Jesus in Musicals

Cotton Patch Gospel is one of many popular musicals that uses the Gospels as source material. Each reimagines how the story could be staged and leads to a deeper understanding of "the greatest story ever told." Cotton Patch Gospel built upon this tradition and created a show that incorporated elements of each of them. Below are some facts on each of the most well known four Gospel inspired musicals. They are interesting in their own right and also give some illuminating perspective into Cotton Patch Gospel.

1961 - Black Nativity
By Langston Hughes
Music Traditional

Genesis: Langston Hughes is best known as the most famous poet of the Harlem Renaissance. However, he was also a well regarded playright having written over 20 plays primarily about the African American experience.
Productions: Black Nativity opened on Broadway on December 11, 1961. After a couple of decades of relative absence, African American Theater companies started picking it up and it is now performed all over the U.S. during the Christmas season.
Musical Style: Gospel renditions of traditional Christmas Carols
Hit Songs: "Go Tell It On the Mountain" and "Joy to the World"
Based On: The birth of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospel of Luke
Famous Actors: Marion Williams of the Ward Singers and Professor Alex Brafford who sold more than a million records with "I'm Too Close to Heaven" both were in the touring cast of Black Nativity.
Innovation: Brought the joy, enthusiasm and feel of Christmas African American church services to a mainstream audience.
Interesting Fact: Dancers Alvin Ailey and Carmen de Lavallade left the show before it opened in protest of changing the title to include the word "Black."



1971 - Jesus Christ Superstar
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber (Evita, Phantom of the Opera, and Cats)
Lyrics by Tim Rice (Evita, Chess, and The Lion King)

Genesis: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had already written Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat together, but that had been for a school production and they were unknowns at the time. They first released Superstar as a concept album in 1970 and it's quick rise to #1 paved the way for two lengthy careers in musical theatre.
Productions: The original Broadway production opened on October 12, 1971 and ran for 18 months. A film version, filmed in Israel, was made in 1973. It has since been produced all over the world and seen many U.S. tours.
Musical Style: Rock Opera
Hit Songs: Murray Head released a single version of "Superstar" in 1971 which reached #14 in the U.S. The same year Helen Reddy recorded a version of "I Don't Know How to Love Him" which reached #12 in the U.S. Yvonne Elliman also had a chart reaching single with "Everything's Alright".
Based On: The Gospel of John from Jesus entering Jerusalem to his crucifixion.
Famous Actors: Yvonne Elliman, who later had a #1 hit with "If I Can't Have You" from Saturday Night Fever, had her career take off with the role of Mary Magdelene, which she played on the concept album, in the original Broadway cast and in the 1973 film. The concept album's Judas, Murray Head most famous for his recording of "One Night in Bangkok" from Chess, and the original Broadway Judas, Ben Vareen most famous for later starring in the musical Pippin and the filmAll That Jazz, also saw their careers take off after their involvement.
Innovation: Jesus Christ Superstar portrayed Judas as a main character. Rather than the villain, he was portrayed sympathetically as a tragic hero trying to prevent Jesus from inciting the Romans to destroy the Jewish people.
Interesting Fact: After the concept album was produced productions of the show began popping up without the authors' consent. They sued and the subsequent ruling is one of the foundations of theatrical copyright law.



1971 - Godspell
Music by Stephen Schwartz (Pippin, Pocahontas and Wicked)
Lyrics primarily from the Episcopal Hymnal
Book by John-Michael Tebelak

Genesis: The show was originally John-Michael Tebelak's thesis project at Carnegie Mellon University. After a two week run at La MaMa in New York Stephen Schwartz was brought in to rewrite the music.
Productions: Godspell opened Off-Broadway at the Promenade Theatre on August 10, 1971. It moved to Broadway in 1976 and spawned a film adaptation in 1973. Since then it has become a community theater mainstay, seeing wildly different interpretations of it's simply set tale.
Musical Style: An eclectic mix of musical theater styles.
Hit Songs: "Day By Day," which reached #13 in the U.S. Other popular songs include "By My Side" and "All for the Best."
Based On: The parables in the Gospel of Matthew.
Famous Actors: The film adaptation of Godspell was the film debut of Victor Garber who had been in the Original Broadway Cast of Sweeney Todd and later would be in the film Titanic. In the ensemble of both the original cast and the film was Lynne Thigpen, known to a later generation as the chief in PBS' Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
Innovation: Inspired by Dr. Harvey Cox's "Christ the Harlequin," Godspell focused on the festivity, playfullness and delight in the Jesus story.
Interesting Fact: Stephen Schwartz has said Godspell is realy about the building of a community. His song "Beautiful City" was written for the film and emphasizes that idea. While not in the script of the musical, the rights allow productions to insert the song into the show wherever they think it fits.



1981 - Cotton Patch Gospel
Music and Lyrics by Harry Chapin ("Taxi", "W*O*L*D", and "Cat's in the Cradle")
Book by Tom Key and Russell Treyz

Genesis: Actor Tom Key was looking to write a play transporting Jesus and his story to the present day South. Someone told him about Clarence Jordan's The Cotton Patch Versions of Matthew and John which already did just that. Inspired by Jordan's work, Tom Key and Russell Treyz created a one man show. They asked Harry Chapin to write a couple of songs to start and end the show and he was so excited by it he turned the show into a musical.
Productions: Cotton Patch Gospel opened Off-Broadway on October 21, 1981 and ran for 193 performances. It was filmed in 1988 and has since become a staple musical in the South still performed by dozens of companies each year.
Musical Style: Bluegrass
Hit Songs: "Somethin's Brewin' in Gainesville", "Jubilation", and "I Wonder What Would Happen to This World".
Based On: The Gospel of Matthew
Famous Actors: Adapter Tom Key stared in the original production and continues to perform the show to this day.
Innovation: Cotton Patch Gospel puts Jesus in our own time, effectively exploring how we'd react if he came today.
Interesting Fact: Original Matthew and author Tom Key's life was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan because in the show they are implicated in the murder of Jesus.

Further Reading:
The SF Chronicle's Review of Lorraine Hansbury Theatre's current production of Black Nativity: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/16/DDDV1B47OG.DTL

Wikipedia's article on Jesus Christ Superstar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_Superstar

Musicalschwartz.com's Godspell page: http://www.musicalschwartz.com/godspell.htm

Loren Collins' Cotton Patch Gospel Website: http://www.lorencollins.net/cottonpatchgospel

The full text of Clarence Jordan's Cotton Patch Gospels: http://rockhay.tripod.com/cottonpatch/

*All photos from www.amazon.com except "Cotton Patch Gospel" which is from http://www.lorencollins.net/cottonpatchgospel/ and "Jesus Christ Superstar" which is from www.wikipedia.com

The Life of Cotton Patch Gospel Composer Harry Chapin

Singer/songwriter Harry Chapin wrote the music to Cotton Patch Gospel right before he died in 1981. Its catchy music brings to life the funny and moving story while bringing light to the hypocrisy of human apathy. It is the culmination of a life dedicated to great music and humanitarianism.


Harry Chapin was born in New York City, the second of four children. His father left the family when he was eight and went and toured as a drummer with the big bands of the era. After high school Chapin spent three months at the Air Force Academy. He then twice flunked out of Cornell University. He went into a band, recording an album with two of his brothers, but the album was unsuccessful. To avoid being drafted his brothers had to drop the band and go to college. Harry Chapin started working in film. While writing a screenplay, he was hired to give guitar lessons to Sandy Chapman so she could play songs to her three children. In 1968 Legendary Champions, the documentary film that came from that screenplay, was nominated for an Academy Award and Chapin became father to thethree children and husband to Sandy Chapman.

Chapin found, while his passion was in storytelling, his drive was still to make music. He combined the two to start writing his now famous, story-songs. In 1971 he pulled together a band and soon caught the attention of Elektra. His debut album Heads and Tales was on the charts for over half of 1972. It’s song “Taxi” became the most requested song in America for ten weeks.

A year later Short Stories produced “W.O.L.D.” which was in the top 50 and the next year Verities and Balderdash became Chapin’s first gold album. The now classic “Cat’s in the Cradle” from that album quickly flew to number one.

Through the rest of the seventies he made seven more popular albums. His solo show, The Night That Made America Famous ran on Broadway for 75 performances and was nominated for two Tony awards.

Despite his great success as a storyteller and musician, Chapin’s greatest legacy is that of activist. Before charity concerts were vogue, Chapin did a hundred a year, raising over 5 million dollars. In 1975 he co-founded World Hunger Year (WHY), an organization dedicated to addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty. For his work to end hunger he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. He also served as a delegate to the Democractic National Convention and was dedicated towards bringing the arts to Long Island, serving on numerous boards there.

In 1981, at the age of 38, Chapin tragically died in a car crash while driving to a benefit performance. His final work, Cotton Patch Gospel, was posthumously produced in New York a few months later. This musical was based on a book by Dr. Clarence Jordan, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. It recontextualized the story of Jesus into the modern day and explored how contemporary Christians would respond to Jesus’ arrival. Harry Chapin’s epitath was taken from the final song from that show “I Wonder What Would Happen to this World”

Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man’s life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world

Further Reading & Photo Credits:

Harry Chapin photo from Rolling Stone's Biography: http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/harrychapin/biography

Gravestone photo from Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Chapin#Legacy

Rolling Stone Obituary from the Harry Chapin Archive: http://harrychapin.com/articles/rsobit.shtml

Autobiographical Statement from The Harry Chapin Archive: http://harrychapin.com/articles/bio.shtml

"Music Rewind: The Activism & Storytelling Of Harry Chapin" by Hal Licino: http://hubpages.com/hub/Music-Rewind-The-Activism-Storytelling-Of-Harry-Chapin

Interview with "Cotton Patch Gospel" Director, Marilyn Langbehn

Cotton Patch Gospel opened last week to standing ovations. During rehearsals director Marilyn Langbehn sat down with us to let us know what makes the show work.

What brought you to Cotton Patch Gospel? Why this show?

I’m not from the South, I quite honestly don’t know where my affinity for this material actually comes from, except that my grandmother was very much in the old time gospel tradition. I remember as a very little girl going to the Assemblies of God church with her, and honest to God this church was built out of logs; it looked like a log cabin. That whole revivalist feeling around religion and very simple storytelling was what she was attracted to and what she made sure I was exposed to. So, from the time I was a little girl, there was this attraction or this affinity for this style of storytelling and this style of preaching. There’s something about the simplicity of it; there’s something about the music, the bluegrass feel and the fact that Harry Chapin wrote it. He was somebody that I was very keen on when I was in college. Just basically the whole package was very exciting to me, and I’m very glad they asked me to do it.

This show is about the life of Jesus who is, of course, a major figure in Christianity. How do you feel this show speaks to Christians and how does it speak to non-Christians?

The story of Jesus, is one of the great stories that we have, regardless of where you are on the faith perspective. It’s always interesting to me to see the various ways in which it gets told. You have the big three theatrical tellings of it, from Jesus Christ Superstar to this show to Godspell. Those are all very different presentations of essentially the same story. The thing that strikes me about this particular telling is that what you’ve got is the message of Jesus distilled down to its very essence, which is essentially do unto others. At the end of the day, what they want you to do is treat everybody the way you want to be treated, and that’s what they present to you as the message.

You’ve directed Superstar, how does your approach to this show differ from how you directed that, despite both telling the story of Jesus?

Superstar has by intention a much harder edge to it. You know, the rock opera format is designed to drive things in a certain way. This is very much told in the way that we all told stories when we were kids: I be the bad guy and you be the good guy. And that’s all the instruction that you need and that’s all the context that you need in order to just branch off and spin a fantasy for yourself. The way that this is put together, Edward plays Matthew who is the narrator and one of the disciples. All he has to do is play the most basic of contexts for us and we instantly know where we are. There are no props in this show; there are no set changes. The spectacle is that of the inside of a barn and a Chautauqua meeting. It’s a fundamental storytelling style that we all grew up with and are so familiar with.

How has it been working with Edward? What’s it like to direct a one man show for much of the piece.

I worked with Edward one other time. He was wonderful, and ever since that time we’ve been in communication back and forth saying we need to find a time and a way to work together again. It all just sort of fell into place. He’s perfect for it. He understands this method of storytelling. He understands how this music works on a whole different level. He’s very generous with his emotional self in the telling of the story, generous to his fellow actors and generous with the audience. It’s been an interesting and lovely experience working with him. It’s a fascinating process to have just the two of you in a room trying to solve the problems of the text and make sure you’re telling it in as engaging and as theatrical a way as you possibly can. It’s fun.

Then there’s the trio, where did they come from and what do they give the show?

It’s really interesting, because the music is written to be sung by the band, which in the original production was four guys. That’s one of the interesting things about this piece; the authors recognized that you can take this basic structure and do a lot of different things with it. In all the notes that they send along with the piece they say “you’re probably not going to find what we created this piece with,” meaning one actor and these band members “so make it work for you.” When we had the auditions, it became clear that the three women we have were the best musicians to tell this part of the story. So instead of a four man quartet we have a three woman trio singing this. Rona Siddiqui, our music director who is also one of the singers, had to take the music and restructure the harmonies in such a way that they fell more naturally into the women’s range. She’s just done an amazing job, not only in recrafting all of that, but then creating that specific sound that the trio has. The sound that the women have is tight, rich and exactly right. It’s just thrilling. It is a whole new way of looking at the material.

You do have a bluegrass band as well, yes?

Oh my God, the band! Well if this doesn’t knock people’s socks off then I’ll throw in with you. The one thing that I knew from experience about bluegrass musicians is that they are a rare breed, a specific type of musician, and if they are any good, they are very good at what they do. One of those things you know to look for if you’ve done enough musicals is when the singers know that the band has got their backs and the band knows that the singers are worth it. It’s this incredibly magical thing that happens amongst disparate musicians when they become a unit. They become a whole sound of voices and instruments together, and I’m watching that happen in rehearsal. You can’t not dance a little in your seat when you hear this music, and you can’t help but be moved at the simplicity and genuine honesty of the lyrics.

As a director there’s always that moment when something’s working and you have some sort of infallible physical signal that happens to you. You know, when the hair stands up on the back of your neck, that kind of thing. It takes a lot for that to happen to me. The moment when Herod orders the henchmen to find baby Jesus and kill him, the massacre of the innocents for those of you that are following along in your hymnals, is heart-breaking. They end up killing all the babies under the age of two, and in this version they toss a bomb into a church nursery. Of course Jesus isn’t there, but it kills 14 babies and toddlers, which harks back to what happened in the South in the civil rights struggle. Erica Richardson, who is this glorious-voiced African American actress, is singing the role of the mother in that particular number. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how far we have and haven’t come.

Anything else give you that sensation?

It happens several times, and I won’t tell you where they all are, but if I’m dancing in my seat that’s a pretty good sign. Katie Kimball, the other trio member, has the most open face. She understands the joy of the music in a way that is completely unclouded by any kind of guile or bravado or need to protect. She is just completely available to the emotional content of the piece and in the music that she is singing. When she and the rest of the trio started to sing “Going to Atlanta” last night, that group of women were so excited I thought they were going to blow the roof off. It’s thrilling. I have such fun. I do

The Art of The Heidi Chronicles

It's the final week of The Heidi Chronicles. For those who have seen our production, you'll remember that after each scene a painting is taken off of the wall. We were very excited to have these paintings; they were painted by artist Nicola McCarthy specifically for the show to evoke the emotional and historical context for the scene during which they are highlighted. Each painting is also an homage to the work of a particular twentieth century female artist and Nicola took time to write a little about her inspirations for us. She also let us put photos of her paintings above each description and a photo of one of the paintings that inspired hers on the right or below.

Act One, Scene One: Painting inspired by Bridget Riley’s Drift series


Bridget Riley is one of the leading lights of the 60's Op Art movement, she inspired a wave of bold graphic design in fashion. Her paintings present a great variety of geometric forms that produce sensations of movement or colour, said to induce sensations in viewers as varied as seasickness and sky diving. If you stare at them for a minute, you will see the sense of movement – vibrating, flashing, throbbing – and perceive illusions of perspective or 3-dimensional space. The effect is mesmerizing, illuminating... but dizzying!

Act One, Scene Two: Painting inspired by Judy Chicago’s Through The Flower


Judy Chicago is a feminist artist who has been making work since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into art-making coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance. Major works include The Dinner Party and The Holocaust Project. She came to be known as an essentialist as she saw something innate and essential to the female species that could be represented by round objects and openings (i.e. female sex organs).

Act One, Scene Three: Painting inspired by Lee Krasner’s Black and White and Pink Collage


Lee Krasner was an influential abstract expressionist painter in the second half of the 20th century. She married artist Jackson Pollock, who was also influential in the Abstract Expressionism movement. Comrades in art, Pollock and Krasner fought a battle for legitimacy, impulsiveness and individual expression. They opposed an old-fashioned, conformist, and repressed culture unreceptive to these values, which was put off by the intricacy of Modernism in general.

Act One, Scene Four: Painting inspired by the Guerrilla Girls’ Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?


The Guerrilla Girls are a group of radical feminist artists established in New York City in 1985, known for using creative posters to promote women and people of color in the arts. Their first work was putting up posters on the streets of New York decrying the gender and racial imbalance of artists represented in galleries and museums. Over the years they expanded their activism to examine Hollywood and the film industry, popular culture, gender stereotyping and corruption in the art world. In 2001 they split into three groups, Guerrilla Girls, Inc.; GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand and Guerrilla Girls On Tour.

Act One, Scene Five: Painting inspired by Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail


Yoko Ono Lennon is a Japanese-American artist and musician. She is known for her marriage to John Lennon and for her work as an avant-garde artist and musician. Ono was an explorer of conceptual and performance art.


Act Two, Scene One: Painting inspired by Alice Neel’s The Pregnant Woman


Alice Neel (January 28, 1900 – October 13, 1984) was an American artist known for her oil on canvas portraits of friends, family, lovers, poets, artists and strangers. Her paintings are notable for their expressionistic use of line and color, psychological acumen, and emotional intensity.

Act Two, Scene Two: Painting inspired by Barbara Kruger’s Untitled (Your body is a battleground)


Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of Kruger's graphic work consists of black-and-white photographs with overlaid captions set in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The juxtaposition of Kruger's imagery with text containing criticism of sexism and the circulation of power within cultures is a recurring motif in the work. The text in her work of the 1980s includes such phrases as "Your comfort is my silence" (1981), "you invest in the divinity of the masterpiece" (1982), and "I shop therefore I am" (1987). She has said that "I work with pictures and words because they have the ability to determine who we are and who we aren’t."

Act Two, Scene Four: Painting inspired by Joan Mitchell’s Sunflower Series


Joan Mitchell was a ‘Second Generation’ Abstract Expressionist painter. Along with Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, and Helen Frankenthaler she was one of her era's few female painters to gain critical and public acclaim. Her paintings and editioned prints can be seen in major museums and collections across America and Europe.

Act Two, Scene Five: Painting inspired by Marlene Dumas’ The Painter


Marlene Dumas was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She studied at the University of Cape Town from 1972 to 1975 and moved to the Netherlands on a scholarship when she was 23. She's been living in Amsterdam for many years. She often uses reference material of Polaroid photographs of her friends and lovers, whilst she also references magazines and pornographic material. Marlene Dumas also paints portraits of children and erotic scenes to impact the world of contemporary art.

Photo Credits:
All photos of Nicola McCarthy's paintings taken by Fred Pitts
Drift No. 2, Through the Flower, Do Women Have to be Naked to get into the Met Museum? and The Painter from Artnet (http://www.artnet.com)
Black and White and Pink Collage from The City Review (http://www.thecityreview.com/krasner.html)
Paiting to Hammer a Nail in from AskArt (http://www.askart.com/askart/o/yoko_ono/yoko_ono.aspx)
Yves by Joan Mitchell from Hauser & Wirth (http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/322/joan-mitchell-sunflowers/view/)
Pregnant Woman from ArtConcerns.com (http://www.artconcerns.net/2007MayBaroda/html/baroda_birthright.htm)
Untitled (Your body is a battleground) from Stanford BodyWorks Syllabus (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/BodyWorks/11300/04.htm)

Public Transit

The Heidi Chronicles opened a week ago. We’ve had a wonderful week of performances and the audience response has been great. People love the play and seem to be almost as excited as we are about our new space. If you haven’t got your tickets already, get them now at Brown Paper Tickets. We also posted some great photos from the production on our website, be sure to check them out.

When we first started coming to the Next Stage we were surprised how easy it is to get there. On the website there’s driving directions, but here’s the easiest way to do it via public transportation.

-From BART-
Get off at Montgomery St. Station.
Walk one block northeast on Market St. to Sutter St. & Sansome St.
Catch the 2, 3 or 4 Muni outbound. Weekdays 5:00-7:30 pm one arrives every 2-6 minutes. Weekends it’s every 7-8 minutes.
Get off at Post St. & Gough St.
Walk two and a half blocks north on Gough St. to The Next Stage.

From other BART stations you can take the 49 bus (Mission 16th St. & 24th St.), the 47 bus (Civic Center) and the California Cable Car (Embarcadero). We use the Montgomery station because of the frequency of the buses there.

-Returning to BART-
The 3 is the only bus to Montgomery BART still running after our show. Walk back to Post St. & Gough St. and wait there. It runs every 20 minutes until after 1:00 am. To avoid a long wait we recommend you print out the schedule from 511.org.

-From Other San Francisco Locations-
For those already in the city, the California Cable Car, the 1, 3, 47, and 49 buses all have stops within four blocks of our theater and run til after midnight seven days a week. 511.org has schedules and maps for all the lines.

A Highly Informed Spectator

Tonight is opening night of The Heidi Chronicles! We couldn't be more excited and we hope you'll join us sometime in the upcoming weeks. In preparation for the show, Dramaturg Paul Doyle gives insight into some of the references in the play we didn't all know.

Heidi’s journey as observer and outsider is steeped in the political movements, buzz words, and culture of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. The names and concepts are touchstones are meant to anchor us in each scene through the years. In case you missed a few of the references, here’s a brief primer.

Weatherperson – At the party in 1968, Heidi uses this gender-neutral term to ask if Scoop is a member of the Weathermen (aka Weather Underground), a communist student movement, that became well know in the 1970s for a series of high-profile domestic bombings (described by former Weatherman Bill Ayers—remember that “scandal” during the 2008 presidential campaign?—as “symbolic acts of extreme vandalism”) in protest of the Vietnam War and meant to disrupt the government. The name comes from a lyric in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

Herbert Marcuse – a German-born political philosopher whose critiques of consumerism and capitalism (best-known works include Eros and Civilization and One-Dimensional Man) strongly influenced both the student movements of the 1960 and the developing field of pop culture studies. Marcuse’s philosophy combined elements of Marxism, Freudian theory, and Hegelian dialecticism. To not be familiar with Marcuse would most definitely have raised eyebrows at a Gene McCarthy campaign party.

Consciousness-raising – Jill and Fran’s women’s rap group was part of the growing feminist movement of the late 60’s and early 1970’s. In discussing and analyzing events in their lives (“rapping”), these women-only gatherings aimed to make the participants aware of systematic oppression in their lives, and offer support in identifying it, analyzing it, and fighting back.

“Erlichperson” and “Haldeperson” – Peter is using gender-neutral terminology to refer to John Ehrlichman and Harry Haldeman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs and Chief of Staff (respectively) during the Nixon administration. By this point in history, both men had resigned from their posts in the fallout from the Watergate scandal. In a year, they would both be serving federal prison sentences.

Florine Stettheimer -- A lesser-known Modernist painter (1871 – 1944), known for painting fanciful representations of Broadway, Fifth avenue, and other New York scenes. She also designed the sets and costumes for Four Saints in Three Acts, a 1934 opera by Vigil Thompson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein.

Laura Nyro – female vocalist whose work blended gospel, avant-garde jazz, and pop music forms into a series of critically-acclaimed albums in the late sixties and early seventies. Pretty good stuff.

Judy Chicago – Feminist visual artist, active since the 1960s. By 1974, Chicago had already founded feminist art programs at CSU Fresno, Cal Arts, and the Los Angeles Women’s Building. In the late seventies, Chicago would create her most famous work, The Dinner Party, consisting of a triangular table with place settings for 39 famous women of myth and history.

Felix Frankfurter – An associate justice of the Supreme Court from 1939-1962, Frankfurter’s formative years were spent on New York’s Lower East Side, saving money for Harvard Law School and attending leftist lectures at the Cooper Union. Early in his career, his progressive views brought him to the defense of leftists and radicals (he wrote a scathing critique of the case against Sacco and Vanzetti), but his strong preference for judicial restraint (upholding a piece of legislation unless it is obviously unconstitutional) placed him in the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. He taught at Harvard Law before joining the court and had an annoying habit of lecturing his colleagues at length during meetings.

“Mass weeping with Yoko in Central Park” – John Lennon was shot and killed by stalker Mark Chapman on December 8, 1980 outside his home at the Dakota building in New York City. This mention of the memorial for Lennon places us on Sunday, December 14, 1980, when an enormous crowd gathered in Central Park for a memorial service.

Reaganomics – Hot topic starting in the early eighties, during Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. In brief, Reagan’s policies sought to leave behind the economic malaise of the 1970s by reducing government spending, reducing taxes, and removing government regulation of industry.

“Death of the ERA” – The Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed constitutional change stating that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.” Introduced in every session of Congress from 1923 to 1970, it was passed by Congress in 1972, but failed to be ratified by the state legislatures by the deadline of June 30, 1982. It was most recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives on July 21, 2009.

The Ethical Culture School – Scoop refers this famous New York private school at the McCarthy party where he meets Heidi, and again when he reveals that he’s late for his son’s fourth grade play (an adaptation of Gunter Grass’s violent allegory for post-World War II Germany The Wicked Cooks). The school is known for its progressive educational philosophy and emphasis on ethical instruction and community service.

Wendy Wasserstein Biography

With “The Heidi Chronicles” Wendy Wasserstein cemented her place as the first great playwright of an unspoken generation. Today, The Custom Made Theatre Blog takes a look at her life and work.

Wendy Wasserstein was born on October 18, 1950 in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children in a struggling Jewish family. Her father, a textile manufacturer, patented velveteen and, with new found finances, the family moved to Manhattan when she was 12. There Wasserstein attended plays and while moved and inspired, was also distressed that she was not seeing smart, strong, witty women, like herself, represented onstage.

Wasserstein attended Mount Holyoke College and graduated in 1971. She proceeded to get an MFA in creative writing at City College, where she wrote her first produced play, “Any Woman Can't.” André Bishop, the artistic director of Playwright’s Horizons, produced “Any Woman Can’t” in 1973 and went on to produce almost all of Wasserstein’s plays.

Bishop was just one of a number of lifelong friends Wasserstein soon made in the New York theater scene. Another who shared Wasserstein’s wry humor was Christopher Durang, a playwright who first approached her by saying, “You look so bored, you must be very bright.” Durang and Wasserstein met as members of the Yale University School of Drama playwrighting class of 1976. There Wasserstein found that not only were plays not being written about women like her, but no one like her was writing plays; she was the only woman in the thirteen person class. Her Yale thesis project was also her first widely successful play, “Uncommon Women,” a play about eight Mount Holyoke graduates who reunite and reminisce about their college years.

In 1988, after three more successful plays, “The Heidi Chronicles” was produced at Playwright’s Horizons. This story of one woman’s quest for fulfillment quickly moved to Broadway and became an American classic. “The Heidi Chronicles” earned many awards including the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award. Impressively, she was able to follow “The Heidi Chronicles” with another Broadway hit, “The Sisters Rosensweig,” a 1992 play about three sisters and their very different struggles with identity.

Wasserstein’s also wrote the plays “Tender Offer,” “Isn’t it Romantic,” “The Man in a Case,” “An American Daughter,” “Old Money,” and “Third.” Her other work included the screenplay for “The Object of My Affection,” two books of essays, and “Pamela’s First Musical,” a children’s book that she adapted into a musical. In 1998 Wasserstein started Open Doors, a program to bring intelligent underprivileged students to New York. That same year, after attempts spanning over a decade, she gave birth to a daughter and achieved her dream of motherhood as a brilliant, resilient and witty single woman. Tragically Wasserstein died in 2006 due to lymphoma complications. The lights on Broadway were dimmed the next day in her honor.

Wendy Wasserstein was the first playwright to put modern women on the stage and gave them a voice. Her work was hailed as funny and accessible as well as being an honest investigation of a struggling driven generation of women. As people balancing careers, love lives and children, Wasserstein’s characters always have doubts and insecurity, but also great strength and insight. Her characters face dissatisfaction, uncertain identities, and societal pressure, with humor. They are always ready with punch lines and quips. Her plays are reflections of a world where people are self-aware individuals who find solidarity and overcome life’s difficulties without losing their ability to smile.

Further Reading:

Wikipedia Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Wasserstein
Jewish Women's Archive Biography: http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/wasserstein-wendy
New York Times Obituary: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/theater/31wasserstein.html
Playbill.com Obituary: http://www.playbill.com/news/article/96859
Michael Feingold Remembers her in The Village Voice: http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-01-24/theater/wendy-wasserstein/

Interview - Director Brian Katz, The Heidi Chronicles

Marketing Associate Alan Kline interviews director Brian Katz about “The Heidi Chronicles,” optimism, political movements, and the value of humor.

Alan: So Brian, why The Heidi Chronicles? What draws you to the play?

Brian: First of all, it’s an extremely funny play. The characters are well drawn and likable; you root for them. It has got the makings of a great play that way; it’s very universal. It actually is a unique play, I think, in that people have this sense of it as this prototypical feminist eighties play, and they’re completely wrong. While it’s a political play in its own right, it does not belong to a certain group or political movement, but is the story of those who don’t really fit in. They are intelligent, witty, and care, but they aren’t necessarily those in a certain ideology that lends itself to group movements and protests. While it’s set in a certain time period, I think what we showed last time around is that it didn’t really age if approached not as a piece of nostalgia, but as one person’s story.

Alan: You did a production of this play in 2006, why do it again?

Brian: We’re opening our new space at the Next Stage, which we are excited about. We wanted to introduce the space with an old favorite. We’ve heard from our audience that this is one of their favorite shows, so we wanted to bring it back as a treat and also to introduce our new neighborhood to us with a piece that people have really loved and gotten a lot out of. We also feel it epitomizes what we do. It’s a modern, award winning play. It is political with a small “p”, which is what we like, plays about individuals not about kings.

Alan: Are you planning to put it on as you did before? Or are you reconceptualizing it at all?

Brian: We feel we are taking the best of. It is a new space, so obviously we have to rethink a lot of things. We will be keeping elements that worked well, though slightly altering many of them. For example, this time around we’re having an artist do some framed art that will represent time and place. But they’ll still come off the wall scene by scene, like the photographs last time. We’re going further with the concept of the impressionist location, in that this will feel a little bit more like a hip museum. And of course there are new cast members who will have their own unique interpretations.

Alan: How would you characterize the play itself?

Brian: It’s a modern comedy, but it’s intellectual. We’ve always felt it’s a Woody Allen type story, that these are the people he knew too. Wasserstein writes what she knows, and she knows upper middle class women best. So it’s an intelligent upper middle-class comedy.

Alan: You mentioned that the play is often assumed to be feminist, though it isn’t. Heidi certainly encounters the feminist movement in the play, how do you feel the play addresses feminism?

Brian: It has feminism, but it’s a tricky word because it means something different to everybody. You know my background. My mother is certainly a feminist. She’s a professor. She was a professor in the 70’s where there was a ridiculous glass ceiling for her. But I was never taught that would ever drift to the side of aggression against anyone else. It’s about equality, period, with pay being the absolute number one issue. In the play, there are feminists I think Heidi is comfortable with and agrees with, and I think there are ones that she feels are on the wrong path. I think Wasserstein felt that way. I think she felt the movement abandoned women like her.

Alan: You said the play is about characters who don’t fit it. Do you see Heidi as the primary representation of this, or are all the characters in the play experiencing this?

Brian: Heidi is the character that embodies that the most, though they probably all have elements of it because we all do. But Heidi is the one who has everything going for her. She’s intelligent, she’s smart, she’s witty and yet she always seems to find herself on the outside. I’m not sure until the end of the play she’s really quite sure why that keeps happening.

Alan: In the monologues that begin the two acts, Heidi talks about women artists who are observers and outsiders …

Brian: Which is all of them, of course.

Alan: Right, and how they were forgotten. Do you see that as a model for Heidi through the play?

Brian: Oh no, I don’t think she’s forgotten at all. That’s why there’s hope in the play. I think there’s a lot of it. I think if you asked her she’d probably believe that we’re evolving in the right direction, that these are all improvements, that we are becoming more humane and more equal as time goes on.

Alan: So you see her as kind of an optimist?

Brian: Yeah, I think she is. She wouldn’t be so upset if she wasn’t, optimists are always the ones to get hurt. She has faith in people; otherwise how could her faith get wrecked at different points in the play? Otherwise she’s just a bitter angry character.

Alan: The play takes place over 24 years,. Although it is timeless, she is going through the events of her time. How do these affect the play?

Brian: Some of the scenes are set at very specific historical times, like the assassination of John Lennon. They’re used as tools to indicate where Heidi is. During the Lennon scene she is perhaps feeling some of her most aloof in the play, which may be where the country was at the time. It was a very strange transitional time moving out of the 70s into the 80s, out of the end of our idealism and into our “me, me, me” decade at its worst. And the character is always responding, because she is aware. She has strong feelings about these things. At the same time nothing changes. Those are universal themes of the play, alienation and setting out ones’ own path.

Alan: Are there any other major themes you explore when working on this play that we haven’t mentioned?

Brian: What we haven’t talked about too much is how funny the play is, how clever and witty a writer Wasserstein is. It makes the brain happy to have intelligent witty characters onstage saying intelligent witty things, and that should never go completely out of style. I don’t think everything has to be Noel Coward or Oscar Wilde, but I do think there’s a great place for a very witty intelligent play that makes you laugh at yourself. It helps us feel for these characters. I liked what you once said about Wendy as someone who hid her anger under humor. I think there’s always anger under humor. I don’t think she was an angry person, but I think she was disappointed for a while, and then maybe, like Heidi, came to terms with that to some extent. Wendy Wasserstein did find her own way to do it. We lost her tragically early. There was nobody more loved in the community. It was a major, major loss. Everyone agreed about how much she cared and how much support she gave others in theatre.