NEW WORKS FESTIVAL

WORLD PREMIERE

MAR 6 thru

APR 5copaken stage

2019•20 SEASON14

FRANKENSTEINby

KYLE HATLEYFrom the novel by MARY SHELLEY

directed by

JOANIE SCHULTZ

presents

* Denotes Members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors & Stage Managers in the United States.

Stuart Carden, Artistic Director Angela Lee Gieras, Executive Director

music director DANA OMAR

scenic design JACK MAGAW

co-costume design LINDSAY DAVIS

co-costume design BRANDY GIORDANO

lighting design RACHAEL CADY

sound design TWI McCALLUM

dramaturg SEAN HOGGE

assistant lighting design ZAN DeSPELDER

assistant lighting design MARGARET SPARE

production stage manager

TENLEY PITONZO*

SPONSORED BY

HERB & BONNIE BUCHBINDER

COPAKENfa m i ly f u n d

816.235.2700 KCRep.org15

This project is supported in part by the City of Kansas City, MO Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund.

STEVE JOSS

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Please remember to turn off all cell phones or any other devices that could make noise and disturb people around you. Videotaping, photography, or other video or

audio recording of this production is strictly prohibited.

Thank You!

The Scenic, Costume, Lighting and Sound Designers in LORT Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists Local USA-829 IATSE.

The Director and the Choreographer are members of the STAGE DIRECTORS AND CHOREOGRAPHERS SOCIETY, a national theatrical labor union.

This theatre operates under an agreement between the League of Resident Theatres & Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Financial assistance for this project has been provided by the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

CAST

KYLE HATLEY* Storyteller DANA OMAR* Musician

* Denotes Members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors & Stage Managers in the United States.

FRANKENSTEIN will be performed WITHOUT INTERMISSION.

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Kyle Hatley

KYLE HATLEY

SEAN: WHAT DREW YOU TO FRANKENSTEIN?KYLE: For Christmas of 2017, my wife, Emily Peterson, gave me a copy of Frankenstein. I read it, and my whole body responded. I cried and laughed and raged through all of it. It’s a heartbreaker. And the things that tend to draw me in artistically are things that tend to impact me emotionally. Of all the iconic themes swirling around this iconic text, the one that I took away most was a theme about time. How much do we have? What happens when we run out of it? That’s what compelled me most to tell this story. Those questions awoke in me a fear of my own mortality. I don’t just mean: a fear of dying; I also mean a fear of losing my loved ones. To quote Mary Shelley: “Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” Those are

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on his new workby sean hogge

KYLE HATLEYthe seeds that sowed this adaptation, but here’s what haunts me: until those seeds took root and broke the surface, I had no idea that my adaptation was about grief.

SEAN: HOW DO YOU TELL A STORY THAT’S BEEN TOLD SO MANY TIMES ALREADY?KYLE: I acknowledge it head on by trying to un-paint the picture we all have in our heads of the creature — the one Hollywood gave us. Which isn’t a bad picture. It’s just not what Mary wrote, and I find what she wrote to be far more interesting, heartbreaking, and terrifying. Added to that, it’s as much about these two people who are telling it, this Storyteller and this Musician, as it is about Frankenstein. I think that’s where a lot of our originality lives.

SEAN: ALMOST ALL OF YOUR RECENT WORK HAS HAD MUSIC AS AN INTEGRAL PART; HOW DOES YOUR ADAPTATION OF FRANKENSTEIN USE MUSIC?KYLE: There is an easy, but purposeful homage in our adaption to the traveling poet-storytellers of antiquity, like Homer, who often accompanied their stories with a musical instrument. I think live music gets your mind and your heart working together, listening together. As an audience member, I want to be taken somewhere. Not just externally, but internally. I’m as interested in what’s going on in a character’s head and heart as I am in the action they’re carrying out onstage. Sometimes live music is the shortest way to the truth of a moment. Sometimes dead silence is. But the immediacy of the musical instrument just sounds like something living and breathing, doesn’t it? I think music can reinforce and amplify the onstage action and provide more dimension and more opportunities for the story to express itself.

SEAN: MARY SHELLEY REVISED HER STORY SOME YEARS AFTER ITS FIRST ACCREDITED PUBLICATION; DO YOU USE THE OLDER TEXT, THE NEWER TEXT, OR BOTH?

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KYLE: While we familiarized ourselves with the original 1818 text and other editions, the version we used as the chief source material for this adaptation was the 1823 second edition.

In the original draft of this adaptation, there was a whole opening segment about what Mary went through from the moment she conceived it, to the edition we all know. We cut it from the play, but this is a nice way to share it with you:

Eleven days after she was born, her mother died of complications from birth. Her father remarried, and their house was filled with step-siblings and half-siblings. She eloped with a poet named Percy Shelley, who was already married, and became pregnant with his child. They had a little girl, but she died two months later. “I dreamt she came back,” the author of our story wrote about her firstborn child. “Her little body was cold, so, we put her by the fire, and rubbed her, and she came back to life again. But when I awoke, I found no baby.”

On a dark and stormy night among friends, there was a contest: “Who could write the best ghost story?” She was 17-years-old when she first began her tale about a man who could bring the dead back to life. That same year she married Percy, and gave birth to a son, named William. That same year her older sister committed suicide, and the woman Percy was married to drowned herself in a river — still pregnant with his child. Mary finished a draft of her story and called it Frankenstein. She had to publish it anonymously because of her gender. It was well received, but no one knew that she was its author. She gave birth to a third child, a daughter, named Clara. and for a moment … she was the mother of two healthy children. But Clara died of dysentery within a year — and then her three-year-old son, William, died of malaria — and then her husband, Percy, drowned at sea — all of this before she was 25-years-old. She published a second edition of Frankenstein the following year, this time with her name on the cover: Mary Shelley. This is her ghost story.

SEAN: IS YOUR ADAPTATION OF FRANKENSTEIN A HORROR STORY, A LOVE STORY, OR A THRILLER?KYLE: It’s funny you mention those three genres, because I started out writing a horror story. But I found a love story. And since then, it’s become a thriller.

SEAN: WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE STORY OF FRANKENSTEIN?KYLE: Though I’m sure it first worked its way into my life during the month of October at some point in my early youth, I remember two specific films that stand like totems in my memory: the very sweet and very funny Young Frankenstein,

Richard Rothwell’s portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840.

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and a little film nobody saw called Monster Squad. There was something moving to me about the creature in those films that has never left me. I read the book for the first time on assignment in high school, circa 1997. And even though I was reading it at the same age Mary was when she wrote it, it didn’t do much for me. I couldn’t get past some of the language, and I wasn’t open to receive the pain and confusion and joy of living Mary had written into it. It’s funny how time works. How much change occurs. Because when I re-read it in 2017, it annihilated me. Every word of it.

SEAN: TO SETTLE THE DEBATE ONCE AND FOR ALL: WHAT IS THE CREATURE’S NAME?KYLE: Ah, yes. Is Frankenstein the name of the man, or his creature? Obviously, yes, it’s the name of the man. And it doesn’t bother me any more when folks mix them up. What I find interesting is that we automatically associate that man’s name with the hideous creature he created. The same way we automatically associate sons of fathers, or daughters of mothers, or wives of husbands, or friends of friends. We associate folks not just

with who they are, but where they came from, who created them, who befriended them, who married them, etc. Victor and his creature are linked forever. In the book, however, you get the sense that the creature considers two names after reading Paradise Lost. The first was Adam. The second was Satan. Because those are the two characters the creature connected with most. So for a moment, there’s this sense in the book that he might try and give himself a name, but he can’t. How can he? There is no other being like him on the planet. He was made as he was. Denied the opportunity for growth. Denied the opportunity for identity. Mary referred to the creature once as “the nameless mode of naming the unnamable.” In the very first stage adaptation of Frankenstein, the program, which listed the actors’ names alongside the roles they were playing, left the role blank next to the actor’s name who played the creature. Instead, just an empty spot glared back at you from the rest of the names and roles. What a stunning way to illustrate the heartbreak of having no identity, and not being allowed one.

Aerial view, Frankenstein Castle, Eberstadt, Odenwald, Hesse, Germany, Feb 2019By David Brown

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SPECIAL THANKS

W hen I first read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, what

surprised me most was that it starts not with Victor Frankenstein, but with letters from Robert Walton to his sister, describing his expedition to the Arctic, his ship stuck in ice, and his encounter with Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein, on the verge of death, tells the tale that we think of as the book.

Walton’s story wraps around the story of Victor, and Victor’s story wraps around the story of the creature, and as I completed the book, I wondered “who is the protagonist?” Is it the creature who tells us of his birth and life? Is it Victor, who carries out the creation of this monster and yet fails in rearing it? Or, is it Walton, who hears this tale and changes the course of his own life?

One of the things I love about Kyle Hatley’s theatrical work is that he is in pursuit of a single question: Why do we need stories? Storytelling makes us human by creating connection, understanding, inspiration, surprise, comfort, and helps us make sense of our lives in both intellectual and emotional ways.

As a theatre creator I often say, if every play you do doesn’t change you somehow, you’re doing it wrong. It isn’t simply the receiver of a story who feels that impact and connection. The teller of the story needs it too — the story meets us, we engage with it, and we are irrevocably changed.

This adaptation of Frankenstein puts the storyteller center stage, a storyteller who, like Walton, finds himself metaphorically stuck in ice. Unlike Walton, who is hearing this story for the first time, our storyteller is telling the story for the last time. He may know the tale well, but through telling it he makes discoveries and connections that release him to once again captain his ship and choose where to navigate next.

In this way, Hatley has written a play that is a love letter to interpretive artists — we may not always generate the stories we enact, but we bring our personal truth to them, creating something evocative and singular in our productions that have a profound effect on our very being. As an interpretative artist, I’m honored to share this glimpse of what that feels like with all of you.

Director’s Note FROM

JOANIE SCHULTZ

FRANKENSTEIN

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THE CAST (In Alphabetical Order)

KYLE HATLEY* (Storyteller)

DANA OMAR* (Musician)

* Denotes Members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors & Stage Managers in the United States.

KYLE HATLEY (Playwright/Storyteller) KCRep Acting: An Iliad, Death of a Salesman, The Foreigner, The Whipping Man, and The Glass Menagerie. KCRep Directing: Sticky Traps, When I Come To Die, Little Shop of Horrors, Carousel, Circle Mirror Transformation, Broke-ology, The Borderland and A Christmas Carol. Regional Acting: An Iliad (Geva Theatre Center); The Temperamentals (About Face Theatre); Danny Casolaro Died For You (TimeLine Theatre Company); End of the Rainbow (Porchlight Theatre (2016 and Max & Louie Productions, 2018); The Actuary and Peter and the Starcatcher (Peninsula Players Theatre); Take Me Out (Steppenwolf and About Face Theatre); Hurlyburly, Carousel, and The Tragedy of Macbeth (The Living Room Theatre). Regional Directing: Jesus Christ Superstar (Arts Asylum, This Happy Breed); Amadeus and Oklahoma!

(TheatreWorks); Carousel, Titus Andronicus, Death of Cupid, Master of the Universe, The Tragedy of Macbeth (The Living Room Theatre); The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (Kansas City Actors Theatre); Ben Franklyn’s Apprentice and Red Badge Variations (The Coterie). Playwrighting: The Death of Cupid, Master of the Universe and The Tragedy of Macbeth, a 3-artist 90-min adaptation (The Living Room Theatre); The Dead Girl, Surfacing, Pinocchio, The Children and Lineage (Chatterbox Audio Theatre). TV/FILM: Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, In An Instant, As The World Turns, Soul Sessions and The Thinning: New World Order. Awards: A Charlotte Street Foundation Generative Artist Fellow (2011). Mr. Hatley served as Associate Artistic Director of KCRep (2008-2014) and as Resident Director (2015).

DANA OMAR (Musical Director/Actor) KCRep: debut. Off Broadway: We Live in Cairo in Concert (Joe’s Pub, Public Theater) Regional: We Live in Cairo (American Repertory Theatre); H.M.S. Pinafore, The Mikado (The Hypocrites, Olney Theatre Center); Amadeus (TheatreWorks); Pirates of Penzance (The Hypocrites, Pasadena Playhouse); The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (People’s Light & Theatre); One Hundred Dresses (Chicago Children’s Theatre), Cinderella at the Theater of Potatoes, Johanna Faustus and H.M.S. Pinafore (world premieres), All Our Tragic (The Hypocrites, The Den Theatre Mainstage Chicago); H.M.S. Pinafore (The Hypocrites, Actors Theatre of Louisville); The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, and H.M.S. Pinafore (The Hypocrites, part of The Gilbert & Sullivan Rep at The Den Theatre Mainstage); Cabaret (The Hypocrites, Chicago DCA

COMPANY

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FRANKENSTEIN

Storefront Theatre). TV: Chicago PD (NBC). Education: BS in Education, Loyola University. AEA Member @domartothemaxx

CREATIVE TEAM

JOANIE SCHULTZ (Director) KCRep: Lot’s Wife, Frida…A Self Portrait. Regional Directing: A Doll’s House, Part 2 (The Jungle Theater); A Small Fire (Philadelphia Theatre Company); A Doll’s House, Hand to God, Pride and Prejudice, Hit the Wall (WaterTower Theatre); Queen, The Whale, Rest, Cocked (Victory Gardens Theater); Cry it Out, Hand to God (Studio Theatre); Sex with Strangers (Cleveland Play House); Venus in Fur (Goodman Theatre); fml: how Carson McCullers saved my life (Steppenwolf Theatre); The Legend of Georgia McBride (Cardinal Stage Company); The Cheats, Martyr, Luther, A Small Fire, The Receptionist, Brief History of Helen of Troy, In Arabia We’d All Be Kings (Steep Theatre); The Hundred Flowers Project (Silk Road Rising); Northanger Abbey (Remy Bumppo Theatre); The Kid Thing (About Face/Chicago Dramatists); The Ring Cycle (Building Stage). Arts Leadership: Artistic Director, WaterTower Theatre 2016-18; Associate Artistic Producer, Victory Gardens Theatre, 2014-16. Fellowships/Residencies: TCG Leadership U Fellowship; Michael Maggio Directing Fellowship (Goodman Theatre); The Director’s Project (Drama League); Denham Fellowship (SDCF). Education: MFA in Directing, Northwestern University. joanieschultz.com

JACK MAGAW (Scenic Design) returns to Kansas City Rep where his previous credits include Indecent, Of Mice and Men, Sweeney Todd, Fences and

Evita among many others. Recent Chicago and regional credits include The Agitators (Geva Theatre and Alabama Shakespeare Festival), Indecent (Arena Stage), America v. 2.1: The Sad Demise and Eventual Extinction of the American Negro (Barrington Stage), The Scarlet Ibis (Chicago Opera Theatre), Silent Sky (Peninsula Players Theatre), Approval Junkie (Alliance Theatre), Support Group For Men (Goodman Theatre), Bloomsday (Remy Bumppo Theatre), Buried Child (Writers’ Theatre) and Radio Golf (Court Theatre). Eleven Joseph Jefferson Award nominations include designs for East Texas Hot Links (Writers’ Theatre) and Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Court Theatre). Upcoming projects include Chicago (Musical Theatre Heritage) and the world premiere of Looks Like Pretty (Geva Theatre). Jack lives in Chicago and teaches design at The Theatre School at DePaul University. jackmagaw.com

LINDSAY DAVIS (Co-Costume Design) Mr. Davis came to UMKC to teach costume design/costume technology after a successful 30-year career in New York. During those 30 years he designed for 13 Academy Award-winning actors, and designed the Tony Award Best Musical, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. For many years he owned and operated a highly successful commercial costume shop. Professor Davis has won design awards in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and South Florida. He has designed opera in Europe, musicals in Japan and Korea, and multiple shows in London’s West End. The Cleveland Playhouse, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Radio City Music Hall, Arena Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Chicagos Goodman, Los Angeles

Opera, New York City Opera and the Metropolitan Opera have all been graced with his work. Mr. Davis has worked professionally in 37 of our 50 states.

BRANDY GIORDANO (Co-Costume Design) KCRep: Last Days of Summer. Local Lighting Design: Bernhardt/Hamlet (Unicorn Theatre); Dido and Aeneas, Game of Love and Chance, Conservatory Dance Recitals 2017-2019 (UMKC Conservatory); En El Tiempo De Las Mariposas, Scotland Road, Carrie: The Musical (Jewell Theatre Company); Torch Song Trilogy (Barn Players). Education: BA in Theatre (William Jewell College); MFA in Lighting Design in progress (UMKC).

RACHAEL CADY (Lighting Design) KCRep Lights: Frida...A Self Portrait, Of Mice and Men, Brother Toad, Man in Love, Evita, Sunday in the Park with George, Sticky Traps, A Christmas Carol (2010-2016), When I Come to Die, The Glass Menagerie, Circle Mirror Transformation, Sticky Traps, Incognito, Later Life. Other Designs Lights: Oklahoma! (Theatreworks); The Underpants, A Perfect Wedding, Shake Rattle and Roll, and Smokey Joe’s Café, (Florida Studio Theatre); Fellowship! (NYMF festival); Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Theatre League); Love Janis (Zach Theatre, Austin). Local Designs Lights: The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds, Tally’s Folly, Tally and Son, 5th of July, and The Cripple of Inishman (Kansas City Actors Theatre). Rachael served as resident designer for the Unicorn Theatre during which she designed over fifty shows from 1995-2010.

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COMPANY

TWI McCALLUM (Sound Design) KCRep: debut. Regional: The Taming, Murder for Two: Holiday Edition (Cape May Stage); The Magical Piñata (Keegan Theatre); 10,000 Balconies (TheatreSquared); Welcome to Sis’s (Ally Theatre). Assistant: Pride & Prejudice (Long Wharf Theatre, Megumi Katayama). TV/Film: American Idol Season 13 (ABC); American Ninja Warrior Junior (NBCUniversal); In the Heights (Warner Brothers). Upcoming Off-Broadway: Mirrors (New York Theatre Workshop/Next Door & Parity Productions). twibackstage.me

SEAN HOGGE (Dramaturg) Sean has been writing bios for about 20 years now, and is tired of the third person. I’ve been involved in performing arts since 1990, and I feel confident that my ability will approach adequacy somewhere around 2040. In the meantime, I help to create music and theater with as many different organizations as possible. So if you saw Kyle’s adaptation Macbeth, or the grand opening at The Arts Asylum, some of that was me. I’ve also been a lesser contributor to The Arts Asylum, The Living Room and various independent artists. Being a software engineer by day grants me the luxury of selecting only the projects I want to work on. To digress a bit: art is the longest conversation with the lowest natural barrier to participation humankind has ever engaged in. Despite our ruinous attempts to erect non-natural barriers to certain groups and persons, our prejudices fail to hold water and ideas are fluid. All that is to say: I contribute only to art that I feel furthers the

conversation. Hopefully it also contains at least some voice that is heard too little. That’s why I’m involved here and I hope the efforts of Mary, Joanie, Dana, Kyle and myself add something to the conversation. I already know it’ll be entertaining because I’ve seen it (hash tag no spoilers). Thanks for supporting the conversation and being a good listener; and yes, perhaps the real monster is my deliberate omission of the Oxford comma.

ZAN de SPELDER (Assistant Lighting Design) KCRep: Pride and Prejudice. Local: The White Rose (The Coterie); The Moors, An Italian Straw Hat (UMKC); The Light that Lights, To Each Her Own, Peculiar Intuition Parts 1 & 2, Aquarius (UMKC Conservatory). Education: BS in Theatre and Philosophy, Albion College; third year MFA in lighting design (UMKC). Awards: Don Childs 2018. Affiliations: USITT. Zan has worked in and out of the country, and on touring shows. zandespelder.com

MARGARET SPARE (Assistant Lighting Design) KCRep: Fun Home, Unreliable, FRIDA…A Self Portrait, Welcome to Fear City, Brother Toad, A Christmas Carol, The Mystery of Irma Vep, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Cabaret. KCRep Lighting Design: The Santaland Diaries. Local Lighting Design: Beauty and the Beast, Spring Festival of Dance, The Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Coppelia (Ballet North); The Drowsy Chaperone (Guest Artist, University of Central Missouri); Back on Cyprus Avenue, Fall Concert 2011

(Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance Company); Grey Gardens, A House With No Walls, Mauritius, Rabbit Hole (Unicorn Theatre). Local Assistant Lighting Design: The Three Musketeers, Alice in Wonderland (Kansas City Ballet); The Marriage of Figaro, Carmen, Norma, Don Giovanni, Pirates of Penzance, La Bohème, Julius Caesar (Lyric Opera of Kansas City). Education: BFA in Technical Theatre (University of Central Missouri); MFA in Lighting Design (UMKC).

TENLEY PITONZO (Production Stage Manager) KCRep: for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Unreliable, School Girls; or the African Mean Girls Play; Assistant Stage Manager: Last Days of Summer, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street; Production Assistant: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, A Christmas Carol, A Raisin in the Sun, Side by Side by Sondheim. New York: Sleep No More. Regional: A Spectacular Christmas Show (Musical Theatre Heritage); An Enemy of the People, Twelfth Night, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Wild with Happy (Baltimore Center Stage); Constellations (Studio Theatre); Three Little Birds, Caps for Sale (Adventure Theatre MTC); The Great Gatsby, Waiting for Godot, Little Women, The Birds, Taming of the Shrew, Henry V, Comedy of Errors (Cincinnati Shakespeare Company). Education: BA in Theatre, Loyola University Maryland. AEA Member