Year in Review: PlayMakers in 2014

Here's a look back at some of our favorite PlayMakers memories from 2014.
(in no particular order)

1. Lisa Brescia's spirited ‘Last Midnight’ as The Witch in Into the Woods

Read more: “Becoming the Witch in Into the Woods“; Lisa Brescia, photo by Jon Gardiner

2. Roger Guenveur Smith in Rodney King, sparking community conversation during PRC² in the wake of the events in Ferguson, Missouri

Roger Guenveur Smith in Rodney King at PlayMakers

3. The elegant 1930s Café Society Supper Club set for Private Lives

Kristen Mengelkoch, Tom Coiner, Jeffrey Blair Cornell and Julie Fishell; photo Jon Gardiner

4. Ray Dooley’s Puck and Julie Fishell’s Nick Bottom as we’ve never seen them before in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Read more: A Conversation with A Midsummer Night's Dream's Ray Dooley and Zachary Fine; photo by Jon Gardiner

Julie Fishell and Ray Dooley; photo by Jon Gardiner

5. Crazy, carefree, sometimes ‘clothes-free’ Spike in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Read more: “Christian Daly makes his PlayMakers debut”; Christian Daly as Spike, photo by Curtis Brown

6. The beautiful healing and hope of Love Alone

Patrick McHugh and Jenny Wales. Photo by Jon Gardiner.

7. Associate Artistic Director Jeff Meanza trips the light fantastic in Assassins (and again as The Baker in Into the Woods!)

Jeffery Meanza; Photo by Jon Gardiner.

8. Joel de la Fuenta’s mesmerizing performance as Gordon Hirabayashi in Hold These Truths

Read more: “Meet Joel de la Fuente”; Joel de la Fuente, photo by Lia Chang

9. Mike Daisey explores America’s national obsession with guns in our commission and world premiere of The Story of the Gun

Mike Daisey, photo by Ursa Waz

10. The Summer Youth Conservatory’s Madison-dancing cast of Hairspray raises the roof of the Paul Green Theatre

"PlayMakers Summer Youth Conservatory presents: HAIRSPRAY"

And a 10 plus 1 we’ll never forget…

11. Adorable bovine Milky White stealing our hearts in Into the Woods!

Read more: “Working with Puppets” by Donovan Zimmerman, Puppeteer, Into the Woods

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine

By Gregory Kable, dramaturg, Into the Woods





Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine working on Into the Woods.


One of the most indispensable and influential artists in the contemporary theatre, Stephen Sondheim was born in New York City in 1930. Following his early mentorship by Oscar Hammerstein II, Sondheim attended Williams College in Massachusetts and studied with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt. Entering his professional career, Sondheim wrote the lyrics for the Broadway musicals West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), and Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) as well as contributing to Candide (1973). In addition to Into the Woods, his works as composer-lyricist include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), The Frogs (1974, revised 2004), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Assassins (1990, expanded 1992), Passion (1994), and Road Show (2008). Sondheim’s numerous honors range from eight Tony Awards, including Best Score for Into the Woods, a 2008 Special Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, eight Grammys, and the Academy Award for Best Song for Dick Tracy (1990). He was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1983, a Kennedy Center Honoree for Lifetime Achievement in the Performing Arts a decade later, and awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996. Along with James Lapine, Sondheim received the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George, one of only eight musicals in Pulitzer history to earn that recognition. In commemoration of his eightieth birthday in 2010, Broadway’s former Henry Miller’s Theatre was renamed for Stephen Sondheim.


James Lapine was born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1949. He attended Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. While teaching advertising design at the Yale School of Drama, Lapine directed a production of Gertrude Stein’s Photograph which transferred to New York, winning him an Obie award. Lapine subsequently wrote and directed Table Settings (1980), Twelve Dreams (1985, revived 1995), and his stage adaptation of playwright Moss Hart’s autobiography Act One for the Lincoln Center Theatre (2014). On Broadway, Lapine has written the book for and directed Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods (1987, and its 2002 revival), Passion, the 2010 revue Sondheim on Sondheim, and directed a concert version of Merrily We Roll Along at New York City Center (2012). Lapine collaborated with composer-lyricist William Finn on the landmark March of the Falsettos (1982) and its sequel Falsettoland (1990) later combined on Broadway as Falsettos (1992), Finn’s A New Brain (1998), and Little Miss Sunshine (2013). Additional directing credits range from the 1997 revival of The Diary of Anne Frank and David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child (1998) to William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (2005) and the 35th anniversary production of Annie (2012). Lapine co-produced and directed the Emmy nominated HBO documentary Six by Sondheim (2013), and wrote the screenplay for the upcoming film version of Disney’s Into the Woods. He has been nominated for twelve Tony Awards winning on three occasions, including two for Into the Woods, has received five Drama Desk Awards, the Peabody Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 2011, Lapine was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.


Come see Into the Woods and A Midsummer Night's Dream at PlayMakers November 1 - December 7. For tickets, call 919.962.PLAY (7529) or visit our website.

Introducing the Assassins: John W. Hinckley, Jr.

“Jodie, I am asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me a chance with this historic deed to gain your respect and love.”

John W. Hinckley, Jr.

John W. Hinckley, Jr. The son of a wealthy oil company executive, Hinckley was born in 1955 in Ardmore, Oklahoma and raised near Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas. By college he had become an indifferent and reclusive student, dreaming of a musical career like his early idol John Lennon. Hinckley’s later obsession with Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver drove him to a real-life stalking of the actress Jodie Foster. Desperate for her attention, he attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan before an AFL-CIO event at the Washington Hilton Hotel in DC on March 30, 1981, frantically emptying all six shots from his revolver while being tackled by Secret Service agents. Reagan recovered from a dangerous gunshot wound a mere inch from his heart, but the attack permanently disabled press secretary Jim Brady, in whose name Congress enacted gun control legislation bearing the name the Brady Law. On the strength of a hotly contested insanity defense, Hinckley was committed to a Washington psychiatric hospital, where he remains to the present day.

With guitar in hand, Brandon Garegnani strums his way into the character of John W. Hinckley, Jr. The curtain has almost fallen on Assassins, buy your tickets today!

Introducing the Assassins: Samuel Byck

“Nobody listens.”

Samuel Byck

Samuel Byck was born in Philadelphia in 1930. A high school dropout, Byck married, had four children and embarked on a series of unsuccessful careers ranging from the U.S. Army to tire sales. Byck’s frequent bouts with depression led to his divorce. Undergoing psychiatric treatment, Byck blamed his misfortunes on a government conspiracy against the working class. He attracted the attention of the Secret Service due to his denunciations of President Richard Nixon and was arrested picketing the White House dressed as Santa Claus in December 1973. He began writing rambling letters to public officials including journalist Jack Anderson, composer Leonard Bernstein, and Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff. In February 1974, Byck attempted to hijack a 747 jetliner from The Baltimore-Washington International Airport, with the intention of flying it into the White House to assassinate Nixon. He recorded a series of cassette tape commentaries as he drove to the airport on February 22. Having commandeered a plane on the runway, Byck became overwrought at perceived delays, and shot both the pilot and co-pilot in the cockpit before being wounded by law enforcement snipers. Realizing his plan had failed, Byck took his own life before federal agents could storm the plane. He was forty-four years old.

Jeffrey Blair Cornel

Jeffrey Blair Cornell makes a wild departure from his last role at PlayMakers, switching from the suave dilettante Elyot in Private Lives to the deluded conspircy theorist Samuel Byck in Assassins. The show ends Sunday, so don't miss out! 

Introducing the Assassins: Lee Harvey Oswald

“Oh, to be torn twixt love and duty”

Lee Harvey Oswald

Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans in 1939. Raised by a widowed mother, Oswald grew disaffected with American life and by his teens considered himself a socialist. Court-marshaled out of the Marines, he defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, where he met and married Marina Nikolaevna. The couple defected back to the United States, settling in Texas, where Oswald’s estranged mother lived in Fort Worth, Lee finding employment at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Depository on November 22, 1963, wounding Texas Governor John Connally, as well, as the two rode with their wives in the controversial choice of an open limousine through downtown’s Dealey Plaza. During a prison transfer two days later, Oswald himself was shot to death by vigilante nightclub-owner Jack Ruby. In the midst of a host of conspiracy theories, a government appointed Warren Commission found Oswald solely responsible for the crime. Oswald’s wife recalled both her husband’s desperation at the threat of their divorce, and his lionizing of the movie sheriff Will Cain in the classic Hollywood Western High Noon, remembering hearing that film’s title song playing repeatedly as Oswald composed his diary, including the lyrics: “Oh, to be torn twixt love and duty / Sposin’ I lose my fair-haired beauty / I’m not afraid of death but, oh / What will I do if you leave me?“. Oswald was twenty-four at the time of his death.

Patrick McHugh has been having a busy season at PlayMakers. He has performed in Love Alone, Metamorphoses, and The Tempest. Don't miss him as Lee Harvey Oswald in Assassins.

Introducing the Assassins: Sara Jane Moore

“If I had had my .44 with me, I would have caught him.”

Sara Jane Moore

Sara Jane Moore conducted another attempt on Ford’s life three weeks later in San Francisco. Born in Charleston, West Virginia to two classical violinists in 1930, Moore was a precocious and accomplished child. She would have five husbands and four children by her mid-forties, and a succession of careers including medicine, a tenure with the Women’s Army Corps, and bookkeeping. By the late-Sixties, Moore become deeply involved in San Francisco’s student revolutionary movement, being pressured into serving as an informant for the FBI, and developing a fascination with the heiress Patty Hearst, who in 1974 was kidnapped by and became a member of the militant Symbionese Liberation Army. Exposed as a spy, Moore sought to amend her relations with the radical left by killing Ford. On September 20, Ford was expected to give a television interview at the St. Francis Hotel. Waiting at the wrong exit, Moore had to shoot from a greater distance than anticipated and missed the President by a considerable distance. She was subdued by a Marine veteran who deflected her aim and wrestled her to the ground. “I’m no Squeaky Fromme”, Moore insisted at her trial, but she was likewise sentenced to life imprisonment and subsequently attempted an escape in 1979, being captured within four hours. Like Fromme, she received added time to her sentence and a monetary fine. In 2007, the age of seventy seven, she was paroled after thirty-two years of her sentence.

PlayMakers favorite Julie Fishell is taking on the role of assassin Sara Jane Moore. Catch her in action before it is too late! To purchase tickets, visit the PlayMakers website, or call (919) 962-PLAY (7529). 

Introducing the Assassins: Giuseppe Zangara

“I salute all the poor of the world."

Giuseppe Zangara was born in Calabria, Italy in 1900. Following his mother’s death, his father emigrated with the family to Philadelphia. Zangara suffered from a mysterious stomach malady which caused him extreme discomfort throughout his life; as desperate a measure as an appendectomy failed to relieve his condition. Scraping a living as a manual laborer, Zangara became a naturalized citizen in 1929. Frustrated with his adopted homeland, Zangara attempted to assassinate President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt at Miami’s Bayfront Park on February 15, 1933. Impaired by the festive fairground crowd, Zangara missed his target but fatally wounded Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who was in attendance largely as Democratic Party penance for challenging some of Roosevelt’s policies. Demonized as a madman, Zangara was sentenced to death by electrocution, defiant to the end of a capitalist system he felt had robbed both him and many like him of their opportunities and happiness. The five weeks between Cermak’s death and Zangara’s execution would be the briefest capital sentencing outcome of the Twentieth Century.

Joseph Medeiros is playing Guiseppe Zangara in Assassins, thru April 20. Make sure to catch Joseph in his PlayMakers debut!