Gypsy Play Guide - Theater Latte Da

Transcription

THEATER LATTÉ DA and HENNEPIN THEATRE TRUST
present
A Musical Fable, Book by ARTHUR LAURENTS
Music by JULE STYNE Lyrics by STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Directed by PETER ROTHSTEIN
Musical Direction by DENISE PROSEK
Choreography by MICHAEL MATTHEW FERRELL
PLAY GUIDE
FEBRUARY 13 - MARCH 13, 2016
RITZ THEATER
THEATER LATTÉ DA & HENNEPIN THEATRE TRUST
1
GYPSY
TABLE OF CONTENTS
3
A note from the Director
4
On The Road: The Road Travelled - Literally and Metaphorically - By
Gypsy
7
Vaudeville History
11
Pantages Theatre History
12
In Their Own Words
17
Bibliography
18
About Theater Latté Da and Hennepin Theatre Trust
GYPSY is being produced by Theater Latté Da and Hennepin Theatare Trust at the Pantages Theater.
Book by Arthur Laurents.
Music by Jule Styne
Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by Peter Rothstein
Music Direction by Denise Prosek
Choreography by Michael Matthew Ferrell
February 13 - March 13, 2016
Previews on February 13, 14, 17, 18 and 19
Opening Night on February 20, 2016 at 8:00 p.m.
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GYPSY
A NOTE FROM
THE DIRECTOR
PETER ROTHSTEIN
Welcome to Broadway Reimagined and Gypsy.
As a director, I seldom return to a work I have
done before, but Gypsy is an exception. Theater
Latté Da first produced the musical at the intimate
Loring Playhouse nearly a decade ago, but the
opportunity to direct this particular musical at the
historic Pantges Theatre was just too good. Also,
my respect for this show has only grown with time.
Ben Brantley of The New York Times calls Gypsy
“perhaps the greatest of all American Musicals.”
The score is superb, with one hit song after another.
So many of these tunes have become standards,
thriving outside the context of the musical, yet they
are each perfectly aligned to the dramatic moment
for which they were intended. Broadway veteran
Jule Styne knew how to write a catchy tune and
evoke the world of a story. And the young Stephen
Sondheim was clearly destined to become one
of the greatest lyricists of the American Theater.
Arthur Laurents’ book is as good as it gets, with
richly drawn characters and a story that is both
singular and universal.
the American Dream. Gypsy, born Louise Hovick,
grew up in vaudeville theaters across the country.
Her family—like thousands of others—lived on the
edge, traveling from city to city by train with their
life’s possessions in suitcases, and their theatrical
scenery in old steamer trunks. They slept in dumpy
hotels, ate in the cheapest restaurants, and then
went to work in the city’s most luxurious buildings—
vaudeville theaters. Their acts were a far cry from
the world in which they lived; it was escapist
entertainment and Americans flocked to it. Our
own Hennepin Avenue was home to 35 vaudeville
theaters at the height of the art form (only four
of them remain). In fact, Louise Hovick and her
baby sister June performed in the Twin Cities
while touring the Pantages and Orpheum circuits.
Perhaps their ghosts still haunt this place.
As a director, my primary job is to get to the truth
of a story. It has been fascinating to uncover the
real-life history of these characters and thrilling
to tell their tale in this theater where they actually
performed. Rose Hovick once said, “Just think of
the girls who would give anything to have shared
your childhood, the music, the lights, the applause,
the people you’ve met, the excitement—you’ve had
a real fairytale childhood.” Our production tries to
capture both that fairytale and their grim reality,
a complex and rich dichotomy that makes me
agree with Mr. Brantley. Yes, Gypsy is “perhaps the
greatest of all American musicals.”
Director Peter Rothstein with Tyler Michaels (Tulsa) and Cat Brindisi (Gypsy Rose Lee)
Gypsy is based on the memoir of the same title
by the burlesque megastar Gypsy Rose Lee.
Her mother was Rose Hovick, a woman who—
depending on your perspective—was either a
certifiable narcissist obsessed with fame and
fortune, or an opportunistic mother in search of
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GYPSY
ON THE ROAD
MATT WOLF ON THE ROAD TRAVELEDLITERALLY AND METAPHORICALLYBY GYPSY
“Together, wherever we go,” or so goes the title
Lyric to one of the Jauntier numbers in Gypsy, a
second-act song that in the context of a musical
as harrowing as it is thrilling could be described
as the lull before the familial storm that follows.
Positioned in the show prior to the face-off
between the mother of all stage mothers, Rose,
and the older of her two daughters, Louise, who
went on to be the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, the song
describes a life spent peripatetically on the road,
hurtling from gig to gig, venue to venue, dream to
ever more improbable dream.
Indeed, it’s not too much of a stretch to regard Rose
Hovick and her motley crew as a showbiz version
of John Steinbeck’s itinerant Joads, another iconic
American brood with a matriarch (Ma Joad) at the
centre who were following their own distinct star.
But what was that life actually like, as distinct from
the version of it depicted in a landmark show that
after all does carry with it the subtitle, “a musical
fable”? (The musical isn’t a documentary, nor need
to be, since any creative team headed by Jule
Styne, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents
was clearly interested in shaping life’s actuality
into the separate realm of art.)
Rose Hovick, c. 1937
the hotelier or proprietor of your most recent stop
before he had twigged that various possessions
had made it out the door along with the guests;
on that front, Gypsy is unabashed about Rose’s
kleptomaniacal tendencies.
Vaudeville itself operated via ‘circuits’ (the oncevaunted Orpheum circuit is referenced in Rose’s
brainstorming opening song, ‘Some People’),
which meant an array of affiliated theatres
that would share acts between them; think of
it as the equivalent then to what is referred to in
contemporary showbiz parlance as ‘the road’
except with so-called family entertainment in
the place of the musical behemoths one might
find today. Some of these venues were more
glamourous than others but they penetrated deep
into the American heartland and to that extent
were a piece of Rose herself, a woman born not into
the landscape of urban sophisticates to which she
aspired but in the plains of North Dakota. Seattle
(where Gypsy was born, through the year of her
birth varies), San Francisco and New Work all came
Later.
But some investigation into the real-life terrain
traversed by the musical is fascinating not least
for the glimpse it offers into one art for that is all
but dead (vaudeville, an entertainment done in
first by radio and then by the movies) and another
(burlesque) that seems to be making the kind of
resurgence of which the late Gypsy Rose Leethe musical’s namesake who died in 1970- would
surely be proud. Chances are, though, that today’s
ecdysiasts- to cite the million-dollar synonym for
‘stripper’ that gets joyously incorporated into the
stage show’s discourse- never endured quite the
hard- scrabble conditions that defined an earlier,
now- vanished era: a rough-and-tumble existence
marked out by stamina, quick wittedness and
being always on the run; running, on the one hand,
toward the next opportunity and, on the other, from
To that end, one can imagine Rose very much
knowing the terrain as she schlepped her troupe
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GYPSY
time, which may be why the birth dates of several
of the individuals involved seem so opaque- best to
leave room for elasticity so you could be whatever
number of years old best suited the moment. As
the kids in the act got older, they inevitably fled the
nest- a phenomenon bitingly explored within Gypsy
the show. Far trickier, though, was the pairing of
children with material deemed unsuitable for their
young eyes and ears, though Gypsy Rose Lee’s
own exposure to the incipiently louche served her
in good stead when she later broke out on her own.
There were equally times when Rose wanted her
daughters to seem young- the more precocious
the better for film work, were there to be any- and
many more when older was better, given that the
minimum working age at the time was 14.
The daily routine was demanding- some would
say punishing, not least in an age such as our own
where there are four little girls who alternate in the
title role of Matilda- The Musical in the West End.
The bubbly, perky peroxide blonde that was Rose’s
Canadian- born younger daughter (and who went
on to write two memoirs, drolly entitled Early Havoc
and More Havoc) was for some years a salary of
$1500 a week at a time when most children her
age might have been getting a weekly allowance
of 25 cents. But the protean tyke surely earned it,
as the eventual moniker Dainty June and Company
to describe the act as a whole went on to prove.
And having first started dancing age 2 and a ½,
June was most likely wise beyond her years by
the time she got to headlining a repertoire that
saw her performing as many as 35 numbers a day
across three or four shows. And without electronic
amplification as well, a feat that makes it even more
fitting that Rose onstage was originated by Ethel
Merman- perhaps the performer most enduringly
associated with the clarion lungs that her tyro,
attention-grabbing daughter must have had.
Rather aptly, June Havoc later went on to appear
in the 1940 Broadway premiere of the Rogers and
Hart musical Pal Joey, playing a character Gladys
Bumps, whose name might have brought a smile
to her wittily-minded mother’s lips had mother and
daughter not by that point been long-estranged, in
marked contrast to the scene of reconciliation that
brings Gypsy to a close (albeit involving Rose’s
other daughter).
Baby Louise and Baby June, along with their dog, performing their
vaudeville act, c. 1925
hither and yon, from the wonderfully named
Jayhawk Theatre in Topeka, Kansas (very much
still going, by the way) to the Teatro Colón in El
Paso Texas (which became a movie palace and
is now a retail establishment) and most palaces
in-between. If the destinations meant reworking
or even translating some of the kids’ routines,
Rose-the ever enterprising manager of an evermutable act- was up to the task, though there was
reportedly some hilarity during the El Paso stop
when Louise’s time-honoured number, ‘I’m a HardBoiled Rose’ was translated into the Spanish for
‘I’m a Hooker’.
Life in vaudeville required living by one’s wits, and
Rose was nothing if not resourceful. It was while
on tour in upstate New York in 1923- a veritable
planet away from the New York where Rose
would later set her Upper West Side apartment
up as a lesbian compound of her own devisingthat Rose’s act was raided amid-performance by
authorities who were not exactly overjoyed to find
a stage full of prepubescents singing material with
titles like ‘Won’t You Be My Husband?’. (Another by
the name of ‘I Want to Be a Janitor’s Child’ sounds
even odder, having to do apparently with the joy of
being able to make a mess.)
Rose’s riposte was to say that she would send the
children at once to a Manhattan drama academy
for theatrically minded kids, the reality being that
she scooped them up to rejoin the vaudeville trailthe relevant officialdom presumably none the
wiser. Age remained a tricky issue throughout this
Gypsy speaks to vaudeville in its day as a
family business, the missing equation being the
stabilizing figure of a man, since Rose’s fate was
to fall foul of the various men in her life and then
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GYPSY
by all accounts to decide that she preferred the
company of women in any case. But whereas
burlesque was generally a singular endeavor,
practiced by a single performer whose task it was
to tease and tantalize the audience, vaudeville
made the family the act- a showbiz gambit that
has of course found multiple equivalents since
(from the von Trapp Family to the Jackson Five
and onwards) but that was rooted in Rose’s day
in such divergent ventures as the Seven Little
Boys, who were celebrated for being cute, and the
Cherry Sisters who were cheered for being awful.
The musical gives us a glimpse of Rose’s so-called
Toreadorables in action, and there are glimpses
of the often random terrain encompassed by
the sketches themselves: farm scenarios were
popular as were those involving newsboys or (the
distaff equivalent) girls who were at once guileless
and knowing; one of Jane’s numbers, ‘Powder
Puff Vamp’, wouldn’t have taken much tweaking
to be right at home in the more soigné hands of
the adult Gypsy.
one another’s company by a life spent so fully in
transit? Most likely, through the enduring power
of Gypsy that its larger concerns transcend the
specifics of this or that ‘circuit’, however much
Louise’s first-act solo ‘Little Lamb’ may reflect the
solace that her little sister June was said to have
found in the company of pets that she didn’t get
as a child from people. (Reading around in the
period, one can also intuit the real-life equivalents
of Herbie and Tulsa, the men who figure however
fleetingly in the Hovic women’s lives.)
Nor is it surprising in this particular instance to note
that the current production’s director, Jonathan
Kent, has among his resume a production of
Mother Courage and Her Children for the National
Theater. Truth to tell, it’s not a million miles from that
play’s survivalist heroine with her omnipresent
cart to Rose, whose daughters functioned as a
sort of human cart who could be wheeled this way
and that until such a time as they wanted out and
rebelled, leaving Rose alone in a spotlight of her
own ferocious imaginings. The physical journey
traced by Rose’s life is an astonishing one, and
it sheds light on various forms of entertainment
that may seem comparatively remote to us today.
But the emotional trajectory that her story relates
resonates far and wide. In its lasting and ongoing
power, one might say that it remains with us
together, wherever we go.
Were June and Louise starting in showbiz now,
they might have well been pushed towards reality
TV, Rose pacing nervously in some green room or
other. But the stage musical is in every way rooted
in a distant but surely recognizable past before
television, where the way to engage your public
was to take your act directly to that public. Was
that to merge the professional and the personal
too closely within a family forced even more into
Matt Wolf is the London Theatre critic of the International New York Times.
He gratefully acknowledges Carolyn Quinn’s book, Mama Rose’s Turn as an
important source for this essay.
June, Louise and the ‘Newsboys’
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GYPSY
VAUDEVILLE
HISTORY
BY RICK EASTIN
American Vaudeville, more so than
any other mass entertainment, grew
out of the culture of incorporation that
defined American life after the Civil
War. The development of vaudeville marked
the beginning of popular entertainment as big
business, dependent on the organizational efforts
of a growing number of white-collar workers and
the increased leisure time, spending power, and
changing tastes of an urban middle class audience.
Business savvy showmen utilized improved
transportation and communication technologies,
creating and controlling vast networks of theatre
circuits standardizing, professionalizing, and
institutionalizing American popular entertainment.
along with their tonics, salves, and miracle elixirs,
while Wild West Shows provided romantic vistas
of the disappearing frontier complete with trick
riding, music, and drama. Vaudeville incorporated
these various itinerant amusements into a stable,
institutionalized form centered in America’s growing
urban hubs.
Problematically, the term “vaudeville,” itself, referring
specifically to American variety entertainment,
came into common usage after 1871 with the
formation of “Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company”
of Louisville, Kentucky, and had little if anything
to do with the “vaudeville” of the French theatre.
Variety showman, M.B. Leavitt claimed the word
originated from the French “vaux de ville” (“worth of
the city, or worthy of the city’s patronage”), but in
all likelihood, as Albert McLean suggests, the name
was merely selected “for its vagueness, its faint, but
harmless exoticism, and perhaps its connotation
of gentility.” Leavitt and Sargent’s shows differed
little from the coarser material presented in earlier
itinerant entertainments, although their use of the
term to provide a veneer of respectability points to
an early effort to cater variety amusements to the
growing middle class.
In the years before the war, entertainment existed
on a different scale. Certainly, variety theatre
existed before 1860. Europeans enjoyed types of
variety performances years before anyone even
had conceived of the United States. On American
soil, as early as the first decades of the nineteenth
century, theatre goers could enjoy a performance
of Shakespeare, acrobats, singers, presentations
of dance, and comedy all in the same evening.
As the years progressed, seekers of diversified
amusements found an increasing number to
choose from. A handful of circuses regularly
toured the country, dime-museums appealed to
the curious, amusement parks, riverboats, and
town halls often featured “cleaner” presentations
of variety entertainment, while saloons, musichalls, and burlesque houses catered to those with
a taste for the risqué. In the 1840’s, minstrel shows,
another type of variety performance, and “the first
emanation of a pervasive and purely American
mass culture,” grew to enormous popularity and
formed as Nick Tosches writes, “the heart of
nineteenth-century show business.” Medicine
shows traveled the countryside offering programs
of comedy, music, jugglers and other novelties
In the early 1880’s, Tony Pastor, a former ringmaster
with the circus turned theatre manager, capitalized
on middle class sensibilities and spending power
when he began to feature “polite” variety programs
in several of his New York theatres. Hoping to draw
a potential audience from female and family-based
shopping traffic uptown, Pastor barred the sale
of liquor in his theatres, eliminated questionable
material from his shows, and offered gifts of coal
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GYPSY
Keith’s triumph as a showman lay chiefly in his
ability to bridge the gulf between notions of “high”
and “low” entertainments that grew increasingly
wider in the years following the Civil War. He
reinforced his theatres’ image of gentility by
including acts from the “legitimate” stage, drawing
an audience previously unavailable to variety
amusements. Simultaneously, he maintained a
number of acts whose forms would have been
familiar to fans of the earlier variety stage without
alienating either constituency. As his partner
Edward F. Albee would later write, the programs at
Keith’s theatres ensured “there is something for
everybody.” Keith’s appeal to the growing middle
class sense of refinement not only won him the
business of women and children, but attracted
the notice of Boston’s powerful Catholic Church
as well. The Church amply funded the expansion
of the Keith enterprise on the promise of more
clean entertainment. Keith and Albee built even
more elaborate theatres in Boston with help from
the Church and they duplicated their success in
other Northeastern cities.
1875 Variety Show Poster
and hams to attendees. Pastor’s experiment
proved successful and other managers soon
followed suit.
Benjamin Franklin Keith, however, earns the
distinction of “the father” of American Vaudeville.
Keith began his career in show business working
variously as a grifter and barker with traveling
circuses in the 1870’s, and for dime museums
in New York. He returned to his home state of
Massachusetts and in 1883 established his own
museum in Boston featuring “Baby Alice the
Midget Wonder” and other acts. His success in
this endeavor allowed Keith to build the Bijou
Theatre. The Bijou, a lavishly appointed, stateof-the-art, fireproof theatre, set the standard for
the shape of things to come. At the Bijou, Keith
established a “fixed policy of cleanliness and
order.” He strictly forbade the use of vulgarity or
coarse material in his acts “so the that the house
and the entertainment would directly appeal to the
support of women and children. . .” Keith strictly
enforced his policies at the Bijou as he would in all
his subsequent theatres. He ruled with an iron fist,
censuring and censoring performers whose acts
fell below his standards of decency. Keith posted
signs backstage ordering performers to eliminate
“vulgarity and suggestiveness in words, action,
and costume” while performing in his theatre
“under fine of instant discharge.” As an added
measure, Keith invited (with publicity) “a Sunday
School dignitary to judge propriety at rehearsals.”
Within a few short years, imitators sprung up
around the country. Managers like S. Z. Poli, Klaw
and Erlanger, F.F. Proctor, Marcus Loew, and Martin
Beck began their own profitable enterprises,
following the lead of Keith and Albee. By the
B.F. Keith
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GYPSY
1890’s vast theatre circuits spanned the country
and “comprehensive networks of booking offices”
handled promotion and production. Subscribing to
a business acumen that mirrored the policies of
captains of industry, Keith and Albee consolidated
their control of vaudeville, first through the United
Booking Artists and later through the establishment
of the Vaudeville Manager’s Association,
establishing a virtual monopoly that lasted well
past Keith’s death in 1914.
inviting.” Keith’s comments point to his recognition
of the importance of managed spectacle to attract
urban audiences.
Alan Trachtenberg writes: “[that] Of all city
spectacles, none surpassed the giant department
store, the emporium of consumption born and
nurtured in these years.” Arguably, Trachtenberg
did not fully consider the vaudeville theatre as
spectacle. Vaudeville theatres, often known as
“palaces,” fiercely competed trying to outdistance
each other in luxury, elegance, and grandiosity. As
one journalist wrote at the opening of B.F. Keith’s
New Theatre in Boston in 1894:
While in Boston, Keith also developed the policy
of the continuous performance that dominated
vaudeville for almost two decades before the bigtime theatres returned to the two-a-day in the
early twentieth century. The continuous ran up
to twelve hours, in which scheduled acts would
appear two or three times. The continuous provided
the illusion of a constant and thriving business,
eliminating what Keith saw as “hesitancy” on the
part of patrons to enter the theatre until they were
“reassured by numbers.” Keith’s idea revolutionized
variety entertainment and tailored it perfectly to the
conditions of life in the surrounding metropolis. A
continuous twelve hours of performances opened
vaudeville to wider audiences than previously
possible. It caught as, Tony Pastor had hoped in
New York, the overflow of uptown shopping traffic,
and catered to both a middle class population
with unprecedented leisure time and workers
constrained by shift work. According to Keith it didn’t
matter “what time of day you visit, the theatre is
always occupied by more or less people, the show
is in full swing, everything is bright, cheerful, and
“The age of luxury seems to have reached its ultima
thule. The truth of this has never been impressed
upon one so forcibly as in a visit to Keith’s dream
palace of a theatre . . . .It is almost incredible that
all this elegance should be placed at the disposal
of the public, the poor as well as the rich.”
Keith’s New Theatre, like F.F. Proctor’s Pleasure
Palace and many other vaudeville theatres to come,
adapted the excessive and opulent architectural
styles of Southern European palaces to create
buildings with few precedents in American cities.
The front of Keith’s New Theatre featured a wealth of
decorative detail. Wrought iron decorations, stained
glass, incandescent lighting, gargoyles, arches,
and marble pillars proclaimed an emphatic message
of gentility, elegance, and success to all passersby.
Keith’s display continued inside the theatre. He filled
the lobby and foyer with white and green marble,
burnished brass, leather upholstered furniture,
large plate mirrors, and enormous panel paintings
by the “eminent artist Tojetti.” Keith commissioned
Tojetti to create more panel paintings above the
huge and heavily gilded proscenium arch inside the
auditorium, complimenting the ornate white and gold
balconies, twelve private boxes, and walls of green
and “rich” rose “in a brocaded silk effect.”15The
design of Keith’s New Theatre overlooked nothing.
From the elaborate hand-painted ceiling to “the
finest toilet and retiring rooms in the country” to the
number oft “fragrant floral displays,” the offering
of “the purest artesian well water” and the “writing
materials furnished free--gold pens, sterling silver
handles, monogrammed paper and envelopes,”
Grand Theatre in Buffalo, NY around 1900
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GYPSY
Keith’s New Theatre conveyed a feeling of lavish
abundance coupled with an inescapable air of
refinement.16Reportedly, even the boiler room
featured a thick carpets and a whitewashed coal
bin.
acts on the stage. A vigilant army of ushers and
uniformed attendants handed customers printed
cards from silver trays.
As Keith would explain, “Our rule was to have the
party approached by the usher first, second by
the assistant head usher, then by the head usher,
and lastly by the management who would request
the party to leave . . .”19Keith’s theatres and their
policies informed his audiences about changing
standards of behavior acceptable for the middle
class. As he would later note, “The public needed
to be educated in these matters.”
Other theatres in the Keith-Albee circuit, as well as
those of their competitors, followed along similar
standards of luxury. Like the department stores of
the era as discussed by Trachtenberg, vaudeville
palaces were “lavishly designed palaces of
consumption” using calculated spectacle to
attract customers.17Vaudeville palaces offered
entertainment, rather than strictly consumer
goods per se, but they also hoped to encourage
customers to purchase concessions and relied
heavily on the advertisement of goods in their
theatre programs.
Prior to the Civil War, American audiences
boisterously voiced their approval or disapproval
at theatrical performances by screaming,
hollering, stomping, throwing vegetables and other
missiles, or in certain instances even rushing the
stage to attack performers or plead for encores.
As the century drew to a close, and the process
of incorporation discussed by Alan Trachtenberg
accelerated along with its related processes of
industrialization and the formation of stricter
cultural hierarchies, entertainment and audiences
were forced to change. In creating and maintaining
the air of refinement associated with his theatres,
Keith successfully developed a form of variety
amusements well-suited for the new middle class
and their urban lifestyles. The sheer abundance,
variety, and spectacle offered at Keith’s theatres
helped to educate and transform American
audiences in their new roles as passive spectators
and consumers of experience and sensation.
Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/easton/vaudeville/
vaudevillemain.html
Keith’s New Theatre, Boston 1894
Also like department stores, vaudeville theatres
functioned as a type of educational institution.
Certainly, the emphasis on the high moral character
of his shows implied a set of ideals regarding
appropriate behavior, but Keith’s theatres offered a
more direct education to the audience as well. His
“fixed policy of cleanliness and order” extended
equally to the patrons of his theatres and the
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GYPSY
PANTAGES THEATRE
HISTORY
BY WEDO MINNEAPOLIS
Seats: 1,014
Opens: 1916
Closes: 1984-1996
Reopens: 2002
of Music,” at the Mann in 1965. The showing was a
terrific success, and “The Sound of Music” went
on to become the longest running film in Twin Cities
history at just under two years. The Mann operated
sporadically from 1965 through 1984, continuing to
show movies, including the last Twin Cities premiere
of Annie in 1982. In 1984, the Mann Theatre closed,
and remained shuttered until 1996. It was then
that current Hennepin Theatre Trust President and
CEO Tom Hoch, along with former Historic Theatre
Group President Fred Krohn, started their five-year
effort to save and restore the Pantages.
The Pantages opened in 1916 as a vaudeville
house, and part of Greek immigrant and impresario
Alexander Pantages’ renowned collection of
theaters. Designed by Minneapolis architects
Kees and Colburn in the “Art Moderne/Beaux
Arts” architectural style, the Pantages’ first show
featured a vaudeville lineup that included singers,
comedians and a banjo player. In 1922, renowned
theater architect Marcus Priteca/RKO remodeled
the theater, adding a new stained glass dome.
Decades later, Edmond Ruben purchased the
Pantages and renovated it by adding bird’s-eye
maple for the theater’s 1946 grand reopening that
featured a screening of “Gilda.”
During the theater’s $9.5 million renovation,
workers discovered architectural drawings that
helped designers restore much of the Pantages’
decorative plasterwork and character. The stainedglass “monitor,” a false skylight in the center of the
auditorium’s ceiling, was also uncovered following
the removal of several layers of paint.
In 1961, Ruben sold the Pantages to Ted Mann,
who owned six other downtown Minneapolis
theaters, including the Orpheum. Mann renovated
the Pantages yet again, establishing the Mann
Theatres as a top-notch movie house with the
movie “Spartacus.” That same year, United Artists
previewed “West Side Story” at the Mann, and the
film went on to win 10 Academy Awards. Recalling
his success with “West Side Story,” director Robert
Wise decided to preview his new movie, “The Sound
In cooperation with the City of Minneapolis, the
completely renovated Pantages re-opened in
2002. Since then, the intimate showhouse has
presented artists including Mikhail Baryshnikov,
Vince Gill, Feist, Todd Rundgren and The Blenders.
It has also hosted collaborative productions with
Twin Cities’ organizations including the Jungle
Theater, the History Theatre, Chanhassen Dinner
Theatres, Cantus and Theater Latté Da.
11
GYPSY
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
MAMA ROSE HOVICK AND
GYPSY ROSE LEE
“I lost their father when the baby was two
and a half. June could dance on her toes
almost before she could walk, so naturally when
I was faced with having to earn a living, I
thought of show business.”
- Mama Rose Hovick
“I had said good-by many times before in my life,
but never as much as I hated saying good-by
to Fanny Brice and the Ziegfeld Follies. I felt as
though I were saying good-by to an era. Everything I knew and understood and loved seems to
be bound up in the dressing room. This place I was
leaving was a theatre, a place where I belonged.
My mother was there, June was there, Gordon too,
and the little boys in the act and all the countless
chameleons and white mice and guinea pigs. I
could close my eyes and see the glided guns, and
the patent-leather dancing shoes. I could hear
Mother telling me to be careful when I crossed the
street and to pin my money to my underwear. And
telling me again how lucky I was, ‘What a wonderful life you’ve had -- the music, lights, applause
-- everything in the world a girl could ask for.’ ”
M
-Gypsy Rose Lee
“Show business is my whole life.
I’ve sacrifced everything for it.”
- Mama Rose Hovick
12
GYPSY
Dainty June and her Newsboys Songsters
“We can’t expect to have
friends. Not when we’re
in the way up. Once we
get there we’ll have all
the friends we want.”
Mumshay, Rose’s dog,
worked in the act, too.
- Mama Rose Hovick
Orpheum Circuit when Louise was ten.
13
GYPSY
“More than anything,
though, was the big
mirror on the wall. I
couldn’t help looking at
myself and I hated the
person I saw. I hated my
brown straight hair, my
ugly crooked teeth, and
most of all I hated the
knickers and the boy’s
clothes I wore.”
B
- Gypsy Rose Lee
June Hovick
“People stared at us
when we walked down
the street.”
Louise Hovick
-Gypsy Rose Lee
“You just live by the Golden Rule, dear, and you won’t
need church. Do unto others before they do you.”
- Mama Rose Hovick
14
GYPSY
h
“Big
eyes,
dear,”
Mother
said.
h
15
GYPSY
zZ
“She transformed herself from the
rear end of a cow into a legend.”
-Erik Lee Preminger, son of Gypsy Rose Lee
16
GYPSY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eastin, Rick. “Vaudeville, A History.” Vaudeville, A History.
Virginia.edu, 2002. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
“Hennepin Theatre Trust History.” WeDo Minneapolis. WeDo,
2016. Web. 25 Feb. 2016.
Lee, Gypsy Rose, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy: A Memoir. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1957. Print.
Wolf, Matt. On The Road. N.d. The Road Travelled - Literally and
Metaphorically - By Gypsy. London.
Gypsy Rose Lee
17
GYPSY
Founded in 1998 by Peter Rothstein and Denise Prosek,
Theater Latté Da is entering its 18th year of combining music
and story to illuminate the breadth of the human condition.
Peter and Denise began their successful collaboration
in 1994 by privately producing five original cabarets to
showcase Twin Cities talent. They discovered that by
placing equal emphasis on music and storytelling, they
could weave tapestries of engaging, challenging and often
surprising narratives that resonated with people on many
levels. Theater Latté Da officially Incorporated as a non-profit
organization in 1998 and to this day remains committed to a
rigorous experimentation with music and story that expands
the art form and speaks to a contemporary audience.
Hennepin Theatre Trust was established as a nonprofit
organization in 2002. Since then, we quickly evolved into
a recognized leader of arts and culture development in
downtown Minneapolis.
Today, we bring value to the community through our four
theatres – the Orpheum, State, Pantages and New Century
– and our growing portfolio of collaborative partnerships.
Annually, our organization alone brings more than 500,000
people to the West Downtown MPLS Cultural District (WeDo™)
to enjoy a range of activities and attractions.
Hennepin Theatre Trust continues to operate, preserve and
program these historic theatres. As the long term owner,
operator and principal programmer of these amazing venues,
the Trust is positioned to create a bright future for them,
presenting a broad array of live entertainment that enriches
our community. We have hired Historic Theatre Group, LLC to
oversee the daily operation of our theatres. We also work with
a variety of outside organizations, including a relationship
with Broadway Across America, to assist us in securing
the very best in touring Broadway engagements. The Trust
has brought current works to our stages through valuable
local partnerships with The Jungle Theater, The Loft Literary
Center, Theater Lattè Da and Cantus, the History Theatre,
Actors Theater, Chanhassen Dinner Theaters, the Guthrie
Theater and National Geographic. The Trust will continue to
foster a broad range of partnerships to ensure a diverse mix
of programming for our patrons.
In 1998, Theater Latté Da began performing at the intimate
120-seat Loring Playhouse. By 2007, Theater Latté Da
Productions were playing to sold-out houses. At this time.
The company began searching for spaces with different
performance configurations to meet the unique needs of
its productions. Since 2007, Theater Latté Da has produced
shows at the Guthrie Theater, Ordway, Pantages Theatre,
Southern Theater, History Theatre, Fitzgerald Theater, the
Rarig Center Stoll Thrust Theatre and The Lab Theater.
Matching its productions to appropriate performance venues
has given Theater Latté Da audiences the opportunity to
expirience a wide variety of spaces and neighborhoods
throughout the Twin Cities.
Theater Latté Da is now emerging as a leader in the musical
theater art form. Theater Latté Da boasts an impressive
history of work that has received significant popular and
critical acclaim. Its world premieres include Passage of
Dreams, All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914, Steerage
Song, and A Christmas Carol Petersen. Unique approaches to
classics have resulted in boldy re-imagined productions of La
Bohème, Cabaret and OLIVER!, among others.
The New Century Theatre will enable the Trust to extend its
programming as a complement to its ongoing operation of
the Orpheum, State and Pantages Theatres. It is a key part of
the Trust’s work in continuing to revitalize Hennepin Avenue
and increase its arts education and presenting activities.
18
GYPSY

Gypsy Play Guide - Theater Latte Da

Transcription

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