[NEohioPAL] Akron Opening -- "The Great White Hope"

[Jan Harcar]

Weathervane Playhouse’s

‘The Great White Hope’ a Strirring, Passionate Examination o

 Prejudice in America

 

Landmark drama a three-way collaboration

 with Karamu House and Ensemble Theatre

 

Weathervane Playhouse – in collaboration with Karamu House and Ensemble Theatre – presents “The Great White White Hope,” the epic landmark drama that examines the American Dream through the prism of race, live on stage from April 1 to 18, 2010.

 

The play’s central character is Jack Jefferson, a prize-winning boxer who is a fictionalized version of Jack Johnson, the American fighter who in 1908 became the first black heavyweight champion of the world. Howard Sackler’s Tony Award- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama charts Jefferson’s tumultuous career after he becomes a champion and explores the nature of racism and racial conflict. 

 

Strong, proud and ego-driven, Jefferson can beat almost any opponent in the boxing ring but encounters a greater foe in society at large when he dares to defy convention and his own community. A combination of strength and swagger, Jefferson is an American braggadocio. In part because he dares to have intimate relationships with white women – and in part because he refuses to behave in the passive, submissive way that white America expected of blacks of his day – Jack Jefferson aggravates white society and even alienates some blacks, too. Outside the boxing ring, Jefferson finds he must wage a separate fight for his own individuality in a world determined to restrict him.       

 

Under the direction of Terrence Spivey, Weathervane Playhouse’s production – featuring a cast of 40 actors – represents the culmination of a year-long, three-way collaboration with two Cleveland theater companies, Karamu House and Ensemble Theatre. On March 14, the production completed a four-week run at Karamu House as a prelude to its three-week run in April at Weathervane Playhouse.

 

Weathervane’s production will feature a seven of the principal actors from the Karamu cast as well as many new actors who auditioned for roles in the Akron run of the play. Backstage, the collaboration has extended to all technical areas: Weathervane’s resident costume designer, Jasen J. Smith, designed costumes for both the Cleveland and Akron runs of the play, and Karamu House scenic designer Richard Morris designed the play’s set for both Karamu’s Jelliffe Theater stage as well as Weathervane’s Founders Theater stage.

 

Support for Weathervane Playhouse’s production of “The Great White Hope” comes from the Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, The Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust, KeyBank Trustee and The Akron Beacon Journal.

 

About the Director

Terrence Spivey has won accolades and received local and national acclaim as artistic director of historic Karamu House in Cleveland, a position he has held since October 2003. His directing credits include “Bee-luther-hatchee,” “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf,” “Dream on Monkey Mountain,” “Permanent Collection,” “Bourbon at the Border,” “The Fire Inside: The Story and Poetry of Nikki Giovanni,” “The Blacks: A Clown Show” and “A House With No Walls,” to name just a few. He serves on the board of trustees of the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture and the Ohio Alliance for Arts and Education. 

About Some of the Play’s Principal Actors

Anthony Elfonzia Nickerson-El (Jack Jefferson) played Mister in Karamu’s production of August Wilson's “King Hedley II.” His ensemble work includes Karamu's production of “Before It Hits Home,” “Black Eagles” and “The Talented Tenth.” He starred in “John Henry” at The Cleveland Play House, and he held ensemble roles in the Beck Center’s “A Few Good Men,” “To Kill A Mockingbird,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Anthony also performed at Dobama Theatre in “In The Blood” and Ensemble Theatre’s production of “The Little Tommy Parker Celebrated Colored Minstrel Show.” He produced the short film “Benjamin,” which won the African-American Women’s Film Festival in 2007. He also appeared in the 2007 indie film “Unspeakable.” He currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Cleveland working on film projects with his wife, Traci, through their company, Omari Entertainment.

Ursula Cataan* (Eleanor Bachman) was last seen in “The Shadowbox,” “Chekhov in Yalta” and “Return to the Forbidden Planet” in Cleveland State University's Summer Stages. Other Cleveland credits include Playhouse Square's production of “I Love You Because,” Sarah Ruhl’s “The Clean House” at The Cleveland Play House and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” with Ensemble Theatre. She has performed regionally and off Broadwayat 59E59, HERE Arts Center, Centerstage, The Brick, Walnut Street Theater, Coconut Grove Playhouse, The Kitchen Theater, Gables Stage, Mosaic and many more. Her other favorite roles include three world-premiere plays by Nilo Cruz, among them originating the role of Marela in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Anna in the Tropics.” She is a graduate of Carnegie MellonUniversity. *Ursula appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association.

Peter Lawson Jones (Tick) by day serves a member of the Baord of Cuyahoga County Commissioners. He ended a nearly 30-year hiatus from the stage in 2008 when he played the role of Tyrone Washington in “Bourbon at the Border” at the Cleveland Play House. Next, he played Salif Camara in Karamu’s “A House with No Walls.” In addition to doing voice-over and commercial work, he is also a playwright. His drama, “The Family Line,” has been successfully produced at Karamu and at both Harvard and Ohio University. When he was a student at Harvard, he appeared in several plays, including “A Day of Absence,” “Goin’ a Buffalo,” “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men” and the 1979 and 1980 Harvard Law School musicals.　 

About the Play’s History

In addition to the play’s historic relevance, “The Great White Hope” made a bit of history of its own during its development and journey to Broadway. It materialized not from what was then the perceived theater capital of New York City but instead from America’s emerging regional-theater movement. In December 1967, Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., produced the first production of “The Great White Hope.” Instant critical acclaim convinced Arena Stage and playwright Howard Sackler to try something no other regional theater company had yet attempted to do: to move the show to New York and to produce it on Broadway.

 

According to “The New York Times,” Sackler himself financed the show’s commercial transfer to the Great White Way with the $225,000 he received from selling his drama to its eventual film producers.

 

On Oct. 3, 1968, the play opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre, where it ran for 546 performances before closing on Jan. 31, 1970. Sackler’s Broadway gambit paid off handsomely, and the play found both the audiences and critical praise it needed to ensure a good return on his investment.

 

The play won both the 1969 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play. Lead actors James Earl Jones as Jack Jefferson and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Bachman won Tony Awards for their performances – and Drama Desk Awards were bestowed upon Jones and Alexander as well as director Edwin Sherin, the latter of whom had also been with the show since its Arena Stage inception.

 

The 1970 film adaptation of the play offered Jones and Alexander the chance to re-create their star-making roles – and each received Academy Award nominations for their performances.

 

In 2000, Arena Stage revived “The Great White Hope” in honor of the theater company’s 50th-anniversary season.

 

In spite of the obvious historical context and relevance to the 1960s and beyond, playwright Sackler preferred to emphasize the play’s universal themes of the human struggle in a complex world. He told “The New York Times” that he that he did not see his play solely as a story of racial conflict. ''What interested me was not the topicality but the combination of circumstances, the destiny of a man pitted against society,'' he said. ''It's a metaphor of struggle between man and the outside world.

 

''Some people spoke of the play as if it were a cliche of white liberalism,'' he continued. ''But I kept to the line right through, of showing that it wasn't a case of blacks being good and whites being bad. I was appalled at first at the reaction.''

 

 

About the Playwright

 

Howard Sackler was born Dec. 19, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York, but grew up mostly in Florida. He returned to the Empire State to attend Brooklyn College, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1950.

 

During college and after his graduation, he wrote poems before turning to playwriting eventually. In 1954, he published a collection of his verse entitled “Want My Shepherd: Poems.” His poems also appeared in such publications as Poetry magazine the Hudson Review, Commentary, and New Directions. Under the influence of his poetical leanings, he wrote his first play, “Uriel Acosta,” entirely in verse. The University of California at Berkeley produced the play, and it won the Maxwell Anderson Award for verse drama in 1954. Sackler’s next play, The Yellow Loves, told the story of Tristan Corbiere, a 19th century French poet. Sackler’s second play was also written in poetic verse, and it won him the University of Chicago's Charles H. Sergel Award for playwriting in 1959. 

 

In addition to his poetry and plays, Sackler also found work in writing for motion pictures. Working with a then-relatively unknown director named Stanley Kubrick, Sackler wrote the screenplays for “Fear and Desire” (1953) and “Killer’s Kiss” (1955). During the 1950s, Sackler complemented his screenwriting income with a couple of notable grants, including one from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1953 and the Littauer Foundation in 1954. 

 

Also during this time, Sackler directed several staged readings at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Here, he chose dramatic works with a decidedly high-minded, literary leaning, such as the plays of Ancient Greece, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot. Furthering his love of the classics, in 1954 he founded Caedmon Records, which produced over 200 audio recordings under his direction. Featuring such notable actors as Albert Finney, Julie Harris, Jessica Tandy, Michael and Vanessa Redgrave, Paul Scofield, John Gielgud, and Peggy Ashcroft, Sackler’s popular long-playing records introduced a new audience to a theatrical treasure trove of classic plays. 

 

In 1963 Sackler married Greta Lynn Lungren. Together, the couple raised two children, Molly and Daniel.

 

Following the Broadway success of “The Great White Hope,” Sackler adapted his play for the 1970 motion-picture version (directed by Martin Ritt), for which his screenplay was nominated for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium by the Writers Guild of America. 

 

In the years thereafter, Sackler continued to direct and to write for both movies and the stage. In 1973, he directed Marguerite Duras's play, "Suzanna Adler," in a Royal Shakespeare Company production at the Aldwych Theatre in London, England. Sackler’s play “Goodbye, Fidel” – a romantic drama set in the early years of the Cuban Revolution – ran on Broadway for only six performances in 1980, but was notable for its casting of “The Great White Hope” star Jane Alexander as well as the Broadway debut of Kathy Bates. His other works as a screenwriter include “Gray Lady Down” (1978) and “Jaws 2” (1978). 

 

Sackler died at the age of 52 in October 1982 on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, where he and his wife had maintained a home. 

 

Ticket and Performance Information

 

“The Great White Hope” plays on Weathervane Playhouse’s Founders Theater stage from April 1 to 18, 2010.

 

The low-cost preview performance is Thursday, April 1; the official opening-night performance is Friday, April 2 at 8 p.m.

 

Between April 2 and 18, performance days and times are Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. (with no performance on Easter Sunday, April 4). 

 

Tickets for the April 1 preview performance only are $15. Tickets for performances after April 1 are $21.

 

$19 tickets for seniors and college students are available for Thursday and Sunday performances. Tickets for children ages 17 and younger are $17 for all performances after April 1. Discounted tickets are also available for groups of 12 or larger. Due to language and adult situations, “The Great White Hope” is not recommended for children under the age of 13.

 

For tickets, call the Weathervane Box Office at (330) 836-2626 or connect online to www.weathervaneplayhouse.com.




Sponsors: Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation, Knight Foundation, The Kenneth L. Calhoun Charitable Trust, KeyBank Trustee

Media Sponsors: WKSU-FM, Akron Beacon Journal

* * *

 

The Mission of Weathervane Playhouse

Weathervane Playhouse and its dedicated volunteers offer vital performing arts resources for the people of Northeast Ohio. We create exciting and thought-provoking shows with impressive production values. Through educational programs and volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds, Weathervane Playhouse serves the theater community, our patrons and our volunteers.

 

The Ohio Arts Council helped fund this program with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans.

 

Additional 2009-2010 Season Sponsors:

89.7 WKSU-FM

The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company



Janis Harcar
Director of Advancement
Weathervane Playhouse
330-836-2323 X16
www.weathervaneplayhouse.com
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