Bluebeard's Castle

Grantors

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Sponsors

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Donors

Opera Roanoke would like to thank our Donors for their generous gifts.

Tributes

Opera Roanoke is honored to acknowledge gifts made in tribute or memory of special friends.

Performers

Kyle Albertson

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Bass-Baritone

Jennifer Johnson Cano

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Mezzo-Soprano

Setting

Songs & Scenes

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Production Staff

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Venue Staff

School Administration Staff

General Director

Brooke Tolley

Artistic Director

Steven White

Community Engagement Associate

Ansley Melton

Musicians

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Board of Trustees

Daniel C. Summerlin III

Robert Nordt Sr.

Paula Prince

Immediate Past President

William "Bill" Krause

Board Members

Sally Adams Barbara von Claparede-Crola Rupert "Rupe" Cutler Isabel Ditzel Frank Giannini James "Jim" Kern Krista Vannoy

Student Advisory Board

Credits

Lighting equipment from PRG Lighting, sound equipment from Sound Associates, rehearsed at The Public Theater’s Rehearsal Studios. Developed as part of Irons in the Fire at Fault Line Theatre in New York City.

Special Thanks

*Appearing through an Agreement between this theatre and Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

“Actors’ Equity Association (“Equity”), founded in 1913, is the U.S. labor union that represents more than 51,000 actors and stage managers, Equity fosters the art of live theatre as an essential component of society and advances the careers of its members by negotiating wages, improving working conditions and providing a wide range of benefits, including health and pension plans. Actors’ Equity is a member of the AFL-CIO and is affiliated with FIA, an International organization of performing arts unions. www.actorsequity.org

United Scenic Artists ● Local USA 829 of the I.A.T.S.E represents the Designers & Scenic Artists for the American Theatre

ATPAM, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents & Managers (IATSE Local 18032), represents the Press Agents, Company Managers, and Theatre Managers employed on this production.

21-22 Season Welcome Letter

Dear Friends of Opera Roanoke,

Welcome to Opera Roanoke’s 46th Season of live performances in the Roanoke Valley. If this past year has taught us anything, it is how vital this art form and its patrons are to our community. We have missed you terribly, but we are ready to welcome you back to the theatre with a line-up of programs that highlight the best of all this art form has to offer – from traditional to contemporary – performances that will expand your mind and fulfill your soul.

At the core of everything we do at Opera Roanoke, is the belief in the power of the human voice to entertain, teach, and connect. With each of our three mainstage offerings this season, there is an opportunity to witness our mission in action. We invite you to explore a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary through the power of music and singing.

We are excited to share our 2021-22 season with you and we look forward to seeing you {back} at the Opera!

‍

Sincerely,

Brooke Tolley
General Director
Steven White
Artistic Director
Daniel C. Summerlin, III
President, Board of Trustees

Program Notes

Bluebeard’s Castle

American premiere of Eberhard Kloke’s version for chamber orchestra

Béla Bartók (1881–1945) was a Hungarian composer and an important pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology. During the first decades of his life, he was better known for his work in collecting and analyzing folk music than for his own compositions. He fled fascism to settle in New York City in 1940. At the time of his death from leukemia, his stature as a composer was beginning to grow internationally.

Bartók’s only opera is an intense psychological journey, a powerful drama of inner emotion, and a tour de force for its two singers and orchestra. Loosely based on Charles Perrault’s late–17th-century fairy tale, it tells the grotesque story of a rich and powerful man, suspected of having murdered several wives, who brings a new bride to his castle. In Bartók’s version, the bride, Judith, prods Bluebeard to open seven doors, each of which reveals an aspect of Bluebeard’s life, material possessions, and, by extension, his soul. With the opening of the final door, Judith is engulfed in his dark subconscious.

By the time the opera was written, the Perrault tale had become a metaphor for contemporary psychological questions: How well can two people know each other? How much should they attempt to find out? While such an approach, almost completely without conventional “action,” could easily have resulted in an overly didactic treatment, Bartók’s music makes the opera a thrilling journey. The score resides on, yet not quite beyond, the jagged edges of tonality. Like the subconscious and the dream world it depicts, it sounds familiar enough so as not to be experienced as abstract, yet foreign and disturbing enough to create a feeling of unease. It is a unique achievement in opera and a great challenge to the performers and production team.

Musicologists delight in analyzing the score of Bluebeard’s Castle, but the opera is remarkable for its ability to make a direct and powerful impression on anyone. The music is closely linked to the rhythms of the text, and yet gives it an acoustic power that transcends the strictly syntactic meaning. It speaks to the emotions as well as to the intellect.

The opera opens with a spoken prologue, in which the audience is invited to question whether what they’re about to see is really happening or takes place in their imagination. Bartók builds each of the scenes, represented by each of the seven doors of Bluebeard’s castle, around its own pitch center: beginning in F-sharp, moving to a bright C (expressed in a glorious outpouring of melody) in the fifth scene, and returning to the subdued F-sharp at the end. The whole drama is contained within this sequence: loneliness with a glimpse of the lost opportunity for love and light.

Much of the title character’s vocal line is declamatory and indeed without much color or range. Its power lies in its dramatic delivery. Conversely, Judith’s music covers a wider range. The underlying intention is clear: She is attempting to break away from his stifling presence. The music of Bluebeard’s Castle makes a universal tale of human relationships from a symbolist psychological study.

Bartók began the project, his sole opera, in 1911, working from a libretto by Béla Balázs. Adapting a particular violent story from Perrault’s collection—now often omitted from modern editions—Balázs, a leading intellectual in Budapest circles, had created a new, psychological rendering of the tale. He removed the happy conclusion, in which Judith is saved from the castle by her brothers and, employing Hungarian folk idiom, turned his focus to the strange relationship between Judith and her husband. “My ballad is the ballad of the inner life,” the poet explained. “Bluebeard’s castle is not a real castle of stone. The castle is his soul. It is lonely, dark and secretive: the castle of closed doors.”

In his score, Bartók likewise presented an inner life, not only pumping musical blood into the veins of the two characters but also presenting a précis of his maturation as a composer. His musical education had begun through his parents’ performances at home, as well as by his own exploration of works by Brahms and Schumann. But in travelling from what is now the borderland between Hungary and Romania to the former’s newly established capital of Budapest, Bartók discovered much richer musical landscapes. Attending the city’s Academy, he not only encountered the music of Richard Strauss but also that of Debussy, thanks to his meeting with the man who was to be his colleague and companion, Zoltán Kodály, in 1905. Such diverse musical seams fused in the works that Bartók began both to create and to notate. He had announced in 1904 that he would “collect the finest Hungarian folk- songs and elevate them, adding the best possible piano accompaniments, to the level of art song.” His encounter with Kodály made that ambition a reality. Working in collaboration, they were prolific in their collecting activities and the music they discovered came to infuse their work.

But what is so remarkable about Bartók’s output is not its ability to reflect diverse influences but to sublimate the strands into one, as is clear in Bluebeard’s Castle. Progress with the score was slow. With it, Bartók had hoped to win the Ferenc Erkel Prize in 1911, but he failed both in this and in a 1912 competition run by music publishers Rózsavölgyi, with one judge deeming the work impossible to stage and another thinking it far too dark. Bartók was devastated, but when, after World War I, the opera was finally mounted in Budapest, he experienced at least a partial refutation of those judgements.

As musical drama, Bartók’s only opera offers a decidedly bleak resolution to the oppositions at its core: Judith vs. Bluebeard, light vs. dark, sanity vs. madness, tonality vs. atonality. These tensions are immediately apparent as the ambiguous spoken prologue trails into silence and the score begins, low down in the orchestra’s register. Its music revolves around a penumbrous F-sharp chord, spelled out in folksy, pentatonic terms. Quickly, the woodwinds cut across this dark but sonorous sound, centering instead on a triad of C major. The clash between these elements spells out the interval of a tritone, the middle point in the chromatic scale or, rather, the polar opposite of the very first note we heard.

Such a dichotomy is seemingly resolved at the blinding opening of the fifth of the seven doors in Bluebeard’s castle. Accompanied by full orchestra (including an organ), Judith screams in amazement at the vastness of the kingdom she can see beyond, the music resounding with the luminescence of C major. But as with every door that she unlocks, there follows a shudder, a strange, angular scale, couched in the same sound-world as the clashing semitone that represents the blood covering everything in sight.

Once more, Bluebeard coolly thanks Judith for bringing daylight into the castle, but when, inevitably, she unlocks the last door of his soul, following her forebears into that final room, the music returns to Bluebeard’s dark, modal sound-world. All light is extinguished, and we are taken back to the primordial “Once upon a time” that is, thanks to Bartók’s psychologically acute music, the clarion call of eternity.

— Gavin Plumley

Gavin Plumley, commissioning editor of English-language program notes for the Salzburg Festival, specializes in the music and culture of Central Europe. He appears frequently on the BBC and has written for publications around the world.

Meet the Cast

Kyle Albertson

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Bass-Baritone

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Mr. Albertson made his European début at Opera Köln in Germany as Frank Murrant in Street Scene and will return to Europe in 2022 to perform the title role in Der fliegende Holländer and Wotan in Loriot’s Der Ring an einem Abend for Opera Graz. In addition, he will return to the Metropolitan as Angelotti in Tosca.

He first joined The Metropolitan Opera roster for Don Giovanni and returned for five consecutive seasons in their productions of Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte, Dialogues des carmélites, The Merry Widow, and Manon. 2020 and 2021 Metropolitan Opera engagements were to include covering the roles of the Dutchman in Der fliegende Holländer, Claggart in Billy Budd, and Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde. He recently stepped back onto the stage as Scarpia in Tosca for the Phoenicia Festival and performed Wotan in Das Rheingold for Opera Santa Barbara and Virginia Opera.

Jennifer Johnson Cano

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Mezzo-Soprano

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A naturally gifted singer noted for her commanding stage presence and profound artistry, Jennifer Johnson Cano has garnered critical acclaim for committed performances of both new and standard repertoire. For her performance as Offred in Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale she was lauded as “towering…restless, powerful, profound, she is as formidable as this astonishingly demanding role deserves” (New York Times). With more than 100 performances on the stage at The Metropolitan Opera, her most recent roles have included Nicklausse, Emilia, Hansel and Meg Page.

Highlights this season include the premiere of Kevin Puts’s The Hours with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Beethoven 9 with the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, and the New York premiere of Marc Neikrug’s A Song By Mahler at CMS Lincoln Center. She performs Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites (Mother Marie) with Houston Grand Opera; the world premiere of Gregory Spear’s Castor and Patience (Celeste) with Cincinnati Opera; and Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle (Judith) with Roanoke Opera.

Meet the Team

Steven White

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Conductor, Stage Director & Scenic Designer

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Praised by Opera News as a conductor who “squeezes every drop of excitement and pathos from the score,” Steven White is one of North America’s premiere operatic and symphonic conductors. He made his acclaimed Metropolitan Opera debut in 2010, conducting performances of La traviata starring Angela Gheorghiu. Since then he has conducted a number of Metropolitan Opera performances of La traviata, with such stars as Natalie Dessay, Hei-Kyung Hong, Plácido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Dmitri Hvorostovksy and Matthew Polenzani. In the past several seasons he has returned to the Met to participate in critically fêted productions of Don Carlo, Billy Budd, The Rake’s Progress and Elektra.

With a vibrant repertoire of over sixty-five titles, Maestro White’s extensive operatic engagements have included performances with New York City Opera, L’Opera de Montréal, Vancouver Opera, Opera Colorado, Pittsburgh Opera, Michigan Opera Theater, Baltimore Opera, New Orleans Opera, and many others. In recent seasons he has conducted Rigoletto with San Diego Opera, Otello and La traviata with Austin Opera, La traviata with Utah Opera, and a world premiere staged production of a brand-new Bärenreiter edition of Gounod’s Faust with Opera Omaha.

In the 2021-2022 season, he returns to the Metropolitan Opera for their production of Tosca, which he also conducts for Utah Opera. He continues his close collaboration with Opera Omaha, conducting Eugene Onegin, joins Peabody Opera Theatre as guest conductor for Dominick Argento’s Postcard from Morocco, and returns to Opera Roanoke for Bluebeard’s Castle in the fall and Verdi’s Requiem in the spring.

Tláloc López-Watermann

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Lighting Designer & Assistant Stage Director

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Tláloc López-Watermann is the founder of Light Conversations, LLC, a lighting and video design company based in New York City. Tlaloc regularly collaborates with stage directors Crystal Manich, Copeland Woodruff, Dean Anthony, JJ Hudson, and James Marvel. He has also designed for directors Ned Canty, Timothy Nelson, Tomer Zvulun, Andrew Eggert, Beth Greenberg, Corinne Hayes, and Sarah Meyers.

Tlaloc is fluent in Spanish and German and spent a season working at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Tlaloc has also worked regularly for The Seattle Opera, North Carolina Opera, Opera Louisiane, Toledo Opera, Utah Festival Opera, Todi Music Festival, Opera Roanoke, Opera Naples, and Shreveport Opera. In 2013, Tlaloc was chosen as the festival lighting designer for Lorin Maazel’s prestigious Castleton Festival in Virginia and has been lighting designer in residence for the Janiec Opera Company in Brevard, North Carolina.

In 2016, Tlaloc made company debuts with Amarillo Opera (Le Nozze di Figaro); Opera Grand Rapids (Gluck's Orphee); and Pittsburgh Opera (Ricardo Primo). In 2017, Tlaloc made debuts with Lawrence University (Hydrogen Jukebox), Opera Columbus, and Opera on the James. In addition to his work in opera, Tlaloc has worked with the Ontological Hysterical Company in New York City, In Strange Company in Albuquerque, A Host of People in Detroit, and The Arena Stage in Washington, DC, where he was the Allen Lee Hughes Lighting Fellow. He holds a BFA in Performance Production from Cornish College of the Arts, and an MFA in Design from NYU / Tisch.

Joey Neighbors

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Set Builder & Technical Director

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Joey has been in the theatre all his life. He has worked on countless productions all over the Southeast and Northeast United States. He has his BFA from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He has been the resident builder for Opera Roanoke for the past six seasons. He has worked with Opera Roanoke on countless productions on and off since 1986. Along with his work with Opera Roanoke he also works with Roanoke Ballet Theatre, Southwest Virginia Ballet, Roanoke Children’s Theatre, Off the Rails Theatre in Roanoke, Opera on the James in Lynchburg, and Annapolis Opera in AnnapolisMD. He has owned his own business for 18 years, Neighbors Handyman & Custom Carpentry and Star City Sets, doing small remodeling/repair jobs, tile work, and custom built-in’s and Sets for Opera and Theatre Companies. His joy in life is his family.

John Lipe

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Stage Manager

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John Lipe, Stage Manager, is a native of Carbondale, Illinois. He has worked for opera companies across the country, such as the Opera Company of Philadelphia, New Orleans Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Early Music Festival, Opera Memphis, Opera Roanoke, Opera Southwest, Tampa Opera, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Toledo Opera, Opera Nevada, and Utah Festival Opera.

Media

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2021 National Touring Cast

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While You Wait

With the help of our friends at Theatrely.com, Marquee Digital has you covered with exclusive content while you wait for the curtain to rise.

Exclusive First Listen to Taylor Trensch and Lizzie McAlpine Singing "The Dream" From FLOYD COLLINS – ORIGINAL BROADWAY CAST ALBUM

Emily Wyrwa

August 7, 2025

“If you follow that sound,” you’ll get a first look at Floyd Collins’ Original Broadway Cast Recording. Center Stage Records has announced the release of Floyd Collins – Original Broadway Cast Recording on streaming and digital platforms on Aug. 8. The CD edition will be available on Sept. 5.

Led by Jeremy Jordan, who was nominated for the 2025 Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical for his performance in the titular role, Floyd Collins ran at Lincoln Center this Spring. It also featured Taylor Trensch, who was nominated for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his performance, and indie-folk star Lizzie McAlpine.

Theatrely has an exclusive first listen to stars Trensch and Lizzie McAlpline singing “The Dream.”

‍Floyd Collins was nominated for six total Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical, Best Orchestrations, Best Leading Actor for Jordan, and Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for Taylor Trensch.

The Original Broadway Cast Recording is produced by Adam Guettel and Ted Sperling, with Adam Siegel and Van Dean serving as executive producers.

Floyd Collins is based on the true story of a cave explorer in Kentucky, 1925. While chasing a dream of fame and fortune by turning Sand Cave into a tourist attraction, Floyd Collins himself becomes the attraction when he gets trapped 200 feet underground. Alone but for sporadic contact with the outside world, including his brother Homer, Floyd fights for his sanity – and, ultimately, his life – as the rescue effort above explodes into the first genuine media circus. Reporters and gawkers from across the country descend on the property, fueling the hysteria and manipulating the nation into holding its collective breath. Floyd Collins, featuring a haunting exploration of the American dream by Tina Landau and a glorious folk and bluegrass-inspired score by Adam Guettel, tells the transcendent tale of a true American dreamer.

Floyd Collins features a book by Tina Landau, music and lyrics by Adam Guettel, additional lyrics by Tina Landau and direction by Tina Landau. The company features Jeremy Jordan as Floyd Collins, Jason Gotay as Homer Collins, Sean Allan Krill as H.T. Carmichael, Marc Kudisch as Lee Collins, Lizzy McAlpine as Nellie Collins, Wade McCollum as Bee Doyle, Jessica Molaskey as Miss Jane, Taylor Trensch as Skeets Miller, Cole Vaughan as Jewell Estes, Clyde Voce as Ed Bishop as well as Kevin Bernard, Dwayne Cooper, Jeremy Davis, Charlie Franklin, Kristen Hahn, Happy McPartlin, Kevyn Morrow, Zak Resnick, Justin Showell, and Colin Trudell.

To pre-save the album, visit here. To pre-order a CD, visit here.

HAMILTON Film To Be Released In Theatres This September

Emily Wyrwa

August 6, 2025

It’s time to go to the “room where it happens.” For the first time, the filmed versionof Hamilton will open in movie theatres across the nation. The theatrical release will take place on Sept. 5, 2025. Tickets are available for purchase at Fandango and anywhere tickets are sold.

The theatrical release expands on the Emmy Award-winning filmed version of the iconic musical, which is available on Disney+. It includes a special prologue to the film called Reuniting the Revolution, which features all-new interviews with the original cast and creators as they reflect on the impact the show has had on their lives

“When we filmed Hamilton, we wanted to try to capture the feeling of being in the Richard Rodgers Theatre during that first year on Broadway,” director/producer Thomas Kail said in a statement. “We’re thrilled that audiences will now have the opportunity to experience it on the big screen.”

A special premiere screening event will take place at the new Delacorte Theatre, home of The Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park series. A limited number of advance tickets will be available for a donation beginning Aug. 11. A free ticket lottery distribution will be available at The Public Theater on Sept. 3, as well as a free standby line in Central Park prior to the screening’s start. All advance ticket donations will benefit The Public Theater, where Hamilton debuted in 2015 before transferring to Broadway.

The pro-shot was filmed at The Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway in June of 2016, with the original cast of the musical, including writer Lin-Manuel Miranda in the titular role.

Andrea Martin, Will Brill Join MEET THE CARTOZIANS At Second Stage Theater

Emily Wyrwa

August 6, 2025

Two-time Tony Award-winner Martin will lead the company of Meet the Cartozians alongside Tony Award-winner Will Brill, Raffi Barsoumian, Nael Nacer, Susan Pourfar, and Tamara Sevunts. The play, directed by Tony Award-winner David Cromer, will kick off Second Stage Theater’s 47th Season.

Meet the Cartozians is part historical drama, part satire. It follows two sets of Armenian Americans — one man fighting for legal recognition in the 1920s, and his descendent fighting for followers and a competent glam team.

The creative team will feature scenic design by Tatiana Kahvegian, costume design by Enver Chakartash, and lighting design Stacey Derosier. The Voice and Dialect Coach is Gigi Buffington. Casting is by Daniel Swee, CSA. Additional members of the creative team to be announced at a later date.

The play kicks off the first season under the leadership of Artistic Director Evan Cabnet and Executive Director Adam Siegel.

‍Meet the Cartozians begins previews on Oct. 29 with an official opening set for Nov. 17 at the Irene Diamond Stage at the Pershing Square Signature Center on West 42nd Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Theatrely News

EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon

Theatrely News

READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT

Theatrely News

"Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes"

EXCLUSIVE: Watch A Clip From THEATER CAMP Starring Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Molly Gordon

By: Maia Penzer

14 July 2023

Finally, summer has arrived, which can only mean one thing: it's time for camp! Theater Camp, that is. Theatrely has a sneak peak at the new film which hits select theaters today.

The new original comedy starring Tony Award winner Ben Platt and Molly Gordon we guarantee will have you laughing non-stop. The AdirondACTS, a run-down theater camp in upstate New York, is attended by theater-loving children who must work hard to keep their beloved theater camp afloat after the founder, Joan, falls into a coma.

The film stars Ben Platt and Molly Gordon as Amos Klobuchar and Rebecca-Diane, respectively, as well as Noah Galvin as Glenn Wintrop, Jimmy Tatro as Troy Rubinsky, Patti Harrison as Caroline Krauss, Nathan Lee Graham as Clive DeWitt, Ayo Edebiri as Janet Walch, Owen Thiele as Gigi Charbonier, Caroline Aaron as Rita Cohen, Amy Sedaris as Joan Rubinsky, and Alan Kim as Alan Park.

Theater Camp was directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman and written by Noah Galvin, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman & Ben Platt. Music is by James McAlister and Mark Sonnenblick. On January 21, 2023, Theater Camp had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.

You can purchase tickets to the new film from our friends at Hollywood.com here.

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READ: An Excerpt From Sean Hayes Debut YA Novel TIME OUT

By: Kobi Kassal

29 May 2023

Actor Sean Hayes is what we in the biz call booked and blessed. On top of his Tony-nominated performance as Oscar Levant in Good Night, Oscar, Hayes has partnered with Todd Milliner and Carlyn Greenwald for the release of their new YA novel Time Out.

Heralded by many as Heartstopper meets Friday Night Lights, Time Out follows hometown basketball hero Barclay Elliot who decides to use a pep rally to come out to his school. When the response is not what he had hoped and the hostility continually growing, he turns to his best friend Amy who brings him to her voting rights group at school. There he finds Christopher and… you will just have to grab a copy and find out what happens next. Luckily for you, Time Out hits shelves on May 30 and to hold you over until then we have a special except from the book just for Theatrely:

The good thing about not being on the team the past two weeks has been that I’ve had time to start picking up shifts again at Beau’s diner and save up a little for college now that my scholarship dreams are over.

The bad part is it’s the perfect place to see how my actions at the pep rally have rotted the townspeople’s brains too.

During Amy’s very intense musical theater phase in middle school, her parents took her to New York City. And of course she came back home buzzing about Broadway and how beautiful the piss smell was and everything artsy people say about New York. But she also vividly described some diner she waited three hours to get into where the waitstaff would all perform songs for the customers as a way to practice for auditions. The regulars would have favorite staff members and stan them the way Amy stans all her emo musicians.

Working at Beau’s used to feel kind of like that, like I was part of a performance team I didn’t know I signed up for. The job started off pretty basic over the summer—I wanted to save up for basketball supplies, and Amy worked there and said it was boring ever since her e-girl coworker friend graduated. But I couldn’t get through a single lunch rush table without someone calling me over and wanting the inside scoop on the Wildcats and how we were preparing for the home opener, wanting me to sign an article in the paper or take a photo. Every friendly face just made the resolve grow inside me. People love and support the Wildcats; they would do the same for me.

Yeah, right.

Now just like school, customers have been glaring at me, making comments about letting everyone down, about being selfish, about my actions being “unfortunate,” and the tips have been essentially nonexistent. The Wildcats have been obliterated in half their games since I quit, carrying a 2–3 record when last year we were 5–0, and the comments make my feet feel like lead weights I have to drag through every shift.

Today is no different. It’s Thursday, the usual dinner rush at Beau’s, and I try to stay focused on the stress of balancing seven milkshakes on one platter. A group of regulars, some construction workers, keep loudly wondering why I won’t come back to the team while I refuse proper eye contact.

One of the guys looks up at me as I drop the bill off. “So, what’s the deal? Does being queer keep ya from physically being able to play?”

They all snicker as they pull out crumpled bills. I stuff my hands into my pockets, holding my tongue.

When they leave, I hold my breath as I take their bill.

Sure enough, no tip.

“What the fuck?” I mutter under my breath.

“Language,” Amy says as she glides past me, imitating the way Richard says it to her every shift, and adds, “even though they are dicks.” At least Amy’s been ranting about it every free chance she gets. It was one thing when the student body was being shitty about me leaving the team, but the town being like this is even more infuriating. She doesn’t understand how these fully grown adults can really care that much about high school basketball and thinks they need a new fucking hobby. I finally agree with her.

[She’s wearing red lipstick to go with her raccoon-adjacent eyeliner as she rushes off to prepare milkshakes for a pack of middle schoolers. I catch her mid–death glare as all three of the kids rotate in their chairs, making the old things squeal. My anger fades a bit as I can’t help but chuckle; Amy’s pissed-off reaction to Richard telling her to smile more was said raccoon makeup, and her tolerance for buffoonery has been at a negative five to start and declining fast.

I rest my arms on the counter and try not to look as exhausted as I feel.

“Excuse me!” an old lady screeches, making me jump.

Amy covers up a laugh as I head to the old lady and her husband’s table. They’ve got finished plates, full waters. Not sure what the problem is. Or I do, which is worse.

“Yes?” I say trying to suppress my annoyance.

“Could you be bothered to serve us?”

Only five more hours on shift. I have a break in three minutes. I’ll be with Devin at Georgia Tech tomorrow. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I say, so careful to keep my words even, but I can feel my hands balling into fists. “What would you—?”

And suddenly Amy swoops in, dropping two mugs of coffee down. “Sorry about that, you two,” she says, her voice extra high. “The machine was conking out on us, but it’s fine now.”

Once the coffee is down, she hooks onto a chunk of my shirt, steering us back to the bar.

“Thanks,” I mutter, embarrassed to have forgotten something so basic. Again.

“Just keep it together, man,” she says. “Maybe you’d be better off with that creepy night shift where all the truckers and serial killers come in.”

Honestly, at least the serial killers wouldn’t care about my jump shot.

It’s a few minutes before my break, but clearly I need it. “I’ll be in the back room.”

Right before I can head that way though, someone straight-up bursts into the diner and rushes over to me at the bar. It’s a middle-aged dad type, sunburned skin, beer belly, and stained T-shirt.

“Pickup order?” I ask.

“You should be ashamed,” he sneers at me. He has a really strong Southern accent, but it’s not Georgian. “Think you’re so high and mighty, that nothing’ll ever affect you? My kid’ll never go to college because of you and your lifestyle. Fuck you, Barclay Ell—”

And before this man can finish cursing my name, Pat of all people runs in, wide-eyed in humiliation. “Jesus, Dad, please don’t—”

I pin my gaze on him, remembering how he cowered on the bench as Ostrowski went off, how he didn’t even try to approach me. “Don’t even bother,” I snap.

I shove a to-go bag into his dad’s arms, relieved it’s prepaid, and storm off to the break room.]

Amy finds me head in my arms a minute or two later. I look up, rubbing my eyes. “Please spare me the pity.”

She snorts and hands me a milkshake. Mint chocolate chip. “Wouldn’t dare.” She takes a seat and rolls her shoulders and neck, cracks sounding through the tiny room. “Do you want a distraction or a shoulder to cry on?”

For more information, and to purchase your copy of Time Out, click here.

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Reframing the COVID-19 Pandemic Through a Stage Manager’s Eyes

By: Kaitlyn Riggio

5 July 2022

When the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a national emergency in the United States in March 2020, Broadway veteran stage manager Richard Hester watched the nation’s anxiety unfold on social media.

“No one knew what the virus was going to do,” Hester said. Some people were “losing their minds in abject terror, and then there were some people who were completely denying the whole thing.”

For Hester, the reaction at times felt like something out of a movie. “It was like the Black Plague,” he said. “Some people thought it was going to be like that Monty Python sketch: ‘bring out your dead, bring out your dead.’”

While Hester was also unsure about how the virus would unfold, he felt that his “job as a stage manager is to naturally defuse drama.” Hester brought this approach off the stage and onto social media in the wake of the pandemic.

“I just sort of synthesized everything that was happening into what I thought was a manageable bite, so people could get it,” Hester said. This became a daily exercise for a year. Over two years after the beginning of the pandemic, Hester’s accounts are compiled in the book, Hold Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic. Released earlier this year, the book documents the events of the past two years, filtering national events and day-to-day occurrences through a stage manager’s eyes and storytelling.

When Hester started this project, he had no intention of writing a book. He was originally writing every day because there was nothing else to do. “I am somebody who needs a job or needs a structure,” Hester said.

Surprised to find that people began expecting his daily posts, he began publishing his daily writing to his followers through a Substack newsletter. As his following grew, Hester had to get used to writing for an audience. “I started second guessing myself a lot of the time,” Hester said. “It just sort of put a weird pressure on it.”

Hester said he got especially nervous before publishing posts in which he wrote about more personal topics. For example, some of his posts focused on his experiences growing up in South Africa while others centered on potentially divisive topics, such as the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Despite some of this discomfort, Hester’s more personal posts were often the ones that got the most response. The experience offered him a writing lesson. “I stopped worrying about the audience and just wrote what I wanted to write about,” Hester said. “All of that pressure that I think as artists we put on ourselves, I got used to it.”

One of Hester’s favorite anecdotes featured in the book centers on a woman who dances in Washington Square Park on a canvas, rain or shine. He said he was “mesmerized by her,” which inspired him to write about her. “It was literally snowing and she was barefoot on her canvas dancing, and that seems to me just a spectacularly beautiful metaphor for everything that we all try and do, and she was living that to the fullest.”

During the creation of Hold Please, Hester got the unique opportunity to reflect in-depth on the first year of the pandemic by looking back at his accounts. He realized that post people would not remember the details of the lockdown; people would “remember it as a gap in their lives, but they weren’t going to remember it beat by beat.”

“Reliving each of those moments made me realize just how full a year it was, even though none of us were doing anything outside,” he adds. “We were all on our couches.” Readers will use the book as a way to relive moments of the pandemic’s first year “without having to wallow in the misery of it,” he hopes.

“I talk about the misery of it, but that’s not the focus of what I wrote... it was about hope and moving forward,” Hester said. “In these times when everything is so difficult, we will figure out a way to get through and we will move forward.”

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