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November 16 - December 18 by Neil Simon directed by Marc Masterson PLAY GUIDE T

November 16 - December 18 by Neil Simon directed by Marc Masterson PLAY GUIDE Table of contents 3 Barefoot in the Park Synopsis, Characters, Setting 4 About the Playwright: Neil Simon 5 Barefoot in Greenwich Village 6 What Are You Laughing At? 7 That’s Sew You! 8 Taking a Bite Out of the Big Apple 9 Discussion Questions 10 Bridgework, Cross-Curricular Connections 1 1 Writing Portfolio 12 Works Cited The Crawford Charitable Foundation supports Actors Theatre of Louisville’s 2010-2011 education programs. Actors Theatre Education Steven Rahe, Director of Education Jacob Stoebel, Associate Director of Education Julie Mercurio, Education Fellow Jane B. Jones, Education Intern/Teaching Artist Christina Lepri, Education Intern/Teaching Artist Liz Fentress, Teaching Artist Jessica Leader, Teaching Artist Study guide compiled by Alex Connolly, Tara Duffy, Julie McCormick, Steven Rahe, Jacob Stoebel and Amy Wegener. Graphic design by Elissa Shortridge. About the BAREFOOT IN THE PARK Play Guide This play guide is a resource designed to enhance your theatre experience. Its goal is twofold: to nurture the teaching and learning of theatre arts and to encourage essential questions that lead to enduring understandings of the play’s meaning and relevance. Inside you will find: • Contextual and historical information including a list of characters, plot synopsis and information about the playwright. • Evocative, thought provoking articles on topics surrounding the play, which are meant to incite conversation and analysis. • Bridgework activities connecting themes and ideas from the play to your curriculum. • Oral discussion and writing prompts encouraging your students to draw connections between the play and their own lives. These prompts can easily be adapted to fit most writing objectives. We encourage you to adapt and extend the material in any way that best fits the needs of your community of learners. Please feel free to make copies of this guide, or you may download it from our website: ActorsTheatre.org/ education_guides.htm. We hope this material, combined with our pre-show workshop, will give you the tools to make your time at Actors Theatre a valuable learning experience. Barefoot in the Park student matinees and study guides address specific educational objectives: • Students will identify or describe the use of elements of drama in dramatic works. • Students will identify or explain how drama/theatre fulfills a variety of purposes. • Students will identify a variety of creative dramatics. The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Actors Theatre of Louisville with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Synopsis Newlyweds Paul and Corie Bratter move into a small apartment in New York City after their six-day honeymoon. While Paul tries to prove himself as a young lawyer in the courtroom, Corie not only sets up their place, she also sets up her anxious mother with their peculiar (or in Paul’s opinion—crazy) neighbor, Mr. Velasco! After all, this is a guy who sleeps on a rug instead of a bed and enjoys some pretty bizarre culinary concoctions (eel knichi— gross!). Corie’s efforts to have fun and spice up Ms. Banks’ life take the four on a wild adventure all over New York City. Conventional Paul and free-spirited Corie always knew that they were different, but after a strange night out and the events that follow, they begin to wonder if maybe they are too different for one another. The honeymoon might be over, but these two young adults (and the older folks too) still have plenty to learn about themselves and the realties and compromises that come with being in a relationship. - Tara Duffy 3 Cast of Characters CORIE BRATTER A carefree young newlywed, busily trying to set up and decorate the new home she shares with her husband, Paul. PAUL BRATTER Corie’s husband, a young lawyer with a dry wit who likes to stay in his comfort zone. MS. ETHEL BANKS Corie’s cautious mother who is willing to endure anything for her daughter, even a strange escapade around New York City. MR. VICTOR VELASCO The Bratters’ eccentric, bohemian neighbor who lives in the attic of the brownstone, just above their apartment. TELEPHONE MAN A good-humored man who makes observations on everyday life and relationships as he installs and fixes telephones. DELIVERY MAN An older man who brings wedding gifts sent to the Bratters—and is exhausted by all the flights of stairs leading up to the apartment. Brownstone apartment buildings Setting Place The small top-floor apartment of a brownstone on East 48th Street in New York City. TIME The early 1960s. CORIE: Yes, it’s five flights. If you don’t count the front stoop. TELEPHONE MAN: I counted the front stoop. Act I, Scene i 4 About the PLAYWRIGHT: NEIL SIMON Playwright Neil Simon reading a script in 1966 Neil Simon is widely considered one of the most successful playwrights in American history. In his long and prolific career, he has become an icon of film and theatre with his distinctive combination of humor and humanity. Simon was born to a Jewish-American family in 1927 in the Bronx, New York City. His father, a garment salesman, struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression. After a brief stint in the military, the young Simon teamed up with his brother Danny to pursue comedy writing in radio and television in 1948. They got their first break writing for the television comedy Your Show of Shows under the actor and writer Sid Caesar. Over the next few years, Caesar put together writing teams that would make any comedy lover giddy: along with the Simons, his writers included Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Woody Allen. “I knew when I walked into Your Show of Shows,” recalled Simon, “that this was the most talented group of writers that up until that time had ever been assembled.” The experience was formative for Simon (in fact, it would serve as the inspiration for his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor), and provides a fascinating snapshot of the guys who would go on to define American comedy in the second half of the 20th century. Like Brooks and Allen, Simon’s writing reflects his roots as a Jewish-American kid growing up in New York City. All three were sophisticated, sarcastic, and ably balanced slapstick and farce with real insight. But in addition, Simon’s plays also capture an inclusive American experience. For him, New York seems to be a microcosm for the country as it evolved; the city was bustling with a diverse population of recent immigrants and represented the frontier of America’s changing cultural landscape. In the 1960s, Simon began writing for the stage. He scored a hit in 1961 with his debut, Come Blow Your Horn, which ran for 678 performances. In 1966, he made history when he had four plays running simultaneously on Broadway: Sweet Charity, The Star-Spangled Girl, The Odd Couple, and Barefoot in the Park (which played for 1,530 performances). In the years that followed, he would go on to write iconic plays and films, earning four Oscar nominations, twelve Tony nominations, and two Tony wins for best play with Biloxi Blues in 1985 and Lost in Yonkers in 1991. Simon’s work has shifted over the course of his career, starting with broad comedy but becoming more serious-minded and reflective with time. Lost in Yonkers stands out as the masterpiece of his late work. Both funny and deeply sad, it shows the devastating effect of an abusive mother on her grown children. In addition to the Tony, the play won Simon the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Today, Simon is still writing new plays, even as his early work continues to be revived around the country. His writing has been wildly successful, and is still resonant, due to his delicate balance of comedy, sentiment and insight. “I used to ask myself: What is a humorous situation?” Simon once said. “Now I ask: What is a sad situation and how can I tell it humorously?” In finding humor in his characters’ troubles, he redeems what is sad and messy about their—and by extension, our—lives. - Alex Connolly 5 Barefoot in Greenwich Village “Do you know we have some of the greatest weirdos in the country living right here, in this house?” Paul says to Corie early on in Barefoot in the Park. He is referring to the eclectic mix of residents that inhabit their new apartment building. These are unfamiliar surroundings for the newlyweds. Paul and Corie go from their honeymoon at The Plaza Hotel – the epitome of high class luxury – to a cramped apartment in one of New York’s edgy, emerging neighborhoods at a time when the culture of the city was in a state of transition: the city was a epicenter of the revolutions of the 1960s that would permanently change American culture. Nowhere was this change more visible than in Greenwich Village, where Corie first takes her shoes off and walks barefoot through Washington Square Park. “The Village” has been known throughout the 20th century as the heartland of Bohemianism, and whose impact uploads/Geographie/ barefoot-play-guide.pdf