Indecent

February 28–March 31

By Paula Vogel
Produced in Association with Arena Stage and Kansas City Rep
Directed by Eric Rosen

HOW FAR WOULD YOU FOLLOW YOUR PASSION?

What is the cost when we sacrifice truth for success? Can radical love be pious, or merely provocative? Does every religion sell God for a price? Follow the true story of a play, a playwright, and a plucky troupe of Yiddish theater artists from 1906 Warsaw to 1923 Broadway, from risky experiment to global sensation—and ultimately shattering scandal. The latest hit from the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of A Civil War Christmas, The Baltimore Waltz, and How I Learned to Drive, this highly acclaimed and award-winning drama pays homage to artists ahead of their time and doomed to pay the price.

Content Advisory: Based on the real-life story behind Sholem Asch’s controversial Yiddish drama God of Vengeance, this play is suited for middle school ages and up. For younger school groups, we strongly suggest a pre-show workshop to discuss the themes of the show.

Approximate runtime is 1 hour and 45 minutes. There will be no intermission.

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Cast

Ben Cherry*
Lemml

Susan Lynskey*
The Middle: Halina / Ensemble

John Milosich*
Moriz Godowsky / Musician / Ensemble

Victor Raider-Wexler*
The Elder: Otto / Ensemble

Susan Rome*
The Elder: Vera / Ensemble

Emily Shackelford*
The Ingenue: Chana / Ensemble

Maryn Shaw*
Nelly Friedman / Musician / Ensemble

Alexander Sovronsky*
Mayer Balsam / Musician / Ensemble

Jake Walker*
The Middle: Mendel / Ensemble

Max Wolkowitz*
The Ingenue: Avram / Ensemble

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Broadway—Indecent, Fiddler on the Roof. Off-Broadway—Goldstein. Tour—Mary Poppins. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage, the Guthrie: Indecent; Pioneer Theatre Company: Oslo; Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park: Mothers and Sons; Utah Shakespeare Festival: Henry V, The Secret Garden, The Tempest, Merry Wives of Windsor; Milwaukee Repertory Theatre: Route 66, Life Could Be a Dream, The Andrews Brothers; Delaware Theatre Company: 10 Months. TV—The Following, Smash, I Love You…But I Lied. Education—The University of Michigan and North Carolina School of the Arts. bencherry.com

Baltimore Center Stage: The Hostage. Regional—Arena Stage/Kansas City Rep: Indecent (Helen Hayes nom.); Oregon Shakespeare/Arena Stage/Berkeley Rep: Roe (Helen Hayes nom.); ACT: Sweat; Berkeley Rep: Imaginary Comforts; OSF: Richard II; The Kennedy Center, Round House, National Theatre, Studio, Theatre J, Olney Theatre Center, Mosaic, MetroStage. Directing—The Kennedy Center: Barbara Hammond’s Enter the Roar; Visible Impact (devised in ASL and English). Education—MFA: University of Iowa; BA (Honours): McGill University; Cert: Nat’l Theatre School of Canada. Awards and Accolades—Named by The Washington Post as one of the “Top 10 Actors to Watch;” featured in American Theatre Magazine, Washington Theatre Review, and Broadway World; numerous Outstanding Lead/Supporting Actress Helen Hayes noms.; DCTS Audience Choice Award; highest honors from the DC Commission on the Arts. Professional—A nationally known new play development specialist who fosters US and international premieres. Prominent incubators include Berkeley’s GroundFloor, BCS’s Play Lab, First Look and Young Playwrights, The Kennedy Center (New Visions/New Voices), NPNN, TCG, and OSF’s Black Swan Lab. Co-artistic director of Washington Women in Theatre (Women’s Voices Festival). Upcoming—Off Broadway59E59: Handbagged.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Broadway—Best Friend, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Gypsy. Off-Broadway—credits include The Passion of Dracula, The Boys Next Door, Give the Bishop My Faint Regards. Tours—include Grand Hotel, Six Degrees of Separation. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Kansas City Actors Theatre: A Moon for the Misbegotten, The Gin Game, The Seafarer, and many more; Kansas City Rep; Milwaukee Rep; Denver Center Theatre; Pittsburgh Public; Syracuse Stage; Springfield Rep; Sylvan Theater. TV—cartoon series for Dreamworks on Netflix: Troll Hunters, Boss Baby; recurring roles include Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond. Film—include Dr. Doolittle 2, Minority Report, The Pursuit of Happyness. Awards—Best Actor Award at the Brussels International Film Festival.

Baltimore Center Stage: After the Revolution, Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, An Enemy of the People, Mud Blue Sky (world premiere). Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Arena Stage: The Great Society, All the Way; Studio Theatre: If I Forget, Hand to God (Helen Hayes nom.); Olney Theatre Center: The Diary of Anne Frank; Theater J: (associate artist-in-resident) Roz and Ray, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Brighton Beach Memoirs (Helen Hayes Award), The Sisters Rosensweig, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide…, The Argument and After the Revolution (Helen Hayes nom.); Rep Stage: The Whale, Las Meninas, A Shayna Maidel; Baltimore Shakespeare Festival: Richard III, Macbeth, All’s Well That Ends Well; Mark Taper Forum: The Substance of Fire; Seattle’s Centerstage: The Legacy. TV—credits include House of Cards, NYPD Blue, and four seasons as DA Ilene Nathan on The Wire. Film—credits include A Dirty Shame and My One and Only. susanrome.com

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Broadway—Cyrano de Bergerac (starring Kevin Kline). Off-Broadway—The Public: Mother of the Maid, Romeo & Juliet; TFANA: Othello; Atlantic Theater Co: Bottom of the World; Red Bull: Volpone, Women Beware Women; Classical Theater of Harlem: King Lear, Marat/Sade, Romeo & Juliet, Macbeth, Three Sisters; Hang A Tale: The Little Prince. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Hartford Stage, Walnut Street Theater, Shakespeare & Co, Shakespeare Theater Company, Ford’s Theatre, Barrington Stage Co, Berkshire Theater Group, Arizona Theatre Co, American Shakespeare Center, Connecticut Rep, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, Wharton Salon, WAM Theater, Actors Shakespeare Project. International—Milan and NYC: Hamlet (title role). Instagram: @AlexanderSovronsky AlexanderSovronsky.com.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Regional—Denver Center Theatre Company: A Christmas Carol (ensemble), When We Are Married (Fred); Colorado Shakespeare Festival: Twelfth Night (Feste), Comedy of Errors (2nd Merchant), Inspector General (Osip), The Little Prince (Men on the Planets); Creede Repertory Theatre: Unrinetown (Bobby Strong), Fools (Leon), Leading Ladies (Leo/Maxine); Kansas City Repertory Theatre: A Christmas Carol (Bob Crachit), Sunday in the Park with George (Louie), Of Mice and Men (George Milton); Kansas City Actors Theatre: Hamlet (Hamlet), A Lie of the Mind (Frankie). Film—An American Artist (George Caleb Bingham). Instagram: @walkerjake79

Creative Team

Paula Vogel
Playwright

Eric Rosen
Director

Alexander Sovronsky*
Music Direction and Original Music

Erika Chong Shuch
Choreographer

Jack Magaw
Scenic Designer

Linda Roethke
Costume Designer

Josh Epstein
Lighting Designer

Andre Pluess
Sound Designer

Jeffrey Cady
Projection Designer

Anne Nesmith
Wig Designer

Zach Campion
Voice and Dialect Coach

Kurt Hall*
Stage Manager

Marcie Friedman*
Assistant Stage Manager

Geoff Josselson, CSA
New York Casting

Indecent is Paula Vogel’s fourth production at Baltimore Center Stage after A Civil War Christmas, How I Learned to Drive, and The Baltimore Waltz. How I Learned to Drive received the Pulitzer Prize, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and New York Drama Critics Awards for Best Play, as well as her second Obie Award. Other plays include The Long Christmas Ride Home, The Mineola Twins, Hot ‘N’ Throbbing, Desdemona, And Baby Makes Seven, The Oldest Profession, and Don Juan Comes Home from Iraq. Her play Indecent opened at The Cort Theatre in New York in April 2017. It is available on Broadway HD. TCG has published four books of her work. She teaches playwriting workshops throughout the United States and abroad.

Eric Rosen recently concluded his decade long tenure as artistic director of Kansas City Repertory Theatre and previously was co-founder and artistic director of Chicago’s About Face Theatre for 13 seasons. World premieres under his direction include Venice (named Best Musical of 2010 by TIME), Clay, Roof of the World, A Christmas Story: The Musical, M. Proust and Theater District. Other directing credits include Baltimore Center Stage (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), Goodman, Hartford Stage, Chicago Shakespeare, Melbourne Theatre Company, the O’Neill and Sundance. Highlights of his tenure at KCRep include reimagined productions of classic musicals including Evita, Sunday in the Park with George, Hair: Retrospection, and a punk rock Pippin, along with classics from Romeo to Death of a Salesman. Rosen helped develop and produced the original production of the Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play I Am My Own Wife. As a playwright, his work includes Lot’s Wife, Dream Boy, Winesburg, Ohio, and Venice. Rosen served on the Board of Theatre Communications Group, was inducted into Chicago’s Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame and was a finalist for the Zelda Fichandler Award. He holds a doctorate in performance studies from Northwestern University and a BA in performance studies from UNC.

This is Erika’s Baltimore Center Stage debut. Erika is a performance maker, choreographer, and director whose topic-driven ruminations coalesce into imagistic assemblages of music, movement, text, and design. Interested in expanding ideas around how performance is created and shared, her recent work For You (a Creative Capital Project, commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts) is a series of intimate performances for audiences of 12. Recent projects also include Iron Shoes, a new neo-feminist folk opera created with Kitka Women’s Vocal Ensemble (supported by Creative Work Fund, NEA) and TheaterTheater, a participatory morality play exploring the hidden forces underlying everyday ethical choices. Her original work has also been commissioned and supported by Gerbode Foundation, Daejeon Metropolitan Dance Theater (Korea) and Berkeley Repertory Theater’s Groundfloor Program. Erika choreographs for theater companies such as Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Theater for a New Audience, Folger Theater, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Kennedy Center, American Conservatory Theater, Pittsburgh Public, Playmakers Rep, California Shakespeare Festival, and Magic Theatre.

Baltimore Center Stage: Clybourne Park, Beneatha’s Place. Regional—design credits include Chicago Opera Theatre: The Scarlet Ibis, Arena Stage: Indecent; Goodman Theatre: Support Group for Men (world premiere); Geva Theatre: The Agitators, Other Than Honorable (both world premieres); Alliance Theatre: Sheltered (world premiere); American Players Theatre: A Flea in Her Ear; Steppenwolf Theatre: The Flick; Writers’ Theatre: Buried Child, East Texas Hot Links; Peninsula Players Theatre: The Bridges of Madison County, Miss Holmes; Court Theatre: Radio Golf, Long Day’s Journey into Night; Milwaukee Repertory Theatre: Man of La Mancha, The Mousetrap; Kansas City Rep: Of Mice and Men, Sweeney Todd. Awards—Eleven Joseph Jefferson Award nominations include designs for East Texas Hot Links (Writers’ Theatre) and Long Day’s Journey into Night (Court Theatre). Professional/Other—Jack lives in Chicago and teaches design at The Theatre School at DePaul University. www.jackmagaw.com

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Off-Broadway—The Public Theater: Richard III. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; OSF: Oklahoma, Richard II, Into the Woods, King Lear, As You Like It, Julius Caesar, All’s Well That Ends Well; Alliance Theatre: Hand to God, The Geller Girls, Managing Maxine, The Underpants, Shadowlands; Cleveland Playhouse: The Game’s Afoot; Court Theatre: The Good Book, Water by the Spoonful, The Dead, Orlando; Goodman Theatre: Stage Kiss, The Clean House; Steppenwolf: Visiting Edna, Mary Page Marlowe, Motherf**ker with the Hat, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Intimate Apparel; Kansas City Rep: Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George; Paramount Theatre: Miss Saigon; Cincinnati Playhouse; Repertory Theatre of St. Louis; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Chicago Shakespeare Theater; Utah Shakespeare Festival; Connecticut Repertory Theatre; Arden Theatre Company; Center Stage; Maltz Jupiter Theatre; American Players Theatre; Northlight: How I Learned to Drive, Away. Awards—Jeff Award (An Ideal Husband); Suzi Bass noms. (The Geller Girls, The Underpants); Connecticut Circle nom. (A Little Night Music). Professional/Other—Northwestern University: Co-director of the MFA Design Program.

Baltimore Center Stage: As You Like It, Twelfth Night, …Edgar Allan Poe. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; The Guthrie, Mark Taper Forum, Goodman Theater, Geffen Playhouse, Kirk Douglas Theatre, Pasadena Playhouse, Trinity Repertory, Long Wharf, Alliance, South Coast Repertory, Geva Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, PlayMakers Repertory, Cincinnati Playhouse, Paper Mill Playhouse. Education—MFA: NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Awards—LA Ovation Award, Knight of Illumination nom., recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Designers. Professional/Other—Josh is also a lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. He serves on the O’Neill Playwrights Conference Artistic Council and currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three daughters. joshepsteindesign.com.

Baltimore Center Stage: Stones in His Pockets, The Skull in Connemara. Broadway— Metamorphoses; I Am My Own Wife; 33 Variations; Lincoln Center: The Clean House. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Arena Stage: Smart People, Equivocation, The Passion Play Trilogy, Legacy of Light, 33 Variations, Smart People, Metamorphoses, Arabian Nights; Goodman; Steppenwolf; Chicago Shakespeare; Lookingglass Theatre (where he is an associate artist); Oregon and California Shakespeare Festivals; The Guthrie Theatre; McCarter Theater; Berkeley Repertory Theater; American Conservatory Theater; Seattle Repertory; La Jolla Playhouse; Center Theater Group. Film—score for The Business of Being Born. Awards—multiple Joseph Jefferson Awards/Citations, an LA Ovation Award, Barrymore Award, Drama Critics Circle Award, and Drama Desk/Lortel nominations for composition and sound design.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Broadway and Tours—Head Projections Programmer for Green Day’s American Idiot, Jennifer Lopez’s AKA tour, Jason Aldean’s Burn it Down tour, Imagine Dragons, Pitbull, Wintuk (Cirque du Soleil), Columbia Artists Theatricals’ tours: Love, Janis (Lighting and Projections). International—LG Theatre Seoul, South Korea: Rebecca. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; KC Rep: Side by Side, A Christmas Carol (2010–2016), The Invisible Hand, The Roof of The World, When I Come to Die, The Glass Menagerie, Circle Mirror Transformation (Lighting and Projections); Stillwater, Hair, Harriet Jacobs, Palomino, Back Home Again: A John Denver Holiday Concert, Under Midwestern Stars, Love, Janis, Give ’Em Hell, Harry; Pearl Theatre: The Great Divorce; Harris Theatre: Mary Wilson Holliday Spectacular; Ensemble Galilei: Seeing America; Portland Center Stage: It Ain’t Nothin’ But the Blues; Seacoast Repertory Theatre: The Gay Bride of Frankenstein, Rooms; Main State Musical Theatre: The Wiz, Always, Patsy Cline; Cleveland Playhouse: Lombardi; Arizona Theatre Company: Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Suicide Club, [title of show], Woody Guthrie’s American Song.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Arena Stage: The Pajama Game, Nina Simone: Four Women, The Little Foxes; Kennedy Center, Ford’s Theatre, Signature Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre, Delaware Theatre Company. Ballet and Opera—Washington Ballet, Wolftrap Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Opera Boston, Annapolis Opera, Castleton Festival. International—Seiji Ozawa’s Matsumoto Festival and Hyogo Performing Arts Center in Japan. Professional/Other—Anne was the resident wig/makeup designer for the Baltimore Opera and has constructed wigs for Scooby Doo! Live and 42nd Street (Asian tour). Her work is in Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery programs, Ice Cold Killers for Investigation Discovery, the Military Channel’s Great Planes, MD Public Television, and the US Army’s tour Spirit of America.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Arena Stage: Kleptocracy, Sovereignty, The Price and Smart People; Studio Theatre: Hand to God (Helen Hayes Award), Vietgone, The Remains; Signature Theatre: The Gulf (world premiere), Heisenberg; Olney Theatre Center: Labour of Love, The Invisible Hand, My Fair Lady; Round House: The Legend of Georgia McBride, Angels in America Part 1 and 2; 1st Stage: When the Rain Stops Falling (Helen Hayes Award). Education—MFA Virginia Commonwealth University, BFA Texas State University. Professional/Other—Zach is a certified teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and is a member of the Studio Theatre Acting Conservatory faculty. voicecoachdc.com

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Arena Stage: credits include The Great Society, The Pajama Game, Smart People, Watch on the Rhine, Carousel, The Year of Magical Thinking (starring Kathleen Turner), Born for This, All the Way, Sweat, Destiny of Desire, The Blood Quilt, Our War, The Shoplifters, Smokey Joe’s Café, Mother Courage and Her Children (starring Kathleen Turner), Maurice Hines is Tappin’ Thru Life, Good People, Red Hot Patriot: The Kick-Ass Wit of Molly Ivins (starring Kathleen Turner), The Normal Heart, Red, Ruined, every tongue confess (starring Phylicia Rashad), Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Ladies, Looped (starring Valerie Harper), Next to Normal (starring Alice Ripley), Awake and Sing!, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia; Kennedy Center, Roundabout Theatre Company, McCarter Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre Company; Signature Theatre.

Baltimore Center Stage: A Wonder in My Soul (sub SM). Off Broadway/New York—Manhattan Theatre Club, Soho Rep, MCC Theater, The Acting Company, Lincoln Center Out of Doors and Midsummer Night Swing. Regional—The Kennedy Center, Westport Country Playhouse, Lake Theatre, Adirondack Theatre Festival, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Media Theatre, Human Race Theatre Company, Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, People’s Light & Theatre Company. Opera/Dance—New York City Opera, Opera Saratoga, Tri-Cities Opera, Dayton Opera, Knoxville Opera, Princeton Festival, Central City Opera, Tulsa Opera, Opera Southwest, Gotham Chamber Opera, Flamenco Vivo Carlotta Santana. Other—New York Fashion Week, Production Coordinator for the New Year’s Eve in Times Square Webcast.

Baltimore Center Stage: debut. Broadway and Off-Broadway—productions include The Velocity of Autumn (starring Estelle Parsons); Southern Comfort; Yank!; Enter Laughing; Pretty Filthy; John and Jen, Himself, and Nora; Alter Boyz. Regional—Kansas City Rep, Arena Stage: Indecent; Actors Theatre of Louisville; Arizona Theatre Company; Bay Street Theatre; Brooklyn Academy of Music; The Civilians; Cleveland Play House; Bucks County Playhouse; Cape Playhouse; Denver Center; Marriott Theatre, North Shore Music Theatre; Old Globe; Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theater; New York Theatre Company. geoffjosselson.com.

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association

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