Production Credits:
Director, Jack Phillips
Technical Director, Thad Hallstein
Stage Manager, Darla Goudeau
Assistant Stage Manager, Jim Kopp
Costume Designers, Debbie Phillips, Patti Roeder
Costume Crew,
?????????????????????
Dramaturg, Rick Pavia
Hospitality Chair, Carol Clarke
Hospitality Crew, Dorothy Attermeyer, Rosemary Beale, Carole Borg, Bill and Terry Fanning, Tom Frohnapfel, Joyce Hewitt, Bonnie Hilton, Karen Holbert, Carol Hudson, Dennis Hudson, Karla Hudson, Ann Marie and Harry Hultgren, Andrea Imes, Donna, Eleanor, and Rich Kanak, Karin Kramer, Craig and Jan Mahlstedt, Jason and Stacy McCargo, Jeff Miklos, Janel Palm, Rick Pavia, Patricia Rafferty, Margo Rickert, Pat Rotz, Donna Sauers, Kevin Slattery, Mary Smith, Liz Steele, Carol Suda, Dave and Susan Valenta, Sarah Vanikiotis, Susan Waldschmidt, Stephanie Williams
Lighting Designer, Cal Turner
Lighting Crew, Paul Roach, Betsy Stiles, Cathy Van Horne
Makeup Designer, Cindy Blaszak
Makeup Crew, Melanie Blaszak, Caron Buinis, Peg Callaghan, Susan Fu, Ronald Keaton, Judy Rossignuolo-Rice, Sarah Vanikiotis
Properties Designers, Linda Auer, Bill Love
Properties Crew, Sandy Buller, Joe Delaloye, Mark Favoino, Dennis Hudson, Joyce Love, Arlene Page, Sue Wisthuff
Set Construction Chair, Grace Abrahamson
Set Construction Crew, Brant Abrahamson, John Allen, Bob Baker, Mike Barger, Anne Cahill, Joe Delaloye, Judy DiVita, Tom Frohnapfel, Mike Huth, Patricia Huth, Heinz Karplus, George Letten, Paul Roach, Bill Rotz, Terri Smartz, Dave Valenta
Set Designer, Judy DiVita
Set Painting Chair, Rob Nardini
Set Painting Crew, Jim Kopp, Mary Pavia, Jack Phillips, Cathy Van Horne, Denny Wise
Sound Designer, Martha Niles
Sound Crew, Judy DiVita, Tom Gess, Mike Janke, Betsy Stiles
Box Office Chair, Mary Ellen Schutt
Box Office Crew, Ed Barrow, Lori Proksa, Patti Roeder, Marilyn Wilson, Judy DiVita
House Manager Chair, Bill Wilson
House Managers, Suzanne Anthoney, Jack Calvert, Susan Cardamone, Peggy Carlson, Penny Choice, Carol Clarke, Rob Cramer, Joe Delaloye, George Dempsey, Tom Frohnapfel, Jim Hannigan, Karla Hudson, Harry Hultgren, Anrdea Imes, Mike Janke, Donna Mae Kanak, Art Kelly, Jon Mills, Denny Wise
Front Row Center Flyer, Joe Petrolis
Group Sales Chair, Betsy Stiles
Poster Distribution, Kathleen Kusper
Production Coordinator, Jon Mills
Program Advertising, Peggy Carlson
Program Editors, Ed Barrow, Marion J. Reis
Publicity Chair, Janette Quinn
Actives Archives Website, Judy DiVita

Acknowledgments
Produced with special permission from Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Special thanks to:
The Fruit Store, Western Springs and Hinsdale, for providing apple cider at cost with free delivery.

Starbucks, Western Springs, for providing decaf coffee for the Thursday performances.

The photographs illustrating this program are from The Theatre of Western Springs’ archives.

Setting: The play takes place in a modest walkup
apartment in a New York Brownstone in the 1960's.

Director’s Corner
By Jack Phillips

It’s great fun for a cast and director to work on Neil Simon’s early plays. It’s also a great challenge. Simon is so good at setting up and then making the jokes that we tend to think that it’s easy to do. Our job is to make it look easy. What’s hard is to keep the acting energy high while letting people have time to laugh. We also have to be very aware of timing. His rhythms are so important to how well the play works that we have to keep sharp throughout the play. Also, while he is famous for his jokes, he is writing real characters that actors have to flesh out and let us understand them. Many of the jokes arise from who the characters are and the actors’ job is to let us get to know them.

Welcome to the first play of our 79th season. Over the summer we have made many changes in the theatre to make your time here more comfortable. We have renovated the bathrooms and added accessible facilities in both the Main Stage and the Cattell Theatre lobbies. You also may notice an improved sound system. We’ll keep working to make your experience here as enjoyable as we can. We appreciate your support.

Dramaturg’s Diary
By Rick Pavia

Neil Simon, one of our most prolific and frequently performed American playwrights and screenwriters, was born Marvin Neil Simon in The Bronx in 1927. He attended New York University briefly in 1946, but left to take a job as a mailroom clerk at the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan. After several jobs during the 1950s, writing for radio and television, he began writing plays. Simon’s first Broadway play, Come Blow Your Horn, opened at the Brooks Atkinson theatre and ran for more than 600 performances. He has also written screenplays for over 20 films. His better known works include The Odd Couple, Murder By Death and The Goodbye Girl, starring his one-time wife, Marsha Mason.

Through the years, Simon has received 17 Tony nominations and won three. He won a Pulitzer Prize for the drama Lost in Yonkers, performed last season here at TWS.

Barefoot in The Park was written in 1963. The original Broadway production was directed by Mike Nichols and opened in October of that year at the Biltmore Theatre where it ran for 1,530 performances. The play was adapted to film in 1967, featuring Jane Fonda as Corie Bratter and Robert Redford as Paul Bratter.

Barefoot in the Park is one of Simon’s lighter comedies with some drama thrown in to give it a mildly serious edge, as is the trademark in many of his plays. The play explores the relationship between two newlyweds, Corie and Paul, settling into their first walk-up apartment in New York, and Corie’s well-intentioned, but sometimes doting mother and their eccentric neighbor, Victor Velasco. Paul is an upwardly mobile young attorney just working his first case, eager to prove himself in the business world; Corie is a free-spirited, imaginative young woman, constantly trying to think up ways to make this small apartment, lacking in adequate heat with a hole in the skylight, a comfortable home for the two of them.

The dialogue fits very well into the 1960’s. It is somewhat dated today, but is still humorous and occasionally touching as these two seemingly diverse personalities attempt to start their new lives together. In a contemporary setting, Paul would probably be a yuppie attorney, driving a Lexus or BMW, constantly on his Blackberry while Corie might be an interior designer or decorator, trying to start a business out of their new home, creating her first website and using a digital camera to upload pictures of her work. Barefoot has been performed many times over the years in various theatres across the country and continues to be enjoyed by audiences today.