Recipient of the
2012 American Theatre Wing
National Theatre Company Award

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Press

The Man in the Mirror
The Rogue gives us a theatrical version of Wilde’s Dorian Gray

Review of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Sherilyn Forrester in the July 23 Tucson Weekly

Dorian Gray faithful to Wilde’s story, wit, language

Review of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Kathleen Allen in the July 23 Arizona Daily Star

Sin gets ugly in Dorian Gray

Review of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Chuck Graham on July 18 in Let The Show Begin! at TucsonStage.com

At The Rogue: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Preview of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Kathleen Allen in the July 16 Arizona Daily Star

Wilde Nights
Christopher Johnson gives us some good theater and exactly what we expect from one of our fave local actor/directors

Preview of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Sherilyn Forrester in the July 9 Tucson Weekly

Read others’ reviews of The Rogue Theatre, or write your own review on TripAdvisor!

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Direction

	Christopher Johnson (Direction/Adaptation) is an Artistic Associate and Ensemble Member of The Rogue Theatre. Directing credits include boom (Mac Award Nomination, Best Director), Cabaret (Mac Award Nomination, Best Musical, Best Director), The Year Of Magical Thinking, The Altruists and Speech & Debate for Winding Road Theater Ensemble; Hedwig and The Angry Inch (Mac Award Nomination, Best Musical) for The Bastard (Theatre); Wit, Persephone Or Slow Time, The Book Of Liz, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, Say You Love Satan, Robots Vs. Fake Robots (Mac Award Nomination, Best Director), Killer Joe (Mac Award Nomination, Best Director), The Rocky Horror Show (Mac Award Nomination, Best Musical, Best Director), Danny And The Deep Blue Sea, The Importance Of Being Earnest, The Penis Monologues, Savage In Limbo, Bug, Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night's Dream for Etcetera at Live Theatre Workshop where he served as Artistic Director from 2007-2012. He has appeared at The Rogue in The Merchant of Venice, Jerusalem, Purgatorio, Richard III, Mother Courage and her Children, The Night Heron, Journey to the West, The Winter’s Tale and As I Lay Dying.

Notes from the Director

Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, could very easily be shelved as one of countless retellings of an age-old morality tale regarding the desire to live forever and the search for eternal youth. Early on in the rehearsal process, however, we found ourselves steeped in a morality tale about morality tales. Do we take art too seriously or not seriously enough, when interpreting the meaning of a given play, novel, painting or piece of music? Wilde tells us from the outset that no matter the result or on which side of the argument we fall, the responsibility belongs solely to the spectator, not the artist. What meaning or lesson we as an audience perceive in the work is ultimately our own subconscious revelation about ourselves, the art itself merely providing the key to the lock of our own deep-held beliefs and fears. What Dorian Gray sees in his own portrait certainly sends him down a tragic path. Whether Dorian takes the aforementioned art and its meaning too seriously or not seriously enough is, I think, a quintessentially Wildean question in that it undoubtedly has multiple (and likely contrary) truths behind it. This adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray contains text from the novel that was censored by his publisher without Wilde’s permission or knowledge prior to the book’s release in 1891. That censored material, specifically regarding the nature of Basil Hallward’s feelings for Dorian Gray and consisting of a heartfelt confession from the former, was not published until 2011. Censorship was not enough to keep The Picture of Dorian Gray from scandalizing the British public upon release into society, and the novel went on to be featured prominently as evidence against Wilde in court when he was sued for gross indecency (committing homosexual acts in private) in 1895. Oscar Wilde dedicated his life not only to his work as an artist but to his identity as one. The content of that work and the conviction of that identity sealed Wilde’s fate in the end, but paved the way for a rising artistic subculture of homosexuality that historians now recognize as instrumental in the shifting of humanity’s attitudes toward and acceptance of “the love that dare not speak its name,” a phrase coined by Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas and again, sadly, used against Wilde at trial. Each one of us has a portrait in the attic bearing our own face and draped in an ever expanding lifetime of sin and glory, victory and regret –– but we can only know the truth of that portrait in our own hearts, see the surface of it behind our own eyes. As Lord Henry affectionately illustrates to Dorian with “Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets,” the truth is not that everybody’s a critic, but that everybody’s an artist. I am thankful we all have such a haven as The Rogue Theatre to assemble, to know ourselves and each other better, to exercise and expand our craft and creativity both on stage and in the audience. I hope you enjoy the show, and whatever you may see in or learn from it, let’s share the blame… —Christopher Johnson, Director director@theroguetheatre.org

About the Author

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) was an Irish author, playwright and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, his plays, as well as the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death. Wilde's parents were successful Anglo-Irish Dublin intellectuals. At university, Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Trinity College in Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde moved to London as a spokesman for aestheticism, trying his hand at various literary activities: he published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art,” and then returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde became one of the best-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity, and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris but it was refused a license for production in England due to the absolute prohibition of Biblical subjects on the English stage. Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London. At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry prosecuted for libel. The Marquess was the father of Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas. The trial unearthed and utilized evidence, including passages of text from The Picture of Dorian Gray, that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labor. Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. He died destitute in Paris of cerebral meningitis at the age of 46.

 

About the Adaptation

The stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Grayis adapted from a combination of three editions of the novel that exist: the 13-chapter version that appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890, the expanded 20-chapter version Wilde published as a novel in 1891, and finally The Uncensored Edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray released by Harvard Press in 2011—in which the text originally found “objectionable” and “unclean” by Wilde’s publishers has been restored based on the original typescripts. The Picture of Dorian Gray is Wilde’s greatest testament to aestheticism and his most significant contribution to the movement, widely considered among the great literary masterpieces of the late Victorian period. More than any of his plays, Dorian Gray fully encapsulates Wilde’s philosophy on art. In his own time, the words, ideas and story of Dorian Gray could never have been presented on stage. We hope to celebrate Wilde’s wit and wisdom, as well as illuminate how far society has (and has not) come since The Picture of Dorian Gray was written, by finally bringing Wilde’s greatest work into Wilde’s most famous arena—the theatre.

 

Ryan Parker Knox and Dani Dryer

Matt Bowdren, Dani Dryer, and Joseph McGrath

Photos by Tim Fuller

 

Cast
James Vane		Matt Bowdren*
Dorian Gray		Dani Dryer
Alan Campbell		Ryan Parker Knox*
Lord Henry Wotton		Joseph McGrath*
Sibyl Vane		Dylan Page
Basil Hallward		Evan Werner
*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States

 

	Matt Bowdren (James Vane) has appeared at The Rogue in The Merchant of Venice, Waiting for Godot, Awake and Sing, Betrayal, Arcadia, Measure for Measure, Mistake of the Goddess, after the quake (2013 Mac Award for Best Actor), Richard III, Metamorphosis, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Night Heron, Journey to the West, As I Lay Dying, Major Barbara, The Real Inspector Hound, New-Found-Land, The Four of Us, Six Characters in Search of an Author and The Goat. Other Arizona credits include The Pillowman with The Now Theatre and Romeo and Juliet with Southwest Shakespeare. Matt has worked regionally in Georgia and New York City performing with The Rose of Athens, Hudson Shakespeare Company, and Collaborative Stages. Matt holds an M.F.A. in Performance from the University of Georgia, and recently completed a Post Graduate Fellowship in Acting at the University of Arizona where he played Iago in the Arizona Repertory Theatre production of Othello.
Dani Dryer (Dorian Gray) has performed locally with Winding Road Theater Ensemble, The Bastard (Theatre), Arizona Onstage Productions and Etcetera at Live Theatre Workshop. Acting credits include boom (Mac Award Nomination, Best Actress), Cabaret (Mac Award Nomination, Best Actress), The Altruists, Hedwig And The Angry Inch (Mac Award Nomination, Best Actress–2013 & 2009), Psycho Beach Party, Steel Magnolias, Dying City, United, Persephone Or Slow Time, Robots Vs. Fake Robots, The Eating Disorder Talent Show, Mr. Marmalade, The Rocky Horror Show, The Importance of Being Earnest, Danny And The Deep Blue Sea, Kitty Kitty Kitty, Savage In Limbo, Bug, Romeo & Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Dani has previously appeared at The Rogue in Mother Courage and her Children and Journey to the West. Dani Dryer’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from an anonymous donor.
	Ryan Parker Knox (Alan Campbell)   The Rogue’s 10th Anniversary Season marks Ryan’s third as a member of the Resident Acting Company, having previously appeared in Journey to the West, The Night Heron, Mother Courage and Her Children, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Richard III, Mistake of the Goddess (Hayavadana), Measure for Measure, Arcadia (2014 Mac Award for Best Actor), Betrayal, Dante’s Purgatorio, Awake and Sing, Jerusalem, The Lady in the Looking Glass, and most recently in The Merchant of Venice. "RPK" is a native South Dakotan, but spent nearly eleven years in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area working for various theatres, including Gremlin Theatre, Children’s Theatre Company, Park Square Theatre, and Paul Bunyan Playhouse to name a few. But Ryan is pleased to now call Tucson home thanks to the fiercely intelligent Rogue audiences and his superb fellow ensemble members, a loyal day job that works with his Rogue schedule, and his lovely lady Shayna. Finally, Ryan would like to dedicate this and every performance in the 2015–16 season to the memory of Lillian Fisher. Ryan Parker Knox’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Ed & Nancy Landes.
Joseph McGrath (Lord Henry Wotton) is Co-Founder and Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre and has appeared in The Merchant of Venice, Waiting for Godot, Jerusalem, Awake and Sing, Arcadia, Measure for Measure, Richard III, The Night Heron, Journey to the West, The Winter’s Tale, The New Electric Ballroom, Shipwrecked!, Major Barbara, New-Found-Land, Old Times, The Tempest, Ghosts, Naga Mandala, Othello, Krapp’s Last Tape, A Delicate Balance (2009 Mac Award for Best Actor), Animal Farm, Orlando, Happy Days, Six Characters in Search of an Author, Red Noses, The Goat, The Cherry Orchard, The Good Woman of Setzuan, Endymion, The Dead, and The Fever. Joe is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama and has toured with John Houseman’s Acting Company. He has performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival and has been a frequent performer with Ballet Tucson appearing in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and for seventeen years as Herr Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker. He has also performed with Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera, and Arizona Onstage. Joe owns, with his wife Regina Gagliano, Sonora Theatre Works, which produces theatrical scenery and draperies.
	Dylan Page (Sibyl Vane) has performed with The Rogue Theatre as Elizabeth of York in Richard III, Kattrin in Mother Courage and Her Children, Mopsa in The Winter’s Tale, Dewey Dell in As I Lay Dying, Jenny Hill in Major Barbara and Felicity Cunningham in The Real Inspector Hound. Her other recent credits include Flaminia in Commedia dell’Arte Day with the Illegitimate Theatre Ensemble, Janice in Member of the Wedding (Arizona Onstage Productions), and Evelyn in The Shape of Things (Arizona Repertory Theatre).
Evan Werner (Basil Hallward) studied theatre at Depaul University and Pima Community College. In his fifteen years of theatre work, he served as Directing Producer for Purple Summer Productions in Bay City, MI, as well as spending three seasons in a variety of roles at The VanBuren Theatre and one season as a member of Winding Road Theater Ensemble. Notable acting credits include Jules in boom, (Mac Award Nomination, Best Actor) Ronald in The Altruists (AZ Daily Star Mac Award Nomination, Best Actor), Howie in Speech & Debate, The Man in Joan Is Burning, Haemon in Antigone, Christopher Belling in Curtains, Seductra in Head: The Musical, Sir Oakley in Anything Goes, Algernon in The Importance Of Being Earnest, Beane in Love Song, Jeff in I Love You Because, Clifford in Deathtrap, Amos in Chicago, Hal in Proof and multiple local appearances with Stories That Soar! The Picture of Dorian Gray marks Evan’s first appearance at The Rogue. Evan Werner’s performance is supported in part by a generous gift from Konnie & Jack Werner.

 

Music
Piano		Anton Faynberg

 

	Anton Faynberg (Music Director) is a Russian-American pianist. His artistic aim is to present traditional and non-traditional music in a personal and relatable manner. As a conduit for the creative process, Faynberg filters impressions through a highly individualized imaginative system in an attempt to make the familiar unfamiliar, and vice versa. Graduated from Oberlin Conservatory, and completing doctoral work at the University of Arizona, Faynberg’s musical roots are steeped in the Russian pianistic tradition, and colored by a postmodernist aesthetic and a metaphysical preoccupation.

Music Director’s Notes

The gothic style has never gone out of fashion because it is beautiful and tragic, and nothing is more engaging than beautiful tragedy. The gothic atmosphere pervades Dorian Gray, and the music embellishes the affect. All but two of the selections are in minor, and even the major ones sound anxious. The underlying musical theme is appropriated from Franz Liszt’s Nuages Gris (Gray Clouds) from 1881. Written in the last five years of his life, Nuages Gris is composed of experimental harmonies shifting slowly within a loose formal structure. The other musical selections are arrangements of works by Chopin and Brahms. The Preludes from 1839, are two or three minute miracles with a single mood. Brahms contributed the Klavierstücke (op. 119, 1893): multi-sectional works, from which a phrase or two was extracted and manipulated. These manipulations do not modify the text, but are presented out of their familiar context in order to acquire new meanings. All the selections are both self-contained and interactive with the scenes: both active and passive. Pre-show music consists of alternating structured improvisations based on Liszt’s Nuages Gris and other themes by Liszt, Chopin, and Brahms. —Anton Faynberg, Music Director

Dani Dryer, Joseph McGrath and Evan Werner

Evan Werner and Ryan Parker Knox

Photos by Tim Fuller

 

Designers
Costume Design		Cynthia Meier
Scenic Design		Christopher Johnson
Lighting Design		Deanna Fitzgerald*
Production Staff
Stage Manager		Shannon Wallace
Set Construction		Christopher Johnson & Joseph McGrath
Costume Construction		Cynthia Meier
Assistant Lighting Designer		Shannon Wallace
Master Electrician		Peter Bleasby
Lighting Crew		Gregory Houston & Brie Gonzales
House Manager		Susan Collinet
Assistant House Manager		Leigh Moyer
Box Office Manager		Thomas Wentzel
Box Office Assistants		Kara Clauser, Holly Griffith & Rebekah Thimlar
Program Advertising		Paul Winick
Poster, Program & Website		Thomas Wentzel
*Represented by United Scenic Artists Local USA 829 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees

 

	Cynthia Meier (Costume Design) learned to sew in seventh grade. She worked her way through college as a costume assistant at Eastern Michigan University, and then became a faculty member teaching design and construction courses after completing her M.A. in Speech and Theatre. As well as serving as Managing and Associate Artistic Director, she has designed costumes for all 46 productions over the past ten years at The Rogue.
Deanna Fitzgerald (Lighting Design) is a Lighting Designer and member of United Scenic Artists Local 829, as well as an associate professor and resident lighting designer at the University of Arizona. Deanna is particularly interested in material that is without spoken word, as well as the relationship between contemplative practices and creativity, and its impact on the human experience.  Recent designs include the lighting designs of Waiting for Godot and Jerusalem at The Rogue Theatre, Cirque Mechanics: Boom Town, which toured for 2 years with an off-Broadway appearance at The New Victory Theatre, and the North American tour of Erth’s Dinosaur Zoo. She designed the lighting for the world premiere STOMP OUT LOUD, the Las Vegas version of the internationally acclaimed STOMP. Other career highlights include 6 years as the Lighting Director on the International Tour of STOMP; Production Director of the Opera Theater Music Festival in Lucca, Italy; Lighting Supervisor/Assistant Lighting Designer at the Santa Fe Opera; Lighting and Tour Consultant for the Original Broadway Cast tours of the Greater Tuna trilogy. Deanna welcomes you to experience more of her work at www.deannafitzgerald.com.
	Shannon Wallace (Stage Manager) is thrilled to be working her first show with The Rogue Theatre. Her previous stage management credits are with Arizona Repertory Theatre at the University of Arizona and include: Bat Boy: The Musical, Avenue Q, Love Song, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Oklahoma!, and Othello. She has also worked with Arizona Theatre Company on their Summer on Stage program, stage managing Elephant’s Graveyard and acting as assistant stage manager for Legally Blonde: The Musical. Last summer she had the opportunity to work as a company and events management intern with the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.
Peter Bleasby (Master Electrician) lit his first show at 13, using near-lethal home-made equipment.  Professionally, he was with BBC-TV for several years, and then was an assistant to UK lighting designer Richard Pilbrow, including the inaugural production at the National Theatre in London (Hamlet, directed by Olivier). He later transferred to the general lighting industry, handling projects ranging from major sports stadia to cathedrals, but maintained his theatre interests by lighting innumerable shows on both sides of the Atlantic.  When the Rogue established itself at The Historic Y in 2009, he volunteered for the initial lighting “hang,” returning in 2013 to work with lighting designer Don Fox and later with Deanna Fitzgerald.  For the 2014-15 season, he planned and supervised the installation of an extensive permanent wiring system that enables the lighting crews to devote more time to the creative process.  In Tucson, he also directs the technical and logistical aspects of Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation fundraisers, including the fashion show Moda Provocateur.
	Susan Collinet (House Manager) earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Arizona in 2008. Decades before returning to college as a non-traditional student, Susan spent twenty years in amateur theater, mostly on the East coast, as well as in Brussels, Belgium in the American Theater of Brussels, and the Theatre de Chenois in Waterloo. She has worked in such positions as a volunteer bi-lingual guide in the Children’s Museum of Brussels, the Bursar of a Naturopathic Medical school in Tempe, Arizona, an entrepreneur with two “Susan’s of Scottsdale” hotel gift shops in Scottsdale, Arizona, and as the volunteer assistant Director of Development of the Arizona Aids Project in Phoenix. Susan continues to work on collections of poetry and non-fiction. Her writing has won awards from Sandscript Magazine, the John Hearst Poetry Contest, the Salem College for Women’s Center for Writing, and was published in a Norton Anthology of Student’s Writing. In addition to being House Manager, Susan serves on the Board of Directors and acts as Volunteer Coordinator for the Rogue.

Our Thanks
Tim Fuller		Tucson Weekly
Chuck Graham		Jesse Greenberg
Arizona Daily Star		Shawn Burke
Al Freitchen		Kara Dryer
Our Advertisers

 

Dani Dryer, Dylan Page, Matt Bowdren and Joseph McGrath

Dani Dryer and Joseph McGrath

Photos by Tim Fuller

 

 

Performance Schedule for The Picture of Dorian Gray

Location: The Rogue Theatre at The Historic Y, 300 East University Boulevard
Click here for information on free off-street parking

Performance run time is two hours, including one ten-minute intermission, and not including music preshow or post-show discussion.

Thursday, July 16, 2015, 7:30 pm DISCOUNT PREVIEW SOLD OUT
Friday, July 17, 2015, 7:30 pm OPENING NIGHT
Saturday, July 18, 2015, 7:30 pm SOLD OUT
Sunday, July 19, 2015, 2:00 pm matinee SOLD OUT

Thursday, July 23, 2015, 7:30 pm
Friday, July 24, 2015, 7:30 pm
Saturday, July 25, 2015, 2:00 pm matinee
Saturday, July 25, 2015, 7:30 pm SOLD OUT
Sunday, July 26, 2015, 2:00 pm matinee SOLD OUT

 

Dylan Page as Sibyl Vane and Dani Dryer as Dorian Gray

Dani Dryer as Dorian Gray and Joseph McGrath as Lord Henry Wotton

Dylan Page as Sibyl Vane, Dani Dryer as Dorian Gray and Joseph McGrath as Lord Henry Wotton

Photos by Tim Fuller