05/02/2016
Savannah Community Theatre
presents
Arnold Sundgaard’s “KEN”
A Staged Reading:
Thursday, June 2, 2016 - 7:30 PM - $5.00
A Full Production:
Thursday- Friday- Saturday, July 7 - 9 at 7:30 PM - $15.00
Sunday, July 10 at 3:00 PM - $15.00
The Savannah Community Theatre proudly presents a staged reading of an original play, KEN, for a one-night engagement on Thursday, June 2nd. KEN is based on a short story of the same name by Arnold Sundgaard, which was published in The New Yorker in 1959. The reading is produced by Stratton Leopold. This is the Savannah premiere.
KEN is based on the true account of a nightmarish train ride which the story writer took in 1933 while he was a student at the Yale Department of Drama. When a fellow student dies, he is elected - under pressure - to take the casket containing the boy’s body back to his parents’ home in Portland, Oregon. The story centers around his trip, the funeral that follows and the events that changed his life.
Don’t miss this special reading presented at The Muse Arts Warehouse, 703 Old Louisville Road, Savannah, Georgia, 31401. Show time is 7:30pm. All tickets are $5.00 and are available at the door. Box Office opens at 7:00 PM. Your $5 will help offset the costs for the reading that include space rental. There will be a question and answer session with the cast and crew after the performance. The audience will be asked to evaluate the show for future development.
And don’t miss a fully staged re-written production of KEN presented at The Muse Arts Warehouse, 703 Old Louisville Road, Savannah, Georgia, 31401. Show time is 7:30pm July 7, 8 and 9 and 3:00pm July 10. Tickets are $15.00 and are available at the door. Box office will open 30 minutes before each performance. Your $15 will help offset the costs of this fully staged production.
Meet the Cast and Crew…
We invite you to meet the five talented actors and the amazing Production team for KEN:
Eric McCrea (Arnold) has been acting in a variety of feature films and popular TV series for five years, most recently acting in “Mena” alongside Tom Cruise and “Christine” with Michael C. Hall. Eric has also shared the screen with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Ed Hems, Josh Radnor, and Christina Applegate. Notable appearances include “The Fifth Wave” with Chloë Grace Moretz and several episodes of The Vampire Diaries. He got his start in Erie, Pennsylvania and has worked in Nashville, Louisville and Atlanta, Georgia. He is looking forward to his role as Arnold.
Gary Strickland (Arnold as an adult) began performing in the early eighties at Stageside Desserts in Savannah Georgia. Since then, Gary has been in countless videos, stage plays and commercials and has performed for over 30 years as a professional musician, clown and actor all over the world. He’s excited to be in this production with his daughter, Maia.
Jake Roberts (Ken/Various Roles) Jake is an actor and a singer with a passion for theatre that started in 10th grade. He studied at Benedictine Military School in Savannah and plans to go to college at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. Jake says he is happy to have had the privilege of working with Justin Johnson, the director of the annual musical for St. Vincent’s and Benedictine. His most recent role was Albert Peterson in “Bye, Bye Birdie.” Jake is beyond thrilled to be doing his first show with The Savannah Community Theatre.
Maia Collins (Marie) has always enjoyed performing for crowds, whether singing goofy songs at summer camp, or putting on an emotional performance on the main stage. She has enjoyed her roles in Charlotte's Web and Tarzan at The Savannah Children's Theatre, where she has also been involved in several behind-the-scenes jobs. She is happy to once again – after the Savannah Community Theatre’s “Godspell” - to be performing with her dad, Gary. Maia has a lot of love and respect for ‘all things art’ and is excited to have the opportunity to be in her second show with The Savannah Community Theater.
Malinda K. Smith (Vinnie/Various Roles) Malinda is happy to be part of this original project with The Savannah Community Theater. Theater has been a lifelong passion for hers, studying at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and performing regularly throughout the Maryland/DC region before relocating to Savannah. Favorite productions include “Other Desert Cities,” “The Little Foxes,” “The Enchanted,” “Mary Stuart” and “The Mollusc”, an Edwardian comedy of ill manners. In addition to performing, Malinda also enjoys production responsibilities in the areas of costuming and play selection.
Stratton Leopold (Producer) has been in the film business for more than 35 years, producing major, large-budget motion pictures. He has nearly 60 film and television credits to his name for roles ranging from executive producer and producer to casting director and actor. Stratton launched his film career in 1974 as a location casting director and location manager for low-budget movies. Yet he is best known for his work as a producer or executive producer of expensive and commercially successful films, working with many of the industry’s iconic directors the past 20 years. They include: Taylor Hackford (Bound by Honor, 1993); Simon West (The General’s Daughter, 1999); Phil Alden Robinson (The Sum of All Fears, 2002); John Woo (Paycheck, 2003 and Tears of the Sun, 2003); J.J. Abrams (Mission: Impossible III, 2006); and Joe Johnston (The Wolfman, 2010). Stratton’s film-making has taken him around the world, to countries that include the United States, Canada, England, Spain, Italy, Central America, the Philippines, Australia and China. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and Producers Guild of America. When he’s not making movies, Stratton’s usually in his native Savannah, Ga., behind the counter at Leopold’s Ice Cream, the popular parlor his Greek immigrant father, Peter, and two uncles, George and Basil, founded in 1919. At the current location on Broughton Street in downtown Historic Savannah, Stratton has incorporated many of the original fixtures from his father’s store, including the 1930s soda fountain, back bar, and props from his many films. There is even an antique Panavision motion picture camera that actually photographed many well-known films! Currently Stratton has two productions in the works: In the Sanctuary of Outcasts and Charlie Two Shoes.
Tom Coleman (Director) Tom is the founder of The Savanna Community Theatre – now in its10th year – and is well known in Savannah’s theatre community, especially among those who were active in theatre in the 1970s and 1980s. Many theatre arts professionals have been influenced by their time working with Tom including Tony-nominated actress Isabelle Keating, Blue Man Group co-founder and actor Phillip Stanton, Broadway performer Tituss Burgess, novelist Chris Fuhrman (“The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys”), Emmy-nominated and Broadway costume designer Helen Butler, Savannah Children’s Theatre founder Kellie Miley and Danny Filson of the Savannah College of Art & Design. The veteran director has produced and directed more than 225 shows since he began his career over 45 years ago as director of the Savannah Young People’s Theatre, a division of the Little Theatre of Savannah, Inc. A graduate of the University of Georgia with a BFA in Theatre, Tom has served on the board of the Georgia Council for the Arts and the Southeastern Theatre Conference. For twenty years Tom served as the artistic director of Athens Creative Theatre before returning to his hometown.
Arnold Olaf Sundgard (1909–2006) (Author) was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and was of Norwegian descent. He attended Johnson Senior High School in Saint Paul, where he played football with the future chief justice of the United States, Warren Burger. He then attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating with a bachelor's degree in English in 1935; he also studied at the Yale Drama School. He taught drama at a number of schools, including Columbia University, Bennington College, Trinity College, Dublin and the University of Texas. Sundgaaard was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of music research in 1951. Sundgaard worked with the Federal Theatre Project early in his career; in 1938 the Project produced, as part of the Living Newspaper series, his play Spirochete: A History, about the spread of syphilis. The play, the writing of which had been encouraged by Susan Glaspell, was a hit in Chicago at its premiere, but met with tremendous protest upon its transfer to Philadelphia. His first play for Broadway was a collaboration with Marc Connelly; titled Everywhere I Roam, it lasted 13 performances in 1938 and 1939. T. Edward Hambleton (1911-2005) produced his plays The First Crocus in 1942 and The Great Campaign in 1947; each lasted five performances only. Of Love Remembered appeared in 1967, directed by Burgess Meredith and starring Ingrid Thulin. Sundgaard wrote the libretti for close to a dozen operas and musicals by composers such as Alec Wilder, Douglas Moore, and Kurt Weill. With Moore he wrote the opera Giants in the Earth, after the novel by Ole Edvart Rølvaag; it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1951. In 1952 he wrote The Lowland Sea with Wilder. In 1948 he and Kurt Weill collaborated on the folk opera Down in the Valley, and in 1944 he and Leonard Louis Levinson (1904-1974), wrote the book for Rhapsody, a collaboration with Fritz Kreisler and John Latouche. Another opera with Moore, Gallantry, a parody of television soap operas, was premiered by the Columbia University School of Music in 1958. With Victor Ziskin he wrote the short-lived The Young Abe Lincoln, which played briefly on Broadway in 1961. Sundgaard was also a lyricist, writing the lyrics to several songs by Wilder. "How Lovely is Christmas" was recorded by Bing Crosby; "Where Do You Go?" was recorded by Frank Sinatra and released on his 1959 album No One Cares. Besides theatrical work, Sundgaard wrote nonfiction for The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, among other publications. With Eric Carle, he also wrote children's books, such as The Lamb and the Butterfly of 1988; his The Bear Who Loved Puccini, published in 1992, was illustrated by Dominic Catalano. Sundgaard counted among his friends Montgomery Clift, Zero Mostel, Studs Terkel and Gregory Peck. He died at his home in Dallas, Texas, and was survived by a son and two daughters; another son preceded him in death in 1985.
