NOVEMBER, 1996 ----------------------------In this issue------------------------------------------ Voices in Contemporary Theatre: The Scottish Curse Goes Digital The Play's the Thing: Lillian Hellman Rubin's Corner: A Definition of Off-Broadway, Alan Ayckbourn TRE Trivia, What's New & Gossip du jour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Voices The Scottish Curse goes Digital We at the Theatre Forum knew that sooner or later somebody in cyberspace was going to have to challenge the curse which has been associated with William Shakespeare's MacBeth (or "that Scottish Play" to those who don't want to risk saying the name aloud) since its first performance. Was it alright to call the show by name or quote it in a bulletin board or chatroom devoted to theatre, or was that the equivalent of breaking a mirror with a black cat while whistling the theme from the Exorcist under a backstage ladder? We had to find out. Taking the bull by the horns, we announced that we'd devote the first installment of our Halloween chat mini-series, Murder & Mayhem. We enjoyed a mayhem-free evening of thought-provoking chat about MacBeth and company and were feeling pretty good about ourselves. But curses are sneaky. Having lulled us into a false sense of security, we then began a series of mishaps in which the guest host was logged off in the middle of the next installment, 3 other staff-members were kept off-line by various circumstances, the guest couldn't log on at all the next week (leaving a befuddled Marie trying to discuss Hamlet all by her lonesome), another staffer had a hard-disk crash, and another had a serious personal tragedy. I guess that will show us. The curse may seem silly to outsiders or newcomers to the theatre, but it has a funny way of making believers out of skeptics. I stopped joking the day I realized a TD who, fed up with the silliness at a production meeting, had stood up and shouted "MacBeth, MacBeth, MacBeth" was dismissed later that month in an organizational purge. Skeptical newbies should also know that lots of folks in the theatre take the curse very seriously, so if they think they're going to kid around in the rehearsal hall they'll quickly find themselves exiled to the parking lot until they perform some home-remedy exorcism. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Play's the thing: Lillian Hellman Theatre's Conscientious Objector "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions. . ." Letter from Lillian Hellman to the House Un-american Activities Committee Lillian Hellman was a woman caught between two worlds -- the theatrical world in which she worked and the political world that nearly stripped her of her work. Though her plays were not overtly political, threads of themes that ran contrary to the standards of her time were present. Though she stated that she ". . .wasn't a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group," in her famous letter to McCarthy and his committee, she was always involved in political affairs around the world. As a result, Hellman was blacklisted in the 50's and 60's. She stood as the symbol of a trusted friend who would not name names to save her own career. Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on June 20, 1905. She was the only child of Max Hellman and Julia Newhouse Hellman. Both were southern families, although the Newhouse family moved to New York eventually. When Lillian's father lost her mother's sizable dowry, the family was forced to move north to join her mother's family. Lillian hated those days spent in the home of her tyrannical grandmother who lorded over the lives of all her family. Family dinners were conducted like business meetings, with members bragging over the price of this or that. The only person who contended with the grandmother was her Uncle Jake. Once, when her Uncle Jake bought her a ring for graduation, Lillian pawned it for twenty-five dollars and bought books. When she told her uncle about the incident, he stared at her for a while then replied, "So, you've got spirit after all. Most of the rest of them are made of sugar water." When Hellman wrote The Little Foxes, about an affluent southern family's struggle for power and money, those words appeared, somewhat altered, in the text. The real joy for Lillian was the six months of the year she spent with her father's family in New Orleans. She fondly remembered the days with her aunts and the borders that resided in their home. Her aunts were kind and charitable, never turning anyone away from their home who were in need. In her memoirs, An Unfinished Woman, Hellman wrote, "It had been one of my grandfather's laws, in the days when my father and aunts were children, that no poor person who asked for anything was ever refused, and his children fulfilled the injunction." These acts of kindness were not done out of piety or were boasted about. Lillian continued this same generosity with her own friends throughout her life. Another important woman in Lillian's early life was Sophronia, the nanny who raised her until her family could not afford her and moved north. Sophronia was the only one who could keep the rebellious Lillian in line according to her father. Sophronia taught Lillian about the life of southern blacks who had to sit in the back of buses, but she also taught Lillian about the pride of those same people. By the age of 19, Lillian left college and began work for Horace Liveright as a manuscript reader. During this period of her life, Lillian began going to many parties, and began an affair with Arthur Kober, a theatrical press agent. When Lillian discovered she was pregnant, she had an abortion rather than face her family with the news. She married Kober in 1925, and they began a travel-filled life that took them to Paris, where Lillian wrote "lady-writer" stories as she called them for The Paris Comet, and then to Hollywood where she became a scenario reader at MGM. During that time her circle of friends included humorist S. J. Perelman and his wife; novelist Nathaniel West, and the writer Dashiell Hammett. By 1932 Lillian and Kober had divorced and she began a thirty-one year relationship with Hammett. Dashiell Hammett was 13 years older than Lillian and introduced her to the political arena of radicals. He also became her mentor and critic, pushing her into the world of a writer. By 1934, Hammett and Hellman were living in the Sutton Hotel, run by Nathaniel West. Hammett completed his best known novel, The Thin Man, modeling the character of Nora Charles on Lillian. Under Dash's encouragement, Lillian completed her first play, The Children's Hour. A former employer, Herman Shumlin, read the play and decided to produce it. The play opened November 20, 1934 at the Maxine Elliott Theater and ran for 691 performances. The Children's Hour was written as Lillian was, ". . .just beginning to formulate her political philosophy and was not yet ready to make that the theme of a play. But she was ready to challenge the conventions of a society that destroys those who deviate from its mores -- in this instance, sexual," according to Doris V. Falk, author of Lillian Hellman. The play was based on an actual case in Bad Companions by William Roughead titled "Closed Doors; or The Great Drumsheugh Case" about two English school teachers accused by a young student of having a lesbian affair. The girl's grandmother informed all the parents of the girl's story and all the students were removed from the school. The teachers sued for libel and after ten years were finally exonerated of the charge. By that time though the teachers were ruined financially and socially. In her play, Hellman added a few extra details to the story: a meddling aunt of one of the teachers, a keyhole that exposes part of the lie, and how the rooms were located in the school. Hellman saw this as a play about good and evil. Homosexuality, although a large part of the plot, was not the social issue she wanted to expose. Her target was the rich and their power to wantonly destroy the lives of innocent people because of a lie. She was not writing about her mother's aristocratic family yet, That came later, but the early seeds of her discontent with their way of live is evident. In The Children's Hour, Mary Tilford, a fourteen year old girl, becomes the catalyst for the downfall of the teachers Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. Hellman, in early notes on the play, likened Mary to Iago in Othello who acts without motive in his wickedness. The only difference Hellman saw was that Mary had fear of the consequences of her actions. Mary's unknowing accomplice is Mrs. Lily Mortar, a faded actress dependent of the charity of her niece Martha for her living. Mrs. Mortar suspects that Martha is jealous of Karen's engagement to Dr. Joe Cardin. She tells Martha: MRS. MORTAR: You're fonder of Karen, and I know that. And it's unnatural, just as unnatural as it can be. You don't like their being together. You were always like that even as a child. If you had a little girl friend, you always got mad when she liked anybody else. Well, you'd better get a beau of your own now -- a woman of your age. Mary finds out about the conversation from two of the girls that overheard the conversation and uses it to gain her grandmother's sympathy about how she is being treated at school. When Mary stressed the "unnatural" part of the conversation, she threw in a few details of her own that made it appear that Karen and Martha were engaged in an affair. Mrs. Tilford calls the other families and immediately the children are taken from the school. After a trial fails to acquit the charges brought against them, Karen and Martha are ruined. Karen sends Joe away after he finally asked her if the charge was true. When Mrs. Mortar appears on their doorstep, after an extended absence, Martha is furious. Mrs. Mortar had been subpoenaed to appear and refute the charges but never returned for the trial. Her absence weighed heavily on the decision, casting suspicious guilt over the teachers. Martha tells her to leave. Mortar retreats upstairs to wait for the next train. Martha finally faces the fact that the lie that ruined them was based in part on truth, at least for her. She admits to Karen that she loves her "that way" and tries to apologize for it. Karen won't accept what Martha is saying and tells her to go upstairs and lie down. Martha leaves the room and soon a gunshot is heard. Karen finds her dead. Before long Mrs. Tilford is at the door. She has just discovered the truth of what Mary has done and wants to repair the damage. Karen tells her that Martha is dead and beyond repair. Many of the critics thought that the play should end just before or just after the gunshot. Hellman thought they might possibly be right and said in her introduction to Four Plays, "I am a moral writer, often too moral a writer, and I cannot avoid, it seems, that last summing-up." Hellman's next play was not as successful as The Children's Hour. Days to Come opened at the Vanderbilt Theater December 15, 1936 and closes after only seven performances. In 1939 The Little Foxes, a play that is based on members of her mother's family, opened February 15 at the National Theater and ran for 410 performances. That success is followed by Watch on the Rhine, which opened April 1, 1941 at the Martin Beck Theater. The play ran for 378 performances and earned Hellman the New York Drama Critics' Award. Watch on the Rhine and her next play The Searching Wind were written as attacks on fascism. In 1944, after the opening of The Searching Wind, which also had a successful run, Hellman went to Russia and met with Sergei Eisenstein. While there, she also attended rehearsals of Russian productions of The Little Foxes and Watch on the Rhine. She notes in her memoir, An Unfinished Woman, that the rehearsals had been going on for six months. In 1946 Hellman's next play, Another Part of the Forest, opened with Lillian directing the project. Autumn Garden opened March 7, 1951 and ran for 101 performances. 1952 marked a dark period in Hellman and Hammett's lives. Joseph McCarthy began his House Un-American Activities Committee and was looking for Communists on every doorknob and behind every door. Hammett was jailed for not giving up names of his associates. When Lillian was subpoenaed, she was advised by her attorney that if she agreed to answer questions about herself, she would have waived her fifth amendment rights and could be forced to answer questions about others. In a letter to the committee, she eloquently makes her stand. She writes: I am prepared to waive the privilege against self-incrimination and to tell you everything you wish to know about my views or actions if your Committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the Committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I'll be forced to plead the Fifth Amendment at the hearing. Even though Lillian was dismissed from testifying, her career suffered because of blacklisting. She was forced to work for less money on projects, when she was hired to work. In spite of that Lillian kept writing and in 1960 Toys in the Attic opened and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play in 1960. Lillian Hellman left a great record of her work process. She was a habitual writer, working three hours in the morning, two to three hours in the afternoon and then began about ten in the evening until one or two in the morning. Lillian preferred typing to longhand, finding the process of writing by hand too slow. When Lillian started writing, she began with outlines. She later discarded them. At other times she would just begin writing and see where it took her. Even when she had a plan, her characters usually did not stick to the plan. To Lillian, "Drama has to do with conflict in people, with denials. . ." so she would start with parts of many people, and fool around with them untilsomething fell in place. After her first draft she might go back to add or delete some of the characters. Hellman would read her dialogue aloud each night and again in the morning before she resumed work. She would never read it to her friends because she was not a performer but a writer. Lillian thought that experienced playwrights should know where to cut speeches and ease the entrances and exits of actors. Her speeches tended to be short and her stage directions were so concise that editing was quick. Hellman did extensive research for many of her plays like Watch on the Rhine, but after completing the research she rarely referred back to it. She insisted that she does the research so it gets inside her and she can be sure that she knows what she is writing about. Titles were always a problem for Hellman. If it had been left to her, numbers would have sufficed as titles for her plays. Her lifelong friend Dorothy Parker is credited for the title The Little Foxes. Writer's block was another stumbling point for Hellman. When stuck, she would tear up everything she had written and start again. She said that, "Sometimes it's a relief and sometimes it's nice to start again with a clean slate. Certain good things remain, and what you want to use will stay in your head . . . I rewrote The Little Foxes I think, seven, eight times." Lillian had much to say regarding the playwrights she came into contact with during her life. Of Tennessee Williams, she commented, "He writes by sanded fingertips." She enjoyed A Streetcar named Desire and 27 Wagons Full of Cotton. She considered Beckett a master playwright, "I think the only writer of importance to come along in theater in the last ten or twelve years is Beckett. For my money, he's the only one who should be taken seriously." She also thought the same of Bertold Brecht and stated, "Oh well, now you're in the big league. I think The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage are the great plays of our time." When asked about Arthur Miller, Hellman responded, "Miller is good and I think will be even better as the years go on. He has force and spirit." She did not like The Crucible but did like the script for A View From The Bridge. She thought William Inge was ". . .a skillful man. The plays aren't up my alley." In 1961 Hellman began her long teaching career. She thought that playwriting courses shouldn't be writing courses but courses, " . . .on how to steal, which is very hard to teach kids; how to steal and yet make something your own. Good writers steal, but bad writers borrow." Hellman also thought that teachers should give the students more than just rules on writing. She said that, "It isn't really rules you give students that they pay attention to . . . it's a feeling you give them of some kind of opening up of the world and some kind of vague direction, if you can manage that." Dashiell Hammett represented that opening up of the world for Lillian, and she spread that skill among her own students. In 1961, Dashiell Hammett died, leaving Lillian without her drinking partner, mentor and companion. She intended to write his biography but Hammett told her she shouldn't bother writing it because, ". . .it would turn out to be the history of Lillian Hellman with an occasional reference to a friend called Hammett." She never wrote the biography. During these later years of her life, Lillian continued to win numerous awards, including the Gold Medal for Drama for the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and honorary degrees from various major universities. She also completed her first memoir, An Unfinished Woman, in 1969, which won the National Book Award for book of the year in the Arts and Letters category. Pentimento, the second of the memoir books which includes the story of "Julia", was published in 1973 and was selected as a Book-of-the-Month Club choice. Her last work, Scoundrel Time, was published in 1976 and remained on the best seller list for twenty-three weeks. Although her name is replete with writing credits, she only wrote twelve plays. She wrote several screenplays, including the first adaptation of The Children's Hour, titled These Three. Besides her memoirs, her books included editing The Selected Letters of Anton Chekov and The Big Knockover: Selected Stories and Short Novels by Dashiell Hammett. One of the last projects that Hellman contributed to was a one-woman show based on her memoirs titled Lillian. In the introduction to the play, William Luce wrote an account of their work together on the play. Producer Ann Shanks and Luce met with Lillian in 1981 to discuss the project. Lillian told Luce that she had spoken with Julie Harris, who was starring in his current play The Belle of Amherst, and had been assured that Luce, ". . .was not a disagreeable man to work with." Luce asked her if she was sure he was right for the job. Lillian said, "Yes . . . and I seldom say yes." Luce's last contact with Hellman was just a few months before her death. During a phone call he was reading her revisions that she had requested. Luce said that Lillian's last words to him were, "It's my voice. Thank you." Lillian's voice was very important to her. When she grew blind and paralyzed before her death, she complained to a friend that she had writer's block. To Lillian, that silence of her writing voice was too much to bear. Lillian Hellman's voice was stilled on June 30, 1984. She died at her home on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. In her will, Lillian established two literary funds. The Lillian Hellman fund was established to advance arts and sciences. The other, named for Dashiell Hammett, was intended to further radical causes. In her death, she honored the principles she believed in most, the words she worked by and the politics she lived by. Plays by Lillian Hellman Internet Sites about Lillian Hellman --- Caprice Woosley is currently pursuing her BFA in theater (directing and playwriting), after 25 years working in and around community theater. She is a playwright, produced but not published, actress, and amateur dramaturg who enjoys researching plays. She is a host in the Writing Forum where she co-hosts a Writing Discussion Group. She also hosted "Shakespeare Unplugged" and "Murder and Mayhem" in the Theatre Forum. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rubin's Corner A DEFINITION OF OFF-BROADWAY I sometimes forget in my enthusiasm for the Broadway theater that their is a another theater world in New York called Off-Broadway. Actors Equity and the League of New York Theaters define an Off-Broadway Theater as a theater that can be located on Broadway. The Off-Broadway theaters located on 76th and Broadway are a perfect example of an Off-Broadway theaters. This seems to be very logical, but your in New York. However, to qualify for Off-Broadway a theater must have 299 seats or less. They usually don't have some of the nice things that Broadway Theaters contain such as infra-red sound systems, an orchestra pit, or an audience waiting areas. An Off-Broadway requires less technical people. Many times you will find yourself sitting on top of the stage in a garage that has been converted into a theater. However, some of our best theater and sometimes some our worst can be found Off-Broadway. The price of tickets can run from $15 to $40, a great saving over their Broadway brother and sisters productions. The current crop of Off-Broadway includes a number of hits. "Born to Sing" brings the glorious voices in this pop/gospel sequel to the long-running, "Mama I Want to Sing". "Cowgirls", the story of a three women classical musical group that is booked into a country and western bar, continues to draw audiences. "I Love Your, Your're Perfect, Now Change" is a crowd-pleasing revue about the joys and pitfalls of love and marriage. Everyone in the audience seems to love the outrageous and cleverly costumed revue called "Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly". Finally, way up on 76th Street we find, "Old Wicked Songs", which is a look at a passionless pianist and an elderly Viennese musician. The new Off-Broadway season has already produced some interesting plays. "Cakewalk" staring Linda Lavin as Lillian Hellman in a love story will open in just a few days. Last season's, "Full Gallop", brings Mary Louise Wilson back to the stage as Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue magazine. If you like "Nunsense", you might like being part of Sister's adult evening class in a new play called, "Late Night Catechism". A new Off-Broadway musical by Mike Craver and Mark Hardwick, about a living-room station in 1920 Arkansas is called "Radio Gals". There is only four weeks left to catch Mart Crowley's 1986 play, "The Boys in the Band". This play about a group of a gay men at a birthday party has gotten rave reviews. As we move toward Christmas, their are a dozen new Off-Broadway shows opening at theaters all over New York. A "View of the Dome", a women's roller coaster ride thru DC politics, scandals, heartbreak and media opens in October. David Mamet brings his play, "Edmond", to the Atlantic Theater Company. This is the controversial story of one man's search for the meaning in the 20th century. We will know in November if Mamet can answer this simple question. The Jewish Rep, the people who give us "Coconuts" bring us a new comedy about a woman trying to stage the ultimate party extravaganza. "431 Of My Closest Friends" opens in late October. They will also produce, "So Long 174 Street", a revival of the hit Broadway musical based on the hilarious book by Carl Reiner. Their third production, in two months, will be about a group of skeptical middle American students try to deal with the Anne Frank story. "Anne Frank and Me", opens in late November. The success of "Rent" has resulted in the Pearl Theater Company producing, "The Barber of Seville". They bill this as a comic romp led by Figaro, the rascally servant of Mozart and Rossinio fame. It opens in early December. Sam Shepard and John Osborne don't want to be left out of the Off-Broadway theater race. Osborne has cast Brian Murray to star in his, "The Entertainer", at the CSC Rep. Sam Shepard, who also seems to be working Off-Broadway on a regular basis, introduces us to the "Tooth of Crime", the story of a rock star and the price he pays for fame. It may not be the usual menu of big plays and musicals, but if your in New York City and want to see some interesting theater then try an Off-Broadway show this Fall. It may not always be the best play you can see, but it will often provide you with an interesting evening of theater. Ayckbourn Invades America Alan Ayckbourn has arrived on the shores of America. In the hills of Connecticut, Ayckbourn has began the job of translating his production of the Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, BY JEEVES, to the stage of the Goodspeed Opera House. This show was Webber's flop of seventeen year ago. Ayckbourn took the show in hand and rewrote the script and lyrics almost completely. It opened at Aykkbourn's Scarborough Theatre, outside of London during the late Spring of 1996. The story concerns a Banjo Concert by Bertie Wooster and his butler, Jeeves. You may remember these characters from the P.G. Wodehouse stories. Ayckbourn rewrote the story around an emergency entertainment when the main characters discover that there is no banjo for the concert. Webber credits Ayckbourn's new book, lyrics and direction for the success of the production in London. BY JEEVES, is a very distant relative of an earlier work according to Ayckbourn. He said that the original production had a lot of actors, large numbers of musicians, dozens of technicians, and a huge crew. The total bill and consequently the total financial losses seemed quite staggering to a man whose entire year long seasons of regional repertory in Scarborough is about one third of the loss on the original production. In spite of this Mr. Ayckbourn could not explain why he and Mr. Webber had chosen to do the production. Neverless, he admitted that this production was a case of all hands back to the drawing board. "The result, BY JEEVES, is more of a rowing boat constructed in a much smaller Scarborough year". Alan Ayckbourn is the long-standing artistic director of the Stephan Joseph Teatre, Scarborough, United Kingdom. He is the author of 50 plays, of which more than half have been produced in the West End. Only a few of his plays have been produced in the United States and then on a limited basis. His plays have been translated into over thirty languages and are performed on stage and television throughout the world. Mr. Ayckbourn play's include Relatively Speaking, Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Bedroom Farce, Just Between Ourselves, A Chorus of Disapproval, Woman in Mind, A Small Family Business, Man of the Moment, Communicating Dorrs, Mr A's Amazing Play, and Invisible Friends. His most recent play on Broadway was A Small Family Business, which lasted less than a month, but received some good reviews. Mr. Ayckbourn was the 1992 Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. Mr. Ayckbourn is now preparing the show for American audiences. He felt that the show was a bit to English for the United States. Once again he has set about rewriting this small show so that Americans will enjoy the show. The new version opens in mid-October and then moves to Broadway, if Mr. Ayckbourn can once again work his magic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRE Trivia: •Which of the following Shakespeare plays is NOT about to be released as a major motion picture: Romeo & Juliet, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet •True or False: Spike Heels is about corruption in the designer shoe industry. •In Lend Me a Tenor, who is the tenor? What city has he come to ? to sing in what opera? •What early '90s musical is set simultaneously in the gritty world of a fictional Private Investigator and the glamorous hollywood where his story is being made into a movie? •Who starred as the P.I. in the original Broadway cast? •"Mr. Nabisco, sir! You could be the first to sell the concept of munching to the Third World." Play and speaker, please. Answers to last month's trivia: •False: O Willy! is the fictional musical based on Death of a Salesman being written by one of the characters in Donald Margulies The Loman Family Picnic . •Laughter on the 23rd Floor is set among a group of writers for a comedy-variety show in the heyday of live television. •In Into the Woods, the ingredients to break the curse were: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. •Savion Glover made his Broadway debut in The Tap Dance Kid •Les Miserables won the Tony for best musical in 1987, beating out Rags, Me & My Girl, and Starlight Express. •Phantom of the Opera won Best Musical in 1988, when Into the Woods took home the Tony for Best Book and Best Score. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gossip du jour... •Entertainment novelty shops such as Sid Cuanga's at the Disney/MGM Studios are vying for props from the film Romeo + Juliett, which include such fascinating items as a mailer for Post Haste Dispatch (when it absolutely positively has to be there by the next act), and stage firearms labeled Sword 9mm •The disappointments of the fall seaspm have made Broadway more than usually anxious about coming attractions - there's great anticipation of Ragtime - and it's justified. Advance word is that some of the f/x are eye-popping. A preview of the music is available from the CD with the Toronto preview cast released Nov. 12th. •Great things are also expected from the $6 million Jane Eyre, with a 30-member cast led by Marla Schaffel and Tony Award-Winner Anthony Crivello, not so much because of a glorious book or score (which were previewed at a Manhattan Theatre Club workshop) but because director John Caird has such a distinguished record working with large casts in strong ensemble productions (Les Miz, Nicholas Nickleby) •Penn & Teller, the bad boys of magic, are planning a return to Broadway. Unlike the hype-monster Copperfield show, P&T will be bringing mostly new material currently in development in Las Vegas. THey're expected to hit the white way in Fall of '97 or Spring of '98 •NOT ENOUGH GOSSIP - There isn't enough buzz about the Jimmy Buffet-Herman Wouk collaboration Don't Stop The Carnival, due to premiere at Florida's Coconut Grove Playhouse in April, 1997 - and given the originality of the team-up, inquiring minds want to know. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright 1996, Mersinger Theatrical Services