The Drama Desk, Lortel and Obie Award-winning Mint Theater Company is pleased to announce two new EnrichMINT Events, an exciting series of post and pre-show discussions which will continue throughout the Mint's current engagement of Maurine Dallas Watkins' So Help Me God! starring Kristen Johnston and Anna Chlumsky.
The new additions to the Enrichmint Events Series are:
Sunday, December 6th after the matinee
"Her Legacy Remembered:
American Women Writing for the Stage in the Early Twentieth Century"
Susan Jonas
This discussion will examine Maurine Dallas Watkins' legacy as an American woman playwright in the early twentieth century in the context of such contemporaries as Susan Glaspell, Rachel Crothers, Sophie Treadwell, Edna Ferber, Angelina Grimke, and Georgia Douglas Johnson. What made it possible for women to penetrate the male-dominated world of playwriting in America? What did these women bring to American theatre that was original, despite or because of their gender -- and race? How did these playwrights fare in their time? Why is their work forgotten today, and what should we remember?
Susan Jonas has extensive experience in theatre as an administrator, dramaturg, producer, director, scholar, and educator. During her decade as Art Analyst with the Theatre Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, she developed numerous field-wide initiatives, including a three-year national study which culminated in "The Report on the Status of Women in Theatre," co-authored with Suzanne Bennett. She currently teaches at New York University. Dr. Jonas is a graduate of Princeton University and earned her doctorate in Dramaturgy at the Yale School of Drama. She is the co-founder of "50/50 in 2020," a grassroots advocacy enterprise which has set the goal of parity for women in theatre to be achieved by the 100th anniversary of American suffrage.
Saturday, December 12th after the matinee
"Sacred Monsters / Profane Dames:
Theater's Love Affair with Difficult Women"
Catherine Sheehy
From So Help Me God!'s Lily Darnley created by Maurine Dallas Watkins to her sister-in-Terpsichore-and-temperament Lily Garland of Twentieth Century created by Hecht and MacArthur just five years later and on to Margo Channing, Helen Lawson, Neely O'Hara, and even Bullets Over Broadway's Helen Sinclair, audiences simply dote on those over-the-top dramatic divas who drive lovers to distraction and directors to drink. What is our fascination with these women behaving badly?
Catherine Sheehy is Resident Dramaturg of Yale Repertory Theatre and chair of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at Yale School of Drama. She teaches seminars in American Stage and Screen Comedy, Restoration and 18th-Century British Comedy, Comic Theory, the Collaborative Process, Models of Dramaturgy, and Satire. She is also a former associate editor of American Theatre and a former managing editor of Theater Magazine. She received her doctorate from Yale for her dissertation "If You Care to Blast for It: Excavating the Lost Comic Masterpieces of the American Canon."
The Mint Theater Company's second offering of the season, So Help Me God! by Maurine Dallas Watkins (the author of Chicago, the play upon which the musical is based), is directed by Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank. Performances began November 18th and opening night is set for December 7th at the Lucille Lortel Theater (121 Christopher Street). Kristen Johnston, two-time Emmy Award winner for her performance in "3rd Rock from the Sun," performs the role of Lily, a fabulous dramatic diva who must fend off a challenge from her ambitious but naïve understudy, played by Anna Chlumsky (My Girl films). Watkins' play was written 20 years before All About Eve.
The cast includes, in addition to Ms. Johnston and Ms. Chlumsky, Brad Bellamy, Catherine Curtin, Amy Fitts, Jeremy Lawrence, Ned Noyes, Kevin O'Donnell, John G. Preston, Allen Lewis Rickman, Kraig Swartz, Peter Van Wagner, Matthew Waterson, Margot White, and John Windsor-Cunningham. Scenic design is by Bill Clarke, with costume design by Clint Ramos, lighting design by Robert Wierzel, and sound design by Jane Shaw.
This past June, the Mint presented a one-night reading of So Help Me God! starring two-time Emmy Award-winner Kristen Johnston, which demonstrated that this lost work deserved a full production. Ms. Johnston reprises her role as Lily Darnley, "the star to whom all wagons are hitched," as the author describes her.
For this one production Mint has ventured out of the West 43rd St. space that has been its home for more than 15 years, to the Lucille Lortel Theater in Greenwich Village, which has a larger stage and twIce The seating capacity. Bank says, "With its rich history and wonderful theatrical atmosphere the Lucille Lortel Theater is the perfect setting for this play about a classic (not classy) Broadway diva."
Kristen Johnston has appeared on and off-Broadway in The Women, Aunt Dan and Lemon and The Skin of Our Teeth. Anna Chlumsky's NY stage credits include Unconditional (LAByrinth Theater Company), and The Fabulous Life of a Size Zero (DR2), among others. Her films include In The Loop, Blood Car, My Girl 1 & 2, as well as the upcoming My Sweet Misery and Eavesdrop.
Mint Theater Company, "that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past" (Village Voice), has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected gems and has brought new vitality to timeless but timely plays since 1992. The Mint was awarded an Obie for "combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition." Mint was awarded a special Drama Desk Award for "unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit."
The Lucille Lortel Theater is located at 121 Christopher Street. Performances for So Help Me God! are Tuesday through Thursday at 7 PM, Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 2 PM & 8 PM, and Sunday at 2 PM. Tickets are $55. To purchase tickets, visit TicketCentral.com or call 212/279-4200.
Visit www.minttheater.org.
