Marin Theatre Company presents Seven Guitars

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Coming up next at MTC:
World premiere of Bellwether by Steve Yockey
Directed by Ryan Rilette
Runs October 6 through 30
Don't miss this spine-tingling fairy tale for adults.

Part 1: Program

Seven Guitars
by August Wilson
directed by Kent Gash+
Scenic Designer - J.B. Wilson**
Lighting Designer - Kurt Landisman**
Costume Designer - Callie Floor**
Music Director - Linda Tillery
Sound Designer - Chris Houston
Original Compositions - Dwight Andrews
Stage Manager - Jonathan Templeton*
Properties Artisan - Seren Helday
Casting Director - Meg Pearson
Dramaturg - Margot Melcon

Featuring: Shinelle Azoroh,* Charles Branklyn,* L. Peter Callender,* Margo Hall,* Omoze Idehenre,* Marc Damon Johnson* and Tobie Windham*

SEVEN GUITARS is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.
Original music (c)1995 Dwight Andrews

+ denotes member, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society
* denotes member, Actors' Equity Association
** denotes member, United Scenic Artists Local 829

Cast of Characters in order of appearance
Louise - Margo Hall*
Red Carter - L. Peter Callender*
Canewell - Marc Damon Johnson*
Vera - Omoze Idehenre*
Hedley - Charles Branklyn*
Floyd - Tobie Windham*
Ruby - Shinelle Azoroh*

Place: Backyard of a house in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Time: Summer 1948

There will be one 15-minute intermission.

Special thanks to Aaron Todd Douglas, Tony Marcus, McCarthy Painting, Tarell Alvin McCraney and Keely Weiman

Please remember to turn off all cell phones or any other devices that could make a noise and be distracting to people around you. 

Photographs and recordings of any kind are strictly prohibited.

Strobe lights and haze will be used during this performance. Cigarette and cigar smoking will be simulated using water-vapor props.

This production of Seven Guitars is generously underwritten by the following:

MTC PARTNERS
Bellebyron Foundation
N.J. "Sky" Cooper
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Gage Schubert
Christopher B. & Jeannie Smith

SEASON PARTNER
H. Hugh Vincent, MD & Joan Watson

VIP PARTNERS
Carl & Linden Berry
Tracy & Brian Haughton
Melanie & Peter Maier
Russell Pratt & Janet Brown
James & Beth Wintersteen

PATRON EVENT SPONSORS
The Club Restaurant at McInnis Park
Elizabeth Spencer Wines
Stacy Scott Catering

WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM
National Endowment for the Arts
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
AT&T Yellow Pages
Marin Community Foundation
Marin Independent Journal
National Endowment for the Arts presents Shakespeare in American Communities
The Shubert Foundation, Inc.
Taproot Foundation
Yelp
Autodesk
The Bernard Osher Foundation
National New Play Network
Peter J. Owens Fund
Stacy Scott Fine Catering

Part 2: Letter from the Artistic Director

Welcome to the first play of MTC's 45th season. Seven Guitars is our first production of a play by the amazing August Wilson. It is a great pleasure to finally bring the work of this American master playwright to our stage in the same season that we also bring another master of the English language, William Shakespeare, to MTC for the first time. 

I was inspired to begin producing Wilson's plays while talking with playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney during In the Red & Brown Water. I told him I wanted to produce all ten of Wilson's Century Cycle plays, but that I wanted to wait until we could bring new visions to the plays, visions that took the plays somewhere unexpected, somewhere less realistic, to the mythic place all great works of theater and literature occupy. Tarell said, "You should do that now, why wait?"

That began a conversation among our artistic staff about how we would approach the plays. We were interested in producing the plays that were immediately and thematically relevant to us, our artists and our community. The play that jumped to the forefront was Seven Guitars. Guitars branches out to the other plays in myriad ways: to The Piano Lesson through the importance of music and musical heritage as a link to the past, to Ma Rainey's Black Bottom through the importance of Chicago and the evolution of roots music to rock music, and to King Hedley II wherein the title character is part of the next generation of the characters you meet in this play. And, not least of all, because the backyard of the Hill District home where Guitars takes place bears an uncanny resemblance to the backyard where August grew up, where he first heard the stories, music and histories that would become the raw materials for his epic Cycle.

What artists would we ask to begin this exploration with us and our audience? First would be my long-time friend and collaborator Kent Gash to direct Guitars. When I first spoke to him, he said he wanted to find a way to bring the neighborhood's topography into the play, to show how, in the Hill District, you're always looking up the street and always looking down the street, halfway to Heaven and halfway to Hell. A perfect vision for our first Wilson.

I am delighted to welcome this splendid cast that includes the return of MTC veteran L. Peter Callender, as well as the first appearances of some of our finest Bay Area artists including Margo Hall, Charles Branklyn, Omoze Idehenre, Shinelle Azoroh and Tobie Windham. Marc Damon Johnson, who has joined us following his Obie-award winning performances in The Brother/Sister Plays in New York, rounds out the cast. I am especially pleased that our Musical Direction has been provided by jazz/roots/R&B legend and San Francisco native Linda Tillery. We hope this will be the first of many collaborations with these remarkable artists.

- Jasson Minadakis

Part 3: Dramaturgy

Article 1 - The Century Cycle: Playwright August Wilson reveals the history of a neighborhood

The 20th century was one of the most well documented periods in history due to the explosion of new media, with news, radio, photography, film, television and the internet capturing millions of stories. How the last century will be remembered depends on how complete a history we hold on to, filling in not just events, but also daily life and relationships, ideas and virtues. In the quest to chronicle the last century, one of the greatest contributors was August Wilson.

A playwright, Wilson wrote a cycle of ten plays, collectively titled either The Century Cycle - because each play takes place in a decade of the 20th century - or The Pittsburgh Cycle - because the action of most of the plays takes place in that city's Hill District - that chronicle the changing social and historical landscape of black America over 100 years.
With each decade he dramatized, Wilson captured a piece of untold American history and brought it to life with cadence, style and flow that are authentic to their time and place but unmistakably of the world of August Wilson. It is a world he observed growing up in the Hill District watching his neighbors struggle for dignity and security in a constantly evolving country.

When he started writing the first play he didn't have an epic undertaking in mind. The plays came to him out of order, first the 70s, then the 20s and the 50s; he wrote the first three before he realized what they would eventually add up to. As he said in an interview just after completing the final play in the cycle, "I was taking one decade at a time... I never had to worry about what my next play was going to be." There is no linear thread that runs through all ten plays, no single character or family to follow, and the plays don't pick up where the previous one left off.

Rather, the Cycle tells the story of a changing neighborhood, impoverished but vital. About more than the characters that inhabit his world, Wilson's plays are rich with the feeling of community that characterized the tightly settled early urban black neighborhoods. They are about living right on top of friends and enemies. They chronicle the changing lives of a people on the move, sometimes on their way up and other times getting dragged down. Wilson's Hill District and the individuals who reside there are defined by a relentless struggle: for a decent job, a nicer home, a better way of life, reconciliation with the past, possibility for the future, or the simplicity of a meal, a place to sleep or someone to love.

Wilson's words expanded the definition of a country that, for so long, marginalized or ignored the stories of African Americans. "I think my plays offer (white Americans) a different way to look at black Americans," he said in an interview in The Paris Review in 1999. "For instance, in Fences they see a garbage man, a person they don't really look at, although they see a garbage man every day. By looking at Troy's life, white people find out that the content of this black garbage man's life is affected by the same things - love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives."

August Wilson was born in 1945 in the Hill District. In his childhood he was called Freddie, named Frederick August Kittel by his absent, alcoholic German father. He identified more with his African-American mother, Daisy Wilson, a fierce woman who raised her six children to be as strong-minded as she was.

It was the people Wilson observed and studied in the neighborhood - the men's animated conversations in barbershops, the cigar store or coffee shop on the corner and the women pausing to gossip on their way to the white neighborhoods where they worked as domestics or bickering in backyards while they prepared dinner - who were the raw materials absorbed and reformed by the playwright.

Dropping out of school in the tenth grade and choosing his middle name and Daisy's maiden name as his own, August Wilson invented himself. Infused with the determination of his mother, the education provided by the local branch of the Carnegie library and the truth found in a 78rpm Bessie Smith blues record he bought for a nickel at St Vincent De Paul's, he became the man who would write the characters of his youth into infamous and gritty life in his plays.

Wilson said, "Before I am anything, a man or a playwright, I am an African American. The tributary streams of culture, history and experience have provided me with the materials out of which I make my art." Inspired by the work of artist and writer Romare Bearden, Wilson's plays are a vibrant collage of fact, faith and fortune using musicality, language and rhythm. He educated himself with books and music, but also by paying attention to the struggles of his elders and tapping into the mythology of the American Dream. Historical accuracy and strict reality give way in favor of a deep exploration of emotional truth. Language lilts and chops through the complicated dynamics of relationships heavy with the weight of the past.

In an essay published in The New York Times in 2000, Wilson wrote, "I wanted to place this culture on stage in all its richness and fullness and to demonstrate its ability to sustain us in all areas of human life and endeavor and through profound movements of our history in which the larger society has thought less of us than we have thought of ourselves."

Article 2 - A note from the playwright

In Sister Mary Eldephonse's seventh grade class, history was at the top of my list of favorite subjects. I was intrigued merely by the record of events that had happened prior to 1957, as it would be years later before I would come to understand that the events had meanings that were connected and played out on a larger playing field of politics and culture.

In my reading of history, seldom if ever was the black experience in America given any historical weight, any meaning or purpose beyond that provided by a culture and politic that had enslaved and still in 1957 refused to accept the equality of its black citizens. As a black American artist, I have sought in all my work to restore the experience to a primary role, to create in essence a world in which the black American is the spiritual center, thus giving the events of history a different perspective. It is one thing to be the owner of a plantation, and another to be a slave. Both have equally valid perspectives. Both share the same physical space, and in the irreversible sweep of history, the same intertwining of national will and purpose, yet there can be no doubt that they lived very different lives.
Despite my interest in history, I have always been more concerned with culture, and while my plays have an overall historical feel, their settings are fictions, and they are peopled with invented characters whose personal histories fit within the historical context in which they live.

I have tried to extract some measure of truth from their lives as they struggle to remain whole in the face of so many things that threaten to pull them asunder. I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life-her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter-are all worthy of art.

Hence, Seven Guitars.

- August Wilson, 1995, Goodman Theatre


Article 3 - Hell with the lid off: Pittsburgh, 1948

Section A

For the flood of immigrants arriving on America's doorstep at the turn of the last century, one of the cities with the most to offer was the booming, belching city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In the late 1800s, Andrew Carnegie pioneered the production of steel, which transformed the city into a major manufacturing center in the United States. As the steel industry grew - along with other manufacturing - the city's population grew, doubling within decades. There was no shortage of work for the newly arrived European immigrants searching for the promise of opportunity.

During the two World Wars and in the years between, the city flourished and made at least a few men exceedingly wealthy. At the same time, Pittsburgh choked its water and air with pollution and smog, the byproducts of massive industry, so much so that one man described it as "hell with the lid off." A layer of grime settled over everything. The thick dust churned in the air and could turn a white shirt black just from walking across town. Still, there was work for unskilled and semi-skilled laborers and, though it was a hard living, it was a living that drew people to the city from far and wide.

Section B - The Great Migration

It was not only immigrants from other countries that made their way to Pittsburgh and other northern industrial cities. African Americans in huge numbers, fleeing Jim Crow laws and the unfulfilled promise of an emancipated South, moved north as part of the Great Migration that took place during the first half of the 20th century. 

In 1900, about 90% of the African-American population lived in the Southern states on farms or in small towns and villages scraping by as sharecroppers or continuing to work for former slave owners, unable to get ahead. There was widespread racism and violence against blacks, enough that even without a secure job, government assistance or any guarantees, individuals and families left behind their homes in the south and took their chances, making their way up to cities in the north, among them Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, New York, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. 

Inequality and racism were not escapable in the north. White workers were often given higher paying factory jobs while black workers were relegated to harder manual labor or service positions, such as porters, waiters, janitors and domestics.

During the Depression, jobs became scarce but the wave of people moving up from the south didn't stop, it just slowed temporarily. With the start of World War II, many workers were sent off to war, leaving jobs to be filled by the masses of people still moving into the cities. In a radical shift, within 75 years, the majority of the African-American population in the United States had become urbanized.

Section C - Living in the city

City life was much different than country life for the hundreds of thousands of relocated African Americans. Because so many people were arriving in Pittsburgh at the same time, the European immigrants and the growing black population competed not only for jobs, but also housing and resources. Lower income neighborhoods were flooded with new arrivals and became a mishmash of cultures trying to carve out a place to call home.

High population density was common in cities, especially in working class neighborhoods. The jobs available to black workers were typically far from the neighborhoods where they lived. Though in transition, many public services - including public transportation, jails and hospitals - were still segregated. Due to overcrowding and lack of access to medical care, infectious diseases spread rapidly in the black neighborhoods.

People who came from the south tended to cluster together for a sense of community and shared history. They also found help from those who had settled in the northern cities before them, using connections to find housing in a brutal and discriminatory real estate market. 

Even though the living conditions were lacking, the black neighborhoods began to develop. Pittsburgh's Hill District was the center of the African-American community in the first half of the 20th century. It was close to downtown but up steep hills (hence the name) making it an undesirable location for the upper classes. Packed with boarding houses and rentals, the Hill was a city-within-a-city, boasting black-owned clubs, shops, meeting halls, Pittsburgh's black newspaper, the Courier, and Negro league baseball teams. There were opportunities for education and literacy and political activism that were never available or possible in the south.


Article 4 - Nothin' but the blues

At the beginning of the 20th century, the blues were strong in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and the Mississippi Delta. Rooted in slave songs, field hollers, work songs, church songs, spirituals and folk ballads, the blues was rural music that told the story of years of slavery and back breaking work farming someone else's land. It was full of guitar, piano and harmonica played by traveling musicians at picnics and church meetings and in country bars and juke joints. Everyone came out to hear the blues and dance to the stories pulled straight from their own lives. There was no shortage of hard times in the South and everyone could relate to the blues.

During the Great Migration, tens of thousands of rural African-American workers moved into cities in the northern states. The community that had created the blues began to leave the South and the old style of blues reminded them too much of what they'd left behind. The musicians arriving in places like St Louis, Detroit and Chicago changed their sound to reflect their new urban surroundings.

Having lived in Mississippi and worked on a plantation before arriving in Chicago in 1943, Muddy Waters left behind the country blues and traded in his acoustic guitar for an electric one. Chicago blues started on street corners but became so popular it moved into packed clubs and dance halls. Muddy, like others on the scene, added drums and a bass to his now-electric guitar and the harmonica that used to cry began to wail. The beat was infectious and had all the soul of the blues with a beat that drove bodies onto the dance floor. This electrified version of the blues laid the groundwork for the R&B and rock and roll that would take over the radio in just over a decade.

Part 4: Who's Who

Section A: Artistic Staff Biographies

August Wilson (Playwright) authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner's Come and Gone (New York Drama Critics Circle Award), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (NYDCC Award), The Piano Lesson (Pulitzer Prize and NYDCC Award), Seven Guitars (NYDCC Award), Fences (Pulitzer Prize, Tony and NYDCC Awards), Two Trains Running (NYDCC Award), Jitney (Olivier and NYDCC Awards), King Hedley II and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of African Americans, decade by decade, over the course of the 20th century. His plays have been produced at regional theaters across the country and all over the world, as well as on Broadway. In 2003, Wilson made his professional stage debut in his one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. He received an Emmy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson. His early works included the one-act plays The Janitor, Recycle, The Coldest Day of the Year, Malcolm X, The Homecoming and the musical satire Black Bart and the Sacred Hills. Wilson received many fellowships and awards, including Rockefeller and Guggenheim Fellowships in Playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award, Heinz Award and the National Humanities Medal. Following his death in October 2005, the Broadway theater located at 245 West 52nd Street was renamed the August Wilson Theatre.

Kent Gash (Director) is the director of the New Studio on Broadway at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, where he has directed Assassins and The Who's Tommy.  He is co-author and director of Langston in Harlem, which won the 2010 Audelco Award for best musical. Gash is the former associate artistic director of the Alliance Theatre, where he directed and choreographed 26 Miles (world premiere), Radio Golf, Sophisticated Ladies,  (Suzi Bass Award for best choreography) Sleuth, Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue, Jelly's Last Jam (Suzi Bass Awards for best musical, director and choreography) Tick, Tick... Boom, Five Guys Named Moe, Topdog/Underdog (co-production with Trinity Repertory Company and New Rep; Elliot Norton Award for best director) King Hedley II, Shakespeare's R&J and Pacific Overtures (co-production with Cincinnati Playhouse and North Shore Music Theatre; Atlanta Journal Constitution's "Best Show of the Year," Elliot Norton Award for best musical and Independent Reviewers of New England Awards for best musical and best director of a musical). Regionally, Gash has directed over fifty productions with Actors Express and True Colors in Atlanta, Cleveland Playhouse, Denver Center Theatre Company, the McCarter IN-Festival, Intiman Theatre in Seattle, Arizona Theatre Company, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Hartford Stage, Maltz-Jupiter Theatre and Shakespeare Santa Cruz. Gash also served as associate artistic director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival. His other New York credits include Miss Ever's Boys (NYC premiere) at Melting Pot Theatre Company, Call the Children Home at Primary Stages (world premiere), Beggar's Holiday and the first off-Broadway revival of Home. Gash spent 20 years as an accomplished actor, including time as a company member at A.C.T., where he won the Claire Luce Award for Miss Ever's Boys and Dinner at Eight and directed first year MFA students.

Section B: Cast Biographies

L. Peter Callender (Red Carter) has appeared at MTC in My Children! My Africa! He is currently the artistic director of African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco and an associate artist at Cal Shakes, where he has acted in over 20 productions. Other Bay Area credits include roles at A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, Brava! for Women in the Arts, Magic Theatre, Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, Aurora Theatre Company, Diablo Actors Ensemble, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, TheatreWorks and San Francisco Symphony. In New York, Mr. Callender appeared on Broadway in Prelude to a Kiss and in Julie Taymor's The Tempest at Classic Stage Company, as well as in roles at the Manhattan Theater Club, New York Shakespeare Festival and Circle Rep. Other regional theater credits include Arena Stage, The Rep in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh Public, Cincinnati Playhouse, Syracuse Stage and Pennsylvania Stage Company. He has appeared in the films Sweet November, Dr. Doolittle, The Kite Runner and voices in The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Margo Hall (Louise) makes her MTC debut in Seven Guitars. Her recent Bay Area credits include Nobody Move at Intersection for the Arts, Fabulation for Lorraine Hansberry Theatre [LHT], Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet at A.C.T. and Trouble in Mind at Aurora Theatre Company. Hall is a founding member of Campo Santo, a resident theater company at Intersection for the Arts, where she has acted in over 10 productions, including plays by Chinaka Hodges, Jessica Hagedorn, Naomi Iizuka, Philip Gotanda, Jose Rivera, Octavio Solis and Erin Cressida Wilson. She recently directed a co-production of The Story by Tracey Scott Wilson for SF Playhouse and LHT and Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin for Word for Word, which premiered at LHT before touring France. In 2005, her Will Glickman Award-winning play The People's Temple (co-authored by Leigh Fondakowski, Grey Pierrotti and Stephen Wangh) premiered at Berkeley Rep. She has also performed for Arena Stage, Olney Theater and Source Theater in Washington, D.C., the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, and locally at Berkeley Rep, Magic Theatre and Brava! for Women in the Arts. 

Charles Branklyn (Hedley) makes his MTC debut in Seven Guitars. He most recently appeared in Twelfth Night at the African-American Shakespeare Company and acted in the independent film The Tenderloin (Fakefoot Productions). Since appearing in August Wilson's Fences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, he has performed in nine different productions of the playwright's ten-play Pittsburgh Cycle. Branklyn received a Drama-Logue Award for his role as Johnnie in River Niger and a San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Turnbo in Jitney, both at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre. He made his professional debut in Gospel of Colonus at A.C.T.

Marc Damon Johnson (Canewell) makes his MTC debut in Seven Guitars. His Bay Area credits include Mother Courage and Polk County at Berkeley Rep. His New York and international theater credits include The Brother/Sister Plays (Obie Award winner and Drama League nominee) and The Poor Itch at Public Theater, The Brothers Size at Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, Mr. Fox: A Rumination at Signature Theatre (Drama League nominee), A Civil War Christmas at Long Wharf, Measure For Measure and Two Gentlemen of Verona at New York Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed at La Jolla Playhouse, Arena Stage, McCarter Theater and the Acting Company. Mr. Johnson has appeared in numerous television shows and films, including Army Wives, Rescue Me, The Sopranos, Third Watch, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Preaching to the Choir, It Runs in the Family, Grace & Glorie and Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. 

Tobie Windham (Floyd Barton) makes his MTC debut in Seven Guitars. He most recently appeared in Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead in New York. Other credits include The Lily's Revenge, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Brothers Size (San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle nominee for best actor), Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet, The Pastures of Heaven and Two Real Coons. He has performed at A.C.T., South Coast Repertory, Magic Theatre, Cal Shakes, City Equity Theater, South City Theater Company and Birmingham Park Players. Windham earned his BA in theater from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and is a graduate of A.C.T.'s MFA program. He is a founding artistic member of Renovation Theater Company.

Omoze Idehenre (Vera) makes her MTC debut in Seven Guitars. In the Bay Area, she has appeared in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Scapin, Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet and Clybourne Park at A.C.T, Macbeth at Cal Shakes and Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter at TheaterFIRST. She has also appeared in the film On the Road, directed by Walter Salles. Idehenre graduated from A.C.T.'s MFA program in 2010 and is now a core company member.

Shinelle Azoroh (Ruby) makes her MTC debut in Seven Guitars. She is a recent graduate of A.C.T.'s MFA program, where her mainstage credits include Marcus; or the Secret of Sweet and A Christmas Carol. She was most recently seen in the A.C.T. MFA production of As You Like It. Her other MFA performance credits include Hotel Paradiso and Once in a Lifetime. Azoroh received her BA in Theater from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where her performance credits include In the Blood for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, Intimate Apparel and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Azoroh is a founding artistic member of Renovation Theater Company, which most recently produced her one-woman show, Cinnamon.

Section C: Production Staff Biographies

Jonathan Templeton (Stage Manager) makes his MTC debut with Seven Guitars. He has worked in Chicago on Good Boys and True, Art and four seasons of First Look Reparatory of New Work at Steppenwolf Theatre Company; Trust, Fedra, Argonautika, The Brothers Karamazov, Great Men of Science, The Shaggs, 1984, The Old Curiosity Shop, Black Diamond and Around the World in 80 Days at Lookingglass Theatre Company, where he is a production affiliate; Loving Repeating, Execution of Justice and Wedding Play at About Face Theatre; and Orpheus Descending at American Theatre Company. He also spent two summers with Weston Playhouse in Vermont. Templeton is a graduate of Northwestern University.

J.B. Wilson (Scenic Designer) has designed sets for MTC's productions of Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Equivocation, Sunlight, The Seafarer, said Sa•d, Displaced, Fugitive Kind, The Hairy Ape, Company, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, All In The Timing, Wilder! Wilder! Wilder!, Lips Together, Teeth Apart and Inspecting Carol. Wilson's extensive Bay Area design credits include sets for A.C.T., Theatreworks, Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep, American Musical Theatre of San Jose, Cal Shakes, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, Artists Confronting AIDS, San Francisco Opera Center, Opera San Jose and many others. Nationally, his designs have appeared on stages in New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Houston, Princeton, Newark, Buffalo, Malibu, Atlanta and elsewhere. He is the recipient of numerous Bay Area Critics Circle and Hollywood Drama-Logue Awards, a Back Stage West Garland Award, Theatre L.A. Ovation Award and the Barbara Bladen Porter Award for Continued Creative Excellence. Wilson is a professor at San Francisco State University.

Kurt Landisman (Lighting Designer) has designed lighting for over 40 of MTC's productions, including Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Happy Now?, Equivocation, The Seafarer and Lydia. His lighting designs have been seen at most Bay Area theaters including A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep, Aurora Theatre Company, Center REP, San Francisco Opera, Cal Shakes, Magic Theatre and TheatreWorks. He has received numerous Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and Drama-Logue awards. Nationally, Landisman's designs have been seen at Arizona Theatre Company, Laguna Playhouse, Los Angeles Opera, Minnesota Opera, Sacramento Opera, Virginia Opera, Tulsa Opera, Ballet Arizona, Guthrie Theatre and Cincinnati Playhouse, as well as Off-Broadway at Circle Rep and Douglas Fairbanks Theatre. His association with playwright Sam Shepard included the world premieres of True West and Fool for Love. Internationally, his designs have been seen in Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai.

Callie Floor (Costume Designer) has designed costumes for MTC's  productions of Fuddy Meers, 9 Circles, Sunlight, boom, My Name is Asher Lev, Magic Forest Farm, Lydia, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Jacques Brel and The Subject Tonight is Love. She has designed for many Bay Area theaters including A.C.T., Magic Theatre, San Francisco Mime Troupe, Zaccho Dance Theater and West Bay Opera. She is currently working on A Delicate Balance for Aurora Theatre Company and How to write a New Book for the Bible for Berkeley Rep. Floor is the resident designer for the California Revels and currently holds the position of Costume Rentals Supervisor for A.C.T. She has a BFA from the University of Utah and a Higher Diploma in Theatre Design from the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

Linda Tillery (Music Director) makes her MTC debut in Seven Guitars. She is a veteran vocalist, percussionist, Grammy-nominated producer and cultural historian whose career has spanned 43 years. She became a central figure in the emerging genre of women's music in the 1970s and 80s as staff producer, vocalist and drummer for Olivia Records. In the 1990s, Tillery studied vocal improvisation with Bobby McFerrin and later became a founding member of McFerrin's vocal ensemble, Vociestra. In 1992 she formed the Cultural Heritage Choir to perform and preserve African-American roots music. Their repertoire includes work songs, spirituals, field hollers, children's play songs, moans and ring shouts. Tillery has performed as the lead singer of the Loading Zone, the Coke Escovedo band, the house band at Slim's nightclub in San Francisco, and as a member of the Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra. She has recorded four solo albums and appeared on over 90 recordings by such artists as Santana, Boz Scaggs, Holly Near, Huey Lewis and The News, Vicki Randle, Pete Escovedo, The Whispers, John Santos, Maria Muldaur, Taj Mahal and Eric Bibb. Tillery has taught classes and residencies at Stanford University, Williams College, University of Utah, Pacific School of Religion, University of Maryland and Spelman College in Atlanta, California Institute of Integral Studies and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Her second solo recording Linda Tillery won a Bammy (Bay Area Music Award) for Best Independently Produced Album and was twice named Outstanding Female Vocalist at the Bay Area Jazz Awards.

Chris Houston (Sound Designer) is a pianist, composer and sound designer. He has designed sound for MTC's productions of Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, Fuddy Meers, Seagull, Happy Now?, In the Red and Brown Water, Equivocation, Sunlight, boom, My Name is Asher Lev, Magic Forest Farm, Lydia, The Seafarer, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, Love Person, A Streetcar Named Desire, said Sa•d and Lovers & Executioners. Locally, his designs and compositions have been featured at A.C.T., Aurora Theatre Company, SF Playhouse, Center REP, Magic Theatre and the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival.

Section D: Administrative Staff Biographies

Jasson Minadakis (Artistic Director) is in his sixth season as artistic director of MTC. Last season, he directed Edward Albee's Tiny Alice, the world premiere of Seagull and the west coast premiere of Happy Now?. In past seasons, he directed Equivocation, for which he won the 2010 Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Director, Sunlight, Lydia, The Seafarer, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, A Streetcar Named Desire, said Sa•d, Love Song and The Subject Tonight is Love. As artistic director of Actor's Express Theatre Company, he directed The Pillowman, Bug, The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Echoes of Another Man, Killer Joe, Burn This, The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, Blue/Orange, and Bel Canto. As producing artistic director of Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, he directed Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train, Chagrin Falls, The Beard of Avon, Arcadia, Nocturne, Fuddy Meers, Lovers & Executioners, Jacob Marley's Christmas Carol, Betrayal, The Weir, Waiting for Godot, The Misanthrope, A Chance of Lightning, The Three Musketeers, Dracula, The Color Wheel, and 19 productions of Shakespeare. Regional credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Hamlet at Georgia Shakespeare, Copenhagen at Playhouse on the Square and Bedroom Farce at Wayside Theatre. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Creative Loafing and Southern Voice named him Best Director of 2004. He has won "Production of the Year" awards for The Pillowman and Bug (Actor's Express), Copenhagen (Playhouse on the Square) and Chagrin Falls (Cincinnati).

Ryan Rilette (Producing Director) is in his fifth season as producing director at MTC, where he has directed Fuddy Meers, In the Red and Brown Water, boom and Magic Forest Farm and will direct the world premiere of Bellwether and God of Carnage this season. From 2002 to 2008, Rilette served as producing artistic director of Southern Repertory Theatre in New Orleans, where he directed the world premieres of The Breach, Rising Water, The Sunken Living Room, The Vulgar Soul and The House of Plunder; and regional premieres of Kimberly Akimbo, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?, and In Walks Ed. He has also directed for A.C.T.'s MFA program, New Theatre (Miami), the Tennessee Williams Festival, Soho Rep and the Flea, among others. He is the president of the National New Play Network, cofounder and former executive artistic director of Rude Mechanicals Theater Company in New York and a former professor at Tulane and Loyola universities.

Seren Helday (Properties Artisan) is resident props artisan for MTC. She has 
provided props for all productions since 2008. She has also provided props for A.C.T., Center REP, Cal Shakes and SF Playhouse. She spent one year as Master Carpenter at New Conservatory Theatre Center in San Francisco, building some 30 shows for their season. Helday was also technical director of the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson in addition to working as a designer, performer and manager. 

Margot Melcon (Dramaturg) joined MTC in 2008 and has served as dramaturg for all productions in the past three seasons. She was Literary and Publications Associate at A.C.T. for four years. She has worked with the Kennedy Center and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, was a fellow at the National Critic's Institute at the O'Neill Playwrights Festival and is a freelance writer for American Theatre magazine. She is a graduate of California State University, Chico. Recently, she taught a Principles of Dramaturgy course at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco.

Meg Pearson (Casting Director) has directed casting for all MTC mainstage productions since 2008. In addition, she directs casting for MTC's School Tour and MTC's New Works staged readings series. Outside of MTC, Ms. Pearson recently served as casting director on the feature film Seducing Charlie Barker, directed by Amy Glazer, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Children's Theatre.  Before coming to MTC, she served as casting assistant on television shows Las Vegas, King of Queens and Grounded for Life, as well as feature films Eurotrip, Dude, Where's My Car? and Straight Jacket.  Pearson is a graduate of the Theatre Arts program at Boston College.

Part 5: Expanded Programs

Article 1 - A summer (camp) to remember: An interview with Cordell Coleman

In July, 31 kids entering grades 2 through 5 performed the musical Madeline and the Gypsies at the Marin Civic Center Showcase Theater in San Rafael to an audience packed with friends and family. After three weeks of rehearsal (not to mention training with professional theater artists to learn improvisation, musical theater, puppetry, circus skills, dance, design, playwriting and acting techniques), these passionate youth put on a fantastic show! Josh Costello, Artistic Director of Expanded Programs, caught up wth "veteran" actor Cordell Coleman (this is his second summer at MTC's camp) to talk about his experience this summer. Cordell starts fifth grade at Edna Maguire Elementary School in Mill Valley this fall.

MTC: What is Madeline and the Gypsies about?
Cordell: A girl Madeline and Pepito [her friend, the son of the Spanish Ambassador to France] go to the circus with their class. The teacher Ms. Clavel comes too. Madeline and Pepito get stuck on the ferris wheel. A gypsy helps them and, then, they join the gypsies! And, they go on gypsy adventures.

MTC: What role are you playing this summer? What do you do in the show?
Cordell: I'm the Strongman and I act strong and tough. And I act like I'm the boss, but really Gypsy Mama is the boss. I had fun playing this role!

MTC: What was your favorite moment of Summer Camp so far?
Cordell: Learning how to juggle, definitely.

MTC: Why did you sign up for Summer Camp with MTC?
Cordell: Because I love to act and, when I grow up, I want to be a famous actor and help the world.

MTC: Who is your favorite teacher this summer?
Cordell: Jef [Labes, the music director], because he is awesome and spontaneous and he inspires me.
MTC: What else do you want people to know about you or about Summer Camp?
Cordell: I want them to know that I like to breakdance.

Article 2 - Nurturing everyone's passion for theater: Learn more about Marin Theatre Company's Expanded Programs

Marin Theatre Company's Expanded Programs department encompasses education, outreach and theater for young audiences, including everything from free lectures for adults at the Mill Valley Public Library to a playwriting competition for teens to performances in elementary schools. Each year we reach hundreds of students with our drama classes, hundreds more with our student matinees and thousands with our School Tour.

In each playbill this season, we will introduce you to someone, like Cordell, who has participated in one of these programs.

In addition to our popular Summer Camps, MTC provides after-school and in-school drama classes with professional teaching artists in Mill Valley, San Rafael, Novato, Larkspur, Sausalito and Marin City.

Our School Tour sends professional actors into elementary schools all around the Bay Area to perform a new play commissioned by MTC for the program. This year's production is Anansi the Spider, written and performed by acclaimed Bay Area hip-hop theater artists Tommy Shepherd and Dan Wolf.

We hold special weekday Student Matinee performances of our main stage season productions for middle and high school students. We also send teaching artists into the schools before students attend the performances to prepare them for the experience. This season, students will see The Glass Menagerie (with discounted and free tickets made available through the generosity of the Shenson Foundation) and Othello, the Moor of Venice. Othello will be presented to participating schools for free, thanks to the generosity of the National Endowment for the Art's Shakespeare for a New Generation program.

The third annual Marin Young Playwrights Festival puts teen playwrights center stage. Eight plays by Marin high school students will be selected as finalists and performed at MTC in February in an event produced by our Teen Advisory Board. The winning script will be performed as a staged reading with professional actors.

Our internship program trains the next generation of theater artists. Interns are a vital part of our summer education programs. They also design props and costumes for the School Tour, as well as work in all aspects of theater production and administration.

For teachers and schools, for students and families and for our community, MTC's Expanded Programs engage people of all ages in the joyous, challenging and inspiring process of theater.

Part 6: Patron information

CONTACT US
Box Office: 415.388.5208
Tuesday-Saturday, 12-5PM
Closed Sundays, Mondays and Holidays
During performance runs the box office is open until show time and on Sundays.

Address: 397 Miller Avenue, 
Mill Valley CA 94941
General: 415.388.5200

Playbill Advertising:
Sasha Hnatkovich, 415.388.5200 x3313

Group Sales:
Groups of 15 or more receive a discounted rate plus a free group leader ticket.  
Julie Knight, 415.388.5200 x3302

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
Tues, Thu, Fri, and Sat  8:00pm
Wed  7:30pm
Sun  7:00pm
Matinees: Thu  1:00pm  ¥  Sat & Sun  2:00pm

TICKET PRICES
Previews: Thu through Sun, $34
All Other Performances:
Tues, $38/34 (excludes Opening) 
Wed, Thu eve & Sun eve, $44/$39 
Fri, $50/45
Sat eve, $55/50 
Matinees Thu, Sat & Sun $44/$39  
Opening Night with Cast Reception, $55/50 
Note: Price difference is between center and side sections. 

Ticket discounts
Under 30: $20, all performances, must show valid ID
Seniors: $7 off tickets to Thu & Sat matinees; $3 discount to all other performances
Rush tickets: $15 (based on availability,
one hour prior to curtain) 

SERVICES & INFORMATION
Arrive on time: Performances begin promptly. There are no refunds for latecomers. Late patrons cannot be seated until a designated seating break or possibly intermission. Patrons returning late from intermission will be seated at the discretion of the House Managers.

MTC CafŽ: Food and beverages are available before performances and during intermission. Save time and order intermission refreshments prior to the start of the performance.

Recycling: Please help MTC conserve resources. Recycle your programs in the racks provided on the way out of the theater, and use the labeled recycling bins for cans, bottles and paper. 

Recording Equipment: The use of sound, video or photographic recording equipment during performances is prohibited. 

Listening Devices: For patrons with impaired hearing, listening devices are available free. Please see the House Manager for details.

For information about physical and program access at MTC, please call 415.388.5208 or dial 711 to use the California Telecommunications Relay Service.

END