In one of Edward Hopper’s most famous paintings (Automat, 1927), a woman sits at a table, a cup of coffee in front of her. She is alone, as are most of the people in Hopper paintings, even when others are there to share the landscape. (See Nighthawks [1942] and Office at Night [1940].) Dead Man’s Cell Phone, by the young playwright (born in 1974) Sarah Ruhl, conveys much the same mood as Hopper’s paintings, though presented in a very different medium and a radically different style. It’s a play about disconnectedness –a comedy really, because, for all the seriousness of its theme, the play is really funny. (In some ways, Ruhl resembles Arthur Adamov, the now-forgotten offspring of the absurdist era in playwriting.)

The play’s protagonist, meek, mousy Jean (described by another character as “a paleish woman, sort of nondescript”) comes alive only when handing on to people she doesn’t know imaginary messages from a dead man she’s never met (while he was alive, that is). But she’s not much different from the other characters in Cell Phone. They all talk past each other, driven by their own self-fantasies or from a need to connect. Each of them presents a different picture of Gordon, the dead man, who, it transpires, was truly and utterly awful. The effect is pointillistic. Visual images come and go behind the actors, people swirl around them, their umbrellas on high and their cell phones at their ears. Disparate meetings and soliloquies coalesce to build a mood of separateness and misunderstanding, which is played out through each character’s incomprehension of the other characters’ motivations and inner fiber. What is surprising, though, is the humor in this play. In even the most savage passages (the “dead man’s” monologue in Act II, for instance), how funny the lines are! A love scene in the making is disrupted by a cell phone ringing and Jean’s inability not to answer it. Her wooer Dwight admonishes her. “Life is for the living,” he says. But the phone rings again and Jean, of course, answers it again. “When something rings, you have to answer it, don’t you?” she queries in another scene. My favorite line? The dead man Gordon delivers it: “Life is essentially a giant Brillo pad.” Our goodness is scrubbed off even as we leave the house in the morning to start the day.

“I try to interpret how people subjectively experience life,” Ruhl has said. “Everyone has a great, horrible opera inside him.” It’s also a terribly funny one.

– David Keymer, for the Prospect Theater Project

Bruce wants to meet someone and so does Prudence. But their Mate Wanted ads haven’t prepared them for what they find when they meet. Bruce has a male lover, Bob, but thinks he’d like to try a woman again. Besides, he wants a child and that’s one thing Bob can’t give him. Prudence doesn‘t know what she wants but it certainly isn’t a bi-sexual whose first comment to her is that she has lovely breasts and five minutes later he’s sobbing into his handkerchief –in a restaurant, no less. They’re not a match made in heaven. Their therapists don’t help at all: Stuart seduces all his women clients and Charlotte talks to a Snoopy doll during sessions. And let’s not forget Bob. From this complicated mess, Obie-Award-winning Christopher Durang (The Marriage of Betty and Boo) has concocted a wild and wooly farce filled to overflowing with laughter.

Directed by Heike Hambley (Bach at Leipzig, Copenhagen)
November 20 — December 13, 2009
(Thur-Sat 8 pm; Sun 2 pm)
Tickets $15

A young woman sits in her window, dreaming of her fiancée, a Bulgarian noble who is off to war. A middle-aged man, Captain Bluntschli, who is a soldier in the opposing Serbian army, climbs in her window. He seeks shelter after a devastating Serbian defeat. As they talk, his lack of idealism affronts her. Her fiancée, Sergius, led the cavalry charge against the Serbian machine guns and won. Sergius’s behavior confirms her picture of the true hero, and Bluntschli definitely doesn’t match up to it. He’s a mercenary. He joined the Serbian army pure and simple because the Serbians got to his village before the Bulgarians, and he sees Sergius’s actions, however successful they were, as nothing but folly. Sergius survived solely because of a mistake on the part of his army’s quartermaster. Bluntschli’s gunners were sent the wrong caliber of ammunition and so they couldn’t decimate the Bulgarian cavalry when they attacked against all the perceived wisdom of military engagement. His prosaic view of war, of everything! -he carries bon bons in his cartridge belt because chocolates are more soothing than bullets in the heat of battle—irritates her but she hides him anyway. The next day he leaves but she finds she can’t forget him. Then Sergius returns. His demonstrative heroism is wearing, and is he really all that he pretends to be?

George Bernard Shaw was one of the greatest and most influential playwrights of the twentieth century, a master at combining social commentary and biting wit. Arms and the Man had been one of his most beloved plays since it opened in London in 1894. It has been a favorite of theatergoers ever since with actors from Ralph Richardson to Kevin Kline and John Malkovich playing the “chocolate soldier” Bluntschli, Olivier, Brando (in his final stage appearance, in 1953) and Raul Julia playing Sergius and Glenne Headly and Helena Bonham Carter the tempestuous and overly romantic young Bulgarian, Raina. Arms is one of two plays by Shaw to be made into a musical –a Viennese operetta, The Chocolate Soldier in 1908. (The other was Pygmalion (1913), the basis for My Fair Lady (1953). Shaw subtitled Arms and the Man “A Pleasant Play,” and a pleasant play it is. The dialogue is light but Shaw lards it with witty observations on a variety of topics: class relations, social pretension, the folly of romanticism, the brutal reality of war. Veteran director Heike Hambley (Copenhagen, The Physicists, Bach at Leipzig) has assembled a first-rate cast to bring this theater classic to life once more. If you don’t laugh at Arms and the Man, ask your doctor to check your pulse: you may already be dead.

Prospect Theater Project
520 Scenic Drive, Modesto
For tickets, call 549-9341

WORKSHOP:
July 20 – August 6:
Mon. – Thurs. 10:00-2:00

PERFORMANCES:
Saturday, August 8
Sunday August 9
Times: TBD

Participation cost: $200

Eugene O’Neill’s

A Moon for the Misbegotten

Directed by David Barbaree
(The Constant Wife, Road to Mecca, The Beauty Queen of Leenane)

It’s 1923, rural Connecticut, the Hogan farm. Phil Hogan is as Irish as they come in all respects, including his disregard for the strict truth and his monumental drinking. His daughter Josie lives with him. Outsized in body, she’s reputed to be equally outsized in her taste for men. Rumor has it she’s had it on with most of the men in her neighborhood. But her one real love is the landlord, James Tyrone, who is the only man around who regularly drinks Phil into the ground.  Tyrone is just waiting around on his inheritance: when it comes through, he’ll leave town but only after selling the farm to Phil at a good price. But Tyrone’s a drunk: he doesn’t always remember what he’s said and he’s just been offered five times as much for the farm as the Hogans can pay. Phil tells Josie that Tyrone has agreed to sell the farm away from them. Angry and hurt, she sets out to entice Tyrone into her bed: once he’s bedded her, she knows he’ll feel obliged to marry her. Out of this sordid scheming, O’Neill fashions a tale of romance that breathes poetry from its very pores –it’s funny too! Josie and Tyrone both have something to lose. Josie may be tough as nails outside but she’s vulnerable and hurt inside. Tyrone numbs himself with alcohol to hide a terrible self-loathing. At last, their love is too fragile: their vulnerabilities doom their one last chance for redemption. Moon has been a magnet for actors since its opening on Broadway more than fifty years ago. To name a few, Colleen Dewhurst, Jason Robards, Jr., Kevin Spacey, have all tried their hands at the roles of the doomed lovers. Now it’s the turn of the talented cast at the Prospect.

Fridays-Sundays, September 18-October 11, and Thursday, October 8
Thursday, Fridays, and Saturdays @ 8 pm; Sundays @ 2 pm
Tickets $15
Reserve tickets by calling 549-9341 or emailing house@prospecttheaterproject.org

Prospect Theater Project will hold auditions for its two upcoming productions on Saturday, May 23rd from 10am-6pm. Available roles are outlined below. The rehearsal process for PTP productions lasts approximately 4-5 weeks, and performances run for 4 weekends. Out of town actors are paid a modest gas stipend and all actors receive a free season subscription.

Auditions will be held at Prospect Theater Project located at 520 Scenic Drive in Modesto. To schedule an audition or get more information, please email auditions@prospecttheaterproject.org

Actors should bring a resume and a headshot, and be prepared for cold readings. A short monologue is recommended.

This Day and Age by Nagle Jackson
Performances July 10th – August 2nd, 2009
Rehearsals to begin June 2009.

Two available roles:

• Marjorie — 60′ish, mother of two adult children, very comfortable with herself.
• Brian — 40-50′ish, British, Margaret’s son-in-law, classical music radio announcer (somewhat “plummy” voice preferable)

Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neil
Performances September – October 2009
Rehearsals to begin August 2009

Five available roles:

• Jim Tyrone (male, mid-30s-40s) Tortured, misbegotten lost sheep. An actor. Wealthy, guilt-ridden, sardonic, charming, drinks a lot, in sore need of redemption.
• Josie Hogan (female, late 20s to 40) Describes herself disparagingly as a “great cow of a woman”, earthy, maternal, emotionally direct, with an intimidating presence. pretends to be hard, coarse, and “one of the guys”?but in truth is winsome, vulnerable, naive, and nurturing.
• Phil Hogan (male, mid 50s-60s). Josie’s father. Cunning, fun loving, hotheaded, comic, blue collar. Of Irish stock . Phil spends much of the play drunk or pretending to be drunk.
• Mike Hogan (male, early 20s) Josie’s youngest brother. Frequently referred to by the other characters as “moral” and “self-righteous”, and is genuinely a good person.
• T. Steadman Harder (male, 20-30s). A wealthy, uppity, detestable landowner. Disdainful, entitled, easily shocked, is not genuinely a good person, and is comically eviscerated by Phil and Josie. A straw dog, all bark no bite.

Directed by Heike Hambley.

Friday-Sunday, April 17-May 10, and Thursday, May 6. Thursday-Saturday performances, 8 pm. Sunday performances, 2 pm.

Bach at Leipzig is a kind of pushmepullyou of a play (hats off to Doctor Doolittle), a witty comedy about music and ambition whose front half is high comedy and whose nether half is low farce. In 1722, six musicians meet in the anteroom to the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas’s Cathedral) in the German city of Leipzig. They are there to audition for the newly vacated post of organist and head of the chapel music school. The candidates dance around each other, seeking advantage in a deadly battle of wits and wiles. Two, maybe a third, are of noble birth: one a blustering but insecure prig, the second a spoiled brat, and the third a credulous old fool. The others are base born: one is an idealistic musical ‘revolutionary,’ the second the frustrated organist at Leipzig’s second best church, the third a penniless conman and trickster who lives (not very well) solely by his wits. But then a seventh candidate arrives. He is Georg Phillip Telemann, acclaimed by all as the Greatest Organist in Germany. Can any of the others defeat him? And if he is vanquished, who shall win the prize instead? An orgy of backbiting and intrigue ensues.

What follows is a hilarious comic fugue: the same situations appear and reappear; the same lines are said, then resaid; alliances are formed and broken as the musicians dance around each other. (Telemann, of course, is above such maneuverings.) An eighth candidate appears at the last minute. His name is Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach. (To confuse matters, all of the characters in the play are named Johann or Georg. And serendipitously, all but one of the actors who play the roles at the Prospect are named David or Daniel in real life.) Careening from rapier wit to broad physical comedy, Bach is a constant surprise. And above the talk and activity, there is the music, the glorious fugues, toccatas and passacaglias of Bach, acknowledged by his successors to be the greatest composer in an age of many, many great composers.

The Prospect’s artistic director Heike Hambley has assembled an exciting mixture of Prospect veterans and newcomers to present this delightful and thought provoking play for the first time in Modesto.

Bach at Leipzig. The Prospect Theater Project. Friday-Sunday, April 17-May 10, and Thursday, May 6. Thursday-Saturday performances, 8 pm. Sunday performances, 2 pm.

• Four-Week Shakespeare for Young Adults
• Four-Week Intensive Acting Shakespeare Workshop

WHERE:
Prospect Theater Project, 520 Scenic Drive, Modesto, CA

WHEN:
Saturdays beginning February 28 through March 21, 2009.

• Shakespeare for Young Adults 10:00-12:00
• Intensive Acting Shakespeare Workshop 12:00-3:00

WHO:
Shakespeare for Young Adults—Any students, 12 – 16, interested in an introduction to Shakespeare and his works through theater games, study of Shakespearean language, verse and the presentation of selected work to an invited audience.
$100.00 for four-week session.

Acting Shakespeare—Any students and actors, 16 and up interested in Shakespearean scene study, monologues and sonnets. A rare opportunity for students and actors to work in a safe, guided environment to hone acting skills, develop audition material, or build public speaking skills.
$140.00 for four-week session.

PTP Founding Artistic Director Jack Souza is facilitating these workshops. A college and university instructor who has taught Introduction to Shakespeare at Modesto Junior College and is a thirty-year theater veteran, Souza has regularly conducted Acting Shakespeare workshops since 2000 here in Modesto at PTP, at Murphys Creek Theatre’s Mirror Project and in New York City.
To inquire, please call PTP at 209-549-9341 or Jack Souza at 209-499-5042.

Photo courtesy of The Modesto Bee

Brian Friel’s
Molly Sweeney
Prospect Theater Project is proud to present the third show of its 2008-2009 season, Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney. Molly Sweeney is directed by PTP veteran Michael Caine, who also directed Talley’s Folly, The Lion in Winter, and Deathtrap at PTP. It stars Andrew Burkum, Kathleen Ennis, and Jim Johnson.

Molly Sweeney opens on Friday, February 20th, and runs through Sunday, March 15th, with performances on Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm, Sunday afternoons at 2pm, and Thursday, March 12th at 8pm. The Talk Back Sunday will occur after the March 8th performance. All performances are at 520 Scenic Drive in Modesto. Tickets are $15 and may be reserved by calling 209-549-9341 or by visiting our online Box Office.

Molly Sweeney is a play adapted from the narrative of neuroscientist Oliver Sacks. In an exceptional string of books, Sacks has brought audiences a series of compelling stories about various kinds of neurological catastrophe. A painter loses all perception of colors. The world appears to him in obscene shades of gray-white. He can, as a result, no longer paint or even embrace his wife because she appears loathsome to him. Patients suffer pains, or itches, from limbs that were amputated long ago. A miracle drug reverses the comas of patients suffering from meningitis, restoring them to full vitality. But the medication loses effectiveness, they retreat into permanent sleep again. (This story was made into the movie Awakenings, with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams.) A man retains his ability to reason but loses any capacity to distinguish between the objects in front of him: a hat and a person are identical to him. (This story, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” was made into an opera, performed in San Francisco ten years ago.)

The logic of the marriage between Sacks, a scientist (though also a humanist) and Brian Friel, Ireland’s greatest living playwright, is not apparent at first sight. But it’s a marriage made in heaven, because both of them write about the same thing, which is loss and isolation.

There is a blind woman. Her name is Molly. Molly Sweeney. She’s forty-one years old. For more than forty years, she has survived, even thrived, as a woman without sight. She has a job –she’s a massage therapist in a local spa—and a husband –she’s two years married. But she doesn’t see, beyond shadows and vague movement at the periphery of her vision.

There is her husband. His name is Frank. Frank’s a dreamer, but not one whose projects you want to invest in. His enthusiasms are short-lived and ill conceived: he imports Iranian goats into the blustery winter of County Mayo and the sheep end up living six months out of twelve inside his house to avoid the cold and never yield milk at all. He’s excited about importing African killer bees and shepherding a convoy through Ethiopia. One of his enthusiasms is restoring his wife, Molly’s, sight. Whether she wants it or not.

There is a doctor. His name is Rice. Patrick Rice. He was once a bright light, a “meteor” in his chosen profession of eye surgeon. Then his wife ran away with his closest friend and he found solace in a bottle. Now he’s a second-rate hack in a provincial hospital in Donegal. Molly is his passport back to respectability. If he can restore her sight ….

Frank pushes, Rice pulls, Molly acquiesces without knowing what she’s getting herself into. The operation works. Her sight is restored, not perfect but more than she’s ever known.

And her world falls apart. Molly knew how to negotiate her old world of tactile evidence. She’d mastered it, was comfortable and fluent in it. Now she must relearn the world –her husband Frank, a relentless but inept autodidact says, she must learn “new engrams.” All her old knowledge and competence is shut away from her; the new world is a blooming confusion, to paraphrase William James. It’s not only confusing, it’s ugly. Learning to maneuver in the world of the sighted after forty years blind is hard work. Molly moves from being a highly competent human being who didn’t perceive her handicap as a liability to one who can’t compete in the sighted world because she is forty years behind the curve.

From there on, it’s downhill in this poignant, thoughtful, reflective and even unexpectedly funny play about the human cost of change –in Molly’s case, the loss of competence and exile from her true self. Brian Friel is a master wordsmith who has never written about a more serious theme than the one explored in Molly Sweeney.