Recipient of the
2012 American Theatre Wing
National Theatre Company Award

A fanciful journey, told with startling theatricality, that begins with a young boy determined to see the world. See it he does—from England to the South Seas and back over a thirty year span, all the while accompanied by his faithful dog. When he tells his story in print, he becomes the toast of London and the living example of how to survive by one’s own ingenuity…or does he?

David Morden’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Jan Stewart.

Matt Walley, Patty Gallagher, David Morden, and Joseph McGrath

Photos by Tim Fuller

Matt Walley, Patty Gallagher, Joseph McGrath, David Morden and Angela Dawnielle Horchem

Photos by Tim Fuller

About the poster

View all production photos

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Press

Shipwrecked! a wildly imaginative ride
Much is made by suggestion—a scrap of costuming, a sound, a gesture—to flesh out a fascinating world

Review of Shipwrecked! by Dave Irwin posted January 12 on TucsonSentinel.com

Truth Through Story
David Morden and the Rogue Theatre delight with Shipwrecked! An Entertainment

Review of Shipwrecked! by Sherilyn Forrester in the January 12 Tucson Weekly

Shipwrecked rides swells of imagination

Review of Shipwrecked! by Kathleen Allen in the January 12 Arizona Daily Star

Get carried away in Shipwrecked!

Review of Shipwrecked! by Chuck Graham on January 7 in Let The Show Begin! at TucsonStage.com

Ahoy! “Pure theatricality” on stage in Rogue play
Shipwrecked! a story about storytelling, takes “a trip through language and sound”

Preview of Shipwrecked! by Kathleen Allen in the December 29 Arizona Daily Star

 

Direction

	Cynthia Meier (Director) is the Managing and Associate Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre for which she has adapted and directed James Joyce’s The Dead, directed New-Found-Land, Old Times, The Tempest, Nāga Mandala, The Four of Us, Othello, Animal Farm, Orlando, Happy Days, The Good Woman of Setzuan, The Fever and The Cherry Orchard, and performed in many of the productions including The Goat, for which she received the Arizona Daily Star’s 2008 Mac Award for Best Actress. Cynthia has also performed in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Arizona Repertory Theatre), A Streetcar Named Desire (Arizona Theatre Company), Blithe Spirit and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Michigan Repertory Theatre), Romeo & Juliet and Chicago Milagro (Borderlands Theatre), A Namib Spring (1999 National Play Award winner), and Smirnova’s Birthday, The Midnight Caller, and The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (Tucson Art Theatre). Cynthia holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of Arizona.

 

Director’s Notes

One night after rehearsal for Shipwrecked!, I decided to write to the author, Donald Margulies. I felt a tremendous wave of gratitude for his play, and I knew he taught at Yale, so I wrote to him via his Yale email address:

Dear Mr. Margulies—
     It’s Saturday night. We’ve just had our 6th rehearsal of Shipwrecked!, here at the Rogue Theatre in Tucson, Arizona. I’m directing and am now plotting out tomorrow’s rehearsal. If there’s anything I believe in, it’s the power of the human imagination. Which is why I love the theatre. Which is why I love your play.
     I don’t know what the future holds for live theatre. But I know that it’s more hopeful because of plays like yours.
Thank you,
Cynthia Meier

The next day, to my surprise and delight, there was an email back from him:

Dear Ms. Meier,
     Shipwrecked! is supposed to do precisely what you expressed in your note: It represents a return to the childlike essence of playtime for seasoned theater professionals such as yourself. The productions in which I had a hand were among the most delightful and memorable of my career. I trust your enthusiasm will grow enormously when you take the play out of the rehearsal room and start performing it for audiences. Revel in the wonder in faces young and old. Remember that in many cases, Shipwrecked! will be the very first play seen by some of the members of your audience. That’s an awesome responsibility. Relish it.
     My very best to you, your company of actors, and your intrepid designers. Keep it simple and true.
     Thanks for writing and making my day.
Sincerely,
Donald Margulies

The cast and crew of Shipwrecked! and Ihave endeavored to take Mr. Margulies’ advice to “keep it simple and true.” So, let us revel in the wonder of this play together, dear audience members. Thank you for being here.

—Cynthia Meier, Director of Shipwrecked!
director@theroguetheatre.org

 

Louis De Rougemont

photographed at the offices of George Newnes Publishers in London (June 1898)

 

Playwright

	Donald Margulies (Playwright) received the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Dinner with Friends. His many plays include Time Stands Still, Shipwrecked! An Entertainment—The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (As Told by Himself), Brooklyn Boy, Sight Unseen, Collected Stories, God of Vengeance, Two Days, The Model Apartment, The Loman Family Picnic, What's Wrong with This Picture?, Broken Sleep: Three Plays, July 7, 1994, Found A Peanut, Pitching to the Star, Resting Place, Gifted Children, Zimmer and Luna Park. His plays have been performed at major theatres across the United States and around the world. Dinner with Friends was made into an Emmy Award-nominated film for HBO, and Collected Stories was presented on PBS. Currently, he is adapting the novel “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides into an HBO miniseries. Mr. Margulies has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2005 he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with an Award in Literature and by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture with its Award in Literary Arts. Mr. Margulies is an alumnus of New Dramatists and serves on the council of The Dramatists Guild of America. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1954, Mr. Margulies now lives with his wife, Lynn Street, a physician, and their son, Miles, in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is an adjunct professor of English and Theatre Studies at Yale University.

 

From Donald Margulies’ Afterword to Shipwrecked!

The magic of theater is its power to astonish, but astonishment can occur only if the audience is willing to suspend its disbelief. How are we expected to astonish young people who have seen everything imaginable, on screens of all description, since they were born?

We need to build a new tradition of theater-going if the theater is to survive. The challenge is to invite this potential audience into the theater, to entertain and move them and make them laugh. If we do our job well, they’ll come again and keep coming, and one day bring their children. If we don’t, if we bore or alienate them, we could lose them forever.

My aim with “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment—The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as told by himself)” was to capture the attention of the hidden child in everyone in my audience. I wanted to write a play that would make no attempt to replicate onstage what television and movies do but would instead celebrate the uniqueness of theater. My impulse was to strip away the trappings of spectacle and get back to what theater does best: tell stories that reflect our world or create new ones that can enlighten, amuse, transport, make you forget, or force you to remember.

I set out to tell a ripping good yarn, the sort of narrative that captivated me when I was a boy, that I think enthralled all of us. For my subject, I was drawn to a story about the very nature of storytelling.

A few years ago, while researching a movie I was writing about a Holocaust survivor-pretender, I read the book “Impostors” by Sarah Burton. In it was the curious true-life tale of Louis de Rougemont, a man whose exploits transfixed the Victorian public. Louis claimed to have survived, among many other travails, a spectacular shipwreck in the South Seas, an attack by a giant octopus and 30 years among a tribe of cannibals. His serialized story made him famous, a celebrity author not unlike the Oprah Winfrey-anointed James Frey, whose veracity (like Frey’s) was ultimately called into question. Louis’ story stayed with me. In fact, the Frey controversy reawakened my interest in it. (Frey wrote “A Million Little Pieces,” a memoir that turned out to be significantly fabricated, for which Frey was publicly dressed down by his erstwhile patroness.)

The story of Louis de Rougemont, his rise and fall, had all the elements of a classic picaresque: A young man leaves home to find himself, goes on a long and unpredictable journey, survives extraordinary events, finds fame, tells lies. In it I saw the potential for a purely theatrical play about the power of imagination.

Whenever I start contemplating a new play, I re-read one of my favorites, Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town.” Revisiting Grovers Corners has become a ritual of mine, like cleansing one’s palette with sherbet between courses. Every time I read it, I make new discoveries. For this new play, “Shipwrecked!,” I found inspiration in its very first words:

“No curtain.

No scenery.

The audience, arriving, sees an empty stage in half-light.”

—Donald Margulies

You may read the entire Afterword here.

 

David Morden as Louis de Rougemont

Photo by Tim Fuller

 

Cast
Louis de Rougemont		David Morden*
Player 1		Patty Gallagher*
Player 2		Joseph McGrath*
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States, appearing under a Special Appearance Contract

 

Cast Biographies

Patty Gallagher (Player 1) is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at University of California Santa Cruz where she teaches movement, mask, Balinese dance, and clown traditions. With The Rogue, she has performed the roles of Shen Te in The Good Woman of Setzuan, Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, Winnie in Happy Days (most recently for The Rogue’s tour to Bangalore, India), Sonnerie and Scarron in Red Noses, Orlando in Orlando, the Player in Act without Words, Emilia in Othello, Rani in Naga Mandala, Ariel in The Tempest, and Alibech in The Decameron. She has worked with Shakespeare Santa Cruz, The Folger Shakespeare Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, The New Pickle Circus, Ripe Time Theatre, Two River Theatre, Teatro Cronopio and Grupo Malayerba. She has performed, choreographed and directed workshops in Asia, South America, Europe, and the U.S. In 2006 she was Fulbright Scholar in Quito, Ecuador. She holds a doctorate in Theatre from University of Wisconsin–Madison, and she is Director in Residence for the Clown Conservatory, San Francisco Circus Center. Joseph McGrath (Player 2) is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama and is the Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre for which he has performed in many of its plays.  Joe was most recently seen as Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara, Bernard in New-Found-Land, Deeley in Old Times, Caliban in The Tempest, and Pastor Manders in Ghosts. In 2009 Joe won the Arizona Daily Star Mac Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Tobias in A Delicate Balance. Joe also authored and directed Immortal Longings for The Rogue and has directed The Balcony, Endymion, The Maids (winner of the Arizona Daily Star 2007 Mac Award for Best Play), Red Noses, Our Town, The Decameron, The Real Inspector Hound (winner of the Arizona Daily Star 2011 Mac Award for Best Comedy and Best Director) and As I Lay Dying. He has toured with John Houseman’s Acting Company, performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and he is a frequent performer with Ballet Tucson appearing in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Cinderella, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dracula and The Nutcracker. He has also performed with Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera, Tucson Art Theatre, and Arizona OnStage. Joe owns, with his wife Regina Gagliano, Sonora Theatre Works, which produces theatrical scenery and draperies. David Morden (Louis de Rougemont) has appeared with The Rogue Theatre as Rinieri in The Decameron, Stephano in The Tempest, Brabantio and Montano in Othello, Editor Webb in Our Town, in the ensembles of Animal Farm and Orlando, as Madame Pace in Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Pope in Red Noses, Yephikhov in The Cherry Orchard, The Man in the Silver Dress in the preshow to The Maids and Glaucus in Endymion. He has acted locally with Arizona Opera (The Pirates of Penzance, The Threepenny Opera), Arizona Onstage Productions (Assassins), Actors Theatre (The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)) and Green Thursday Theatre Project (Anger Box, Rain), of which he was a co-founder. David has also directed The Rogue’s productions of Major Barbara, Ghosts, A Delicate Balance, The Goat (2008 Arizona Daily Star Mac Award), Six Characters in Search of an Author and Krapp’s Last Tape, Not I and Act Without Words. David has also directed productions with Green Thursday, Oasis Chamber Opera, DreamerGirl Productions, and Arts for All.

Patty Gallagher, Matt Walley, David Morden, Angela Dawnielle Horchem and Joseph McGrath

Photo by Tim Fuller

Music Director’s Notes

It’s hard to imagine a childhood without music and song. Even more difficult to tell an adventure story without the sounds of wind, rain or the occasional CRASH! We wouldn’t think of it and neither would Donald Margulies. The world of Shipwrecked! is full of sights and sounds for the eye and ear. You’ll hear sounds made by our mouths, our hands, any and all instruments we could find. One of the more unique used is the waterphone, a hollow metal disk filled with water surrounded by pitched prongs that’s played with a bow from an upright bass. Its eerie sounds can be heard on many a sci-fi movie.

Music on the piano, while occasionally original, is more often from Schumann’s Album for the Young. Schumann’s music is all about storytelling. His book on teaching youngsters was in use at the time of Louis’ story and it succeeds in placing us very much in the world of the 19th century. Following Louis to the Coral Sea and his underwater adventure required one of the many water pieces for piano, so appears Ravel’s Jeux d’eau. Our Islanders dance to an authentic Samoan melody transcribed for marimba. Our sailors sing sea shanties, Drunken Sailor and South Australia, along with an accordion. And that’s only the beginning!

Suggestions for the pre-show vocal music came from our director Cindy and her husband Tom, who spends many joyful hours singing cool songs such as these around Tucson with Sons of Orpheus.

And for all of those of you who are wondering…a runcible spoon is a small fork with three prongs, one having a sharp edge, and curved like a spoon used to eat pickles. Amazing, huh?

—Dawn C. Sellers, Music Director of Shipwrecked!
director@theroguetheatre.org

Preshow Music

Sonata Op. 35, No. 2 by Fredrick Chopin

Jabberwocky
by Sam Pottle, text by Lewis Carroll

The Owl and the Pussy Cat
by R. de Koven, text by Edward Lear

On the Road to Mandalay
by Oley Speaks, text by Rudyard Kipling

Italian Mariners’ Song by Robert Schumann

Pianist: Dawn C. Sellers
Vocalists: Patty Gallagher, Angela Dawnielle Horchem,
Joseph McGrath, David Morden, Leah Taylor and Matt Walley

 

Music and Sound Effects
Dawn C. Sellers, Music Director
Angela Horchem
Matt Walley

 

Musican Biographies

	Dawn C. Sellers (Music Director, Musician) performed in The Rogue’s production of Our Town, was Assistant Director for Naga Mandala, Assistant Director and pianist for Ghosts, and Music Director for The Tempest, Old Times and Major Barbara. Dawn was a pianist, composer and educator prior to receiving an MFA in dramatic writing from Carnegie Mellon University. She has composed music for Off-Broadway and is published by Hal Leonard, Alfred and Kjos Music Publishers. In Tucson, her plays have been produced by This Side Up Productions, Beowulf Alley Theatre Company, Live Theatre Workshop, and Live Theatre Workshop’s Etcetera series, as well as The Arizona Women’s Theatre. She is also listed on nytheatre.com, which features emerging women playwrights.
Angela Dawnielle Horchem (Musician) appeared at The Rogue Theatre as an ensemble member in As I Lay Dying and as Amalia in The Decameron. She combines a background in team sports with a passion for theatre. After earning her MA in theatre from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Angela went on to study physical theatre at Dell’Arte International and performance in Bali, Indonesia. In Tucson, she co-founded Clown, R.N., a clown therapy program working with local hospitals and clinics. Other credits include Antony & Cleopatra and The Taming of the Shrew at the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival, Mother Courage, Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, and Much Ado About Nothing at UNO, and guest-artist roles with companies across the country, including WONDERHEADS, National Headquarters, The Witching Hour, and Dell’Arte International. Whether approaching Shakespeare or an original, devised work, Angela brings a passion for character, love for the physical, and spirit of exploration and discovery.
	Matt Walley (Musician) has performed with The Rogue Theatre as Cash Bundren in As I Lay Dying and Bill Walker in Major Barbara. He graduated from Dell’Arte International in 2009 with an MFA in Physical Ensemble Theatre. Since then he has performed with The Pinnacle Peak Pistoleros and their Wild West Stunt Shows, as well as with Stories that Soar! Matt has been seen at Live Theatre Workshop here in Tucson and has acted in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. He is teaching acting this year at The University of Arizona.

 

David Morden as Louis de Rougemont

Photo by Tim Fuller

 

Designers
Costume Design		Cynthia Meier
Lighting Design		Clint Bryson
Scenic Design		Joseph McGrath
Production Staff
Stage Manager		Leah Taylor
House Manager		Susan Collinet
Box Office Manager		Thomas Wentzel
Box Office Assistant		Anna Swenson
Snack Bar Manager		Leigh Moyer
Snack Bar Assistant		Shannon Macke
Poster and Program		Thomas Wentzel

 

	Clint Bryson (Lighting Designer) has designed lights for nearly every Rogue Theatre production. Other lighting design credits include As Bees in Honey Drown and Golf Game for Borderlands, Woman in Black for Beowulf Alley, and The Seagull for Tucson Art Theatre. Clint is currently the Shop Foreman, Production Technical Director and Marketing Director for Catalina Foothills Theatre Department where he designs and coordinates the construction of all scenery. He is also a member of Rhino Staging Services, and a regular participant in Arizona Theatre Company’s Summer on Stage program where he designs and builds the scenery as well as teaches production classes.
Leah Taylor (Stage Manager, Preshow Vocalist) was Stage Manager for The Rogue Theatre’s As I Lay Dying and Major Barbara and Assistant to the Stage Manager for The Decameron. She was Stage Manager for The Now Theatre’s The Pillowman, The Bald Soprano and Overruled. Other work includes shows with Winding Road Theatre Ensemble and Sacred Chicken Productions. Leah graduated from the University of Arizona in May 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts in Classics and Anthropology.
	Susan Collinet (House Manager) received her A.A. Degree from Pima Community College in 2005, and her B.A. in Creative Writing and English Literature from the UA in 2008. Previously, Susan spent twenty years in amateur theater as well as in the American Theater of Brussels and the Theatre de Chenois of Waterloo, Belgium. She has worked in such positions as volunteer bi-lingual guide in the Children’s Museum of Brussels and volunteer assistant Director of Development of the Arizona AIDS Project in Phoenix. Susan is currently peddling a manuscript of poetry for publication and working on collections of creative nonfiction and fiction. Her writing has won awards from Sandscript Magazine, the John Hearst Poetry Contest, and the Salem College for Women’s Center for Writing, and has been published in the 2010 Norton Anthology of Student’s Writing. In addition to being House Manager, Susan acts as Volunteer Coordinator for The Rogue.

David Morden and Patty Gallagher

Photo by Tim Fuller

Our Thanks
Arizona Daily Star		Bryan Rafael Falcón
Tim Fuller		Tucson Weekly
Chuck Graham		Jesse Greenberg
Amy Novelli		Shawn Burke
Pasco Kitchen and Lounge		BICAS

 

SHIPWRECKED! AN ENTERTAINMENT—THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF LOUIS DE ROUGEMONT (AS TOLD BY HIMSELF)
is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.

Commissioned and first produced by South Coast Repertory.

David Morden as Louis de Rougemont and Joseph McGrath as Bruno the Dog

Photo by Tim Fuller

 

Performance Schedule for Shipwrecked!

Location: The Rogue Theatre at The Historic Y, 300 East University Boulevard
Free off-street parking! Click here to see map and parking information.

Performance run time is 1 hours and 40 minutes, not including music preshow or post-show discussion. There is no intermission.

Thursday January 5, 2012, 7:30 pm PREVIEW
Friday January 6, 2012, 7:30 pm OPENING NIGHT
Saturday January 7, 2012, 7:30pm
Sunday January 8, 2012, 2:00 pm matinee

Thursday January 12, 2012, 7:30 pm, HALF-PRICE NIGHT SOLD OUT
Friday January 13, 2012, 7:30 pm
Saturday January 14, 2012, 7:30 pm
Sunday January 15, 2012, 2:00 pm matinee SOLD OUT

Thursday January 19, 2012, 7:30 pm, HALF-PRICE NIGHT SOLD OUT
Friday January 20, 2012, 7:30 pm
Saturday January 21, 2012, 7:30 pm
Sunday January 22, 2012, 2:00 pm matinee SOLD OUT

Patty Gallagher and Joseph McGrath

Photo by Tim Fuller