Production History
An early version of Sexual Perversity in Chicago was first produced at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont by the members of St. Nicholas Theater. The production was directed by Mamet.
The play was a series of blackouts showing various people (waitresses, policemen, investment bankers etc. having discussions about sex. It featured:
- William H. Macy
- Steven Schachter
- Alison Zucker
- Mary Tibbetts
- Madeleine Dammers
- Peter Vincent
The play was subsequently reworked by Mamet with director Stuart Gordon into the four character structure that made it famous and established David Mamet as a playwright. An earlier Mamet play Danny Shapiro and his Search for the Mystery Princess was combined with Sexual Perversity, adding the characters of Bernie Litko and Joan Webber. It was produced and performed by Organic Theater Company in Chicago in June 1974, in a production directed by Stuart Gordon. The cast featured:
- Warren Casey as Bernie Litko
- Eric Loeb as Danny Shapiro
- Carolyn Purdy Gordon as Deborah Soloman
- Roberta Custer as Joan Webber
In December 1975, the play was mounted off-off Broadway at the St. Clements Theatre in New York. An off-Broadway production directed by Albert Takazauckas opened on a double bill with the playwright's The Duck Variations on June 16, 1976 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village and ran for 273 performances. The cast included F. Murray Abraham and Peter Riegert. Subsequent cast members included Jeff Zinn.
Read more about this topic: Sexual Perversity In Chicago
Famous quotes containing the words production and/or history:
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)