SUMMERFOLK at Muhlenberg College
Muhlenberg Theatre Association presents SUMMERFOLK, a play by Maxim Gorky (1904) that continues to have reverberations for our political times. A century later, we continue a global debate over human potential and social justice, the meaning of work, and the allocation of resources for profit and pleasure.Wednesday, April 6, 2005 10:03 AM
Information & Tickets 484-664-3333
Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance
SUMMERFOLK at Muhlenberg College: April 28 – May 1, Baker Theatre.
"I am not aiming at producing literature or art. I am striving to paint life as I find it and to tell the truth always." Maxim Gorky interview in The New York Times, 1906
Muhlenberg Theatre Association presents SUMMERFOLK, a play by Maxim Gorky (1904) that continues to have reverberations for our political times. A century later, we continue a global debate over human potential and social justice, the meaning of work, and the allocation of resources for profit and pleasure. “It’s an incredible timely play when you consider America’s growing gap between the rich and the poor and current political flight from public works and social services, “reflects the production’s director, James Peck. “This play reminds us that people of education and privilege are in a position to act to address the social challenges of a society. Now, as then, some will make that choice, and others will only serve to preserve and protect their own interests.”
Gorky (born Aleksy Maximovich), campaigned endlessly for freedom of the press, advocated for social democracy, protested against all racial persecution, and waged a life-long battle against inhumanity. Beginning as an apprentice to a baker, he worked on his own from the age of 12 and established himself as a journalist and short story writer in early life. He carried with him an instinctual desire to make people’s lives better, and to do it through literature, journalism and the theatre. His first theatrical success at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1902 was The Lower Depths, and his popularity gave him some influence in spite of his revolutionary activities. He later chose his pseudonym Maxim Gorky (meaning bitter) as a fitting name for a writer who was frequently arrested, exiled and criticized. Gorky continued through out his life to write about the injustices of his society, protest the treatment of other writers and intellectuals, and support party activities with the earnings from his plays.
“The aim of literature is to help man to understand himself, to strengthen the trust in himself, and to develop in him the striving toward truth; it is to fight meanness in people, to learn how to find the good in them, to awake in their souls shame, anger, courage; to do all in order that man should become nobly strong,” wrote Maxim Gorky, in a letter to a friend, N. D. Teleshov, December 1901.
SUMMERFOLK
Gorky ’s majestic play reveals a group of professionals vacationing at their Russian daches, or summer cottages at the start of the 20 th Century. These husbands and wives, friends and lovers are the sons and daughters of working class Russians. In their middle ages, they are now part of the small elite middle class whose work as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and civil servants allows them the luxury of these summer retreats.
Summerfolk offers actors and audiences the opportunity to experience a rare contemporary production of Maxim Gorky’s work. Using the new version of the play by Nick Dear which premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London, 1999 (directed by Trevor Nunn and Fiona Buffini to great acclaim), James Peck has chosen the project for the Muhlenberg stage for its crisp and intelligent writing, the unusual 16 major character roles, and the challenge of working with an ensemble company of 26. “The rich emotional life of these characters could fill a novel, but the characters are so vivid and interesting that every shift in the constellation of characters on the stage takes you somewhere new,” affirms Peck.
In the early years of the century, Russians of every social class were beginning to sense the onset of a great upheaval. Caught between the failed aristocracies of the Czars and sensing they were just a heart beat away from the social revolution, the bourgeois lived with uncertainty. The old estates, farms and orchards were being sold to land developers to be divided into country properties for cottages, or dachas, for the “summerfolk” – people who work in the larger cities but spend their summers commuting between town and country. By the end of the nineteenth century, affording the leisure escape of your own country dacha was the mark of a successful professional family.
The inhabitants of Summerfolk are meeting, as they do every year, at the dacha of Sergei Bossov and his wife, Varvara for their summer holiday. With them are Kaleria, Sergei’s younger sister; Vlass, Varvara’s younger brother; the widow Maria Lvovna and her daughter, and a variety of neighbors and guests. There is plenty of leisure time in the house, terrace, and woods for drinking, gambling, amateur theatre, songs, poetry and picnics. While they have the luxury to indulge themselves in idleness, there is growing among them a stifling ennui as they find themselves comfortably stationed but without meaningful work or purposeful activities to inspire them.
Set against a sage and silver green wood of white birch, there is the feeling that this is an indistinct, ambiguous place even with its great beauty. Approaching the space as representational but not realistic, scenic designer Curtis Dretsch and lighting designer Dennis Parichy are creating an environment that envelops the play and allows the skeletal architecture and furnishings of the scenes to simply pass through these woods. In this existential solitude rage the swirling conversations and swiftly changing dynamics of the characters who subtly and then more aggressively begin to question the meaning of their work and leisure.
As the prospect of revolution hangs above Russia, some are frightened at the consequences of more social change; some are angry, some complacent; and some yearn for a new life. Vavara expresses her discontent with more certainty than the others: “I feel the need to go away. Somewhere. A place where simple people live, people sound in mind and body, where they speak honestly, straightforwardly, and do real, useful things!”
Through much of the play, the characters are like ostriches, guilty of willful denial and neglect. “They know the world is changing and yet they fill their lives with unsatisfying nonsense because they cannot embrace the tide of history outside their doors,” says Peck. “The mood is strangely tensile, and conversations reveal failed dreams, strained marriages, guilty pleasures, entangled friendships, illicit business affairs, contemplated adulteries and unrequited loves. The doctor finds the way they live “despicable,” the legal clerk anguishes “defending property and privilege” for a living; another decries the “banality, the mediocrity, the injustice that surrounds us” and the writer Shalimov cries, “How the devil can you write, when you don’t understand what’s going on in the world? Everything seems to be changing shape… slipping and sliding.. nothing has any solidity.”
The scenes of Summerfolk also shift rapidly, and the experience of the play leaves us sharing their monumental secrets even before they explode on the stage. Faced with a diversity of opinions, some can focus only on their unhappiness, some are content to play the masquerade, some resort to clowning or poetry, and a few are intent on discovering and telling the truth about their lives. As Varvara shares with the others, “I’m not very eloquent, I know, but surely, my good friends, we have a duty to encourage people to believe in themselves! To recognize their value, to recover their dignity! Only then can we begin to behave like human beings!”
As they question the value of work, relationships and leisure, they're shocked by the responses their disputes reveal. As the play progresses, we are engaged by the dramatic ironies of knowing these characters better than they know themselves, and we are rewarded by the emergence of a few who finally choose to act upon their instincts with courage. As the tensions, resentments, and desires long buried by the trappings of upper middle class life assert themselves, their relationships alter forever. In an elegant confirmation of Gorky’s optimism about the rising middle class’s ability to make a difference in Russia, Maria Lvovna delivers to the audience the cue to action:
We should try to be different. We really should! We're the children of cooks and laundry-women and decent working people. We have a duty to be different! Never before has our great country had an educated bourgeoisie with direct blood ties to the working class. Those ties should feed us, should plant in us a burning desire to improve and regenerate and illuminate the lives of our own people - people who toil and toil, till the day they die trapped in dirt and darkness….
“We too should work. Not as an act of charity, but for ourselves, to nourish ourselves, to broaden our boundaries, and to annihilate this sense of solitude we feel…
It’s as if we’ve been sent on ahead – a search party – to find the road to a better life.”
ARTIST PROFILES
Dr. James Peck (Director) has directed plays and operas at theaters throughout the United States, including the New York Shakespeare Festival, Syracuse Stage, the Hangar Theater, the American Globe Theater, and the Sushi Gallery. Productions at Muhlenberg include Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution, David Edgar’s Pentecost, John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate’s Dido and Aeneas, Wycherley’s and Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. He received the Drama League Director’s Project Award. James is also a theater historian who publishes regularly in leading academic journals and presents his research at scholarly conferences. Prior to Muhlenberg, he was Head of Directing at the Playwrights Horizons Theatre School, an affiliate program of the New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Liz Covey (Costume Designer) recently designed costumes for the premiere of One at the Cincinnati Playhouse, and The Importance of Being Earnest for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis. Her professional credits also include Ten Little Indians, The Little Foxes, Dracula and A Little Night Music for Cincinnati Playhouse; Heartbreak House and The Phantom Lady for the Pearl Theatre; The Gamester, A Flea in Her Ear, Major Barbara, Gross Indecency, The Heiress and An Ideal Husband for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; The GrandDuchess of Gerolstein and Don Pasquale for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Hobson’s Choice for Milwaukee Repertory Theater; Anything Goes for Paper Mill Playhouse; The Miser, Colorado Shakespeare Festival; The Vortex, Walnut Street Theatre – among many others.
Curtis Dretsch (Scenic Designer) has been designing, teaching and administrating at Muhlenberg since 1979. He is currently a professor of theatre arts and the Director of Design/Technical Theatre. His designs have been seen in both MTA and SMT productions, as well as at the Pennsylvania Stage Company (where he was the Principal Guest Designer for 12 years), Terry Beck Dance Troupe, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, Theatre Three, and the Shakespeare Festival of Dallas. B.A., Montana State University; M.F.A., Southern Methodist University.
Dennis Parichy (Lighting Designer) has been designing for the Muhlenberg Summer Music Theatre for nine years as well as designing as a guest artist for the Muhlenberg Theatre Association. He has designed over 400 productions during his forty years as a lighting designer. Broadway credits include Talley’s Folly, Burn This, Penn & Teller, Crimes of the Heart and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He designs for many regional theatres and opera companies and has received three Tony nominations, an Obie Award and a Drama Desk Award for his designs in New York.
The Muhlenberg Theatre Association cast includes: Adam Pinti, Danielle Tolles, Leslie Berkowitz, Craig Porter, Benjy Shaw, Phil Kemble, Jessical Ball, Amy Charowski, Courney Romano, Jessica Katz, Christine Barclay, Matt DiBiasio, K. C. Cvitanov, Tim Bungeroth, Brian Byus, and Noah Herman.
BOX OFFICE INFORMATION
Call 484-664-3333, Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. for ticket reservations. Tickets must be purchased at time of reservation. You may also request tickets by visiting www.muhlenberg.edu/cultural/baker and going to the calendar. For more information about the theatre program at Muhlenberg College, visit our website at www.muhlenberg.edu/depts/theatre.
