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ADD1NG
MA¢HINE
The UR International Theatre Program continually brings new, challenging and exciting
theatre to Rochester. We can’t do it without your support. Become a patron of the arts,
and a supporter of new, exciting work and fresh talent, by making a donation to the Program today.
Even the smallest amount can make a difference. Call 273-5159 to find out how you can contribute...
(and every donation is tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law.)
ur supporting the arts
Our work has been supported by the following generous patrons and friends
of the UR International Theatre Program:
A MU$ICAL
Hameed Ahmed ('11) - Walter Monteith Aikman - Leah Barish ('12) - Stephen M. Bertetti
Thomas M. Bohrer ('85) - Leslie Braun - Kevin Brice ('12) - Alan Carmasin ('67) - Lisa G. Chanzit
Donald Chew - Jill M. Cohen - Timothy J. & Shelby M. Connell - Montoia Davis ('10)
Alison DeSantis - Margaret Wada & Michael Dumouchel - Eleanor Leba Eines - Diane Faissler
Randall Fippinger & the Frances Alexander Family Fund of the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund
Charles Flowers - Bethany Gilboard ('80) - Edmund A. Hajim - Christopher and Alissa Harrington
Frank A. & Linda E. Interlichia - Jonathan Kammel - Heidi Kasper - Taryn McKenna Kimel
Sheila Knopke - Adam Konowe ('90) - Sylvia B. Lee - Jeffery Mantel
Elizabeth McMaster (in memory of Katie McManus) - Mark R. Milner - Karen Celeste Moculeski
Mitch Nelson - David Paul Dominic Pascoe - Russell Peck - Diane Waldgeir Perlberg (‘77) &
Mark C. Perlberg (‘78) - Paul I. Pilorz - Laura J. Platt - Peter Plummer - The family and friends
of Nicholas S. Priore ‘83 - Ronald Rettner - Matt Rodano - Seth A. Rubinstein
James Schwartz - Kay Shames - Aadika Singh - Mrs. May T. Skinner - Robert & Roberta Sokol
Linda & Tom Sloan - Joan Ross Sorkin - Evelyn Stock - Jean Marie Sullivan - Marian Todd
Janice Willett - Cyd Rosenberg Weiss - Peter Winkelstein - Mark & Robin Young
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the
mysteries
of life
can
be revealed
in numbers
the ur international theatre program
artistic director nigel maister
production manager gordon rice
administrator katie farrell
assistant technical director sarah eisel
production assistants & props masters carlotta gambato & macie mcgowan
costume shop manager nadine brooks taylor
box office & front-of-house manager macie mcgowan
assistant costume shop manager mo seraji
senior costume shop interns lakiesha holyfield & jennifer uvina
costume shop interns grace elizabeth interlichia & jessica chinelli
wardrobe supervisor grace elizabeth interlichia
assistant props masters nina desoi, lydia jimenez & franny swanson
props intern jessica chinelli
scene shop assistants chris bickford, cassandra donatelli, chris futia & alex karpinski
publicity interns leah barish, livie cohn, erin fairbank, iliana garcia, jordan gray, maggie
margolis, dontae mears & arden witheford
theatre intern leah barish
program information compiled by lydia jimenez
URITP photographer adam fenster
URITP videographer kevin brice
production trailer by david tan
additional trailers by johannah kohl & deema al mohammad ali
URITP webmaster zachary kimball
graphic, program & poster design
i:master/studios at [email protected]
www.rochester.edu/theatre
adding machine: a musical was developed and received its world premiere at the next theatre company,
artistic director jason loewith, on february 5, 2007.
adding machine: a musical was produced in new york by scott morfee, tom wirtshafter, and margaret cotter
at the minetta lane theatre, opening night february 25, 2008.
a note about the program
Program content is compiled by the production’s Assistant Director, Lydia Jimenez, and edited by
Nigel Maister. For a complete list of sources and works cited, please contact the Theatre Program.
the video and/or audio recording of this performance by any means whatsoever
are strictly prohibited
This production has been made possible through the combined efforts of
ENG 171 & 271 (Technical & Advanced Technical Theatre), and ENG 291 (Plays in Production)
Chris Bickford - Ryan Brown - Dominick Caruso - Ryan Charcholla - Joe Cicero - Eric Cohen - Chris Dende
John DiBartolomeo - Nicholas Fedorka - Sam Higgins - Joseph Kowtun - Chris Lebano - Michael Martin
Michael Mayor - Conor McMahon - Janixa Mejias - Alex Osuch - Alex Parker - Amir Patel - Penina Rubin
Corey Rudalavage - Alex Sandler - Kristopher Scharles - Thomas Sorrentino
special thanks
Applied Audio and Theatre Supply - Dave Izzo / URMC - Bill’s Carpet and Furniture Center
Our Lady of Mercy High School - Brighton High School Performing Arts
Shawn Casey - Josef Hanson - Prof. John Covach and the UR Music Department
Dean Jamal Rossi - Prof. Michael Burritt - Rob Edwardsen - Mitchell Moore
Christopher Glattly and Glattly Pianoforte - Nancy Martin & Rare Books & Special Collections
Sean Curran - Charlotte Furniture Warehouse - Andy Boroson - Derek Medonia / Geva Theatre
Penina Rubin - Katie and Tosh Farrell
we are particularly indebted to Marian Todd, whose generosity
made Adding Machine: A Musical possible
senior farewell
The UR International Theatre Program wishes the following students who have contributed to the
Theatre Program over the course of their undergraduate careers and who are now graduating: good
luck, godspeed, and many broken metaphorical legs in the years ahead. Stay in touch!
Priscilla Alabi - Mel Balzano - Leah Barish - Chris Bickford - Kevin Brice
Ryan Brown - Dominick Caruso - Jessica Chinelli - Joe Cicero - Natalia DeMaria
Chris Dende - Nina DeSoi - James Eles - Nicholas Fedorka - William Hogan
Jonathan Isaacs - Joseph Kowtun - David Krinick - Michael Martin - Kevin McCarthy
Alex Osuch - Alex Parker - Andrew Polec - Christine M. Rose
Mo Seraji - Thomas Sorrentino - Liya Sun - Franny Swanson - David Tan
join the todd theatre facebook group
visit the todd theatre blog:
http://toddtheatre.blogspot.com
visit the todd theatre youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/ToddTheatre
18
continued from page 3
this amount required majority approval. Each playwright led the production of his own work. Rice remained
with the company until its dissolution in 1960.
By the time of his death on May 8, 1967, Rice was the author of about fifty full-length plays, four novels
(three published), numerous short stories and his autobiography, Minority Report. Rice’s other works include
The Iron Cross (1914); Counsellor at Law (1931), which was adapted into a film of the same name in 1933; and
Street Scene, which won Rice the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1929, and was adapted into a Broadway musical/
opera with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes. In addition to Loewith and Schmidt’s musical adaptation, The Adding Machine (1923) was adapted into a film (1969; dir. Jerome Epstein) and a Bunraku
puppet show by Chicago’s Hystopolis Puppet Theatre.
continued from page 11
causing the company to outgrow its first quarters and necessitated the establishment of the first Todd Protectograph factory in 1908 on University Avenue.
Todd was quick to realize that the check amount was not the only place of vulnerability. In 1914,
Todd developed the Protod-Greenbac, a chemically treated security paper surfaced with sensitive inks and a
mathematically intricate dot pattern that, at the touch of an ink eradicator, flashed to the surface hundreds of
small “VOIDS.” The Protod-Greenbac now secured a check’s name, date and signature.
The Todd Protectograph Company was a pioneer of worker’s rights. In 1905, the company granted
a system of yearly employee bonuses, offered life insurance bonuses in 1917, and inaugurated the five-day
work week, with no reduction of wages, in 1928. Todd was the first major firm in Rochester to establish this
practice. In 1932, insurance broadened to health and accident coverage, and a medical department was built in
1930 to provide on-site care for on-the-job sickness. The Todd Protectograph Company was one of the first
firms to offer paid vacation (in 1937), and paid holidays (in 1944). In the words of Libanus: “The business of
the Todd Protectograph is founded on ‘Protection.’ To this matter, consideration is given first, last, and all the
time.”
George W. Todd was one of the leading minds in the establishment of the University of Rochester.
The inscription above the fireplace in Todd Lobby attests to his work: “This River Campus with the buildings
erected thereon for the College for Men of the University of Rochester, is the realization and dream of George
W. Todd who first proposed the site and organized the group of citizens who procured the funds to make the
dream a reality. In recognition of Mr. Todd’s service to the University, this building is named in his honor.”
Elmer Rice wrote The Adding Machine in seventeen days. He regarded it as an opportunity to exorcize his feelings toward his father who, unable to support his family, “failed to measure up to [his] standards of fatherhood”:
It was not as though I had vented my ill-will by portraying my father in an unfavorable light. For,
though he had many of Mr. Zero’s prejudices and malevolences, he was proud, self-assertive and anything but a conformist. My release is part of the mystery that enshrouds the whole creation of the play.
-Rice in his autobiography, Minority Report
17
the university of rochester international theatre program presents
adding machine: a musical
original music by joshua schmidt
libretto by jason loewith & joshua schmidt
based on the play the adding machine by elmer rice
directed by nigel maister
musical direction by john baxindine
set & costume design by marsha ginsberg
lighting design by thomas dunn
sound design by will pickens
video design by c. andrew bauer
choreography by elliott reiland
production staff
production stage manager ................................................................... franny swanson
assistant production stage manager ............................................................ liza penney
assistant stage managers .................................................................. emily ansley/band
................................................................................................ elizabeth bradley/props
........................................................................................................ eric cohen/run crew
............................................................................................. natalia demaria/costumes
....................................................................................................... chris futia/run crew
...................................................................................... juan de la guardia durán/video
................................................................................................ william hogan/run crew
.............................................................................................. danielle jaman/costumes
................................................................................................. meridel phillips/sound
..................................................................................................... natasha sacoto/lights
master electrician ......................................................................... cassandra donatelli
assistant master electrician ..................................................... rory blunt & darcy bird
audiovisual engineer .................................................................................... kevin brice
assitant audiovisual engineers ...................................... alex karpinski & theo lincoln
audio mixer ........................................................................................ bruce stockton
follow spot operators .................................................. william hogan & emily ansley
assistant makeup designer ................................................. grace elizabeth interlichia
assistant musical director ........................................................................ jesse lozano
assistant director .................................................................................... lydia jimenez
this production was made possible, in part, by the
ellen miller '55 endowment for theater productions
adding machine: a musical runs approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes with one 20 minute intermission
adding machine: a musical is presented by special arrangement with samuel french, inc.
elmer rice
28 September 1892 - 8 May 1967
quotations from Shakespeare,
the Bible, Omar Khayyám and
Lewis Carroll.” Rice was admitted to the bar in December
1913, but soon abandoned law
to pursue a career as a playwright.
He wrote his first play,
On Trial, in 1914, experimenting with dramatic critic Clay
Hamilton’s idea of writing a
play that moved backward in
time. Rice reworked Hamilton’s idea, and thus, On Trial
was the first stage play to employ the device of flashback.
After the success of On Trial,
Rice was offered a five year
Hollywood contract by Samuel
Goldwyn. He moved to Hollywood in 1919, but was troubled
by the differences between film writing and playwriting. He found film to be less of an individual
artistic endeavor, and more of a collective, corporate
endeavor that stifled originality.
For a short time (1935-1936), Rice was director of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a branch
of the Works Progress Administration whose aim
was to provide work for unemployed professional
actors and other theatre artists during the Great Depression. A firm believer in free speech and vocal
advocate against censorship, when the State Department declared that foreign heads of state could not
be depicted on stage, Rice resigned in protest.
After his resignation, Rice founded the
Playwrights’ Company in 1938, with the prominent
American dramatists Maxwell Anderson, S.N. Behrnman, Sidney Howard and Robert E. Sherwood.
The company agreed to produce any play written by
its members on the single condition that production
costs did not exceed $25,000. Plays budgeted above
s a child, Elmer Leopold Reizenstein had
a passion for building
blocks. With his “fine set” of
vari-colored stone blocks, Elmer built structures and edifices that convinced his mother he would grow up to be an
architect. He did not know
that the hundreds of books he
read at the New York Public
Library, a block away from his
family’s apartment on West
114th Street, would frame his
perspective as a playwright.
At the time, reading was an
“escape and compensation for
the dullness of daily life.” In
retrospect, Rice realized that “nothing in [his] life
was more helpful than the simple act of joining
the library.”
Financial setbacks caused by his father’s
epilepsy forced Rice to leave high school prematurely. He accepted an office boy position in a law
firm. After working for a year, and after earning
his high school equivalency, he decided to attend
law school. Rice pursued law not out of any interest in the subject, but with the perception that
it was the only plausible career he could pursue.
Law lectures satiated Rice’s voracious literary appetite. Able to read a play in a two-hour lecture,
Rice read the works of Shaw, Ibsen, Galsworthy
and other “problem-play” dramatists. In addition to the experience of the content, Rice learned
much about play structure by reading these works.
He graduated in the spring of 1912, and passed his
bar examination in the fall of that year. He maintained he had a “good time” playing with the rhetorical forms of his responses—some were “written in blank verse, others included jokes, limericks, 3
A
Will Pickens (Sound Designer) was privileged to have designed the UR International Theatre Program’s
first musical, Hello Again, Andy Bragen’s The Hairy Dutchman, The Illusion (both at the URITP and Geva
Theatre Center), George F. Walker’s Suburban Motel, and The Colonel Bird by Hristo Boytchev. Geva Theatre
Center: The Music Man, Cabaret, A Marvelous Party, Key West, and That Was Then. Broadway: Death of a Salesman (Barrymore Theatre), That Championship Season ( Jacobs Theatre), The Importance of Being Earnest, Present Laughter (American Airlines Roundabout Theatre). Off-Broadway: Evolution (Cherry Lane), That Hopey
Changey Thing, Sweet and Sad (The Public Theater), Completeness, Burnt Part Boys (Playwrights Horizons),
Fornicated From the Beatles, Black Snow, Non-Play (The New Ensemble), Benefactors, I Never Sang for My
Father, Heroes, and Beasley’s Christmas Party (Keen Company). Regional credits: Water by the Spoonful, Antony
and Cleopatra (Hartford Center Stage), A Time to Kill (Arena Stage), Richard III, Comedy of Errors, Cymbeline,
and Macbeth (Chicago Shakespeare Theater). Will mixed the original Off-Broadway production of Adding
Machine: A Musical. www.willpickens.com. Will is a UR International Theatre Program Associate Artist.
C. Andrew Bauer (Video/Projections Designer) NYC: CQ/CX (dir. David Leveaux, co-design with Peter
Nigrini, Atlantic Theatre Company), The Diary of a Teenage Girl, (dirs. Sarah Cameron Sunde and Rachel
Eckerling, 3LD Art and Technology Center), Fêtes De La Nuit (dir. Kim Weild, Ohio Theater), Milk-n-Honey
(Lightbox Theater Company, dir. Ellen Beckerman, 3LD Art and Technology Center; KŌ Festival, Amherst
College), Romeo and Juliet (dir. Tony Speciale, CSC); Kaddish (dir. Kim Weild, East 4th St. Theatre); 5 Minutes
(New York Live Arts), Passage (LIU), both with Amanda Selwyn Dance, and An Error of the Moon (written
by Luigi Creatore, dir. Kim Weild, Theater Row). Regional: Hydrogen Jukebox (dir. Lawrence Edelson, Fort
Worth Opera). Associate to Peter Nigrini: The Best Man (dir. Michael Wilson, Broadway) Fela! (dir. Bill T.
Jones, Broadway; International Tour), 9 to 5: the Musical (dir. Joe Mantello, Broadway), The Elaborate Entrance
of Chad Deity (dir. Eddie Torres, Second Stage) and Wings (dir. John Doyle, Second Stage), as well as numerous regional productions. Awards: 2010 Innovative Theater Award for Fêtes De La Nuit, design for Milkn-Honey featured in USA Exhibition, 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Editor and Producer of Brooklyn Bound a
narrative feature that premiered at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. Upcoming: Detour with Amanda Selwyn
Dance at New York Live Arts.
Elliott Reiland (Choreographer) is a Brooklyn-based director/choreographer/artist and holds a BFA in
Dance from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Recent Work: Into The Woods (Asst. Choreographer, Centerstage/Westport); Union Square (Ens. Dancer, 80 St Marks); West Side Story (A-Rab; Dir: David Grabarkewitz,
El Paso Opera); Let it Rain (Director, NYU); The Daughter of the Regiment (Soldier, dir Sean Curran, Opera
Theatre of St Louis); Jennifer the Unspecial (Director & Choreographer, NYU), CIRCUITS (Dancer; Patricia
Noworol Dance, German Tour). Elliott has also taught and choreographed for New York University, First
Stage Children's Theater, The Arrowhead Broadway Company, Ballet School of Stamford, Boston Ballet,
NYU's GMTWP and Milwaukee Skylight Opera Theatre. His own dance work has been shown at Joe's Pub,
The 92nd St Y, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, and around Wisconsin.
continued on page 17
16
artist bios
John Baxindine (Music Director) is an internationally successful arranger and pianist specializing in musical
theater. Credits include: International: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (New Arrangements/Orchestrations; US, UK
Tours), I Love a Piano (Music Director, Japan Tour), Der gelbe Stern (Arrangements/Orchestrations, Australia
Tour). Broadway: Chance and Chemistry (Orchestration Supervisor). Other NYC: Yank! (York Theatre), The
Mystery of Edwin Drood (20th Anniversary Concert), The Fartiste (FringeNYC 2006). Assistant to orchestrator Jonathan Tunick: Cy Coleman's The Great Ostrovsky (Prince Music Theater), Meet John Doe (Ford's Theater), Paradise Found. Other regional: Parade (Philadelphia premiere; Barrymore Award nomination), Kathie
Lee Gifford's Saving Aimee (White Plains PAC), Pal Joey, Casino Paradise, Jamaica (Prince Music Theater).
Arranger for Donna McKechnie, Christiane Noll, Hampton String Quartet, etc. Recordings: Rupert Holmes's Swing. John graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where he received the Thomas Temple
Hoopes and LeBaron Russell Briggs prizes for his groundbreaking thesis on Leonard Bernstein's Candide.
Marsha Ginsberg (Set and Costume Designer) Previous work with Nigel Maister at UR: sets and costumes:
The Puzzle Locker (David Hancock); Suburban Motel (George Walker); sets: Gorky's The Lower Depths. Recent
theater work: Map of Virtue (13P); Er Nicht als Er (zu mit Robert Walser), Meetfactory, Prague; Our Class (dir.
Blanka Zizka; Wilma Theater); Habit (David Levine; Luminato Festival, Mass MoCA, Watermill Center);
Blue Flower (ART; Elliot Norton Design Award); Telephone (Foundry Theater, NYC, Obie-award); Lascivious Something (Women’s Project/Cherry Lane); Bleakhouse (Bauhaus Festival,Theaterhaus Jena); Kafeneion
(Athens/Epidaurus Festival); Knock-Out (Thalia Theater, Hamburg; Theaterhaus Jena); Opera: with Ken Rus
Schnoll: It Happens Like This (Guggenheim Museum, Tanglewood Music Center); Proserpina (Spoleto Festival USA); with Christopher Alden: Phaeton (Saarlindishes Staatstheater); Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail
(Theater Basel); Imeneo (Glimmerglass Opera); Carmen (Nationaltheater Mannheim); Serva Padrone, Rita
& Pauvre Matelot (San Francisco Opera); In Mahler’s Shadow (Eos Orchestra); with Roy Rallo: Ariadne auf
Naxos (Opera National de Bordeaux); Methusalem Projekt; Don Pasquale (Nationaltheater Weimar); La Finta
Giardinera (San Francisco Opera); Elektra; Bluebeard’s Castle (Long Beach Opera). Exhibits: Solo: "Pavlov’s
Lab and other rooms" at Gallery Magnus Müller, Berlin; "Design Life Now" National Design Triennial, Cooper Hewitt Museum, ICA Boston, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. Grants: NEA/TCG Early Career Design Fellowship; MacDowell Colony Fellowships. Education: MFA, NYU Tisch School of the Arts;
Visual Arts at Whitney Independent Study Program; BFA, Cooper Union. Marsha is a UR International
Theatre Program Associate Artist.
Thomas Dunn (Lighting Designer) designs lighting for architecture, dance, theater, and visual art venues in
the US and abroad. Previous Todd Theatre productions include: Suburban Motel, The Illusion, The Hairy Dutchman, 365 Days/365 Plays, King Lear, The Lower Depths, and Killer Joe. Other University affiliations include:
Auburn University, Bard College, Florida State University, and Fordham University. Thomas is the recipient
of a 2009 Kevin Kline Award for Outstanding Lighting Design on The Little Dog Laughed (The Repertory
Theatre of St. Louis), as well as a 2007 Bessie Award for Lighting and Visual Design on Nottthing Is Importanttt (DD Dorvillier/human future dance corps). He was educated at Bennington College and Yale School
of Drama. Thomas is a UR International Theatre Program Associate Artist.
cast
mr. zero ...... andrew polec iv
mrs. zero ...... katie lewis
daisy dorothea devore ...... zoe netter
shrdlu ...... chris urquiaga
the boss/the fixer/charles ...... jacob goritski
mrs. one/mae/prisoner’s wife ....... leah mould
mrs. two/betty/matron ...... christine m. rose
mr. one/prisoner ...... brian giacalone
mr. two/prison guard ...... andrew spitzberg
ensemble ...... christina graham & travis kohler
prelude
something to be proud of
harmony, not discord
office reverie
moving up
in numbers
in numbers (reprise)
i’d rather watch you
the party
zero’s confession
ham and eggs
didn’t we?
i was a fool
the gospel according to shrdlu
death march
intermission
a pleasant place
shrdlu’s blues
daisy’s confession
i’d rather watch you (reprise)
freedom!
freedom! (reprise)
the music of the machine
4
band
piano/conductor ...... john baxindine
keyboards ...... jesse lozano
percussion ...... daniel lyons
musical
numbers
background: the original
production of elmer rice's
the adding machine
composing expressionism
occupy wall street
n his autobiography, Minority Report, Elmer Rice
writes: “the dialogue [of The Adding Machine] is
unlike anything I had written before: an attempt
to reproduce authentic human speech.” Like the musical, Rice’s play opens with Mrs. Zero’s prolonged chastisement of Mr. Zero. In the original text, Mrs. Zero
voices her resentment toward Mr. Zero for six pages
of uninterrupted scolding: he does not take her downtown to see “sweet little love stories” at the cinema, is
one of her key complaints. Her monologue is rife with
repetitive words and phrases that communicate her bitterness: “Twenty-five years! An’ I ain’t seen nothin’ happen. Twenty-five years in the same job. Twenty-five
years tomorrow.” Robert Hogan, in The Independence
of Elmer Rice, writes that Mrs. Zero’s repetitiveness is
not mundane. Rather, “each rephrasal to her is not a
rephrasal but almost a new discovery of bitterness.”
Schmidt musically exploits repetition’s function in the
I
Joshua Schmidt (Composer/Co-librettist) is a Milwaukee-based
composer/sound designer. Schmidt believes Adding Machine “to be
a romantic comedy; a very, very dark romantic comedy that explores
one simple question: What is a life worth living.” His other works
include: A Minister’s Wife, which received six Joseph Jefferson Award
nominations and two awards: Best New Work (Musical), and Best
Supporting Actress (Liz Baltes); Whida Peru, a one-act monologue
in music that served as the second act of INNER VOICES: 2010; and
The Gift of the Magi, which premiered in 2010 at The American Players Theatre. Schmidt’s work has been featured in venues across the
US. He created the sound design for the UR International Theatre
Program production of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With
You (2008; dir. Susanna Gellert).
7
he Occupy Movement began on September 17, 2011 in Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park in New York City’s financial
district. Activists protesting social inequality and corporate
influence on government occupied the park in a tent encampment
until November 15, when it was dismantled by law enforcement. Following Zuccotti Park’s example, numerous Occupy demonstrations
were formed in cities across the United States and around the globe.
The temporary encampments of the Occupy movement,
evoking as they do the tent cities of the displaced, lacked-certainly
in their beginnings-a formalized social structure. The freedom and
improvisation of these ad hoc communities soon necessitated the establishment of rules and hierarchies to ensure peaceful, sound and
sanitary cohabitation.
T
12
g.w. todd
& the todd protectograph
n a letter written on March 25, 1938, Todd Union President, George Corwin, assured the son of
George W. Todd that even after his father’s death, “as long as our student union shall function on
this campus, [his] name shall be perpetuated in the hearts and minds of this institution.” Decades
after his death, and decades after the building’s transformation from student union to Theatre Program
home (the conversion of the union dining hall to black box theatre was funded by Todd's daughter-in-law,
Elizabeth Conolly Todd; his granddaughter, Marian Todd, underwrote the piano used in this production),
our production of Adding Machine leads us to consider more than the name of our benefactor.
With his brother Libanus, George W. Todd conceived and commercialized the Todd Protectograph, a machine designed to protect against the fraudulent alteration of checks. The early machines
embossed an ink imprint into the body of the check paper that stated a limiting amount. A check written for $8.26 embossed by the Protectograph would read, “Not over $9.” Improved design soon permitted the embossing of exact amounts. The use of bank checks was not a common practice at the
time, but a wave of forgeries and check "raisings" swept the country in the early 1900s. Skilled forgers,
called “draft raisers,” would increase the amount of genuine bank drafts a hundred, even a thousand times
their original amounts. Thus, the Todd Protectograph Company enjoyed rapid growth in its first decade,
I
11
continued on page 17
score. He removes any pauses that occur between these
repetitive phrases, causing Mrs. Zero’s natural speech
rhythms to become “heightened, relentless and nagging.” The dissonant intervallic clusters of the music
through which these repetitions are expressed further
contribute to the mood of exasperation and discord.
The entire libretto is created of phrases and dialogue
from Rice’s text that are musically enhanced by the
composer.
Just as Schmidt’s musical additions heighten
the emotional content of Rice’s text, so he and his colibrettist's subtractions also function to amplify the expressionistic element of the work. In the original play,
“the girl in the window” is named Judy O’Grady, and
she appears in a graveyard with a “young man,” with
whom, the text suggests, she will have sex. Judy has
recently been released from prison and discovers the
gravestone of Mr. Zero, who was responsible for her
being “sent to the hoose-gow” for six months. The audience sees “the girl in the window” interact with others in a real environment, whereas in the musical, she
only gets a passing (but critical) mention from Zero
and by Mrs. Zero. The musical’s “girl in the window”
is a figment that exists exclusively in Zero’s mind; our
perception of her is formed by Zero’s representation of
her. Her lack of physical definition and representation
in the musical give a director the opportunity and freedom to expressionistically represent this figment and
thus build on the psychological portrait of repression
that is unique to Mr. Zero.
Jason Loewith (Co-librettist) is Executive Director of the National New Play Network, an
alliance of not-for-profit professional theatres that fosters the development and production of
new plays. He is a Jeff and After Dark award-winning producer, director and writer. He served
as Artistic Director of Chicago’s Next Theatre Company from 2002-2009, during which time he
directed area premieres of Paula Vogel’s The Long Christmas Ride Home, Lynn Nottage’s Fabulation, Theresa Rebeck & Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros' Omnium Gatherum, and revivals of Entertaining Mr. Sloane and Measure for Measure.
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a note about shrdlu
hrdlu’s name is the second half of the typographic sequence “ETAOIN SHRDLU,” a phrase born
out of the keyboard arrangement on Linotype machines. Linotype machines were hot metal typesetting machines with which newspapers and magazines were printed from the 1880s until the
1970s (when computer typesetting and offset lithography made them obsolete). In hot metal typesetting,
S
molten type metal is used to make a mold
with a line of raised letters, called a slug,
which presses ink to paper. The letters on the
Linotype machine were arranged to reflect
their frequency of use in the English language. ETAOIN SHRDLU are the twelve
most frequently used letters in English, and
so composed the first two vertical columns
on the right side of the machine’s keyboard.
When a typographical error was made, the
Linotype operator was
unable to
the elysian fields
a linotype machine keyboard
backspace to delete it. But to retype the line, he had first to finish
the line of type to eject the incorrect metal type slug. To finish the
line, the quickest method was to
“run down” the first two columns
on the keyboard with a finger:
producing the phrase ETAOIN
SHRDLU. Sometimes, the line
would inadvertently not be discarded, and so the phrase would
appear erroneously in publications.
he classical Greek conception of paradise and the afterlife, where, as Shrdlu says, “only the most
favored remain,” is the Elysian Fields, a place where gods, heroes and the righteous eternally reside.
Homer writes in the Odyssey: “men lead an easier life than anywhere else in the world, for in Elysium there falls not rain, nor hail, nor snow, but Oceanus breathes ever with a West wind that sings softly
from the sea, and gives fresh life to all men.” In the Odyssey, Elysium is not a realm of the righteous dead,
but a paradise where heroes live eternally under the rule of Rhadamanthos, son of Zeus. In Pindar’s Odes,
those who lived righteous lives on Earth reside in Elysium after death, where they “receive a life free from
toil… in the presence of the honored gods,” and “enjoy a life without tears,” where “flowers of gold are blazing.” Like Homer and Pindar, Rice envisions the Elysian Fields as a “pleasant place,” however, admittance
is not exclusive to the righteous, but also, in defiance of Shrdlu’s religious dogma, “the basest of sinners.”
T
have the manpower and time to handle such large volumes of data.
Prior to the employment of the adding machine, businesses sought “lightning calculators,” individuals who could mentally add long, wide columns of numbers at prodigious speeds and with complete accuracy.
In the 1880s, the Académie des Sciences in France hired a committee to study lightning calculators in order
to conceive methods to develop lightning arithmetic skills in accountants. Dorr E. Felt, co-founder of the
Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company, another prominent producer of adding machines, blamed pen and
paper calculating practices of “turning men into veritable machines,” and welcomed mechanical calculation
as a humanizing force.
The Burroughs Adding Machine Company continued to thrive throughout the early 1900s.
The company expanded its factory forces to manufacture numerous types of office machinery, including
typewriters and check protection machines. As vacuum tube computers developed in the 1950s, the Burroughs Company designed and manufactured ElectroData, a decimal architecture computer for business
computing. In 1962, Burroughs invented the revolutionary B5000, the first machine to contain virtual
memory. Burroughs, as other computer companies were, was in intense competition with IBM, and thus
merged with Sperry in 1986 to form the computing company, Unisys. Unisys continues to manufacture
computers today for banks, weather data services, and government purposes.
umerous inventors developed mechanical calculating machines throughout the seventeenth century.
Drawings by German astronomy professor, Wilhelm Schickard, in a 1623 letter to Johannes Kepler
depict a “calculating clock” that could add and subtract six digit numbers. French mathematician
Blaise Pascal invented the first commercialized calculator in 1641, and French watchmaker Rene Grillet
and German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz found inspiration from Pascal’s work.
William Seward Burroughs, a bank clerk born in Rochester, New York, built, manufactured and
commercialized the adding machine for the American office in the late 1800s. Seward founded the American Arithmometer Company in 1886, later named the Burroughs Adding Machine Company.
In the American office, adding machines remedied the “long hours and slow, torturous business
progress” of pen and paper bookkeeping. John S. Coleman, president of the Burroughs Corporation in
the late 1940s remarked about the American office prior to mechanical data handling: “Bookkeeping,
before the advent of the adding machine, was not an occupation for the flagging spirit or the wandering
N
automation
and the
american
office
mind. It required in extraordinary degree, capacity for sustained concentration, attention to detail, and a
passion for accuracy.” Data could now be figured faster, in larger quantities and with greater accuracy. As
industry and businesses rapidly expanded, the amount of data needed to be figured increased. Businesses
realized the efficiency value of mechanical data handling, and the adding machine soon became a staple in
the American office. Furthermore, the adding machine enabled business functions that had before never
been practiced, and the existence of data that before had never existed. Businesses now could easily keep
daily ledger balances, daily cash balances, figure discounts, compute commissions, figure estimates and post
perpetual inventory records. These basic calculations were often not figured because businesses did not
expressionism
Following both Palmieri’s and Rice’s definitions of
expressionism, the fragmented, subconscious dialogue between Mr. Zero and Daisy Devore in “Harmony, Not Discord” is an example of an expressionist
device: though they communicate about the task in
front of them, bookkeeping, the audience hears both
characters express their fantasies and memories. Julia A. Walker says in Expressionism and Modernism in
the American Theatre: “Before we see Zero and Daisy’s
inability to make contact, we hear them fail to make
contact with each other.” Their inability to hear what
the audience hears communicates the characters’
emotional repression and inability to relate to each
other on a social level.
ice’s The Adding Machine is regarded as an example of “expressionist” theatre. The word “expressionism” was first used in the 1850s to describe paintings of a “particular intensity” that strove
“beyond the passive reservations of impression[ism]
towards a more violent, hectic, energetic creativity.”
Expressionist paintings dissolved conventional form,
featured abstract use of color and evoked powerful
human emotion. In 1905, a group of expressionist
painters, including Erich Heckel and Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner formed Die Brücke (The Bridge), a painting
collective in Dresden. Franz Marc, August Macke
and Wassily Kandinsky formed Der blaue Reiter (The
Blue Rider, named after Kandinsky’s 1903 painting)
in 1912, a similar collective in Munich. This style
Elmer Rice on expressionism
of art evolved into German theatre, lead by Oskar
Kokoshka with his 1909 play, Mörder Hoffnung der
Though Rice’s The Adding MaFrauen (Murder, the Hope of Women). Georg Kaiser
chine is widely regarded as an “exand Ernst Toller are other prominent German expressionist work,” Rice himself
pressionist playwrights. Expressionism touched the
was not well acquainted with this
American theatre in the 1920s, with Eugene O’Neill’s
literary style:
The Emperor Jones (1920) and The Hairy Ape (1922),
and Rice’s The Adding Machine.
“An allegation that has persisted is
that I was influenced by the Ger
Elmer Rice scholar
man expressionists and even borAnthony Palmieri defines exrowed liberally from them. The
pressionist theatre as a “form of
fact is, though I had heard of exartistic expression that aims to
pressionism, I had not read any of
externalize inner experience. In
the German plays. I tried several
[expressionist] theatre, the sigtimes to define expressionism. In
nificant element for the dramamy memorandum to Digges [the
tist is psychological. The [playfirst Mr. Zero]: ‘What we must
wright] will try to dramatize the
convey… is a subjective picture of
inward and otherwise hidden or
a man who is at once an individudisguised experiences of his draal and a type. In the realistic play,
matis personae. He will make
the murder
from the original production of
we look at the character from the
use of the enacting of fantasies
elmer rice's the adding machine
outside. We see him in terms of
or memories, and will employ
strange effects and weirdly disaction and actuality. But in the expressionist play we subordinate and
torted settings to drive home his even discard objective reality and seek to express the character in terms
nonrealistic aims.”
of his own inner life.”
R
How did you first encounter Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine? What propelled you to musicalize Rice’s text?
One could say rather that the "Machine" chose me first. Adapting Elmer
Rice's 1923 expressionist juggernaut was the long-time dream of librettist,
Jason Loewith. Apparently he had approached other composers with the
project to no avail. When he finally inquired into my interest in the project in January of 2004, I was working as a sound designer on a show that
he was producing at the Next Theatre Company in Evanston, IL, where he
served as Artistic Director. Up to that point, I had never written a musical, nor did I envision myself writing one. I knew of Elmer Rice—his play
Street Scene had been wonderfully adapted into a music theatre piece by
Kurt Weill and Langston Hughes—but up to that point I had never read
or seen or even heard of The Adding Machine. I didn't hesitate. I said yes.
I committed to the project. Then I read it....
Where did you begin?
The first music written for Adding Machine was "Daisy's Confession.” This
was before I met my wife—in my "single" years, tortured romantic that
I was. I rewrote and re-orchestrated that song for a long time. Kept it
secret, even. There are some difficult and explosive emotional moments in
Rice's play, but I have always felt that the act of openly articulating your
love for another person when you have never done so before, is maybe the
most profoundly frightening things many normal people ever experience.
Who is Mr. Zero?
Mr. Zero is the fundamental expression of human inability—psychological inability, lack of empathy, sexual inability, inability to interact with others, function in a career other than menial work, lack of vision, lack of work
ethic—an encapsulation and reflection of all the worst of human behavior
beyond sociopaths, psychopaths. He is who I am at my worst.
Can you consider a passage in the show, like, “Something To Be Proud Of,”
and discuss how the music works technically to communicate content?
The lyrics for this song are cherry-picked phrases from Rice's original scene
one monologue, transformed. Each phrase has a natural rhythm—the
natural rhythm of speech. Repetition of these phrases allows this rhythm
to become iconic, groovy as it were. We splice in and out of these rhythms,
which make it seem very complicated but actually it’s the heightened expression of natural speech rhythm (2's and 3's at different speeds). Taking
an interview with composer-librettist
joshua schmidt
out all the pauses in-between makes this rhythm relentless, even nagging. Harmonically, the music is actually very simple and basic, but I have only three instruments, so I embarked on a method of adding color and edge to the proceedings
by playing with register (high notes/low notes), intervalic clusters (two notes or
more, close together on the piano) which occur in parts of a measure, reflect the
accentuation on natural rhythms of speech. Over time, I change one note of the
overall "chord" of a particular sequence, and that changes the harmony of a section
very gradually. These things in combination make the music seem extreme, which is
exactly how Mr. Zero feels about his wife's bitching about the movies. Movies—to
friends—to "I hate you." This music she sings is the equivalent of the feeling inside
Mr. Zero's head. It is his nightmare. The song is his hell. And she is articulating it.
Can you talk a bit about Shrdlu and his music? His music sounds very distinct from the
rest of the score… Why is this? What are some technical characteristics of gospel music?
Why does gospel/blues “work” with his character?
Shrdlu is Rice's everyman: the prototypical American, lilly-white, church-going
stereotype gone wrong—wrong as in matricide. You say it sounds distinct. I'd say
each character has a distinct musical vocabulary, and that the consistency is that
we grind all these musical styles through a filter—the very limited complement of
piano/synth/drums as a means of unifying it all. Shrdlu sings gospel when secure
in his faith; blues (at least 12 bar blues structure with very dense harmonies) when
his faith is shaken. The two are related genres borne of the American experience.
It made sense to me at the time, I guess. Daisy sings tin pan alley songs and pop
ballads. Why? Why not. Rice wrote a play in seven wildly different scenes. Ten
page monologues, naturalistic scenes, abstract scenes-the whole gamut laid out in
dizzying complexity. It's the hallmark of the play, and one could say the hallmark
of the American experience: the melting pot where it all collides.
I’ve heard the music described as “Expressionist.” Can you define this style in terms of
music? Why does this style of music work well with Rice’s text?
I don't know what you heard. Someone tell me what "expressionist" music means,
and I guess what I could do would be to point out several pieces in current and past
history that would refute or support what you say. I wrote what I wrote without
even thinking about it. Each song started as an emotional response to a scene,
character, or mood, pulled from my own experience—my musical tastes and experiences—which are varied, and all relative to text.
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