New York, NY Pe r m i t N o . 7 5 2 8
AT THE MINT THEATER, 311 WEST 43RD ST, 3RD FLOOR
PA I D
June 3 through July 27, 2014
JUNE 3 through JULY 27
PRODUCING ART IST IC DIRECT OR
NON - PROFIT U . S . POSTAGE
866-811-4111 or minttheater.org
J O N AT H A N B A N K FINANCE & PRODUCT ION
S H E R R I K OT I M S K Y
SPECIAL DISCOUNT OFFER!
SAVE 10% JUNE 3 THROUGH JUNE 29 PAY ONLY $49.50 (use code MINT49) SAVE 50% BUY CHEAPTIX. LIMITED AVAILABILITY. (REGULAR PRICE $55; $2.75 PER TICKET SERVICE CHARGE APPLIES TO ALL ORDERS.)
PERFORMANCES Tue, Wed & Thu at 7pm Fri & Sat at 8pm, Sat & Sun at 2pm Wed. Matinees: 6/18, 7/9 at 2pm No performances: 6/17, 6/24, 7/8
ORDER YOUR TICKETS TODAY! Online: minttheater.org Phone: 866.811.4111 M-F 9 to 9, S-S 10 to 6
JULES ROMAINS
BY
TRANSLATED AND DIRECTED BY
GUS KAIKKONEN
SAVE EVEN MORE WITH CHEAPTIX: You don’t have to be a cheapskate to appreciate a bargain. We offer a limited number of half-price tickets ($27.50) for every performance. How many CheapTix are available? About 10 per night, sometimes less—and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Do I get to choose where I sit? No. We assign your seats the night of the performance, but don’t worry, our theater only has 100-seats. Will I sit with my friends? Yes, we won’t ever split your party.
with -
ROSS BICKELL MITCH GREENBERG GEORGE MORFOGEN JAY PATTERSON PAUL PONTRELLI DAVE QUAY DOUGLAS REES JAMES RIORDAN MEGAN ROBINSON KRAIG SWARTZ SCOTT THOMAS BRIAN THOMAS VAUGHAN VLADIMIR VERSAILLES
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Mint’s First-Priority Club
First-Priority Club Members get the best seats at the best price. First-Priority Club members receive advance notification of all of our productions and events. Our newsletter is packed with information and insight. GET THE SEATS YOU WANT:
First-Priority Club Members have the first chance to order tickets. PAY LESS FOR TICKETS:
First-Priority Club Members pay only $38.50 per ticket. You save 30%. NEVER PAY SERVICE CHARGES:
First-Priority Club Members pay no service charges no matter how you order. RECEIVE PERSONAL ATTENTION:
First Priority Club Members call the Mint directly and not the Ovation call center. ATTEND READINGS FOR FREE:
First-Priority Club Members are invited to attend readings and other special events. Minimum tax-deductible contribution: $150 For more information call us at 212.315.0231
311 W. 43rd St. 3rd Floor New York, NY 10036
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Sets ROGER HANNA Costumes SAM FLEMING Lights PRICE JOHNSTON Original Music & Sound JANE SHAW Projections ROGER HANNA & PRICE JOHNSTON Props JOSHUA YOCOM Casting JUDY BOWMAN Production Manager SHERRI KOTIMSKY Production Stage Manager LISA MCGINN Assistant Stage Manager LAURA KIM Illustration STEFANO IMBERT Graphics HEY JUDE DESIGN, INC. Advertising THE PEKOE GROUP Press DAVID GERSTEN & ASSOCIATES
866-811-4111 or minttheater.org Donogoo is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
By public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
“DONOGOO is both a delightful entertainment and a work of depth and humanity. It is a gift of great geniuses to inspire laughter while demonstrating that truth transcends the borders of time and space.” La Proue, 1930
In DONOGOO, ambition and imagination collude to create fact out of fraud. Lamendin is a desperate man suffering from an existential crisis. Le Trouhadec is a professor of geography who longs for election to the Academy of Sciences. Together they unwittingly set in motion a stock market swindle of global proportions. Investors, pioneers and prospectors alike are driven to seek their fortune in Donogoo, a place that doesn’t exist—or does it? DONOGOO was originally published in 1920 as a novel in the form of a mock film scenario. It wasn’t until 1929, with the opening of the Théâtre Pigalle in Paris, that Romains considered re-fashioning DONOGOO into a play. The Pigalle was billed as the most modern theatre in the world, employing the latest developments in theatrical design and backstage machinery. The Pigalle faced an uncertain fate in its first year of operation as it was unable to find a production suited to its mammoth technological capabilities. Finally, Romains’ cinematic tale—which swings wildly from a scene atop the Moselle Bridge, to a bar, to a Bank office, to the wilds of South America—could be fashioned into a play script. DONOGOO opened in October of 1930 and was so successful it saved the struggling Théâtre Pigalle from ruin. Le Figaro called the play, “a complete triumph; filled with very amusing burlesque, an atmosphere of adventure, and written with all the skill and vitality that one expects from the author of DR. KNOCK.” DONOGOO is all but unknown in the English-speaking world; it has been performed only once in this country, in 1961 at the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York, directed by Adrian Hall. “A spoof of scientific accuracy, high finance, trade, patriotism, pioneering, and a host of momentous and minute matters,” wrote the New York Times, calling the play “sharp and amusing.” Our production of DONOGOO will feature a vibrant new translation by Gus Kaikkonen. Gus previously translated and directed Jules Romains’ DR. KNOCK.
“The play is constructed with a perfect precision...by one of the greatest and most comically skillful of our contemporary writers. Romains, with the most delicate care, creates scenes of fine comedy that grip the audience’s attention.” La Revue hebdomadaire, 1930
JULES ROMAINS Jules Romains (1885-1972): Romains was born Louis-Henri-Jean Farigoule on August 26, 1885. He spent most of his childhood in Paris, where his father was a teacher. In 1902, he published his first poem, “Le Chef-d’ouvre” (“The Masterpiece”) in La Revue jeune. He published under the pen name he would use the rest of his life—Jules Romains—chosen because it was easy to pronounce, memorable, and expressed his love of Rome. Romains continued to write and publish poetry, but he also furthered his education. After graduation, he taught philosophy full-time while continuing to write poems and prose. His first volume of poems, La vie unanime, published in 1908, outlined his new philosophy of Unanimism, which he discovered while wandering the streets of Paris. In Unanimism, Romains “had an intuition of the interconnectedness of all people, that groups possess a sort of collective soul, generated by disparate individuals who make up the group,” according to biographer Susan McCready. Unanimism influenced a generation of avantgarde thinkers and artists. Romains first success as a playwright came in 1923 with Monsieur Le Trouhadec saisi par la débauche, about a naïve yet cunning professor. It was directed by visionary actor/director/designer Louis Jouvet. (The character of Professor Le Trouhadec is central to the story of Donogoo.) Romains surpassed the success of Trouhadec with another comedy the same year, Knock, or Le Triomphe de la médicine, directed by Louis Jouvet, who played the title role. The play was a sensation. Dr. Knock was revived six times between 1924 and 1933, and seven more times between 1935 and 1949. In 2010 Mint produced DR. KNOCK, also translated and directed by Gus Kaikkonen. Again the play worked its magic:
“It’s a play that once again proves that one of the best ways to be topical is to look to the past.” Jason Zinoman, The New York Times “I never cease to marvel at how Jonathan Bank, the Mint’s artistic director, always manages to pull terrific plays of which I’ve never heard out of his seemingly bottomless hat. He’s done it again with Doctor Knock.” Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal
“Romains’s comedy is elegant, stinging and more disquieting the more you dwell on it.” David Cote, Time Out New York
Thomas M. Hammond, Patrick Husted in Mint’s 2010, Dr. Knock. Photograph by Richard Termine
ENRICHMINT EVENTS ENRICHMINT EVENTS ARE SUPPORTED IN PART BY A GRANT FROM THE MICHAEL TUCH FOUNDATION.
All events take place immediately after the performance and usually last about fifty minutes. They are free and open to the public. Speakers and dates subject to change without notice. You can now watch twenty past events through our EnrichMINT VIDEO ARCHIVES. Visit minttheater.org and click on the EnrichMINT tab.
SUNDAY, JUNE 8 after the matinee: JEANINE PARISIER PLOTTEL
PROFESSOR EMERITUS, HUNTER COLLEGE & THE GRADUATE CENTER, CUNY Jeanine Plottel is the former chair of the Hunter Department of Romance Languages, and the author of many articles and books in both French and English. The French government has decorated her twice for her contributions to French Language, Literature and Culture. She presently serves on several boards, including Barnard College, where she is a trustee, the Society for French American Cultural Exchange (FACE), the Columbia University Maison Française, and the NYU Institute of French Studies. She traces her intellectual genealogy to Jules Romains: her Ph. D. thesis advisor, friend, and mentor, Jean Hytier, was one of Jules Romains’s students. She will discuss the playwright’s unique position in French literary history.
SATURDAY, JUNE 14 after the matinee: GUS KAIKKONEN TRANSLATOR AND DIRECTOR OF DONOGOO Gus Kaikkonen is an award-winning playwright, actor and director. For eighteen years has been the Artistic Director of New Hampshire’s Peterborough Players. Gus is a frequent collaborator at the Mint, having most recently directed N.C. Hunter’s A PICTURE OF AUTUMN. In 2010, Gus directed his own translation of Jules Romains’ DR. KNOCK for the Mint. Gus’s plays, translations and adaptations have been produced Off Broadway at the Mint, the Pearl Theatre Company, New York Musical Theatre Festival, Playwrights Horizons, the Production Company; in England at the New End Theatre and the Theatre Museum in London, and the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough.
SUNDAY, JUNE 15 after the matinee: LISE SCHREIER
ASSOCIATE CHAIR, MODERN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, FORDHAM U. In DONOGOO, Jules Romains skillfully satirizes the patriotism and pioneering spirit that drove French imperialism. Lise Schreier will discuss the play in the context of French colonial literature. Professor Schreier teaches nineteenth-century French literature and twentieth-century French and Francophone literature at Fordham University. Her research interests include colonial and postcolonial literature, her publications focus on travel writing, constructions of national and artistic identities, and the connections between imperialism and early feminism. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled “The Playthings of Empire: Exoticized Children and the Politics of French Femininity, 1780-1895.”
SATURDAY, JUNE 21 before the matinee: GUS KAIKKONEN TRANSLATOR AND DIRECTOR OF DONOGOO 12:00PM – BRUNCH AND DISCUSSION AT BEA (403 WEST 43RD STREET)
Join Gus Kaikkonen, Translator and Director of DONOGOO by Jules Romains, for a delicious pre-matinee brunch at BEA, where he will discuss the process of translating and adapting Romain’s ambitious and sprawling play for the Mint Theater Company. BRUNCH AND ONE PREMIUM TICKET $85 ($75 FOR MEMBERS OF THE FIRST-PRIORITY CLUB CALL 212.315.0231 TO RESERVE YOUR PLACE.