Pittsburgh Public Theater’s education and outreach programs are
generously supported by BNY Mellon Foundation of Southwestern
Pennsylvania. Funding for Open Stage is provided by the Grable
Foundation, the Buhl Foundation, and Mike and Steffie Bozic.
Pittsburgh Public Theater
Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Contents
Plot Synopsis……………………………………………………………3
Characters……………………………………………………………….4
George Bernard Shaw………………………...………………....………5
A List of Major Plays by George Bernard Shaw……………………….7
Exploring Ideas and Themes in Candida……………………………….8
An Example of Shaw’s Stage Directions………………………………11
The Style and Imagination of George Bernard Shaw………….……...12
Quotes from Shaw……………………………………………….……..15
Shaw on Shaw………………………………………………………….16
Discussion Questions…………………………………………………..17
Meet the Director…………………………………….…..………….....18
Meet the Cast……………………………………………..……………19
Theater Etiquette…………………………………………....…………22
P.A. Academic Standards…………………………………...………….23
References...……………………………………………………………25
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Plot Synopsis
Candida is set in the north-east suburbs of London in the month of October, 1948.
Candida, the wife of the Reverend James Morell, a popular Christian Solialist in
the Church of England, returns home from a trip with Eugene Marchbanks, a
young poet. Marchbanks plans to woo Candida, and give her an exceptional life
unlike the one she currently lives. When faced with the dilemma of which man to
choose, Candida must make a choice between the man who has given her
everything, and the young man who desires to give her so much more.
Jayne Atkinson playing the title role in Candida at the Berkshire Theatre Festival (2008),
celebrating the revival of its American premiere in 1928.
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2013-2014 Season
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Characters
The Reverend James Mavor Morell - The forty year old husband of
Candida, Morell gives speeches on a multitude of topics and is hearty,
energetic, handsome and passionate.
Eugene Marchbanks - A young poet who has just turned 18 and fallen
in love with Candida.
Mr. Burgess – Candida’s father who is visiting for the day. A sixty
year old man with the tendency to be vulgar and offensive.
The Reverend Alexander Mill - A young gentleman from a university
who is learning from and modeling himself after Reverend Morell
Miss Proserpine Garnett – A thirty year old typist. She is as
opinionated as she is sensitive.
Candida Morell –Wife of Reverend Morell, Candida is a beautiful,
charming woman.
Candida at the Royal George Theatre, Shaw Festival (2011).
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) was born in Dublin, the son of a
civil servant. His education was irregular, due to his dislike of any
organized training. After working in an
estate agent's office he moved to London as a
young man (1876), where he established
himself as a leading music and theatre critic
in the eighties and nineties and became a
prominent member of the Fabian Society, for
which he composed many pamphlets. He
began his literary career as a novelist. As a
fervent advocate of the new theatre of Ibsen
(The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 1891), he
decided to write plays in order to illustrate
his criticism of the English stage. His
earliest dramas were called appropriately
Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898). Among these, Widower's Houses
and Mrs. Warren's Profession savagely attack social hypocrisy, while in
plays such as Arms and the Man and The Man of Destiny the criticism is
less fierce. Shaw's radical rationalism, his utter disregard of
conventions, his keen dialectic interest and verbal wit often turn the
stage into a forum of ideas, and nowhere more openly than in the
famous discourses on the Life Force, Don Juan in Hell, the third act of
the dramatization of woman's love chase of man, Man and Superman
(1903).
In the plays of his later period discussion sometimes drowns the drama.
Although in the same period he worked on his masterpiece Saint Joan
(1923), in which he rewrites the well-known story of the French
maiden and extends it from the Middle Ages to the present.
Other important plays by Shaw are Caesar and Cleopatra (1901), a
historical play filled with allusions to modern times, and Androcles and
the Lion (1912), in which he exercised a kind of retrospective history
and from modern movements drew deductions for the Christian era. In
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Major Barbara (1905), one of Shaw's most successful discussion plays,
the audience's attention is held by the power of the witty
argumentation that man can achieve aesthetic salvation only through
political activity, not as an individual. The Doctor's Dilemma (1906),
facetiously classified as a tragedy by Shaw, is really a comedy the
humour of which is directed at the medical profession. Candida (1898),
with social attitudes toward sex relations as objects of his satire, and
Pygmalion (1912), a witty study of phonetics as well as a clever
treatment of middle-class morality and class distinction, proved some of
Shaw's greatest successes on the stage. It would later become the basis
of the musical, My Fair Lady.
It is a combination of the dramatic, the comic, and the social corrective
that gives Shaw's comedies their special flavour. Shaw's complete
works appeared in thirty-six volumes between 1930 and 1950, the year
of his death.
Shaw takes a photo with Bunch, the cat (1938).
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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The Major Plays of George Bernard Shaw
Note: Dates reflect approximate dates of composition.
1892. Widower's Houses
1893. The Philanderer
1893. Mrs. Warren's Profession
1894. Arms and the Man
1894. Candida
1895. You Never Can Tell
1896. The Devil's Disciple
1898. Caesar and Cleopatra
1899. Captain Brassbound's Conversion
1901. The Admirable Bashville, or Constancy Unrewarded
1903. Man and Superman
1904. How He Lied to Her Husband
1904. John Bull's Other Island
1905. Major Barbara
1906. The Doctor's Dilemma
1907. Don Juan in Hell
1908. Getting Married
1910. Misalliance
1910. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets
1912. Androcles and the Lion
1913. Pygmalion
1916. Heartbreak House
1923. Saint Joan (Nobel Prize winner)
1929. The Apple Cart
1932. Too Good to be True
1936. The Millionairess
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Exploring Ideas and Themes in Candida
Reprinted courtesy of McCarter Theatre
By Erica Nagel, Artistic Engagement Manager at McCarter Theater
Source: McCarter Theatre - Candida Guide
(http://www.mccarter.org/Education/candida/index.html)
Christian Socialism
In Candida, Morell is a powerful speaker in both the religious and
political arenas. His sermons focus on the teachings of the church as
well as on progressive socialist movements of the time. This blend of
spiritual beliefs and political activism was known as Christian
Socialism. The movement grew out of recognition of the disparity
between Christian ideals and the societal effects of capitalism. Christian
Socialist parties were usually led by religious leaders unlike other
socialist unions and parties whose leaders were secular reformists. The
movement began in England in 1848, and was influenced greatly by
Chartism, Fourierism and Henry George's single tax theory, rather
than by the revolutionary communism proposed by Marx. Leaders such
as Frederick Denison Maurice and Stewart Headlam encouraged the
laboring masses and the church to cooperate against the dangers and
inequities of capitalism. The Christian Socialists published periodicals
and essays, promoted workers unions, and founded a workingmen's
college. Though the movement eventually dissolved, their traditions
were carried on by the Fabian Society (of which George Bernard Shaw
was a prominent member), the Guild Socialists, and by
several Roman Catholic groups.
Shaw and The Fabian Society
Founded by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, the Fabian Society was a
socialist political organization dedicated to transforming Britain into a
socialist state, not by revolution, as Marx suggested, but by systematic
progressive legislation, and educating a select few that actually had the
political power to make a substantial difference. From these educated
few, the Fabians believed, reforms would spread to the rest of society.
The society released essays, written by famous Englishmen including
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2013-2014 Season
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George Bernard Shaw, and attracted prominent speakers in order to
influence British intellectuals and government officials.
The Fabians believed that the system of capitalism had created an
unjust and inefficient society of property and business owners. The
reforms that the society fought for centered on the social ownership of
monopolies and property; the Fabians believed that this would equally
distribute wealth among all citizens. Shaw and other intellectuals spoke
and wrote passionately about the goals and promises of the Fabians,
and although Shaw disaffiliated from the group in the 1930's, he
continued to support the London School of Economics and the Labor
Party, two important offshoots of the Fabian Society.
"The Woman Question"
The "Woman Question" of the early 20th century was the name given
to the discussion of the changing roles of women in society. Disciplines
as diverse as philosophy, theology, medicine, physics, and mathematics
were applied to discovering the answers to questions such as: Should
women be allowed to receive higher education? Should they be allowed
to vote and take part in politics? Should women be employed equally
with men in the business world? What about their role in relation to
their husbands in the domestic sphere? The term was coined by
Stephan Leacock in his famous essay "The Woman Question" wherein
he concluded that to burden a woman with voting rights or a career
was cruel, due to her already overwhelming responsibilities in the
home:
Women need not more freedom but less...To expect a woman, for
example, if left by the death of her husband with young children
without support, to maintain herself by her own efforts, is the most
absurd mockery of freedom ever devised. Earlier generations of
mankind, for all that they lived in the jungle and wore coconut
leaves, knew nothing of it. To turn a girl loose in the world to
work for herself, when there is no work to be had, or none at a
price that will support life, is a social crime" (Leacock, 60).
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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George Bernard Shaw, on the other hand, was an avid proponent of
women's freedom and suffrage, and argued that women, with their
tendencies toward humility, Christianity, and compassion were ideal
voters within a system of government that sorely lacked these qualities.
Early Feminist groups such as the Women's Liberal Federation and the
Women's Social and Political Union fought for the rights to vote,
receive education, and work outside the home; usually, the goals of
these organizations, coinciding with goals of other reform movements
of the time, included improved medical care, socialized property
ownership, and class equality.
Working Conditions
During the 1850's in Britain, a worker in a factory could make between
two to three times more than they could as farm workers. Because of
this shift, by the late 1800's huge numbers of English men, women, and
children left farms and towns to live and work in an urban setting. This
change drastically altered their lives as families were separated for up
to 14 hours a day, sometimes with each family member in a
different factory. Infant mortality rose dramatically due to neglect and
malnourishment and children as young as seven were often victims of
factory accidents. Despite these hardships, workers continued to flood
the labor market. With such an excess of available labor, manufacturers
took advantage and lowered wages. During the late 1800's fine
spinners of yarn made between 25 to 30 shillings a week. Coarse
spinners made about 18 shillings a week. Weavers such as those
employed in Burgess' factory made only about 10 shillings to 16
shillings a week, and children, who worked up to ten hours a day, took
home 3 shillings to 4 shillings a week. At that time, a loaf of bread cost
about 1 shilling. As early as the 19th century some of the English
recognized the harmful effects of unregulated factory work. Trade
unions, workers guild, and political parties fought for reform by
regulating working hours, safety standards, and wages. These liberal
groups characterized the factory owners as greedy, uncaring,
and amoral and urged the workers to unite in protection of their rights.
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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An Example of Shaw’s Stage Directions
Shaw was known for having lengthy stage directions in his plays.
Candida was no exception. For instance, here is a stage direction in the
first act of the play. Morell and Proserpine are discussing Morell’s
speaking schedule. Morell decides what day he will schedule himself to
speak for a new group and tells Proserpine. This then happens:
She enters the engagement in silence, with implacable disparagement of the
Hoxton Anarchists in every line of her face. Morell bursts open the cover of
The Church Reformer, which has come by post, and glances through Mr.
Stewart Headlam’s leader and the Guild of St Matthew news. These
proceedings are presently enlivened by the appearance of Morell’s curate, the
Reverend Alexander Mill, a young gentleman gathered by Morell from the
nearest University settlement, whither he had come from Oxford to give the
east end of London the benefit of his university training. He is a conceitedly
well intentioned, enthusiastic, immature novice, with nothing positively
unbearable about him except a habit of speaking with his lips carefully closed a
full half inch from each corner for the sake of a finicking articulation and a set
of university vowels, this being the chief means so far of bringing his Oxford
refinement (as he calls his habits) to bear on Hackney vulgarity. Morell, whom
he has won over by a doglike devotion, looks up indulgently from The Church
Reformer and remarks “Well, Lexy? Late again as usual!”
Shaw clearly had a gift for details.
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
Page 11
The Style and Imagination of George
Bernard Shaw
Reprinted courtesy of McCarter Theatre
By Janice Paran, former Director of Play Development at McCarter Theater
Source: McCarter Theater Guide
(http://www.mccarter.org/Education/candida/index.html)
In the course of his 94 years, the Irish-born critic, dramatist and
polemicist George Bernard Shaw took up a variety of causes and
careers, achieving notoriety in most of them, excellence in some, and
genius - albeit gradually and never less than controversially - in the
one he modestly referred to as his "trade." Shaw the playwright,
simultaneously smitten with the stage and incensed by the
"tomfoolery" that passed for dramatic writing in his age, undertook its
reform, creating an astonishingly diverse body of work (more than 30
major plays) whose intellectual rigor, comic sophistication, moral
complexity, toothsome language and sheer theatrical savvy gave rise to
a new word, Shavian, to describe the writer, his work, or anyone who
ardently admires the same.
Shaw brought to his plays the same feistiness, drollery, and love
of contrariness that marked his critical writing (he was an art, music
and theater critic before he was a playwright), his public speaking
career (he was famous the world over for his oratorical skills), and even
his letter writing (by some estimates, he wrote ten letters every day of
his adult life). He was a socialist, a teetotaler, a vegetarian, and a
freethinker who approached all
forms of received wisdom with
the utmost skepticism. He
cultivated his reputation as a
high-profile punster and pundit,
referring in the third-person to
"G.B.S.," the celebrated
reformer and gadfly who could
be counted on to rail wittily
against a variety of social,
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2013-2014 Season
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economic, political and cultural ills.
Among those ills, in his view, was the state of the English stage at
the end of the 19th century. Shaw deplored two of its tendencies: its
appetite for "well-made plays," the formulaic trifles popularized by the
French playwright Eugene Sardou and his English imitators, and its
over-reverence for anything written by Shakespeare (a practice Shaw
dubbed "Bardolatry"). Inspired by revolutionary theatrical
developments elsewhere in Europe - particularly Ibsen's daring
decision to represent social ills in a newly realistic fashion in plays such
as A Doll House and Ghosts, and the integrated stagecraft that
galvanized audiences at Wagner's operas, Shaw embarked on his own
playwriting career in 1892.
A dozen years and as many plays later, Shaw was still forced to
describe himself as "an unperformed playwright in London," despite a
resumé that included Widowers' Houses, The Philanderer, Mrs. Warren's
Profession, Arms and the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny, You Never
Can Tell, The Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra and Man and
Superman. His penchant for social analysis, coupled with a healthy
irreverence for conventional dramatic values and bourgeois morality,
kept theater producers at bay, and Shaw turned to readings, private
productions and publication of his plays to cultivate an audience for his
work. The tide finally began to turn in 1904, when the actor, director
and playwright Harley Granville Barker, along with his business
partner J.E. Verdrenne, took over London's Court Theatre in a
deliberate challenge to the commercial West End. Under their
management, eleven of Shaw's plays - including Candida (with
Granville Barker in the role of Marchbanks) and such new efforts as
Major Barbara and The Doctor's Dilemma – were produced over the next
three years. Shaw's reputation as a major new dramatist was finally
secured, and given added luster by the 1914 commercial success of
Pygmalion (which later inspired the musical My Fair Lady). Shaw
maintained his international celebrity for the rest of his long life though his popularity in England plummeted for a time following his
criticism of England's entry into World War I - and he contributed at
least two more masterpieces (Heartbreak House and Saint Joan) to an
already daunting oeuvre. He continued to write, provocatively
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and prodigiously, until his death in 1950.
Shaw's stature today as a "classic playwright" tends to obscure
the essentially revolutionary nature of his
writing, which is as seditious as it is entertaining.
A dab hand at drawing room dialogue that is
ebullient, surprising, literate, and lethal, Shaw
enjoyed having his cake and eating it too:
seducing audiences with his cleverness and craft
while assailing their habits of mind. He was often
charged with didacticism, with wearing his
various reformist agendas on his sleeve, but he
was less interested in promulgating a particular
point of view than he was in putting a variety of
viewpoints through their paces, rigorously and
argumentatively and with a good deal of humor.
Antitheses, naturally, abound: in Major Barbara, a munitions
manufacturer outpaces his do-gooder daughter when it comes to
helping the poor; in Pygmalion, a flower-seller demonstrates better
manners than her university-educated mentor; in Candida, an immature
poet proves more than a match for a charismatic clergyman in matters
of the heart.
Shaw's purpose, always, as the critic Eric Bentley has pointed out,
was to investigate the relation between ideas and reality, or, more
accurately, between idealism and realism. Exposing hypocrisy was not
his goal; rather, he hoped to demonstrate how human beings are
hoodwinked by their own unconsidered actions and the beliefs they
profess to hold. An enemy of second-hand thinking in all its guises,
Shaw deployed his chastening fierce wit in retaliation, as his speeches
and pamphlets and prefaces attest. But it is on the stage that Shaw's
passionate intelligence lives most fully, and the pleasure of his plays,
still, is the pleasure of watching his characters discover who they really
are, not through the agency of the plot, but through the exercise of
their minds and the movement of their souls.
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2013-2014 Season
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Quotes from George Bernard Shaw
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for
appointment by the corrupt few.”
“Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no
better than we deserve.”
“Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.”
“My situation is a solemn one. Life is offered to me on condition
of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My
will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed not
by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a
small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarfs in
honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow
creatures.”
“Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.”
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all
because you were born in it.”
“I'm an atheist and I thank God for it.”
“When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a
tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.”
“It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do
right.”
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Shaw on Shaw
From Pittsburgh Public Theater’s program: You Never Can Tell, season 1977-78.
“…I have no doubt I shall at last
persuade even London to take its
conscience and its brains with it when
it goes to the theatre, instead of
leaving them at home with its prayerbook as it does at present.”
“I have solved every
important problem of
our time, and people
still go on propounding
them as if they were
unsolved.”
“When a comedy is performed, it is
nothing to me that the spectators
laugh: any fool can make an audience
laugh. I want to see how many of
them, laughing or grave, are in the
melting mood.”
“The true artist will let
his wife starve, his
children go barefoot, his
mother drudge for his
living at seventy, sooner
than work at anything
but is art.”
“What was done to me in my
childhood was nothing at all of an
intentional kind. I wasn’t spoiled; and
I wasn’t helped. No direct ill
treatment was added by anybody to
the horrors of the world. Nobody
forbade me to discover what I could
of its wonders. I was taken-took
myself- for what I was: a disagreeable
little beast.”
“…People complain that my plays are
all talk. Now it is quite true that my
plays are all talk, just as Raphael’s
pictures are all paint, Michael
Angelo’s statues all marble,
Beethoven’s symphonies all
noise…But…without a stock of ideas,
mind cannot operate and plays
cannot exist. The quality of a play is
the quality of its ideas.”
Pittsburgh Public Theater
“The only thanks that
people give me for not
‘boring’ them is that
they laugh delightedly
for three hours at the
play that has cost many
hours of hard labor, and
then turn round and say
that it is no play at all
and accuse me of talking
with my tongue in my
cheek. And then they
expect me to take them
seriously!”
“It is questionable whether it is quite decent
for a dramatic author to be also a dramatic
critic; but my extreme reluctance to make
myself dependent for my bread and butter
on the acceptance of my plays by managers
tempts me to hold to the position that my
real profession is that by which I can earn my
bread in security.”
“…I must warn you, before you attempt to
enjoy my plays, to clear out your
consciousness most resolutely everything
you have ever read about me in a
newspaper…In some unaccountable way I
may seem to cast a spell on journalists…The
person they represent me to be not only
does not exist but could not possibly exist.”
“One day early in the eighteen hundred and
sixties, I being then a small boy, was with my
nurse, buying something in the shop of a
petty newsagent, bookseller, and stationer in
Camden Street, Dublin, when there entered
an elderly man, weighty and solemn, who
advanced to the counter, and said
pompously, ‘Have you the works of a
celebrated buffoon?’
“My own works were at that time unwritten,
or it is possible that the shop assistant might
have misunderstood me so far as to produce
a copy of MAN AND SUPERMAN.”
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Discussion Questions
1) Why does Eugene Marchbanks so fervently desire Candida? How
does that differ from the way Reverend Morell views his wife?
2) Why does Morell allow himself to become more and more
threatened by Marchbanks throughout the play? What causes the
change in him to suddenly take Marchbanks seriously?
3) How does Marchbanks’ poetry influence his actions?
4) After declaring his love for Candida to Morell, Marchbanks says “Do
you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any
less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about?” This is
vintage Shaw. What do you think about this idea?
5) How do Morell, Marchbanks and Candida change throughout the
play? What caused the changes?
6) What does Candida’s response to her two suitors say about her
philosophy of love and marriage? Do you agree with her choice and the
reasoning behind it?
7) Shaw was a huge political force of his time. What messages in the
play do you consider to be political?
8) If Shaw were alive and writing today, what political and societal
subjects do you think he would be targeting?
9) Shaw is known for having lengthy and detailed stage directions.
Most plays have many fewer stage directions. Why might Shaw have
been inclined to have so much staging written into his scripts?
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
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Meet the Director
TED PAPPAS celebrates his 14th season as
Producing Artistic Director of Pittsburgh Public
Theater and his 21st year of close association
with the company as a director. He has staged
more than 40 productions for The Public,
including the works of Euripides, Shakespeare,
Schiller, Wilde, Gilbert & Sullivan, and
Sondheim. Some highlights include Sophocles’
Electra, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Kaufman &
Ferber’s The Royal Family, Peter Shaffer’s
Amadeus, Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses,
Kander & Ebb’s Cabaret, the American premiere
of Alan Ayckbourn’s RolePlay, and the world premiere of Rob Zellers &
Gene Collier’s The Chief, which played The O’Reilly for seven seasons and
was filmed. His career began in New York City where he worked at
Playwrights Horizons, Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, John Houseman’s The
Acting Company, New York City Opera under the leadership of Beverly
Sills, and shows on and off Broadway. His regional credits are numerous and
varied and include productions for Williamstown Theatre Festival, Arena
Stage in Washington DC, the Kennedy Center, the Canadian Opera
Company, Toronto’s Royal Alexandra, and Goodspeed Musicals. He staged
a hip-hop concert hosted by Harry Belafonte which galvanized the Cannes
Film Festival, directed a Las Vegas extravaganza for impresario Steve
Wynn, and served as choreographer for NBC’s legendary series “Saturday
Night Live.” He studied Shakespeare with Samuel Schoenbaum and modern
drama with Eric Bentley, and holds degrees from Northwestern University
and Manhattan’s Hunter College. He is a past president of the Stage
Directors and Choreographers Society, the national labor union.
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2013-2014 Season
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Meet the Cast
GRETCHEN EGOLF (Candida Morell) has appeared at
Pittsburgh Public Theater in The Secret Letters of Jackie
and Marilyn and As You Like It. She has played on
Broadway in Jackie (also in the West End production)
and Ring Round the Moon (Lincoln Center on
Broadway); Off-Broadway in new plays with Second
Stage, The Vineyard, The Flea, and The Women’s
Project; and regionally as Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire at The Guthrie,
Emma in Betrayal at The Huntington, Gilda in Design for Living at The
Shakespeare Theater, and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing at Barrington
Stage, among others. Film includes “The Namesake,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,”
and “Quiz Show.” Television includes “Elementary,” “The Good Wife,” “Blue
Bloods,” “CSI: Miami,” “NCIS,” “Law & Order,” “Lie To Me,” and “Criminal Minds,”
among others, as well as recurring roles in “Law & Order SVU” and “Roswell,” and
series regular roles in “Journeyman” and “Martial Law.” TV movies include
Lifetime’s “The Two Mr. Kissels” and “Gleason.” Training: Juilliard.
JARED McGUIRE (Eugene Marchbanks) couldn’t be happier to
return to this magnificent theater to work on this
extraordinary play. Recent work includes: Clybourne Park
(Pittsburgh Public Theater), Master Harold and the Boys (Palm
Beach Dramaworks and Cape May Stage), Speech and Debate
(American Theatre Company), Please Continue and The Secret
Catcher (Ensemble Studio Theatre), Leave the Balcony Open
and Photograph 51 (3LD), The Rubber Room (NY Fringe
Festival), as well as the films Between Josie and Maria, SubterraNYa, and the
upcoming feature Behind the Mirror. Jared is a proud member of Ensemble Studio
Theatre.
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Candida
2013-2014 Season
Page 19
MATTHEW MINOR (The Reverend Alexander Mill) is
thrilled to make his debut at Pittsburgh Public
Theater. Other notable stage credits include “Piggy” in
director Giovanna Sardelli’s production of Lord of the
Flies at Barrington Stage, “Benjie” in the regional
premiere of the musical Summer of ’42 at Casa
Mañana, and “Bear” in the dark comedy White People by Neil Cuthbert at
Ensemble Studio Theatre. Proud graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School
of the Theatre and member of the Drama Desk Award-winning Godlight Theatre
Company, where he will be seen Off-Broadway as “Bobby” in the stage adaptation
of Deliverance at 59E59 Theatre in the fall.
JOHN O’CREAGH (Mr. Burgess) a native North-Sider, is delighted
to be back in the ’Burgh and working with this talented
company. Pittsburgh audiences last saw him as Doc in West Side
Story when the National Tour played The Benedum. John has
appeared on television on “The Late Show with David
Letterman,” “John Adams,” “Life on Mars,” “Law & Order SVU,”
“Kidnapped,” and “Sex and The City.” He’s currently preparing a
book of light verse for publication.
MEGHAN MAE O’NEILL (Miss Proserpine Garnett) has appeared
in Tribes (Barrow St. Theater, Mark Taper, La Jolla Playhouse),
See Jane.... (NYC Fringe), Extinguish Yourself (LES Spaces
Festival), As You Like It (Guthrie Theatre), Macbeth and Blithe
Spirit (Utah Shakespeare Festival), Untold Crimes (Guthrie Lab).
Sketch and Comedy: Matt&Meghan (TONY critic’s pick), Fraidy
Cat: A Sort of Solo Show (Ars Nova, W.I.C Festival, Sketchfest
NY, Charleston Comedy Festival), Queens City Radio, JCrew
Crew, Animals, Girl Camp, Livia Scott Sketch Program.
Contributor to Reductress, Slacktory, NYMag. Proud member of The Story Pirates.
Training: Guthrie Actor Training Program, National Theatre London, Iowa Writer’s
Workshop, Second City, UCB, Magnet Theatre. www.meghanoneill.org.
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DAVID WHALEN (The Reverend James Mavor Morell) is excited
to be back with The Public for his seventh production, having
previously appeared in Good People, God of Carnage, The
Royal Family, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and
Electra. Pittsburgh: 20 productions with PICT, six with City
Theatre, Quantum Theatre, The REP, and barebones. He is a
former Post-Gazette Performer of the Year and has also
received Barrymore, Helen Hayes, and Kevin Kline Awards. He
has played leading roles at The Roundabout, South Coast Rep, Alley Theatre,
Philadelphia Theatre, Arden Theatre, Hartford Stage, Folger Theatre, Center Stage,
Huntington Theatre, Laguna Playhouse, McCarter Theatre, Syracuse Stage,
Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Peoples Light & Theatre, Venice’s Biennale Festival,
Playmakers Rep, among others. Film credits include: Mr. Waters in the upcoming
The Fault of Our Stars, The Legion, Jack Reacher, 61*, The Xmas Tree, Black Dahlia,
My Bloody Valentine, True Blue, as well as many TV appearances.
davidwhalenactor.com.
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Theater Etiquette
When you visit the theater you are attending a live performance with actors that
are working right in front of you. This is an exciting experience for you and the
actor. However, in order to have the best performance for both the audience and
actors there are some simple rules to follow. By following these rules, you can
ensure that you can be the best audience member you can be, as well as keep the
actors focused on giving their best performance.
1. Turn off all cell phones, beepers, watches etc.
2. Absolutely no text messaging during the performance.
3. Do not take pictures during the performance.
4. Do not eat or drink in the theater.
5. Do not place things on the stage or walk on the stage.
6. Do not leave your seat during the performance unless it is an emergency.
If you do need to leave for an emergency, leave as quietly as possible and
know that you might not be able to get back in until after intermission.
7. Do clap—let the actors know you are enjoying yourself.
8. Do enjoy the show and have fun watching the actors.
9. Do tell other people about your experience and be sure to ask questions and
discuss the performance.
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2013-2014 Season
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Pennsylvania Academic Standards
The plays of Pittsburgh Public Theater’s 39th season, subtitled the Masterpiece
Season, are a wonderful celebration of some of the greatest works in theatrical
history, with rich benefits for school students. The 2013-2014 line-up features a
six-play subscription series, all by world renowned composers and playwrights
that hold a special place in any theater enthusiast’s heart. The Masterpiece Season
will provide examples of the wittiest dialogue, the sharpest characters, and the
most captivating scores.
Applicable to All Plays and Productions:
Arts and Humanities Standards and Reading-Writing-Speaking-Listening
Standards
Attendance and participation by students at any play produced by Pittsburgh
Public Theater bears direct applicability to the PA Education Standards in Arts
and Humanities and Reading-Writing-Speaking-Listening (RWSL). These
applicable standards are summarized first. Then, each play for Season 39 is taken
in turn, and its relevance to standards in other Academic Content Areas is cited.
All standards are summarized by conceptual description, since similar concepts
operate across all the grade levels served by The Public’s Education-Outreach
programs (Grades 4 through 12); the principal progressive difference is from
basics such as Know, Describe and Explain, moving through grade levels towards
more mature activities such as Demonstrate, Incorporate, Compare-Contrast,
Analyze and Interpret.
9.1: Production, Performance and Exhibition of Dance, Music, Theatre and
Visual Arts
Elements

Scenario • script/text • set design • stage productions • read and write
scripts • improvise • interpret a role • design sets • direct.
Principles
Balance • collaboration • discipline • emphasis • focus • intention • movement
• rhythm • style • voice.
 Comprehensive vocabulary within each of the arts forms.

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 Communicate a unifying theme or point of view through the production of
works in the arts.
 Explain works of others within each art form through performance or
exhibition.
 Know where arts events, performances and exhibitions occur and how to
gain admission.
9.2: Historical and Cultural Contexts
 The historical, cultural and social context of an individual work in the arts.
 Works in the arts related chronologically to historical events, and to
varying styles and genres, and to the periods in which they were created.
 Analyze a work of art from its historical and cultural perspective, and
according to its geographic region of origin.
 Analyze how historical events and culture impact forms, techniques and
purposes of works in the arts.
 Philosophical beliefs as they relate to works in the arts.
Play #5: CANDIDA. April 17 – May 18, 2014.
Written by George Bernard Shaw (1895). Directed by Ted Pappas.
Candida, by George Bernard Shaw (1895). In this sparkling comedy, the
established and comfortable order of love and marriage is turned topsy-turvy by
the legendary wit of English literature’s master curmudgeon. Shaw’s deceptively
well-mannered play created a sensation, even a scandal, when it premiered in
1903, and its mischievous spirit delights audiences even today. At the heart of the
play is not only the relationship between man and woman, but a educative course
on self-recognition as the primary key to a successful life. What makes this
delightful work a true masterpiece is that Shaw sugar-coats with gentle laughter
and true warmth the potentially bitter pills he concocts to cure our self-deception.
The luminescent Gretchen Egolf, who played Rosalind in The Public’s 2012 As
You Like It, will inhabit the title character.
Civics and Government
 Analyze citizens’ roles in the political process toward the attainment of
goals for individual and public good.
 Evaluate an individual’s civil rights, responsibilities, and obligations in
various contemporary governments.
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 Evaluate the role of political parties, interest groups, and mass media in
politics and public policy.
Economics
 Explain how incentives cause people to change their behavior in predictable
ways.
 Analyze the characteristics of economic expansion, recession, and
depression.
Family and Consumer Sciences
 Justify the significance of interpersonal communication skills in the
practical reasoning method of decision making.
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References
Candida, 2011. Shaw Festival. By Richard Ouzounian. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/2011/05/29/review_the_shaw_festivals_candida_is_best
_when_it_plays_it_straight.html>.
Candida. 2008. Berkshire Fine Arts. By Larry Murray. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.berkshirefinearts.com/06-22-2008_magnificent-candida-lights-up-berkshiretheatre-festival.htm>.
"George Bernard Shaw - Biographical". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2013.Web. 31 Mar
2014.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1925/shaw-bio.html>.
Michaels, Steven, Janice Paran, and Erica Nagel. "McCarter Theatre - Candida Guide."
McCarter Theatre. McCarter Theatre Education Department, 2004. Web. Summer 2013.
<http://www.mccarter.org/Education/candida/index.html>.
Shaw, Bernard. Plays by George Bernard Shaw. New York: New American Library, 1960. Print.
Shaw and Bunch. 1938. Society of Authors, Ayot St Lawrence. Archives Hub. Web.
<http://archiveshub.ac.uk/features/georgebernardshaw/georgebernardshaw-bunchthecat.html>.
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