HOCDprogram | Juvenilia at Suffolk University

HANDBOOK OF CIVILIAN DEFENSE: WHAT EVERY LOYAL AMERICAN CAN DO TO HELP THE UNITED STATES WIN THE WAR

Written and directed by Wesley Savick

With Original Music and Lyrics by Wesley Savick

75^th Annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe

8th – 13th August 2022 at 20:50 (8:50 PM)

At GREENSIDE at NICOLSON SQUARE (Venue 209) in the LIME STUDIO

A word-for-word theatrical adaptation (with original music) of the 1942 government handbook published to prepare families for uncertainty and violence, then and now. This world premiere production summons the anxiety, ignorance and hopefulness of an eighty-year-old public service announcement to awaken 21st century world citizenship. The show will be making its world premiere at Festival Fringe and will be remounted at Suffolk’s Modern Theatre in September 2022.

A note from the director...

“The impetus for Handbook was entirely unexpected: While visiting home last summer, my mother unearthed a long forgotten “Handbook of Civilian Defense” from her basement. I immediately saw in this artifact a theatrical opportunity to illuminate our current American moment, fraught as it is with anxiety, the threat of violence and the impulse for ordinary civilians to assert agency and tribal solidarity in the face of tumultuous change.

The original “Handbook” from 1942 was a preparation for catastrophe which tried to preempt panic. Our production of Handbook is a wake-up call meant to galvanize awareness of the dangers we currently face. It insists on being very funny while remaining deadly serious.

It is also an unreliable time machine. It appears to be looking back eighty years in order to see the present with fresh eyes. But audience members may also notice that the production is glimpsing its own obsolescence as an artifact of naiveté in the face of ominous, imminent upheaval.

Most important, Handbook is a celebration of the return of live theatre…what uniquely it can do and say and conjure. Theatres have closed due to epidemics in the past but they have never before faced so much competition for attention upon reopening. With this glorious opportunity to premiere ‘Handbook’ at the 75th Annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe (with an adaptation of a document only five years older than the Fringe itself!), we are reaffirmed in our passion never to take theatre, or democracy, for granted.”

– Wesley Savick, July 31st 2022

FEATURING

Adriana Alvarez

Anastasia Taso Bolkwadze

Andrew Bourque

Liam Grimaldi

Emma Hudd

Alex Pollock**

**Member of Actor’s Equity Association

CREATIVE & PRODUCTION

Wesley Savick, Writer & Director

Bozkurt Karasu, Design Collaborator: Sound/Lights

Sara Brown, Design Collaborator: Costume/Set

Jim Bernhardt, Producer

Kevin J. P. Hanley, Production Supervisor

Kendyl Trott, Production Stage Manager

Roz Beauchemin, Marketing

Aisling Mehigan, Marketing

Kiara Escaleria, Costumes Assistant

Elektra T. Newman, Technical Assistant

Special thanks to MIT School of Humanities and Social Sciences, MIT Music and Theater Arts, Lourey Savick, Josh Higgason, Christian Fredrickson, Sophie Ancival, and Yi Tu.

CAST

Adriana Alvarez [SU ‘19] is exhilarated to be back working with Juvenilia! Her first production was UBU ROAR when she graduated in 2019. Her recent credits are Priscilla Scollay in The Boston Tea Party Ships & Museums, Cousinship in Everybody, and Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls. Offstage, Adriana keeps busy directing and choreographing. Her most recent shows include Cabaret at Suffolk University and Sweet Dreams at Artbarn Theatre Company. Adriana wants to thank her family and friends for their constant support and love.

Liam Grimaldi [SU ‘20] graduated from Suffolk with a BA in Theatre. He spent a year studying at the University of Glasgow where he became a member of STAG and made his Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2019 with Tablespoon Theatre Company’s production of Painted Corners. Liam believes he would not be where he is today if it weren’t for all his incredible friends and family both home and abroad. This is his first production with Juvenilia.

Anastasia (taso) Bolkwadze [SU ‘21], is excited to be making her Festival Fringe debut with this production! Her last project included writing music for Our Time, a virtual play by Wes Savick. She was last seen in To Gather Apart, a virtual play for which she received a Kennedy Center Citizen Artist Award. Her favorite roles include Burger from Hair, Love from Everybody, and Sh’te from Loss of Breath.

Emma Hudd [SU ‘22] Is honored to participate in her second production with Juvenilia. She is a recent Graduate of Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts. Her most recent roles include Zoe in Pilgrims of the Night and Imogen in Suffolk Universities first outdoor production Cymbeline, of which she earned a nomination for the Kennedy Center Irene Ryan Acting Award.

Andrew Bourque [SU ‘17] is ecstatic to be with his theatre family again. He currently writes for Boston-based music publication Allston Pudding and is a Coordinator with Alert Innovation. His most recent theatre credits include starring in Liam Grimaldi’s Veleda (2020), personal assistant on 42nd Street at North Shore Music Theater, run crew for The Owl Answers at Harvard University, Assistant Director for Rev. 23 with White Snake Projects and starring in One Nation at Suffolk University (all 2017).

Alex Pollock [SU ‘06] has appeared briefly in Hulu’s Castle Rock, as well as numerous theatrical productions, including: UBU ROAR, Edward II, The Flick, The Aliens, The Seagull, Rhinoceros, Sticks and Bones, Appropriate, and This Is Our Youth. He is the recipient of two Elliot Norton Awards and a Princess Grace award.

**Member of Actor’s Equity Association

CREATIVE & PRODUCTION

Suffolk University theatre department story.

Wesley Savick (Writer/Director) has directed or acted in over one hundred professional productions, almost all new works, including premieres by Derek Walcott, Christopher Durang, Shel Silverstein, Jeffrey Sweet and Robert Brustein. He has directed at the American Repertory Theatre, the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, the Organic Theatre, and the Market Theatre, as well as Central Square Theatre, Boston Playwright’s Theatre, SpeakEasy, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre and many more. He is an Edgerton Award winner who has written, co-written or adapted twenty-seven plays including two novels by Alan Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams and mr. g), a musical based on the NPR show “Car Talk” which premiered at Suffolk University and subsequently enjoyed a record-setting professional run at CST, as well as a full-length opera based on the life of Liberace. Wes has served as Artistic Director of Theatre X in Milwaukee, interim Artistic Director of the Drama League of New York’s Directors Project, Artistic Associate of Chicago’s Organic Theatre and guest director-in-residence at the DARTS 2 Subaru Theatre in Tokyo, Japan. Wes is the Founding Director of The National Theatre of Allston and its legacy project, Juvenilia…initiatives established to promote, assist and celebrate the transition of Suffolk students and alumni into the professional Boston theatre.

Bozkurt “bozzy” Karasu (Design Collaborator: Sound/Lights) was born and raised in Istanbul where he worked many years as a production manager and designer for festivals, musicians, artists and companies before he moved to NYC in 2003 to join The Wooster Group as their production manager and company member with whom he actually visited Edinburgh quite a few times to perform in Edinburgh International Festival. In 2012 he accepted a position at MIT / Theater Arts and moved again this time to Cambridge, MA where he had the chance to meet and work with Wesley Savick and Sara Brown. They collaborated in numerous productions during his short stay in New England before he moved to Los Angeles, CA in 2015 where he currently resides. But since the day he moved to Southern California Wes, Sara and him kept talking and planning about getting together for another project and finally this year “Handbook of Civilian Defense” created this opportunity. He feels extremely privileged to be a part of this amazing show which Wes wrote and directed, to work with the extremely talented performers of Juvenila and to be here in Edinburgh again this time as a part of Edinburgh Festival Fringe program.

Sara Brown (she/her) (Design Collaborator: Costume/Set) is a set designer for theater, opera, and dance. This is her third project with Juvenilia following her work on Rhinoceros and Ubu Roar. Selected designs include Common Ground: Revisited at the Huntington Theater Company; The Day at Jacob’s Pillow; Hagoromo at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Fellow Travelers and at the Minnesota Opera; World of Wires at The Kitchen in NYC and Festival d’Automne in Paris; Prince of Providence at Trinity Repertory company in Providence, RI; Der Freischütz with Heartbeat Opera in NYC; The Mother of Us All at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her virtual and online designs include set design for The Other Shore, a virtual reality dance performance developed with the dance and visual art company Zoe|Juniper and the production design for an online film version of the play Fat Ham produced by the Wilma in Philadelphia. She is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Music and Theater Arts. Samples of her work can be found at www.sarabdesign.com.

Elektra T. Newman (Technical Assistant) [SU ’18] is often referred to as ‘a modern renaissance woman’ – She has operated regionally as a freelance artist for nearly thirty theatre companies over the past several years; some of which include The Huntington Theatre Co., M.I.T., Harvard University/American Repertory Theatre, Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre, The Strand, SpeakEasy, Boston Center for the Arts & with The Gold Dust Orphans at the Lithuanian Citizens Association, all in a multiplicity of technical fields such as scenic carpentry/painting, lighting, sound, & stage/house management. She graduated from Suffolk University with a Bachelor of Science in Theatre & Arts Administration in 2018, & has been working as a Technical Assistant in the Theatre Department since Fall of 2019. She has many aspirations for the future, & someday hopes to fulfill an unforeseen destiny through the many ironic coincidences that make up her life.

Kendyl Trott (Production Stage Manager) [SU ‘22] is incredibly proud of all the hard work this cast has dedicated to this project. She is dedicated to the craft of collaboration necessary to keep theatre alive and has been honored to work throughout Massachusetts with companies such as Actors’ Shakespeare Project, Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Juvenilla, and most recently, Arlekin Players. For more information about Kendyl go to kendyltrott.com.

GALLERY

photos by Aisling Mehigan

JUVENILIA is a professional theatre at Suffolk University in residence at the Modern Theatre. JUVENILIA’s mission is to nurture, promote and produce adventurous work with a company of actors, directors, playwrights, stage managers and designers comprised of Suffolk University alumni.

Suffolk University, located in historic downtown Boston, with an international campus in Madrid, is a student-centered institution distinguished by excellence in education and scholarship. Suffolk University offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs in more than 90 areas of study. Its mission is to empower graduates to be successful locally, regionally, and globally.

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