presents RIDICULOUS FRAUD...Ridiculous Fraud), where a funer-al may entail a jazz procession, and where balls and masquerades begin with Twelfth Night on Jan-uary 6th and continue

Ridiculous Fraud • SOUTH COAST REPERTORY P1

43rd Season • 412th ProductionSEGERSTROM STAGE / OCTOBER 13 - NOVEMBER 19, 2006

David Emmes Martin BensonPRODUCING ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

presents

RIDICULOUS FRAUDby Beth Henley

Hugh Landwehr Joyce Kim Lee Peter Maradudin Stephen LeGrandSCENIC DESIGN COSTUME DESIGN LIGHTING DESIGN SOUND DESIGN

Martin Noyes John Glore David Leavenworth Randall K. Lum*FIGHT DIRECTOR DRAMATURG PRODUCTION MANAGER STAGE MANAGER

DIRECTED BY

Sharon Ott

Linda and Tod WhiteHONORARY PRODUCERS

Ridiculous Fraud was originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre, Princeton, N.J.Emily Mann, Artistic Director/Jeffrey Woodward, Managing Director

CORPORATE PRODUCER

THE CAST(in order of appearance)

Lafcad Clay ..................................................................................... Ian Fraser*Andrew Clay ............................................................................ Matt McGrath*Willow Clay ................................................................................ Betsy Brandt*Kap Clay .................................................................................... Matt Letscher*Uncle Baites ............................................................................ Randy Oglesby*Georgia ......................................................................................... Eliza Pryor*Maude Chrystal .......................................................................... Nike Doukas*Ed Chrystal ............................................................... Paul Vincent O’Connor*

THE PLAY TAKES PLACE OVER THE COURSE OF A YEAR

ACT I, SCENE ONE: SUMMER

Clay family home in New Orleans, the Garden District

ACT I, SCENE TWO: FALL

Outside Uncle Baites’ farmhouse in the Louisiana backwoods

15-MINUTE INTERMISSION

ACT II, SCENE ONE: WINTER

Kap’s cabin and backyard, deep in the woods

ACT II, SCENE TWO: SPRING

New Orleans cemetery, the Clay family tomb

LENGTHApproximately 2 hours and 20 minutes, including intermission.

P2 SOUTH COAST REPERTORY • Ridiculous Fraud

Official Airline Media PartnerMedia Partner

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers.


PRODUCTION STAFFAssistant Stage Manager ................................................... Nina K. Evans*Casting .............................................................................. Joanne DeNautDialect Coach ............................................................... Cynthia BasshamStage Management Intern ............................................ Jennifer ShermanAssistants to the Scenic Designer ................ Michelle Carello, Jian Jung,

Bradley SchmidtDeck Crew ....................................... EJ Brown, Brian Coil, Emily Kettler,

Courtney Sprague Costume Design Assistants ....................... Valerie Bart, Vanessa N. King

Please refrain from unwrapping candy or making other noises that may disturb surrounding patrons.The use of cameras and recorders in the theatre is prohibited. Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the theatre.

Cellular phones, beepers and watch alarms should be turned off or set to non-audible mode during the performance.


ike Eudora Welty before her, Beth Henleyhas been known to chafe at hearing her work

described as “Southern Gothic” — a literarylabel of convenience which, like any suchlabel, over-simplifies and irons out individuali-

ty. One can find at least as many differences as simi-larities between Henley’s work and that of Welty,William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, TennesseeWilliams, Carson McCullers and Cormac McCarthy —other distinctive writers whohave had the “Southern Gothic”descriptor applied to them.

What these writers share,though, is their Southern her-itage, their tendency to set theirwork in the South, and their useof at least some of the generalstylistic qualities that have ac-creted under the “gothic” um-brella: eccentric characters;irony; strange plot turns;grotesque imagery; a sense of faded glory, of aworld in decay, often marked by the decadence thatmay accompany decay. But more than anythingwhat snags Henley on the gothic hook, in commonwith many of the aforementioned writers, is her abili-ty to discover rich veins of humor in an unhappy,even horrific situation.

Flannery O’Connor, whom Henley counts among herfavorite writers, once suggested that “anything thatcomes out of the South is going to be calledgrotesque by the northern reader, unless it isgrotesque, in which case it is going to be called real-istic.”

On the same subject, Carson McCullers, in an essaycalled “The Russian Realists and Southern Literature,”

drew a comparisonbetween Southernwriters and thoseof 19th-centuryRussia, noting theirshared inclinationto achieve “a boldand outwardly cal-lous juxtapositionof the tragic withthe humorous, theimmense with thetrivial, the sacred

with the bawdy, the whole soul of man with a mate-rialistic detail.”

This would undoubtedly make sense to Henley who,while acknowledging the roots of her dark humor inher Southern upbringing, also points to the work ofthe Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, as a source

“The cult of the past in the South, assymbolized in its ruins, its preserved gloriesdisplayed in spring pilgrimages, itsmonuments and graveyards, owes less tocultural climate and imagination than toremembered history.”

- critic Elizabeth M. Kerr

BY JOHN GLORE

Southern Belles-Lettres

L


and inspiration. In more than oneinterview she has described theseminal experience of attending aproduction of Chekhov’s TheCherry Orchard: “I was cryingand screaming; I was really eu-phoric because I understood howthings could be simultaneouslytragic and comic and so alive andso real.”

Henley’s Southern plays — and itshould be noted that they fallmostly at the beginning of her ca-reer — share something else withChekhov’s work. Chekhov begins The Three Sisterson the name day of one of its characters, and almostall of his plays turn on homecomings, leave-takingsand other special events. Similarly,Henley looks to special occasions asspringboards for the dramatic action inher Southern plays. Her first success,the Pulitzer-winning Crimes of theHeart, takes place on the birthday ofone of its three sisters. The Miss Fire-cracker Contest takes its title from theevent that gives rise to its story, as doThe Wake of Jamey Foster and The Debutante Ball(which had its world premiere at South Coast Reper-tory in 1985). But in and around these supposedlycelebratory occasions, people’s lives are falling apart,hopes are fading, the desperate reach out for solace— and the laughs keep coming.

Henley’s interest in commemorations and festivitiesmay again stem from her Southern roots. Does any-one, after all, have a greater sense of occasion than aSoutherner? — and perhaps above all the people of

New Orleans (the setting forRidiculous Fraud), where a funer-al may entail a jazz procession,and where balls and masqueradesbegin with Twelfth Night on Jan-uary 6th and continue through acarnival season that culminateswith Mardi Gras in February orMarch.

Ridiculous Fraud marks a returnto Southern centricity for Henley,and like its predecessors, it looksto momentous occasions to frameits drama. But as with several of

her early Southern plays, the special events inRidiculous Fraud don’t quite make it to the stage:the wedding that is to launch the story gets derailed;

and the funeral atits conclusionhappens off stage,prior to the finalscene.

Henley doesn’twant us to focuson the occasions

themselves, but on the more quotidian transactionsthat happen around such events, having perhaps re-membered Chekhov’s own observation that life-changing moments may take place while a salt shak-er is being passed across the dinner table — or, inHenley’s case, while an unsuspecting man eats acanapé laced with a surprise ingredient.

“Southern writers are stuck with theSouth, and it’s a very good thing to bestuck with.”

- Flannery O’Connor

Pictured on opposite page from left, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers and Anton Chekhov.Above, clockwise from left, Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and Flan-nery O’Connor.


Growing into the TheatreI was real shy when I was little. I was sick with asth-ma. Spent a lot of time getting shots and laying inbed. At night, Mama’d come into my room and askme why I was crying. I’d tell her I was pretending tobe Heidi.

FWhen I was a senior in high school, I was kind ofbereft and [my mother] put me in an acting class.What I loved about the acting class was that yougot to think all day long about a person that wasn’tyou, and figure out why they were sad and whatthey wanted, what they dreamed. I just lovedbeing divorced from my own wretchedness.

FI did have friends at that age [in high school], butwhat you fear is not having friends. You fear thatpart of you is not acceptable to be exposed and Ithink that’s a lot of what I look for in my characters.I wonder what their greatest fear is and what theirgreatest dream is and what the tension is between thetwo. Usually their fear is holding them back fromtheir dream, and their dream is giving them hope tofight against their fear.

FWhen I was younger I kept thinking that I needed towrite an important play, that I needed to help peopleunderstand something and improve the world andenlighten people - except I didn’t know anything.This was the big problem. And then I read whereIonesco said: “Oh, I just like to write about my ownconfusion.” I said, “Well, I can do that; I’m certainlyconfused.” It was like this weight was lifted. I don’thave to solve anything because there is nothing tosolve. It’s all a big mystery and if you can expressthe misery and the confusion truthfully, that might besomething worth looking at.

FThe reason I love the theatre… is because it alwaysfelt like such a sanctuary to me from the real world.It was such a magical world where everyone waspassionate about something; they felt so alive whenthey were there…. It made you not think aboutdying.

Funny SadI believe the humor may be about survival. Growingup I didn’t feel entitled to be outraged and shame hadto be denied. Self-pity was definitely frowned upon.Perhaps because Southern culture at that time wasdedicated to the glorification of lost causes. Alsowhen I get earnest about something I’m usually justseeing one piece of the pie and I miss what is true andunsettling. One of my mother’s favorite refrains was,“Let’s not take ourselves so seriously.”

FI went to see an all-black production of The CherryOrchard starring James Earl Jones and Gloria Foster…It was like a satori when James Earl Jones as Lopakhincame back in after buying the cherry orchard and said,“I bought it.” It was the greatest day of his life be-cause he was no longer a serf, but also it was theworst day in his life because he had betrayed his dear-est friend. All through that speech he was zing, zing,zing, back and forth between despair and joy, mad-ness and sanity, and regret and not caring. I wasscreaming in the theatre; I thought I was going to beevicted. I started crying and laughing and I couldn’tstop. Then, after he leaves, Gloria Foster falls out ofher chair and has to be carried off. It was just abso-

Henley on Life and Theatre


lutely a revelation about how alive life can be andhow complicated and beautiful and horrible….

F[On her Mississippi upbringing:]As much as I try to shake it, I can’t. It’s just there. Akind of sensibility that’s dark and light at the sametime. A kind of Grand Guignol view of life.

Crimes of the HeartI never know how a play is going to end when I startwriting. When I was writing Crimes of the Heart, I re-member being upset because I thought that one of thecharacters was going to commit suicide. I was so re-lieved when it didn’t happen.

F[On her first major production, at Actors Theatre ofLouisville:] It was January and it was freezing... I remember stand-ing in the parking lot, and these people in fur coatswere getting out of their cars. And I thought, “Oh, myGod, they paid money, they hired babysitters, and theycame out to see this,” and I started crying. I was terri-fied that I was going to be arrested for fraud.

FWhen I saw Crimes of the Heart, I was really amazedat how funny it was to people. I just think it’s the wayyour mind works. Coming from the South, peopledidn’t have much patience with youembracing your ownpain, groveling in it.

FWhen you have a PulitzerPrize for a play you getother jobs, and you sort ofhave to believe you’re awriter, which up until thatpoint I wasn’t even sure Iwas. The hard part is that Iwas kind of obnoxious and alittle bit arrogant. And I thinkI was arrogant because I knewI didn’t know what peoplethought I should know, and Ifelt like a phony. But I studieda lot, went back to school, and Ikeep learning through writing. Ifeel very lucky to have gotten tobe a writer in my life. That’s themain thing.

F

[On the 20th anniversary of the first production ofCrimes of the Heart:] Sometimes it feels like it’s been 50 years, and some-times it feels like it’s been two days. Time is the mostfascinating thing to me: It’s liquid and relative andmakes no sense whatsoever. I’m just happy to bealive, and happy that someone is still interested indoing the play.

Ridiculous FraudI knew I wanted to write a play about men. To see ifI could do it. And when I got the commission I hadjust done a play with four women and I thought itwould be fun to watch men in rehearsal for a change!

FI had eight notebooks of stuff but I didn’t have a veryclear outline. I knew that the first scene was going tobe about a wedding that didn’t happen, and the nextwas going to take place out in the country, and thenext was going to be deep in the woods and the lastwas going to be in the cemetery. I didn’t know whowas going to die or if somebody was going to die.But here’s an interesting thing: when I was being driv-en back to the airport after one of my trips to Prince-

ton, my driver told me about hismother being in prison for awhite collar crime. That kindof opened things up for me—imagining the reality of havinga parent in prison. How dev-astating and disruptive andhumiliating that would be.

FJust having a family, I think,is different from not havinga family. It is so strangehow you can feel that theconnection with thesepeople is so primal andbasic, although some-times you would not bewith them if theyweren’t your family.You are inextricablybound to them, con-cerned for them andenraged by them orenraptured by them.Families are a pecu-liar sort of situation.

Crimes of the Heart poster from the movie


ew Orleans. Nowadays when anyonementions that city all we can think of is

Hurricane Katrina and the devastation itvisited upon Louisiana’s gaudy jewel. But

Beth Henley wrote the first draft of RidiculousFraud many months before the great storm hit, and

after the hurricane had left disaster inits wake she inserted a new stage di-rection specifying that the play takesplace five years prior to Katrina. Shewants audiences for the play to havein mind the vital, thriving New Or-leans, the Big Easy, the home of MardiGras and muffaletta, jambalaya andjazz; that New Orleans whose hub isthe Café du Monde (“the café of theworld”), where tourists rub elbowswith people from every stratum of citylife, dunking their beignets in chicory-laced café au lait in the wee hours ofthe morning; the old-world New Or-leans where to be part of high society

conveys a senseof royalty to a family lineand where, concomitantly,to fall from high societycarries the worst kind ofhumiliation.

It’s a fate that seems tohave befallen many a fami-ly over the last two cen-turies. After havingchanged hands during itsearly history, from French

Carnival, for all its masks and disguises, mir-

rors New Orleans society, with its peculiar

social hierarchies, its pockets of strange tra-

ditions, its wild diversity, its partiality to

drama and spectacle. - Carol Flake,

New Orleans: Behind the Mask

of America’s Most Exotic City

BY JOHN GLORE

“The City that Care Forgot”

N


to Spanish to French again and finally to U.S. con-trol, by 1840 New Orleans was easily the wealthiestcity in the nation. But more recently, even beforeKatrina hit, it ranked as the thirteenth poorest amongthe country’s large cities.

New Orleans’ sense of high society wasinstilled during the 18th

century

by the French and Spanish, who frowned upon thewave of American commoners that descended uponthe city after the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Buteven as the city’s wealth subsided through the 20thcentury, its particular sense of aristocracy persisted,carried on by those families whom history and tradi-tion had anointed as the crème de la crème of theCrescent City.

Today the elite continue to join the other citizensand temporary citizens of New Orleans for MardiGras, which was first brought to the city by the Euro-pean upper class. On Fat Tuesday you can find thehaut monde strutting its stuff at masquerade ballsand tapping its own to serve as King and Queen ofthe Carnival. Through the rest of the year they dis-play their ascendancy more quietly. The vast Ameri-can middle-class may have long since taken over thecity through sheer strength of numbers, but the mon-eyed families still guard their sense of the socialorder against the barbarians at the filigreed gates.

Pictured on the opposite page, the Café du Monde and a New Orleans Bourbon street build-ing. On this page, a typical New Orleans cemetery and a Mardi Gras poster.

I went there from the time I was a child. Mycousins lived there, and we would go down thereto visit them or for Mardi Gras, and in highschool I would take a bus or a train for theday. It was very glamorous. I’ve vacationedthere a lot, and the last year my mom was alivewe went there at Easter. It’s such a bizarrething how ‘Ridiculous Fraud’ bookends ‘Crimesof the Heart,’ which was set five years afterHurricane Camille. To me it’s very poignant.- Beth Henley


*BETSY BRANDT (Willow Clay) ap-peared at SCR previously in thePacific Playwrights Festival read-ings of Truth and Beauty andScab. Other theatre credits in-clude Much Ado about Nothing atthe Arizona Theatre Company;Ctrl Alt Delete at San Jose Reper-tory; Royal Family and The LittleFoxes at Intiman Theatre; TheTempest and A MidsummerNight’s Dream at Tacoma ActorsGuild; The Little Foxes at PortlandCenter Stage; Thirst and the read-ings of American Siddhartha andThe Fabulous Invalid at AmericanConservatory Theater; TakingSides at Jewish Ensemble Theatrewhere she was awarded BestNew Actress by the Michigan Al-liance of Professional Theatres;The Fantasticks at BathhouseTheatre; and Albertine in FiveTimes at Illinois Repertory The-atre. Her film credits include

Shelf Life, Memphis Bound... andGagged and Confidence. Televi-sion appearances include “CSI,”“Close to Home,” “Medical Inves-tigation,” “Navy NCIS,” “The Prac-tice,” “ER,” “Without a Trace,”“The Guardian,” “JAG,” “JudgingAmy” and the made for televisionmovie Back When We WereGrownups.

*NIKE DOUKAS (Maude Chrystal)most recently appeared at SCR inCyrano de Bergerac. Other SCRcredits are Major Barbara, MuchAdo about Nothing, EverettBeekin, The Beard of Avon, TheNorman Conquests: Round andRound the Garden, Pygmalion,How the Other Half Loves, Armsand the Man, Blithe Spirit, GreenIcebergs, Loot and The Companyof Heaven. She appeared at AContemporary Theatre in Seattlein God of Vengeance and Com-

municating Doors. She has alsoappeared at Pasadena Playhouse,The Old Globe, Mark TaperForum, Doolittle Theatre andShakespeare Festival/LA. In theBay Area she performed at theAmerican Conservatory Theater,the California and VITA Shake-speare Festivals and ShakespeareSanta Cruz. Television and filmcredits include “Without a Trace,”“Criminal Minds,” “Blind Justice,”“Boston Legal,” “Malcolm in theMiddle,” “NYPD Blue,” “TheGuardian,” “Judging Amy,” “Diag-nosis Murder,” “Caroline in theCity,” Little Girls in Pretty Boxes,recurring roles on “DesperateHousewives” and “Almost Per-fect,” and in the feature filmSeven Girlfriends. Ms. Doukashas an MFA from the AmericanConservatory Theater and is amember of The Antaeus Compa-ny.

Artist Biographies

NIKE DOUKAS

Maude ChrystalBETSY BRANDT

Willow ClayIAN FRASER

Lafcad Clay


*IAN FRASER (Lafcad Clay) ismaking his SCR debut. Theatrecredits include Man and Super-man at Kansas City Repertory;Bunnicula and The GingerbreadMan at Seattle Children’s Theatre;The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? at ACTTheatre; Owen Meany’s ChristmasPageant at Book-it Repertory;Scapin, The Servant of Two Mas-ters and The Dying Gaul at Inti-man Theatre; Two Gentlemen ofVerona at Wooden O Theatre; TheTime of Your Life at TheatreSchmeater; Bell, Book and Candleat Village Theatre; David Copper-field at Book-It All Over; TheMerry Wives of Windsor, Hamletand Shakespeare’s Top Ten at Seat-tle Shakespeare Company; Catch-22 at Stepping Stone Productions;and Bald Soprano at Stone SoupTheatre.

*MATT LETSCHER (Kap Clay) ismaking his SCR stage debut, al-though he appeared at SCR previ-ously in the Pacific PlaywrightsFestival (PPF) reading of Ridicu-lous Fraud, as well as theNewSCRipts reading of KateRobin’s Anon and the PPF readingof Craig Lucas’ Singing Forest.Theatre credits include The Rivalsand Neil Simon’s Proposals on

Broadway; Double Double atWilliamstown Theatre Festival;Rain Dance and The TropicalPickle at The Purple Rose TheatreCompany; Love’s Labour’s Lost atThe Old Globe; Absolution atCourt Theatre; Julius Caesar andAs You Like It at the Idaho Shake-speare Festival; The Sisters atPasadena Playhouse; and TheSeagull at Fountain Theatre. Filmand television credits include theupcoming untitled Alan Ball film,Madison, Straight-Jacket, Identity,Gods and Generals, Super Sucker,John John in the Sky, The Mask ofZorro, Lovelife, Gettysburg, “TheNew Adventures of Old Christine,”“Criminal Minds,” “Joey,” “GoodMorning, Miami,” “Living in Cap-tivity,” “Almost Perfect,” “NYPDBlue,” “Ellen,” “The Larry SandersShow,” “The West Wing” and themade for television movies Kingof Texas, When Billie Beat Bobby,and The Beach Boys: An AmericanFamily. His play, Sea of Fools, willhave its world premiere at ThePurple Rose Theatre in 2007.

*MATT McGRATH (Andrew Clay)appeared previously at SCR in theNewSCRipts reading of House toHalf and the production of Raisedin Captivity. He most recently ap-

peared in The Black Rider (CenterTheatre Group, Ahmanson, LosAngeles; Barbican, London; ACT,San Francisco; Sydney -- Help-mann Award nominee). OnBroadway he appeared in Cabaret(Emcee) and A Streetcar NamedDesire and Off-Broadway in Hed-wig and the Angry Inch, A FairCountry (Lincoln Center), Minutesfrom the Blue Route, What Didn’tHappen, Nothing Sacred, TheDadshuttle, Escape from Happi-ness, Fat Men in Skirts, The OldBoy, Life During Wartime andAmulets Against the DragonForces. Regional theatre credits in-clude Japes (Bay Street Theatre),Mother of Invention (WilliamstownTheatre Festival), Loot(Williamstown Theatre Festivaland La Jolla Playhouse), DistantFires (LA Weekly Award) andSnakebit. Film credits includeFull Grown Men (Tribeca Film Fes-tival ’06), The Notorious BettiePage, The Anniversary Party, TheBroken Hearts Club, Boys Don’tCry, The Impostors, Story of a BadBoy, 1999, Colin Fitz, The Sub-stance of Fire, Bob Roberts, TheDadshuttle and Desperate Hours.On television he appeared in “Law& Order: Criminal Intent,” “Frasi-er,” “Now and Again,” “Chicago

MATT MCGRATH

Andrew ClayMATT LETSCHER

Kap ClayPAUL VINCENT O’CONNOR

Ed Chrystal


Hope,” “New York Undercover,”“Winnetka Road,” Andersonville,The Member of the Wedding andCruel Doubt.

*PAUL VINCENT O’CONNOR (EdChrystal) is making his SCR debut.Theatre credits include The Soundof Music at the Hollywood Bowl;Juno and the Paycock at the BStreet Theatre; The Drawer Boy atPapermill Playhouse; ContinentalDivide at La Jolla Playhouse; TheSkin of Our Teeth at CaliforniaShakespeare Festival; The Weir atGeffen Playhouse; Henry V at TheOld Globe; Death Defying Acts atAurora Theatre Company; How ILearned to Drive at BerkeleyRepertory Theatre; Gross Indecen-cy at Theatre on the Square; andDeath of a Salesman, The DarkerFace of Earth, Arcadia, TwelfthNight, Much Ado about Nothing,You Can’t Take it With You, MadForest, The Firebugs, Other Peo-ple’s Money, Aristocrats, The Ice-man Cometh and Enrico IV at theOregon Shakespeare Festival.Film credits include Rikers, Seabis-cuit, Purpose, and Terminal Fear.Television credits include a recur-ring role on “Felicity,” guest star-ring roles on “Vanished,” “24,”“JAG,” “Cold Case,” “Kingpin,”

“The West Wing,” “The Court,”“The X-Flies,” “NYPD Blue,” “ER,”“Bette,” “Any Day Now,” “FamilyLaw,” “The Practice”; and support-ing roles in the made for televi-sion movies A Perfect Husband:The Laci Peterson Story, A FewGood Hearts and Inherit the Wind.

*RANDY OGLESBY (Uncle Baites)has appeared at SCR as CarltonGleason in Getting Frankie Mar-ried—and Afterwards, CC Show-ers in The Diviners, Jerry in Be-trayal, Jay in All the Way Homeand Nick in Sight Unseen. Hestudied theatre at the University ofVirginia in Charlottesville and atthe American Conservatory The-ater in San Francisco where healso spent six years in the actingcompany performing such roles asBelyaev in A Month in the Coun-try and Orin in Mourning Be-comes Electra. He has performedat The Old Globe, The DenverCenter for the Performing Arts,Westport Country Playhouse, Pa-perMill Playhouse, Pacific Conser-vatory of the Performing Arts andeight shows at Mark Taper Forum,most recently Lewis and ClarkReach the Euphrates. He was acast member of The KentuckyCycle from its workshop begin-

ning at Mark Taper Forum throughits run at Intiman Theatre, TheKennedy Center and the RoyalTheatre on Broadway. His numer-ous film and television appear-ances include The Island, Bring-ing Down the House, Pearl Har-bor, Liar Liar, and recent appear-ances on “Cold Case,” “Without aTrace” and an upcoming episodeof “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.”He played the Democratic MajorityLeader of The Senate on the series“Mr. Sterling” and has a recurringrole on this season’s “Vanished.”

*ELIZA PRYOR (Georgia) is return-ing after making her SCR debut asLucy in the world premiere ofNoah Haidle’s Mr. Marmalade.She recently worked with DavidMamet on his comedy BostonMarriage at Geffen Playhouse.She also had a recurring role onthe second season of HBO’s “Car-nivale.” Her film Red Is the ColorOf was the 2006 winner of TheMerchant-Ivory Award for BestFeature Film at The Oxford Inter-national Film Festival. Beforemoving to LA, Ms. Pryor lived inNew York City performing onstage as Violet in TennesseeWilliams’ Small Craft Warningswith The Worth Street Theatre, as

RANDY OGLESBY

Uncle BaitesELIZA PRYOR

Georgia


Christina in Christina at SohoRepertory Theatre and as Agethein Nothing at Richard Foreman’sOntological Theatre. Film creditsinclude 13 Conversations AboutOne Thing, as well as festivalaward winners City of Thieves,Weeki Wachee Girls and MadAbout Harry. Her guest starringroles on television include “CSI,”“Gilmore Girls,” “Numb3rs,”“Angel,” “Third Watch,” “The Job,”“Madigan Men” and “Sex and theCity.” She studied in New York,Montreal and Paris.

PLAYWRIGHT,DIRECTOR & DESIGNERS

BETH HENLEY (Playwright) wasawarded the Pulitzer Prize inDrama and the New York DramaCritics Circle Award for Best Amer-ican Play for Crimes of the Heart.Smith and Kraus published a twovolume collection of 12 of herplays including The Miss Fire-cracker Contest, The Wake ofJamey Foster, The Debutante Ball,The Lucky Spot, Abundance, Sig-nature, Control Freaks and Impos-sible Marriage. Ms. Henley wrotethe screenplay for the film versionof Crimes of the Heart, for whichshe was nominated for an Acade-my Award. She also wrote thescreenplays for The Miss Fire-cracker Contest, Nobody’s Fool,Trying Times and True Stories.Ms. Henley is the Presidential Pro-fessor of Theatre Arts at LMU/LA.

SHARON OTT (Director) has beena leading director in the Americantheatre for the past 21 years. Shebecame Artistic Director of Berke-ley Repertory Theatre in 1984, andin her 13-year tenure she devel-oped the company’s reputation forinnovative programming that re-sulted in a Tony® Award in 1997,the final year of her leadership.At that point, she became theArtistic Director of Seattle Reperto-

ry Theatre where she oversaw theinitiation and completion of a $15million endowment campaign, anddeveloped important relationshipswith playwrights Nilo Cruz, LisaLoomer and Amy Freed. She hasdirected at theaters throughout thecountry including Mark TaperForum, South Coast Repertory, LaJolla Playhouse, Huntington The-atre Company, Arena Stage,Kansas City Repertory, AllianceTheatre Company and Playwright’sHorizons, The Public Theater, andManhattan Theatre Club in NewYork. She has also directed sever-al operas at Seattle Opera, SanDiego Opera and Opera Colorado.She has received many awards forher directing and producing in-cluding Bay Area Theatre CriticsCircle Awards for The Tooth ofCrime and Heartbreak House atBerkeley Repertory; Drama Logueawards for Twelfth Night, Ladyfrom the Sea, Ballad of Yachiyo,and Lulu; the Elliot Norton Awardfor Best Production (Boston) forThe Woman Warrior; and an ObieAward with Theatre X for A FierceLonging. She is thrilled to returnto South Coast Repertory whichwas a co-producer of The Balladof Yachiyo and where she startedher West Coast career with a pro-duction of The Seagull.

HUGH LANDWEHR (ScenicDesign) has designed scenerythroughout the United States. Hiswork on Broadway has includedproductions of Frozen, Bus Stop,All My Sons and A View from theBridge. Off-Broadway, he has de-signed Last Easter, Scattergood,Filumena, The Baby Dance, TheEntertainer and Candide, amongothers. He has had long and pro-ductive relationships with manyregional theatres including CenterStage in Baltimore, Long WharfTheatre in New Haven, Buffalo’sStudio Arena, The ShakespeareTheatre in Washington, D.C., Alley

Theatre in Houston, Guthrie The-ater, Seattle Repertory Theatre andACT Theatre in Seattle and manyothers. During summers he hasdesigned at Williamstown TheatreFestival and Westport CountryPlayhouse. He is presently amember of the faculty of NYU’sTisch School of the Arts and hastaught at the University of Wiscon-sin, Madison, The North Carolina

TOD AND LINDA WHITE(Honorary Producers). Twoyears on the SCR Board, twoyears as SCR Honorary Pro-ducer. Tod White and hiswife Linda are both generousand adventurous. They choseto underwrite Beth Henley’sRidiculous Fraud, a new playthat has not yet been seen onthe West Coast, following lastseason’s underwriting of JoePenhall’s Dumb Show, whichhad not been seen anywherein America. Besides being intheir seventh season as sub-scribers to First Nights onboth stages and members ofthe Platinum Circle of donors,the Whites prove their interestin new work by attendingNewSCRipts readings duringthe season.

US BANK (Corporate Pro-ducer) joined SCR’s CorporateCircle during the 2004-05 Sea-son and the following yearbecame a first-time HonoraryProducer by helping under-write the final play of theTheatre for Young Audiencesseries, The Stinky Cheese Man.U.S. Bank is the sixth largestfinancial services holdingcompany in the United Statesand through its foundationprovided more than $19 mil-lion in grants to nonprofit or-ganizations in 2005.


School of the Arts, and Williams College.He is proud to have twice been the re-cipient of NEA grants as an AssociateArtist, to have won the Murphy Award inDesign (administered by Long WharfTheatre), and to be the 2003 winner ofthe Helen Hayes Award for OutstandingSet Design. He was educated at YaleCollege.

JOYCE KIM LEE (Costume Design) ispleased to be returning to SCR where shelast designed the world premiere ofRichard Greenberg’s A Naked Girl on theAppian Way. Her other designs at SCRinclude The Clean House, Anna in theTropics, The Two Gentlemen of Verona,Hold Please, Art, The Summer Moon, Sid-ney Bechet Killed a Man and Entertain-ing Mr. Sloane. Other selected credits in-clude Sonia Flew at Laguna Playhouse;Room Service, The Two Gentlemen ofVerona and The Comedy of Errors at Ore-gon Shakespeare Festival; The Countryand Wonderland directed by Lisa Peter-son at La Jolla Playhouse; Ten Unknownswith Stacy Keach and The House ofBernarda Alba with Chita Rivera andSandra Oh (LA Ovation Nomination) atMark Taper Forum; and Under the BlueSky directed by Gil Cates at Geffen Play-house. She has also designed costumesfor the Los Angeles Opera, BerkeleyRepertory Theatre, East West Players, In-diana Repertory Theatre, Chicago’s CourtTheatre, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festi-val, Arena Stage, Berkshire Theatre Festi-val Children’s Theatre, Latino TheatreCompany and Singapore Repertory The-atre. Recent film design includes SayUncle starring Peter Paige and Kathy Na-jimy. Ms. Lee is a recipient of anNEA/TCG Grant for Designers.

PETER MARADUDIN (Lighting Design) ispleased to return to SCR, where he hasdesigned over 30 productions includingThe Real Thing, The Studio, A Naked Girlon the Appian Way, Princess Marjorie,Safe in Hell, The Piano Lesson, Hurrah atLast, Great Day in the Morning and Pre-lude to a Kiss. On Broadway he de-signed the lighting for Ma Rainey’s BlackBottom and the Pulitzer Prize-winning

Beth Henley, Vol. 1: Collected Plays 1980-1989(Smith & Kraus, 2000)

The first of a two-volume com-pilation of Beth Henley’s col-

lected plays reveals a consistent-ly excellent body of work from adistinctive voice of the Americantheatre — a modern SouthernGothic with a bit of wild come-dy, some theatrical poetry, apinch of pessimism and lots ofwarm geniality thrown in forgood measure. In addition toher most famous work, thePulitzer Prize-winning Crimes ofthe Heart, contents include Am IBlue?, The Wake of Jamey Foster,The Miss Firecracker Contest, TheLucky Spot, and The DebutanteBall (World Premiere 1985 onSCR’s Mainstage). These playsreveal the gallery of memorableSouthern women that has keptHenley’s work alive on stagesacross the country for twodecades.

The Plays of Beth Henley: A Critical Studyby Gene A. Plunka (McFarland & Co., 2005)

In the first critical study of Hen-ley’s complete plays, the author

dispels common stereotypes thatattempt to pigeonhole her workas regional drama and/or socio-logical treatise. The book main-tains that Henley’s plays must beunderstood as universal state-ments about the angst of mod-ern civilization and suggests re-assessment of her characters inlight of Freud’s proposition thatcultural restrictions create neu-rotic individuals. The introduc-tion provides a brief account ofthe playwright’s childhood andcareer, followed by an insightfulexamination of thematic and

stylistic elements in all twelve ofHenley’s widely-produced plays.

Eating New Orleans: FromFrench Quarter Creole Dining to the Perfect Poboyby Pableaux Johnson (Countryman Press, 2005)

This guide to the city’s leg-endary eateries and distinctive

food culture includes more than100 restaurants where authenticLouisiana cuisine lives andbreathes — from the FrenchQuarter’s white-linen Creole in-stitutions such as Antoine’s tothe funky, family-owned jointsfrequented by locals. Equalparts travel book and foodguide, author Pableaux Johnsonprovides plenty of tips for hun-gry travelers, guiding them toboth the culinary hot spots andthe lesser-known neighbor-hoods.

Cemeteries of New Orleans: A Journey Throughthe Cities of the Deadby Jan Arrigo, Photography byLaura A. McElroy (Voyageur Press, 2005)

Aphotographic tour of thecity’s most captivating grave-

yards, such as St. Louis #1,Greenwood, St. Roch, Lafayette,bayou and plantation countrycemeteries, this book is loadedwith intriguing facts and histori-cal tidbits, such as a list of“Who’s Buried Where.” Numer-ous sidebars and captions dis-cuss the origins of All Saints’Day, architectural styles, burialprocesses, cemetery preserva-tion, history, jazz funerals, andvoodoo. If you think that thereis nothing left to be said aboutNew Orleans’ famous “cities ofthe dead,” better think again!

What’s New in the Theatre Shop


The Kentucky Cycle , and Off-Broadway Hurrah at Last, Balladof Yachiyo and Bouncers. Mr.Maradudin has designed over 300regional theatre productions forsuch companies as The KennedyCenter, Guthrie Theater, AmericanConservatory Theater, BerkeleyRepertory Theatre, Mark TaperForum, La Jolla Playhouse, SeattleRepertory Theatre, The Old Globe,Huntington Theatre Company, Ac-tors Theatre of Louisville, Steppen-wolf and Oregon ShakespeareFestival. He is a Founding Princi-pal of First Circle, a lighting de-sign consultancy for architectureand themed environments, and isthe author of the plays EugeneOnegin, The Woman in White andThe Blackamoor of Peter the Great.

STEPHEN LeGRAND (Sound De-sign) has designed music andsound for theatres throughout thecountry including RoundaboutTheatre Company, The PublicTheater, Manhattan Theatre Club,Huntington Theatre Company,Seattle Repertory Theatre, AllianceTheatre Company, BerkeleyRepertory Theatre, Mark TaperForum and La Jolla Playhouse. Heserved as resident sound designerat the American Conservatory The-ater in San Francisco for 11 yearsbefore relocating to Seattle to ex-plore the sonic nuances of espres-so steamers and whale spouts.Recent credits include RestorationComedy, Heartbreak House, TheThree Sisters, The Mystery of IrmaVep and Ma Rainey’s BlackBottom. Some favorite shows in-clude Lulu, Golden Child, Hecuba,Twilight Los Angeles, The Ballad ofYachiyo, Anna in the Tropics andA Skull in Connemara.

*MARTIN NOYES (Fight Director)returns to SCR where he most re-cently fight directed Nothing Sa-cred, Bach at Leipzig, the Ameri-can premiere of Hitchcock Blonde

(he also played the Husband) andThe Further Adventures of HeddaGabler. Other recent work in-cludes King Lear, As You Like Itand Pygmalion at ShakespeareSanta Cruz; I’m not Rappaport atLittle Fish Theatre Company; BigLove, Cabaret, Hot ‘N’ Throbbing,A Christmas Story and Never inMy Lifetime at The Chance The-ater; and The Grapes of Wrath atAlabama Shakespeare Festival.Mr. Noyes received his BFA fromSouthern Oregon University andhis MFA from the University of Al-abama, both in Theatre with theemphasis in Acting. He is also amember of the Society of Ameri-can Fight Directors.

JOHN GLORE (Dramaturg) beganhis new job as Associate ArtisticDirector of SCR in 2005, after fiveyears as the resident dramaturgfor the Mark Taper Forum, whereprojects included Luis Alfaro’sElectricidad , Culture Clash’sChavez Ravine, Lisa Loomer’s Liv-ing Out and Jessica Goldberg’sSex Parasite. Prior to his time atthe Taper, he was literary manag-er for 16 years at SCR, where heserved as dramaturg on dozens ofproductions, workshops and read-ings. From 1981-84 he was liter-ary manager at Washington D.C.’sArena Stage, and he has alsoserved as a dramaturg for MidwestPlayLabs in Minneapolis. His ownplays have been produced at SCR,Actors Theatre of Louisville,Berkeley Repertory Theatre andother theatres across the countryand internationally. In 1997-98 heteamed with Culture Clash towrite a new adaptation of Aristo-phanes’ The Birds, which was co-produced by SCR and BerkeleyRepertory Theatre. His adaptationof The Stinky Cheese Man, by JonScieszka and Lane Smith, wasseen on the Argyros Stage in June,as part of SCR’s 2005-06 TYA sea-son. He has taught playwriting

and related subjects at PomonaCollege and UCLA and has con-tributed articles to such publica-tions as Theater and AmericanTheatre. He received his MFA de-gree in dramaturgy from the YaleSchool of Drama.

*RANDALL K. LUM (StageManager) began his 17th seasonwith Nothing Sacred. This sum-mer he stage managed his goodfriend Amy Freed’s play Restora-tion Comedy for California Shake-speare Theater in Northern Cali-fornia. Last season he stage man-aged Blue Door, Man From Ne-braska, Born Yesterday and TheFurther Adventures of HeddaGabler . Two seasons ago heworked on Brooklyn Boy, HabeasCorpus, Vesuvius, Princess Mar-jorie and made his Argyros StageManaging debut with On theMountain. During his long asso-ciation as SCR’s resident stagemanager, he has worked on morethan two dozen world premieresand has been associated with over80 productions. In 1997, Mr. Lumstage managed the AIDS BenefitHelp is on the Way III at the Palaceof Fine Arts in San Francisco.Other stage management creditsinclude the American Conservato-ry Theater in San Francisco, TheOld Globe in San Diego, BerkeleyRepertory Theatre, San Jose CivicLight Opera, VITA ShakespeareFestival, Pacific Conservatory ofthe Performing Arts, Long BeachBallet, San Francisco ConventionBureau and Kawasaki Motorcy-cles. He would like everyone totake a moment to remember allthose who have lost the battle andall those still suffering and fightingthe AIDS epidemic.

*NINA K. EVANS (Assistant StageManager) is returning to SCR forher fourth season. She served asthe Assistant Stage Manager onThe Studio, Bunnicula and The


Adventures of Pør Quinly. In ad-dition, she was the Production As-sistant on Dumb Show, Vesuvius,On the Mountain and The Retreatfrom Moscow. Ms. Evans alsoserved as Company Manager andAudience Services Director for theColorado Shakespeare Festival.She has a BFA in Technical The-atre from the University of Col-orado at Boulder.

DAVID EMMES (Producing ArtisticDirector) is co-founder of SCR.He has received numerous awardsfor productions he has directedduring his SCR career, including aLos Angeles Drama Critics CircleAward for the direction of GeorgeBernard Shaw’s The Philanderer.He directed the world premieresof Amy Freed’s Safe in Hell, TheBeard of Avon and Freedomland,Thomas Babe’s Great Day in theMorning, Keith Reddin’s Rumand Coke and But Not for Me andNeal Bell’s Cold Sweat; the Ameri-can premieres of Terry Johnson’sUnsuitable for Adults and Joe Pen-hall’s Dumb Show; the West Coastpremieres of C.P. Taylor’s Goodand Harry Kondoleon’s Christmason Mars; and the Southland pre-miere of Top Girls (at SCR and theWestwood Playhouse). Otherproductions include the WestCoast premieres of Three View-ings by Jeffrey Hatcher, The SecretRapture by David Hare and NewEngland by Richard Nelson; andArcadia by Tom Stoppard, TheImportance of Being Earnest byOscar Wilde, Ayckbourn’sWoman in Mind and You NeverCan Tell by George BernardShaw, which he restaged for theSingapore Festival of Arts. He hasserved as a theatre panelist andonsite evaluator for the National

Endowment for the Arts, on theExecutive Committee of theLeague of Resident Theatres, andas a panelist for the CaliforniaArts Council. After attending Or-ange Coast College, he receivedhis BA and MA from San Francis-co State University, and his PhDin theatre and film from USC.

MARTIN BENSON (Artistic Direc-tor), co-founder of SCR with hiscolleague David Emmes, has di-rected nearly one third of theplays produced here. He has dis-tinguished himself in the stagingof contemporary work, includingWilliam Nicholson’s The Retreatfrom Moscow, the world premiereof Horton Foote’s Getting FrankieMarried — and Afterwards andthe critically acclaimed Californiapremiere of Nicholson’s Shadow-lands. He has won accolades forhis direction of five major worksby George Bernard Shaw, includ-ing the Los Angeles Drama CriticsCircle (LADCC) Award-winnersMajor Barbara, Misalliance andHeartbreak House. Among hisnumerous world premieres is Mar-garet Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-win-ning Wit, which he also directedat Seattle Repertory Theatre andthe Alley Theatre in Houston. Hehas directed American classics in-cluding Ah, Wilderness!, A Street-car Named Desire, A Delicate Bal-ance and A View from the Bridge.Mr. Benson has received theLADCC Distinguished Achieve-ment in Directing awards an un-paralleled seven times for thethree Shaw productions, JohnMillington Synge’s Playboy of theWestern World, Arthur Miller’s TheCrucible, Sally Nemeth’s HolyDays and Wit. He also directedthe film version of Holy Days

using the original SCR cast. Alongwith Emmes, he accepted SCR’s1988 Tony Award for OutstandingResident Professional Theatre andwon the 1995 Theatre LA OvationAward for Lifetime Achievement.Mr. Benson received his BA inTheatre from San Francisco StateUniversity.

PAULA TOMEI (Managing Direc-tor) is responsible for the overalladministration of South CoastRepertory and has been ManagingDirector since 1994. A member ofthe SCR staff since 1979, she hasserved in a number of administra-tive capacities including Subscrip-tions Manager, Business Managerand General Manager. She servedon the board of Theatre Commu-nications Group (TCG), the ser-vice organization for theatre, from1998-2006 and was its Presidentfor four years. She has alsoserved as Treasurer of TCG, VicePresident of the League of Resi-dent Theatres (LORT) and hasbeen a member of the LORT Ne-gotiating Committee for industry-wide union agreements. In addi-tion, she represents SCR at nation-al conferences of TCG and LORT;is a theatre panelist for the Na-tional Endowment for the Artsand the California Arts Council(CAC), and site visitor for theCAC; served on the AdvisoryCommittee for the Arts Adminis-tration Certificate Program at theUniversity of California, Irvine;and has been a guest lecturer inthe graduate school of business atStanford and the University ofCalifornia, Irvine. She graduatedfrom the University of California,Irvine with a degree in Economicsand pursued an additional courseof study in theatre and dance.

The Actors and Stage Managers em-ployed in this production are membersof Actors’ Equity Association, the Unionof Professional Actors and Stage Man-agers in the United States.

The Scenic, Costume, Lighting andSound Designers in LORT theatresare represented by United ScenicArtists Local USA-829, IATSE.

The Director is a member of the Soci-ety of Stage Directors and Choreogra-phers, Inc., an independent nationallabor union.

Documents

presents RIDICULOUS FRAUD...Ridiculous Fraud), where a funer-al may entail a jazz procession, and where balls and masquerades begin with Twelfth Night on Jan-uary 6th and continue