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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE

CRIMES OF THE HEART


By Beth Henley

Directed by Sharon Ammen


OPENS FRIDAY, JULY 1st


Now considered a classic in “southern Gothic” style, Pulitzer-Prize-winning play Crimes of the Heart explores the dysfunctional lives of the McGrath sisters with affection and a penetrating sense of humor.  Directed by Sharon Ammen, remembered for her Mystery of Irma Vep and her own adaptation of Velveteen Rabbit in former CRT seasons, this Beth Henley masterpiece examines the close connection between laughter and tears, heartache and joy and the strength of family ties that endure even through the most difficult hardships.

Design Team Director ..............................................................................................................................Sharon Ammen Assisstant Director ............................................................................................................. Brandon Wentz Scenic Designer ................................................................................................................Dana M. Harrell Scenic Artist .......................................................................................................................Elizabeth Goble Costume Designer ................................................................................................................. Clair Hummel Lighting Designer ........................................................................................................... Porsche McGovern Sound Designer ........................................................................................................................ Jeff O’Brien Property Designer ...................................................................................................Rachelle Martin Wilburn THE CAST Lenny Magrath .............................................................................................................. Carolyn Conover Chick Boyle ...................................................................................................................Ashley Dillard Doc Porter........................................................................................................................ Brandon Wentz Meg Magrath ................................................................................................................... Jennifer McVey Babe Botrelle ..................................................................................................................Amanda Miller Barnette Lloyd ....................................................................................................................................Andrew Todd Place Kitchen of the Magrath sisters’ house in Hazelhurst, Mississippi. Time Late October, 1974 There will be one 15 minute intermission. This production is sponsored by Diann and Craig McKee. Join us on July 17 around 6:30 p.m. (ten minutes following the 4:00 p.m. Sunday matinee) for a Sunday Talk with Irma Davis, a counselor with FSA Counseling and Behavioral Health in Terre Haute, who will join us to discuss fascinating and ever-changing dynamics of sibling relationships. *Actors’ Equity Association member. Crimes of the Heart is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Services Inc., New York. Originally produced by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Inc, in February 1979. Crimes of the Heart received its New York Premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1980. Produced on the Broadway Stage by Warner Theatre Productions, Inc./ Claire Nichtern, Mary Lea Johnson, Martin Richards, Francine Lefrak. Production Staff Stage Manager ........................................................................................................................ Kevin Ward Assistant Stage Manager ..........................................................................................................Ian Marshall Lighting Board Operator .......................................................................................................... Andrew Law Sound Operator ....................................................................................................................Eli Van Sickel Wardrobe Head ................................................................................................................... Aaron Owens Dressers ......................................................................................................Clara Butts, Preston Dildine Run Crew .................................................................................................... Charles Adams, Brian Kogut House Manager ............................................................................................................................... Eric Wilburn Beth Henley Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1952, Beth Henley has spent over thirty years preserving the grace and mystique of the American South through her heart-felt stories. Creating characters that maintain a balance of eccentricity and simple humanity, Henley is a master of the human condition, and it is no doubt her long history in the theater and her expert understanding of classical dramatic construction that have shaped her success as a playwright. Henley grew up in the theater, watching her mother build an impressive repertoire as a staple member of the Jackson Community Theater. Beth loved to attend rehearsals and work through scripts with her mother. Her background in the theater brought her to Southern Methodist University, where she and classmates, Kathy Bates, Powers Booth, and Judith Ivy formed a powerful and successful graduating class for SMU’s Theater Department. From here, Henley went on to write over a dozen full-length plays. Her most popular play, Crimes of the Heart, was first produced at the Actor’s Theater of Louisville in 1978 and opened at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York in 1981. The same year, Crimes of the Heart won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 1982, it was nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Play. Henley also wrote the screenplay for the 1986 film version of her play starring Diane Keaton, Jessica, Lange, and Sissy Spacek and received an Oscar nomination for her work. Other works include The Miss Firecracker Contest (1985), The Debutant Ball (1985), Abundance (1990), and most recently, The Ridiculous Fraud (2006). Henley fell in love with theater after seeing the works of Chekhov, and his influence is evident in her expert use of realistic, everyday circumstances and conversations that subtly and seamlessly explore and reveal universal and emotional struggles, fueled by grief, sadness, pain, loss, hope, reconciliation, and profound humor. It is through these emotions that we also feel Henley’s tremendous empathy. Perfecting the tragicomedy genre within the style of Southern Gothic, Henley builds on family relationships, crafting characters with which we can easily identify. If we are honest, it is often in her characters most unflattering traits that we see flashes of ourselves. In the preface of Henley’s collection Four Plays, Camilla Carr writes of the playwright’s universal appeal, “We’ve been spurned by lovers and fought with all our underhanded souls with every trick in the book to get the despicable, loathsome, ornery, subhuman slugs back again. And again.” The comforting combination of laughter and tears shines in many of Beth Henley’s works, and while some might shy away from the raw emotions of rage and grief, this playwright has never been afraid to embrace anger and bask in the freedom it brings. It is through the arguments between her characters that their greatest moments of humor and humanity are revealed. In fact, when asked by an Oxford playwriting student how to write a play, Henley simply responded, “Well…just take two characters and get them in an argument.” Southern Gothic and the Grotesque Southern Gothic literature is a subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature. Set against the backdrop of a collapsed antebellum south, this style is characterized by grotesque, eccentric characters and macabre, unsettling events. Some scholars advocate that this literary style began early in American literature with the horror stories of Edgar Allen Poe, but traditionally, the genre is most often chronicled in American literature beginning around 1930. While still achieved by some contemporary authors, the peak of this genre seems to have been reached between the late 1940s and the late 1960s by numerous southern-born writers. Authors famous for their Southern Gothic voice include William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, Harper Lee, and Thomas Wolfe; more recently, authors like Beth Henley, Anne Rice, Cormac McCarthy, and Cherie Priest have also embraced this dark and fascinating literary style. While Faulkner is by far the most prolific writer to incorporate the Southern Gothic style, perhaps the author most famous for perfecting it is Flannery O’Connor, best known for her shockingly tragic and darkly humorous collections of 32 short stories, published between 1955 and 1971. While several full-length novels have been written in the Southern Gothic style, this brand of literature is most often seen in the short story format, creating a greater sense of immediacy. Tight plotlines and deeply specific characters offer insight into the traditions and eccentricities of the South while making profound and often unsettling connections to humanity at large. Southern Gothic literature is noted for its classic use of the grotesque, a literary device that is defined by characters who garner equal amounts of empathy and disgust. This genre challenges the stereotypes of southern characters, making them tormented by their secrets, haunted by the past, and disconnected from humanity and the rest of the world. This dark literary style also embraces the idioms and idiosyncrasies of the South and places a great deal of importance on location and customs. In this complex and startling genre, deep rooted traditions of the South, half romantic, half archaic, leave a residue on the characters and locations that are impossible for some characters to overcome. Southern Gothic characters are often outcasts: lonely, broken, forgotten individuals ignored by society, whose arrival upsets the superficial peace of a family or community, ultimately exposing them for what they really are. Many stories in the Southern Gothic style revolve around morally flawed characters, with issues of race and faith appearing in the background. One of the traditional character traits employed by the grotesque is one of dark cruelty, including characters who act out of pure nastiness and show no mercy. What makes their behavior truly horrifying is the everyday nature and attitude toward that brutality despite the insightfulness with which it is delivered. There is no fanfare, no melodrama, only the simple realizations that the character is wicked, they will commit wickedness with abandon, there is little to be done to stop them, and few are ever spared. However, through their malice, other characters are able to gain insight into their own lives and flaws, ultimately realizing that they are equally capable of – and often equally guilty of – their own brands of cruelty. A second popular character type found in this genre, one that embraces cruelty under a different guise, is the egotistical, self-righteous character who uses a mask of faith and forgiveness to conceal his/her harsh arrogance and bigotry. These sanctimonious individuals fancy themselves heroes and saviors, and in the Southern Gothic style, their hypocrisy is usually revealed with the innocence and clarity of a child. The Southern Gothic style is also characterized by a dark sense of humor and deep rooted tradition and loyalty that is tragically overshadowed by self-righteousness, complacency, and pain. Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, Flannery O'Connor said, "Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic." In this sense, it may be easy to dismiss the characters and events of Southern Gothic literature as allegorical caricatures of the South, too fantastical to be considered realistic, until we remember the wild eccentricities of our own families, and then the universal pain, loss, heartbreak, redemption, and joy endured by these characters become all the more real. In fact, the universality of these characters is no small feat. O’Connor went on to confess, "Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one." Even with their symbolic figures, traditional locations, and classically Southern ideals, the stories of this genre are often refreshingly free of didacticism and unapologetic in nature. Many Southern Gothic writers create ironic, metaphorical fiction about eerily humorous, deeply profound, and deceptively backward characters who, for good or bad, experience major transformations by the end of their story. A character’s ultimate transformation is often accomplished through pain, violence, loss, and sometimes ludicrous yet good-intentioned behavior, all in the pursuit of belonging. The disturbing elements used in these stories are that way because we feel equal sympathy for each character. In a manner true to the grotesque, there are no clear villains or heroes; even the most despicable characters gain sympathy because they are often born out of inconceivably tragic circumstances. The saddest moments in Southern Gothic literature come when the reader sees how a life or a relationship might be saved, but the characters miss the mark, just barely. Happy moments are fleeting, and even the greatest gains are made only through tremendous sacrifice. The tragedy comes in realizing too late. Director’s Note When I was a little girl in the 1950s, my family’s fortunes went from bad to worse, and we moved into an old house in Gulfport, Mississippi. I can remember my mother chasing the landlord off “our” property with a broom when he tried to “steal” pecans that had fallen in the yard; I remember how my father had my brother convinced that there was an angry baboon living in our banana tree; I remember the scent of magnolias and the sticky humidity. But mostly I remember those flashes of life when we were all laughing together, despite our fallen circumstances—like the time we all removed our shoes and socks and made a game of seeing what we could each pick off the linoleum floor with our feet. I think of those moments as much the same as Lenny’s vision at the end of Crimes of the Heart: “It was something about the three of us smiling and laughing together . . .it wasn’t forever; it wasn’t for every minute. Just this one moment and we were all laughing.” This very funny and serious play offers us the chance to spend a short time in the company of the MaGraths as they connect over an old kitchen table in an old Mississippi house, haunted with memories that both hurt and heal. --Sharon Ammen