1968 Playbill ; Paul Rogers, James Coco, Ken Kercheval ; Here's Where I Belong

Description

1968 Playbill (Shubert Theatre, Philadelphia, Pa.: pre-Broadway) ; Paul Rogers, Nancy Wickwire, Heather MacRae, Walter McGinn, James Coco, Ken Kercheval, Graciela Daniele et al in Here's Where I Belong, a musical adapted from East of Eden, the novel by John Steinbeck (book by Terrence McNally ; music by Robert Walman ; lyrics by Alfred Uhry)
; Program is in Good condition.
Note: McNally, librettist & Hanya Holm, choreographer, and the composer of the dance music, Genevieve Pitot, were no longer credited when the show reached Broadway where it closed on opening night.  Additionally, the list of musical numbers showed significant changes.
62 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm ; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
: Playbill Inc.,
Issued as Volume 5, no. 1 (January 1968) of Playbill.
Cast: Paul Rogers, Nancy Wickwire, Walter McGinn, James Coco, Ken Kercheval, Heather MacRae, Bette Henritze, Dena Dietrich, Patricia Kelly, Casper Roos, David Thomas, Richard Marr, David McCorkle, Donald Norris, Andy Love, Larry Devon, Joyce McDonald, Joy Serio, John Dickerson, Ray Kirchner, Elisa DeMarko, Michele Simmons, John William Gardner, Bud Fleming, Jane Laughlin, Joan Nelson, Lee Wilson, John Johann, Tod Miller, Barbara Webb, Graciela Daniele, Aniko Morgan, Joseph Nelson, Joetta Cherry, Steve Bolster, Darryl Askey, Gene Gavin, Clifford Scott ...
Mitch Miller presents ... directed by Michael Kahn ; choreography and musical staging by Hanya Holm ; scenery by Ming Cho Lee ; costumes by Ruth Morley ; lighting by Jules Fisher ; musical direction and vocal arrangements by Theodore Saidenberg ; dance music by Genevieve Pitot ; orchestrations by Glenn Osser, Norman Leyden, and Jonathan Tunick ; produced in association with United Artists.
Advertisements in the program include: Philadelphia area restaurants (Bookbinders Sea Food House, Inc. ; Sir Francis Room at the Drake, Your host, Tony Vee ; Bird Cage Discotheque ; Kite & Key Cocktail Lounge at the Benjamin Franklin Hotel) ; Center City Cadillac Co. ; Schmidt's of Philadelphia Beer ; Jack Entratter presents ... at The Sands Las Vegas ; Original cast recordings of Cabaret & Fiddler on the Roof ; Strega Liqueur ; Faust Salmon.
Terrence McNally bio:
"1938: Michael Terrence McNally is born Nov. 3 in St. Petersburg, FL, to Hubert and Dorothy (née Rapp) McNally, transplanted New Yorkers who run a seaside bar and grill.
1946-9: ... spends Saturday afternoons listening to Live from the Met on the radio and attends his first two Broadway shows (Annie Get Your Gun, starring Ethel Merman, and The King and I, starring Gertrude Lawrence), which make a lasting impression.
1949-56: The family relocates a final time to Corpus Christi, TX. During his years at W. B. Ray High School (1952-56), McNally is mentored by Maurine McElroy, an extraordinary English teacher who regularly invites select students to her home to read poetry and listen to classical music.
1956-60: After being encouraged by Mrs. McElroy to attend college out of state, McNally wins a scholarship to attend Columbia College as a journalism major, returning to Corpus Christi summers to work as a cub reporter for the Times Caller. In New York City McNally begins a lifelong practice of attending the theater and opera several nights a week. After meeting twenty-nine-year-old Edward Albee, the nineteen-year-old McNally moves in with the budding playwright. They will remain a couple for about five years.
1961-62: While working as a stage manager at the Playwrights Unit of the Actors Studio, McNally is recruited by director Molly Kazan to travel with and tutor the two teenaged sons of Nobel Prize-winning novelist John Steinbeck and his third wife, Elaine, as the family embarks on what is expected to be a year-long cruise around the world.
Following their return to New York, Steinbeck suggests that McNally write the book for Here’s Where I Belong, an ill-fated musical adaptation of Steinbeck’s East of Eden.
1964-65: Early versions titled Bump and There Is Something Out There are workshopped by Albee-Barr Wilder in New York and by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis before And Things That Go Bump in the Night opens on Broadway April 26, 1965.
... begins relationship with Bobby Drivas, actor. McNally writes his next several plays for Drivas, tailoring Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone? (1971) to showcase Drivas’s talents. Drivas will go on to direct McNally’s The Ritz and Bad Habits, as well as star in Albee’s The Man With Three Arms (1983), and will remain one of McNally’s closest friends until Drivas’s death from AIDS-related causes in 1986.
1969: Next, written for actor James Coco, becomes McNally’s first critical and financial success. It is directed by Elaine May, whom McNally credits with giving him a crash course in play-writing.
1975: The Ritz premieres Jan. 20 at the Longacre Theatre in New York City, and runs for 400 performances. Richard Lester’s 1976 film version retains the original cast.
1978-84: McNally commutes between New York and Hollywood as he collaborates with television producer Norman Lear on “The Education of Young Harry Bellair, Esq.,” a situation comedy set in early eighteenth century London that draws upon the conventions of Restoration comedies of manners. Although “Education” and several other pilots fail to find network support, McNally’s adaptation of John Cheever’s “The Five-Forty-Eight” for PBS (1979) earns critical acclaim, and his Mama Malone runs on CBS in summer 1984.
1985-95: ... embarks on a decade-long collaboration with the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC). MTC will premiere a string of McNally hits—Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (1987), The Lisbon Traviata (1989), Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), A Perfect Ganesh (1993), and Love! Valor! Compassion! (1994)—making for one of the most successful pairings of playwright and theater company in twentieth-century American theater history.
1985-2001: As Vice President of the Dramatists Guild, McNally is active in theater community events to raise awareness of the toll that AIDS is taking on the arts community, and in protests to save three beaux-arts theater buildings threatened with demolition to make way for Times Square’s Marriot Marquis Hotel and Theater ... in plays like Some Christmas Letters, The Last Mile, the Tony Award-winning Love! Valour! Compassion! and the Emmy Award-winning Andre’s Mother, McNally becomes a major voice during the AIDS epidemic. And in Ghost Light and Dedication, he examines America’s failure to preserve its theater heritage.
1993: McNally wins the first of his four Tony Awards for his book for the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman. Subsequent Tony Awards will be for Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995), Master Class (1996) and the book for the musical Ragtime (1998). Earlier McNally had won the Hull-Warriner Award—notable because it is bestowed by dramatists upon their fellow dramatists—in 1974 for Bad Habits, in 1987 for Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune and in 1989 for The Lisbon Traviata. In addition, he has won four Drama Desk Awards, two Lucille Lortel Awards, and two Obie Awards.
1996: Inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
1998: Awarded an honorary degree by The Juilliard School for “invaluable contribution to the theater.” ...
2000: Dead Man Walking, based on the 1993 memoir of the same title by Sister Helen Prejean, with music by Jake Heggie, premieres at the San Francisco Opera and becomes the most frequently produced English language opera across the globe ...
2011: Receives the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award ...
2018: McNally is inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters as one of only five playwrights included in this body. A documentary of his life and career titled Every Act of Life (dir. Jeff Kaufman) premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival.
In honor of McNally’s eightieth birthday, New York City Mayor de Blasio declares November 4 “Terrence McNally Day.” The official proclamation praises McNally for having served “as a civil rights activist, championing marriage equality and tackling issues that impact the LGBTQ community and people with HIV/AIDS,” and concludes: “Through his thought-provoking and witty plays, musicals, and operas, Terrence has engaged and uplifted generations of diverse audiences in New York and far beyond, and at age 80, the untiring artist is still creating new works.”
2020: McNally dies in Sarasota, Florida."