Ellen Barry* (Ida Sage/Moma) has played over 100 classical and contemporary roles in NYC and at regional theatres including the WorkShop, Century Center and White Horse (NYC), McCarter (NJ), New Century (MA), Syracuse Stage (NY), Boarshead (MI), and St. Michael’s (VT). The Detroit Free Press named her Best Leading Actress for Vivian Bearing in Wit and for Ella in Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman she received an OOBR Award. Among her favorite roles have been Williams’ Maggie, Blanche, Stella and Hannah, Shakespeare’s Hermione, Constance and Juliet; Martha in Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf; Meg and Lorraine in Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, and Katherine in McNally’s A Perfect Ganesh. Her one-woman shows, Lizzie Borden at 8 O’Clock and The Infinite Variety of Shakespeare’s Women have been seen throughout the tri-state area. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has also served as stage manager, Board Chair, development/marketing consultant and script reader for Broadway, Off-Broadway, stock and LORT productions. Ellen and her late husband, Paul Barry, founded the NJ Shakespeare Festival (now Shakespeare Theatre of NJ). During their tenure, nearly 200 plays were presented, including all 38 in the Shakespeare canon and works by other authors ranging from Sophocles to Stoppard.
Jes Bedwinek (Jean Mooney) is thrilled to be back at Ivoryton Playhouse, where she was last seen as Brook in Love Quest! She’s an NYC based actor/comedian and a company member of Accomplice! The Show, an improvised, immersive comedy. NYC: Mary Jane’s Pa (New Perspectives’ On Her Shoulders Festival), A Footnote in History (Anecdota at The New Ohio Theater), The Nocturnist (The Habitat), NYIT Award Nominated Asylum by New Dance Theater (Access Theater Artist in Residence), Gruesome Playground Injuries (Times Square Arts Center). Regional: The Long Weekend and The Great Kooshog Lake Hollis McCaullie Fishing Derby (The Lake Theater), Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labour’s Lost (Boston Commonwealth Shakespeare Co), Twelfth Night (Oberlin Summer Theatre Fest), Spring Awakening (Promethean Theatre of Chicago). Alum of Second City and The Moscow Art Theatre at A.R.T. TV/Film: “A Mother’s Will” (post-prod), “Parental Pride”, “Homeland” (Showtime) and “The Deuce” (HBO). MFA from The New School for Drama. www.jesbedwinek.com.
Bonnie Black* (Ophelia Barnett/Fifi) is delighted to return to Ivoryton Playhouse where she previously appeared as Jeanette Fisher in Last of the Red Hot Lovers. NYC credits include : HB Playwrights Foundation, CAP21, Pan Asian Rep, NY International Fringe Festival, Theatre for the New City, ELT. Regional: The Old Globe, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Connecticut Rep, Merrimack Rep, Capital Rep, residency with Adrian Hall’s Trinity Rep and company memberships with the Alley Theatre and Great Lakes Theatre Festival, among others. Recently, Bonnie played the title role in Driving Miss Daisy at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse and worked on the development of the new plays Strings with Pulse Ensemble Theatre and Citizen Wong with Pan Asian. Television includes: FB, Mr. Robot, Law & Order, L&O: Criminal Intent, recurring on Loving, and several soaps.
Anna Fagan (Rose Jackson) is excited to return to Ivoryton Playhouse where she previously appeared in last season’s production of The Hundred Dresses. Recent credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Maggie), Proof (Catherine), Phantom (Christine), Amadeus (Constanze), and Crimes of the Heart (Lenny). Anna is a graduate of The Theatre Lab Honors Acting Conservatory in Washington, DC. www.annafagan.com
Bethany Fitzgerald* (Kathy Two Boggs) is thrilled to be back at Ivoryton in the world premiere of The Queens of the Golden Mask. Regional Credits ~ Long Wharf Theatre: The Happy Prince (The Child). Ivoryton Playhouse: Shout! The Mod Musical (Red Girl), Hairspray (Amber Von Tussle), Cuckoo’s Nest (Candy Starr). Playhouse on Park: Chicago (Roxie Hart), Play It Again, Sam (Multiple Women). This past September, she played Emma Small in the musical, Johnny Guitar at Majestic Theater, in West Springfield, MA. A very special thank you to Jacqui, Carole Lockwood, Liz, the Ivoryton team, and our incomparable cast and crew! ‘Enjoy the show!’
Gerrianne Genga* (Faith Carlyle) is so thrilled to be making her Ivoryton Playhouse debut! Favorite Credits Include: 42nd Street (National Tour – Maggie Jones), Hairspray (Velma Von Tussle), Lend Me a Tenor (Maria Morelli), 42nd Street (Dorothy Brock). Thank you Jacqui Hubbard and thank you to Bob Miller, Todd Eskin and my great team at ATB Talent! All the love to Rick, Jordan, Jade, my family and friends. www.GerrianneGenga.com
Sarah Jo Provost* (Martha Nell Sage) is a graduate of Florida State University’s BFA Acting program. She has worked with theaters across the country including the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival and Sierra Repertory Theatre. She was seen most recently as the title role in HEDDA at NYC’s Theatre for the New City. Previous credits include Ariel in The Tempest, Nina in The Seagull, Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew, and Philomele in The Love of the Nightingale. She can be seen as Ruth in the upcoming VR series Delusion: Lies Within from Skybound Entertainment. A Connecticut native, she is thrilled to be making her Ivoryton debut! Love and thanks to her family for their support. Proud member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. www.sarahjoprovost.com
MEET THE PLAYWRIGHT:
Carole Lockwood (Playwright) has been consistently active in the professional theater since her college days at Purdue University under the mentorship of Dr. Joe Stockdale. She has played in over 68 professional productions, winning Chicago’s prestigious Joseph Jefferson Best Actress Award for her performance in Ashes opposite John Malkovich at David Mamet’s St. Nicholas Theater.
It was Mr. Mamet himself who first challenged her to write. The Queens of the Golden Mask has been staged as a reading by Dayton’s FutureFest, Long Beach Playhouse in California, the HRC Showcase Theater in Hudson, New York, as well as by Urban Stages and The New Professional Theater in NYC.
Carole has written 8 plays, including Civil Rights themed The Mary Band Road Show, The Girls’ of Red Tears, and The Running Stitch (which deals with The Underground Railroad in 1848).
Her work has been endorsed by The National Council of Churches, former Ambassador Andrew Young, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dr. Loretta Williams of the Gustav Myerson Institute for Civil Liberties in Boston and Dr. Dorothy Cotton (the only woman in Dr. King’s inner circle), to name just a few.
Carole is delighted to have the World Premiere of Queens at Ivoryton Playhouse and expresses a sincere thank you to Artistic Director, Jacqui Hubbard, for her vision and courage. Also, she wishes to thank long ago pal, Laura Copland, who took the time to actually read a new script and enthusiastically pass it on. Such is not often the case. Thank you to husband, Frank Rubury, for always keeping the faith.
It was Civil Rights hero, Petric Smith/Elizabeth Cobbs, who pulled aside the Cotton Curtain in Birmingham, sharing his family’s Klan history with her. In honor of him, The Queens of the Golden Mask is dedicated: for Pete’s sake.
Carole is a member of Actors Equity Association and The Dramatists Guild.
Director: Jacqueline Hubbard
Stage Manager: Andrea Wales*
Scenic Designer: Daniel Nischan
Lighting Designer: Marcus Abbott
Sound Designer: Tate R. Burmeister
Costume Designer: Elizabeth Saylor Cipollina
* member of Actors Equity
Directors Note
“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” – Hannah Arendt
What has always fascinated me – in literature, drama, film and in life – is the common ground. The shared human experiences. The births and deaths and messy days in between that we all live through, whether we run a nation or a small theatre. It is the rare human being that reaches the end of life without experiencing joy and hate, love and evil, war and peace and all the varieties and shades of grey that lie in between.
What attracted me to this play was, what Hannah Arendt called “The Banality of Evil”. The every day lives of these Southern women who bake and sew and raise families and look just like most of us – and belong to the Ku Klux Klan. We all know the horrors perpetrated by the Klan but Carole Lockwood’s fascinating play takes us behind scenes to remind us how easily we can be taken in by peer pressure, propaganda and the politics of fear and what a slippery slope that can be.
Jacqui Hubbard, Director Ivoryton Playhouse 2018
Check back here for photos and video clips!
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A brand new play for our time
The Queens of the Golden Mask
at the Ivoryton Playhouse
Ivoryton – It is summer, 1961, and in Celestial, Alabama, it’s hotter’n a blister bug in a pepper patch. It is especially steamy in the kitchen of the Sage household where the matriarch, Ida, has gathered her friends around her to meet the new girl in town. How will Rose from Ohio fit in with the ladies of Celestial who bake pies, sell Avon and belong to the Ku Klux Klan?
THE QUEENS OF THE GOLDEN MASK, a world premiere, opens at the Ivoryton Playhouse on October 31st and runs through November 18th, 2019. Carole Lockwood’s brand new play pulls aside the Cotton Curtain to reveal a hidden piece of history that tells a little known story and also raises a warning. The normalizing of hate is dangerous and toxic – not only to the objects of the hatred but eventually destroying those who are unwittingly caught up in its comfortable complacency.
The play is based on the experiences of Elizabeth H. Cobbs/Petric Smith who wrote the autobiographical Long Time Coming: An Insiders Story of the Birmingham Church Bombing that Rocked the World. Smith’s work provides more than an insider’s account of one of the most atrocious events of the civil rights era; it is also the personal journey of a woman inside the world of the most extreme opponents of racial justice. In the violent world of the Klan, women were subservient; men beat their wives with impunity in order to sustain white male supremacy. Most women were partners in the goal of maintaining white supremacy but there were many who, quietly and with great moral courage, put their lives on the line. This is their story.
Carole Lockwood is an actor and writer who has performed all over the country, on and off Broadway, but it was a challenge from David Mamet that prompted her to sit down and write a play. She has been writing ever since. Carole has written five plays; Basic Cable; The Lone Star Princess; and three scripts based in the civil rights movement, “the girls” of Red Tears (the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church), The Mary Band Road Show (the Selma-to-Montgomery March) and The Queens of the Golden Mask. Up on the Roof (rooftops after Hurricane Katrina) is currently in the works.
The cast includes Bonnie Black*, Bethany Fitzgerald*, Jes Bedwinek, and Anna Fagan who have all appeared at Ivoryton, and Ellen Barry*, Gerrianne Genga* and Sarah Jo Provost* who will be making their Ivoryton debut.
The production is directed by Jacqueline Hubbard, Ivoryton’s Artistic Director, with set design by Daniel Nischan, lighting design by Marcus Abbott and costume design by Elizabeth Saylor Cipollina.
THE QUEENS OF THE GOLDEN MASK opens at the Ivoryton Playhouse on October 31st and runs through November 18th, 2018. Performance times are Wednesday and Sunday matinees at 2pm. Evening performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30pm, Friday and Saturday at 8pm.
There will be a talk back with the cast and director plus guests after every performance on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
Tickets are $50 for adults; $45 for seniors; $22 for students and $17 for children and are available by calling the Playhouse box office at 860-767-7318 or by visiting our website at www.ivorytonplayhouse.org
(Group rates are available by calling the box office for information.) The Playhouse is located at 103 Main Street in Ivoryton.
Photos by Jonathan Steele.
Members of the press are welcome at any performance after November 1st, 2018
*denotes member of Actors Equity
Looking for something to do? Ivoryton Playhouse has been voted best place to see live theatre by readers of The Shoreline Times for three years in a row. Come to Essex and visit our historic, professional theatre – a Connecticut treasure!