presents
Study Guide
CONTENTS
Cast and Crew
Preparing for Your Visit
Oo’s Oo (Who’s Who) in My Fair Lady
The Curious Evolution of My Fair Lady
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3
4
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LAFS.910.RL.3.9: Analyze how an author draws on and transforms source material in a specific work.
LAFS.1112.RL.3.9: Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American
literature, including how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.
My Fair Lady and Social Class
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SS.912.H.1.2: Describe how historical events, social context, and culture impact forms, techniques, and purposes of works in the arts,
including the relationship between a government and its citizens.
SS.912.S.3.1: Describe how social status affects social order.
SS.912.S.4.2: Identify major characteristics of social groups familiar to the students.
SS.912.S.4.8: Explain how students are members of primary and secondary groups and how those group memberships influence
students’ behavior.
LAFS.910.SL.1.1: Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led)
with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and
persuasively.
Class Comedy in My Fair Lady
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SS.912.H.1.5: Examine artistic response to social issues and new ideas in various cultures.
SS.912.S.2.7: Explain how various practices of the culture create differences within group behavior.
SS.912.S.2.5: Compare social norms among various subcultures.
My Fair Lady and the Edwardian Era
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SS.912.W.6.2: Summarize the social and economic effects of the Industrial Revolution.
My Fair Lady and Identity
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SS.912.S.3.2: Explain how roles and role expectations can lead to role conflict.
LAFS.910.W.1.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details,
and well-structured event sequences.
An Interview with the Director
Teacher Evaluation
Student Evaluation
Bonus: An Interview with Alan Jay Lerner
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Cast and Crew
Eliza Doolittle
Professor Higgins
Pickering
Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill & Others
Alfred Doolittle & Others
Mrs. Higgins & Others
Freddy Eynsford-Hill & Others
Karpathy & Others
Ensemble
Ensemble
SCENIC DESIGNER
DAVID L. ARSENAULT**
Patricia Noonan*
Jeffrey Binder*
William Parry*
Maureen Silliman*
Bill E. Dietrich*
Cathy Newman*
Sean Seymour*
Jeremiah Ginn*
Kevin Patrick Martin*
Julia Johanos*
COSTUME DESIGNER
LAUREN GASTON
LIGHTING DESIGNER
JIMMY LAWLOR**
PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER
MALLORY HEWELL*
DIRECTED BY KRISTEN COURY
MUSIC DIRECTED BY MATT AUMENT
(*) Denotes Actor or Stage Manager appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association
(**) Denotes member of United Scenic Artists, Local USA 829
(***) Denotes member of SDC (Stage Directors & Choreographers Society)
Gulfshore Playhouse set rendering by Scenic Designer David L. Arsenault. Note the forced
perspective, which gives depth to the stage, and the arches, which call in mind Covent
Garden, where much of the play is set.
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PREPARING FOR YOUR VISIT TO
THE THEATRE
BEFORE
 Do the activities in the Study Guide with your
students.
 If you can, watch the movie (or excerpts from the
movie.)
THE DAY OF THE TRIP
 Have students bring their lunch (they can eat it
during the 15-minute intermission) and a sweater or
sweatshirt – it can get chilly in the theatre.
 They can also bring pocket money if they’d like to
buy snacks or a t-shirt.
 Arrive 20 minutes before the performance. That
way we’ll have a chance to seat your group and
students will have a chance to settle in for the show!
Audrey Hepburn in the film My Fair Lady.
THEATRE ETIQUETTE
 Students are expected to be attentive and respectful during performances.
 No cell phone use is allowed in the theatre while a show is going on. Any
cell phones will be confiscated and returned to students at the end of the
performance.
 Students may leave the theatre at any time to use the bathroom, but no
talking is allowed while a performance is going on.
 Students must take out any trash they bring in.
 Students may not put their feet on the chairs in front of them.
 No flash photography or recording is permitted.
AFTER THE TRIP
 Please fill out teacher and student evaluations and send them to us. Your
feedback shapes our programming and we are eager to hear about your
experience and about other programming you’d like to see. Thank you!
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Many thanks to The Shaw Festival
for lending us their wonderful character description page!
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THE CURIOUS EVOLUTION of MY FAIR LADY
FROM GREEK MYTHOLOGY . . .
OVID'S METAMORPHOSES, BOOK X, 8 AD
The Roman poet Ovid wrote a tale of a sculptor named Pygmalion, who carved his dream
woman from ivory. He fell in love with his creation, giving it clothing and jewelry and naming
her Galatea. One day he visited the temple of Aphrodite (Goddess of Love) to pray for a wife
just like his beloved statue. The goddess visited Pygmalion's home and saw the statue bore her
own resemblance, so she granted life to Galatea. When Pygmalion returned home, his statue was
a live woman. They married and lived happily ever after and had a daughter Paphos, for whom a
city on the island of Cyprus is named. – Courtesy of Dawn Denmar
. . . TO PRE- WORLD WAR I COMEDY
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW’S PYGMALION, 1912
Playwright George Bernard Shaw took the tale of Pygmalion and set it in Edwardian England,
introducing the world to stalwart flower girl Eliza Doolittle, arrogant professor Henry Higgins,
peacemaker Colonel Pickering, and a host of other characters. Pygmalion is a commentary on the
British class system and raises three universal questions: what elements create our place in the
world, is it ever possible to break out of our circumstances, and does love transcend class and
social boundary?
. . . TO BROADWAY MUSICAL
ALAN LERNER AND FREDERICK LOEWE’S MY FAIR LADY, 1956
Perhaps the most popular musical of the 1950s, My Fair Lady came into being only after
Hungarian film producer Gabriel Pascal devoted the last two years of his life to finding writers
who would adapt George Bernard Shaw's 1914 play Pygmalion into a musical. Rejected by the
likes of Rodgers and Hammerstein and Noël Coward, Pascal finally turned to the younger but
very talented duo of Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner. My Fair Lady opened at the Mark
Hellinger Theatre on March 15, 1956, topping the charts on US Billboard 200 and enjoying a run
of 2,717 performances which lasted more than nine years. The original production featured Rex
Harrison as Henry Higgins and Julie Andrews as Eliza. The show took its title from the nursery
rhyme “London Bridge Is Falling Down.”
. . . TO HOLLYWOOD MOVIE
MY FAIR LADY, 1964
The 1964 film version starred Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway and Audrey Hepburn. Neither
Harrison nor Hepburn were classic musical theatre singers. Harrison said that he could not
“speak-sing” consistently enough to dub his voice, and as a result, he was the first actor ever to
wear a wireless mic in a film. The sound designers won an Academy Award. Hepburn’s singing
was not approved by the studio and her songs were dubbed by Marni Nixon (the voice of many
Hollywood heroines including “Maria” in West Side Story.) The film was a runaway success,
winning eight Academy Awards.
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MY FAIR LADY AND SociaL CLASS
Julie Andrews in the original
Broadway production.
“To a generation of students raised on Disney films, George
Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is a familiar story: Eliza Doolittle is
Cinderella, a beautiful working girl turned princess by fairy
godmother Henry Higgins. And indeed, Eliza is surrounded by
beautiful ball gowns, horse-drawn carriages, and a handsome
young admirer. Yet perhaps it is Pinocchio that is a more
accurate comparison. For just as Gepetto creates his puppet and
then loses control of his naughty son, so Henry Higgins turns a
flower girl into a lady only to discover she has a will of her own.
Beyond its fairy tale aspects, Pygmalion is a social commentary
on the systems of education and class in Victorian England. And
most interesting to Shaw himself is the drama’s treatment of
language, its power, and the preconceptions attached to it by
society.” –JEANNE M. MCGLINN, Ph.D., University of North
Carolina at Asheville and W. GEIGER ELLIS, Ed.D., University
of Georgia, Professor Emeritus
CLASS DISCUSSION
My Fair Lady is largely about how what we wear and the way we talk defines who we are. What
are some examples of how you define yourself or others based on speech and clothing?
Do you believe that there’s a class system in America? If so, in what ways does it manifest?
Is it possible to move from one social class to another? How?
Do you believe it’s possible to become “a different human being” by changing your speech,
clothing, and/or manner?
Is there a compressed “class system” at school? How would you describe it?
WRITING
Describe a time in which you identified that you were from a different social class than someone
else. It doesn’t have to be someone you know – it could be someone you saw on the bus or at a
store.
Describe a time in which you found yourself in an environment that felt foreign to you.
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CLASS COMEDY IN MY FAIR LADY
Two of the main characters in My Fair Lady are polar opposites: the rigidly correct Professor
Higgins, who decides to train Eliza to be a lady, and Eliza’s drunken father, dustman Alfred
Doolittle. Read these lyrics from Higgins’ first song “Why Can’t the English?” and listen to it if
you can:
Look at her, a prisoner of the gutter,
Condemned by every syllable she ever uttered.
By law she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue . . .
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now,
Should be antique. If you spoke as she does, sir,
Instead of the way you do,
Why, you might be selling flowers, too!
When Eliza’s father Doolittle meets Higgins, he gives a speech from the opposite perspective:
What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I
am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the
time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: 'You're
undeserving; so you can't have it.' But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that
ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I
don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a
lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song
and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the
deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything.
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
How would you describe these characters based on
these excerpts? What are their qualities and their
attitudes towards life? How old do you suppose they
are?
Read both excerpts out loud. How is the speech
pattern different?
Both the song and the monologue make fun of the
attitudes of the rich and poor. How?
Stanley Holloway as Doolittle, with Gordon
Dilworth and Rod McLennan, in the original
Broadway production
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MY FAIR LADY AND THE EDWARDIAN ERA
POWER
Britain led the world in trade, finance, and shipping, and for the
rich, it was a time of leisure and opulence.
MACHINES
The Industrial Revolution brought many machines and other
innovations that made peoples’ lives, if not easier, more efficient.
There was a passion for the newest, latest gadget. Music was
recorded and played on wax cylinders used on phonographs,
which is how Professor Higgins records and plays Eliza’s voice in
My Fair Lady.
WOMEN’S PLACE IN THE WORLD
Due to the expanded professions of teaching and nursing and more
available education, women’s status in society began to change
rapidly. The suffragette movement (women’s right to vote) was in full force, though women
were not granted the right to vote until 1928.
FASHION
The Edwardian era was the last time women wore corsets. It introduced “tea dresses” made of
soft fabric and worn at home. Men wore tailored suits very similar to what they wear today.
ASCOT
Horse racing was a favored pastime of the upper class and Ascot was the place to be seen. This is
still true today!
Ascot then and now.
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MY FAIR LADY AND IDENTITY
Just before Professor Higgins takes Eliza to the Embassy Ball to see if she can pass as an upper
class lady, he says to Pickering, “What could possibly matter more than to take a human being
and change her into a different human being by creating a new speech for her? It's filling up the
deepest gap that separates class from class and soul from soul.”
CLASS DISCUSSION
Do you believe that the way we talk is what most distinguishes and separates us from each other?
Why or why not?
Is it possible to change yourself or another person into a different human being by transforming
appearance and behavior?
What is your opinion of Professor Higgins’ project of taking Eliza into his house and teaching
her how to look and act like an upper class lady?
WRITING
Describe a time in which you wanted to transform – and maybe did.
Describe a time in which you witnessed someone try to break out of their circumstances.
Costume Designer Lauren Gaston’s renderings of Eliza’s dresses for the Gulfshore
Playhouse production.
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AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR
Kristen Coury is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of Gulfshore
Playhouse. Hailing from New York City, Kristen and her then-husband drove
through Naples accidentally and immediately decided to sell their apartment in
NYC and become permanent Naples residents. Determining there was a niche to
fill in this arts-loving town, Kristen proceeded to found Gulfshore Playhouse upon
arrival in 2004 and never looked back. Carefully and quickly she brought the
Playhouse from a staff of one (herself) and a budget of zero, to a staff of 25 and an
annual budget of nearly $2.5M with no debt. She has directed many of the
Playhouse productions to date, of which her favorites include: Jacob Marley’s
Christmas Carol, All My Sons, Tartuffe, A Streetcar Named Desire, Art, A View from
the Bridge, Blithe Spiritand The Glass Menagerie. Kristen made her feature film
directorial debut with Friends and Family, a comedy starring Tony Lo Bianco, Anna
Maria Alberghetti, and Tovah Feldshuh, which was released around the US and Europe. Kristen has
directed several new works, produced a CD and worked on a variety of musicals in various stages of
development, including Steel Pier on Broadway, a Broadway workshop of The Jazz Singer and Houdini at
the Goodspeed Opera House
What inspired you to direct My Fair Lady?
We haven't done a full-scale musical in a long time, and when we heard about the 2-piano 10person version, it seemed perfect for our stage. As we step back into the world of making
musicals I absolutely wanted to helm this exciting, fun and well-loved classic. I looked forward
to working with an incredible team which includes our Artistic Associate, Broadway veteran
Jeffrey Binder as Henry Higgins, as well as Choreographer Adam Cates. I am thrilled with our
progress so far and look forward to bringing all of Edwardian London onto our stage.
What do you find most challenging and most exciting about the process?
Since it's a ten person musical based on a classic play about how our dialect defines us, each
actor we cast had to be a quadruple threat - meaning they had to be able to bring depth to the
text, most of which is the original Shaw, as well as sing AND dance, and be great with dialects
(Cockney and upper-class British) since most of them are playing more than one character.
The show takes place in Edwardian London and is largely about the British class system.
In what ways do you feel that it's meaningful to a modern American audience?
For me, it's about so much more than just a class system. I think it's about the potential each one
of us has inside, and that we only need opportunity to knock before we are able to put all our
talents and gifts into play and shine! I also think it's so much about our common humanity. We
all have dreams inside of us, and so often we may lack the path forward due to race, socioeconomic level, or gender. This play shows us that it is possible to achieve our dreams with
gumption, pluck, and a little bit of luck
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TEACHER EVALUATION
Your evaluations help us shape our programming. Please send teacher and student evaluations to:
Gulfshore Playhouse Education
1010 5th Avenue South
Suite 205
Naples, Florida 34102
GREAT
GOOD
FAIR
POOR
the quality of the
show
your experience
of being at the
theatre
the educational
enrichment for
your students
our
communication
with you
the time of day/
year
What kind of programming would you like to bring your students to see at the theatre?
What did you feel was most valuable about this experience?
Do you have any feedback for us about how to improve the experience?
Any further comments?
Thank you!!!
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STUDENT EVALUATION
Your evaluations help us shape our programming. Please send evaluations to:
Gulfshore Playhouse Education
1010 5th Avenue South
Suite 205
Naples, Florida 34102
GREAT
GOOD
FAIR
POOR
the singing
the acting
the dancing
the set and
costumes
being at the
theatre
What was your favorite part of the show?
What kind of shows would you like to see at the theatre?
Anything else you’d like us to know?
Thank you!!!
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FURTHER READING:
AN INTERVIEW WITH
BOOKWRITER & LYRICIST ALAn jay lerner
1963
CRE AT I O N O F A L ADY
Copyright ©1963 Tams-Witmark Music Library, Inc.
Lyrics copyright ©1956 by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe.
It seemed to me, when I graduated from college, that everything that could be said in lyrics had
been said. If you were witty, how could you be wittier than Larry Hart? If you were romantic,
how could you be more romantic than Oscar Hammerstein? We start off, in any art form,
eclectic; but it’s an acute problem–how to find an individuality.
I’ve been writing lyrics, professionally, since 1940. It’s only within the last few years that I have
begun to feel for myself, that I’ve come close to finding something that’s pretty much my own. It
isn’t Hammerstein. It isn’t Hart. It isn’t Porter; it’s my own particular vernacular, and the first
song in MY FAIR LADY, “Why Can’t The English,” I think, illustrates what I mean.
The first ten minutes of any musical offering should dictate the style of the entire evening: on
what level the work is to be accepted critically and emotionally. Loewe and I wanted Professor
Henry Higgins to be the first one to sing. We decided he should not be a singer; he should be an
actor who sort of spoke some songs. We wanted the audience to know at the beginning of the
evening, before they had heard anybody else–this was what they were in for.
Higgins was going to sing, and the question was what. There was no situation, so obviously it
was to be a character song; it would concern itself with the cornerstones of his personality, his
frustrations, his intense interest in the English language. How do you write a comic song of that
nature, which is to be spoken, and not have it sound like Coward or Gilbert? We wrote several
versions until we finally discovered a key. We didn’t write the song first; it was written much
later, the result of having solved another problem. We found that if we could write each comedy
song based on some emotion–either frustration or anger or disappointment or bitterness–on a
definite emotion, we could escape from a humor that came from clever rhymes or from the
author’s intrusion of himself. It would come out of the antic of the character.
Look at her–a pris’ner of the gutters;
Condemned by ev’ry syllable she utters.
By right she should be taken out and hung
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue!
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I can only speak of the second song, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” with pain because it was obvious
that the leading lady was there, and she must have a song to establish her. (In a musical play,
even with the dialogue of Bernard Shaw, nothing established a character as much as a song.)
My great frustration was that I couldn’t find a climax for the song without going into someone’s
head resting on a knee, and there I was back in “Over The Rainbow” and “The Man I Love.” I
went seven weeks trying to find a solution for it. Finally, I couldn’t find a creature comfort that
was as climactic as someone’s head resting on a knee. So the lyric stayed.
Someone’s head restin’ on my knee,
Warm and tender as he can be,
Who takes good care of me…
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?
Loverly! Loverly!
Loverly! Loverly!
Every time I hear it, my skin turns a little crabby.
The next song of the play, I think, is a good example of the inter-relationship between composer
and lyricist. No lyric writer can ever realize himself or his talents alone; I don’t think it’s
possible for a lyric writer to ever reach his full expression without continuing collaboration with
a composer. The knowledge of how a composer thinks and how he creates and how he feels
about work is simply of incalculable influence upon a lyric writer and upon his ideas.
“With A Little Bit Of Luck” was the introduction of the father, Doolittle, and we wanted a
character song to establish him.
The Lord above made liquor for temptation,
To see if man could turn away from sin.
The Lord above made liquor for temptation–but
With a little bit of luck,
With a little bit of luck,
When temptation comes you’ll give right in!
We decided the type was to be an English music hall song. The reason is indicative of what I
mean by knowing the abilities and inclinations of a composer: Loewe does not write jazz. He’s
Viennese by birth and is more at home in tempo than rhythm.
The song, “Just You Wait,” wherein Eliza Doolittle gives vent to her hatred and anger of
Higgins, was the song that told us how to write the show.
Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait!
You’ll be sorry but your tears’ll be too late!
You’ll be broke and I’ll have money!
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Will I help you? Don’t be funny!
Just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins, just you wait!
We had written eight songs before we wrote that one, and none of them seemed right. It was after
writing “Just You Wait” that we threw out all the others and started over, because it was there
that we suddenly saw the value, the whole kind of freshness that seemed to nail down an
emotional attitude, an emotional point of view.
I don’t know how to talk about “The Rain In Spain” because we had no idea what its effect
would be. We wrote it in about ten minutes. We’re very slow workers; I don’t know what
happened. I said one day, “We’d better write something where they scream with joy about the
Rain in Spain.” Fritz sat down and wrote it in a very few minutes.
By George, she’s got it!
By George, she’s got it!
Now once again, where does it rain?
We thought it would be amusing if Higgins did a little Spanish fandango–and that was the end of
it. I think it’s quite obvious to any student that it’s not a great piece of music, nor a great lyric.
It’s just a pure, simple piece of business that seems to come out of Eliza’s longing. Certainly it’s
nothing anybody should examine twice.
“I Could Have Danced All Night” was the unsolvable problem; the reasons were manifold. One
was a dramatic one. It was impossible for Higgins to love Eliza, for them to admit to themselves
that they felt anything emotional about each other. At the same time, you have to have a ballad in
a musical, and it seemed like the place for it; but every song we wrote–we wrote seven–said too
much. Somehow they seemed to indicate that Eliza was in love with Higgins or that she felt
something for him. Finally, we were only able to write the song when we were near the end of
the whole work itself and we had written “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face.” We said,
“There’s the ballad. We don’t have to worry about a ballad. We’ll just go back and write a happy
song.”
I could have danced all night!
I could have danced all night!
And still have begged for more.
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I’ve never done before.
Writing happy songs is the thing I care least about doing. I’m embarrassed by that lyric.
Although I think the first half of it is very good, it’s not something I’m proud of; it’s not a lyric I
enjoy listening to in the theatre. I said to Loewe, “Can’t we make it look a little more interesting?
We’ll put the servants in and give it some kind of life other than a girl being ecstatically happy.”
The last song, “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” is my favorite. Years ago, Maxwell
Anderson wrote a book called Off Broadway; and for those students interested in writing for the
musical theatre, I certainly recommend it. He discusses what he calls the “recognition scene,”
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that scene wherein the hero or heroine recognizes the nature of his problem, be it external or
internal, and either conquers it or is conquered by it. We felt that Higgins must have a
recognition scene in which he recognizes the nature of his problem, albeit obliquely and slightly
astigmatically.
Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!
I’ve grown accustomed to her face!
She almost makes the day begin.
I’ve grown accustomed to the tune
She whistles night and noon.
Her smiles. Her frowns.
Her ups, her downs,
Are second nature to me now;
Like breathing out and breathing in.
I was serenely independent and content before we met;
Surely I could always be that way again–and yet
I’ve grown accustomed to her looks;
Accustomed to her voice:
Accustomed to her face.
The only difference is–he neither conquers it nor is conquered by it.
Eliza? Where the devil are my slippers?
There are tears in Eliza’s eyes. She too understands.
--Alan Jay Lerner, 1963
DON’T MISS OUR NEXT STUDENT MATINEE PERFORMANCES!
THURSDAY MARCH 30 at 10:00AM
THURSDAY MAY 18 at 10:00AM
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