She's Hideous (2004)

the world premiere
book, music, and lyrics by
Eric Dienstfrey
October 12-13, 2004
ArtLoft Theatre, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/hideouspage.html

THE CAST
The Artist – Colin DeVaughan
Wanda – Amy Schwarz

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Eric Dienstfrey
Sound Designer – Nathan Ruyle
Graphic Designer – Alissa Umansky

Man of La Mancha (2004)

Book by Dale Wasserman
Music by Mitch Leigh
Lyrics by Joe Darion
inspired by The Adventures of Don Quixote
by Miguel de Cervantes
Sept. 30-Oct. 23, 2004
ArtLoft Theatre, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/lamanchapage.html

THE CAST
Miguel de Cervantes/Don Quixote – Todd Schaefer
Escalante/Aldonza – April Lindsey
Manservant/Sancho Panza – Brian Claussen
Governor/Innkeeper – Brad Slavik
Duke/Sansón Carrasco – Aaron Benedict
Scorpion/Anselmo – Isaac Bondurant
Casildera/Fermina/Moorish Dancer – Christine Brooks
El Médico/Barber/Paco – Thom Crain
Belerma/Antonia – Megan Iverson
Mother Bane/Housekeeper/Maria – Mo Monahan
Lobillo/Pedro – J Reese
Judas/Padre/Tenorio – Jason Weitkamp

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Scott Miller
Fight Choreographer – Nicholas Kelly
Set Designers – The Company
Scenic Artist – Todd Schaefer
Lighting Designer – Elizabeth Heilich
Costume Designer – Thom Crain, Todd Schaefer
Box Office Manager – Steve Dohrmann
Lobby/Concessions Manager – Ann Stinebaker
Graphic Designer – Scott Hunt
Photographers – Michael C. Daft, Robert Stevens

THE BAND
Guitar – Mike Renard
Keyboards – Chris Petersen
Bass – Dave Hall
Percussion – Joshua Costello

THE REVIEWS
Man of La Mancha is in the pantheon of stellar shows in the Broadway musical canon. The New Line Theatre production, directed with keen intuition and appropriate reverence by Scott Miller, beautifully underscores the inherent nobility and passion of the work with a masterful presentation.. . a stunning triumph.” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

“Director Scott Miller and a talented ensemble meaningfully reinterpret for today this stirring hymn to individualism from the experimental theatre movement of nearly forty years ago. . . The entire company’s approach and embodiment of Wasserman’s and Cervantes’ quest for truth in illusion inspires admiration. With Miller’s moving yet focused direction, each performer contributes talent and conviction throughout. . . New Line proves Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha is not dead, but lives ‘a life worth living’.” – Nancy Crouse, KDHX-FM

“The layers encasing this performance keep the audience at a shrewd distance, though the intimate staging does not. Todd Schaefer [as Quixote] fiddles with the relationship between actor and role and between actor and audience. . . [The] other performers take a similarly intellectual tack. They don’t sweeten the show, visually or vocally. But they keep it honest for two meaty, intermission-free hours.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The show is another hit from one of the most stylistic theater companies in St. Louis. For those out there that tend to shy away from musical theater, I highly recommend this production, as it will remove any ill-conceived notions you may have about the genre, and make you think twice about judging a book by its cover. “ – Tyson Blanquart, Playback St. Louis

“Once it begins to roll, it sweeps like an avalanche. . . a great show in every respect.” – Joe Pollack, KWMU-FM

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
St. Louis theatre has rarely been more political than it is right now, with recent shows like the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’ The Crucible, ECHO Theatre’s Marat/Sade, and now New Line’s Man of La Mancha. In this election year, it becomes clearer than ever that theatre is a place for our community to come together and discuss the issues of our times. When Man of La Mancha opened in 1965, Life magazine’s critic Tom Prideaux wrote:
It is easy to dismiss this play as sentimental. But in a time when men complain about losing their identity, of being mere cogs and numbers in a computerized world, the spectacle of a rampantly individual Don Quixote is welcome. His constant homage to spiritual ideals touches a chord, especially among the young today who are so earnestly and vociferously finding ideals among political realties. The audience’s tears testify to the achingly human ambivalence of Quixote, who is both a criticism and a defense of man’s idealism. In making us love him and recognize parts of him in ourselves, this absurd but magnificent dreamer has revealed deep truths. He has shown to what an important extent all men can, and must, create their own reality – and how inspiring and dangerous it can be.
You’d almost think Prideaux had written this in 2004, about the new influx of idealistic young people into the political process, and about the human disconnection of our increasingly digitized world. But it’s more than that.

In the last few years, our government has imprisoned American citizens without charge and refused them access to legal counsel or contact with loved ones. Our government now has the power to enter and search our homes without our knowledge or consent. Our government can check our library records to see if they think we’re a threat to national security. Our soldiers have tortured prisoners in foreign prisons.

Man of La Mancha speaks to these times.

This show is not the old-fashioned musical people think it is, and we’re here to prove it. It came from the experimental theatre movement of 1960s New York, and it’s about the disillusionment and forced conformity that so many young people were battling in the sixties, and still today. It’s about fighting for a better world, refusing to let others tell us how to see the world, about rising up against the over-reaching of our government and of religious extremists – both Christian and Muslim – and about changing the world simply by living a moral, engaged, courageous life.

Don Quixote the novel was written in 1615 and Man of La Mancha was written in 1965, but few pieces of theatre are more clearly about our world right now, right here. It is an election year and we must, each of us, stand up and make our voices heard. We hope this show will inspire you to do just that.

Maybe Don Quixote is crazy, but he may also be right.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2004)

Book by John Cameron Mitchell
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask
co-produced with the
Washington Avenue Players Project
July 29-Aug. 21, 2004
ArtLoft Theatre, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/hedwigpage.html

THE CAST
Hedwig – Todd Schaefer
Yitzak – Stephanie Brown

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Scott Miller
Lighting Designer – Florian Staab
Costume Designers – Todd Schaefer, Thom Crain
Sound Designer – Florian Staab
Lighting Technician – Thom Crain
Box Office Manager – Steve Dohrmann
Lobby/Concessions Manager – Ann Stinebaker
Graphic Designer – Kris Wright
Photographers – Michael C. Daft, Robert Stevens

THE BAND
Piano – Chris Petersen
Guitar – Mike Renard
Bass – Dave Hall
Percussion – Joshua Costello

THE REVIEWS
“What’s a girly boy to do when his sex-change operation is botched? Form a rock & roll band! Todd Schaefer shows off an amazing voice in this confessional concert piece, which features a kick-ass band and great cross-gender supporting work from Stephanie Brown.” – Deanna Jent, Riverfront Times

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a challenging piece of theater, to audiences and to the St. Louis theater community as well… the sort of theatre St. Louisans should be exposed to.” – Joe Pollack, KWMU-FM

“Mr. Schaefer’s [Hedwig] gains the edge by having the stamp of a Scott Miller production: clearly thought-out; artistically consistent; and faithful to playwright Cameron Mitchell’s intent… The New Line/WAPP version gives us a Hedwig whose gifts are also indisputable – and whose past, present, and future are even richer, thanks to greater artistic virtuosity.” – Richard Green, KDHX-FM

“Hedwig is genuinely worth seeing more than once from different points of view. In fact, the book by John Cameron Mitchell and the music and lyrics by Stephen Trask are so intellectually and musically compelling that a first viewing creates an appetite for a second. One interpretation sparks interest in another.” – Gerry Kowarsky, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Todd Schaefer projects a bittersweet and melancholy portrayal of Hedwig, describing the tragic tale of the unhappy and lonely soul, underplaying the anger and focusing instead on the character’s confusion and angst. He is nicely complemented by Stephanie Brown’s taciturn twist on Yitzak, both carping and retreating from Hedwig’s futility. Scott Miller’s direction wisely emphasizes the strengths of the musical score, which offers a number of superior rock anthems, from the pulsating opening number, ‘Tear Me Down’ to the plaintive ‘Origin of Love’ and the lovely ballad ‘The Long Grift,’ which offers some sweet harmony by Schaefer and Brown.” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
While it’s true that the central character of Hedwig and the Angry Inch is an East German, transgendered, “internationally ignored song stylist,” stuck in the early 70s world of glam and punk, still her story is one of the sweetest, most emotional, most deeply moving of just about any musical you can think of. This is a love story, but not an immature, fantasy love story that has nothing to do with real life, like those in Brigadoon, Hello Dolly!, Li’l Abner, or No, No, Nanette.

No, this is a love story that everyone can relate to, about the search for The One, the person that completes you, and the realization that our romantic views of love may be less based in reality than we’d like to believe. Real love is difficult, messy, complicated. Not everyone ends up with The One. The real search, the real journey, is an interior one, a search for wholeness and completeness inside. For anyone who’s ever thought they’d found The One, only to find out later how wrong they were, this is a story for you. And it’s also a story for those of us who sometimes feel like the world is just batting us around like a piece of paper caught in the wind, without purpose, without sympathy, without respite.

Tonight, Hedwig stands before you, emotionally naked, exposed more than any physical nakedness could expose her. She tells us her crazy, outrageous, tragic, hopeful story, partly to exorcise her own demons and find her own way, but also partly to tell us all that we are not alone. We all go through the same battles in life. Some do it in comfortable homes, some in one-room apartments, some in a Kansas trailer park. But the battles are the same.

Like a musical New Line did a few years ago, Songs for a New World, this is a show about surviving, about finding yourself with your back to the wall, all options seemingly exhausted, and then you rise up anyway, find your way back, and come out alright in the end.

Though the show’s influences vary from Plato’s Symposium to Marlene Dietrich to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, its story is really a simple one. It’s a story that belongs to all of us at one point or another in our lives. So tonight, we do what theatre does best: we come together in a darkened room and share our lives in hopes that it will make our journeys a little easier.

Reefer Madness (2004)

Book by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney
Music By Dan Studney
Lyrics by Kevin Murphy
June 3-26, 2004
ArtLoft Theatre, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/reeferpage.html

THE CAST
Jimmy Harper – Percy Rodriguez
Mary Lane – Amanda Butcher
The Lecturer, et al. – Thomas Conway
Jack – Jeffrey Pruett
Mae – Susan Arnold Marks
Sally – Lainie Wade
Ralph – Nicholas Kelly
Ensemble – Gypsy Brown, Colin DeVaughan, Kirstin Kennedy, Leah Schumacher

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Scott Miller
Choreographer – Robin Berger
Dance Captain – Jeffrey Pruett
Technical Director – Pat Murphy
Set Designer – Justin Barisonek
Lighting Designer – Peter Gilchrist
Costume Designer – Thom Crain
Sound Designer – Pat Murphy
Props Master – Jeff Schoenfeld
Box Office Manager – Steve Dohrmann
Lobby/Concessions Manager – Ann Stinebaker
Graphic Designer – Matt Reedy
Photographers – Michael C. Daft, Robert Stevens

THE BAND
Piano – Kad Day
Guitar – Jim Shiels
Bass – Dave Hall
Percussion – Joshua Costello

THE REVIEWS
“When it comes to goofy fun, Reefer Madness has kilos to spare.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The New Line cast is bursting with energy and talent. . . the excellent band and the bright performances will ensure that you’ll have a high old hoot of a time at New Line’s Reefer Madness.” – Steve Callahan, KDHX-FM

“Kevin Murphy’s sly lyrics and Dan Studney’s music are the highlights of New Line Theatre’s mostly hilarious telling of this cautionary tale. . . Robin Berger’s choreography is humorously snappy; combined with the fun songs, they happily critique the silly things Americans fear.” – Deanna Jent, The Riverfront Times

“New Line Artistic Director Scott Miller has a reputation in St. Louis for taking chances with unconventional shows. Witness New Line’s production of Batboy: The Musical last season. He comes up swinging again with Reefer Madness, the rock musical based on the 1936 government scare-film of the same name. . . As with most New Line Theatre shows, Scott Miller has a point to make, and Miller gets his point across wonderfully with this production.” – Tyson Blanquart, Playback St. Louis
“New Line Theatre’s production is an amusing, tongue-in-cheek treat under the clever, droll direction of Scott Miller. The music to Reefer Madness has an ingratiating and appealing quality, with clever lyrics by Kevin Murphy and plenty of upbeat music by Dan Studney, both of whom collaborated on the book.” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
America really does suffer from Reefer Madness.

Of course, the title doesn’t just refer to the “madness” that the myths say comes from pot, but also the “madness” in mainstream America which swirls around the drug problem, making it impossible to solve or even discuss rationally. It’s true that many Americans are genuinely addicted to dangerous drugs, but America, as a society and as a government, continues to react to this problem so hysterically and so irrationally that real solutions are impossible.

And that’s what this show is laughing at.

People have been using marijuana and hashish, both products of the cannabis plant, all over the world for thousands of years. Some anthropologists believe cannabis was the first crop humans ever cultivated. Cannabis is a weed that grows everywhere on Earth except the Arctic Circle. Evidence of the cultivation of marijuana reaches back as far as 2737 B.C. China. In 2300 B.C., the Chinese emperor and physician Shen Nung first recorded the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes. It has been used recreationally as far back as 1000 B.C.

But in America, throughout the twentieth century and now into the twenty-first, drugs laws have been made and used to control minority populations more so than to solve any drug problem. Originally, the first anti-marijuana laws in America were quite openly designed to rid America of the “problem” of Mexican workers who had immigrated to the U.S. Later the target was black jazz musicians, then the Beats, then the hippies, then rock musicians and their fans, now the hip-hop community. America’s jails are clogged with non-violent drug offenders. America’s War on Drugs has failed, mainly because the people running that war don’t understand what or why they’re fighting.

Study after study – most commissioned by the government – has proven conclusively that marijuana is not addictive, that it is not dangerous (in fact, it’s far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco), and that it is not a “gateway drug” leading to other drug use. In fact, to this day, no violent crime in America has ever been linked to marijuana. Ever. Some of these studies concluded that the laws against marijuana are more dangerous and more the cause of violence and crime than the drug itself. Of course, many of those studies were silenced or destroyed by the very people who commissioned them because of their conclusions.

As rational, responsible citizens, we have to ask some questions about America’s ubiquitous War on Drugs: Do we really know that marijuana is part of the “drug problem” in America? Who is telling us this and can we trust them? Have they lied to us before? Is this just like Prohibition, and weren’t lots of people needlessly killed when alcohol was criminalized and went underground? Did we not learn our lesson during Prohibition about criminalizing pleasure in the United States? Have we ever seen that work? And most importantly, should the American government really be waging “war” on its own citizens?

Reefer Madness exposes the hysteria and insanity that still swirls around America’s perception of recreational drugs. Who knows, you might even change your mind… or yours…. or YOURS!

The Nervous Set (2004)

Book by Jay Landesman and Theodore Flicker
based on the novel by Jay Landesman
Music By Tommy Wolf
Lyrics by Fran Landesman
Arrangements by Tommy Wolf and Chris Buckley
March 4-27, 2004, ArtLoft Theatre, St. Louis
http://www.newlinetheatre.com/nervoussetpage.html

THE CAST
Brad – Jeffrey Pruett
Jan – Kirstin Kennedy
Yogi – Thom Crain
Bummy – Michael Deak
Danny – Nicholas Kelly
Sari – Danna Dockery
Max – Mark Moloney
The Beats, the Squares, and the Smart Set – Isaac Bondurant, Danna Dockery, Josh Goldwasser, Sarah Lynn Griffin, Rich Ives, Susan Arnold Marks, Mark Moloney, Leah Schumacher

THE ARTISTIC STAFF
Director – Scott Miller
Assistant Director – Jerry McAdams
Technical Director – Pat Murphy
Set Designer – Justin Barisonek
Lighting Designer – Peter Gilchrist
Costume Designers – Thom Crain, Todd Schaefer
Props Master – Kimi Short
Music Arrangers – Tommy Wolf, Chris Buckley
Box Office Manager – Steve Dohrmann
Graphic Designer – Kris Wright
Photographers – Michael C. Daft, Robert Stevens

THE BAND
Piano – Kad Day
Bass – Terry Kippenberger
Percussion – Joshua Costello

THE REVIEWS
“Many times, I’ve traveled thousands of miles and spent hundreds of dollars to see obscure musicals, but catching The Nervous Set at New Line turned out to be the most valuable theatrical pilgrimage I’ve ever made.” – Peter Filichia, TheaterMania.com

“God bless Miller for letting us see this odd bit of history. And bless him for the continuing adventure that is New Line Theatre.” – Steve Callahan, KDHX-FM

“It’s difficult not to get drawn into the idealism and hypocrisy of a group of young, disillusioned, brilliant show-offs. Bitterly funny irony and far-ahead-of-its-time social commentary.” – John Shepherd, Playback St. Louis

“The songs, by composer Tommy Wolf and lyricist Fran Landesman, are the engine of The Nervous Set, driving us through the narrow streets of Greenwich Village and to a few other outposts of greater New York... Today, we’re inclined to see the Beats – with their skepticism about consumerism society and their embrace of ‘far-out’ ideas in an era that valued conformity – as cultural heroes. But The Nervous Set reminds us of some of the less attractive aspects of Beat culture: its thoughtless sexism (men pursue ideas, women work to support them and lie down to please them), its arrant homophobia and its self-destructive addictions.” – Judith Newmark, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“In one of the many sprightly songs that provide the best reason for seeing the 45th-anniversary revival of the jazz/beat musical The Nervous Set, the leading man exudes, ‘We just have one life/Let’s make it a fun life’.” – Dennis Brown, The Riverfront Times

“It was a pleasure to hear Fran Landesman’s glorious lyrics and Tommy Wolf’s music.” – Joe Pollack, KWMU-FM

“New Line artistic director Scott Miller’s forte is musical theatre and that strength is apparent... Jeffrey Pruett (Brad), Michael Deak (Bummy), and Nicholas Kelly (Danny) shine... This Nervous Set is jittery for good reason...” – Mark Bretz, Ladue News

DIRECTOR'S NOTES
Welcome to the world of the Beats, a generation of young people in post-World War II, pre-Vietnam America, swimming in disillusioned angst and apathy. This very special show is both a ground-breaking jazz musical and also a clear-eyed social document, a record of a time and place that should never be forgotten, when America had lost its way and lost track of what's important. It's a truthful evocation of the Beat Generation, with all its warts and contradictions, all its nihilism and its earth-shattering realignment of modern literature. People know about the hippies, but how many know where the hippies came from? The Nervous Set shines the light once again on some of America's true cultural giants.

Jack Kerouac (fictionalized in the show as “Bummy”) once said of the Beats in New York, “We are living at just the right time – Johnson and his London, Balzac and his Paris, Socrates and his Athens – the same thing again.” This show is set at a thrilling moment in American culture. At the same time that Kerouac was changing the course of the American novel and Allen Ginsberg (“Danny” in the show) was doing the same with poetry, other revolutions were also taking place. Jackson Pollock was changing American painting with his wild, visceral new abstract style. Charlie “Bird” Parker was changing music, with the invention of “Bop,” a fierce, aggressive new kind of jazz improvisation. Lenny Bruce was changing comedy, turning it not only political but arguably dangerous. Sid Caesar was changing the face of the newborn television, inventing live sketch comedy with Your Show of Shows. Off Broadway was being born, and on Broadway, Marlon Brando was inventing an entirely new style of aggressive, emotionally raw, American acting.

Charles Schulz was changing the nature of comic strips, bringing the disillusionment and disenfranchise¬ment of the Beats to the funny papers with Peanuts, his now world famous comic strip that commented on literature, art, music, theology, medicine, psychiatry, and the then taboo themes of faith, intolerance, depression, loneliness, cruelty, and despair. Also in 1950, Aldous Huxley, who had written the revolutionary novel Brave New World years earlier, was taking mescaline for the first time, and he wrote The Doors of Perception, starting (or re-starting) America's drug culture. America, the bland land of conformity was being turned upside-down.

Almost everything in The Nervous Set really happened (even the pogo stick). And now we have the rare opportunity to revisit that amazing time, to get a rare glimpse inside that moment in history from the perspective of the people who were really there. This is no Hollywood fiction. This is how it really happened…