CALHOUN COMMUNITY COLLEGE THEATRE PRESENTS
Arthur Miller's
Ce r ta i n P r i v a t e
C onv ers at ions
i n T w o A c ts
a n d a R e q ui e m
Produced by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
CALHOUN
COMMUNITY
COLLEGE
Black Box Theatre • Fine Arts Building • Decatur Campus
DEATH OF A SALESMAN
President’s Message
Welcome to Calhoun Community College. We are
delighted that you have come our way to enjoy
another outstanding production by our talented
Theater Department. Calhoun’s Theater program
has a stellar reputation, and I know you will be
entertained. I look forward to what this year’s
theater season has in store, and I hope you will join
us again.
Thank you for your support of Calhoun Community
College and of the arts.
Marilyn Beck
President
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
CALHOUN THEATRE POLICIES
Thank you for supporting Calhoun Theatre. The cast and crew welcome you to the
Black Box Theatre and Death of a Salesman.
If you wish to greet the actors or crew members, you are welcome to remain in
the theatre after the show.
IN CONSIDERATION OF AUDIENCE MEMBERS AND PERFORMERS, PLEASE . . .
SWITCH ALL PAGERS, CELL PHONES, AND OTHER ELECTRONIC DEVICES OFF
OR TO THE MUTE MODE. CELL PHONES SHOULD BE PUT AWAY.
TEXT-MESSAGING IS PROHIBITED DURING THE PERFORMANCE.
NO PHOTOGRAPHING OR VIDEOTAPING
Pictures and videos of the play are available from the Theatre Department.
BABIES AND NOISY CHILDREN ARE PROHIBITED.
Please consider others, and do not ask to bring children five and under into the
theatre.
HANDICAPPED SEATING IS AVAILABLE FOR ALL SHOWS.
Please inquire at the ticket desk if you require assistance.
FOR SAFETY REASONS, IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT AUDIENCE MEMBERS
DO NOT LEAVE THEIR SEATS WHILE THE PLAY IS IN PROGRESS.
THOSE WHO DO LEAVE THE THEATRE MAY NOT BE RESEATED UNTIL
INTERMISSION. LATE COMERS WILL BE SEATED AT THE DISCRETION
OF THE HOUSE MANAGER.
ENJOY THE SHOW!
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller believed that playwrights had a responsibility to the world around them.
Miller’s life was shaped by the Great Depression. Born in 1915 into an affluent Jewish-American family, he grew up during the 1920s, an idealistic and prosperous time for the nation.
Sweeping change was everywhere. America’s victory in World War I promised an end to all
future wars; women had been granted the right to vote, broadening and strengthening the
country’s democratic principles; and Prohibition offered the hope to its many supporters for
God’s kingdom on earth. Throughout the land, there was a growing belief in the greatness
and destiny of the United States.
The foundation of this conviction rested on a decade-long economic boom that brought unprecedented material advancement. The prosperity was fueled by the stock market, which in
those days allowed investors to buy shares with only a small percentage of the actual price,
called “margins.” But in 1929, it all came crashing down. Marginal buying proved to be a
house of cards, Wall Street collapsed, and the nation - and soon the rest of the world - plunged
into The Great Depression. People lost their savings and their jobs. Everywhere businesses
closed down, and millions of unemployed workers swarmed onto the streets, standing in
bread lines and desperately searching for work.
The Miller family were among the victims of the crash. Young Arthur had grown up in a large
house with servants, but when his father’s coat-manufacturing business went bankrupt, he
didn’t even have enough money to go to college. Undeterred, he found a job as a shipping
clerk in an automobile parts warehouse for $15 a week and managed to save enough money
to enroll at the University of Michigan. There he studied journalism and English and graduated in 1938.
But Miller never got over the effects of the Depression. He later wrote
I did not read many books in those days. The depression was my book ...There was
the sense that everything had dried up. Some plague of invisible grasshoppers was
eating money before you could get your hands on it. You had to be a Ph. D. to get
a job in Macy’s. Lawyers were selling ties.... Before the crash I thought “Society”
meant the rich people in the Social Register. After the crash it meant the constant
visits of strange men who knocked on our door pleading for a chance to wash the
windows, and some of them fainted on the back porch from hunger. In Brooklyn,
New York. In the light of weekday afternoons.
The Depression ground on relentlessly for ten long years, despite the efforts of President
Roosevelt and the government to turn things around. But nothing worked. As the Depression took on the look of a permanent economic condition rather than a temporary downturn,
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Miller, like many Americans, began to question the merits of a system that had failed so utterly and left millions of families in poverty. He believed that America had lost its way, that in
our devotion to wealth we had lost sight of the values and ideals of the founding fathers, and
in our national mad dash to get rich we had lost our sense of fairness and compassion.
To show that something was wrong, Miller wrote Death of a Salesman. Theatre, he believed,
had a power to move and change. He wrote that drama presents
“... the idea of value, of right and wrong, good and bad, high and low, not so much
by setting forth these values as such, but by showing...the wages of sin....In other
words, by showing [in my plays] what happens when there are no values, I assume that the audience will be compelled and propelled toward a more intense
quest for values that are missing. For instance, should one admire success? Was
success immoral? - when everybody else in the neighborhood not only had no
Buick, but no breakfast?
[We Americans] still have the energy - if we could only find out how to form it and
use it and symbolize it - to ask the big questions: Why are we alive? What does it
all mean? ...I cannot accept that each man is an island and that...theater is something done altogether for the pleasure of the artist and altogether to divert people
from real life. I think there is a mission.
That mission for Miller was to point out misguided material values and the resulting fragmenting of the family. His first great critical and financial success was All My Sons, which
condemned dishonest business practices. Two years later, Death of a Salesman probed
flawed American values. In 1953, The Crucible, a scathing condemnation of the anti-communist hysteria after World War II, compared the hearings of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities with New England witch trials of the 1690s.
By that time, Miller was already established as one of America’s greatest playwrights. He
continued writing plays until he was almost ninety, although his best work was written in the
first half of his career. He is perhaps best-known for his 1956 marriage to and subsequent
divorce from the iconic actress Marilyn Monroe. His 1964 play After the Fall, which premiered shortly after Monroe’s suicide, was based upon their relationship. Miller was also a
tireless and courageous defender of human rights and individual liberties.
Arthur Miller died on February 10, 2005, at the age of eighty-nine, exactly forty-six years to
the day that Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway. That play, like so many others that
he wrote, is the legacy of a man who strived to build a better the world around him.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Cast of Characters
Willy Loman..........................................................................Bubba Godsey
Linda .........................................................................................Emily Parks
Biff .........................................................................................Jake Blagburn
Happy...................................................................................Ashley Hubbert
Bernard...........................................................................Quentin Barrentine
Eddie Vancil
Woman ...............................................................................Katie Whitworth
Charley ...................................................................................Daniel Martin
Ben...........................................................................................James Davis
Howard...................................................................................Blake Mitchell
Jenny ...............................................................................Heather Anderson
Sandy...............................................................................Melinda Simpkins
Trey Warren
Miss Forsythe .......................................................................Meredith Rose
Erica Chambers
Letta .....................................................................................Krista McCarty
Erica Chambers
Elrod ...............................................................................Quentin Barrentine
Eddie Vancil
The action of the play takes place in Willy Loman’s house and yard in Brooklyn
in 1949 and in various places he visits and has visited in New York and Boston.
Act I
Monday Night
Act II
Tuesday Morning
Requiem
A Few Days Later
Death of a Salesman runs approximately two hours,
including a ten-minute intermission.
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Production Staff
Director ........................................................................................Bill Provin
Set Designer .........................................................................Bubba Godsey
Set Builders ..............................................................................Eddie Vancil
Heather Anderson
Ashley Hubbert
James Davis
Costumes .................................................................................Cathy Parker
Joy Parker
Heather Anderson
Lighting Designer .................................................................Bubba Godsey
Lighting Operator .....................................................................Aaron Lovell
Music/Sound ................................................................................Bill Provin
Props........................................................................................Cathy Parker
Joy Parker
Heather Anderson
Makeup ...............................................................................Katie Whitworth
Assistant Directors ..........................................................Heather Anderson
Melinda Simpkins
Cathy Parker
Joy Parker
Dramaturg ...................................................................................Joy Parker
House Manager .......................................................................Cathy Parker
Factotum ...................................................................................Lynn Parker
Absent Friends...................................................................Kurtis Charleson
Tammy Hasting
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Death of a Salesman
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman opened on Broadway in February
1949. The play took only six weeks to write and was an instant sensation, striking a national nerve and resonating throughout the nation
and the world. Miller was only thirty-three, but the play immediately
established him as one of America’s foremost playwrights.
The original production of Death of a Salesman was directed by the
legendary Elia Kazan, who also directed the stage premieres of Miller’s
first success, All My Sons, in addition to Tennessee Williams’s A
Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The set designer
was Jo Mielziner, whose revolutionary set design allowed Miller to
break out of the traditional theatrical confinements of time and space.
Mielziner’s set used invisible walls and creative lighting to facilitate
moving the story back and forth through time and place. It also provided the intimacy the playwright wanted to achieve. Miller subtitled
his play Certain Private Conversations because he wanted the audience members to feel that, rather than watching the Lomans, they
were eavesdropping on them. Though Mielziner’s ground-breaking
techniques have become common today, his set for Death of a Salesman remains a standard in all theatre textbooks.
To many people, Death of a Salesman seemed the most meaningful
and moving statement about American life in years. It is the story of
Willy Loman, the salesman of the title - both an individual and a symbol of America. Still considered by many to be the greatest American
play ever written, it won the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony Award, the Donaldson Award, the Theatre Club Award, and the New York Drama Critics Award.
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DEATH OF A SALESMAN
There has been much debate about what Death of a Salesman is supposed to signify. Many Americans, given Miller’s left-wing sympathies, thought it was Communist propaganda, but the Soviet Union
refused to allow the play to be produced. Some called the play a psychological revelation, some social comment, some a tragedy. But
whatever it was about, everyone realized that Miller was saying something distressingly important about America.
(When the first movie version of Death of a Salesman came out in
1951, the studio included a trailer which explained how exceptional
Willy was, how important selling and salesmen were to the nation, and
how secure real, ordinary salesmen were - in short, how idiotic the
film they had just made was!)
Miller himself said that he didn’t set out to write a tragedy or anything
except the truth as he saw it. That truth for him was his own family
and the conflicts and relationships it engendered, and family members were the models for a number of characters in the play. Willy
Loman in particular, the dogged defender of business and selling, is
based on one of his uncles, a traveling salesman.
While the play, then, is about the conflicts of one unique family, it also
examines American values, particularly success, material wealth, and
the American Dream. As such, Death of a Salesman, despite being
fixed in time (just after World War II) and place (New York and New
England), has retained its relevance. People still struggle to fit in, still
crave respect, still define themselves through their jobs, still feel lost
and alone in the world around them. And we are perhaps even more
obsessed today with money and good looks. Sixty years after it was
written, Death of a Salesman remains a national mirror in which to
see ourselves.
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About Calhoun Theatre
Calhoun Community College Theatre is an accredited, two-year program offering an associate’s degree in Theatre. Courses may also be taken as electives by non-majors.
You'll find our graduates in four-year institutions, graduate schools, and the
professional ranks of stage and film. But, we are just as proud of those who
have pursued other fields, for we believe that theatrical training, with its emphasis on teamwork, preparation, and presentation, teaches and motivates
students to excel in any career.
Calhoun Theatre produces three plays annually, including one by Shakespeare. Our goals have always been to produce the highest quality plays; to
give each of our students the opportunity to participate; and to entertain and
educate our audiences, especially students in middle school, high school,
and college.
Our Shakespeare for Schools and Theatre Outreach programs offer special
performances for schools, senior citizens, and other groups in the Calhoun
service area. We also provide learning and teaching aids, lectures, and discussion groups.
All Calhoun plays are presented in our Black Box Theatre. Although this
unique performing space permits a variety of staging configurations, it normally places audience members on opposite sides of the stage, thereby offering the intimacy of theatre-in-the-round while retaining full set-building
capability. A play at Calhoun is an experience like no other.
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Thank You!
Thanks to the many friends and supporters of Calhoun
Theatre, with special acknowledgement to
Calhoun Humanities Division
Calhoun Printing Services
Calhoun Public Relations
Jimmy Cantrell
Michael Conyers
Terri and James Flowers
Nancy Keenum
Harry Moore
Kim Parker
Lynn Parker
Will Parker
Amanda Prater
Robin Self
Weddings - Portraiture - Commercial-Sports
Website - www.InnovativeImaging.biz
E-mail - [email protected]
Ardmore, AL
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COMI NG
IN APRIL
TO THE BLACK BOX
AN HOUR OF SHORT PLAYS
April 15 and 16 at 1:00 p.m.
April 17 at 7:00 p.m.
SINNERS AND SAINTS:
THE WOMEN I KNOW
April 18 and 19 at 7:00 p.m.
April 20 at 2:00 p.m.