AtticRep
C/o Department of Speech and Drama, One Trinity Place, San Antonio, TX 78212 Tel: 210.999.8524
BACK OF THE THROAT
By Yussef El Guindi
December 6 – 15, 2007
The Attic Theater
Ruth Taylor Theater Building
Trinity University
CAST
KHALED Nate Beal
BARTLETT David Connelly*
CARL Rick Frederick
ASFOOR William Razavi
SHELLY, BETH, JEAN Renee Garvens
*Appearing by permission of Actors Equity Association
Premiered in San Francisco, CA, in a co-production by
Golden Thread Productions and Thick Description.
First presented in New York City by The Flea Theater,
Jim Simpson, Artistic Director; Carol Ostrow, Producing Director.
This production is made possible, in part, by funding through the Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogues Initiative
Creative and Production Staff
Director Roberto Prestigiacomo
Dramaturg Stacey Connelly
Set and Costume Martha Penaranda
Lighting Designer Jimmy Honsaker
Technical Director Cameron Beesley
Strip Choreography Renee Garvens
Fight Choreography David Connelly
Strip Consultant Jackie Anderson
Production Stage Manager Yinelly Arnold
Stage Manger Erika Reyes
Assistant Stage Manager Joan Williams
Master Electrician Justin Moore
Lead Electrician Scott Marshall
Stage Hand Thomas Benavidez
Nate Beal (KHALED) is a senior at Trinity University and is majoring in theatre and history. He has appeared in six main stage productions at Trinity and more at Shakespeare at Winedale Summer Theatre. Past favorite shows include Dracula (Van Heilsing), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (The Player), Holiday (Edward Seaton) and Richard II (John of Gaunt). He serves as Lab Show Coordinator for the Trinity University Players’ Society and Secretary of Omega Tau of Phi Alpha Theata. His other interests include playwriting, politics, Asian studies and spending time with friends.
David Connelly (BARTLETT) most recently acted the title role in King Lear, performing with his students at the North East School of the Arts (NESA), where he created and has taught the acting component of the Musical Theater program for the past nine years. He performed on Broadway and at the Festival of Perth, Australia, in the Steppenwolf Theatre Company's Tony-nominated production of "The Song of Jacob Zulu." Regional credits include performances with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the Goodman Theatre, the Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and the San Antonio Public Theatre. David adapted, directed and composed music for Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrances from the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial, produced by Chicago's Famous Door Theatre Company. Shrapnel in the Heart received a Joseph Jefferson Citation, several After Dark awards, and was named as one of the Best Productions of 1993 by both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.
Rick Fredrick (CARL) is a recent transplant form Chicago where he enjoyed a ten year run as a company member of the critically acclaimed European Repertory Company. He has been seen in roles such there as; Woyzeck in Woyzeck, Ariel in The Tempest, Dr Lvov in Ivanov, Sammy Werlitzer in Happy End, Dr Astrov in Uncle Vanya, the Beggar in Jean Giraudoux’s Electra, was Nick in inugural AtticRep production of One for the Road and Carter in Fat Pig. Rick is proud to make San Antonio home and thrilled to work with AtticRep.
Renee Garvens (SHELLY, BETH, JEAN) made her debut performance at the AtticRep in Fat Pig and will appear in The Back of the Throat. She has been been seen on local stages since moving to San Antonio in 2001. Renee is in her sixth season as a member of the Vexler Children's Theatre Troupe. Some of her favorite past roles include Alice in Alice in Wonderland, Sarah in Beau Jest, Huck Finn in Tom Sawyer, and Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. She has also appeared in numerous local and national television commercials and independent films. This performance in Back of the Throat is dedicated in appreciation of the support of her husband and children.
William Razavi (ASFOOR) was born in Tehran, Iran and grew up in Helotes, Texas. He is a graduate of Trinity University (BA 1995) and Brandeis University (MFA-Dramatic Writing 1997). His play Making Up For Lost Time was work-shopped at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts and his radio play Wenceslas Square was broadcast in Boston on WERS. His plays Macbeth, Lusitaniaand The Next-to-Last-Flight of Amelia Earhart are currently part of the curriculum at several universities. Directing credits include a Paper Heroes for the Renaissance Guild’s Act One series and Soup du Jour at the Boerne Community Theatre. His favorite roles have included Dr. Rance in What the Butler Saw at Trinity, Tiny Duffy in All the King’s Men at Brandeis, and A in Samuel Beckett’s Rough for Theatre I. He is also a contributing writer for the San Antonio Current.
Creative and Production Staff
YINELLY ARNOLD (Production Stage Manager) Yinelly is currently the Assistant Technical Director at San Antonio College. Her past credits include Just a Kiss, Living Out, Pain of the Macho, andmany more. She is delighted to be working on another production with AtticRep.
STACEY CONNELLY (Dramaturg) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech and Drama at Trinity University. She received her B.F.A. from the University of Oklahoma and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Theatre from Indiana University. Her teaching areas include acting, dramatic literature, text analysis, and theatre history. Among her directing credits are The Cashier, Buried Child and Our Town at Loyola University Chicago; Molly Sweeney with the San Antonio Public Theatre; King Lear at North East School of the Arts; and a number of productions at Trinity, among them The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Top Girls, Tango, Spring Awakening, Candida, Present Laughter, Dracula and Hay Fever. Her scholarship on modern drama has appeared in leading national journals. Specializing in German theatre between the two world wars, she served as a Research Fellow for the German Academic Exchange Service in Berlin. Her other research interests include political theatre, especially the work of Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator.
ROBERTO PRESTIGIACOMO (Director) Directing credits in professional and academic theatres (representative): King Lear, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, The Triumph of Love, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Marisol, How I Learned to Drive, One for the Road, Fat Pig, and original works like pastiche, Sabbia and Guernika. His creative work includes the development of community-based theatre through improvisation and storytelling techniques, and the creation of original physical theatre pieces. At Trinity University, Roberto teaches directing, acting, physical theatre, community-based theatre, and contemporary performance. He is a member of Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers (SSDC) and is a native of Rome, Italy.
JIMMY HONSAKER (Lighting Designer) James studied lighting and scenic design at the University of Colorado. Design credits include Company, Dr. Faustus, and Six Flags Fiesta Texas’s Creature Feature.
MARTHA PENARANDA (Scenic and Costume Designer) studied textile design in her native Colombia. She studied scene and costume design at the Academy of Fine arts in Florence, Italy, and has a dual master’s degree in scene and costume design from Carnegie Mellon University. Martha has designed sets and costumes for the AtticRep production of The Last Day of Judas Iscariot, and scenery for Fat Pig, Just a Kiss and Mr. Marmalade.. Other favorite projects includes The Water Children, directed by the playwright, Wendy MacLeod, and Conference of the Birds, with costumes designed by Paul Tazewell. Until 2003, she was Assistant Professor of Drama at Kenyon College.
ERIKA REYES (Stage Manager) Erika is a theater major at San Antonio College. She has help to build shows such as: Grease, Don't Dress For Dinner, The Glass Menagerie, Zombie Prom, and The Women. She hopes to someday get her Bachelor's Degree in design. This is her first time working with AtticRep.
DRAMATURG'S NOTES
In the days following 9/11, our government undertook a massive response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers and Washington, D.C. In some ways, this response was a culmination of events surrounding previous attacks: the bombing of the World Trade Centers in 1993; the1995 attack on the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, and the suicide bombing of the S.S. Cole in 2000. Yet the shock and massive loss of life on September 11th provoked a sea change in our government’s attempts to protect us at home and abroad. In October 2001, President Bush created the Department of Homeland Security to establish a broad network of programs “. . . to develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks.” Operating as an arm of the Oval Office, the DHS was founded to "to coordinate the executive branch's efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States” (www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011008.htm). These efforts, of course, included The Patriot Act, passed during the same month, which expanded the powers of law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism through eased restrictions on search and seizure, foreign intelligence gathering, and on detaining and deporting immigrants suspected of terrorist acts. The act also included “domestic terrorism” as part of its broader definition of terrorist activity; thus widening the net of law enforcement to cover a larger range of activities under Patriot Act provisions. Despite criticism from both major political parties for the act’s violations of civil liberties, and rulings from Federal courts stating that a number of its provisions are unconstitutional, the Patriot Act was been re-authorized in March 2006 with nearly all of its original provisions intact.
As Back of the Throat makes clear, the Patriot Act authorizes law enforcement to detain an immigrant indefinitely; to search a home or business without the owner’s or occupants’ permission or knowledge and to search telephone, e-mail, and business records without a court order, including records that document use of libraries and financial institutions. To take the long view, our country has restricted or suspended civil liberties in the past in times of emergency—for reasons of national security. How will history judge the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act? Fifty years from now, will the families of citizens now convicted or under suspicion receive reparations from the federal government as thousands of Japanese Americans did whose civil liberties were cancelled during WWII? Has our anxiety about domestic terrorism turned into another Red Scare? In considering these questions, we might remember Edward R. Murrow’s prescient warning in his See It Now broadcast of March 9, 1954: “We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”
Stacey Connelly - Dramaturg
About the Difficult Dialogues Initiative
The Ford Foundation selected 27 higher education institutions to receive grants of $100,000 each for projects that promote campus environments where sensitive subjects can be discussed in a spirit of open scholarly inquiry, academic freedom and with respect for different viewpoints.
Difficult Dialogues was created in response to reports of growing intolerance and efforts to curb academic freedom at colleges and universities. The goal is to help institutions address this challenge through academic and campus programs that enrich learning, encourage new scholarship and engage students and faculty in constructive dialogue about contentious political, religious, racial and cultural issues.
The Ford Foundation launched Difficult Dialogues in April 2005 by inviting proposals from all accredited, degree granting, non-profit institutions with general undergraduate programs. Over 675 preliminary proposals were submitted, signaling widespread interest in finding effective ways to teach and discuss sensitive topics.
Difficult Dialogues is part of a broader, $12 million effort by the Ford Foundation to understand and combat anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other forms of bigotry in the United States and Europe. It builds on the foundation’s history of supporting efforts by colleges and universities to foster more inclusive campus environments and to engage with the growing racial, religious and ethnic diversity of their student bodies.
MAKING ATTICREP POSSIBLE
We invite you to participate in the growth of AtticRep by becoming a sponsor. Gifts small and large help AtticRep meet the costs of production, royalties, marketing, and pay artist stipends. With your donation, you will demonstrate your support of thought-provoking, quality theater. Please consider joining the many sponsors listed in the back of this program in their dedication to fostering the growth of San Antonio’s newest theater company.
For more information on sponsor opportunities and giving levels, please visit with Managing Director Tim Hedgepeth at 999-8524, pick up a Sponsor Information sheet in the lobby, or visit our website at www.atticrep.org
AtticRep is looking for volunteers to assist with marketing, front of house and other projects. Please call Managing Director Tim Hedgepeth at 999-8524 for more information.