Meet the Talented Actors and Director of Glengarry Glen Ross

Print

Glengarry Glen Ross runs March 3-19 at the Be Be Theatre. Tickets on Sale Now. Purchase by March 5 and Pay NO FEES

Actors

Cyd Dawson-Smith

(Baylen) has been involved in local theatre for several years in a variety of ways. The prospect of being in this show was too enticing to turn down, and she is thrilled to be sharing the stage with so many talented local folks. She’d like to thank her family for keeping her sane during the rehearsal run, and all the friends and family who offered words of support and promises to attend. It really means a lot. She’d also like to thank Different Strokes for putting on such great theatre. For Cyd, “The idea of doing a show where the original cast concept involved all men as an all-female show is thrilling. The characters are juicy, interesting, and of varying ages – as a woman who is over 45, it is gratifying to have such an opportunity”.

Lucia Del Vecchio

(Williamson) has an MFA in Playwriting and Theatre from the University of Texas at Austin.  She is the managing and associate artistic director of The Magnetic Theatre.  She directed the world premiere of her play The Employee Handbook Revision Committee at Magnetic last October, and was last seen onstage in Stop/Kiss with DSPAC.  She thinks “the concept of this show has given her and the cast a rare opportunity as women onstage to explore roles that have very little to do with any type of relationship, but a lot to do with power and ambition”.

 

Courtney DeGennaro

(Roma) is a lifelong actor whose passion for the craft took her to the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities in 1999, after which she continued her studies at Theatre Emory and the Oxford Ensemble of Shakespearean Artists. She moved to Asheville in 2010 and promptly joined the theatre scene. Glengarry Glen Ross marks Courtney’s 3rd appearance with Different Strokes Performing Arts Collective, and her second of those three playing a part written for a man. She previously appeared for DSPAC as Sam in Coyote on a Fence and as Holly in Next Fall.

 

Christine Eide

(Moss) has recently returned to WNC after spending the past five years teaching in Ecuador. She holds a BA in Theatre Performance and Music as well as a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction.  She has performed a wide variety of roles since she began acting at the age of 16, and has performed professionally with companies such as Opera Carolina, Asheville Lyric Opera and Bright Star Touring Theatre. While in Ecuador she also had the joy of co-founding Azuay Community Theatre for whom she acted as both producer and director.  She’s thrilled to see how the theatre community has grown here in Asheville, and is so grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it!  When asked about her thoughts on casting an all female production of such an iconic play, Christine said “I am both intrigued by and indifferent to the concept of an all female Glengarry Glen Ross.  It’s interesting to see these characters from a female perspective, but at the same time, they’re still just people.  Men, women, we all share a common human experience, and I think that this production makes that clear”.

Sarah Felmet

(Levine) is seen off and on in the Asheville Theatre world. She was last seen in Montford Park Player’s Tartuffe as “Dorine”. Before that she was seen in UNC-A’s Tartuffe as “Dorine”. She decided to do something different. That is why she is here. What is more different than a female cast of this show? She’s overjoyed! Sarah also had a few things to say about this production of Glengarry Glen Ross, “In a world where men dominate, meaning Mamet’s vision of the show, it is a refreshing thing to look at these lines from a female perspective. The world looks to women for certain stereotypical roles and those are not of the world we explore. The typical nurturer isn’t here. The world is dog eat dog, get on top of the other guy, win the war. Be the one on top. It’s not that there aren’t women out there like this…We just never get a chance to really explore them on stage. Women typically don’t get this kind of steak to gnaw upon. It’s gristly and hard to chew but in the end it’s choked down with a healthy glass of scotch.

Danielle King

(Aaronow) is thrilled to be performing with Different Strokes yet again, in this unusual production of Glengarry Glen Ross! She has had a wonderful experience working with such a talented cast and crew to shed new light on a play that explores such traditionally masculine themes. She hopes that you enjoy the show.

Katie Anne Towner

(Lingk) has been involved in the theater in one way or another for most of her life. Most recently, she has directed, acted, and stage managed for The Magnetic Theatre. Favorite credits include playing the role of Hannah in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia (Warren Wilson College), co-producing the short play festival, Brief Encounters: New Magnetic Voices (The Magnetic Theatre), and directing the annual Bernstein Family Christmas Spectacular (The Magnetic Theatre). She is excited to be returning to the stage and to be working with DSPAC for the first time. Katie Anne belevesProducing GGGR with an all-female cast is a bold choice and one that is especially apropos given the continuing gender inequities in the workplace. It has been particularly illuminating to see women in a “man’s world” where the point isn’t that they are not men, but rather that they are individuals seeking money and power and influence of their own”.

 Director

Sean David Robinson

10552356_10152206037755779_8241166151396574848_nis an actor, writer and director born and raised in North Carolina. A resident of Asheville since 2000, he has performed with Different Strokes, SART, Magnetic Theater, Montford Park Players, Asheville Vaudeville, Black Swan Theater Co. and The Asheville Fringe Festival. Notable recent stage roles include Adam in Next Fall (DSPAC) and John in Coyote On A Fence (DSPAC).  It was Sean’s idea to cast Glengarry Glen Ross with a female cast. “Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet is a vulgar play. Even disregarding the swearing, which is ample, the play trades in other forms of vulgarity: greed, racism, avarice, manipulation and downright apathy. The world of the play is civilized savagery – Lord of the Flies in a suit and tie.

So, why stage is as an all-female production?

“In part, we are doing this because the idea of female savagery is completely foreign to us. There’s a reason Mamet populated this world with men, and it isn’t because women can’t be salespeople.Men are brutes in our stories, and we like it. From Gilgamesh, killer of the Bull of Heaven, to Romeo, killer of Tybalt, to Bruce Willis, killer of almost everyone in the Die Hard series he isn’t blood-related to, our male heroes are weapons first.  Wit, sarcasm, cruelty: these may not draw blood, but they are weapons nonetheless. We rarely see this from the women in our stories. In spite of Joan of Arc, Stagecoach Mary, Hillary Clinton, Ronda Rousey, Oprah and a myriad other powerful women of history, our stories are full of women who fill stereotypical roles: the mother, the housewife, the prostitute, and the old maid”. So, in this play, we ask a simple question: would we celebrate this civil brutality if it wore a female face?

How has this play evolved, for you, during the process?
When Steph and I first discussed Glengarry Glen Ross as an all-female production, my aim was to shine a light on gender bias. What this play has become, however, is an exploration of the beauty of language.
Language is malleable, and each word carries untold layers of meaning. A cast of men reading and performing this play will decide a certain line carries meaning A, and a cast of women will find it to carry meaning B. Many times, those meanings are exactly opposite, but both are equally correct.
In that way, this play is more about HOW people talk to each other than what they say. It’s about communication.
And so, it should be no surprise that our cast of women has found compassion in characters where there previously had never been, found empathy in them, found justice to replace malice, found love even in long-cold hearts, and camaraderie alongside cutthroat capitalism.
The play is transformed. It is no longer about the empty drudgery of a sales office plagued by the greed of capitalist overlords. Instead, this is a play about learning how to say what you’ve always wanted to say, even if it’s too late to do anybody any good.