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September 16 – October 25, 2015
Opening Night: Thursday, September 24 at 8:00 p.m.)
A WORLD PREMIERE MUSICAL
Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage
Old Globe Theatre
Conrad Prebys Theatre Center
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Vignettes by Douglas Carter Beane, Nilo Cruz, Christopher Durang, Carrie Fisher, David Henry Hwang, Rajiv Joseph, Terrence McNally, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, and Alfred Uhry
Direction and Choreography by Christopher Gattelli
Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens
Conceived by Christopher Gattelli and Jennifer Manocherian
Scenic Design by Derek McLane
Costume Design by Jess Goldstein
Lighting Design by Donald Holder
Sound Design by Peter Hylenski
Projection Design by Olivia Sebesky
Orchestrator, Michael Starobin
Music Director, Steven Malone
Shadow Sequence Design by Larry Reed/ShadowLight
Casting by Telsey + Company, Abbie Brady-Dalton, CSA
Associate Choreographer, Mark Myars
Production Stage Manager, Michael Domue
A company that has amassed an astounding 18 Tony Awards, 4 Pulitzer Prizes, 6 Pulitzer finalist distinctions, 3 Emmys, and 2 Academy Awards joins forces at the Globe for an exuberant world premiere dance-theatre musical! Ten of America’s best theatrical storytellers (the minds behind such hits as The Full Monty, Driving Miss Daisy, M. Butterfly, and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) join director-choreographer Christopher Gattelli (Newsies, The King and I) and composer Stephen Flaherty (Ragtime) to create a ravishing evening that glides, leaps, and twirls through the giddy extremes of romantic love. This unique event ranges across eras and cultures and tells its stories through the universal language of dance, from classical ballet to swing to tap to ballroom to jazz to flamenco and more. In Your Arms is as intoxicating as a sunset cocktail and as exhilarating as a first kiss.
Stephen Flaherty (Music) is the composer of Ragtime (Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, two Grammy Award nominations), Rocky, Seussical (Grammy and Drama Desk nominations), and Once on This Island (Tony nomination, Olivier Award for Best Musical). His additional Broadway credits include original songs for Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life and incidental music for Neil Simon’s Proposals. Flaherty has also written four musicals at Lincoln Center Theater: The Glorious Ones (OCC and Drama Desk nominations), Dessa Rose (OCC and Drama Desk nominations), A Man of No Importance (OCC Award for Best Musical, Drama Desk nomination), and My Favorite Year. His other theatre credits include Little Dancer (The Kennedy Center), Lucky Stiff, and Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein (Chicago’s Jefferson Award for Best New Musical). His work for film includes Anastasia (two Academy Award and two Golden Globe nominations), the documentary After the Storm, and Lucky Stiff. This year celebrates Flaherty’s 31-year collaboration with lyricist-librettist Lynn Ahrens.
Douglas Carter Beane (Story) is the author of the plays Shows for Days, The Nance, The Little Dog Laughed (Tony and Olivier Award nominations), Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, As Bees In Honey Drown (Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award), Music from a Sparkling Planet, The Cartells, Mondo Drama, The Country Club, and Advice from a Caterpillar. His musicals include Xanadu (Tony nomination), Sister Act (Tony nomination), Lysistrata Jones (Tony nomination), Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella (Tony nomination), and The Bandwagon. Beane penned the screenplays for To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and Advice from a Caterpillar (Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival Best Feature). His opera credits include Die Fledermaus (repertory of Metropolitan Opera), and his television credits include The Nance (PBS’s “Live from Lincoln Center”). His current projects include writing and directing Fairycakes and Robin Hood.
Nilo Cruz (Story) won the Pulitzer Prize and the Steinberg/ATCA Award for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics and was nominated for a Tony Award. His opera Bel Canto, based on Ann Patchett’s book, will premiere in December at Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Christopher Durang (Story) is one of the country’s most beloved and widely produced contemporary American playwrights. Among his best known plays are Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, Beyond Therapy, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation, the Pulitzer Prize finalist Miss Witherspoon, and Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them. Known for absurdist humor and raging satire, Durang’s style has influenced an entire generation of writers. But even the anger of an enfant terrible must recede, and his most enjoyable and commercially viable comedy to date, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, swept the 2013 Best Play category, winning the Tony, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Drama League, and Off Broadway Alliance Awards, as well as delighting Globe audiences last season. In 2013 he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
Carrie Fisher (Story), actress, writer, and daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, made her film debut in Shampoo and became a cultural icon playing Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. She starred in such hits as When Harry Met Sally, Hannah and Her Sisters,and The Blues Brothers. Her television credits include “Laverne & Shirley” and “Sex and the City,” and her appearance in “30 Rock” was Emmy Award-nominated. Fisher’s bestselling novel, Postcards from the Edge, netted her the Los Angeles PEN Literary Award for Best First Novel, and her Postcards screenplay for the Oscar-nominated film starred Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep. Three novels and two memoirs have followed: Delusions of Grandma, Surrender the Pink, The Best Awful, Wishful Drinking,and Shockaholic. Her one-woman Broadway show Wishful Drinking was filmed for HBO and was Emmy-nominated. Fisher will reprise her role of Princess Leia in the much anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
David Henry Hwang’s (Story) work includes the plays M. Butterfly, Chinglish, Yellow Face, Kung Fu, Golden Child, The Dance and the Railroad, FOB, and the Broadway musicals Aida (co-author), Flower Drum Song (2002 revival), and Disney’s Tarzan. He is America’s most-produced living opera librettist and has worked with composers Philip Glass, Osvaldo Golijov, and Bright Sheng, among others. Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time Obie Award winner, and a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is currently a writer-producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series The Affair, and he is developing an original series, “Shanghai.” Hwang won the 2011 PEN/Laura Pels Award, 2012 Inge Award, 2012 Steinberg/ATCA Award, 2014 Doris Duke Artist Award, and 2015 IPSA Distinguished Artist Award. He serves as Head of Playwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts and was recently the Residency One Playwright at New York’s Signature Theatre Company.
Rajiv Joseph’s (Story) Broadway play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama and was awarded a grant for Outstanding New American Play by the National Endowment for the Arts. Joseph’s New York productions include Guards at the Taj (Atlantic Theater Company), The North Pool (Vineyard Theatre), Gruesome Playground Injuries, Animals Out of Paper, and All This Intimacy (Second Stage Theatre), The Leopard and the Fox (AlterEgo Theatre Company), and Huck & Holden (Cherry Lane Theatre). His other recent plays include Mr. Wolf (South Coast Repertory), The Lake Effect (Crossroads Theatre Company), and The Monster at the Door (Alley Theatre). He received his B.A. in Creative Writing from Miami University and his M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He served for three years in the Peace Corps in Senegal and now lives in Brooklyn.
Terrence McNally (Story) was awarded the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award and is the winner of Tony Awards for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and his books for the musicals Ragtime and Kiss of the Spider Woman. In 1996, he was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame. This past season he was represented on Broadway by It’s Only A Play and his book for The Visit. Mothers and Sons, his 20th Broadway production, received a 2014 Tony nomination for Best Play. McNally’s other plays include Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; The Lisbon Traviata; Corpus Christi; The Ritz; and A Perfect Ganesh. He also wrote the libretto for the opera Dead Man Walking, which had its premiere at San Francisco Opera. His newest opera, Great Scott, will be premiering at Dallas Opera in October 2015. His teleplay Andre’s Mother won an Emmy Award.
Marsha Norman (Story) won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for her play ‘night, Mother and a Tony Award for the book to her musical The Secret Garden. She is Co-Chair, with Chris Durang, of the Playwriting Program at The Juilliard School. Her newest projects include the book for the musical King Kong and a play about trafficking and violence toward women worldwide. She won a Peabody Award for her work in television and has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. She won the Margo Jones Award, the Sidney Kingsley Award, and the William Inge Lifetime Achievement Award in Playwriting. She writes and lectures frequently on playwriting and the musical book. She serves on the board of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She is a Founder and President of The Lilly Awards Foundation and serves on the Steering Committee of the Dramatists Guild of America.
Lynn Nottage (Story) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a screenwriter. Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world. They include Sweat (American Revolutions commission at Oregon Shakespeare Festival); By the Way, Meet Vera Stark (Lilly Award); Ruined (Pulitzer Prize and Obie, Lucille Lortel, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards); Intimate Apparel (Steinberg/ATCA and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards); Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine (Obie Award); Crumbs from the Table of Joy; Las Meninas; Mud, River, Stone; Por’knockers; and POOF! She and composer Ricky Ian Gordon are adapting Intimate Apparel into an opera (Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater commission). Nottage is the recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Dramatists Guild Hull-Warriner Award, the inaugural Horton Foote Prize, Helen Hayes Award, and Lee Reynolds Award. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild.
Alfred Uhry (Story) is distinguished as the only American playwright to have won a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, and two Tony Awards. Uhry began his professional career as a lyric writer under contract to the late Frank Loesser. He made his Broadway debut in 1968 as lyricist for Here’s Where I Belong. His first major success was Broadway’s The Robber Bridegroom (book and lyrics) and five recreated musicals at Goodspeed Opera House. Uhry’s first play, Driving Miss Daisy, opened Off Broadway in 1987 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1988. The film, starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy, won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay in 1990. His work includes The Last Night of Ballyhoo (Tony Award), Parade (Tony Award), Lovemusik (Drama Desk Award nomination), and Without Walls (starring Laurence Fishburne). In 2014, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
Christopher Gattelli (Direction, Choreography, Co-Conceiver) was awarded the 2012 Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his choreography for Disney’s Newsies (now on its first national tour). As a choreographer, his Broadway credits include current hits Amazing Grace and The King and I (Lincoln Center Theater), South Pacific (Tony and OCC nominations), Sunday in the Park with George, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Godspell, The Ritz, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, 13, and High Fidelity. His Off Broadway credits include Dogfight (Lucille Lortel Award), Altar Boyz (Lortel and Joe A. Callaway Awards, Drama Desk nomination), Bat Boy: The Musical (Lortel Award), tick, tick… BOOM!, 10 Million Miles, Adrift in Macao, and I Love You Because. His choreography has also been seen on the West End and in London in South Pacific, Sunday in the Park with George, and tick, tick… BOOM! His national and international tour credits include Altar Boyz, Godspell, Grease, and the world premiere of Disney Theatrical’s Pooh’s Perfect Day, as well as South Pacific at the Sydney Opera House. His regional choreography credits include The Jungle Book (Goodman Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company), Little Miss Sunshine (La Jolla Playhouse), Me and My Girl and O Henry’s Lovers (Goodspeed Opera House), and Tom Jones (North Shore Music Theatre). His credits as a director-choreographer include the Off Broadway production of Silence! The Musical (Time magazine’s Top 10 of 2011), the world premiere of Jim Henson’s Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas and Radio Girl (Goodspeed Musicals), and Departure Lounge (The Public Theater’s New York Shakespeare Festival). He recently directed and choreographed the original workshop of In Your Arms, which he also co-created, at New York Stage and Film, and he recently choreographed the Coen brothers’ feature film Hail, Caesar!
Lynn Ahrens’s (Lyrics) theatre credits include Ragtime, Once on This Island, Seussical, Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life, My Favorite Year, Rocky, A Man of No Importance, Dessa Rose, The Glorious Ones, Madison Square Garden’s A Christmas Carol, Lucky Stiff,and the recent Kennedy Center world premiere of Little Dancer. Her film and television credits include the feature animation Anastasia (20th Century Fox), A Christmas Carol (NBC), Camp (IFC), “Schoolhouse Rock” (ABC), and many others. She is a Council Member of the Dramatists Guild of America and co-founded the Dramatists Guild Fellows Program. Her honors include Tony, Emmy, Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Lilly Awards and nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and Grammy Award. In 2014, together with her longtime collaborator, composer Stephen Flaherty, she received the Oscar Hammerstein Award for Lifetime Achievement.
While this is Jennifer Manocherian’s (Co-Conceiver) first experience as co-conceiver, she has been a producer on Broadway for over 25 years.
Jess Goldstein (Costume Design) has designed, among many others, On the Town, Jersey Boys, Newsies, The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino (Tony Award nomination), Henry IV with Kevin Kline (Tony nomination), The Rivals (2005 Tony Award), The Apple Tree with Kristin Chenoweth, Orphans with Alec Baldwin, Buried Child, Proof, Take Me Out, Love! Valour! Compassion!, How I Learned to Drive, Dinner with Friends, The Mineola Twins (Lucille Lortel and Henry Hewes Design Awards), Il Trittico for Metropolitan Opera, and Tony Goldwyn’s film A Walk on the Moon. Goldstein is a graduate of the Yale University School of Drama and has taught design there since 1990. He was the 2015 recipient of the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award.
Donald Holder (Lighting Design) previously designed the Globe’s The Times They Are A-Changin’. His Broadway credits include The Lion King and South Pacific (Tony Awards), The King and I, The Bridges of Madison County, Golden Boy, Ragtime, Movin’ Out, Gem of the Ocean, A Streetcar Named Desire, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and Juan Darien (all Tony-nominated), On the Twentieth Century, You Can’t Take It With You, Bullets Over Broadway, Cyrano De Bergerac, Thoroughly Modern Millie,and The Boy from Oz, among others. His regional credits include La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Denver Center Theatre Company, Center Stage, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Long Wharf Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, Alley Theatre, and many others. His opera credits include The Magic Flute, Two Boys,and Otello (Metropolitan Opera), Carmen (Houston Grand Opera), and Moby-Dick and Death and the Powers (The Dallas Opera). He also designed seasons one and two of the NBC television series “Smash.”
Peter Hylenski (Sound Design) is a Grammy, Olivier, and four-time Tony Award nominee. His selected Broadway credits include Something Rotten!, After Midnight, Motown The Musical, The Scottsboro Boys, Side Show, Rock of Ages, Rocky, Bullets Over Broadway, Shrek The Musical, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Lend Me a Tenor, Elf, Wonderland, Cry-Baby, The Times They Are A-Changin’, The Wedding Singer, Sweet Charity, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me, Little Women, and Brooklyn. His other credits include Le Rêve and ShowStoppers (Wynn Las Vegas), Ragtime (London), Rocky: Das Musical (Hamburg), King Kong (Melbourne), How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular (international arena tour), Walking with Dinosaurs (international arena tour), Bull Durham, and Mame. Hylenski is also a producer and engineer for film, album, and television projects. He has engineered commercials for clients such as Sony, Levi’s, General Mills, and Mercedes-Benz and was the re-record mixer and sound supervisor on his fifth film for the American Museum of Natural History, titled Dark Universe.
Olivia Sebesky (Projection Design) recently designed Ever After (Paper Mill Playhouse), The Spoils, Sticks and Bones, and Intimacy (The New Group), “Fake Off” (truTV), the Nasser bin Hamad Awards with OnTheFly (Bahrain), In Your Arms (New York Stage and Film), Spam (3-Legged Dog), Vegas Nocturne (Spiegelworld/The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas), WikiMusical (New York Musical Theatre Festival), The Architecture of Becoming (Women’s Project/New York City Center), Alice + Olivia Fashion Show at Sleep No More (New York Fashion Week), God Hates This Show (HERE Arts Center, Joe’s Pub), The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (Company One), and Yesterday Happened: Remembering H.M. (Underground Railway Theater). She received the 2013 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Design.
Michael Starobin’s (Orchestrator) credits include If/Then, Annie, Dogfight, Leap of Faith, Queen of the Mist, People in the Picture, Sondheim on Sondheim, Next to Normal (Tony Award), The Glorious Ones, Grinch, Adrift in Macao, The House of Bernarda Alba, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Assassins (Tony Award), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A New Brain, A Christmas Carol, Hello Again, Guys and Dolls, My Favorite Year, Falsettos, In Trousers, Sunday in the Park with George, Once on This Island, Closer Than Ever, Legs Diamond, Romance/Romance, Carrie, Birds of Paradise, Rags, 3 Guys Naked, and Von Richthofen. His films include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Life with Mikey, Home on the Range, Tangled, and Lucky Stiff.
Steven Malone (Music Director) was the associate music director/conductor for the Broadway production of Newsies. Other Alan Menken shows he has worked on, both regionally and on Broadway, include The Hunchback of Notre Dame (associate music director), Sister Act, Leap of Faith, The Little Mermaid, and Disney’s upcoming live-action film of Beauty and the Beast. Malone was the assistant music director for NBC’s live telecast of Peter Pan starring Christopher Walken and Allison Williams and was the children’s vocal conductor for The Sound of Music Live! starring Carrie Underwood. He has been a music director and pianist for numerous workshops of new musicals, companies, and events, including The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park, Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival, Nashville Opera, The Kennedy Center Honors, and the Tony Awards. With Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, Malone has worked on Little Dancer at Lincoln Center, the just-released feature film Lucky Stiff, and, as associate music director, Flaherty and Ahrens’s upcoming stage production of Anastasia.
Telsey + Company (Casting) cast the Broadway productions and tours of Fiddler on the Roof, The Color Purple, China Doll, Misery, Allegiance, On Your Feet!, Sylvia, Spring Awakening, Hamilton, Something Rotten!, An American in Paris, Finding Neverland, The King and I, Hand to God, Kinky Boots, Wicked, The Bridges of Madison County, If/Then, The Sound of Music, Love Letters, Newsies, Pippin, Motown, Rock of Ages, and Million Dollar Quartet. Their Off Broadway credits include Atlantic Theater Company, LAByrinth Theater Company, MCC Theater, Second Stage Theatre, and Signature Theatre Company. Their regional credits include American Repertory Theater, Goodspeed Musicals, La Jolla Playhouse, New York Stage and Film, Paper Mill Playhouse, Westport Country Playhouse, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. They cast the films Fun House, Tallulah, Ithaca, The Intern, Ricki and the Flash, Focus, The Last Five Years, Song One, A Most Violent Year, and Into the Woods. Their television credits include “Flesh and Bone,” “Masters of Sex,” and numerous commercials.
Mark Myars (Associate Choreographer) served as associate choreographer of If/Then (Broadway, upcoming national tour); associate choreographer of Beaches (Drury Lane Theatre); and dance supervisor and assistant choreographer of seven worldwide productions of Wicked. Myars is the choreographer of Gotta Dance!, a revue that celebrates the evolution of dance on Broadway. His other Broadway credits include Footloose, Wicked, 9 to 5, Come Fly Away, and West Side Story. He also appeared Off Broadway as Dream Hannibal in Silence! The Musical. His film credits include Center Stage, The Producers, Across the Universe, Rock of Ages, Life of an Actress the Musical, and Winter’s Tale.
Michael Domue (Production Stage Manager) recently worked on Noir and The Unbuilt City at New York Stage and Film, where he worked on last season’s workshop of In Your Arms. His regional credits include Dracula, A Christmas Carol, Topdog/Underdog, Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure, Becky Shaw, The As If Body Loop, Natural Selection, The Shaker Chair, Pure Confidence, The Ruby Sunrise, and The Lively Lad (Actors Theatre of Louisville/Humana Festival), The Mourners’ Bench, Camelot, Cabaret,and A Christmas Carol (Trinity Repertory Company), and productions at Philadelphia Theatre Company, Olney Theatre Center, Swine Palace, and 17 summer seasons at Totem Pole Playhouse. His Off Broadway work includes Urge for Going, Knives and Other Sharp Objects, The Last Cargo Cult, and The Ruby Sunrise (The Public Theater). Domue’s additional credits include Master Class, A Streetcar Named Desire, Company, and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (The Kennedy Center), and he has been part of the stage management teams at Radio City Music Hall on productions of the New York Spring Spectacular and Radio City Christmas Spectacular.
Jess Slocum (Assistant Stage Manager) previously worked at The Old Globe on Twelfth Night, Buyer & Cellar, Bright Star, Othello, Water by the Spoonful, The Winter’s Tale, A Doll’s House, Pygmalion, A Room with a View, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, the 2011-2013 Shakespeare Festivals, Rafta, Rafta…, Robin and the 7 Hoods, Alive and Well, Sammy, Cornelia, Since Africa, Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, and The Glass Menagerie. Her Broadway credits include In the Heights. Her regional credits include Side Show, Ruined, The Third Story, Memphis,and Most Wanted (La Jolla Playhouse) and Post Office (Center Theatre Group). Her San Diego credits include Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company, North Coast Repertory Theatre, and Lamb’s Players Theatre. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University.