PERFORMANCES
Friday, October 31, 2014
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Fr. Frank Krische Student and Alumni Hall
Tickets go on sale October 16

ABOUT THE PLAY

Simon’s The Good Doctor took the Broadway stage in 1973 as a series of sketches celebrating Chekhov’s short stories bound by Chekhov’s reincarnation, the Writer, who states in the opening monologue, “here I am, day after day, haunted by one thought, I must write, I must write, I must write.” 

And write both Chekhov and Simon did, becoming two of history’s most eminent and prolific authors. Reports describe Chekhov, argued as the greatest writer since Shakespeare, writing every spare second, often starting and finishing a story in a single evening. Others account Simon, the world’s most produced living playwright, habitually carrying a bag of in-process scripts, furiously writing and rewriting to the final rehearsal. Ceaselessly, both created comedies of human nature, presenting everyday follies and foibles as humor.

Despite renown, many critics dismiss Chekhov and, as a result, Simon’s The Good Doctor, claiming nothing happens or resolves. To such criticism Chekhov wrote, "in real life people don't spend every minute shooting each other, hanging themselves and making confessions of love. They're more occupied with eating, drinking, flirting and talking stupidities.” Striving towards objectivity, Chekhov presents such behavior in his writing, unaffected but not unheightened. Just as he found absurdity in the commonplace, he also found significance, observing, “People eat their dinner, just eat their dinner, and all the time their happiness is being established or their lives are being broken up."

CAST
The Writer
Mitch Quaney

The Sneeze
The Clerk – Dalton Frantz
His Wife – Jennifer Dark
The General – Trevor Schoenhofer
His Wife – Jessica Voegeli

The Governess
The Mother – Savannah Schrickel
The Governess – Catelyn Rees

Surgery
The Priest – Jake Bernard
The Dentist – Mitch Quaney

Too Late for Happiness
The Old Man – Michael Duncan
The Old Woman – Theresa Bagley

The Seduction
The Man – Dalton Frantz
His Wife – Tressa Dekat
The Seducer – Mitch Quaney

The Drowned Man
A Man – Trevor Schoenhofer
A Sailor – David Hall
A Policeman – Danny Madsen

The Audition
The Actress – Madelynn Kurtz
The Voice – Mitch Quaney

A Defenseless Creature
The Assistant – Dylan Legleiter
The Banker – Michael Duncan
The Woman – Danielle Beckley

A Quiet War
Army – Dalton Frantz
Navy – Jake Bernard

NEIL SIMON

Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written over thirty plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, most adapted from his plays. He has received more Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer.

He grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, and giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood. He often took refuge in movie theaters where he enjoyed watching the early comedians like Charlie Chaplin, which inspired him to become a comedy writer. After a few years in the Army Air Force Reserve after graduating high school, he began writing comedy scripts for radio and some popular early television shows. Among them were The Phil Silvers Show and Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows in 1950, where he worked alongside other young writers including Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks and Selma Diamond.

He began writing his own plays beginning with Come Blow Your Horn (1961). It was followed by two more successful plays, Barefoot in the Park (1963) and The Odd Couple (1965), for which he won a Tony Award, making him a national celebrity and "the hottest new playwright on Broadway." Overall, he has garnered seventeen Tony nominations and won three. During one season, he had four successful plays showing on Broadway at the same time, and in 1983 became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre, the Neil Simon Theatre, named in his honor.

ANTON CHEKHOV

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov  (born January 29, 1860 – died July 15, 1904) was a Russian physician, dramaturge and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his literary career: "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress."

Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.