Billy Bishop Goes to War: behind-the-scenes

My left thumb is red with spray paint, I’ve been wearing the same torn and paint-dripped jeans since Friday, and every muscle in my scratched-up hands is weak from heavy gripping. I don’t think I’ve ever been so physically exhausted. But, as I used to say after sprinting the 400 in high school track, it hurts real good.

Monday’s light hang was the worst of it. We started hanging lights at 9am and didn’t finish until 12:30 in the morning. With only one year under my belt since college where we used a scaffold to hang lights and the moveable seating units were easy to push out of the way, pushing and carrying ladders and wooden steps around seemed more a study in clowning than a light hang. We would climb a ladder, hang a light, climb down, get a cable, climb up, connect the cable, climb down, move the ladder three feet, climb up, tie the cable to the grid, climb down, move the ladder… By the end we could barely carry our bodies around let alone a ladder or a lamp. And it was beautiful.

It’s beautiful to have the theatre full of designers creating something out of nothing. It’s beautiful to see the crew and designers working together and working hard to make the creations in their minds come to life. It’s beautiful to see a black box transform into another world. I am exhausted and sore and covered in paint, and that’s beautiful too.

Trisha Hail
Assistant Production Manager

Gloucester Stage Announces 2008 Season

We are so excited to announce our 2008 season opening June 5th.
Here it is! Let us know what you think.

June 5 - June 22
Billy Bishop Goes To War
A Play with Music
By John Gray and Eric Peterson
Directed by Scott LaFeber
Musical Direction by Will McGarrahan
Set to music, this journey follows a heroic World War I fighter pilot down in the trenches, up to the skies, through the halls of Buckingham Palace, and inside the human spirit as he attempts to reconcile his love of flying with the horrors of war.
“A HIGH-FLYING ACE OF A SHOW, CAPTURING THE HUMOR, THE HELLFIRE, AND THE DERRING-DO OF AN EXTRAORDINARY CAREER!” - The New York Times

June 26 - July 13
Enigma Variations
By Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Translated by Jeremy Sams
Directed by GSC Artistic Associate David Zoffoli
Journalist Erik Larsen is offered an unprecedented interview with Abel Znorko, the lager than life author and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. This beautifully wrought psychological drama is sometimes a dual and sometimes a duet, but never what it appears to be.
“...QUIRKY AND DELIGHTFUL...[KEEPS] US RIVETED THROUGHOUT WITH REVELATIONS AND REVERSALS..." - LA Weekly

July 17 - August 3
Going to St. Ives
By Lee Blessing
Directed by Eric Engel
Featuring Academy Award nominee Lindsay Crouse
and Elliot Norton Award winner Jacqui Parker
The lives of two powerful women, an affluent English doctor and the mother of an African dictator, become irrevocably intertwined in this captivating juxtaposition of black and white, order and chaos, heroism and hell.
“SPECTACULAR...EMOTIONALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY ENGROSSING...DAZZLING..."
- Philadelphia City Paper

August 7 - August 24
Doubt, A Parable
By Academy Award winner John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Eric Engel
Featuring Nancy E. Carroll and Lewis D. Wheeler
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Drama Desk Award and the Tony Award for Best Play. This riveting morality play about events that may or may not have taken place in a 1964 Bronx convent and refectory comes to Gloucester in a production starring Elliot Norton Award winner Nancy Caroll of GSC’s Collected Stories and My Old Lady and Lewis D. Wheeler from A.R.T.'s No Man's Land.
Presented with sponsorship from the Goldhirsh Foundation.

August 28 - September 14
The Woman in Black
A ghost play
By Stephen Malatratt based on the novel by Susan Hill
Directed by Karen MacDonald of the American Repertory Theatre
Featuring Steven Barkhimer and Shelley Bolman
A lawyer harboring a wrenching fear and an actor hired to help him exorcise his tale take you on a journey to the secret-filled marshes of Nine Lives Causeway.
"PROVIDES A PLEASURABLE RIPPLE OF FEAR DOWN ONE'S SPINE AND AN UNCOMFORTABLE LURCH IN THE PIT OF ONE'S STOMACH." - Time Out

NEW PLAY READING SERIES
On the following evenings at 7PM
Each reading to be followed by a discussion.
Suggested Donation $20

Tue July 22:
The Threshing Floor
By James Ijames
Directed by Scott Edmiston
Performed by James Ijames
Based on the life and ideas of American writer and civil rights activist, James Baldwin. Mr. Ijames performance in GSC’s Ponies was acclaimed as one of the best of the 2007 season.

Sun July 27:
Sow and Weep
By Nitzan Halperin
Directed by Judy Braha
Cast includes Nancy E. Carroll and Anne Gottlieb
A Palestinian law student and an Israeli peace activist must decide how to honor their families, their culture and their own beliefs in this intimate and unconventional exploration of the middle-east conflict.

Sun August 17:
The Hotel Plays
By Israel Horovitz
Directed by Mr. Horovitz
Cast includes Ted Reinstein of WCVB TV’s “Chronicle” and Marianna BaashamSix new postage stamp plays all with Horovitz's trademark blend of comedy and drama.

Sun September 7:
His Master’s Voice
By Frederic Kimball
Directed by David Wheeler
Cast includes Max Wright, Lisa Richards and Lewis D. WheelerA family tries everything, including a beautiful Romanian cellist, to lure their engineer father out of his basement laboratory. Culture, religion and science collide in this poignant family comedy.