Humpday With Howard: Lessons Learned

As our season this summer comes to a close, I would like to take a moment to reflect on some of the biggest things I've learned from working for the Nebraska Repertory Theatre:

Holding a chicken at
Community Crops Garden Gala!

1. Lincoln in the summer is wonderful.

As an out-of-state student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I usually go home for summer vacation. This year was the first time I stayed in Lincoln, and it was marvelous. From Jazz in June to the Lincoln Community Crops Garden Gala to the Nebraska Rep's season, there's always something fun going on.

2. There's always room for another cupcake.
Our intermission cupcakes, courtesy of Le Cupcake, were a big hit this summer, but one should always find a home for them. While I always shared with cast and crew, one of the leftovers always managed to find a home in my own stomach.

Music from County Road and some woodwork from
Capital City Carvers during a Fine Arts Fridays performance.

3. More art is always better.
Our Fine Arts Fridays were among my favorite evenings to house manage. Nothing tops wandering around the lobby with guitar music drifting through the air and fine art hanging on the walls or wood sculptures displayed for all to see—all right before the thrill of theatre!

Behind the scenes of our
TV Commercial shoot!

4. Working in the theatre business is awesome.
I've always loved theatre, but having the opportunity to work with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre, with a professional theatre company, has made me realize just how much I love the profession I'll be entering next May after graduation. It's scary, but it'll be more than worth it.

Management Team (plus Rachel and Sara)
at the Company Party.

5. Excellent coworkers make for an excellent time.
I have had the opportunity to work side by side with talented, intelligent, and driven students and professionals all working toward the same goal. It was difficult at times, but the atmosphere of the Rep kept us all in good spirits, and as a result, we were able to create some marvelous theatre.

Many thanks to all who I've worked with this summer: ;patrons, blog readers, and company members. Special shout-out goes to Virginia Smith and Julie Hagemeier in particular for allowing me to explore the management and newsletter editing sides of myself. It's been a wonderful season!

Humpday with Howard: Top Ten Reasons to See Unnecessary Farce

This evening the Nebraska Repertory Theatre opens its third and final show, Paul Slade Smith's Unnecessary Farce. Here's a list of the top ten reasons (in no particular order) why you need to see Farce:

10. The Costumes
Costume designer Nancy Konrardy is a seasoned professional from Dubuque, Iowa, whose costumes for General Hospital earned her two Daytime Drama Emmy awards for outstanding achievement in costume design. Farce's costumes are colorful and fun and even include some surprise tartan.

9. The Set
Darin Himmerich, who is the Scenic Designer and Technical Director at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, has designed a wonderful set complete with eight doors that is reminiscent of exactly the kind of motel where some seedy dealings might go down. 

8. An Equity Actor
Farce features one of our fabulous out-of-town Actors' Equity Association members, Carolyn Popp, who plays Mrs. Meekly, the mayor's wife.

7. The Director
Directing Unnecessary Farce is St. Louis native, Alan Knoll. You may have seen Alan during the past two Rep seasons on stage as Jeeves in Jeeves Intervenes, Phillippe in Heroes, Mr. Woodhouse in Emma and Dad in Making God Laugh. He's back again this year, not as an actor, but a director.

6. Cops and Crooks
Who doesn't like a good old cop 'n crook comedy? It's pleasure to watch new police officers Billie Dwyer (played by Katherine Nora LeRoy) and Eric Sheridan (played by Joshua Waterstone) try and prove to the chief that they're great at their jobs.

5. It's a Farce!
Featuring slapstick humor, a slew of rapidly slamming doors, and mistaken identity, Farce is a farce that will have you rolling on the floor laughing!

4. Television Theme Songs
Sound designer Michael Smith's pre-show and intermission music features some excellent and catchy television theme songs, both from today and from the past. And we're giving you an opportunity to win a prize: all you have to do is name at least ten of the theme songs played before the show begins and present your list to the house manager at intermission. If you name at least ten songs, you will have the choice to win a free beverage (glass of wine, beer, or soda) at intermission, or two free tickets to another Rep show this season!

3. Cupcakes and Refreshments 
Grab a drink from Meier's Cork 'n Bottle before show, or at intermission with a delicious cupcake from Le Cupcake! 

2. UNL Alumni Actors
The cast of Unnecessary Farce features three UNL alumni, David Landis (a JD Law graduate playing Mayor Meekly), Katherine Nora LeRoy (an MFA Acting graduate playing Billie Dwyer), Lucy Myrtue (a BA Theatre Performance graduate playing Karen Brown), and Joshua Waterstone (an MFA Directing for Stage and Screen graduate playing Eric Sheridan).

1. An Evening with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre is a Wonderful Night Out
With laughter, food, and drink, a night with the Nebraska Repertory Theatre is always sure to be excellent.

Humpday with Howard: Office Shenanigans & Student Rush Tickets

In case anyone thought the Nebraska Rep management team is all work and no play, here are a few pictures of us being goofballs (while still working hard, of course):

Jerica and Stephanie hang up two of our giant lobby posters while Emma peeks out from behind a third

Stephanie, myself, Emma, and Desiree taking selfies before the opening of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Joshua, Desiree, Stephanie, myself (my computer's there but I'm not), and Emma all take a break to look at some adorable photos of dogs

This Corgi Husky mix is one of our favorites

Much like our occasional shenanigans, the plays we're putting up this year are all filled with fun and humor. Tomorrow we open our second show, Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation. 

For those of you who don't know, fifteen years ago NRT, in conjunction with the University Program Council (UPC), began offering student rush tickets before performances. Fifteen minutes prior to curtain (so at 7:15pm for our evening performances and 1:45pm for our matinees) any UNL student can purchase a ticket for only $5. Rush tickets will be available before every performance, but we have a limited number of tickets, so get there fast!

Humpday with Howard: Who Wore it Best?

As we prepare to open our first show of the season, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, tomorrow, I thought I'd do something a bit more fun and celebratory. At one point in the play, the characters go to a costume party. Masha, famous movie star that she is, insists they all go themed the way her personal assistant suggested, as characters from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The original version of the tale, written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812, was a tad different than the Disney version with which Masha (and all of us) are familiar. In the Grimm version, the Evil Queen (Snow White's mother) asks the huntsmen to bring back the liver and lungs of her seven-year-old daughter so she may salt them and eat them; the dwarves are unnamed, bland, and personality-less; the queen tries to kill Snow White not once, but thrice (first she gives her bodice laces and ties them so tight that Snow White can't breathe, then she combs her hair with a poisoned comb, THEN she gives her the poisoned apple); the prince takes Snow White's crystal coffin from the reluctant dwarves and she revives, not because he kisses her, but because his servant tripped and jostled the body, causing the poisoned apple chunk to fall out of Snow White's mouth; finally, the queen is invited to the happy couple's wedding (they skipped the dating phase and went straight for matrimony), where they put fiery, iron slippers on her feet and make her dance until she dies. Pleasant, right?

Various NRT company members have had the pleasure of modeling different pieces of Masha's Snow White costume. Let's see who wore it best:

Me sporting muslin mock-ups of Snow White's iconic sleeves.

Company Manager Emma Gruhl models Snow White's headband.

Actress Kristie Berger in her character Masha's full costume.

Stitcher Rachel Owings models her creation of Snow White's cape.

So, who wore it best? Leave your comments below and be sure to see the finished costume in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike when it opens tomorrow!

Humpday with Howard: Paul Slade Smith, the Man Behind the Farce

Hello! To wrap up my series of author bios, I'm going to talk about Paul Slade Smith, the playwright of the Nebraska Repertory Theatre's final show, Unnecessary Farce.


October of 2006, Paul Slade Smith's first play, Unnecessary Farce, premiered in Lansing, Michigan. Before the premiere of Farce, Smith's theatre work was all performance-based. He played Lefevre and understudied Andre in the national tour of Phantom of the Opera, along with Doctor Dillamond in the national tour of Wicked. He also performed regionally in a slew of musical comedies, Shakespearean

Actor and Playwright Paul Slade Smith,
Author of Unnecessary Farce

comedies, and farces. Smith's own Farce marked the start of his career as a playwright.

In a Skype interview with Smith, reviewer Dan St. Yves asked the playwright what sparked the desire to write. Smith replied "I just had a notion to set out to write a play...with the thought that 'let's see if I can write a play.'" Smith had no clue if his play would be successful, but he was optimistic. Flash-forward about seven years, and Unnecessary Farce has been so successful that by the end of last year, it reached its hundredth production.

Smith is currently preparing to perform in the world-premiere production of a musical adaptation of the film Finding Neverland and working on his second play, The Real Lulu, a comedy that deals with politics and how we mess it all up. Until then, NRT's production of Unnecessary Farce is more than enough to tickle your funny bone and get you your Paul Slade Smith fix. Buy your tickets today!

Humpday With Howard: Playwright Annie Baker

Hello! This week, I'll be delving into the biographical background of Annie Baker, the playwright of our second show, Circle Mirror Transformation.

The New Yorker relates an excellent anecdote about Annie Baker's career as a playwright, and it deals with one of those moments that every theatre-maker has, so I'm going to share it with you. When she was twenty-four, Baker's physician asked her what her job was. She replied with "I write plays, but you can’t be a playwright, so I have a day job, and maybe I’ll end up teaching or something." The doctor explained that he had another patient who was a prominent playwright. Baker responded by saying "Yeah, but you can’t make a living as a playwright. You can’t, like, be a playwright." Her doctor gave her a funny look.

Flash-forward nine years to 2014, and Baker finds herself at Columbia University picking up the Pulitzer Prize she won for her play, The Flick. After that encounter with her physician, she realized that it was possible to make a living as a playwright, and she has been doing it successfully ever since.

Annie Baker receives the 2014 Pulitzer Prize Drama
from Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University.

Baker was born in April, 1981, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has her undergraduate degree (in dramatic-writing) from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating and before working full-time as a playwright, she held a slew of miscellaneous positions including assistant residence-hall director for the School of American Ballet, contestant wrangler for The Bachelor, and writer for the television show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? - first writing throws (pre-commercial sendoffs), and later as one of the show’s researchers.

Her 2009 play, Circle Mirror Transformation, won countless awards and, during the 2010-2011 theatre season, was the second most produced play in the United States. Her writing style has been likened to the naturalist and realist styles of Ibsen and Chekhov, but it inhabits an entirely different category from those late nineteenth-century playwrights. Her plays are immensely realistic and down to earth, yet also contain moments of suspended animation and transcendence where action is and characters are transfixed. The awkward pauses and strange silences that often play a role in day-to-day conversation find a place in her plays, and as The New Yorker so elegantly explains, "Her goal is to explore what’s left unsaid along the edges of conversation: it’s the principle of looking at familiar stars so that the galaxies that can’t be seen head on appear out of the corner of your eye." What you see and hear in her plays are snippets of conversation you would overhear on the subway, in a coffee shop, on line at the supermarket. And then you watch someone hula hooping for a minute. The juxtaposition of these two elements-of  reality and transcendence-characterize Baker's unique, touching, and entertaining style.

On another note, when asked who her heroes are, Baker replied "Chekhov. Chekhov. Chekhov. Chekhov." It seems Durang isn't the only playwright we're producing this season who's a fan of Anton's.

Be sure to check out our production of Circle Mirror Transformation, which opens July 17th and runs in repertory with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and Unnecessary Farce until August 10th.

Humpday With Howard: Vanya and Chekhov and Durang and Spike

Hello, all! For the next few weeks, the Rep's weekly newsletter will be featuring articles on the three plays we're producing this season in order to provide a little extra insight into the texts. I wrote this week's article and its focus was on our first show, Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, and the play's Chekhovian roots. For those of you who don't receive our newsletter, I'm going to recap some of what I said in the newsletter, and then I'll go a little bit more in depth into playwright Christopher Durang's own background.

Durang likens his 2013 Tony award-winning play to Chekhov in a blender. It is not a parody, however, and no prior knowledge of the 19th-century Russian playwright is needed in order to enjoy this exceptional play. But it does make the story more fun!


Born in Taganrog, Russia on January 29, 1860, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a grocer's son who became one of Russia's greatest storytellers. His plays are considered comedies of the human condition, and they emphasize emotion and the exploration of character and existence in ways that his contemporaries had not done. Some of his greatest works feature characters in country estates mourning the lives they never led and living in excruciating anguish and boredom. This often makes his writing seem deeply tragic, but this was not Chekhov's intention. The playwright once explained that:

"All I wanted was to say honestly to people: 'Have a look at yourselves and see how bad and dreary your lives are!' The important thing is that people should realize that, for when they do, they will most certainly create another and better life for themselves. I will not live to see it, but I know that it will be quite different, quite unlike our present life.

Enter Christopher Durang, a playwright born on January 2, 1949 in Montclair, New Jersey. This places him on planet Earth forty-five years after and 3,881 miles away from Chekhov's death (July 14, 1904 in Badenweiler, Germany). Durang holds a B.A. in English from Harvard College and an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Yale School of Drama. His writing style is darkly satirical and he uses "wit and absurdity" (The New York Times) to explore topics such as family and religion.

Durang's first professional production was the play The Idiots Karamazov, which he co-wrote with classmate Albert Innaurato. Prada-wearing Meryl Streep, a classmate of theirs at the time, starred in the play as a quirky 80 year-old at the Yale Repertory Theatre. His play, Titanic, premiered 1976 and was his first production to be transferred to off-Broadway. It starred yet another one of his famous classmates, the alien-hunting Sigourney Weaver. This was the beginning of a long line of collaborations with Weaver, leading up to her performance as Masha in Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

Left: Sigourney Weaver in Titanic.

Right: Meryl Streep in The Idiots Karamazov

Durang earned his first  nomination (Best Book of a Musical) for his 1978 musical A History Of The American Film. He earned his first Tony for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (which we'll be producing in July!). Vanya premiered at the McCarter Theatre Center in Princeton, New Jersey, in September of 2012; was transferred to Lincoln Center Theater in October 2012; and was finally transferred to Broadway in March of 2013.

In Vanya, Durang pulls character traits, situations, and themes from Chekhov's four greatest plays, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, and creates a witty and contemporary play in dialogue with Chekhov's masterpieces. Be ready to see them on stage at the Nebraska Rep this summer!

Humpday With Howard: The Fun and Games of Theatre Management

Theatre Management may sound like all work and no play, but the Nebraska Repertory Theatre management team takes pride in making not only our theatre performances fun for everyone, but also our promotional events! Our Assistant General Manager and House Manager, Bryan Howard, talks about how the Nebraska Rep is connecting with audience members on a fun and personal level, and the history behind one of our favorite promotional games:

Charadtionary at Jazz in June

Hello, everyone! My name is Bryan and I'll be your weekly Wednesday blogger. I am very interested in history and so plan with my posts to connect this season's productions and marketing with some of the history behind it all.

To kick it off, I thought I'd talk a little bit about our Jazz in June booth from last night. As Stephanie mentioned, we gave those who attended the event the chance to win a free ticket to one of our shows this summer. What did they have to do? Transform a blank dry erase board into masterpiece in one minute.

Or, put simply, play some pictionary. With a splash of charades thrown in because, hey, this is a theatre company after all. So, to play this charadtionary game, we had players pick a word from a fishbowl (all of which relate to our 2014 season) and then try and draw (and mime) something in under a minute that would lead their partner(s) to guess it correctly. Here are a few of many examples of works that put Starry Night and the Mona Lisa to shame:

And now for some history! According to a 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times, Pictionary sprung from the mind of Rob Angel, a Seattle waiter who, at parties, would pick words from a dictionary at random, draw them, and have other guests guess the words. In 1985, he stopped waiting, partnered with Gary Paul Everson and founded the company that would become Seattle Games Inc., and began selling Pictionary. In 1986, the game was off to a modest start and sold about 350,000. The next year, however, sales exploded and, with 3 million copies sold, Pictionary became one of the hottest toys of the year, making it the Furby of its day. Since its creation, Pictionary has spawned many imitators, including Milton Bradley's less successful Win, Lose or Draw game, a 1989 and 1997 gameshow of the same names, and, most recently, the OMGPOP's app, Draw Something. Now, we've brought it to the Nebraska Rep!

The Nebraska Rep isn't just having fun at Jazz in June; we're also working on new events to come out and play! Keep an eye out here and on social media to stay posted on where we'll be playing.