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Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt Honorees
of the 2009 William Inge Theatre Festival
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Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt,
two Texans who have fashioned American musical
history, are the Honorees of the 28th
annual William Inge Theatre Festival in
Independence, Kansas.
Jones and Schmidt—perhaps best
known for “The Fantasticks,” the longest running
musical in history—will receive the Inge Festival’s
Distinguished
Achievement in the American Theatre Award from
April 22-25, 2009.
The Inge Festival is named for the late
Pulitzer Prize (“Picnic”) and Oscar-winning writer
William Inge, a native of Independence, Kansas.
The award will be presented at
the festival’s Tribute finale, Sat. April 25.
The Inge Festival is held at the William Inge
Theatre at Independence Community College, located
90 miles north of Tulsa, Okla.
“Simplicity” is a supreme
compliment that applies to Jones and Schmidt
musicals.
They broadened the scale of the Broadway
musical with their engaging and innovative approach.
“This legendary writing team is
bold and adventurous in their work; funny and
touching, enormously romantic and sentimental
without being cloying,” said Inge Center Artistic
Director Peter Ellenstein.
“They have a long line of marvelous,
innovative musicals, and I’m excited to have the
public gain greater knowledge of the breadth of
shows by these phenomenal talents.”
The Jones and Schmidt style is
bold: the musicals are characterized as “minimal,”
with small casts and modest sets, but are inspiring
and audacious.
“The
Fantasticks” exemplifies that simple yet limitless
style.
Inspired by an Edmond Rostand play, this love
story of a young couple and their conniving parents
opened in
1960 at an off-Broadway theater–and ran 42 years,
counting 16,875 performances through nine
presidencies.
It has since been revived off-Broadway.
Jones and Schmidt followed with
their first Broadway show, “110 in the Shade.”
This adaption of the N. Richard Nash story “The
Rainmaker” is celebrated for a glorious score and was
revived on Broadway in 2007, starring multiple
Tony-Winner, Audra Macdonald.
Broadway was again their next stop
in “I Do! I Do!” a two-character musical, starring Mary
Martin and Robert Preston in an adaptation of the Jan de
Hartog comedy “The Fourposter.”
Jones and Schmidt also operated the
Portfolio Studio, where they continued to experiment
with small-scale musicals.
Among their products is “Celebration,” about the
struggle to find humanity, which enjoyed a Broadway run.
Their notable “Philemon,” winner of the Outer
Critics Circle Award, is an inspiring morality play set
during the Roman Empire.
Jones and Schmidt have continued
their collaboration in more recent years.
“Collete Collage” is two one-act musicals based
on the autobiography of the contentious Sidonie Colette,
author of “Gigi.”
There followed another adaption,
this one of Thornton Wilder’s American classic play,
“Our Town.”
Jones and Schmidt crafted the musical version, titled
“Grover’s Corners.”
The project exerted a pull on Jones and Schmidt
as “Our Town’s” spare staging is readily adapted to
their style.
The Caldecott Award-winning
children’s book “Mirette on the High Wire,” by Emily
Arnold McCully, served as inspiration for “Mirette.”
Set in Paris at the turn of the century, the
musical opened in 1996 at the Goodspeed Opera House in
Connecticut.
Jones and Schmidt are prominent in
front of the stage, as well.
Jones played the role of the “Old Actor” in the
original cast of “The Fantasticks.”
Over the decades Jones frequently appeared in the
Off-Broadway show under a pseudonym--the audience often
not knowing that one of the actors was also the
librettist. Similarly, Schmidt, during many years of the
run, was pianist.
In 1997, both further displayed
their performances skills in “The Show Goes On,” a revue
based on their songs.
And both appeared in the original production of
“Grover’s Corners.”
Jones and Schmidt have earned
numerous awards, including induction into the Broadway
Hall of Fame, the ASCAP-Richard Rodgers Award, and a
Special Tony.
The Honorees will be joined at the
festival by actors and directors from New York and
Hollywood throughout the four-day event.
The guests will perform and also conduct public
panels and workshops, a unique opportunity for the
general public to directly learn from professionals in
the field.
Since its founding in 1981, the
Inge Festival has brought to America’s heartland some of
the world’s most beloved playwrights.
Past Inge Festival Honorees include Arthur
Miller, August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, Stephen
Sondheim, Neil Simon, and Edward Albee.
The Inge Center receives major
support from the Kansas Arts Commission, the Hallmark
Corporation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the
William T. Kemper Foundation—Commerce Bank, Trustee,
Independence Community College and the William Inge
Festival Foundation. It is sponsored by the William Inge
Center for the Arts at Independence Community College.
The Inge Center is a year-round producer of
professional play development workshops and theater
education.
Tickets for the Inge Festival are
on sale online March 1, 2009.
Information is available at
www.ingefestival.org or by calling (800) 842-6063
ext. 5835.
Christopher Durang is 2008
William Inge Theatre Festival Honoree
Photo by John Schisler
Media contact: Bruce
Peterson (800) 842-6063 ext. 5492
Christopher Durang, one
of the most influential playwrights of contemporary
American theater, will be the Honoree of the 27th
William Inge Theatre Festival, April 23-26, 2008, in
Independence, Kansas.
Durang will receive the
William Inge
Theatre Festival Distinguished Achievement in the
American Theatre Award on Sat. April 26,
2008 during the Tribute festival finale, at the
William Inge Theatre on the campus of Independence
Community College. Previous Honorees at the Inge
Festival include such great playwrights as Arthur
Miller, August Wilson, Neil Simon, Edward Albee, and
Stephen Sondheim, among others.The festival is named
for the late Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning writer
William Inge, who was a native of Independence.
“We are excited to honor
one of modern theater’s funniest and most topical
playwrights, whose noteworthy achievements include
inspiring a new generation of young playwrights,”
said Peter Ellenstein, Inge Center Artistic
Director.
Christopher Durang, an
actor as well as a playwright, has seen his plays
produced on and off-Broadway, around the country and
abroad. From the start, his hilarious
no-holds-barred work has attracted serious actors.
His first professional production was of “The Idiots
Karamozov,” co-authored with Albert Innaurato, at
the Yale Repertory, starring then student Meryl
Streep. As a student, Durang also collaborated with
fellow student and previous Inge Festival Honoree
Wendy Wasserstein.
Durang’s work “Titanic”
starred his Yale classmate Sigourney Weaver and he
co-authored with her a satiric cabaret, “Das
Lusitania Songpsiel” Later, both Durang and Weaver
were nominated for Drama Desk Awards for Best
Performer in a Musical. Also in 1976, his play “A
History of the American Film” received an unusual
“triple premiere” with back-to-back productions at
professional resident theaters across the nation.
The following year, it hit Broadway, earning Durang
a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical.
In the early 1980s,
Durang penned some of his most famous work. “Sister
Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You” received rave
reviews. Elizabeth Franz originated the lead role,
with actresses Nancy Marchand, Kathleen Chalfont,
Lynn Redgrave, Cloris Leachman, and Valerie Curtin
among those headlining subsequent productions.
“Sister” was paired with his popular curtain raiser
“The Actor’s Nightmare.”
“Beyond Therapy” likewise
attracted the attention of many noted actors.
Initially Off-Broadway starring Sigourney Weaver and
Stephen Collins, it later transferred to Broadway
starring Dianne Wiest and John Lithgow. David Hyde
Pierce, getting his Equity card in his first
professional production, played a small but funny
role of the waiter.
The subsequent play “Baby
with the Bathwater” was directed by Mark Linn-Baker
and featured Cherry Jones and Tony Shalhoub. In
1985 New York’s Public Theatre presented Durang’s
“The Marriage of Bette and Boo.” It featured a
remarkable cast including Joan Allen and Graham
Beckle, along with Olympia Dukakis and Mercedes
Ruehl.
His newer stage work
includes books and lyrics for “Adrift in Macao” with
music by Peter Melnick. His crackpot Christmas play
“Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge” was a big
success, about an out-of-control Mrs. Cratchit. In
2004, he wrote a commission for the McCarter Theatre
in Princeton, N.J., which became “Miss
Witherspoon.” It was named on the Ten Best Plays of
the year by Time
magazine and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Durang has also received
acclaim for his writing in non-stage venues as
well. He wrote a teleplay for the PBS series
“Trying Times,” co-authored with Wendy Wasserstein
“House of Husbands” and became a staff writer for
the ABC special “Carol and Robin and Whoopi and
Carl.” In 2001 he appeared in six episodes of the
NBC sitcom “Kristin,” starring Kristin Chenoweth.
Additional acting credits
include opposite Jean Smart in “Laughing Wild,”
(which he wrote) and the films “Housesitter,” “The
Secret of My Success” and “Mr. North,” among
others. In 1993 Durang was thrilled to be cast in
“Putting it Together,” a compilation of Stephen
Sondheim songs. The cast included Julie Andrews,
Rachel York and Michael Rupert.
Durang is currently
co-director of the playwriting program at the
Juilliard School of Drama. His awards include the
Harvard Arts Medal and the prestigious three-year
Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award; and the
Sidney Kingsley Playwriting Award. Early in his
career, he won a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller, the CBS
Playwriting Fellowship, and many other grants and
fellowships.
During the Inge Festival,
each evening will feature numerous special guest
artists in the fields of performance, playwriting,
and directing. Many will be on stage to help salute
Durang at the Tribute festival finale.
During the daytime of
the festival April 24-26, festival patrons can meet
the guests during workshops and panels about the
performing arts.
Also part of the
Festival is “Scenes at the Inge House.” The Inge
Center will select winning scenes by college actors
from competitions held at regional Kennedy Center
American College Theatre Festival conferences. The
scenes are then performed in the living room of the
William Inge Boyhood home in Independence, which is
now used as residency for professional guest
playwrights-in-residence.
A further presentation
during the Festival is the
Otis Guernsey New
Voices in the American theater Award, to
be bestowed to an outstanding emerging playwright.
For more information on
the Inge Festival and year-round events at the
William Inge Theatre Festival, visit
www.ingefestival.org.
Major supporters of
the William Inge Center for the Arts include the
Kansas Arts Commission, the National Endowment for
the Arts, Hallmark Corporation, the William T.
Kemper Foundation/Commerce Bancshares, the
Dramatists Guild, the Dana Foundation, and many
corporate and private foundations and hundreds of
individuals across the country.
For more information
on the Inge Festival and other Inge Center
activities, contact (800) 842-6063 ext. 5835 or
visit
www.ingecenter.org.
Media Advisory:
Below are:
--Complete list of previous William Inge Theatre
Festival “Distinguished Achievement in the American
Theatre” Honorees.
--Complete list of previous “Otis Guernsey New
Voices in the American Theatre Award” winners.
William Inge Theatre
Festival
Distinguished Achievement
in the American Theatre Award
Honorees--
presented in person
in Independence, Kansas
1982: William Inge Celebration
1983: Jerome Lawrence
1984: William Gibson
1985: Robert Anderson
1986: John Patrick
1987: Garson Kanin
1988: Sidney Kingsley (in Independence)
Robert E. Lee (on the road)
1989: Horton Foote
1990: Betty Comden & Adolph Green
1991: Edward Albee
1992: Peter Shaffer
1993: Wendy Wasserstein
1994: Terrence McNally
1995: Arthur Miller
1996: August Wilson
1997: Neil Simon
1998: Stephen Sondheim
1999: John Guare
2000: A.R. Gurney
2001: Lanford Wilson
2002: John Kander & Fred Ebb
2003: Romulus Linney
2004: Arthur Laurents
2005: Tina Howe
2006: 25th Anniversary retrospective
2007: Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick
Otis Guernsey New Voices in Playwriting Award
Winners
1993: Jason Milligan
1994: Catherine Butterfield
1995: Mary Hanes
1996: Brian Burgess Cross
1997: Joe DiPietro
1998: David Ives
1999: David Hirson
2000: James Still
2001: Mark St. Germain
2002: Dana Yeaton
2003: Theresa Rebeck
2004: Mary Portser
2005: Lynne Kaufman
2006: Melanie Marnich
2007: JT Rogers
