Forever Written and Performed by Dael Orlandersmith

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1 PORTLANDCENTERSTAGE Presents Forever Written and Performed by Dael Orlandersmith Directed by Neel Keller January 30 March 20, 2016 Artistic Director Chris Coleman

2 PORTLANDCENTERSTAGE Presents Forever Written and Performed by Dael Orlandersmith Directed by Neel Keller Scenic Designer Takeshi Kata Lighting Designer Mary Louise Geiger Dramaturg Joy Meads Costume Designer Kaye Voyce Sound Designer Adam Phalen Stage Manager Kelsey Daye Lutz Production Assistant Kristen Mun Forever was originally commissioned and produced by Center Theatre Group/Kirk Douglas Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, in 2014, Michael Ritchie, Artistic Director. Subsequently produced in a New York premiere and developed in part by New York Theatre Workshop, Jim Nicola, Artistic Director, Jeremy Blocker, Managing Director, in 2015, with the support of Dartmouth College.

3 Forever is produced by special arrangement with The Gersh Agency, 41 Madison Ave. 33rd Fl. NY, NY Performed without intermission. Videotaping or other photo or audio recording of this production is strictly prohibited. The Actor and Stage Manager employed in this production are members of Actors Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. A LETTER FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR By Chris Coleman It is easy for us to forget, sitting alone on our couches with our novels and television shows that, until fairly recently, story was always an intensely communal activity. For tens of thousands of years story happened only when a teller came together with listeners. For uncounted millennia, story was exclusively oral. The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, by Jonathan Gottschall At PCS we never forget how connected we are to story; our mission statement is built around it. But as I thought about the

4 three productions kicking off 2016 in the context of the passage above, I felt even more connection to the traditions of storytelling. Two of the pieces Forever and Each and Every Thing are very different works by writer/performers, and the other one is an adaptation of one of the most beloved novels ever written, Great Expectations. What they share (as with all productions at PCS): We will experience each of them communally. Great Expectations is one of the books that marked the golden age of the novel. Growing literacy and the technologies that made wider distribution of books and magazines possible meant that the demand for stories grew rapidly. Many of Dickens novels, including Great Expectations, were originally published in serial form before being released as books, which meant that his characters and plots were more a part of the shared culture than ever before possible. By bringing this tale to the stage in a captivating adaptation by Lucinda Stroud, we re excited to take this beloved story back to a shared experience. We are turning over the Ellyn Bye Studio for two months to a pair of superb storytellers, who each bring a distinct voice to the American experience. Some of you may remember Dael Orlandersmith from The Gimmick, which PCS presented in a special engagement in She is a brilliant poet/performer whose work embodies the ancient tradition of storytelling in a very modern way. In

5 Forever, she pays tribute to the artists who have inspired her as she shares the personal, harrowing and formative journey of her own girlhood. I ve known Dael for many years, and I m an admirer of her compelling presence and artistry. I m thrilled to bring her back to Portland. Dan Hoyle is also returning to PCS for Each and Every Thing, after his previous turn with us in The Real Americans in Dan is a keen observer of contemporary society, and in Each and Every Thing, he takes on the newest threat to shared experience personal technology. If we spend time together not telling each other our stories, but focused on our devices, what happens to our common humanity? Through his insightful exploration and capacious imagination, Dan invites us to explore that question with him. As we welcome in the first months of 2016, I hope you will continue to join us as we bring you the most exciting spectrum of stories we can find, and to be inspired to share your own stories, communally, with your friends and family. FEATURE I The Dreaded First Person Prior to the premiere of Forever at Center Theatre Group in 2014, playwright/performer Dael Orlandersmith took a break from rehearsals to talk with Joy Meads, Forever

6 dramaturg and Center Theatre Group s literary manager. The excerpts below are from that conversation. JOY MEADS: Dael, you have been working on this play for a little more than a year and a half. Tell us about the very beginning; where did the idea come from? DAEL ORLANDERSMITH: The idea came from a great documentary called Forever by Heddy Honigmann. It s about Père Lachaise, a very famous cemetery where Jim Morrison is buried, among others. There was a character in the film that I wanted to play, so I approached Neel Keller, who is now the director of my play, and he said, That s an interesting idea but who introduced you to art? Why don t you write about who introduced you to art? That was my mother, and Paris was a place where my mother always wanted to go. JM: In the play you talk about artists who feel like family. What does it mean for an artist to feel like family? DO: I think that a lot of us who lean towards the arts wonder if other people feel the same way did someone paint this, did someone write this, how did it manifest itself? When someone

7 paints it, writes it or sings it, you realize that you are not alone. It becomes universal. So it s like, Oh my God, this is great, how can I use those tools of paint, that tool of language, that tool of bodily instrument to put that across? That s the thing that is so important; it transcends language. I do not speak French, but whenever I hear Edith Piaf sing, I understand everything she s saying. JM: Who are some artists that you felt connected to, that were important to you? DO: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, the first Patti Smith album [Horses]. JM: Tell me more about what that album meant to you. DO: She transcended gender; it was a total fusion of rock n roll and poetry. It went straight to the subconscious. JM: You are from Harlem and the South Bronx, but you started spending a lot of time in the East Village as a teen, and you live there now. Tell me a little about the East Village. What was it

8 like when you first started hanging out there; what made you want to be there? DO: It was rough, but also it was colorful. St. Mark s Place in the 70s and 80s was one of the roughest places ever, but having said that, some of the great music was coming out of that scene. You had people who were very colorful and also selfdestructive. It was a mixture of both, especially in the 70s when bands like Blondie were coming out, or early Talking Heads, Television, those bands; it was a very strange mix. The bar I used to go to, Grassroots Tavern, which is still there, was a mixture of hustlers, because there was the St. Mark s Baths up the block, and you had Ukrainians, Poles who grew up in the hood, the art students from Cooper Union, as well as people from La MaMa. It was this interesting mix of people that was going on at the time; it was so eclectic, but it was very tough. People tend to romanticize their youth; there was some great music that was coming up, but also it was a very rough scene, in certain ways. JM: Speaking of people romanticizing their youth, when Neel first brought up the idea of you writing a play about your mother, your own story, your reaction was something like, You

9 mean write in the dreaded first person? What did the dreaded first person bring up for you? DO: It meant delving into the shit, you know. But also, again, it was very important that I see myself and this woman [my mother] as a character. Most people when they write about themselves, they deify themselves, and they deify the people they come from. Like if somebody says, My parents were great, they never fought, I think: Are you mad, of course they fought! So I wanted to look at the fact that this flawed individual who raised me was a person who was filled with angst, filled with pain filled with wonder. And I had to look at myself as someone filled with wonder, but also as someone who is capable of great cruelty, and who has inflicted pain upon people as well. JM: Do you think you could have written this play at the beginning of your career? DO: No. JM: What do you want to make sure people know about what this play is, and what it isn t?

10 DO: That it is not verbatim; it is a memoir play versus an autobiographical play. Certainly there are facts that are involved, but it is my impressions and thoughts. But that is what memoir means; it s this hybrid of fact, and also your impression of what happened. Those people are Here, but no longer here / But they are Here. Dael Orlandersmith, Forever After the show, we invite you to post a message in the lobby in honor of someone who has passed on that helped shape your life. Tell us what you think of the show! Find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

11 CAST AND CREATIVE TEAM BIOGRAPHIES Dael Orlandersmith Writer and Performer Dael Orlandersmith is a playwright, poet, actor, teacher and Pulitzer Prize nominee. She debuted Forever at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Los Angeles (Center Theatre Group commission), followed by a run at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven and an Off-Broadway premiere at New York Theatre Workshop. Orlandersmith s plays include Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men (co-produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Goodman Theatre); Horsedreams (developed at New Dramatists and New York Stage and Film Company; Off- Broadway premiere at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater); Bones (commissioned and produced by Mark Taper Forum); Suicide Girlz (commissioned by Atlantic Theater Company); Stoop Stories (developed at The Public Theater s Under the Radar Festival and Apollo Theater s Salon Series; premiered at the Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C.); The Blue Album (a collaboration with David Cale; premiered at Long Wharf Theatre); Yellowman (commissioned and co-produced by The Wilma Theater and Long Wharf Theatre; premiered at McCarter Theatre; Off-Broadway premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club); The Gimmick (commissioned by McCarter Theatre and premiered on its Second Stage on Stage; Off-Broadway premiere directed by Portland Center Stage s Artistic Director Chris Coleman for New York Theatre Workshop); Beauty s Daughter (Off-Broadway premiere at American Place Theatre); and Monster (originally at New York Theatre Workshop). Yellowman and a collection of her earlier works have been

12 published by Vintage Books and Dramatists Play Service. Orlandersmith was nominated for the 2015 Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Solo Performance in Forever. With Yellowman, she received a Pulitzer Prize nomination, Drama Desk Award nominations for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Actress in a Play, and a Susan Smith Blackburn Award. For Beauty s Daughter, she received an Obie Award and was a Susan Smith Blackburn Award finalist. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, the Helen Merrill Award for Emerging Playwrights, a Guggenheim, a PEN/Laura Pels Foundation Award, a Lucille Lortel Foundation Playwrights Fellowship and a Whiting Award. She has toured extensively with the Nuyorican Poets Café (Real Live Poetry) throughout the United States, Europe and Australia. As a teacher, she has worked at Princeton University (artist in residence, 2009), Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College, among others. Her current projects include a one-woman play about a Danish girl s life-changing encounter with Billie Holiday, a young adult script about surviving adolescence and, for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, a play about the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. Neel Keller Director Neel is happy to be back at Portland Center Stage, where he previously directed The Cripple of Inishmaan, The Santaland Diaries and A Christmas Memory. In the fall of 2014, he directed the world premiere production of Forever, which comes to PCS after successful runs in Los Angeles, New Haven and New York. Other recent directing credits include the world premieres of Jennifer Haley s The Nether and Kimber Lee s different words for the same thing. Later this year, he will be

13 directing Sheila Callaghan s Women Laughing Alone with Salad and the premieres of Julia Cho s Office Hour and Lucy Alibar s Throw Me On the Burnpile and Light Me Up. Neel lives in Los Angeles where he is an associate artistic director of Center Theatre Group. He has also directed at Long Wharf Theatre, New York Theater Workshop, La Jolla Playhouse, Remains Theatre and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Neel first saw Dael Orlandersmith perform her dazzling poetry almost 30 years ago. Not long thereafter, they worked together on a production of Romeo and Juliet staged in a prickly New England meadow. He is surprised and happy that she still speaks to him. Takeshi Kata Scenic Designer New York: Forever (New York Theatre Workshop), 3 Kinds of Exile, Through a Glass Darkly, Storefront Church, The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Atlantic Theater Company), Adding Machine (Minetta Lane), Orson s Shadow (Barrow Street Theatre), Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. Regional: Alley Theatre, American Players Theatre, Ford s Theatre, Geffen Playhouse, Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, The Old Globe, Resident Ensemble Players, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Yale Repertory Theatre. Obie Award. Drama Desk, Ovation and Barrymore Award nominations. Kata is an assistant professor at University of Southern California, School of Dramatic Arts.

14 Kaye Voyce Costume Designer Kaye Voyce is a designer for theater, opera, dance and performance, based in New York City. She previously worked with Ms. Orlandersmith on her play Horsedreams. Other recent credits include The Real Thing and The Realistic Joneses on Broadway; The Mystery of Love and Sex at Lincoln Center Theater; Il Turco in Italia at the Festival d'aix-en-provence, Teatro Regio di Torino and Opera de Dijon; writer/director Richard Maxwell's The Evening Part 1 at Walker Arts Center, On the Boards and the Warhol Museum; The Evening Part 2 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Buenos Aires; and Toss and Rogues, the choreographer Trisha Brown's final works. Mary Louise Geiger Lighting Designer PCS: The Cripple of Inishmaan, Red, From the Mississippi Delta, Absurd Person Singular, For Colored Girls New York Theater Workshop: Oedipus at Palm Springs, Architecture of Loss. Broadway: The Constant Wife (American Airlines Theatre). New York: Bauer (59E59 Theaters); My Mother has 4 Noses (The Duke); Killing of Sister George, Natural Affection, Beyond Therapy (TACT, Beckett Theatre); This Bitter Earth, Les Carillons (NYCB Theatre at Westbury); Good Television, The New York Idea (Atlantic Theatre Company); Kindness, The Blue Door, The Busy World is Hushed (Playwrights Horizons); The Morini Strad, Olive and the Bitter Herbs (Primary Stages); Mabou Mines Dollhouse, Red Beads (Mabou Mines); Violet Fire (BAM Next Wave Festival, National Theatre, Belgrade). Regional: Center Theatre Group (Forever, The Goat, Nickel and Dimed, Tongue of a Bird), Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT

15 Theatre, The 5 th Avenue Theatre. Awards: Helen Hayes, IRNE, NYSCA. Training: Yale School of Drama. Faculty: NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Adam Phalen Sound Designer Select shows include: Other Desert Cities and Marjorie Prime (Mark Taper Forum); The New Electric Ballroom and The Word Begins (Rogue Machine Theatre); 9 Circles (LADCC nominee, Best Sound Design, Bootleg Theater); Against Oblivion (South Coast Repertory); St. Jude, Facing Our Truth, Titus Redux, The Paris Letter, Flight (NAACP Award, Best Sound Design), Gaytino!, Taking Flight, Of Equal Measure, Taking Over, Eclipsed and Bones (Kirk Douglas Theatre). Phalen is the resident sound designer for the Ojai Playwrights Conference and head audio at Center Theatre Group's Kirk Douglas Theatre. Joy Meads Dramaturg Joy Meads is literary manager/artistic engagement strategist at Center Theatre Group. At CTG, dramaturgy credits include Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison (2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist), A Parallelogram by Bruce Norris, The Royale by Marco Ramirez, and Radiate by Daniel Alexander Jones. Previously, Joy was literary manager at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and associate artistic director at California Shakespeare Theater. Joy has also developed plays with New York Theatre Workshop, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Denver Center Theatre Company, O'Neill Theater Center, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Portland Center Stage, South Coast

16 Rep and Campo Santo, among others. Joy is a proud member and co-founder of The Kilroys ( Kelsey Daye Lutz Stage Manager PCS credits include: stage manager for The Santaland Diaries, The Lion, The People s Republic of Portland (second engagement), Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Typographer s Dream, The Last Five Years and A Small Fire; production assistant for Clybourne Park, Venus in Fur, A Midsummer Night s Dream, The North Plan and Anna Karenina. Kelsey Daye is a graduate of University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She would like to thank her pups for all their unconditional love, and Shamus for being wonderful. Kristen Mun Production Assistant Kristen Mun is originally from Hawaii and graduated from Southern Oregon University with a B.F.A. in Stage Management. This is her third season at Portland Center Stage, where previous credits include: production assistant on The Santaland Diaries, Three Days of Rain, Threesome, Lizzie, and 2nd production assistant on Fiddler on the Roof. Outside of Portland, she has worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Repertory Theatre and Actors Theatre of Louisville. In Portland, she has worked as a production assistant and stage manager with other theater companies, such as Artists Repertory Theatre (And So It Goes, Red Herring), Oregon Children s Theatre (A Year With Frog and Toad, Charlotte s Web, Ivy and Bean, Junie B. Jones) and Broadway Rose Theatre Company

17 (Oklahoma!). Outside of stage managing, Kristen is also a fight choreographer and stage combat teacher. ARTISTIC DIRECTOR CHRIS COLEMAN Chris joined Portland Center Stage as artistic director in May, Most recently, he directed the Off-Broadway debut of Threesome at 59E59 Theaters (a production that had its world premiere at PCS and was also presented at ACT-Seattle). Before coming to Portland, Chris was artistic director at Actor s Express in Atlanta, a company he co-founded in the basement of an old church in Chris recently returned to Atlanta to direct the world premiere of Edward Foote at Alliance Theatre. He also directed Phylicia Rashad and Kenny Leon in Same Time Next Year at True Colors Theatre Company in Atlanta, in Favorite PCS directing assignments include Ain t Misbehavin, Three Days of Rain, Threesome, Dreamgirls, Othello, Fiddler on the Roof, Clybourne Park, Sweeney Todd, Shakespeare s Amazing Cymbeline (which he also adapted), Anna Karenina, Oklahoma!, Snow Falling on Cedars, Ragtime, Crazy Enough, Beard of Avon, Cabaret, King Lear, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Man and Superman, Outrage, Flesh and Blood and The Devils. Chris has directed at theaters across the country, including Actor s Theater of Louisville, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, ACT- Seattle, The Alliance, Dallas Theatre Center, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop and Center Stage in

18 Baltimore. A native Atlantan, Chris holds a B.F.A. from Baylor University and an M.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon. He is currently the board president for the Cultural Advocacy Coalition. Chris and his husband, Rodney, are the proud parents of an 18-lb Jack Russell/Lab mix, and a 110-lb English Blockhead Yellow Lab. SPONSOR STATEMENTS The Boeing Company The communities where our employees live and work have enabled The Boeing Company to become a global leader in aerospace. Giving back to these communities is important to our employees and a core value of our company. Boeing invests in the performing and visual arts because they fuel a community s economic engine, help produce a creative and disciplined workforce, and nurture the imagination and self-reflection required to solve complex personal and community issues. Art seeks to discover and present a new way of seeing the world, whether the world of ideas or the physical world. The Boeing Company is proud to support this production of Forever by Portland Center Stage. Diana Gerding It is an honor and a privilege to help sponsor the work of an extraordinary and thoughtful artist, Dael Orlandersmith. We are fortunate to be able to have her back once again in Portland, with this performance of her play, Forever.

19 Ronni Lacroute It is an honor to sponsor a powerful piece of very personal, intimate theater focusing on family. A solo show about an artist s own life is a very daring public exploration of self which can be a deeply moving experience for the audience. We learn more about ourselves by hearing such stories about the people and events that shaped another person. Lead Corporate Champion Umpqua Bank Actors take chances. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. But none of these actors would be on stage tonight without taking chances. It's part of growth, and we're all made to grow. That's why we're such a proud supporter of Portland Center Stage. Let this performance inspire you to take the chances that power your own growth.

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