presents Study Guide 1 Student Evaluation 13 Bonus: An Interview with Alan Jay Lerner 14

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1 presents Study Guide CONTENTS Cast and Crew 2 Preparing for Your Visit 3 Oo s Oo (Who s Who) in My Fair Lady 4 The Curious Evolution of My Fair Lady 5 LAFS.910.RL.3.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work. LAFS.1112.RL.3.9: Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics. My Fair Lady and Social Class 7 SS.912.H.1.2: Describe how historical events, social context, and culture impact forms, techniques, and purposes of works in the arts, including the relationship between a government and its citizens. SS.912.S.3.1: Describe how social status affects social order. SS.912.S.4.2: Identify major characteristics of social groups familiar to the students. SS.912.S.4.8: Explain how students are members of primary and secondary groups and how those group memberships influence students behavior. LAFS.910.SL.1.1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grades 9 10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively. Class Comedy in My Fair Lady 8 SS.912.H.1.5: Examine artistic response to social issues and new ideas in various cultures. SS.912.S.2.7: Explain how various practices of the culture create differences within group behavior. SS.912.S.2.5: Compare social norms among various subcultures. My Fair Lady and the Edwardian Era 9 SS.912.W.6.2: Summarize the social and economic effects of the Industrial Revolution. My Fair Lady and Identity 10 SS.912.S.3.2: Explain how roles and role expectations can lead to role conflict. LAFS.910.W.1.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences. An Interview with the Director 11 Teacher Evaluation 1 12 Student Evaluation 13 Bonus: An Interview with Alan Jay Lerner 14

2 Cast and Crew Eliza Doolittle Professor Higgins Pickering Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill & Others Alfred Doolittle & Others Mrs. Higgins & Others Freddy Eynsford-Hill & Others Karpathy & Others Ensemble Ensemble Patricia Noonan* Jeffrey Binder* William Parry* Maureen Silliman* Bill E. Dietrich* Cathy Newman* Sean Seymour* Jeremiah Ginn* Kevin Patrick Martin* Julia Johanos* SCENIC DESIGNER COSTUME DESIGNER LIGHTING DESIGNER DAVID L. ARSENAULT** LAUREN GASTON JIMMY LAWLOR** PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER MALLORY HEWELL* DIRECTED BY KRISTEN COURY MUSIC DIRECTED BY MATT AUMENT (*) Denotes Actor or Stage Manager appears courtesy of Actors Equity Association (**) Denotes member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829 (***) Denotes member of SDC (Stage Directors & Choreographers Society) Gulfshore Playhouse set rendering by Scenic Designer David L. Arsenault. Note the forced perspective, which gives depth to the stage, and the arches, which call in mind Covent Garden, where much of the play is set. 2

3 PREPARING FOR YOUR VISIT TO THE THEATRE BEFORE Do the activities in the Study Guide with your students. If you can, watch the movie (or excerpts from the movie.) THE DAY OF THE TRIP Have students bring their lunch (they can eat it during the 15-minute intermission) and a sweater or sweatshirt it can get chilly in the theatre. They can also bring pocket money if they d like to buy snacks or a t-shirt. Arrive 20 minutes before the performance. That way we ll have a chance to seat your group and students will have a chance to settle in for the show! Audrey Hepburn in the film My Fair Lady. THEATRE ETIQUETTE Students are expected to be attentive and respectful during performances. No cell phone use is allowed in the theatre while a show is going on. Any cell phones will be confiscated and returned to students at the end of the performance. Students may leave the theatre at any time to use the bathroom, but no talking is allowed while a performance is going on. Students must take out any trash they bring in. Students may not put their feet on the chairs in front of them. No flash photography or recording is permitted. AFTER THE TRIP Please fill out teacher and student evaluations and send them to us. Your feedback shapes our programming and we are eager to hear about your experience and about other programming you d like to see. Thank you! 3

4 Many thanks to The Shaw Festival for lending us their wonderful character description page! 4

5 THE CURIOUS EVOLUTION of MY FAIR LADY FROM GREEK MYTHOLOGY... OVID'S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK X, 8 AD The Roman poet Ovid wrote a tale of a sculptor named Pygmalion, who carved his dream woman from ivory. He fell in love with his creation, giving it clothing and jewelry and naming her Galatea. One day he visited the temple of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) to pray for a wife just like his beloved statue. The goddess visited Pygmalion's home and saw the statue bore her own resemblance, so she granted life to Galatea. When Pygmalion returned home, his statue was a live woman. They married and lived happily ever after and had a daughter Paphos, for whom a city on the island of Cyprus is named. Courtesy of Dawn Denmar... TO PRE- WORLD WAR I COMEDY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW S PYGMALION, 1912 Playwright George Bernard Shaw took the tale of Pygmalion and set it in Edwardian England, introducing the world to stalwart flower girl Eliza Doolittle, arrogant professor Henry Higgins, peacemaker Colonel Pickering, and a host of other characters. Pygmalion is a commentary on the British class system and raises three universal questions: what elements create our place in the world, is it ever possible to break out of our circumstances, and does love transcend class and social boundary?... TO BROADWAY MUSICAL ALAN LERNER AND FREDERICK LOEWE S MY FAIR LADY, 1956 Perhaps the most popular musical of the 1950s, My Fair Lady came into being only after Hungarian film producer Gabriel Pascal devoted the last two years of his life to finding writers who would adapt George Bernard Shaw's 1914 play Pygmalion into a musical. Rejected by the likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Noël Coward, Pascal finally turned to the younger but very talented duo of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner. My Fair Lady opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on March 15, 1956, topping the charts on US Billboard 200 and enjoying a run of 2,717 performances which lasted more than nine years. The original production featured Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza. The show took its title from the nursery rhyme London Bridge Is Falling Down.... TO HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MY FAIR LADY, 1964 The 1964 film version starred Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway and Audrey Hepburn. Neither Harrison nor Hepburn were classic musical theatre singers. Harrison said that he could not speak-sing consistently enough to dub his voice, and as a result, he was the first actor ever to wear a wireless mic in a film. The sound designers won an Academy Award. Hepburn s singing was not approved by the studio and her songs were dubbed by Marni Nixon (the voice of many Hollywood heroines including Maria in West Side Story.) The film was a runaway success, winning eight Academy Awards. 5

6 MY FAIR LADY AND SociaL CLASS Julie Andrews in the original Broadway production. To a generation of students raised on Disney films, George Bernard Shaw s Pygmalion is a familiar story: Eliza Doolittle is Cinderella, a beautiful working girl turned princess by fairy godmother Henry Higgins. And indeed, Eliza is surrounded by beautiful ball gowns, horse-drawn carriages, and a handsome young admirer. Yet perhaps it is Pinocchio that is a more accurate comparison. For just as Gepetto creates his puppet and then loses control of his naughty son, so Henry Higgins turns a flower girl into a lady only to discover she has a will of her own. Beyond its fairy tale aspects, Pygmalion is a social commentary on the systems of education and class in Victorian England. And most interesting to Shaw himself is the drama s treatment of language, its power, and the preconceptions attached to it by society. JEANNE M. MCGLINN, Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Asheville and W. GEIGER ELLIS, Ed.D., University of Georgia, Professor Emeritus CLASS DISCUSSION My Fair Lady is largely about how what we wear and the way we talk defines who we are. What are some examples of how you define yourself or others based on speech and clothing? Do you believe that there s a class system in America? If so, in what ways does it manifest? Is it possible to move from one social class to another? How? Do you believe it s possible to become a different human being by changing your speech, clothing, and/or manner? Is there a compressed class system at school? How would you describe it? WRITING Describe a time in which you identified that you were from a different social class than someone else. It doesn t have to be someone you know it could be someone you saw on the bus or at a store. Describe a time in which you found yourself in an environment that felt foreign to you. 6

7 CLASS COMEDY IN MY FAIR LADY Two of the main characters in My Fair Lady are polar opposites: the rigidly correct Professor Higgins, who decides to train Eliza to be a lady, and Eliza s drunken father, dustman Alfred Doolittle. Read these lyrics from Higgins first song Why Can t the English? and listen to it if you can: Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter, Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered. By law she should be taken out and hung, For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue... Why can't the English teach their children how to speak? This verbal class distinction, by now, Should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir, Instead of the way you do, Why, you might be selling flowers, too! When Eliza s father Doolittle meets Higgins, he gives a speech from the opposite perspective: What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: 'You're undeserving; so you can't have it.' But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS How would you describe these characters based on these excerpts? What are their qualities and their attitudes towards life? How old do you suppose they are? Read both excerpts out loud. How is the speech pattern different? Both the song and the monologue make fun of the attitudes of the rich and poor. How? Stanley Holloway as Doolittle, with Gordon Dilworth and Rod McLennan, in the original Broadway production 7

8 MY FAIR LADY AND THE EDWARDIAN ERA POWER Britain led the world in trade, finance, and shipping, and for the rich, it was a time of leisure and opulence. MACHINES The Industrial Revolution brought many machines and other innovations that made peoples lives, if not easier, more efficient. There was a passion for the newest, latest gadget. Music was recorded and played on wax cylinders used on phonographs, which is how Professor Higgins records and plays Eliza s voice in My Fair Lady. WOMEN S PLACE IN THE WORLD Due to the expanded professions of teaching and nursing and more available education, women s status in society began to change rapidly. The suffragette movement (women s right to vote) was in full force, though women were not granted the right to vote until FASHION The Edwardian era was the last time women wore corsets. It introduced tea dresses made of soft fabric and worn at home. Men wore tailored suits very similar to what they wear today. ASCOT Horse racing was a favored pastime of the upper class and Ascot was the place to be seen. This is still true today! Ascot then and now. 8

9 MY FAIR LADY AND IDENTITY Just before Professor Higgins takes Eliza to the Embassy Ball to see if she can pass as an upper class lady, he says to Pickering, What could possibly matter more than to take a human being and change her into a different human being by creating a new speech for her? It's filling up the deepest gap that separates class from class and soul from soul. CLASS DISCUSSION Do you believe that the way we talk is what most distinguishes and separates us from each other? Why or why not? Is it possible to change yourself or another person into a different human being by transforming appearance and behavior? What is your opinion of Professor Higgins project of taking Eliza into his house and teaching her how to look and act like an upper class lady? WRITING Describe a time in which you wanted to transform and maybe did. Describe a time in which you witnessed someone try to break out of their circumstances. Costume Designer Lauren Gaston s renderings of Eliza s dresses for the Gulfshore Playhouse production. 9

10 AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR Kristen Coury is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Gulfshore Playhouse. Hailing from New York City, Kristen and her then-husband drove through Naples accidentally and immediately decided to sell their apartment in NYC and become permanent Naples residents. Determining there was a niche to fill in this arts-loving town, Kristen proceeded to found Gulfshore Playhouse upon arrival in 2004 and never looked back. Carefully and quickly she brought the Playhouse from a staff of one (herself) and a budget of zero, to a staff of 25 and an annual budget of nearly $2.5M with no debt. She has directed many of the Playhouse productions to date, of which her favorites include: Jacob Marley s Christmas Carol, All My Sons, Tartuffe, A Streetcar Named Desire, Art, A View from the Bridge, Blithe Spiritand The Glass Menagerie. Kristen made her feature film directorial debut with Friends and Family, a comedy starring Tony Lo Bianco, Anna Maria Alberghetti, and Tovah Feldshuh, which was released around the US and Europe. Kristen has directed several new works, produced a CD and worked on a variety of musicals in various stages of development, including Steel Pier on Broadway, a Broadway workshop of The Jazz Singer and Houdini at the Goodspeed Opera House What inspired you to direct My Fair Lady? We haven't done a full-scale musical in a long time, and when we heard about the 2-piano 10- person version, it seemed perfect for our stage. As we step back into the world of making musicals I absolutely wanted to helm this exciting, fun and well-loved classic. I looked forward to working with an incredible team which includes our Artistic Associate, Broadway veteran Jeffrey Binder as Henry Higgins, as well as Choreographer Adam Cates. I am thrilled with our progress so far and look forward to bringing all of Edwardian London onto our stage. What do you find most challenging and most exciting about the process? Since it's a ten person musical based on a classic play about how our dialect defines us, each actor we cast had to be a quadruple threat - meaning they had to be able to bring depth to the text, most of which is the original Shaw, as well as sing AND dance, and be great with dialects (Cockney and upper-class British) since most of them are playing more than one character. The show takes place in Edwardian London and is largely about the British class system. In what ways do you feel that it's meaningful to a modern American audience? For me, it's about so much more than just a class system. I think it's about the potential each one of us has inside, and that we only need opportunity to knock before we are able to put all our talents and gifts into play and shine! I also think it's so much about our common humanity. We all have dreams inside of us, and so often we may lack the path forward due to race, socioeconomic level, or gender. This play shows us that it is possible to achieve our dreams with gumption, pluck, and a little bit of luck 10

11 TEACHER EVALUATION Your evaluations help us shape our programming. Please send teacher and student evaluations to: Gulfshore Playhouse Education th Avenue South Suite 205 Naples, Florida the quality of the show your experience of being at the theatre the educational enrichment for your students our communication with you the time of day/ year GREAT GOOD FAIR POOR What kind of programming would you like to bring your students to see at the theatre? What did you feel was most valuable about this experience? Do you have any feedback for us about how to improve the experience? Any further comments? Thank you!!! 11

12 STUDENT EVALUATION Your evaluations help us shape our programming. Please send evaluations to: Gulfshore Playhouse Education th Avenue South Suite 205 Naples, Florida the singing the acting the dancing the set and costumes being at the theatre GREAT GOOD FAIR POOR What was your favorite part of the show? What kind of shows would you like to see at the theatre? Anything else you d like us to know? Thank you!!! 12

13 FURTHER READING: AN INTERVIEW WITH BOOKWRITER & LYRICIST ALAn jay lerner 1963 CREATION OF A LADY Copyright 1963 Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc. Lyrics copyright 1956 by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It seemed to me, when I graduated from college, that everything that could be said in lyrics had been said. If you were witty, how could you be wittier than Larry Hart? If you were romantic, how could you be more romantic than Oscar Hammerstein? We start off, in any art form, eclectic; but it s an acute problem how to find an individuality. I ve been writing lyrics, professionally, since It s only within the last few years that I have begun to feel for myself, that I ve come close to finding something that s pretty much my own. It isn t Hammerstein. It isn t Hart. It isn t Porter; it s my own particular vernacular, and the first song in MY FAIR LADY, Why Can t The English, I think, illustrates what I mean. The first ten minutes of any musical offering should dictate the style of the entire evening: on what level the work is to be accepted critically and emotionally. Loewe and I wanted Professor Henry Higgins to be the first one to sing. We decided he should not be a singer; he should be an actor who sort of spoke some songs. We wanted the audience to know at the beginning of the evening, before they had heard anybody else this was what they were in for. Higgins was going to sing, and the question was what. There was no situation, so obviously it was to be a character song; it would concern itself with the cornerstones of his personality, his frustrations, his intense interest in the English language. How do you write a comic song of that nature, which is to be spoken, and not have it sound like Coward or Gilbert? We wrote several versions until we finally discovered a key. We didn t write the song first; it was written much later, the result of having solved another problem. We found that if we could write each comedy song based on some emotion either frustration or anger or disappointment or bitterness on a definite emotion, we could escape from a humor that came from clever rhymes or from the author s intrusion of himself. It would come out of the antic of the character. Look at her a pris ner of the gutters; Condemned by ev ry syllable she utters. By right she should be taken out and hung For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue! 13

14 I can only speak of the second song, Wouldn t It Be Loverly, with pain because it was obvious that the leading lady was there, and she must have a song to establish her. (In a musical play, even with the dialogue of Bernard Shaw, nothing established a character as much as a song.) My great frustration was that I couldn t find a climax for the song without going into someone s head resting on a knee, and there I was back in Over The Rainbow and The Man I Love. I went seven weeks trying to find a solution for it. Finally, I couldn t find a creature comfort that was as climactic as someone s head resting on a knee. So the lyric stayed. Someone s head restin on my knee, Warm and tender as he can be, Who takes good care of me Oh, wouldn t it be loverly? Loverly! Loverly! Loverly! Loverly! Every time I hear it, my skin turns a little crabby. The next song of the play, I think, is a good example of the inter-relationship between composer and lyricist. No lyric writer can ever realize himself or his talents alone; I don t think it s possible for a lyric writer to ever reach his full expression without continuing collaboration with a composer. The knowledge of how a composer thinks and how he creates and how he feels about work is simply of incalculable influence upon a lyric writer and upon his ideas. With A Little Bit Of Luck was the introduction of the father, Doolittle, and we wanted a character song to establish him. The Lord above made liquor for temptation, To see if man could turn away from sin. The Lord above made liquor for temptation but With a little bit of luck, With a little bit of luck, When temptation comes you ll give right in! We decided the type was to be an English music hall song. The reason is indicative of what I mean by knowing the abilities and inclinations of a composer: Loewe does not write jazz. He s Viennese by birth and is more at home in tempo than rhythm. The song, Just You Wait, wherein Eliza Doolittle gives vent to her hatred and anger of Higgins, was the song that told us how to write the show. Just you wait, enry iggins, just you wait! You ll be sorry but your tears ll be too late! You ll be broke and I ll have money! 14

15 Will I help you? Don t be funny! Just you wait, enry iggins, just you wait! We had written eight songs before we wrote that one, and none of them seemed right. It was after writing Just You Wait that we threw out all the others and started over, because it was there that we suddenly saw the value, the whole kind of freshness that seemed to nail down an emotional attitude, an emotional point of view. I don t know how to talk about The Rain In Spain because we had no idea what its effect would be. We wrote it in about ten minutes. We re very slow workers; I don t know what happened. I said one day, We d better write something where they scream with joy about the Rain in Spain. Fritz sat down and wrote it in a very few minutes. By George, she s got it! By George, she s got it! Now once again, where does it rain? We thought it would be amusing if Higgins did a little Spanish fandango and that was the end of it. I think it s quite obvious to any student that it s not a great piece of music, nor a great lyric. It s just a pure, simple piece of business that seems to come out of Eliza s longing. Certainly it s nothing anybody should examine twice. I Could Have Danced All Night was the unsolvable problem; the reasons were manifold. One was a dramatic one. It was impossible for Higgins to love Eliza, for them to admit to themselves that they felt anything emotional about each other. At the same time, you have to have a ballad in a musical, and it seemed like the place for it; but every song we wrote we wrote seven said too much. Somehow they seemed to indicate that Eliza was in love with Higgins or that she felt something for him. Finally, we were only able to write the song when we were near the end of the whole work itself and we had written I ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face. We said, There s the ballad. We don t have to worry about a ballad. We ll just go back and write a happy song. I could have danced all night! I could have danced all night! And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings And done a thousand things I ve never done before. Writing happy songs is the thing I care least about doing. I m embarrassed by that lyric. Although I think the first half of it is very good, it s not something I m proud of; it s not a lyric I enjoy listening to in the theatre. I said to Loewe, Can t we make it look a little more interesting? We ll put the servants in and give it some kind of life other than a girl being ecstatically happy. The last song, I ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face is my favorite. Years ago, Maxwell Anderson wrote a book called Off Broadway; and for those students interested in writing for the musical theatre, I certainly recommend it. He discusses what he calls the recognition scene, 15

16 that scene wherein the hero or heroine recognizes the nature of his problem, be it external or internal, and either conquers it or is conquered by it. We felt that Higgins must have a recognition scene in which he recognizes the nature of his problem, albeit obliquely and slightly astigmatically. Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn! I ve grown accustomed to her face! She almost makes the day begin. I ve grown accustomed to the tune She whistles night and noon. Her smiles. Her frowns. Her ups, her downs, Are second nature to me now; Like breathing out and breathing in. I was serenely independent and content before we met; Surely I could always be that way again and yet I ve grown accustomed to her looks; Accustomed to her voice: Accustomed to her face. The only difference is he neither conquers it nor is conquered by it. Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers? There are tears in Eliza s eyes. She too understands. --Alan Jay Lerner, 1963 DON T MISS OUR NEXT STUDENT MATINEE PERFORMANCES! THURSDAY MARCH 30 at 10:00AM THURSDAY MAY 18 at 10:00AM 16