Rubicon Theatre Presents Joanna McClelland Glass’ TRYING, 3/13-4/4

Rubicon Theatre Company continues its 2009-2010 Season with the Central Coast Premiere of a timely drama about a fascinating and enigmatic figure in American history. TRYING, which opens March 13 and runs through April 4th (with low-priced previews March 11 and 12), is a poignant, poetic and powerful story about a relationship between Francis Biddle, Attorney General under Roosevelt and Chief Judge at the Nuremburg trials; and Sarah, a tenacious 25-year-old woman from the Canadian plains, one of a string of secretaries Biddle's wife has hired to help him put his affairs in order at the end of his long an illustrious career. Biddle, 81, is in poor health, proud and cantankerous as he begins to confront his own mortality. Sarah, however, is also headstrong, and from her early life on the prairie has developed a strength and wisdom beyond her years. Despite the difference in ideologies and age, the two forge a friendship. The play is autobiographical in nature and is written by Joanna McClelland Glass, who worked for Biddle in the late 60s.

Father/Daughter Duo Trod the Boards in TRYING

One New York critic, in writing about TRYING, said that the play "demands a duo who work unfailingly in synch, with a cadence that plays to little intellectual dances." That's exactly what audiences will get at Rubicon, where the actors have been working in synch for much of their lives. The production stars father-and-daughter actors Robin Gammell and Winslow Corbett.

Scion of an old Philadelphia Mainline family (his ancestor William Biddle bought land directly from William Penn and he was a distant relative of James Madison), the real Francis Biddle was a complicated man. A Harvard graduate and a successful attorney, he threw off the expectations of his upbringing and made it his life's work to stand up for the downtrodden and fight for what is right. And yet, despite his sense of social justice and the great good he achieved in his lifetime (he was part of the tribunal that convictEd Hermann Goering and Rudolph Hess), he was not without contradictions. It was Biddle's duty during World War II to order the FBI to round up Japanese-born American citizens and take them to interment camps, a fact that continued to haunt him throughout his life. In a letter to Stanford Professor Shiko Furukawa, he later wrote, "Never again will I trust that mystic cliché' ‘military necessity.'

Robin Gammell, who plays Biddle, is a longtime veteran of stage and screen. He has appeared at Rubicon in Waiting for Godot, A Delicate Balance, and You Can't Take It With You. Other credits include the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Stratford Festival of Canada. Regional credits include the Guthrie (where he worked for many years with Rubicon alum Sonny Van Dusen and Len Cariou), the Taper, Long Wharf, and The Old Globe. Gammell's numerous TV and film credits include "Dave," "Guilty by Suspicion," "Circle of Two," "Bulworth," "Austin Powers," "Full Circle," "Sister Act II" and "Star Chamber," among others. His dozens of television credits include "Saving Grace," "Eli Stone," "Nip/Tuck," "Providence," and others.

Joining Gammell on stage as Sarah, is his daughter Winslow Corbett, who made her Rubicon debut (and worked with her father for the first time ever) in You Can't Take It With You, playing Alice Sycamore. Although recently graduated from the conservatory at program at SUNY Purchase, Corbett (also the daughter of actress Gretchen Corbett), has amassed an impressive number of credits. In New York, she has appeared as Thea in The Lark at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Jill in The Skin Game for the Mint Theatre, and Gladys in Skin of Our Teeth at Lincoln Center Director's Lab. She recently made her South Coast Rep debut as Poppy in Noises Off. In the National Tour of The Graduate, she starred as Elaine. Other credits include Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, ACT and Pittsburgh Public. Winslow should prove to be not only a match for Judge Biddle, but for Gammell as well.

More on the Playwright

The works of Joanna McClelland Glass have been produced in numerous North American theatres, as well as in England, Ireland, Australia and Germany. She has been an acclaimed and award-winning playwright and author for over 30 years. Among her works is Play Memory. Directed by Harold Prince, Play Memory was first produced in 1984, winning Ms. Glass a Tony Award Nomination in that same year. Last month, Ms. Glass's play Palmer Park about racial integration in Detroit, was approached in a groundbreaking way. It is being explored simultaneously and presented by all Big 10 colleges, who approached her as a consortium. In addition to her many successful plays in the U.S. and Canada, Glass has also written two novels: "Reflections on a Mountain Summer," and "Woman Wanted," both of which she adapted as screenplays for Lorimar Studios and Warner Brothers. She has received a Rockefeller grant, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her papers are archived in the Special Collections, University of Calgary Library.

Director and Designer Team Include Returning Rubicon Veterans

At the helm of this production is director JENNY SULLIVAN. Sullivan has directed more than a dozen diverse productions at Rubicon alone. Her career has also taken her to Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Long Wharf and Off-Broadway. She serves as an Artistic Associate at Rubicon, and has worked with artists such as Jack Lemmon, John Ritter, Tom Astor, Susan Clark, Bonnie Franklin, Joseph Fuqua, Harold Gould, John Bennett Perry, Linda Purl, Joe Spano, Bruce Weitz, Stephanie Zimbalist, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. and many others. Recent directorial excursions at Rubicon include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Hamlet, Doubt, and You Can't Take It With You.

Among the design staff for Trying are folks very familiar with Rubicon. Trying is set in the office of Judge Biddle, which is actually a converted hay loft in the garage adjacent to the Biddle's Georgetown home. Ovation Award-winning Set and Lighting Designer TOM GIAMARIO (Fiddler on the Roof, Art) brings over three decades of design experience to the table, and has a set design that accurately portrays the time and seasons over the course of Judge Biddle's final year. Costume Design is by Cathy Parrott, who was associate designer on Rubicon's The Best is Yet to Come under multi-Tony Award-winner William Ivey Long, with whom she frequently collaborates. Sound Design is by DAVID BEAUDRY, another Rubicon favorite whose designs include most of the non-musicals of the last several seasons. And T. THERESA SCARANO continues her outstanding work over the past few years for Rubicon as Prop Designer.

History of the Production
TRYING originated at the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, where The Chicago Sun-Times called the play, "One of the finest pieces of theatre I have seen in many years -- a glittering, diamond-hard script." It moved Off-Broadway in 2004 in a production starring Fritz Weaver and was one of the final roles essayed by James Whitmore (in Washington, D.C.). Alan Mandell garnered great acclaim as Biddle for his performance and encore run at the Colony Theatre a few years ago. The production has continued to receive recognition throughout the world. Of the London premiere in 2009, critic Kevin Quarmby wrote, "It's rare to leave a theatre having been moved to laughter and tears by a production, the simplicity and integrity of which is as refreshing as it is strangely reassuring. TRYING by Joanna McClelland Glass is an astonishing play."

Why Try?

Says Rubicon Artistic Director James O'Neil: "TRYING has much to say about intergenerational differences, and about the challenges of aging. But it is also about so much more than that," he continues. It is a story about how we are constantly trying to make a meaningful world out of the difficulties and obstacles in our paths," continues O'Neil. "It is a tale of love, friendship, loss, hope and the nobility we achieve through struggles in spite of our misgivings. Despite all their differences, what Sarah and Judge Biddle find in common is life itself and (more importantly) how you live it."

Sponsors

Rubicon's production of TRYING is generously sponsored by LORETTA AND MIKE MEREWETHER. Co-Sponsors are MICHELINE SAKHAROFF and SHEELER MOVING AND STORAGE. Media Sponsors are GOLD COAST BROADCASTING, KDB, TIME WARNER CABLE and Ventura County Star. In addition to the Merewether Family and Ms. Sakharoff, other Season Sponsors are SANDRY AND JORDAN LABY and Barbara Meister AND BARBER AUTOMOTIVE GROUP.

Dates, Prices and Special Performances

TRYING opens at Rubicon on Saturday, March 13 at 7:00 p.m., with low-priced previews March 11 and 12 at 8:00 p.m. Performances continue March 14 at 2:00 p.m. for the first weekend. Subsequent performances are Wednesdays at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m., Thursdays at 8:00 p.m., Fridays at 8:00 p.m., Saturdays at 2:00 and 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Ticket prices are $39 to $59, depending on the day of the week. Students may attend a 10:00 a.m. student matinee for $10; individual student tickets are $25 with ID.

The OPENING NIGHT GALA tickets are $95 and include pre-show champagne and truffles in the lobby, tickets to the 7:00 p.m. show, and a post-show party with the cast, director, designers and crew at MY FLORIST CAFÉ in Ventura (complimentary hors d'oeuvres and a no-host bar). The Opening Night price also includes a tax-deductible donation to Rubicon of $50 per person.

"TALKBACKS," where audiences are invited to remain after the show for a facilitated chat with the actors and the artistic staff about the process or the production, are scheduled following the first two Wednesday 7:00 p.m. performances of the run (March 18 and 25).

The third Sunday matinee of TRYING, March 28 at 2:00 p.m., is AUDIO-DESCRIBED for individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

Tickets may be purchased in person through the Rubicon Theatre Company BOX OFFICE, located at 1006 E. Main Street (Laurel entrance). To charge by phone, call (805) 667-2900. Or visit Rubicon online at www.rubicontheatre.org. Twenty-four-hour-a-day ticketing is newly available online, thanks to a grant from the IRVINE FOUNDATION's Regional Arts Initiative, and patrons are now able to select specific seats online.

Next up at Rubicon!

Tickets are on sale now for Beth Henley's Pulitzer Prize-winning play CRIMES OF THE HEART. Don't miss this funny, sexy and surprising comedy, playing April 24 through May 16, 2010. Casting is in progress, however two returning Rubicon veterans have been announced as Meg and Doc - FALINE ENGLAND (All My Sons, Turn of the Screw) and JASON CHANOS (Bus Stop, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?). Artistic Director James O'Neil will helm this hilarious and heartwarming show, sponsored by LORI AND DR. RICHARD REISMAN and co-sponsored by HELEN YUNKER.

A Biography of the Real Biddle

Francis Biddle is perhaps best known for the time he served as a judge at the international military tribunal at Nuremberg, where he ruled on the fates of high-profile Nazis Hermann Goering and Rudolf Hess. He was also the Attorney General under Roosevelt.

The real-life Biddle was born Francis Beverley Biddle on May 9, 1886. Born in Paris while his family was traveling abroad, Francis was a member of one of Philadelphia's oldest and most prominent families. His ancestor William Biddle purchased land directly from William Penn.

Francis's father Algernon was a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. His great-great-grandfather was Edmund Randolph, and he was a relative of James Madison.

Francis Biddle graduated from the Groton School, where, in addition to his rigorous studies, he excelled at boxing. He attended Harvard University and graduated with an A.B in 1909 and a law degree in 1911.

He then went to work immediately as private secretary to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a position he held for two years. In 1912, he supported the presidential candidacy of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's renegade Bull Moose Party. Biddle opened his own law firm in Philadelphia in 1912 and practiced for nearly 30 years.

During World War I, he left his home to serve briefly in the U.S. Army. Upon his return, he became special assistant to the U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1922 to 1926.

Beginning in the 1930s, Francis Biddle was appointed to a number of important governmental roles. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt nominated him to be chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. On February 9, 1939, Roosevelt nominated Biddle to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, to a seat vacated by Joseph Buffington. Biddle was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 28, 1939, and received his commission on March 4, 1939. He only served one year before resigning on January 22, 1940, to become the United States Solicitor General. During this time he was also chief counsel to the Special Congressional Committee to Investigate the Tennessee Valley Authority, from 1938 to 1939, and director of Immigration and Naturalization Service at the U.S. Department of Justice in 1940. Roosevelt nominated him to the position of Attorney General of the United States in 1941.

Serving as Attorney General throughout most of World War II, Biddle was directed to order the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrest of "enemy aliens" on December 7, 1941 as the precursor to Executive Order 9066 which authorized the U.S. Japanese internment camps of the second world war. It was one of the great regrets of his career and haunted him in later life.

At President Harry S. Truman's request, Biddle resigned after Roosevelt's death. Shortly after, Truman appointed Biddle as a judge at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.

In 1947, he was nominated by Truman as the American representative on the United Nations Economic and Social Council. However, after the Republican Party refused to act on the nomination, Biddle asked Truman to withdraw his name.

In 1950, Biddle was named as chairman of the Americans for Democratic Action, a position he held for three years; then one decade later, wrote two volumes of memoirs: A Casual Past in 1961 and In Brief Authority the following year. His final position came as chairman of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Commission, which he held until 1965.

Biddle's writing skills had long been in evidence prior to the release of his memoirs. In 1927, he wrote a novel about Philadelphia society, "The Llanfear Pattern." In 1942, he took advantage of his close association with Oliver Wendell Holmes 30 years earlier with a biography of the jurist, "Mr. Justice Holmes," then wrote "Democratic Thinking and the War" two years later. His 1949 book, "The World's Best Hope," looked at the United States' role in the post-war era.

Biddle was married to the poet Katherine Garrison Chapin. He died of a heart attack in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, on October 4, 1968. He had two sons, Edmund Randolph Biddle and Garrison Chapin.

The Real Sarah: More about Playwright Joanna McClelland Glass

The character of Sarah in Trying is based on Joanna McClelland Glass, the playwright of Trying, who was Francis Biddle's personal secretary in the final year of his life.

Ms. Glass is one of Canada's most prominent playwrights and novelists. She was born Joan Ruth McClelland in Saskatoon on October 7, 1936. Joanna studied theatre in high school and developed her abilities in community theatre. Shortly after moving to Calgary to work for a radio station, she played the role of Anne Boleyn in Maxwell Anderson's Anne of the Thousand Days for the Dominion Drama Festival in 1957, where she won a scholarship to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. She then moved to New York, where she met and married physicist Alexander Glass in 1959.

In the ensuing years, Ms. Glass began to write. In 1967, she was hired by the poet Katherine Biddle (Biddle's wife) to work for the former Attorney General as he was trying to put his affairs in order.
Ms. Glass continued to write while raising three young children. Then, in 1972, her one-act plays Canadian Gothic and American Modern were premiered at the Manhattan Theatre Club in New York under the direction of Austin Pendleton. The Canadian premiere took place at the Pleiades Theatre in Calgary. Canadian Gothic was Ms. Glass's memories of her childhood. The show was adapted for radio by the CBC in 1974 and by the BBC in 1983, and remains one of Glass's most produced plays.

Artichoke, her comedy starring Colleen Dewhurst, premiered at the Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, in 1975, and played at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in 1976. A distinctively Canadian play, the play evokes graphic images of the Prairies during the Depression.

To Grandmother's House We Go was first produced in Houston, and moved to New York in 1980; its portrait of intergenerational conflict takes an ironic twist when the mother rejects her grown family's dependency on her after the death of the grandmother during a Thanksgiving reunion.

Play Memory (1983) returns to the gothic landscape of rural Saskatchewan, portraying an abusive father's attempt to control his wife and daughter. It was produced on Broadway, directed by Harold Prince, and received a Tony nomination. Its Canadian premiere was at the 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon in 1986.

If We Are Women takes its title from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" ("We think back through our mothers, if we are women"). The show premiered at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1993, and has played across Canada in a co-production of the Vancouver Playhouse Can Stage, the Centaur Theatre in Montreal, Theatre Calgary, and the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton. In England it was directed by Richard Olivier and starred Joan Plowright. It too is autobiographical, tracing the relationship between a writer characterized as "in her early forties, confessional, but always in a fragile, wistful, slightly humorous way, rather than self-pitying," her illiterate mother from Saskatchewan, her intellectually sophisticated mother-in-law, and her rebellious teenage daughter.

Glass wrote the comedy Yesteryear while she was a playwright-in-residence at Centrestage in Toronto; it premiered at the St. Lawrence Centre in 1989, and was remounted at the Blyth Festival in 1998 and at Can Stage in 1989. Yesteryear is set in 1948 when the province had voted in a CCF government. The male protagonist wins a lottery and gets a second chance at a relationship and at a reformative political vocation.

Glass has also written two novels: Reflections on a Mountain Summer (Knopf, 1975) and Woman Wanted (St Martin's, 1984), both of which she has adapted as screenplays for Lorimer Studios and Warner Brothers.

She has received a Rockefeller grant, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her papers are archived in the Special Collections, University of Calgary Library.

For more information, visit http://info.rubicontheatre.org/Page.aspx?pid=183