. She worked on films such as The Westerner, Dead End and These Three, the latter a somewhat sanitized version of The Children’s Hour which, in order to conform to the standards of the Motion Picture Production Code, substi-tuted heterosexual infidelity for lesbian-ism as the central plot device. She also embraced the development of labor unions; she became a member and

strong advocate for the young Screen Actors Guild and began work on Days to Come, a stage drama focusing on a labor dispute in a small town. Her growing political activism led her to join with other literary figures to back the produc-tion of The Spanish Earth, a 1937 docu-mentary intended to raise support for anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War. In March of that year, Hellman joined a group of 88 public figures in signing “An Open Letter to American Liberals” that urged support of the anti-Fascist Soviet Communist regime. That summer she toured Spain on her own, experiencing firsthand the tragedies of the civil war as it affected ordinary citi-zens. Moved by the devastation she wit-nessed, Hellman decided to use her stature as a prominent writer to publicly support the International Brigades of non-Spanish allies of the Spanish Loyalists; upon her return to the US she published a chroni-cle of her travels, “A Day in Spain,” in The New Republic. She became a mem-ber of the Communist Party in 1938, although she later termed herself “a most casual member,” noting that “I attended very few meetings and saw and heard nothing more than people sitting around a room talking of current events.” Dissatisfied with the party’s inaction, she left two years later.

Her distrust of capitalism, sparked by her wealthy upbringing, became evident in her next play, The Little Foxes, which premiered on Broadway in 1939 starring

Tallulah Bankhead. The story of the infighting that occurs in a turn-of-the-century southern family eager to cash in on a potential windfall, the play was immediately popular with audiences caught in the struggles of the Depression. Although some saw Hellman’s play as a thinly-veiled indictment of capitalism and its destructive effects, Foxes’ vivid char-acters and superbly plotted drama were universally praised by critics; among them, not surprisingly, was The Daily Worker, the organ of the American Communist Party. Shortly thereafter a film adaptation of The Little Foxes earned nine Academy Award nomina-tions, including Best Picture, as well as nominations for Hellman’s screenplay and lead actress Bette Davis. Hellman’s next play, Watch on the Rhine in 1941, was an impassioned indictment of Fascism and Nazism and underscored her sup-port for a united international alliance against Hitler, even though this conflicted with her still strong Soviet sympathies during the brief period of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Hellman became an active fundraiser for anti-Nazi activists and in 1944 wrote The Searching Wind, a play concerning the vacillating loyalties of an ambassador in both his personal and public lives. It was unsuccessful and derided even by Communist sympathizers disappointed by Hellman’s lack of pro-Soviet views in the play.

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions...” –Lillian Hellman, while testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee, May 19, 1952

Left: Dashiell Hammett, author and companion of Lillian Hellman. Below: Film adaptation of The Little Foxes, starring Bette Davis.

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But Hellman’s history as a Soviet sympa-thizer was beginning to bring her into conflict with the US government. During the war she was rejected twice for a passport to visit England by authorities who considered her “an active Communist.” She did however eventually receive clearance to visit Russia in 1944 as a guest of VOKS, the Soviet agency for cultural exchanges. Three years later, she refused a multi-year contract with Columbia Pictures because of the inclu-sion in her contract of a loyalty clause, which she considered an infringement on her right of free speech. Shortly thereafter, she was informed by director William Wellman that he was unable to hire her because she had been black-listed. Later that year, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began their investigation of Communist influences in the film indus-try. Hellman wrote a strongly worded attack on HUAC for Screen Writer, the publication of the Screen Writers Guild, in which she decried both the Committee and the Hollywood producers who coop-erated with the group, writing, “Those are frightened men and you pick fright-ened men to frighten first. Judas goats; they’ll lead the others, maybe, to the slaughter for you...”

Although her work in film had ended, Hellman’s theatrical career was never more productive, including Another Part of the Forest (a prequel to The Little Foxes) in 1947, a translation of the French play Montserrat in 1949 and The Autumn Garden, one of her most admired works, in 1951. The next year she was finally called to testify before HUAC; terrified by the specter of that experience she nonetheless told her law-yer that she refused to name names or to deny her own short-term membership in the Communist Party. Eventually she decided to make her appearance before the Committee with a letter outlining her sporadic contact with the party and briefly stating her own “misplaced ideal-ism” in joining the group; she refused to take the Fifth Amendment, insisting that she had nothing to hide. Her lawyer had planned to release the letter to the press after her testimony; however, during her appearance before the Committee, chair-man John Wood suggested that the let-ter be entered into the court record,

which forced it to be read aloud. Writing that “I was raised in an old-fashioned American tradition…to try to tell the truth, not to bear false witness, not to harm my neighbor, to be loyal to my country,” Hellman further stated, memo-rably, “I cannot and will not cut my con-science to fit this year’s fashions even though I long ago came to the conclu-sion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.”

Almost instantly Hellman became a her-oine of the left. One writer called her testimony “a courageous act, worthy of a lady.” In The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson applauded her attitude, terming it “a basic moral force that every lover of the American system must adhere to.” When her name was men-tioned at a luncheon at the American Jewish Congress, the usually staid assem-blage “applauded loud and long.” Though initially flattered by the attention, she found that the charges of “fellow traveler” and “unrepentant Stalinist” would follow her for the rest of her life, even after the Red Scare of the 1950s faded away.

Despite this public controversy her career flourished. Her next works—an adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s The Lark, the book for the Leonard Bernstein musi-cal Candide, the premiere of Toys in the Attic in 1960—brought her critical acclaim, economic security and an elite group of friends that included novelist William Styron, JFK advisor Richard Goodwin, political heavyweights McGeorge Bundy and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and even conservative columnist Joseph Alsop. In the 1960s era of civil rights reform and feminism she became an icon: in demand as a commencement speaker at Ivy League schools, a some-times outspoken supporter of student activism against the Vietnam War, a defender of the rights of dissident artists in the Soviet Union (a position which she adopted reluctantly, recalling her earlier admiration for Soviet anti-Fascist poli-tics). Five years after Hammett’s death in 1961 she wrote an introduction to a collection of his work, a moving and inti-mate portrait of their 30-year relation-ship. The satisfaction of this experience led her finally to produce a series of best-selling memoirs: An Unfinished

SMART USE OF YOUR SUPPORTGoodman Theatre is grateful to every Donor who supports our productions and programs. We understand the importance of your contri-bution, and that you want your gift to be used wisely. We’re proud that 77 cents of every dollar raised goes directly to Goodman Theatre funding priorities—well beyond the 65-cent standard set by the Better Business Bureau.

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INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR THE LITTLE FOXESGoodman Theatre is proud to acknowledge the following individuals for their support of the 2014/2015 90th Anniversary Season and The Little Foxes.

The Edith-Marie Appleton Foundation/Albert and Maria Goodman

Julie and Roger BaskesJoan and Robert CliffordPatricia CoxRuth Ann M. Gillis and Michael J. McGuinnisMerle ReskinKimbra and Mark Walter

90th Anniversary Season Diamond Sponsors

Efroymson-Hamid Family FoundationEfroymson Family Fund

90th Anniversary Education and Community Engagement Season Sponsors

Michael A. Sachs in Memory of Alice B. Rapoport

90th Anniversary Season Emerald Sponsor

Doris and Howard Conant Family FoundationMarcy and Harry HarczakM. Ann O’BrienCarol Prins and John HartAlice and John J. Sabl

Women Artists Season Sponsors

Paul Dykstra and Spark CreminDonald L. Martin II

The Little Foxes Director’s Society Sponsors

Marcy and Harry HarczakCatherine Mouly and LeRoy T. Carlson, Jr.Andra and Irwin PressShaw Family Supporting OrganizationMr. and Mrs. Douglas SteffenSara F. SzoldMaria E. Wynne

The Little Foxes Education Sponsors

Commitments as of April 16, 2015

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Woman (1969), Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973) and Scoundrel Time (1976). She appeared in glossy maga-zine ads for Blackglama furs (the cam-paign asked “What becomes a legend most?”). She was showered with presti-gious awards such as the National Book Award, the Edward MacDowell Medal for her contribution to literature and the Paul Robeson Citation Award from Actors’ Equity Association. When she presented the Oscar for Best Documentary Film in 1977, she received a rousing standing ovation from the starry crowd.

But her reacceptance into the Hollywood community came at a price. A sequence from Pentimento, a dramatic description of Hellman’s role in an espionage inci-dent in Austria in 1937, was turned into the hit film Julia, winning Vanessa Redgrave an Academy Award for her portrayal of the title character—and, to

the author’s delight, starring Jane Fonda as Hellman herself. Soon after the film’s release rumors began to circulate that “Julia” was actually Muriel Gardiner, a psychiatrist now living in Princeton, New Jersey, and the only American known to have worked in the Austrian resistance. Despite this, the author steadfastly defended her story. Hellman had previ-ously received similar criticism. Journalist Martha Gellhorn, wife of Ernest Hemingway during the Spanish Civil War, had vigorously refuted Hellman’s “eyewit-ness” accounts of the conflict. But these new accusations received a national air-ing in a 1979 television interview by Dick Cavett with longtime Hellman rival Mary McCarthy, who uttered the soon-to-be-famous description of Hellman’s honesty: “I once said that every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” Cavett, a distant friend of Hellman’s, thought little of the joke; Hellman, how-ever, flew into a rage when the show aired several months later. Though now ill with emphysema and nearly blind, she filed lawsuits against both McCarthy and Cavett. Hoping that the case would sim-ply die, McCarthy proceeded to track down the true story of “Julia,” as well as proof that Hellman had embellished other sequences in her memoirs. Other writers jumped on the bandwagon as well when the charges became public; William F. Buckley wrote, “What Lillian Hellman specialized in, during almost two bloody decades, was precisely in cutting her conscience to fit the whims of Joseph Stalin.” Finally in 1983 Gardiner herself emerged from obscurity, verifying her identity as the fictional “Julia” and acknowledging that she had never met Hellman. The lawsuit outlasted Hellman herself; on June 30, 1984, she died from a heart attack in her home on Martha’s Vineyard.

GOODMAN THEATRE WOMEN’S BOARD: MAJOR PRODUCTION SPONSOR FOR THE LITTLE FOXESThe Goodman Theatre Women’s Board continues its longstanding support for the dynamic and diverse voices in the Goodman’s Artistic Collective with its sponsorship of The Little Foxes. Since its formation in 1978, the Women’s Board has made part of its mission the sponsorship of a production every season, as well as providing crucial funding for the Goodman’s Education and Community Engagement Programs.

Goodman Theatre gratefully salutes the Women’s Board as a Major Production Sponsor of The Little Foxes, and thanks its members for over 35 years of generosity and commitment to the theater.

“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” –Novelist Mary McCarthy on Hellman, October 18, 1979

Left: Jane Fonda, who portrayed Lillian Hellman in the film Julia. Right: Mary McCarthy, author and critic of Hellman.

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Lillian Hellman sets The Little Foxes in a small southern town in the spring of 1900. Well-to-do siblings Ben and Oscar Hubbard and their sister Regina Giddens aim to compound their wealth by invest-ing in a cotton mill in their community. Their desire for riches overshadows all; Regina especially won’t mind if she exploits hundreds of workers and alien-ates her own family members, so long as the profits allow her to wear the latest fashions from Europe. As the siblings scheme, their African American servants look on, observing everything but know-ing they will never profit from their employers’ financial gains.

While The Little Foxes is a work of fiction, the environment and culture it depicts were part of Hellman’s formative years. Born in New Orleans in 1905, Hellman spent her childhood shuttling between the South and New York City. Her mother’s family served as inspiration for the Hubbards. Hellman biographer Dorothy Gallagher wrote, “As a girl she had listened intently to their dinner table conversations: Intense, lively competitive discussions about money and business deals. Family table talk provided her

with source material for the slashing, angry wit and rapaciousness of the Hubbards: Money—how it is made, how it is used, how the love of it is the root of social and personal evil— is the idea that powered her play.”

While a play examining the dangers of worshipping wealth could take place in nearly any society, historical or present day, the American South at the turn of the century provided unusually numerous opportunities for greed to flourish in some citizens. Slavery had been abol-ished 35 years earlier, but its effects, and those of the Civil War, still ravaged the region. Blacks (and some whites) were left with few employment opportu-nities and therefore ripe for exploitation. Former slaves and their children, with little or no education, often worked as poorly paid domestic servants or as sharecroppers; their day-to-day lives still resembled those of slaves. In the decade after the play is set, African Americans began migrating in large numbers toward northern cities like Pittsburgh and Chicago where they could find simi-lar work for superior wages. It was this migration, not increased opportunities

in the South, that primarily enabled many blacks to achieve middle class status by the middle of the century. But in 1900, still reeling from slavery, poor educational opportunities, poverty and harsh treat-ment by whites, most African Americans were staying put in the southern states where they were born.

The Hubbards’ proposed business—a cotton mill—will exploit local workers

Avarice, Economy and Lillian Hellman’s Depiction of the American SouthBy Neena Arndt

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who are desperate for any job in the South’s post-bellum economic slump. Tobacco and cotton, for years the South’s greatest economic assets, proved less financially advantageous without the “free labor” that had previously sustained the region’s economy. And because the South had long prospered via an eco-nomic system that relied primarily on agriculture, it had not constructed cities comparable to those in the North. Its sprawling landscape, punctuated by now-understaffed and crumbling plantations, proved an inadequate infrastructure for rebuilding the economy. By the turn of the century, the South still had not developed the strong industries that had shaped the North’s economy since 1850. Cotton mills, like most factories, had been built primarily in northern states, so bringing “the machine to the cotton, and not the cotton to the machine” seemed a revolutionary idea that would save on transport costs and provide jobs to a population sorely in need.

But the Hubbards, like many of their real-life historical counterparts, are not aiming to create living-wage jobs that will buoy their town’s economy; they are seeking large profits. They know that Southerners expect less compensation than industrial workers in the northern states: One character notes that while the average wage for mill workers in Massachusetts is eight dollars per week, in their area “there ain’t a mountain white or a town nigger that wouldn’t give his right arm for three silver dollars every week.” Indeed, between 1900 and 1920

many businessmen opened cotton mills in the South. They proved so profitable that many mills in New England soon went out of business.

Writing in 1939, Hellman had witnessed the decades that followed the first years of the new century. She had seen not only the rise of the southern cotton mill, but also the gradual (but still far from complete) progress of black Americans towards racial equality. The Little Foxes depicts a racial situation that was histori-cal even at the time of the play’s first production. Perhaps because of the play’s retrospective viewpoint—many white Americans were more open to the idea of black equality in 1939 than in 1900—Hellman demonstrates sympathy toward the servant characters. While some white authors of the time portrayed blacks as dull-witted or lazy, Hellman’s black char-acters Addie and Cal are observant and shrewd. At one point Regina’s husband Horace, who disapproves of his wife’s ruthless approach to business, promises to give Addie, the maid, a substantial sum of money. Hellman invites the audience to see this as an example of his kindness. Many decades later we can appreciate Hellman’s condemnation of the Hubbards and their ilk more so than the play’s orig-inal audiences likely could; the characters’ avarice and racism seem more reprehen-sible in 2015 than they would have to a pre-civil rights white audience.

But the play’s central idea—that greed can rot community, family and human beings—is universal and transcends the

decades that separate us from Hellman’s characters. In their society, antecedent to our own, we can surely recognize what has not changed. And in those characters, flawed as they are, we can see ourselves mirrored back, perhaps improved, but with some faults still intact.

FEATURED SPONSOR: TARGETGoodman Theatre is proud to recognize Target as a Major Corporate Sponsor for the theater’s flagship education program – the Student Subscription Series. Target Student Matinees complement the company’s desire to support a well-rounded education by making arts and cultural experiences accessible to youth in Chicago high schools city-wide. By combining professional development for teachers with materials and resources for comprehensive preparation, students are well-prepared to see plays at the Goodman and engage in con-versations on a variety of topics, themes and issues drawn from the Goodman’s produc-tions. The Goodman is grateful to Target for its investment in education and its continued generosity to this longstanding program.

Left: An Alabama cotton mill built around the turn of the century. Below left: A young boy is trained on a cotton spinning machine. Below right: A young girl working as a spinner at a southern cotton mill.

FEATURED SPONSOR: ERNST & YOUNG LLP “We’re proud to advance EY’s purpose of building a better working world through our support of Goodman Theatre’s production of The Little Foxes. We applaud the Goodman’s efforts to enhance the cultural strength of our Chicago community and admire the theater’s commitment to quality, diversity and community.”

– Kevin Cole, Illinois Market Segment Leader, Ernst & Young LLP, Goodman Trustee

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Disgraced By Ayad Akhtar | Directed by Kimberly SeniorALBERT THEATRE | September 12 – October 18, 2015

Direct from Broadway, Ayad Akhtar’s “terrific, turbulent” (The New York Times) Pulitzer Prize-winning drama returns to Chicago in a blistering new production from director Kimberly Senior.

Another Word for Beauty By José Rivera | Music by Héctor Buitrago Directed by Steve CossonALBERT THEATRE | January 16 – February 21, 2016

A stirring new music-filled work by Academy Award nominee José Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries) and Grammy winner Héctor Buitrago.

The Matchmaker By Thornton Wilder | Directed by Henry WishcamperALBERT THEATRE | March 5 – April 10, 2016

Experience the comic fireworks of Thornton Wilder’s 1955 American classic, praised as “one of the sweetest and smartest romantic farces ever written” (The Wall Street Journal).

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window By Lorraine Hansberry | Directed by Anne Kauffman ALBERT THEATRE | April 30 – June 5, 2016

A Raisin in the Sun playwright Lorraine Hansberry’s final work, which premiered just three months before her untimely death in 1965 at age 34, is restaged by Obie-winning director Anne Kauffman.

GoodmanTheatre.org | 312.443.3800

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Wonderful TownMusic by Leonard Bernstein | Lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green Book by Joseph A. Fields and Jerome Chodorov | Directed by Mary Zimmerman ALBERT THEATRE | June 25 – August 7, 2016

Mary Zimmerman directs a dazzling revival of Leonard Bern-stein’s classic, song-and-dance filled ode to New York City that “fizzes and pops and rhumbas with timeless energy” (Variety).

Feathers and Teeth By Charise Castro Smith | Directed by Henry GodinezOWEN THEATRE | September 19 – October 18, 2015

Teen angst surges to a whole new level in this offbeat world premiere comedy from Charise Castro Smith.

Carlyle By Thomas Bradshaw | Directed by Benjamin KamineOWEN THEATRE | April 2 – May 1, 2016

“Darkly hilarious provocateur” (The Village Voice) Thomas Bradshaw presents an outrageous comedy of political culture clashes—just in time for an election year.

Soups, Stews, and Casseroles: 1976By Rebecca Gilman | Directed by Robert FallsOWEN THEATRE | May 21 – June 19, 2016

The powerful team of Artistic Associate and playwright Rebecca Gilman and Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls (Blue Surge, Dollhouse, Luna Gale) reunites for a new drama about the heart and soul of a small town.

2666 Based on the book 2666 by Roberto Bolaño Adapted and directed by Robert Falls and Seth Bockley OWEN THEATRE | February 6 – March 13, 2016

This epic adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s internationally acclaimed novel, named the “Best Book of 2008” by Time magazine, is a not-to-be-missed theatrical event.

SPECIAL EVENT

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Diving into History with The Little Foxes Costume Designer Jenny MannisBy Neena Arndt

FEATURED SPONSOR: POLK BROS. FOUNDATIONGoodman Theatre is proud to recognize Polk Bros. Foundation for its continued partnership as the Principal Foundation Supporter of the Student Subscription Series.

With the longstanding support of funders like Polk Bros. Foundation, the Student Subscription Series has evolved from a modest effort to provide Chicago public high school students access to live theater into a comprehensive development program providing arts-infused learning opportunities in a range of academic disciplines to 2,500 students and 69 teachers at 27 schools.

Polk Bros. Foundation’s commitment to this landmark program provides access to the arts for students and improves the quality of life for the people of Chicago.

FEATURED SPONSOR: INTERACTIVE HEALTH “Interactive Health is delighted to support Goodman Theater in presenting The Little Foxes. The performing arts are vital to Chicago’s reputation as a world-class city—our partnership with the renowned Goodman Theatre represents our commitment to creativity, innovation and the well-being of our community.”

– Cathy Kenworthy, President and CEO, Interactive Health, Goodman Trustee

The Little Foxes takes place in 1900 and features characters from two vastly different southern social classes: the wealthy, white Hubbard family and their African American servants, Addie and Cal. While the events of the play revolve around the Hubbards, Addie and Cal are present for much of the action; their lowly social status, though, ensures they often remain seen but not heard. Play-wright Lillian Hellman’s text provides few glimpses into the servants’ lives so the task of fleshing out these characters falls to the production’s actors and creative team. A principal way for an audience to gain insight into characters is through their clothing. A costume designer’s work communicates information about a char-acter’s social class, grooming habits and personal style. For a period piece such as The Little Foxes, which aims to repre-sent history in a literal manner (as opposed to taking artistic license), the costume design must also reflect the attire of a particular time and place.

Enter costume designer Jenny Mannis, whose Goodman credits include such sartorially diverse productions as the modern political drama The World of Extreme Happiness and the 1920s-set farce Animal Crackers. Mannis, along with scenic designer Todd Rosenthal and lighting designer David Lander, is responsible for recreating the visual elements of a wealthy household in the turn-of-the-century American South. In conducting her research for the show Mannis discovered hundreds of images from the period that informed and inspired her including family portraits, clothing advertisements and candid shots of both aristocrats and servants. She grew fascinated by the relationship between the wealthy and their domestic help, who spent their lives in close

proximity, often residing under the same roof, yet living vastly dissimilar lifestyles. The subjects of these photographs—ordinary Americans going about their daily lives—would never have anticipated that their clothing would someday serve as research for a play.

After compiling research, Mannis created sketches of each outfit, as she does for every production she designs. Each cos-tume piece was then purchased or built by the Goodman’s costume shop and tai-lored to the actor who will wear it on stage. During the rehearsal process final adjustments were then made to accom-modate stage action: for example, an actor might require an extra pocket to carry a prop, or a small hat might be substituted for a large one that proves too cumbersome.

On the following pages are examples of the early 20th century images Mannis uncovered during her research for The Little Foxes, as well as selected costume sketches from the production.

SUPPORT DIVERSE VOICES AT THE GOODMAN AS A COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PARTNERGoodman Theatre’s Community Engagement Partners are a select group of Donors who support the theater’s diversity initiatives by helping fund productions that explore varied theatrical and cultural traditions. This spring, you can make a tax-deductible gift of $500 to support community and education program-ming around stop. reset. and receive an array of benefits, including VIP tickets to Community Night.

To pledge your support as a Community Engagement Partner, contact Scott Podraza at 312.443.3811 ext. 566 or ScottPodraza@GoodmanTheatre.org.

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IMAGES 1–2: African American women in domestic servant roles during the early 20th century.

IMAGE 3: Sketch of the costume of Addie, the Hubbard’s servant.

IMAGES 4–5: Pages from Harper’s Bazaar informed a dress worn by Birdie, the wife of Oscar Hubbard, in the play’s first act.

IMAGE 6: Costume sketch of Birdie.

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IMAGES 7–8: Candid shots and clothing ads that inspired a costume worn by Cal, the Hubbard’s servant, during the play’s second and third acts.

IMAGE 9: Sketch of Cal’s costume in acts two and three.

IMAGES 10–13: An elaborate act three outfit for Regina, the scheming sister of the Hubbard family, draws from a variety of sources.

IMAGE 14: Sketch of Regina’s costume in act three.

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This year marks playwright/director/actress Regina Taylor’s 20th season as an Artistic Associate at the Goodman. During her tenure, Taylor has presented an eclectic mix of work including the blues drama Oo-Bla-Dee, the Chekhov-inspired Drowning Crow and two productions of her inspiring musical Crowns. Taylor closes the Owen Season by directing the Chicago premiere of her newest work, stop. reset., an examination of the ever-chang-ing landscape of literature and digital technologies. In a recent conversation with Tanya Palmer, the Goodman’s director of new play development, Taylor discussed her inspirations for the play and reflected on her time at the Goodman.

Tanya Palmer: What inspired you to write stop. reset?

Regina Taylor: The idea came when my favorite bookstore closed. The store was right across the street from my home and stopping in was part of my daily rit-ual. I’d go there to get a cup of coffee, browse the aisles and see what I might discover. I love books. I grew up with books. Now I was starting to think about what the future will hold for books, what it will look like and if I can accept it. So the play is about how I deal with change, but then also opens up to look at how we are all dealing with the enor-mous changes happening right now with regards to technology, race, gender, sex-uality and economics. I thought about the history of books and of storytelling, going all the way back to the oral tradi-tion. At one point in history people were accustomed to the hierarchy of oral tra-dition where someone functioned as the holder of history and memory. The hier-archy of who told the story and whose lives were worthy of being discussed was broken down when books were invented. That was an enormous change and there was resistance to moving from a gathering

of people around a fire to an individual alone with a book. “What’s going to hap-pen to the human mind and our civiliza-tion if we hand over this knowledge to individuals?” It feels like we’re now at that same moment in terms of books. We’ve shifted from oral tradition to books and now books to…what? We have a generation of people growing up on devices. There are all these things that we thought would never change, but now all these changes are happening on all these different levels. That’s where the play started. For the character Alexander Ames, who runs a publishing company, books are vessels of history and memory. They are the container of the voices of ancestors and legacy, of what we pass down palm to palm.

TP: You did a lot of research about new technologies through the course of developing this play. What did you dis-cover? Has your point of view changed about technology?

RT: My perspective has opened up through conversations I’ve had with different people with different eyes on these issues. I’m open to the challenges and ready to take that leap because of these conversations.

TP: The play is also, I think, about the future of African American identity to a certain extent. Alexander Ames owns an African American book publishing company. His identity as an African American, that history and legacy that he carries with him, seems to be in question too, along with the books that he publishes.

RT: The play is about identity, legacy and how we pass those things down in this time of societal upheaval with

A Conversation with stop. reset. Playwright/Director Regina TaylorBy Tanya Palmer

Regina Taylor

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technology and all these changes. It’s told through the lens of an African American. We have a play that is set in Chicago in a not-too-distant future and we take on the speculative fiction of what lies ahead. It is then a science fiction play, an Afrofuturist play.

TP: How would you describe the Afrofuturist genre?

RT: The most noted contemporary author writing in this genre was Octavia E. Butler [1947 – 2006, a novelist and short story writer whose works include Bloodchild and Parable of the Sower.] But it goes back to books such as George Schuyler’s 1931 novel Black No More or Ishmael Reed’s 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo. Afrofuturism is a way of grappling with who we are as African Americans in the present moment by looking at our past and speculating on how we get to tomorrow.

TP: Are you a fan of Octavia E. Butler’s work?

RT: Yes. I’m a big sci-fi fan. Afrofuturism is very interesting to me and not just in literature. There are musicians like Sun Ra, who spent a lot of time in Chicago, whose work influences a lot other impor-tant musicians, from George Clinton to Frank Ocean to Janelle Monae to Kanye West. The children of this Afrofuturistic music are all fascinating to me, and they’re all speculating what we’ll become as African Americans. In the sci-fi mov-ies I watched growing up, if there was a black character—and a lot of times there weren’t because black people just weren’t thought of as being part of the future—they usually died within the first

few moments. With Afrofuturism, the focus is on grappling with where we as African Americans have been, where we are now and dreaming about who we will become.

TP: There is another important charac-ter in the play who seems, on the sur-face at least, to be the polar opposite of Alex: a young man named J who is totally in tune with technology and for whom books hold no meaning. Can you talk a little bit about this character? In many ways he is the most “futuristic” element of the play.

RT: J gives us a window into the next generation and generations to come. In terms of African American history, we think about that line of how to get to free-dom. We think about that in terms of our most immediate past, which still affects us at this present time and will through tomorrow. Freedom. But freedom into

what? Will race matter 500 years from now? At what point does the conversa-tion change? I wanted to get different per-spectives on change and what that means in terms of identity. Certainly these two characters, Alexander Ames, who’s about 75 years old, and J, who is much younger, can speak to the greatest spectrum of perspectives in this play and provide dif-ferent viewpoints. There are also a num-ber of other perspectives represented by the office workers at Alexander’s publish-ing house who are all afraid of losing their jobs. But certainly the greatest dis-tance, I think, comes from Ames and J, two people whose lives have been affected by history in very different ways.

Above: George Schuyler, Octavia E. Butler and Sun Ra.

INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR STOP. RESET.Goodman Theatre is proud to acknowledge the following individuals and Institutional Donors for their support of the 2014/2015 90th Anniversary Season and stop. reset.

The Edith-Marie Appleton Foundation/Albert and Maria Goodman

Julie and Roger BaskesJoan and Robert CliffordPatricia CoxRuth Ann M. Gillis and Michael J. McGuinnisMerle ReskinKimbra and Mark Walter

90th Anniversary Season Diamond Sponsors

Efroymson-Hamid Family FoundationEfroymson Family Fund

90th Anniversary Education and Community Engagement Season Sponsors

Michael A. Sachs in Memory of Alice B. Rapoport

90th Anniversary Season Emerald Sponsor

Doris and Howard Conant Family Foundation

Marcy and Harry HarczakM. Ann O’BrienCarol Prins and John HartAlice and John J. Sabl

Women Artists Season Sponsors

Cecilia Conrad and Llewellyn MillerJeffrey W. Hesse and Julie Conboy HesseLeslie S. HindmanShaw Family Supporting OrganizationSusan and Bob WislowNeal S. Zucker

stop. reset. Director’s Society Sponsors

Segun Ishmael M.D.

stop. reset. Digital Connection Consortium Sponsor

Contributing Sponsor for stop. reset.

Flat panel televisions generously provided by Abt

Commitments as of April 16, 2015

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TP: This is the second production of stop. reset.; you directed the play at the Signature Theatre in New York last sea-son. What did you learn from that pro-cess and will anything change with this new incarnation?

RT: I’m in the process of reimagining the play. This is a play about Chicago, and I look at it as a way of celebrating my 20 years here with the Goodman. It’s an ideal way to explore my relationship with the theater and the city where I am based. I’m also very interested in how we present the play. I’m excited about expanding the life of the play beyond the stage. To that end I’m collaborating with a number of artists and institutions to engage in conversations about the play’s ideas and themes and to invite others to create work that responds to the play through various disciplines. I’ve invited composers, photographers, visual artists, filmmakers and writers to create unique, original pieces that will be presented during the run of the play. I’m also work-ing with the Goodman to plan a series of dinners and symposia to engage schol-ars, business leaders and politicians in conversations about change in Chicago. We’re presenting a series of one-on-one interviews with real people in Chicago—politicians, doctors, artists—as they talk

about about how they are dealing with changes in their fields. All of these art works and discussions are being docu-mented and will be uploaded onto StopReset.org, a micrositesite created by the Goodman for the play. Audiences can really start engaging with the piece before they come to the theater, and can con-tinue to do so after they see the play. The dialogue continues. That’s really important to me. I’ve had this unique opportunity in the last 20 years working at the Goodman to find my own voice and part of that is having dialogue with the theater and the communities in Chicago that have helped shape my work. Finding new ways to break down the walls of the theater and have these conversations with audiences is really fascinating.

EXPLORE THE WORLD OF STOP. RESET. AT STOPRESET.ORGDive into the digital world of Regina Taylor’s new work at StopReset.org, a new website dedicated to expanding the play beyond the stage. Watch Taylor in conversation with Chicago influencers, view local student proj-ects inspired by the play and much more!

Below: Regina Taylor in rehearsal for Crowns.

UNITED BY AN ARRAY OF ARTISTIC VOICESComprised of some of the most renowned artists in the American theater, the Artistic Collective is charged with artistically defining Goodman Theatre’s mission. Each member of the Collective brings a distinct aesthetic per-spective, giving each Goodman season a wide range of theatrical styles and visions. Members include Robert Falls, Brian Dennehy, Rebecca Gilman, Henry Godinez, Steve Scott, Chuck Smith, Regina Taylor, Henry Wishcamper and Mary Zimmerman.

FEATURED SPONSOR: BMO HARRIS BANK “BMO Harris Bank is a strong supporter of the arts and we value the historic cultural impact Goodman Theatre has on our city. Our longstanding partnership is deeply rooted in a shared commitment to diversity, community engagement and bringing a world-class theater experience to everyone.”

– Carl Jenkins, Managing Director, Community Investments, BMO Harris Bank, Goodman Trustee

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ENTRY (OR, YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME)by SCOTT T. BARSOTTIJune 11, 7:30pm | Polk Rehearsal Room

Coye and Whit rent a cabin in the woods for a relaxing vacation, until they find a guestbook signed by other renters and uncover a haunting and disturbing past.

Scott T. Barsotti creates work in the horror genre. His plays include The Revenants, Kill Me, Jet Black Chevrolet, Brewed, Jagoff, Facing Angela and adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Body Snatcher and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. He is a member of WildClaw Theatre. His plays have been pro-duced and/or developed by Lifeline Theatre, The Ruckus, Route 66 Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, Stage Left Theatre, The Side Project, Steep Theatre, Theatre Seven of Chicago, New York International Fringe Festival and the Rhinoceros Theater Fes-tival. He has an MFA in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists.

KILLING OF A GENTLEMAN DEFENDERby CARLOS MURILLOJune 12, 7:30 pm | Polk Rehearsal Room

On July 2, 1994, 41 murders took place in Medellin, Colombia, including the mystifying death of national fútbol star Andres Escobar following his losing Colombia the 1994 World Cup. Carlos Murillo’s play Your Name Will Follow You Home, originally commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Company, recently had its Spanish language premiere at Repertorio Espanol in New York City. Other plays include A Thick Description of Harry Smith, Diagram

of a Paper Airplane, Augusta and Noble, Dark Play or Stories for Boys, Unfinished American Highwayscape #9 & 32, Mimesopho-bia, Offspring of the Cold War, Schadenfreude, Never Whistle While You’re Pissing and the forthcoming trilogy The Javier Plays. Awards include the MetLife Nuestros Voces Award, the Frederick Loewe Award, two National Latino Playwriting Awards and the Otis Guernsey Award. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a former resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and heads the playwriting program at The Theatre School of DePaul University.

25 MOREby BONNIE METZGARJune 13, 7:30pm | Polk Rehearsal Room

Through the span of one human life, family and friends and lovers careen off and smash into each other, investigating the bones of the past and future, seeking out the source of the holy desire to love and be loved. As About Face Theatre’s artistic director from 2008 to 2013, Bonnie Metzgar directed The Pride, The Homosexuals and The Young Ladies Of. She served as the Carl Djerassi Fellow in Playwriting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 2013 to 2014. Her play You Lost Me was a finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Festival and was selected for the Great Plains Theater Conference. Ms. Metzgar has an NEA commission to write a new piece on transgender Civil War soldier Albert Ca-shier for About Face Theatre. She serves on the National Advisory Committee for HowlRound at Arts Emerson and has taught at Hol-lins University, Brown University, University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Yale University, University of Colorado, Denver and DePaul University. She received her MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa and her BA cum laude from Brown University.

THE FERTILE LIEby MIA MCCULLOUGHJune 14, 4pm | Polk Rehearsal Room

In contemporary Jordan, 19-year-old Assyrian Farsana marries an unknown and much older doctor, affecting both their fami-lies in unexpected ways. Mia McCullough’s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago Dramatists, Stage Left Theatre, The Old Globe, Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company, InterAct Theatre Company, Actor’s Express and Victory Theater Center, among others. Her work has been developed through Goodman The-atre’s New Stages Festival, the PlayPenn conference, Steppen-wolf Theatre Company’s First Look Repertory, Ensemble Studio Theatre and Stage Left Theatre’s LeapFest. Her play Since Afri-ca received its New York premiere at Red Fern Theatre Company in 2014. Impenetrable, which recently opened at Clockwise Theatre, was a finalist for the American Theatre Critics Associa-tion’s 2013 Steinberg Award. She won the ATCA Osborn Award, the Julie Harris Playwriting Competition, a Cincinnati Entertain-ment Award and a Jeff Award and was a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Jane Chambers Award. She is an adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University and a resident playwright with Chicago Dramatists.

See Daring New Works from the Playwrights UnitEach year, the Goodman selects four local playwrights to develop their work as members of the Playwrights Unit. Throughout the season, the writers meet regularly with the Goodman’s literary staff to read and discuss their works-in-progress. The members are chosen not only for their strong playwriting skills, but also for their aesthetic diversity; because each approaches playwriting differently, they are able to offer unique insights into one another’s work. This June, the Goodman presents staged readings of the works developed this year. Past Playwrights Unit plays have gone on to full productions at the Goodman, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble and Chicago Dramatists.

Tickets are free, but reservations are required. Visit GoodmanTheatre.org/PlaywrightsUnit.

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Student Success Stories: Engaging the Next GenerationBy Teresa Rende

Throughout the Goodman’s 90th Anniversary Season, Educa-tion and Community Engagement Coordinator Teresa Rende will profile Goodman Education program participants who are taking artistic, academic and professional worlds by storm.

Kyle Johnson is currently completing his senior year at Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men in Bronzeville. After his first summer participating in the Goodman’s General Theater Studies (GTS) program, Johnson was nominated to join the Goodman Youth Arts Council (GYAC). Since then Johnson has spent three more summers in GTS and is now currently in his third season as a GYAC member. Below, Johnson discusses his goals for higher education and GYAC’s work around The Little Foxes.

Teresa Rende: What encourages you to return to GTS and GYAC each year?

Kyle Johnson: I come back each year because of the support of the leaders in

the programs, my passion for theater and my love for the Goodman. My happi-ness is theater and getting to know new people and new things about myself.

TR: What are your goals for college? Do you have any universities or majors in mind?

KJ: My first goal is to get the Gates Scholarship [for which Kyle is currently a finalist]. Also, I would like to get two degrees, so I have to make sure I stay focused and don’t give up. I hope to attend Columbia College Chicago and major in theater with a minor in business.

TR: This year GYAC selected The Little Foxes for its annual event [for which council members invite their peers to see a show at the Goodman and con-duct a post-show workshop and discus-sion about the play]. Even though the play is set a century ago, this work is still relevant to young people today. Why do you think so?

KJ: It’s relevant because it involves issues that still impact us in today’s soci-ety. The Little Foxes can teach us about the power money can have over people. Discussing these topics can help [stu-dents] understand more about their own character and benefit them in the future.

TR: Why do you think it’s important to bring young people to the theater and discussion events like this one?

KJ: It’s important to help young people experience theater and thus experience how theater can help express various social and political views. Theater helps young people learn more about them-selves. It allows them to get their opinions out there and better express their ideas.

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Kyle Johnson in the 2014 performance of General Theater Studies’ Heartscape.

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Want to Learn More About What Inspires the Work on Our Stages?TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THESE EVENTS TO ENRICH YOUR GOODMAN THEATRE EXPERIENCE.

Share your passion for the Goodman with future generations by joining the Spotlight Society, a group of dedicated supporters who have designated a gift to the theater in their estate plans.

To learn more, we hope you’ll join fellow Goodman Subscribers for the 11th Annual Estate Planning Seminar. You’ll learn about the fundamentals of estate planning, tax laws and information on how you can make a direct impact on the Goodman for generations to come.

Outfoxing Uncle Sam: How to Plan Your Estate May 6 | 11:30am | Healy Rehearsal Room, Goodman Theatre

The seminar will be presented by the Goodman’s Advisory Council—a group of prominent estate planning professionals who serve as volunteer advisors for the Goodman’s Spotlight Society. For more information about the Spotlight Society or the Estate Planning Seminar, please contact Amber Bel’Cher at 312.443.3811 ext. 220 or AmberBelCher@GoodmanTheatre.org.

LEAVE A LEGACY!

Artist EncountersGoodman Theatre Artist Encounters bring together audiences and the artists who create the work on our stages in an intimate environment, for a behind-the-scenes look at the plays and the playmaking process.

Tickets are free for Subscribers, Donors and students with a school ID; $5 for the general public. Reservations are required. Call 312.443.3800 or visit GoodmanTheatre.org to reserve your seats.

Artist Encounter: The Little FoxesSunday, May 10 | 5 – 6pm | Healy Rehearsal RoomFeaturing director Henry Wishcamper.

Artist Encounter: stop. reset. Sunday, May 31 | 5 – 6pm | Polk Rehearsal RoomFeaturing playwright and director Regina Taylor.

PlayTalksOne hour prior to select performances, members of the Goodman’s artistic staff present free, interactive talks to give patrons a deeper understanding of the work they are about to see.

PlayTalk: The Little FoxesPlayTalks will be held in the upper lobby at 7pm on May 15, 22, 29 and June 5. FREE.

PlayBacksThese free post-show discussions give patrons the opportunity to engage with one another and members of the artistic team.

PlayBack: The Little FoxesFollowing each Wednesday and Thursday evening performance of The Little Foxes, patrons are invited to join us in the Albert Theatre for a discussion about the play. FREE.

PlayBack: stop. reset. Following each Wednesday evening performance of stop. reset., patrons are invited to join us in the Owen Theatre for a discussion about the play. FREE.

Join Us For Special stop. reset. EventsTo further explore the themes of her new work stop. reset., playwright/director Regina Taylor has planned special events and symposia during the play’s run with individual artists and institutions across Chicago. Visit GoodmanTheatre.org/StopReset for more information.

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Two Trains Running Opening NightOn Monday, March 16, guests and sponsors gathered at the Goodman to celebrate the opening of August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, directed by Goodman Resident Director Chuck Smith. Guests enjoyed cocktails and dinner followed by the performance in the Albert Theatre. Thank you to all of the sponsors who generously supported Two Trains Running and The August Wilson Celebration. We would also like to acknowledge Opening Night Sponsor Heidrick & Struggles and Event Sponsor Petterino’s.

Fame, Fantasy, Food, Adventure AuctionNearly 200 guests braved the cold and snow to attend the annual Fame, Fantasy, Food, Adventure Auction on Monday, February 2 at The Peninsula Chicago. Despite the temperature, the event was a record-breaking success raising over $460,000 to support Good-man productions and education programs. Congratulations to Auction Co-Chairs Darlene Bobb and Lorrayne Weiss and Auction Trustee Chair Kristine R. Garrett for a truly spectacular evening! Special thanks to Event Sponsor American Airlines, Contributing Sponsor The PrivateBank, Jeep Raffle Sponsors Bobb Auto Group/Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Robert and Darlene Bobb, Media Sponsor Make It Better and Supporting Sponsors Swati and Bobby Mehta and Christine and Michael Pope.

TWO TRAINS RUNNING OPENING NIGHT 1 Goodman Executive Director Roche Schulfer with 90th Anniversary Season Diamond Sponsor and Goodman Trustee Roger Baskes, Two Trains Running Education Sponsor and Goodman Trustee Rebecca Ford and Two Trains Running Education Sponsor Paul Donahue. 2 Two Trains Running director and Goodman Trustee Chuck Smith with The August Wilson Celebration Icon Sponsor and Goodman Trustee Nancy Lauter McDougal and Goodman Trustee Linda Hutson. 3 The August Wilson Celebration Icon Sponsor and Goodman Life Trustee Peter Bynoe and Two Trains Running Education Sponsor and Goodman Emeritus Trustee Dia Weil. 4 Goodman Trustees Anthony Maggiore (JPMorgan Chase) and Patty VanLammeren (Allstate Insurance Company) with Two Trains Running director Chuck Smith. Allstate Insurance Company and JPMorgan Chase are Major Corporate Sponsors of Two Trains Running. 5 Goodman Associate Producer/Director of Casting Adam Belcuore with 90th Anniversary Season Diamond Sponsor and Goodman Trustee Kimbra Walter and Two Trains Running Education Sponsors and Goodman Trustees Julie Danis, Randy White and Kathleen Cowie.

FAME, FANTASY, FOOD, ADVENTURE AUCTION 6 Michael Pope and Women’s Board members Eileen Murphy and Christine Pope. 7 Women’s Board member Jane Gardner, Sarah Begel and Women’s Board member Nancy Swan. 8 Auction Co-Chair Darlene Bobb, Chair of Goodman Board of Trustees Joan Clifford and Auction Co-Chair Lorrayne Weiss. 9 Goodman Theatre’s Women’s Board President Swati Mehta, Women’s Board member Anu Behari and Goodman Trustee and Women’s Board member Alice Sabl. 10 Brandon Barr, Mary Beth Malone, Kathleen Malone and Auction Trustee Chair Kristine R. Garrett. Photos by John Reilly Photography.

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The August Wilson Celebration Kick-OffOn Monday, March 9, 2015, Goodman Theatre Boards, Sponsors, Donors, Subscribers, Community Leaders and Artistic Partners from across Chicago gathered to kick off the citywide August Wilson Celebration. Guests enjoyed a special reception at the Harold Washing-ton Library’s beautiful Winter Garden followed by a public panel featuring Celebration Curator and Goodman Resident Director Chuck Smith, actor/director Ron OJ Parson, Northwestern University professor and critic Harvey Young, director and Congo Square Theatre Company co-founder Derrick L. Sanders and moderated by the Goodman’s Director of Education and Community Engagement Willa J. Taylor. Panelists discussed August Wilson’s personal relationship with the Chicago theater community and the impact his work has had on the artists who consider Chicago their creative home. Special thanks to the Kick-Off Committee who made this evening possible, as well as to the many Individual and Institutional Sponsors who made the entire Celebration possible.

THE AUGUST WILSON CELEBRATION KICK-OFF 1 Kick-Off Committee member and Commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Michelle T. Boone with her guest. 2 From U.S. Bank Betsy Cadwallader and Goodman Business Council Member Marsha Cruzan. 3 Goodman Trustees and Two Trains Running Education Sponsors Kathleen Cowie and Julie Danis. 4 Goodman Trustee Lamont Change and Chicago West Community Music Center Board Members Howard and Darlene Sandifer, along with Goodman Trustee and The August Wilson Celebration Curator Chuck Smith. 5 Chicago Public Library Foundation’s Rhona Frazin and husband Julian with Goodman Executive Director Roche Schulfer. 6 Goodman Trustee Tim Russell and his wife Joi-Anissa Russell. 7 Kick-Off Co-Chairs and Goodman Life Trustee Peter Bynoe and Emeritus Trustee Dia Weil with Chair of the Board of Trustees Joan Clifford, Executive Director Roche Schulfer and Honorary Chairman and Life Trustee Albert Goodman. Photos by John Reilly Photography.

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THE LITTLE FOXESBY LILLIAN HELLMAN | DIRECTED BY HENRY WISHCAMPER

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STOP. RESET.WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY REGINA TAYLOR

In the OwenMAY/JUNE 2015

Accessibility performances:

The Little Foxes

ASL-Signed Performance: May 13 | 7:30pm ($30 tickets)

Audio-Described Performance: May 20 | 7:30pm ($30 tickets)

Open Captioning Performance: June 6 | 2pm ($30 tickets)

stop. reset.

Audio-Described Performance: June 10 | 7:30pm ($20 tickets)

ASL-Signed Performance: June 17 | 7:30pm ($20 tickets)

Contact the box office for tickets and more information at 312.443.3800 (voice) and 312.443.3829 (TTY).

Puttin’ on the glitz

GOODMAN THEATRE GALAFEATURING TWO-TIME TONY AWARD

WINNER SUTTON FOSTER

SATURDAY, MAY 16, 2015 | 6:30pm THE FAIRMONT CHICAGO BLACK TIE

Tickets start at $1,000. For more information, contact GoodmanGala@GoodmanTheatre.org or call 312.443.3811 ext. 586.

GALA PROCEEDS WILL BENEFIT GOODMAN THEATRE’S EDUCATION AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS.

ROBERT FALLSArtistic Director

LINDA W. AYLESWORTHFRANCES K. DEL BOCAGala Co-Chairs

Commitments as of April 16, 2015

GALA SPONSOR PARTNERS

SHARON AND CHARLES ANGELLLINDA AND BILL AYLESWORTHJOAN AND ROBERT CLIFFORDDRS. ROBERT AND FRANCES DEL BOCARUTH ANN M. GILLIS AND MICHAEL J. MCGUINNISADNAAN HAMID AND ELISSA EFROYMSONSHERRY AND PETER JOHNSWATI AND SIDDHARTH MEHTACAROL PRINS AND JOHN HARTMERLE RESKINALICE AND JOHN J. SABLKIMBRA AND MARK WALTER

Exclusive Airline of Goodman Theatre

Print Media Sponsor

The Sun-Times Foundation and The Chicago Community Trust will match donations to Goodman Theatre through June 20, 2015 up to a total of $25,000. Up to $1,000 can be matched per individual donation.

JEFFREY W. HESSEGala Trustee Chair

SWATI MEHTAPresident, Women’s Board

GORDON C.C. LIAOPresident, Scenemakers Board

JOAN E. CLIFFORDChair, Board of Trustees

ROCHE SCHULFERExecutive Director

MICHAEL AND JACKY FERRO

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PERMIT #2546

Dear Subscribers and Friends:

Our 2015/2016 Season will begin in just a few months, and I hope that you have taken time to renew your subscription. Featuring works that are big, bold and brilliant, the upcoming season will include a recent Pulitzer Prize winner, new plays from a variety of exciting artists (including an Oscar-nominated playwright), rarely seen masterworks, a dazzling revival of a classic musical—and a host of special productions and events. It’s a season of which I’m very proud, and one which I hope you’ll greatly enjoy. You are an essential part of Goodman Theatre’s success, and your support makes our great work possible.

For more details concerning our 2015/2016 Season, please turn to page eight.

We look forward to sharing this truly memorable season with you!

JOIN US FOR OUR 2015/2016 SEASON

BIG. BOLD.

BRILLIANT.THE 15/16 SEASON

Robert Falls Artistic Director