SET & LIGHTING DESIGNERBERT SCOTT***

This entire season sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Florida Repertory Theatre is a fully professional non-profit LOA/LORT Theatre company on contract with the Actors’ Equity Association that proudly employs members of the national theatrical labor unions. *Member of Actors’ Equity Association. **Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. ***Member of United Scenic Artists.

The Fred & Jean Allegretti Foundation • Naomi Bloom & Ron Wallace • Dinah Bloomhall • Jane & Bob BreischAlexandra Bremner • Janet & Bruce Bunch • Chippendale Audiology • Berne Davis • Mary & Hugh Denison

Ellie Fox • David Fritz/Cruise Everything • Nancy & Jim Garfield • Vici and Russ Hamm John Madden • Joel Magyar • Noreen Raney • Linda Sebastian & Guy Almeling • Arthur M. Zupko

STARRINGensemble members

V CRAIG HEIDENREICH* • CARRIE LUND*and

DAVID FRIEDLANDER* • BRITT MICHAEL GORDON* • OLIVIA HOWELLJACKIE SCHRAM* • STACEY SCOTTE*

DIRECTED BY ensemble member GREG LONGENHAGEN

COSTUME DESIGNERALICE NEFF

2 0 1 7 - 1 8 G R A N D S E A S O N S P O N S O R S

FLORIDA REPERTORY THEATRE

2 0 1 7 - 2 0 1 8 S E A S O NHISTORIC ARCADE THEATRE • FORT MYERS RIVER DISTRICT

ROBERT CACIOPPO, PRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

P R E S E N T S

PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGERJOSHUA QUINN*

The Last Night of Ballyhoo is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.Originally produced on Broadway by Jane Harmon, Nina Keneally and Liz Oliver.

The Play was commissioned by the Alliance Theatre Company, and presented by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, Cultural Olympiad for the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival.

SOUND DESIGNERJOHN KISELICA

SPONSORED BY ELLIE FOX

Lala Levy.....................................................................................................JACKIE SCHRAM*†

Reba Freitag.................................................................................................STACEY SCOTTE*†

Boo Levy.............................................................................................................CARRIE LUND*†

Adolph Freitag..................................................................................V CRAIG HEIDENREICH*†

Joe Farkas....................................................................................BRITT MICHAEL GORDON*†

Sunny Freitag...............................................................................................OLIVIA HOWELL*†

Peachy Weil..........................................................................................DAVID FRIEDLANDER*†

TIME & PLACEAtlanta, Georgia. December, 1939.

THE LAST NIGHT OF BALLYHOO will be performed with one 15-minute intermission.

The video and/or audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever is strictly prohibited.

The Actors & Stage Manager employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

ALFRED UHRY is the only playwright ever to win the Triple Crown: an Oscar, a Tony, and a Pulitzer Prize. He began his career as a lyric writer under contract to the late Frank Loesser. In that capacity he made his Broadway debut in 1968 with Here’s Where I Belong. He then wrote the book and lyrics for The Robber Bridegroom and was nominated for a Tony Award. He followed that with five re-created musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House. In 1987 his first play, Driving Miss Daisy, opened at Playwrights Horizons Theatre in New York. It was subsequently moved to the John Houseman Theatre, where it ran for over 1,300 performances. The play earned many awards, including the Outer Critics Circle Award and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. For the film version, he won an Academy Award and the film itself was voted Best Picture of the Year. Other films include Mystic Pizza and Rich in Love. Mr. Uhry’s second play, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which was commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, opened on Broadway in February 1997. It has been chosen Best Play by the American Theatre Critics Association, The Outer Critics Circle, and the Drama League, and the 1997 Tony Award. He worked on Parade, a musical play about the Leo Frank case, with music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown and directed by Harold Prince. His film projects include a new adaptation of Dodsworth for Time Warner, Cut Flowers for Miramax, and Taft, commissioned by Morgan Freeman.

CAST

*** *†Member of Florida Repertory Theatre’s Ensemble of Theatre Artists. See page 23 for the entire ensemble.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

(in order of appearance)

Asst. Stage Manager: Laura WestAsst. Costume Designer: Olivia Pedigo

Wardrobe Supervisor: Ian WittenLighing and Sound Board Operator: Eli Carnahan

Understudies:Haley Clay u/s Lala Levy • Paul Gary u/s Peachy Weil

Dillon Feldman u/s Joe Farkas • Virginia Newsome u/s Sunny Freitag

SPECIAL THANKSLeigh Scrabus • LaTasha Armstead • Lisa R. Kaminski

City of Fort Myers Community Redevelopment Agency Amanda Warriner • Jonathan Borgia • Asolo Repertory Theatre

Penguin Point Costume Shop at Lake Howell High School

DAVID FRIEDLANDER* (Peachy Weil) is thrilled to be making his Florida Rep debut. Selected credits include Katie Roache (Mint Theatre); The Rivals, Measure for Measure (New York

Classical Theatre); Amadeus, Stones in His Pockets, Romeo and Juliet, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Little Prince (PlayMakers Repertory); Middlemen (New Jersey Repertory); Twelfth Night (Mountain Playhouse); Stones in His Pockets (Majestic Theater); End of Summer, The Boss (Metropolitan Playhouse); Love’s Labor’s Lost (Shakespeare Forum); Belleville (Sonorous Road Productions) TV/Film: Girls, Nan’s Ring. MFA from University of North Carolina, BA from Yale University. Proud member Actor’s Equity Association. MG, you come too.

BRITT MICHAEL GORDON* (Joe Farkas) is thrilled to be returning to Florida Repertory Theatre where he previously portrayed Billy in Tribes and Jan in The Unexpected Guest.

Other regional credits include Arcadia (Palm Beach Dramaworks), Assassins and Peter and the Starcatcher (freeFall Theatre), Good People and The Pitmen Painters (American Stage), Tribes (Mad Cow Theatre), and Butterflies Are Free (Broward Stage Door). Britt is a recipient of a Silver Palm Award and Theatre Tampa Bay Award. He received a BFA in Acting from Florida State University.

V CRAIG HEIDENREICH*†

(Adolph Freitag) appeared last season at Florida Rep as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and very recently directed Disgraced this season, Best of Enemies last

November, and Echo Location for the 2016 PlayLab new play festival. He also appeared in Pitmen Painters for American Stage in St. Petersburg and directed Freak for the Urbanite in Sarasota. He has produced, directed, and/or performed in more than 200 professional productions throughout the country including

15 seasons and more than 80 productions with Actors Theatre of Louisville, three seasons with the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, two seasons with the Asolo in Florida, five with Shakespeare Santa Cruz in California and three years as artistic director of the Complete Theatre Alliance and Infinite Space as well as the first three seasons of the Banyan Theater in Sarasota of which he is a founder. He currently splits his time between theatre work and coaching for Banyan Voice and Speech in which he and his wife, Tess Hogan, are partners.

OLIVIA HOWELL (Sunny Freitag) moved to New York City after graduating from Stephens College with a B.F.A. in Theatre Arts and is happy to call Fort Myers her temporary home. Select credits

include Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Honey), Skin of Our Teeth (Gladys), Number the Stars (Annemarie), The 39 Steps (Annabella/Pamela/Margaret), Love is Dead (Cindy), and Bedroom Farce (Susannah). You may also hear her as BaaBaa the sheep in the animated children’s series The Mother Goose Club. Olivia eagerly awaits the 2018/19 release of two feature films Nothing Like the Sun and Ask for Jane. Much love to her family, and fiancé Greyson. www.olivia-howell.com

CARRIE LUND*† (Boo Levy) is co-founder, ensemble member, associate producer of Florida Rep, was recently seen in Sylvia, and has acted in over 90 productions in Southwest

Florida. In 2012, she was named Best Actress of the Year and named one of the “Power Women of the Year” by Florida Weekly. She produced and acted on Sanibel Island from 1984-1998 at the Pirate Playhouse and on Captiva Island with Carrie Lund Presents. She taught theatre at Florida Gulf Coast University in its early years, produced theatre companies in her hometown of Erie, PA and New York City, and performed in regional theatres in NY, VT and NC, as well as the Three River Shakespeare Festival, Pittsburgh Playhouse, and American

CREATIVE TEAM

Ibsen Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA. In 1987, the Sanibel-Captiva Chamber of Commerce awarded her the Distinguished Citizen Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. Carrie has been in all nine Florida Rep shows reviewed by The Wall Street Journal: The House of Blue Leaves, The Cocktail Hour, One Slight Hitch, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Little Foxes, God of Carnage, Sylvia (2011, 2017), You Can’t Take It with You, and Dancing at Lughnasa. Other selected credits include Florida Rep’s Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End, Becky’s New Car, Doublewide, Dividing the Estate, Tribes, Heart Song, Clybourne Park, Rumors (2002, 2011), August: Osage County, Noises Off (1998, 2010), The Last Romance, Enchanted April, Rabbit Hole, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, All My Sons, and Private Lives. Married to Robert Cacioppo, she enjoys the accomplishments of their best productions: Matthew and Julia.

JACKIE SCHRAM* (Lala Levy) is thrilled to be back at Florida Repertory Theatre! Credits: Florida Rep: 2009/2010 season acting apprentice, Boeing- Boeing, You Can’t Take It With You, and

Rumors. Jackie just finished a year-long run Off-Broadway in Sleep No More. She has also toured the country twice: once with The 39 Steps and once with Aquila Theatre Company. Jackie trained at The University of Tampa and The New School for Drama in New York. The forever traveler, she likes to call Brooklyn her home-base these days. More on Jackie: www.facebook.com/tallgirlschram

STACEY SCOTTE* (Reba Freitag) is delighted to return to Florida Rep, previously seen here in August: Osage County (Ivy), Absurd Person Singular (Jane), and Company (Amy). Off-

Broadway credits include Strictly Personal, Eat the Runt, and Boobs! The Musical. Other regional favorites (Riverside Theatre – Vero Beach, Goodspeed, Sacramento Music Circus, Florida Studio Theatre) include Mame (Mrs. Upson); La Cage aux Folles (Marie Dindon); I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change;

Ruthless! (Myrna Thorn); and Hairspray (Prudy Pingleton). Television and film credits include 30 Rock, The Practice, Unsolved Mysteries, Zoobilee Zoo, Julie & Julia, Me & Will, and currently streaming on Amazon Prime, Judy’s Child. www.staceyscotte.com

GREG LONGENHAGEN† (Director) is making his mainstage directorial debut with Florida Rep’s production of The Last Night of Ballyhoo. As a 20-year company member, Greg’s versatility as an Actor, Fight Director, and Dialect Coach has been evident in many Rep productions. He served as director for the young audience’s version of Laura Ingalls Wilder and as assistant director for the Rep’s very first production, Noises Off. Greg directed for the PlayLab new play series, including last season’s staged reading of We Will Not Be Silent. Other local directing credits include Florida Gulf Coast University’s The Foreigner and Leap at Theatre Conspiracy. In addition to his continuing efforts for Florida Rep, Greg is an Assistant Professor at FGCU and President of Abbott Productions, where he has been responsible for many national marketing campaigns for television and the web. His past achievements include assistant director to Theodore Mann in the acclaimed production of The Music Box at HERE, NYC and resident director for Pittsburgh’s professional touring company “Shakespeare in the Schools.” Greg holds an M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and was certified with the S.A.F.D. at Carnegie Mellon University.

JOHN KISELICA (Sound Designer) is a graduate of West Virginia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in lighting and sound design. He is the Resident Sound and Lighting Designer for Endstation Theatre Company in Central VA and acts as the Lighting and Sound Supervisor for year round consultation and project specific work. He has worked on a national tour, Buddy: the Buddy Holly Musical, as the master electrician after a contract with Royal Caribbean International as a stage technician. Commercial theatrical work includes installing Prodigy Hoists, an automated rigging system from Electronic Theatre Controls. In addition to his seasonal position with Florida Rep, John continues to freelance in the professional, academic, and community theatre circles.

CREATIVE TEAM

CREATIVE TEAMALICE NEFF (Costume Designer) is delighted to be returning to Florida Repertory Theatre after designing Over the River and Through the Woods. She has designed frequently for professional as well as academic companies, including Lees McRae Summer Theatre, the outdoor drama Horn in the West, Blowing Rock Stage Company, and for the Appalachian State University Opera Program, all in North Carolina. She has also designed at Davidson College, Ballet Austin, Western Carolina University, and the University of the Cumberlands. She has built costumes for Glimmerglass Opera, some of which are now in stock for the Metropolitan Opera; for the Hallmark channel miniseries True Women, and for Alvernia University. She managed the ASU Theatre & Dance Department costume shop for many years, and mentored many students who went on to graduate schools and professional careers. She holds a BFA in costume design and construction from UT-Austin. She and her husband enjoy riding their motorcycle cross-country, raising money for theatre-based charities.

JOSHUA QUINN* (Production Stage Manager) is excited to be back in Fort Myers with this great company. Florida Rep: Best of Enemies, Shear Madness. Off-Broadway: Sistas, Toyt Fun a Seylsman, A Loss of Roses, Buyer & Cellar, F#%ing Up Everything. Tour: The Lightning Thief, Fly Guy. New York: Children of Salt, Manuel v. the Statue of Liberty, The Travels, The Tenth Floor, POPart, The Farm, Thicker than Water, Helicopters, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Yorktown, Sister Myotis’s Bible Camp, Engaging Shaw, Dreyfus in Rehearsal. Proud member of AEA.

BERT SCOTT*** (Set & Lighting Designer) Off-Broadway designs include According to Goldman, Bass for Picasso, The Unexpected Guest, The Cocktail Hour, The Middle Ages, The Rules of Charity, and many others. Regionally, Bert has designed for Stages St. Louis, Theatre West Virginia (where he served for seven seasons as Resident Designer), The Opera Company of Philadelphia, The Mark Twain Playhouse (Branson, MO), Theatre by the Sea and Ocean State Theatre (Rhode Island), North Shore Music Theatre (Boston), The Orlando Shakespeare Theatre, Orlando Rep, and Nickelodeon (Slime Time Live! on Norwegian Cruise Lines and several productions of Dora the Explorer Live! in the US and Canada). Bert is an associate professor of theatre and the coordinator of the Theatre Design & Technology BFA program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

LAURA WEST (Asst. Stage Manager) is a proud 2017 graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has fostered her love of travel and theatre by working at theatres across the country, such as Jean’s Playhouse in Lincoln, New Hampshire and The Lake Dillon Theatre Company in Silverthorne, Colorado, and she is so thrilled to be joining Florida Repertory Theatre for their 20th season. Some of her favorite past credits include Little Women, Orlando, Godspell, The Wild Party, Assassins, and Sister Act. She is always eager to talk about her two adorable cats or her love of the font Garamond, and she sends a huge thank you to her friends and family for always supporting her.

T I C K E T S

ACTORS’ EQUITY ASSOCIATION (AEA) was founded in 1913 as the first of the American Actor unions. Equity’s mission is to advance, promote and foster the art of theatre as

an essential component of our society. Today, Equity represents more than 40,000 actors, singers, dancers and stage managers working in hundreds of theatres across the United States. Equity members are dedicated to working in the theatre as a profession, upholding the highest artistic standards. Equity negotiates wages and working conditions and provides a wide range of benefits including health and pension plans for its members. Through its agreement with Equity, this theatre has committed to the fair treatment of the actors and stage managers employed in this production. AEA

is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an international organization of performing arts unions. For more information, visit www.actorsequity.org.

FLORIDA PROFESSIONAL THEATRES ASSOCIATION (FPTA) is a statewide organization of professional theatre companies and theatre professionals

interested in the development and promotion of professional theatre throughout Florida. Florida Repertory Theatre is a proud FPTA member theatre.

Florida Repertory Theatre is a member of THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP (TCG), the national organization for the American Theatre.

DRAMATURGICAL NOTES

East of the Elbe: German Jews and “the Other Kind”As a Jew in early 20th century Atlanta, you could be a member of arguably the most prominent social organization in the region: The Standard Club. There are several requirements for membership but above all, anyone who wants to join must be Jewish and must be German. “Well,” Peachy Weil pauses to think at one point of the play, “they’re startin’ to let in a few others because they need the initiation fees. But they try to only take the ones that are toilet trained.” And so begins the show’s most heated discussion regarding race and religion.

The Last Night of Ballyhoo tackles the issues of pre-WWII Atlanta where Jewish identity is at a crisis and sociopolitical differences spread hate from Jew to Jew.

Playwright Alfred Uhry was born in Atlanta to a German Jewish family whose ancestry traces back to the founders of the city itself. “Southern Jews,” Alfred declares, “define themselves as Southern first, American second, and Jewish third.” “Our social life was Jewish,” says Aline Uhry, Alfred’s mother. “We were a very tight little German-Jewish community revolving around the Temple and the Standard Club… People say the Jewish clubs are exclusive, and they sprang up as a result of not being in the other [a WASP].”

“Yet to be a true Southerner, to be part of the ‘in’ group,” Alfred continues, “You have to be Christian.” Or at least, as close to it as you could be.

Since the late 19th century, the Jewish community in Atlanta has splintered into separate groups. The German Jews who practiced Reform Judaism and the Eastern European immigrants who were Orthodox. German Jews have assimilated more into the Southern way of life more than their Orthodox counterparts. “We had a Saturday night bridge-playing group for over 45 years,” says Aline. “At the height of it, we had 23 people. Five of us went to Wellesley. We’d come to each other’s houses for dinner. We’d get all dressed—cocktail dresses. You’d have drinks with hors d’oeuvres and candy and nuts in little silver dishes. And we’d always get together on New Year’s Eve.” Meanwhile, the Eastern Europeans were more culturally conservative and maintained a firm grip in Jewish customs and traditions.

“I think the [German] Jewish lifestyle tried to copy the WASP style, in their own way,” says Aline. German Jews sat at the fringes of both Southern Christians and Jewish Orthodoxy, nestling comfortably between the two and drawing from both culturally and socially.

These differences fueled conflict with the tendency of German Jews to look down on their Eastern European counterparts. While some German Jewish organizations assisted Jewish immigrants who were in need and helped them assimilate, there were others who did not treat them as kindly. When the Council of Jewish Women opened a Sabbath School for the immigrants, Yiddish Jews were offended. The editor of the local Jewish newspaper defended the school, claiming that these newly arrived immigrants were “ignorant” and “coarse” and that “we want to make good American citizens out of our Russian brothers.” Aside from this, German Jews also made institutional efforts to keep the immigrants from their inner circle. Yiddish Jews were largely excluded from the Standard Club from its founding until the club was financially forced by The Great Depression to relax this discrimination. Yiddish Jews founded their own social club, the Progressive Club, in 1913. By most accounts, this social barrier between German and Yiddish Jews did not die out until World War II.

(SOURCES: www.isjl.org/georgia-atlanta-encyclopedia.html; The Temple Bombing by Melissa Fay Greene; www.youvecottmail.com/a-conversation-with-alfred-uhry--jason-robert-brown.html)

“What’s the Elbe?” asks Sunny Freitag a half hour into the play. The Elbe is a river that separates Germany and Czechoslovakia. “The west of it is us,” explains Reba Freitag, “and the east of it is the other kind.” Sunny presses: “How can you tell?” “The way they look.”

DRAMATURGICAL NOTES

BallyhooFrom 1931 to the late 1950s, members of Atlanta’s Standard Club sponsored “Ballyhoo,” an annual courtship weekend attended by college-aged sons and daughters of the Temple community. The event drew Jewish youth from the “best” families across the South, which meant those with German Jewish ancestry. Over a long weekend, participants endured an exhausting round of breakfast dates, lunch dates, tea dance dates, early evening date, late night dates, formal dances, and cocktail parties, with the goal of meeting a “nice Jewish boy or girl” who might well become a spouse.

Similar courtship weekends in southern cities included Montgomery, Alabama’s “Falcon,” Birmingham, Alabama’s “Jubilee,” and Columbus, Georgia’s “Holly Days.”

(Excerpted from the introduction of Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History edited by Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg)

At the Center ofthe World

It was 1939 and everyone had its eyes on the Loew’s Grand Theatre. For three nights, crowds gathered in the streets with an excitement you can still taste even in the blandest of photographs taken that December. “Atlanta is the center of the world tonight!” Lala Levy exclaims in the opening scene. And indeed it was: Gone With the Wind was having its world premiere and its stars were lighting up the city. Hattie McDaniel and the rest of the black cast members were notably absent as Georgia’s Jim Crow laws prevented them from attending. This almost caused Clark Gable to boycott the celebrations if not for McDaniel successfully convincing him to go.

Atlanta Ballyhoo Club. 1947 or 1949. L-R: Beth Issacs (Nashville); Ann Sternberg (Asheville); Shirley Hirsch (Reif) (Atlanta); Ralda Bressler (Protosky?), Barbara Kessler (Zickel), and Danice Greenwald (Macon). Shirley Hirsch (Reis) was crowned the Queen of Ballyhoo.

Robert L. Gerson Family PapersWilliam Breman Jewish Heritage Museum

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