YALE REPERTORY THEATRE PRESENTS “THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS”

BY CARLO GOLDONI

ADAPTED BY CONSTANCE CONGDON

FROM A TRANSLATION BY CHRISTINA SIBUL

DIRECTED BY CHRISTOPHER BAYES

MARCH 12-APRIL 3 -- UNIVERSITY THEATRE

Yale Repertory Theatre (James Bundy, Artistic Director; Victoria Nolan, Managing Director) presents The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni, adapted by Constance Congdon from a translation by Christina Sibul, directed by Christopher Bayes at the University Theatre (222 York Street), March 12-April 3.  Opening Night is Thursday, March 18.
 

The cast of The Servant of Two Masters is Sarah Agnew (Beatrice), Will Cobbs (Waiter), Liam Craig (Brighella/Porter), John Treacy Egan (Il Dottore), Steven Epp (Truffaldino), Allen Gilmore (Pantalone), Andy Grotelueschen (Silvio), Chris Henry (Waiter), Jesse J. Perez (Florindo), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Clarice), and Liz Wisan (Smeraldina).

 
The Servant of Two Masters features original musical by Chris Curtis and Aaron Halva, sets by Katherine Akiko Day, costumes by Valérie Thérèse Bart, lighting by Chuan-Chi Chan, and sound by Nathan Roberts. Emmy Miller and Hannah Rae Montgomery are the production dramaturgs; Rick Sordelet is the fight director; Beth McGuire is the vocal and dialect coach; and Bree Sherry is the stage manager.

ABOUT THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS

Identities are mistaken, engagements are broken, and lovers are reunited in Carlo Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte masterpiece when the wily—and chronically hungry—servant Truffaldino hatches a zany scheme to double his wages (and his meals) by serving two masters at once.

The virtuosic physical comedy and mayhem of The Servant of Two Masters is directed by Christopher Bayes, whose hilarious choreography is featured in the hit stage production of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

TICKET INFORMATION AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Tickets for The Servant of Two Masters range from $35-82 and are available online at www.yalerep.org,

by phone at (203) 432-1234, and in person at the Yale Rep Box Office (1120 Chapel Street, at York Street). Student, senior, and group rates are also available.

In addition, all tickets for the Monday, March 15 performance are $10.

 Please note: The Servant of Two Masters is Yale Rep’s 2009-10 WILL POWER! production.  The run includes three 10:30AM performances available only to middle and high school student groups.  For information on WILL POWER! performances, please contact Ruth M. Feldman at (203) 432-8425 or rm.feldman@yale.edu.

Friday, March 12                               8PM

Saturday, March 13                         8PM      

Monday, March 15                          8PM

Tuesday, March 16                          8PM

Wednesday, March 17                   8PM

Thursday, March 18                        8PM                       Opening Night

Friday, March 19                               8PM

Saturday, March 20                         2PM                       Talk Back

Saturday, March 20                         8PM      

Tuesday, March 23                          8PM

Wednesday, March 24                   2PM                      Senior Reception begins at 1PM

Wednesday, March 24                   8PM

Thursday, March 25                        8PM                       Talk Back

Friday, March 26                               8PM

Saturday, March 27                         2PM                       Open Captioning, Talk Back

Saturday, March 27                         8PM                       Grad Night reception begins at 7PM

Monday, March 29                          10:30AM              WILL POWER!

Tuesday, March 30                          10:30AM              WILL POWER!

Wednesday, March 31                   10:30AM              WILL POWER!

Wednesday, March 31                   8PM

Thursday, April 1                              8PM

Friday, April 2                                     8PM

Saturday, April 2                               2PM                       Audio Description

Saturday, April 2                               8PM

BIOGRAPHIES

CAST

SARAH AGNEW (BEATRICE) is making her Yale Rep debut.  Her theatre credits include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tartuffe, The Seagull, Hamlet, The Government Inspector, and The Miser (Theatre de la Jeune Lune, company member); the world premiere of Sarah Ruhl's adaptation of Three Sisters (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park); Dead Man’s Cell Phone (Oregon Shakespeare Festival); The Syringa Tree (The Jungle Theater); Major Barbara, the American premiere of Brian Friel's Home Place, The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, As You Like It (Guthrie Theater); Hamlet (The New Victory Theater); Vroooom! A Nascar Comedy (NYC); a new adaption of archy and mehitabel, which she co-created, directed, and designed (Open Eye Figure Theater); and productions at La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Rep, Trinity Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alley Theatre, and The Wilma Theater. Sarah studied at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (BA), Actors Theatre of Louisville (apprenticeship), École Philippe Gaulier, and at the Burlesk Center with Pierre Byland.

WILL COBBS (WAITER TWO) is making his Yale Rep debut.  A first-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, he began his career in Atlanta working at theatres including Georgia Ensemble Theatre, Theatre in the Square, and Alliance Theatre. His theatre credits include Yellowman and In the Red and Brown Water. He also played PFC Brian Day on Lifetime’s Army Wives.

LIAM CRAIG (BRIGHELLA/PORTER) is making his Yale Rep debut. His New York credits include the Broadway production of Boeing Boeing (understudying and performing the role of Robert); and Off-Broadway: The Internationalist (Vineyard Theatre), Aunt Dan and Lemon (The New Group), Two Noble Kinsmen (The Public Theater), and Don Juan (Theatre for a New Audience). His regional theatre credits include A Christmas Story (Actors Theatre of Louisville), The Scene (Hartford Stage, Alley Theatre), Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Studio Theatre), The Lady from the Sea (Intiman Theatre), and Henry V (Shakespeare on the Sound). Television and film: Mercy, Rescue Me, Boston Legal, Law &Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and The Royal Tenenbaums. Liam received his BA in English and Theater Studies from Yale College and his MFA from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program.
 
JOHN TREACY EGAN (IL DOTTORE) is making his Yale Rep debut.  His Broadway credits include Bye Bye Birdie, Disney’s The Little Mermaid (Chef Louis), The Producers (Max Bialystock, Roger DeBris, and Franz Liebkind), Jekyll & Hyde, as well as the National and European tours of Kiss Me Kate and Cats.  His other stage credits include the Off-Broadway productions of When Pigs Fly!, Batboy! The Musical; the Actors Fund Chess benefit concert; Master Class, A Streetcar Named Desire, The Odd Couple, and Children of Eden.  Television and film credits include 30 Rock, Cupid, Law & Order, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, As the World Turns, Bravo Presents: Linda Eder, Martin Scorcese’s upcoming Boardwalk Empire on HBO, The Producers, and Last Night with Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes (upcoming). His solo CDs Counts the Stars and On Christmas Morning are available on iTunes and cdbaby.com.

STEVEN EPP (TRUFFALDINO) was an actor, writer, and co-Artistic Director at Theatre de la Jeune Lune, winner of the 2005 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, from 1983-2008. Title roles there included Tartuffe, Crusoe, Hamlet, Gulliver, Figaro, and The Miser; as well as major roles in Yang Zen Froggs, Romeo and Juliet, Cyrano, Children of Paradise, Scapin, Germinal, Don Juan Giovanni, The Three Musketeers, Twelfth Night, The Magic Flute, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Seagull, and The Little Prince.  He last appeared at Yale Rep in Theatre de la Jeune Lune’s Children of Paradise in 1993. His other theatre credits include productions at the Guthrie Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Spoleto Festival, American Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alley Theatre, and Off-Broadway’s The New Victory Theater. Steven wrote and performed the solo show The House Can’t Stand. Steven holds a degree in theatre and history from Gustavus Adolphus College. He was a 1999 Fox Fellow and is a 2009 McKnight Theatre Artist Fellow. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children.
 

ALLEN GILMORE (PANTALONE) is happy to be making his Yale Rep debut with friends Chris Bayes and Jesse Perez.  His previous collaborations with Bayes include the roles of Argant in Scapin (Idaho Shakespeare Festival, Intiman Theatre, and Court Theatre), Angelo in The Comedy of Errors (Idaho Shakespeare Festival), and Hamm in Endgame (Court Theatre). He recently performed as The Tragedian in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Writers’ Theater in Chicago). Other favorite roles include both Othello and Iago in Othello, Bynum in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and James Hewlett in The African Company Presents Richard the Third. Following the run of The Servant of Two Masters, he will return to the Court Theatre in Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.  Allen is from Texas and is a US Army Infantry veteran.  
 

ANDY GROTELUESCHEN (SILVIO) is making his Yale Rep debut.  Originally from Iowa, he is a clown apprentice to Christopher Bayes and has performed in Bayes’s Clowns (The Public Theater/New York Clown Festival) and The Moliere Impromptu (Trinity Rep).  His other theatre credits include the Guthrie Theatre and The Acting Company’s national tours of The Spy and Henry V, directed by Davis McCallum; international touring with The Glass Contraption; Cymbeline (Fiasco Theater, directed by Ben Steinfeld and Noah Brody); Lucy Thurber's Monstrosity (13P, directed by Lear deBessonet); The Scariest (The Exchange, directed by Ari Edelson and Meredith McDonough), The Glass Contraption's The Amazing Ted Show! (Ars Nova); Don Cristobal, Billy Club Man (St. Ann's Warehouse, HERE Arts Center, directed by Erin Orr); as well as productions at Guthrie Theatre and Arizona Theatre Company. Andy is a Fiasco Theater company member and received his MFA from the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium.
 

CHRIS HENRY (WAITER) is making his Yale Rep debut.  A first-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, his theatre credits include productions at Williamstown Theatre Festival, Origin Theatre Company, Columbia University, and Carnegie Mellon University.  He has also appeared on All My Children. He received his BFA in acting from Carnegie Mellon University.

JESSE J. PEREZ (FLORINDO) previously appeared in Yale Rep’s productions of Lulu (2007), The Cherry Orchard (2005), and The Taming of the Shrew (2003). His New York credits include Triple Happiness (Second Stage Theatre), Barrio Girl (Summer Play Festival), Recent Tragic Events (Playwrights Horizons), In the Penal Colony (Classic Stage Company), Up Against the Wind (New York Theatre Workshop), and Lucia di Lammermoor (The Metropolitan Opera).  Regional theatre productions include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare on the Sound), Hard Weather Boating Party (Humana Festival of New Plays), Arabian Nights (Berkeley Rep), Argonautika (Lookingglass Theatre Company), Celebrity Row (Portland Center Stage), Pericles (Goodman Theatre), and Hamlet (McCarter Theatre Center).  Film and television: American Splendor, All Night Bodega, Playing God, Kazaam, Life on Mars, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, The Job, and Third Watch.  He is a graduate of The Juilliard School.

DA’VINE JOY RANDOLPH (CLARICE) is making her Yale Rep debut.  She is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she has appeared in Orlando, The Seagull, The French Play, and Jelly’s Last Jam. Her other credits include Into the Woods, Our Lady of 121st Street, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Hair. She received her BA from Temple University.

LIZ WISAN (SMERALDINA) previously appeared in Yale Rep’s 2008 production of A Woman of No Importance. She is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include Phèdre, Almost Always Something, La Ronde, The Bedtrick, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Current War, Man=Man, Good Egg, and Peer Gynt. Other Yale credits include Language of Angels, Babs the Dodo, See What I Wanna See, One for the Road (Yale Cabaret); The Who’s Tommy and Recess (Yale Summer Cabaret). Her regional theatre credits include The Winter’s Tale (Chautauqua Theater Company); Anything Goes, Twelfth Night, and Cloud Tectonics (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Liz co-wrote and performed in two shows for Upright Citizens Brigade: The Goods Are Odd (2006 New York International Fringe Festival) and Seriously Extremely Important.

CREATIVE TEAM

CONSTANCE CONGDON (ADAPTOR) Plays include Tales of the Last Formicans, which has had more than 200 productions worldwide; Casanova, Dog Opera (The Public Theater); Losing Father’s Body (Portland Stage); Lips (Primary Stages); Native American (Portland Stage, Lyric Hammersmith Studio); The Automata Pietà (Magic Theatre);  and at American Conservatory Theater: A Mother starring Olympia Dukakis, a new verse version of The Misanthrope, Moontel Six (also London's National Theatre), and Nightingales (also Theatre Royale Bath’s Youth Theatre). No Mercy and its companion piece, One Day Earlier, were part of the 2000 season devoted to Congdon at the Profile Theatre. Her latest play, Paradise Street, developed at New York Theatre Workshop, received its premiere production in Los Angeles at The Attic Theater by the Title 3 Company. She has also written a number of opera libretti and seven plays for the Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. Currently, she has two commissions: Take Me to the River (Denver Center Theatre) and a play about Robert Mapplethorpe (Primary Stages). She is the recipient of grants from the NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, W. Alton Jones Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Newsday, Arnold Weisberger, Berilla Kerr, Helen Merrill, and Great Plains Theatre Conference awards. She is an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of The Dramatists Guild and PEN, and has been teaching playwriting at Amherst College for fourteen years.

CHRISTOPHER BAYES (DIRECTOR) began his theatre career with Theatre de la Jeune Lune where he worked for five years as an actor, director, composer, designer, and artistic associate. In 1989 he joined the acting company of the Guthrie Theater for over twenty productions, including The Tempest, King Lear, Marat/Sade, The Triumph of Love, and his one-man show This Ridiculous Dreaming, based on Boll’s novel The Clown. Directing credits include Yale Rep (The Birds, 2001), Intiman Theatre, Court Theatre, Trinity Repertory Theater, Touchstone Theater, Idaho Shakespeare Festival. In New York: HERE Arts Center, P.S. 122, Dixon Place, The Flea Theater, The Public Theater, The Juilliard School, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program. He is part of the creative team for the Broadway and National Tour of The 39 Steps (The Roundabout’s American Airlines, Cort, and Helen Hayes Theatres) for which he served as Movement Director and Creator of Additional Movement.  He is a 1999/2000 Fox Fellow. He has served on the faculty of The Juilliard School, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, Head of Movement and Physical Theater at The Brown/Trinity Consortium and taught workshops for Cirque du Soliel, The Big Apple Circus, The Public Theater’s Shakespeare Lab and Williamstown Theater Festival among others. He is currently the Head of Physical Acting and Associate Professor at Yale School of Drama.

KATHERINE AKIKO DAY (Scenic Designer) designed the costumes for Yale Rep’s production of The Master Builder earlier this season. She is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include the set for The Robbers and costumes for The Tempest. She received a BA in art history and film studies from Dartmouth College, where she designed sets for The Imaginary Invalid, The Distance from Here, A Number, The Lover, and sets and costumes for Betrayal.
 

VALÉRIE THÉRÈSE BART (Costume Designer) designed the set for the world premiere of POP! at Yale Rep earlier this season. Valérie is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The Tempest (sets) and The Robbers (costumes). Other costume design credits include Cabaret, The Wind in the Willows, James and the Giant Peach (Santa Ana College); Monster, One Flea Spare (Sight Unseen Theatre Group); Twelfth Night (Footprint on the Sun); Metamorphosis (UCLA Theatre). Film credits include The Commotion (Vanishing Pictures) and A Kiss on the Nose (USC Film). Valérie has also designed costumes for dance concerts at Santa Ana College, in which she danced herself, and has worked at South Coast Repertory Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, A Noise Within Theatre, and The Colorado Shakespeare Festival. She holds a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles. www.valeriebart.com

Chuan-Chi Chan (Lighting Designer) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The Bedtrick (Carlotta Festival of New Plays), The Robbers, and Peer Gynt. Other theatre design credits include Woyzeck (Tainan Jen Theater) and The One Jailed by Moonlight (Taiwan Artist Theater). She has worked as a designer, master electrician, and programmer with Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Assembly Dance Theater, Tainan Jen Theater as well as other performing arts groups. She is a graduate of National Taiwan University.

 
NATHAN A. ROBERTS (SOUND DESIGNER) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where his credits include the La Ronde (original score), Man=Man (original score), Love’s Labour’s Lost, and The Bedtrick (Carlotta Festival of New Plays).  His other theatre credits include Fly-By-Night, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Late: A Cowboy Song (original score), The Who’s Tommy, Traumland, Recess (Yale Summer Cabaret); Orestes, Flowers and Other Stories, One for the Road, Estrella Cruz [The Junkyard Queen] (Yale Cabaret); Ferdinand the Bull (Arden Theatre Company); and Faust (Blue Heron Arts Center).

 
CHRISTOPHER CURTIS (COMPOSER) New York composition credits include Red Noses by Peter Barnes, Four by Feydeau, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Moliere One Acts, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, The Love of Three Oranges (The Juilliard School);  Zibaldoni, The Reluctant Love Doctor, The Imaginary Invalid, The New Place, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay (New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program); and Timeslips (HERE Performing Arts Center). He has also co-composed and performed in Chris Bayes’s productions of The Big Day, The Fiasco Bros. Circus (Juilliard); The Birds (Yale Rep); The Moliere Impromptu (Trinity Repertory Theatre). Other credits include Ballywoonde (Edinburgh Fringe Festival) as well dance performances at Joyce SoHo and PS122.  Film credits include original score for To the Other Side, a documentary short by Drew Bracken; and the Cinema 16 short film series at the 92nd Street Y with Crown the Invisible.  A graduate of Southern Methodist University, he plays viola and guitar in the New York City-based band Quiet Lights.

AARON HALVA (COMPOSER) Raised amongst polkas and hymns in Iowa, Aaron has since studied music in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Greece,and Spain. New York composition credits include  Red Noses, Four by Feydeau, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Moliere One Acts, Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, The Love of Three Oranges, The Big Day, The Fiasco Bros. Circus, The Birds (The Juilliard School); The Imaginary Invalid, The New Place, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!, The Reluctant Doctor of Love (New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program); and Timeslips (HERE Performing Arts Center).  Other composition and performance credits include Ubu Rex (Yale Repertory Theatre), Ballywoonde (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), and most recently, The Moliere Impromptu (Trinity Repertory Theatre). Recent film credits include the upcoming Wall Street II as leader and arranger for Nu D’Lux, a New York-based Cuban/Latin style Son Montuno group.

EMMY MILLER (PRODUCTION DRAMATURG) is a first-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama.  Previously she taught theatre studies and Latin at The Shipley School, where she also ran a Shakespeare performance program.  Professional credits include directing Twelfth Night for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival’s Young Professional Company and working as dramaturg for Brian Friel’s Translations at Brown University Theatre.  Madeline received her BA and MA in Classics from Brown University.

HANNAH RAE MONTGOMERY (PRODUCTION DRAMATURG) is a second-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where she has worked as a dramaturg on The Seagull and as a mentor with the Dwight/Edgewood Project. She is a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College, where her dramaturgy credits included Suzan-Lori Parks’s national play-a-day festival 365 Days/Plays. A Colorado native, she has acted since age seven on professional stages in Boulder and Denver. Hannah has had several staged readings of her original plays at Denver’s Curious Theatre Company as part of the Curious New Voices program and the Playwright Showcase of the Western Region and has been a contest finalist in the Front Range New Playwrights’ Showcase.

RICK SORDELET (FIGHT DIRECTOR) 44 Broadway productions, including Disney’s The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, The Little Mermaid, and Aida. He has staged the fights for the opera Cyrano de Bergerac starring Placido Domingo at the Metropolitan Opera, The Royal Opera House, and the LaScala in Milan, Italy; and for over 40 productions on five continents. Film: The Game Plan starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; Dan in Real Life starring Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche; and Hamlet starring Campbell Scott. He served as the chief stunt coordinator for Guiding Light and staged the fights for First Jedi, a CD-ROM for George Lucas. Rick received the Lucille Lortel Award for Sustained Excellence in 2007. He teaches at Yale School of Drama, The New School for Drama, and The Neighborhood Playhouse. He is a company member of The Drama Dept., a board member of The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and the author of the play Buried Treasure. He is married to actress Kathleen Kelly and has three children: Kaelan, Christian, and Collin.

BETH McGUIRE (VOCAL and dialect COACH) Vocal and dialect coach credits include the Off-Broadway productions of The Overwhelming (Roundabout Theatre Company); The Black Eyed (New York Theatre Workshop); Five by Tenn (Manhattan Theatre Club); People Be Heard (Playwrights Horizons); Candida, Gas Light (The Roundtable Ensemble); Free Market (The Working Theatre); Exit Cuckoo (Midtown International Theatre Festival); Art of Memory (Company SoGoNo); and a workshop of In Darfur (The Public Theater). Regional: Eclipsed, Death of a Salesman, Lydia, All’s Well That Ends Well, dance of the holy ghosts, The Mystery Plays, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Iphigenia at Aulis, Kingdom of Earth (Yale Rep); Hamlet, Carnival, King John, The Glass Menagerie (Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey); The Cook (Hartford Stage); and Crimes of the Heart (The Cape Playhouse). Ms. McGuire is currently on faculty at Yale School of Drama; is a member of VASTA (The Voice and Speech Trainers Association), Actors’ Equity, SAG, and AFTRA; and is an actress with over 30 years of performance experience.

Bree Sherry (Stage Manager) is a third-year MFA candidate at Yale School of Drama, where her credits include The French Play, Paradise Lost, The Three Sisters, The Commedia Project, A Month in the Country, Troilus vs. Cressida, and If Found Please Return to Charles Darwin. Her professional theatre credits include Rough Crossing (Yale Repertory Theatre); Half A Sixpence (Goodspeed Opera); Cinderella, Jesus Christ Superstar, Hairspray (North Shore Music Theatre); Chicago, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Cocoanuts (Seaside Music Theater). She received a BA in Theatrical Production and Design from Elon University.