Matt Corica

Anything Goes

Choreography by Brianna Ascione

Scenic Design by Emma Antenen

Lighting Design by Chris Brusberg

A Flea in Her Ear

Scenic Design by Zoë Hurwitz

Lighting Design by Cameron Filepas

Costume Design by Matt Corica

The Drowsy Chaperone

Choreography by Brianna Ascione

Scenic Design by Tony DiBernardo

Lighting Design by Chris Brusberg

Love's Labour's Lost

Scenic Design by Zoë Hurwitz

Lighting Design by Cameron Filepas

Costume Design by Isabel Lagana

Something Rotten!

Scenic Design by Rochele Mac

Costume Design by Isabel Lagana

Choreography by Isabel Lagana

The Farnsworth Invention

by Aaron Sorkin

Scenic Design by Tony DiBernardo

Lighting Design by Manuel Da Silva

Costume Design by Isabel Lagana

Working

Scenic Design by Tony DiBernardo

Costume Design and Choreography by Isabel Lagana

Lighting Design by Nicholas Palatella

WORKING - A MUSICAL presented by the Delbarton Abbey Players (Winter 2021)

Love And Information

by Caryl Churchill

To put it plain: producing theatre in the era of Covid-19 is a challenging thing. Ours is an art form predicated on human connection - on proximity, both literal and emotional - and as we’ve seen in the world at large, the precautions we need to take to keep one another safe can make it that much harder to connect. What better play to produce than one that challenges us as well? This play, with a style and structure unlike anything seen on stage at Delbarton, has been a most rewarding challenge for our company, and promises to challenge and engage its audience as well.

Separated into seven sections, each thematically connected but otherwise unrelated, “Love and Information” tries to connect with us the way we connect with one another in 2020. Like scrolling a social media feed, we are given little snapshots of the characters’ lives - sometimes emotionally fraught, sometimes profound, sometimes just idle conversation. It’s a challenge for the actor and production team to build these little worlds only to immediately leave them to go somewhere else. With almost 60 scenes, over 120 characters, no stage directions, no context in time or location given by the playwright, Churchill leaves so many decisions up to the company that no two productions of “Love and Information” share much more than the title and her words - and, of course, the ideas those words explore.

We often watch theatre expecting to be given some sort of anchor - a recognizable plot, characters that fit certain molds, a consistent time and place - but in this play Churchill seems more interested in asking questions than providing answers. The theatre of “Love and Information” is not a neatly packaged, plastic copy of ‘real life’ but an exploration of the things that pull us together and keep us apart. It’s a mirror into which we see our own lives reflected - the ubiquity of cell phones in the play mirrors our own; the joy and grief and angst and uncertainty of its characters a perfect encapsulation of our own attempts to navigate a world that seems to perpetually teeter on the brink of chaos. These are not always pleasant things to think about! Yet by posing these questions, Churchill gives us space to find the beauty hidden beneath tragedy; the profundity camouflaged by the banal. Churchill doesn’t give us any easy answers in this play because the answers aren’t hers to give - they are ours to find. And just as our company has puzzled over, interpreted, and re-imagined the raw material she’s given us, she asks the same of her audience - to think, yes, but also to discuss, to interpret, to imagine. This play is an examination of life in the 21st century, in all its uncertainty - we invite you to explore it with us tonight.

Enjoy the show.

Merrily We Roll Along

Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

A pair of shipwrecked twins, each believing the other is dead, conceal their identities to afford themselves space to grieve anonymously - the sister even going so far as to disguise herself as a man, dressing in her brother’s clothes. A countess hides behind her grief for her own recently deceased father and brother, using her mourning veil as a shield to ward off suitors. A duke sends his courtiers on his behalf to woo the countess, maintaining a safe distance from her repeated rejection.

These are not particularly obvious ingredients for a comedy! Yet these are the people and circumstances Shakespeare chooses to put at the center of “Twelfth Night,” using as the source of its humor a rather melancholy idea: that these characters’ grief, their status, or simply their idea of themselves requires that they must hide inside these false identities - that they must project a version of themselves to the outside world that is not a true reflection of who they are within. (In our modern era we call this ‘Instagram’.)

To be sure, there is humor to be made from these circumstances - poor Sir Andrew picking a fight with very much the wrong twin, Malvolio’s outrageous courtship of an unwitting Olivia, and Olivia’s hysterical defense of the wrong ‘Cesario’ are prime examples. But in just the right light, from the right angle, you can see the pain behind the smiles. Laughter and melancholy, Shakespeare seems to tell us, are but two sides of the same coin.

Like all comedies in Shakespeare’s time, “Twelfth Night” wraps up its story with tidy romantic couplings. But the most crucial love story of the play is not one that ends in marriage - it is the reunion of its separated twins, Viola and Sebastian. “An apple cleft in two,” comments a flabbergasted Antonio, “is not more twin than these two creatures.” This image isn’t accidental - the two halves may be identical, but they are each only half of a whole. Viola’s name goes unspoken for the entirety of the play until her brother speaks her back into existence - joining the two halves once more. Viola and Sebastian are made whole, as we are, when they expose their soul and find its match reaching back.

Enjoy the show.

Big Fish

Music and Lyrics by Andrew Lippa

Book by John August

Based on the book by Daniel Wallace and the Columbia Motion Picture written by John August

“There are two men in my life - him and you - and the stories I believe in all come true…”

There’s an old adage in the theatre that acting, at its essence, is telling a lie truthfully - that to be an actor is to be able to say things that aren’t true, touch things that aren’t there, see things that don’t exist. The stories we tell in the theater aren’t true, but to be good at telling them, we have to believe that they are; if we don’t, neither will our audience.

In our early discussions about this show, we spoke at length about Edward and Will Bloom and their relationship to the truth. From Will’s perspective, the truth is what is real - what actually happened, without embellishment. Will wants to reconcile with his father by seeking the truth in Edward’s stories, but as Sandra reminds him in the song quoted above, truth has much more to do with what you believe. Edward’s stories don’t need to be real to be true.

That idea - that truth can exist independent from reality - is central to what we do in the theatre. We tell these stories on stage not because they are real, but because they have a truth to tell. Once we find the truth, we know what our stories are about - we know why they need to be told.

You don’t have to dig very deep to find the truth of this show (but you do have to wait until the end of the show to hear it):

“It ends with love…this much I know.”

Will spends most of the show searching for the truth in his father’s stories, and in the end, he finds love. Love is the truth that binds together the stories of this show, from Edward to Will to all the rest. It is our truth, too - it binds us together as a company; it devotes us to our craft. Most of all, it is the truth that we want to share with you.

Enjoy the show.

Metamorphoses

Based on the Myths of Ovid

Written and originally directed by Mary Zimmerman

"Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths."

For as long as we've been able to speak, we've told each other stories - to entertain us, to enlighten us, to explain the unexplainable. The Greeks used myths not only to make sense of the world around them but also to make sense of human nature - to better understand each other and ourselves. Myths are a mirror; they reflect our fears and desires, our strengths and our weaknesses back onto us. Even the gods of these myths are not immune from very human feelings of jealousy, pride, and love. They too, are ourselves, staring back in the mirror.

A central component in the stories you will see and hear told today is metamorphosis - change. Sometimes that change is physical, sometimes emotional; it is born of love, trauma, or perhaps initiated by divine intervention. It is always a one-way trip. We all undergo many metamorphoses during our time on earth - child to parent, student to teacher, novice to master. Upperclassmen in our audience are well aware of this; their college applications are (mostly) sent, and they can take stock of how much they’ve changed since arriving at Delbarton a lifetime ago - the young men they've become, so far removed from the boys they were.

As a cast and crew, we've undergone changes as well, of course - over the past months we've built characters, scenes, and the wonderful set you see before you. We've changed ourselves, as well - grown closer to one another, found the love and fellowship that can only come from working together towards a common goal. After the final performance, some of us may feel the sadness that sometimes accompanies a journey's end - as those seniors may feel in just a few short months. Rather than mourn a journey's end, we should take special care to remember where we've been - and to look ahead with excitement, and hope, and joy, to the journey that lays before us, each day a lifetime; each act of love an eternity.

Enjoy the show.

Into The Woods

Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim

Book by James Lapine

Theatre, at its core, is about telling stories. This is a bit of a truism, but it’s a good place to start when thinking about a show like “Into The Woods,” a show built around such iconic stories. We tell these stories in the hopes that it can bring us closer to an understanding of our collective self; at their best, they show us truths about ourselves we aren’t able to see on our own. Theatre is also about relationships - between actor and character, image and sound, performance and audience. So when we approach a play like “Into The Woods,” with its bottomless, nearly Shakespearean depth, the best place to start is with the stories, and what their relationships to one another can tell us about our own.

In our production, as we talked about the story of the play and the connections between characters within them, we found ourselves again and again at a single idea: that who we are is shaped by our connection to others, and the most profound connection we have is the relationship between our parents and our children. How we relate to our parents is how we relate to the world, and the stories we tell our children are the stories they will tell their own. As we see these characters molded by these relationships, we start to see ourselves in them - we come to realize their journey through the woods is our journey; their struggles are our own reflected back.

We see it in Cinderella, who strives for goodness and kindness in a house that is empty of both. We see it in the Baker, who desperately seeks guidance from a father who isn’t there as he struggles to take on the responsibility of parenthood himself. We see it in the complicated relationship between the Witch and her adopted daughter, Rapunzel. We see it in the arc of the youngest characters, Little Red and Jack, who each find that with freedom and choice comes risk, and with independence comes responsibility. We see it as they all experience the joy of getting their wish - and the bewilderment at what comes after “ever after.” We see it most profoundly as they experience loss, and in the new family that finds its beginnings at the end of the play.

As an audience consisting entirely of parents and children, we hope you find your own truths about family in the story of this play, illuminated so beautifully by its words and music.

Enjoy the show.