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Cast
(in order of appearance)
Sarah Daniels Karen Holbert
Patrick Chibas Dan Marema
Ross Collins David Knezz
Dean Burton Strauss Denny Wise
Dean Catherine Kenney Paulette Sarussi
Mr. Meyers David Bremer
Greg Sullivan Rich Kropp
Director's
Corner
By Jack Phillips
I spent many years in academe and am still involved in university
teaching. While I have never seen such a perfect example of self-serving,
closed-off thinking as Rebecca Gilman shows us in Spinning into
Butter, I certainly met many people who could become administrators
like Dean Kenney and Dean Strauss. Unfortunately, people who think
they fully understand someone else from within their own limited
personal experience and people who want to solve big social problems
by a list of things to do aren't limited to teaching. Ms. Gilman
has written a wonderful story that doesn't solve anything but urges
us to try.
Dramaturg's
Diary
By Marion J. Reis
About the play
Rebecca Gilman's Spinning into Butter is about racism
with a difference. It shatters all the conventional bromides about
how to deal with it. It seems to reiterate the old fashioned doctrine
of original sin, of something gone awry in our fallen nature. Implications
are that racism is deeply rooted in our heart and soul.
Think of being born left-handed and being forced to write right-handed.
Think of having a homosexual orientation and being forced into heterosexual
behavior. The play strikes the same discordant notes. We want harmony,
peace, heart's ease, yet something in us won't let that happen.
That's Sarah's struggle. In the last act, Meyers notes it explicitly
and his words suggest a latent racism in us all. Did something happen
in the Garden of Eden that skewered mankind with a propensity to
disharmony and evil behavior?
The racism in this play reaches out and grabs the audience as we
instinctively recognize the validity of Sarah's internal conflict
as our own. We even glimpse the self-hatred that racism produces
in its own victims, i.e. in Simon Brick.
Gilman received the Goodman's Scott McPherson Award of $5,000 which
led her to write Spinning into Butter. It premiered at the Goodman
Theatre in Chicago on May 16, 1999. Its first New York production
took place at the Lincoln Center Theatre on July 27, 2000 (her first
Equity production in New York). In 2001 it premiered at the Royal
Court Theatre Upstairs in London. Then in 2002 it exploded like
a chain of lit firecrackers; its incendiary effect made it one of
the most frequently produced plays in America. Everywhere audiences
demanded and got post-production discussions.
The source of Spinning into Butter stemmed from an incident that
occurred during Rebecca Gilman's undergraduate days at Middlebury
College in Vermont. Responses on campus conflicted with her Southern
roots. A black student at Middlebury was the recipient of racial
threats, but the attitudes of the other students, mostly New Englanders,
intrigued Gilman. "People I didn't know would hear I was from
Alabama and come knocking at my door and say: 'Tell me about racism
in the south.' I'd say: 'Tell me about racism in the north.' It
was as though they didn't think racism was their problem."
They deluded themselves that racism existed only in the south, while
racism in the north went unacknowledged.
Gilman says, "I wanted to play with people's expectations of
the characters and force them to think about their own buried, unadmitted
racism." The stereotypical racist as portrayed in our mass
media is usually unattractive -- mean, stupid, obese or otherwise
morally or physically deformed. This allows educated people to disassociate
themselves, but Gilman doesn't want to make it so easy.
Furthermore, Gilman is extremely sensitive to the nuances of the
language of racism and sexism and the struggle we have with being
politically correct. Although the play is written in the style of
contemporary speech, Rebecca Gilman proves her mastery of language
through her very sensitive use of politically correct nuances. There
is a sense of delicate humor and dismay about how Patrick Chibas
ought be categorized, as "Nuyorcian" rather than "Hispanic."
To the politically sensitive, "Hispanic" is a designation
given by European imperialists who colonized Puerto Rico. Gilman
pokes fun at intellectuals resorting to a dictionary to settle an
argument over name-calling. Gilman's style makes fine-line distinctions
in words ("quiet" vs." shy," "students
of color" vs. "minorities," "folk art"
vs. "outsider art," "uneducated" vs. "undereducated").
Gilman also exposes how easily we learn the jargon of political
correctness, but using it does not change our underlying attitudes
and judgments. It masks our confronting the real issues. She says,
"Being self-conscious about how we refer to people is a positive
thing. But it is very easy to learn the jargon but not change attitudes.
Politicians, corporations, and universities are very adept at it."
And about the play, "I've sometimes felt that people thought
that I ought to solve racism in this play. But it's only a play.
You can't solve racism with a single play, any more than you can
solve it with a 10-point bullet plan."
Acknowledgements
Produced by special arrangement with The Dramatic Publishing
Company of Woodstock, Illinois
Originally produced by the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois,
on February 22, 1999, Robert Falls, Artistic Director, Roche Schulfer,
Executive Director. Produced by Lincoln Center Theatre in 2000,
New York City.
Special Thanks to The Fruit Store, Western Springs and Hinsdale,
for providing apple cider at cost with free delivery.
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Production
Credits
Director Jack Phillips
Technical Director Troy Lee Brasuell, Jr.
Stage Manager Carol Dapogny
Assistant Stage Manager Karen Arnold
Costume Co-Chairs Eileen Crow, Katie Pecis
Costume Crew Linda Auer, Doreen Batastini, Patricia
Binder, Lori D'Asta, Pat Giesler, Darla Goudeau, Stacie Heintze,
Julie Knoch, Carmel Opre
Dramaturg Marion J. Reis
Hospitality Chair Carol Clarke
Hospitality Crew Connie Alexander, Mark Berry,
Cele Bona, Chuck Bona, Carole Borg, Stacie Heintze, Dennis Hudson,
Carol Hudson, Dick Jacoby, Peggy Jacoby, Brian Wacker, Merrill Weymiller,
Carol Wedeking, Mark Wroczynski
Lighting Designer Mary Ellen Schutt
Lighting Crew Keith Burzinski, Betsy Stiles
Makeup Designers Jackie Weiher, Marilyn Weiher
Makeup Crew Susan Cardamone, Christy Dahl, Robert
Erck, Nancy Obern, Arlene Page, Robyn Saunders
Properties Designer Pat Huth
Properties Crew Mark Cunningham, Bill FitzGerald,
Bonnie Hilton, Dennis Hudson, Mike Huth, Mike Mallon, Mike Pavia,
Mary Van Nest
Set Construction Chair Mark Hewitt
Set Construction Crew George Dempsey, Mike Huth,
Rich Ptacek, Fred Sauers, Pete Sonnenberg
Set Designer Betsy Stiles
Set Dressing Donna Sauers
Set Painting Chair Rob Cramer
Set Painting Crew Carol Clarke, Jayne Besjak, Christina
Dees, Ceri Hartnett, Carol Hudson, Patti Jena, Laura Leonardo-Ownby,
Linda Metz, Caron Wedeking
Sound Designer Rick Pavia
Sound Crew Stephanie Bullwinkel, Martha Niles,
Alan O' Brien, Betsy Stiles, Stephanie Williams
Box Office Chair Marilyn Wilson
Box Office Crew Kelli Kubicki, Lori Proska, Patti
Roeder, Janet Ryan-Grasso, Mary Ellen Schutt, Carol Suda
House Manager Chair Bill Wilson
House Managers Jack Calvert, Susan Cardamone, Rob
Cramer, Mike DeKovic, Joe Delaloye, Harry Hultgren,Terry Locke,
Kevin Mc Grath, Jon Mills
Front Row Center flyer Joe Petrolis
Group Sales Co-Chairs Ceri Hartnett, Betsy Stiles
Poster Distribution Kathleen Kusper
Production Coordinator Linda Roberts
Program Advertising Peggy Carlson
Publicity Chair Carol Dapogny
Program Editor Stephanie Williams
Program Crew Marion J. Reis
Website Judy DiVita
About the author
Rebecca Gilman was born in Trussville, Alabama, in 1964. As a child,
she and her friends used to put on skits for her parents. On one
occasion they celebrated Canadian Independence Day with a pageant,
drinking Canada Dry ginger ale and singing the Canadian nation anthem.
At 18 she wrote Always Open "about a group of disgruntled
Krispy Kreme Doughnut employees who decide to suffocate their manager
in a big vat of dough." Chris Jones describes her as "A
slight, unassuming woman with dark hair and a soft Alabama accent,
whose gentle demeanor provides no clue whatsoever to the intense
content of her plays."
Her academic background provided her with the thoroughly authentic
cultural environment she needed for Spinning into Butter.
She attended Middlebury College in Vermont, but graduated from Birmingham
Central College in Alabama. Then she went to the University of Virginia
with the idea of becoming a professor of English, but found herself
taking courses in playwriting. While she was in graduate school,
she wrote Little Eva Takes a Trip and The Adventures
of Bobby and Vaughan, both produced by The Next Stage Company.
After she received her master's degree, she immediately entered
the MFA program in playwriting at the University of Iowa.
For her career as a playwright, Chicago became her adopted city
where she was a resident writer at Chicago Dramatists. Before her
popular success with Glory of Living, she had written 15
plays and received 150 rejection slips from various theaters, including
the Goodman. This breakthrough play, about a teenage murderess,
premiered in Forest Park at the Circle Theatre in 1996; it opened
in London's Royal Court in January 1999. Sudden and prolific success
led to premieres of other plays at the Goodman with subsequent performances
at New York's Lincoln Center and London's Royal Court Theatre. Her
transformation from a struggling writer, who in 1998 was clerking
for a living in the Chicago accounting office of Peat/Marwick and
doing temp work by day, into a sought-after playwright took place
during 1999 and 2000.
The Goodman had put up two of her plays in the course of nine months,
Spinning into Butter in the summer of 1999 and Boy Gets
Girl in March 2000. Her Crime of the Century about
the Richard Speck murders opened at the Circle Theatre in December
1999. She confesses that, while she doesn't read reviews, on opening
night, "It feels like the presidential elections. We watch
the candidates on TV sit in a hotel room trying to look like they're
having a good time, but they really want to throw up."
For two seasons, 1998 - 2001, she provided some experimental three-minute
telephone dramas and comic anthologies of scenes and monologues
for the Humanities Festival Actors Theatre of Louisville.
An intended work on the tentatively titled The Great Baseball
Strike of 1994, which had been commissioned by the Goodman
with $75,000 from the Prince Charitable Trust, was cut short by
the death of Michael Maggio with whom she was to have collaborated.
Maggio defined Gilman's qualities as a playwright: "She seems
to have a remarkable capacity to put her finger on the pulse of
the zeitgeist. She understands how to write plays that are premised
on something that seems immediate and recognizable to her audience,
but she finds a way to dig very deeply into the characters and the
milieu. And she has a remarkable capacity to hook you into a story."
Her next play Blue Surge opened at the Goodman on July
9, 2001, and a play written earlier, The American in Me,
opened in June of 2001 in San Francisco's Magic Theater. In 2003,
she forsook her adopted city and relocated to Columbus, Ohio, to
enjoy the comparative quiet that encouraged greater productivity.
Sweetest Swing in Baseball, a psychological drama about
an institutionalized woman taking inspiration from the Mets' Darryl
Strawberry, had its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre in
London in March of 2004. She is currently working with Robert Falls
on Dollhouse, an adaptation of the play by Henrik Ibsen,
which will have its world premiere in June 2005, at the Goodman.
Pulitzer Prize nominee Rebecca Gilman does not shy away from difficult
subjects: a woman serial killer, psychiatric disorders and treatment,
latent racism in liberals, childless couples, sexually corruptible
policemen, dysfunctional families, stalkers. Indeed, her contribution
provides us with highly volatile exposure to deep-seated problematic
social attitudes, racial, sexual, and criminal pathologies. Her
works have the ability to evoke extreme emotional reactions because
they scratch our sensibilities and consciences, our moral convictions
with uncomfortable truths that we do not want to admit even to ourselves.
She gets under the facade of the conventional defenses we set up
to protect ourselves from those painful realities because they threaten
our sense of order, propriety, and psychological well being.
Thursday Nights Talkback
Sarah A. Malone, principal consultant with Chicago-based The AldoneMalone
Group, Ltd., is lending her expertise to Talk-Back, the post-play
discussion featured after the opening night and second Thursday
performances of Spinning into Butter. During Talk-Back, featured
after Thursday evening performances of both Mainstage and Forum
plays, members of the audience have an opportunity to enhance their
understanding of the play by posing questions to the director, cast,
and crew members who return to the stage for the discussion.
Ms. Malone is an organizational effectiveness and human resources
consultant with 20 years experience. Her practice includes specialties
in culture transformation and diversity/inclusion strategy and training,
which correlate with the major thematic issues of Spinning into
Butter. Prior to founding The AldonMalone Group, Ltd., Ms. Malone
served as Vice President/Human Resources for Advocate Healthcare.
She has a bachelor's degree in human resources development and management
from Northeastern Illinois University, a master's degree in management
and organizational behavior from Benedictine University, and is
currently pursuing a Ph.D. in organizational development at Benedictine
University
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