1999 William Inge Honoree

18th Annual
William Inge Theatre Festival
Salutes
John Guare

John Guare

Schedule of Events

Wednesday, April 14
7:30 P.M.--PICNIC by William Inge.  Performed by the BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PLAYERS.  Adults $8.00
Students $5.00 (ICC students free).  All seats reserved.  William Inge Theatre, Fine Arts Building.

Thursday, April 15
8:00 A.M. - 4:00 P.M.--REGISTRATION in the Margaret Goheen Foyer of the William Inge Theatre, Fine Arts
Building.  FILM FESTIVAL featuring  "Penn Avenue to Broadway" (documentary on Inge) and other Inge films:
Splendor in the Grass, Picnic, Bus Stop, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, and Come Back, Little Sheba. Fine Arts Room114, Fine Arts Building.  FREE 

8:00 A.M. - 9:00 P.M.--THE WILLIAM INGE COLLECTION open to visitors. College Library, Academic Building.

12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M.--Tour of "WILLIAM INGE'S INDEPENDENCE." Sign up at the Registration desk in
the Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building.  Tour leaves from in front of Inge Theatre. Fee: $2

1:00 P.M. - 2:30 P.M.--"Creating Picnic." Join the director and cast of the Brandeis University Players production of PICNIC for a panel discussion.  Music Hall, Fine Arts Building. (requires Daytime Pass)

2:45 P.M.- 3:45 P.M.--"ONE ON ONE WITH QUEEN BEY."  Join world-renowned jazz singer and actress Queen
Bey as she discusses her career, and the ins and outs of show business. Music Hall, Fine Arts Building.  (requires
Daytime Pass)

4:00 P.M. - 5:00 P.M.--Tour of "WILLIAM INGE'S INDEPENDENCE." Sign up at the Registration desk in the
Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building.  Tour leaves from in front of Inge Theatre. Fee: $2

7:30 P.M.--PICNIC by William Inge.  Performed by the BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PLAYERS .  Adults $8.00
Students $5.00 (ICC students free).  All seats reserved.  William Inge Theatre, Fine Arts Building. 

9:30 P.M.--"MOONGLOW AT THE HOTEL BOOTH."  After-theatre party at the historic Hotel Booth, 8th & Main,
Independence, with "QUEEN BEY and Company." TICKETS:  $12.00 (Includes hors d'oeuvres and wine)

Friday, April 16
8:00 A.M. -  4:00 P.M.--REGISTRATION in the Margaret Goheen Foyer of the William Inge Theatre, Fine Arts
Building. THE WILLIAM INGE COLLECTION open to visitors. College Library, Academic Building.  FILM FESTIVAL continues in FA114, Fine Arts Building. (Check schedule at Registration Desk) FREE

8:15 A.M. - 9:15 A.M.--"A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO DIRECTING" with Broadway and regional theatre director Luke Yankee.  Music Hall, Fine Arts Building. (requires Daytime
Pass) 

9:30 A.M. - 10:45 A.M.--"A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN GUARE." Mr. Guare will discuss the theatre and respond to questions.  Inge Theatre, Fine Arts Building. (requires Daytime Pass)

11:00 A.M. - 12:00 P.M.--"Six Degrees of THEATRE: 1999." A panel discussion with playwrights Robert Anderson and John Guare, "Best Plays" editor Otis L. Guernsey, Jr., James
Houghton, Artistic Director of the Signature Theatre, and moderator David LeVine. Inge Theatre, Fine Arts Building. (requires Daytime Pass)

12:00 P.M. - 1:00 P.M.--"A MOVEABLE FEAST" LUNCH.  A keepsake lunchbag with contents to be eaten at numerous locations.  Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building.  Fee: $7.50
1:00 P.M. - Tree planting in memory of Garson Kanin, Inge Honoree in 1987, in front of the Inge Theatre.   

1:15 P.M. - 2:15 P.M.--"PERSPECTIVES ON THE AUDITION PROCESS."  Join director Luke Yankee,
Playwright David Hirson, and actor Bruce Norris for different viewpoints of the audition process.    Music Hall, Fine Arts Building.  (requires Daytime Pass)  

2:30 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.--"SCHOLAR'S CONFERENCE." Conference Director: Dr. Jackson Bryer, The University
of Maryland.  Lecture Hall, Academic Building. (requires Daytime Pass)

3:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.--Tour of "WILLIAM INGE'S INDEPENDENCE." Sign up at the Registration desk in the
Margaret Goheen Foyer, Fine Arts Building.  Tour leaves from in front of Inge Theatre.  Fee: $2

7:00 P.M.--"A GALA DINNER Party at the Independence Country Club."  The awarding of the 1998 Margo Jones Award and Medal to James Houghton.  Silent Auction of theatre memorabilia starts at 6:00 p.m.  All proceeds from the silent auction benefit the restoration of the boyhood home of William Inge, now owned by the Inge Festival Foundation.  All seats reserved. $50.00 (RESERVE EARLY-LIMITED SEATS AVAILABLE)

Saturday, April 17
8:00 A.M. -  12:00 P.M.--REGISTRATION at the CIVIC CENTER (downstairs of Memorial Hall), Penn &
Locust Streets, Independence.

10:00 A.M. -  2:00 P.M.--THE WILLIAM INGE COLLECTION open to visitors.  College Library, Academic
Building, ICC campus. FILM FESTIVAL continues in the College Library, Academic Building.

8:30 A.M. - 10:00 A.M.--"PLAYWRIGHTS IN RESIDENCE AT THE SIGNATURE."  James Houghton, Artistic
Director, will discuss the Signature Theatre and its playwrights.   CIVIC CENTER, Penn & Locust Streets. (requires
Daytime Pass)

10:00 A.M. - 11:45 A.M.--"NEW VOICES IN AMERICAN THEATRE:1999."  Scenes from playwright David
Hirson's new play Wrong Mountain with discussion afterwards.  Civic Center, Penn & Locust Street. (requires Daytime Pass)

11:45 A.M. - 1:00 P.M.--"PICNIC LUNCHEON" at Riverside Park, 4-H Building. Fee: $7.50

1:30 P.M. - 2:30 P.M.--SCENES FROM PICNIC AT WILLIAM INGE'S HOME."  Join the cast of PICNIC for
scenes in front of William Inge's boyhood home, 514 N. 4th St.,
Independence.  (requires Daytime Pass)

2:30 P.M. - 3:00 P.M.--"Open House at the Inge Home-A restoration project in progress."

3:00 P.M. - 4:00 P.M.--TOUR OF "WILLIAM INGE'S INDEPENDENCE." Pre-register at the Registration desk
at the Civic Center prior to 12:00 p.m.  Tour leaves from Inge House, 514 N.4th St.  Fee: $2

8:00 P.M.--"TRIBUTE TO JOHN GUARE." Presentation of "THE DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT IN THE
AMERICAN THEATRE AWARD."  William Inge Theatre. All seats reserved. $12.00(ICC STUDENTS FREE)
 

ROBERT ANDERSON's plays have been produced professionally and in community and college theatres all over the world.  His most famous plays include Tea and Sympathy (1953), Silent Night, Lonely Night (1959), You Know I Can't Hear You When The Water's Running (1967), I Never Sang For My Father (1968), and Solitaire/Double Solitaire (1971).  Anderson has also written extensively for motion pictures, radio, and television.  His film credits included Tea and Sympathy, (1956), Until They Sail, (1957), The Nun's Story, (1959), The Sand Pebbles, (1966),  and I Never Sang For My Father, (1970), (nominated for the Academy Award and winner of the Screenwriter's Guild Award).  In 1980 Anderson was nominated for the Writer's Guild Award for his television drama, The Patricia Neal Story, and was elected to The Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.  The Kissing Was Always The Best is one of his most recent plays and I Never Sang For My Father enjoyed a successful revival in 1987 and 1988.   In 1991, two of Anderson's works were shown on television, The Last Act Is A Solo, which won an Ace Award, and Absolute Strangers. Anderson previously served as  President of the Dramatists Guild and is now on the Dramatists Guild Council.   Anderson served as Vice-President of the Authors League of America and is the author of two novels: After and Getting Up and Going Home.  Mr. Anderson participated in the panel discussion, "Six Degrees of Theatre:1999" on Friday, April 16 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
in the William Inge Theatre, and participated in the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 at 8:00 p.m. in the William Inge Theatre.

QUEEN BEY was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas where she started singing at the age of twelve in the famous Orchid Room, a Kansas City jazz club, popular in the 1950's.  She received her basic training from jazz greats such as Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Linda Hopkins. She has performed with B.B. King, The Platters and the late jazz pianist Earl Garner. Queen recorded her first album called "Comin' Thru" and her second album, "Dues Paid in Full" in 1990; her newest CD is titled
"So this Is London."   Added to her credits, Ms. Bey has acted on stage, television and in film, including Broadway musicals - Ain't Misbehavin, One Mo' Time, and Blues in the Night.  Her television debut was an NBC mini-series, Matter of Justice co-starring with Patty Duke and Martin Sheen.  Her film debut was in the movie Ninth Street with Martin Sheen and Isaac Hayes.  In 1980, Ms. Bey received the Governor's Arts Award and was one of the honorees at the 1991 induction of the Elder Statesman of Kansas City Jazz, Inc.  In Kansas City, she has performed at the New Theatre Dinner Theatre and at the American Heartland Theatre.  She recently performed at the Paseo Performing Arts Theatre in Once On This Island.  Queen Bey participated in "One on One With Queen Bey" on Thursday, April 15, and was the headline act for "Moonglow" on Thursday, April 15 at the Hotel Booth in Independence. 

BERNARD GERSTEN has been the Executive Producer of Lincoln Center Theater since its re-establishment in 1985, in partnership with Gregory Mosher through 1991 and with Andre Bishop as Artistic Director since then.  Among Lincoln Center Theater's seventy two productions of the past twelve years,
especially notable productions include Anything Goes, Sarafina!,
Speed-The-Plow, The House of Blue Leaves, The Front Page, Our Town, Waiting For Godot, Six Degrees of Separation, The Sisters Rosensweig, The Heiress, A Delicate Balance, and An American Daughter.  For PBS they have produced The House of Blue Leaves, The Comedy of Errors, Our Town and Twelfth Night.  He was producer of the NBC documentary film Voices of Sarafina! From 1960 to 1978, he was the Associate Producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival for among other works, A Chorus Line, Two Gentlemen of Verona, For Colored Girls..., That Championship Season, Much Ado About Nothing, and Sticks and Bones.  Mr. Gersten has been an adjunct professor of Theater Administration at NYU, Yale School of Drama, and Columbia University School of the Arts.  Mr. Gersten was the Master of Ceremonies for "A Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 in the William Inge Theatre.
 
DAVID HIRSON, chosen as the Inge Festival's 1999 "New Voice in American Theatre,"  was born in New York City, and was educated at Yale University and in England at Magdalen College, Oxford.  He made his Broadway and London debuts with his first play, La Bete, for which he received the John Gassner Award of the Outer Critics Circle, the New York Newsday/Oppenheimer Award, and the Marton Prize of the Dramatists Guild for Best New American Playwright.  La Bete also received the special "Best Play" citation in the American Theatre annual Best Plays 1990-91, as well as five Tony Award nominations and six Drama Desk nominations including Best Play 1991.  For the London production of La Bete, he won the 1992 Laurence Olivier Award for Comedy of the Year.  David's second play, Wrong Mountain, which he completed
last summer, is scheduled to have its world premiere on Broadway this coming fall, produced by Dodgers-Endemol Theatrical Productions.  Mr. Hirson also took part in a panel discussion entitled "Perspectives on the Audition Process" on Friday, April 16 in the Music Hall of the Fine Arts Building.

POLLY HOLLIDAY began her career with seven years of classical repertory at the Asolo State Theatre in Sarasota, FL.  She made her New York debut in 1972 at the Public Theatre in Wedding Band by Alice Childress.  Her Broadway credits include All Over Town by Murray Shisgal (1975) and a revival of Arsenic and Old Lace (1986).  In 1988, she played Amanda in The Glass Menagerie at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.  In 1990, she again appeared on Broadway as Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for which she received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress.  Her feature films include All the President's Men, Gremlins, Moon Over Parador, Mr. Wrong and most recently, The Parent Trap.  Her television credits include the 1996 series, The Client, several television movies and a recurring role on the sit-com Home Improvement.  For four years, Ms. Holliday played the character of Flo on the TV sit-com Alice for which she was nominated five times for an Emmy and for which she twice won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a TV series.  In 1997, she appeared in the world premiere of a new Horton Foote play, The Death of Papa, in Chapel Hill, NC, appearing with Matthew Broderick, Ellen Burstyn and Hallie Foote.  Holliday recently appeared on Broadway in Guare's play Marco Polo Sings a Solo at the Signature Theatre and performed a scene from it at the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 in the Inge Theatre. 

DAVID E. LeVINE is a theatrical lawyer, consultant and lecturer.  He is Chairman of the Margo Jones Award Committee, and trustee of the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center.  He was Executive Director of the Dramatists Guild, Inc., from 1966 to 1992.  He was a founding member of the Broadway Alliance Committee and a member of the Tony Awards Administration Committee.  He is a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia University Law School.  Mr. LeVine was the moderator for the panel discussion "Six Degrees of Theatre: 1999" on Friday, April 16 in the Inge Theatre and presented the Margo Jones Award at the Gala Dinner on Friday, April 16.


BRUCE NORRIS recently appeared on Broadway in John Guare's Marco Polo Sings a Solo at the Signature Theatre. Other Broadway credits include Wendy Wasserstein's An American Daughter, Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues, New York Plunge at Playwrights Horizons, Sin at Second Stage, The Arabian Nights, What the Butler Saw, Life During Wartime, and The Debutante Ball at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and Wenceslas Square and A Midsummer Night's Dream at the New York Shakespeare Festival.  In Chicago, he appeared in many productions with the Goodman and Remains Theatres.  He adapted and directed Joe Orton's Up Against It and wrote and directed The Vanishing Twin, both for Chicago's Looking Glass Theatre.  Recent film credits include A Civil Action with John Travolta.  Mr. Norris took part in a panel discussion entitled "Perspectives on the Audition Process" on Friday, April 16 in the Music Hall of the Fine Arts Building and also in the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 in the Inge Theatre.


OTIS L. GUERNSEY, JR., editor of The Best Plays yearbook and former editor of the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, was educated at Yale University.  After graduation, he joined John Gassner's playwriting seminar in New York but soon started working for the New York Herald Tribune, beginning as a copy boy and then graduating to reporter, film and drama critic, and drama editor.  In 1960 he resigned from the Herald Tribune.  His credits include authoring two original film stories, one of them Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest.  In 1964 he took charge of the Best Plays series of theatre yearbooks started in 1919 by Burns Mantle.  Mr. Guernsey's resumes of the seasons from 1965 to 1987 were combined in a single volume titled Curtain Times.  A veteran of both the New York Film Critics and the New York Drama Critics Circle, Guernsey helped to found the American Theater Critics
Association in 1974.  He  received a special award from the New England Theater Conference in 1988 and the Margo Jones Medal in 1991.  Mr. Guernsey took part in the panel discussion "Six Degrees of Theatre: 1999" on Friday, April 16 in the Inge Theatre and is advisor to the Inge Festival's New Voices in American Theatre.

 
MIKE WOOD, Executive Director of Media Resources at Wichita State University, has an MFA from the University of Southern California in Cinema Production, and has served as producer of the tribute to the playwright for the Inge Festival twelve times.  In 1987 he received the Outstanding Alumnus Award at Independence Community College.  He is the writer and producer of "William Inge: Penn Avenue to Broadway," a documentary on Inge's life, and is a recipient of the Margaret Goheen Award. He produced the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17.
 

LUKE YANKEE has directed, produced and taught at regional theatres throughout the U.S. and abroad.  He has served as the Artistic Director of the Long Beach Civic Light Opera and the Struthers Library Theatre. Highlights include: Night Club Confidential with Barbara Eden, Man of La Mancha with John McCook, The King & I with Lee Meriwether, Love Letters with
Ed Asner, Sally Struthers, Troy Donahue, Joanna Gleason, John Rubenstein, and Governor Pete Wilson, Driving Miss Daisy with Eileen Heckart and Private Lives with David Canary.  For the last four years, he has directed Theatre LA's Ovation Awards, honoring excellence in Los Angeles theatre.  He has also directed and produced industrials and special events all over the country, working with celebrities ranging from Quincy Jones and Dick Clark
to Carol Burnett and Stephen Sondheim.  He is a regular guest director at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Columbia College in Hollywood.  He has just returned from guest lecturing with Barbara Eden on a cruise to India, Egypt and Israel.  Mr. Yankee took part in a panel discussion entitled "Perspectives on the Audition Process" on Friday, April 16 in the Music Hall of the Fine Arts Building and also in the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 in the Inge Theatre.

James Houghton is the founding artistic director of the Signature Theatre Company in New York City.  The Signature Theatre is the only not-for-profit theatre company in the United States to devote each season of productions to the work of a single playwright.  John Guare is this year's featured Signature dramatist.  Other honored writers to have their work featured at the Signature include  Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Horton Foote, and Edward
Albee.  In recognition of its artistic contributions, Signature Theatre and its artists have been honored with the Pulitzer Prize, Obie Awards, Drama Desk Awards, Lucille Lortel Awards and the Outer Critics Circle Awards.  For Signature, Houghton directed Miller's The American Clock nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Direction and his radio play The Pussycat and the Expert Plumber Who Was a Man (Broadcast by National Public Radio), Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class, the premieres of Adrienne Kennedy's Obie Award-winning June and Jean in Concert, Foote's Laura Dennis, Albee's Fragments and Marriage Play, Lee Blessing's Two Rooms and Romulus Linney's Heathen Valley and Ambrosio, both co-directed with Romulus Linney.  In addition to his collaboration with Signature's Playwrights-in- Residence, Houghton was named artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre of Minneapolis, MN last December and continues to serve as artistic director of the New Harmony Project in Indiana, a national writers' conference for theater, television and film writers.  There he has worked with such writers as Robert Anderson, Mark St. Germain and Regina Taylor, among many others.  He has directed workshops for various companies including the Dallas Opera, the Joseph Papp Public Theatre/NYSF, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, San Jose Repertory, and the Sewanee Writer's Conference.  Mr. Houghton was on the panel "Six Degrees of Theatre: 1999" on Friday, April 15 in the Inge Theatre, presented "Playwrights in Residence at the Signature" on Saturday,
April 17 at the Civic Center, and took part in the "Tribute to John Guare" on Saturday, April 17 in the William Inge Theatre. 

In 1981, he served as a consultant to the National Endowment
for the Humanities for the William Inge Archives at Independence Community College.  He is the editor of The Theatre We Worked For: The Letters of Eugene O'Neill To Kenneth MacGowan (1982) and many other publications.  In 1988 he published "An Interview with Robert Anderson" in Studies In American Drama and most recently edited The Playwright's Art: Conversations With Contemporary American Dramatists, published by Rutgers University Press, and New Essays On F. Scott Fitzgerald's Neglected Stories.

JUDITH BABNICH, associate professor of theatre at Wichita State University, received her BA degree from Edgecliff College, an MA from the University of Cincinnati, and a Ph.D in theatre arts from UCLA.  She is a member of Actors Equity.  Her research on the Omaha Magic Theatre and playwright Megan Terry has appeared in such journals as "Theatre Survey," "Theatre Journal," and "Centennial Review."  After receiving her doctorate, she worked with the Missoula, Montana, Children's Theatre Tour Project and toured throughout the U.S. and Canada for a year.  Her recent productions include: Fences, A Raisin in the Sun, Durang Durang, Before It Hits Home, Prosperity, Six Degrees of Separation, The Colored Museum, Pippin, and Miracle.  Her
production of Winter Lies was chosen for the 1991 regional American College Theatre Festival.  Her paper is entitled: "Six Degrees of William Inge: A Mystery Paper."

CRAIG CLINTON is a professor and head of the Theatre Department at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  He attended Yale School of Drama and received his Ph.D in drama from Carnegie-Mellon University.  His published criticism includes articles on playwrights Trevor Griffiths, John Arden, and Tennessee
Williams, as well as William Inge.  He also writes plays and his work has been produced in universities and regional theatre companies and in New York at the Divine Theatre and the Manhattan Theatre Club.  In 1994 he delivered a paper at the Inge Festival, "Encoded Realism," examining the metaphoric dimensions of the scenic designs of William Inge's major plays and in 1998
presented "Politics and Difference in Robert Anderson's Tea and Sympathy." This years work is entitled "Inge and Kazan: Collaborations on Stage and Screen."

GENE A. PLUNKA received his Ph.D in comparative literature from the University of Maryland, where he specialized in modern and contemporary drama.  He has published articles on the plays of Edward Albee, Peter Shaffer, Jean Genet, John Millington Synge, Jean-Claude van Itallie, and John Guare.  Dr. Plunka's books include Peter Shaffer: Roles, Rites, and Rituals in the Theater (1988); The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet: The Art and Aesthetics of Risk Taking (1992); and Jean-Claude van Itallie and the Off-Broadway Theater (1999).  He is also the editor of Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater, a book collection of sixteen articles, including his own essay, "Antonin Artaud: The Suffering Shaman of the Modern Theater."  His latest project is a book on John Guare and black comedy.  Dr. Plunka is currently Professor of English at the University of Memphis.  He will present "John Guare's Black Comedy: The House of Blue Leaves." 

BETH C. RIPS is a PhD student in English at the University of Nebraska.  A former restaurateur and professional baker turned teacher, she holds a master's degree in English from Creighton University and a bachelor's degree in art history from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.  An avid fan of theatre, she became completely smitten while watching Angels in America at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.  Last fall she presented a paper at the Tennessee Williams Festival in Clarksdale, MS.  In 1998 she presented a paper on  "Deanie Loomis: Inge's Jazz Age Ophelia."  Her topic this year is "Bad Girls and Big Daddies: Family, Power, and Patriarchy in Splendor in the Grass and Orpheus Descending.