study guide - Sun Valley Center for the Arts

20
COMPANY OF FOO LS
STUDY GUIDE
and
VANYA
SPIKE
and SONIA
and MASHA
by Christopher Durang
July 1 - 22 • Liberty Theatre, Hailey
Company of Fools 20th Season Sponsors:
Bob Disbrow & Kim Kawaguchi, Linda & Bill Potter, Walt Witcover
Legacy Gift, Theresa Castellano Wood & Benjamin Wood and
Barbara & Stanley Zax with support from Arrow R Storage,
High Country Fusion, Linda & Bob Edwards, Priscilla Pittiglio,
Richard & Judy Smooke and Scott Miley Roofing
208.578.9122
companyoffools.org
Vanya and Sonia and
Masha and Spike
made possible by:
Carol & Len Harlig
Wood River Insurance
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WELCOME TO OUR 20th SEASON
Hello,
· WELCOME
·
SET CONSTRUCTION
· PLAY SYNOPSIS
· SETTING
· CAST OF CHARACTERS ·
PRODUCTION STAFF
·
THE PLAYWRIGHT/CHRISTOPHER DURANG
·
·
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
BUCKS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Company of Fools’ production of Vanya and Sonia and
Masha and Spike marks the Company’s first foray into
the outrageously hysterical and often absurd world of
playwright Christopher Durang. Guest director Gary C.
Hopper returns after directing the Company’s wildly
successful God of Carnage in 2012. In choosing this
comedy, Company of Fools heralds its 20th Season with
a play that opens up our senses—with laughter.
Enjoy the play!
The Fools
· THE MAN BEHIND THE NAMES
ANTON CHEHKOV
· AGING IN THE SPOTLIGHT
·GLOSSARY
·
·
· QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION
LEARN MORE ON-LINE
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
The cast of Company of Fools production
SET CONSTRUCTION
PLAY SYNOPSIS
Company of Fools sets, costumes and props are fabricated
just for our productions. Created by artists here on staff.
Vanya and Sonia (named after Chekhovian characters by
their theatre loving, academic parents) have lived their
entire lives in the family’s farmhouse in Bucks County,
Pennsylvania. While they stayed home to take care of
their ailing parents, their sister Masha has been gallivanting
around the world as an oft-married successful actress and
movie star, leaving Vanya and Sonia to feel trapped and
resentful at home. Meanwhile, the soothsayer/ cleaning
woman, Cassandra, warns them of terrible events to happen in the near future — events which do come true.
Masha sweeps in with her boy-toy Spike to alleviate their
misery if only for a few nights. Masha has plans of her
own and she will see them fulfilled. The quiet household
is thrown into a tumult as issues of sibling rivalry, regret,
love and lust erupt.
set model created for Company of Fools production
THE SETTING
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Present Day
construction begins on the house
CAST OF CHARACTERS
taping out the stone pattern for the floor
VanyaJohn Glenn*
SoniaPatsy Wygle
MashaDenise Simone*
SpikeMax Ehrlich
NinaMaggie Horan*
CassandraJana Arnold*
PRODUCTION STAFF
the completed floor
getting closer...
DirectionGary Hopper
Stage Management
K.O. Ogilive*
Set Design
Joe Lavigne
Costume Design
Elizabeth Weiss Hopper
Light Design
Lynn Coleman
Dialect Coach
Ann Price
* Appearing courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association The Union of Professional Actors and Stage
Managers in the United States
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
Once deemed “our Poet Laureate of the Absurd” by
the New York Observer, Durang’s plays often have silly,
illogical elements to them. In Laughing Wild, a woman has
a mental breakdown because a man is standing in her way
in the tuna fish aisle. In The Marriage of Bette and Boo,
a priest impersonates a strip of frying bacon. In Baby With
the Bathwater (1983), two new unprepared parents are
disappointed that their baby doesn’t speak English and are
“too polite” to check its gender so they decide the baby
is a girl named Daisy, when in fact Daisy is actually a boy.
Durang has admitted to being a fan of Theatre of the
Absurd. Never heard of it? The theater critic Martin
Esslin first coined the term in his 1960 essay “Theatre of
the Absurd.” He wrote that in absurdist plays, there’s a
“dismissal of realism” and “logical construction and
argument gives way to irrational and illogical speech.”
However, stories from the Theater of the Absurd are
not just plain nonsense; in fact, Esslin said that “they have
something to say and can be understood,” but the viewer
is often left to draw his or her own conclusions. Although
there was no official Absurdist movement, playwrights
typically associated with the style include Samuel
Beckett (Waiting for Godot, 1953) and Eugène Ionesco
(Rhinoceros, 1959).
THE PLAYWRIGHT
CHRISTOPHER DURANG
Christopher Durang received a BFA from Harvard and an
MFA from Yale School of Drama. His first professional
production was The Idiots Karamazov co-authored
with Albert Innaurato and performed at Yale Repertory
Theatre. The show featured then Yale student Meryl
Streep. He first came to public attention with the offBroadway review Das Lusitania Songspiel, a collaboration
with his friend, actress Sigourney Weaver, who also
appeared in the original production of Vanya and Sonia
and Masha and Spike. Durang’s work as a playwright
includes A History of American Film, Sister Mary
Ignatius Explains It all for You, Beyond Therapy, Baby
with the Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo
and Laughing Wild.
Something else that’s interesting to note is Durang’s
preferred delivery of absurdist language. In a 1987
interview with BOMB Magazine, he said he felt it was
far less funny if actors would speak his dialogue in an
exaggerated, almost cartoonish manner. While he was
a student at Yale, he valued the talented performers’
ability to perform his plays’ absurdist aspects in a more
understated style.
“Most of the actors seemed (to know) intuitively to both
keep it simple and to make it oddly believable,” he said.
“[They] would treat it as if they meant what they said.
It was both funnier and ‘deeper’ that way. It gave the
audience a sense that people in life act in an exaggerated
way, as they do.”
As an actor, Christopher Durang has appeared in the films
The Secret of My Success, Mr. North, The Butcher’s
Wife, Housesitter and The Cowboy Way. Since 1994
he has been co-chair with Marsha Norman of the Lila
Acheson Wallace American Playwright Program at the
Julliard School.
The Marriage of Bette and Boo
BUCKS COUNTY,
PENNSYLVANIA
Bucks County was one of the three original counties in
Pennsylvania; it was named by William Penn in 1682 after
Bucks County, also called Buckinghamshire, in England, the
county where he lived. Bucks County was originally much
larger than it is today. Northampton County was formed
in 1752 from part of Bucks County while Lehigh County
was formed in 1812 from part of Northampton County.
General George Washington and his troops camped in
Bucks County as they prepared to cross the Delaware River to take Trenton, New Jersey by surprise on the morning
of December 26, 1776. Their successful attack on Britain’s
Hessian forces was a turning point in the American War
for Independence. The town of Washington Crossing,
Pennsylvania and Washington Crossing Historic Park were
named to commemorate the event.
Like the rest of the Philadelphia region, Bucks County has
experienced a rapid increase of immigrants since the 2000
census. Known for its very large and established Eastern
European population, most notably the Russian community, but also the Ukrainian and Polish communities, Bucks
County is now seeing a rapid surge of other immigrant
groups.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Bucks County also is experiencing rapid second largest
area of biotechnology in the United States, only behind
Boston. Projections indicate that by 2020 one out of four
people in Bucks County will work in biotechnology.
Another important asset of the county is tourism. The
northern regions are known for their natural scenery and
farmland. Colonial history and proximity to major urban
areas including Philadelphia, New York City, Allentown,
Reading and Atlantic City. Popular attractions in the area
include the shops and artist’ studios of New Hope, Peddler’s Village, Washington Crossing Historic Park, and
Quakertown Farmer’s Market, popular on weekends.
Many writers and artists based in New York City have
called Bucks County home, settling mainly in the small area
between Doylestown and New Hope, along the Delaware
River. Notable residents have included Margaret Mead,
Pearl S. Buck, Oscar Hammerstein II, Moss Hart, Dorothy
Parker and S. J. Perelman. Present day residents include
Stan and Jan Berenstain, Stephen Sondheim, composer Joe
Renzetti and the entertainer Pink.
THE MAN BEHIND THE NAMES:
ANTON CHEKHOV
boys. When Chekhov was sixteen, Pavel went bankrupt
and the family left Taganrog for Moscow. Anton stayed
behind to complete his schooling. To pay for his
education, he worked various odd jobs, including writing
short pieces, which he sold to local publications. He
also wrote a full-length play entitled Fatherless, but
Chekhov did not consider writing to be his main occupation.
In 1879, he enrolled at I.M.Sechenov First Moscow
State Medical University, where he would train to be a
physician. AlthoughChekhov achieved great renown for
his literary works, he always considered medicine to be
his principal vocation.
“What matters most is to breakout of the rut. Everything else
is unimportant.”
— Anton Chekhov
In the opening scene of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike, Vanya asks Sonia, in the midst of her complaining,
if she might move to a different room of the house.
“Leave the morning room?” responds Sonia, “But I’m in
mourning for my life.” To this melancholic turn-ofphrase Vanya replies dryly, “I hope you’re not going to
make Chekhov references all day.” Yet, what else can
Vanya really expect, when he and both of his sisters are
named after Chekhov characters? “It’s been our cross to
bear,” laments Vanya of their academic parents’ naming
preferences, but he himself is busy at work on an
experimental play intended as a kind of homage to
the play-within-the-play in Chekhov’s The Seagull. His
other sister, Masha, is a successful movie actress, but she
regrets never performing the part she was named for,
Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters. “Oh my sisters, let
us go to Moscow! To Moscow, let us go,” recites Masha
repeatedly. “Imagine how wonderful I would’ve been,”
she sighs, reflecting back on her acting career. Although
Masha may have missed the chance to play her namesake
role, turning up as a character in Christopher Durang’s
explicitly Chekhov-indebted comedy might just be the
next-best thing. Upon Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike’s premiere in 2012, critics, such as Ben Brantley
of the New York Times, observed that familiarity with
Chekhov was not a prerequisite to thoroughly enjoying
Durang’s play. This may be true, but it certainly doesn’t
hurt either.
Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, Russia on January
29, 1860. His father, Pavel, was the proprietor of a
grocery store, who sent his son to a school for Greek
Chekhov famously remarked, “Medicine is my lawful wife,
and literature is my mistress.” His “mistress,” as it turned
out, would be a singular oeuvre with which admirers, not
least Durang and his characters, continue to be smitten.
Although Chekhov did not live a long life, he was
remarkably prolific. In the 1880s alone, he wrote nine
plays, including Ivanov (1887) and A Marriage Proposal
(1889). Chekhov also penned many well-received short
stories, five novellas, and one novel, The Shooting Party
(1884). However, it was Chekhov’s final four plays—each
prominently invoked in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike—that would ultimately cement his reputation as
one of modern theatre’s greatest playwrights.
The Moscow Art Theatre Company
The Seagull (1896) centers on two writers, the wellknown but middlebrow Boris and the more radical
Konstantin, whose poorly received symbolist play
provided the inspiration for Vanya’s work-in-progress in
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Although The
Seagull is a comedy, it is a decidedly dark one. Konstantin,
for example, attempts suicide by shooting himself, but
survives when the bullet only grazes his head. While
nothing quite so grim occurs in Durang’s play, the notes
of regret and disappointment that underlie the humor in
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike are consciously
in line with the bleakly comic mood of The Seagull. Also
the character of Irina, an actress past her prime, may
be the main inspiration for Durang’s Masha, whose film
career appears to be on the decline.
Vanya, the eponymous character of Chekhov’s 1899
play, helps to manage the rural family estate of a retired
professor, a point echoed in Vanya, Sonia, and Masha’s
Chekhov-obsessed, professor parents, whom Vanya and
Sonia cared for up to the time of their deaths. Uncle
Vanya is mentioned by name when Nina, who is also
enamored with Chekhov’s work, asks if she can call Vanya
“Uncle Vanya,” since, she says, he reminds her of her
uncle. The play also contains a character named Sonia,
who is plain in appearance, not beautiful, a trait shared
by Durang’s Sonia, resentful of her more glamorous and
attractive sister, Masha. Much of the drama in Chekhov’s
play comes from the threatened sale of the professor’s
rural estate, managed and lived in by Vanya and Sonia.
This is, of course, a key element that Durang borrows for
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.
Chekhov’s last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry
Orchard, are also significantly referenced in Durang’s
play. The former contains Masha’s namesake, the role she
wishes she had played earlier in her career, before getting
too tied up with the Sexy Killer film series. The rapport
among the titular sisters, Olya, Masha, and Irna, and their
brother, Andrey, in Chekhov’s play may have provided
the model for the siblings’ relations in Vanya and Sonia
and Masha and Spike. The Cherry Orchard, meanwhile,
also centers on the loss of a cherished family estate—a
frequent theme in Chekhov’s work. Chekhov’s tragicomic
swansong is repeatedly invoked by Sonia, who describes
the small clustering of cherry trees outside her family’s
home as a “cherry orchard,” a somewhat exaggerated
description with which Vanya and Masha both take issue.
Chekhov finished writing The Cherry Orchard in 1903,
and the play was first staged on January 17, 1904 at the
Moscow Art Theatre. Seven months later, Chekhov died
of tuberculosis in the German town of Badenweiler. His
work, however, would continue to inspire some of the
twentieth century’s finest and most innovative writers,
including James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Vladimir
Nabokov. Few among his posthumous devotees have
better captured the dark humor in Chekhov’s dramaturgy
than Durang does in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and
Spike. And like his idiosyncratic characters, the would-be
experimental playwright Vanya and the Chekhov-quoting
Sonia and Masha, Durang makes no secret of his deep
creative debt to the Russian master.
AGING IN THE SPOTLIGHT
“I want to grow old without face lifts. They take the life out
of a face, the character.”
— Marilyn Monroe
In the first act of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,
Masha shows up at her family’s farm-house, the present
home of her brother and sister. She has a twenty something hunk along for company. When Vanya and Sonia
note the difference in age between their sister (who, like
them, is in her fifties) and her new romantic companion,
Spike, Masha attempts to downplay the apparent agegap: “He’s 29 if he’s a day,” she insists, “And I’m only
41. Possibly 42.” Masha knows better, though, as do her
siblings. As reassurance, Spike announces matter-of-factly
that he likes older women. Such reassurance notwithstanding, Masha is instantly concerned and jealous when
she sees Spike, stripped down to his underwear to cool
off in the pond, chatting with Nina, a pretty, sweetseeming young woman in her twenties. In terms of her
profession, Masha also admits, eventually, that she has
some age-related worries. She may have been the star of
the successful Sexy Killer franchise, but these days, plum
leading roles are not being offered to her with the same
reliable regularity that they once were. Consequently,
Masha has taken her personal assistant, Hootie Pie’s
advice to sell the family home, against the objections
of Vanya and Sonia. The hefty pay-cheques that Masha
formerly took home are no longer rolling in, and, she
sadly concedes, this state-of-affairs is unlikely to improve
as she continues to age.
Company of Fools
production of
Vanya and Sonia
and Masha and Spike
Masha’s name, like that of her siblings, may come directly
from Chekhov, but her general characterization, as an
aging movie star struggling to stay famous and desirable,
is best situated among other, notable representations
of aging actresses. The tropes noted above—the much
younger boyfriend, the jealousy directed at younger,
potential rivals, the dwindling career prospects—are
each important elements within this particular dramatic
context.
Just as playwright Christopher Durang repeatedly makes
reference to Chekhov, he likewise acknowledges the
distinctive lineage of aging actress characters to which
Masha is a recent, inspired addition. When Nina sees
Masha dressed in her Snow White costume, she asks,
“Are you that silent screen actress from the old movie
who lives in a mansion and says, ‘I’m ready for my close
up, Mr. Demille?’” Telling of her age, Nina has not actually
seen Sunset Boulevard. Masha has seen it, and does not
take kindly the comparison to Norma Desmond, the
tragic, aging heroine of Billy Wilder’s classic 1950 film. In
Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson, herself a former star
from the silent era, plays Norma, a forgotten, once-great
actress trying desperately to resurrect her faded film
career. Meanwhile, she becomes romantically involved
with a handsome younger man, Joe Gillis (played by
William Holden). Like Masha, Norma continues to affect
the aura of the glamorous movie star at the peak of her
fame, yet in her more vulnerable moments, her delusions
give way to bitterness and insecurity.
Maggie Smith in California Suite
Another key point of reference mentioned explicitly
in Durang’s play is Neil Simon’s California Suite, and
specifically Maggie Smith’s character, the film actress Diana
Barrie. It is Sonia, not Masha, who impersonates “Maggie
Smith on the way to the Oscars,” and who relates the
curious fact that Smith played an actress nominated for an
Oscar she did not win, while the real-smith Smith did win
an Oscar for her role as Diana Barrie. Sonia is referring
to the film version of California Suite, directed by Herbert
Ross and released in 1978, but Simon’s work had originated
on the stage two years earlier. In both incarnations of
California Suite, the character of Diana Barrie is an
actress, whose career is beginning to decline as she ages.
The Oscar nomination provides some small hope that
she might make a comeback, but, as is the case for the
aging Masha, returning to the peak of her fame is unlikely.
In Diana’s unhappy marriage of convenience, to a gay
antique dealer, there is also an echo of Masha’s five failed
marriages. The love-life of the aging actress is made to
mirror her professional decline. There may be momentary
sparks of possibility—an Oscar nomination, or a fling with
a young stud who claims to prefer older women—but
the general trajectory is unmistakably pointing downward.
Another classic representation of the aging actress,
alluded to rather more implicitly in Durang’s play, is All
About Eve. In that film, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz,
Bette Davis plays Margo Channing, a legendary theatre
actress coping with the effects of aging. The ostensibly
sweet, aspiring actress Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter)
develops a friendship with Margo, claiming deep admiration
for her stage idol. Eve, however, is a scheming sycophant,
who attempts to steal Margo’s husband as well as her
leading part in an important upcoming play. (Incidentally,
while All About Eve won the Academy Award for
the Best Picture of 1950, Davis, Baxter, and Sunset
Boulevard’s Swanson all lost the Best Actress prize to a
young ingénue, Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday.)
When Durang’s play introduces the character of the
sweet-seeming Nina, it sets up a dynamic very reminiscent
of All About Eve. Like Eve, Nina, an aspiring actress who
dreams of being involved in the theatre, seems saccharinesweet and gushes with admiration of Masha’s work. It
seems all too probable—to Masha and probably to the
audience, as well—that Nina will steal Spike’s affections
away from his older girlfriend. Yet Durang, in this regard,
cleverly subverts expectations: Nina, as it turns out, is just
genuinely in love with the theatre. She is as sweet as she
initially seems, but she is also, surprisingly, quite thoughtful
and smart. She admits that she finds Spike attractive, but
she is much more interested in Vanya and his experimental
play than in Spike and his Encourage 2 audition. Masha
does end up losing Spike to a younger woman—Hootie
Pie, with whom Spike had been having an affair—but not
to the would-be Eve to her Margo.
These are just a few, particularly notable examples of
aging actress characters, each of them readily discernible
in Durang’s Masha. These characters, including Masha,
serve to remind us of celebrity culture’s vampiric obsession
with youth, especially with respect to female thespians.
Durang, like his dramatic forebears, recognizes the potential
for acerbic humor in this familiar narrative of decline, but
these representations also convey the sad, frustrating
nature of aging in the spotlight.
Bette Davis in All About Eve
GLOSSARY
Sanguine: : cheerful
Pollyanna: an eternal optimist; reference to the child heroine of
the 1913 eponymous novel
Presentiment: a feeling that something will happen
Piccolo: a small flute.
Self-effacement: humility or modesty
Metaphor: a figure of speech to compare two things that are alike
figuratively but not literally
Cavorting: frolicking or behaving in a festive manner
Heron: a long-legged, long-necked and usually long-billed bird
Harbinger: an omen
Harrangue: a tirade
Ethereal: exquisite in an otherworldly manner
Ides of March: reference to the date March 15, when Roman
leader Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.
Amity: friendship
Enmity: hostility
Calamity: disaster
Entreaty: an appeal
Incipient dementia: emerging intellectual deterioration, usually
a result of old age
QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER
DISCUSSION
Trojan Horse: term used to describe a person or thing intended
to undermine or destroy from within; a reference to the classical
mythology story in which the Greeks hid in a gigantic hollow wooden
horse, disguised as an offering, to destroy Troy and win the Trojan War
1. Durang’s play is very funny, but it also includes some
rather dark undertones. In your view, is Vanya and Sonia
and Masha and Spike best categorized as a comedy?
Dorothy Parker: an American writer known for her wisecracking
wit who produced poetry, short stories and screenplays in the
mid-20th century
2. Are the play’s titular siblings tragic characters?
Why or why not?
Dotage: an offensive term for the lack of strength or concentration
sometimes believed to be characteristic of old age
3. Are portrayals of aging actresses, like Masha, more
broadly representative of the experience of women in our
society? How do Masha and Sonia deal differently with the
effects of aging?
Repast: a meal
Nymph: a woman with graceful, delicate, fairy-like features
Libation: a strong drink
Name day: the feast day of the saint after whom a person is
named
Agamemnon: a Greek leader during the Trojan War who was
killed by his wife upon his return
Intuit: to feel
Norma Desmond: : a character in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard
who was a fading moving star
Harpy: a nagging or bad-tempered woman
Traipsing: to wander without purpose
Maggie Smith: an English actress who has won two Oscars and
been appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British
Empire for her contributions to the performing arts
Stanley Kowalski: a working-class character from the 1947
Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire
Pirandellian: describing a drama in which actors become
inseparable and indistinct from the characters that they play;
reference to the works of early-20th century Italian dramatist and
poet Luigi Pirandello
4. How important is it to know about the plays of Chekhov
and Aeschylus in order to get the jokes in Christopher
Durang’s play?
5. What effect does Vanya’s long monologue have on your
opinion of his character?
6. Why does Masha want everybody to dress up as a
character from the Snow White story?
7. How does the play give homage to Anton Chekhov?
What devices are used and where does it reverberate
and resonate?
8. How would you describe the relationship between
Vanya and Sonia? How does Masha fit in with the rest of
the family? How would you describe their family?
9. What is the connection between the family and the
farmhouse?
LEARN MORE ON-LINE
An interview with Durang, discussing his inspiration for
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.
http://www.playbill.com/features/article/175773Christopher-Durang-in-a-Russian-Mood-by-Way-ofBucks-County-Lands-on-Broadway
Christopher Durang’s Website
http://www.christopherdurang.com/
Interview with Christopher Durang
- http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/
christopher-durang/#/_
Youtube with David Hyde Pierce and
Christopher Durang
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH1spBFx7SE
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
BOOKS
Dolan, Josephine and Estella Tincknell, editors.
Aging Femininities: Troubling Representations.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2012.
A diverse volume focusing on the manner in
which aging females are represented in art and
culture. Among the contributors are Abigail
Gardner, Sadie Wearing, Nedira Yakir, and Joanne
Garde-Hansen.
Rayfield, Donald. Anton Chekhov: A Life.
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press,
2000.
An insightful biography of Chekhov, written by a
noted Chekhov specialist.
Swinnen, Aagje and John A. Stotesbury, editors.
Aging, Performance, and Stardom:
Doing Age on the Stage of Consumerist Culture.
Vienna: Lit Verlag,
2012.
A collection of stimulating essays on the topic of
aging, particularly as it relates to the theatre and
cinema. Contributors to this volume include
Judith Butler, Ann Basting, Margarette Gullette,
and Estella Tincknell.