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IN THIS ISSUE

Doris Betts,

Short Story Author Jeanine Tesori

Composer Brian Crawley

Lyricist

Synopsis

Historical Background

America & the Age of Transportation

The Journey to Healing

This guide is available online at skylightmusictheatre.org

SEPTEMBER 30 - OCTOBER 16, 2016 Score by Jeanine Tesori, Book and Lyrics by Brian Crawley

V IOLET is the inspiring story of a young woman’s journey to self-acceptance. The intimate, psychologically-

charged musical begins in 1964, when Violet Karl, whose face was horribly disfigured in a childhood accident, boards a Greyhound bus for a pilgrimage from North Carolina to Oklahoma in search of a miracle. She hopes the healing powers of a television evangelist he will heal her scar and make her “pretty.” We never see the scar that mars Violet’s face, a detail left to the imagination, but there is never a moment we can forget the pain she has endured since her accidental injury. Violet was raised from early childhood by her widowed father. When she was 13, she was hit by a flying axe blade while he was chopping wood. Violet is now 25 and alone. The story weaves together past, present and fantasy, vividly recalling painful memories that have been festering and bubbling up for years in Violet's consciousness. As she gets farther from the place that scarred her physically and emotionally and closer to her healing fantasy, she begins to let her guard down and open herself to friendship. She meets two young soldiers on the bus who become catalysts for a deeper, more internal healing: Monty is cocky, confident and calls himself a “Roman Candle that you can’t wait to set off.” But he is lonely at

heart. The other soldier on the bus is Flick, an African-American who can empathize with Violet because as a black man in the south in the 1960s, he knows a thing or two about being judged by his appearance. The musical is based on THE UGLIEST PILGRIM, a short story by North Carolina writer Doris Betts. The story has the quality of a fairy tale rooted in reality. Like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Violet discovers there are limits to a magician's tricks, and the truth is that life is more about what you learn on the journey than at the destination. As Violet travels, the music moves from warm, soul-stirring folk and bluegrass to smoky Rhythm & Blues to full-throated gospel. The rich and rousing score was composed by Jeanine Tesori, a prolific female theatrical composer, with book and lyrics by Brian Crawley. Tesori’s other works include the Tony® Award-winning FUN HOME (2013), SHREK THE MUSICAL (2008),

CAROLINE, OR CHANGE (2004) and THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE (2002). VIOLET premiered Off-Broadway in 1997, winning the Drama Critics' Circle Award and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Musical. The 2013 Broadway revival earned 4 Tony® Award nominations, including Best Revival of a Musical.

AUDIENCE GUIDE | VIOLET

Research/Writing by Justine Leonard for ENLIGHTEN,

Skylight Music Theatre’s Education Program

Edited by Ray Jivoff rayj@skylightmusictheatre.org

and Margaret Bridges margaretb@skylightmusictheatre.org

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D oris Betts (1932 – 2012) was an award-winning novelist, short story writer and distinguished

educator. The characters in her stories grappled with religious faith, freedom, captivity and were steeped in the Southern literary tradition. Betts was born Doris June Waugh in Statesville, a river town in central North Carolina. The only child of local mill workers, she rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most celebrated and influential writers and educators in the South. She worked as a reporter for The Statesville Daily Record while still in high school and entered the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) in 1950, earning Phi Beta Kappa honors. As a young woman, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Mademoiselle Prize for college fiction, the UNC Putnam Award for her first novel, THE GENTLE INSURRECTION (1954), and three Sir Walter Raleigh Awards for subsequent novels. The most widely printed of her stories, THE UGLIEST PILGRIM, was made into a short film, VIOLET, which

won an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short in 1981. In 1997, Jeanine Tesori and Brian Crawley, wrote the musical VIOLET inspired by THE UGLIEST PILGRIM, which went on to win numerous awards. Betts’s novel SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD (1994) won the Southern Book Award, which is presented by newspaper book editors and reviewers in the South, and was named one of the 20 best books of 1994 by The New York Times. Betts was unparalleled as a teacher and mentor in English and writing. Students crowded her classes at UNC every year, often camping out so they could ensure a spot on her roster. She was the first woman ever elected Chairman of the Faculty at the University of North Carolina. In 1998, UNC endowed the Doris Betts Distinguished Professorship in Creative Writing in her honor. She served as the Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1975, she received the North Carolina Medal for Literature, the highest civilian award bestowed by the state. When asked what made her want to become a writer, she replied “Oh, Bible stories, without question. It makes you feel that the ordinary is not ordinary.”

Sources include The New York Times,

UNC Website, North Carolina obituaries

THE GENTLE INSURRECTION (1954) TALL HOUSES IN WINTER (1957) THE SCARLET THREAD (1965)

THE ASTRONOMER AND OTHER STORIES (1966)

THE RIVER TO PICKLE BEACH (1972) BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD AND

OTHER STORIES (1973) HEADING WEST: A NOVEL (1981)

SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD (1994) THE SHARP TEETH OF LOVE (1998)

Major Works

DORIS BETTS AUTHOR

A lthough Jeanine Tesori's grandfather was a composer, she didn't realize writing music

could be a career for women. Today she is one of the most prolific and honored female theatrical composers in history, with five Broadway musicals, a number of film scores and four Tony nominations. She and Lisa Kron won the 2015 Tony Award® for Best Original Score for FUN HOME, making them the first female writing team to win that award. Tesori grew up in Port Washington, Long Island, New York, her father a doctor, her mother a nurse. Although she played the piano from the age of three, she went to Barnard College intending to study medicine, but after two summers coaching at a kids’ theatre camp in the Catskills, she changed her major to music. After graduation, Tesori began working in New York as a musical theatre pianist, arranger, and conductor. Her first musical was the 1997 Off-Broadway production of VIOLET, which opened to mixed reviews, but won a number of awards. The story of VIOLET has a deep, personal connection to Tesori. Like her recent musical FUN HOME, it centers on a father-daughter relationship which is a generally unexplored topic in musical theatre.

Tesori and lyricist Brian Crawley were drawn to the possibilities of weaving the story with the musical journey the characters embark upon. He states, “Violet’s bus travels across the country, through Nashville and Memphis, two other national centers of very different kinds of music; it occurred to us early on that the piece could travel through these musical styles as it traversed the locations.“

Tesori is probably best known for her musical adaptation of the 1967 film THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, with librettist Dick Scanlan. Adapting the film for the stage involved supplementing the score with eleven new songs and four old ones from the 1920s. MILLIE earned Tesori a second Tony® nomination in 2002.

The innovative CAROLINE, OR CHANGE, with book and lyrics by Tony Kushner, author of ANGELS IN AMERICA, opened at the Public Theatre in 2004. Tesori’s score for CAROLINE won a Tony® nomination and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music.

She and Kushner also collaborated on a translation of Bertoldt Brecht’s MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN in 2006 as a part of the Public Theatre’s Shakespeare in the Park series. In In the summer of 2011 their opera A BLIZZARD ON MARBLEHEAD NECK premiered at Glimmerglass Opera. Tesori wrote the music for SHREK, THE MUSICAL, which opened on Broadway in 2008 and for which she earned both Tony and Drama Desk Award nominations for her music. Tesori is the artistic director of a concert series of Off-Broadway musicals, "Encores! Off-Center.” Her new opera, THE LION, THE UNICORN AND ME, based on the children's book by Jeanette Winterson, had its world premiere in a production by the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center in December 2013. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. She lives in Manhattan with her husband Michael Rafter and daughter Siena.

JEANINE TESORI COMPOSER

B rian Crawley was born in 1962 and grew up in the suburbs of Cinncinati. He

discovered his interest in playwriting as an undergraduate Theatre Studies major at Yale University. He holds an MFA in Acting from the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. His libretto for VIOLET was awarded the Kleban Award. Crawley also wrote the book and lyrics for A LITTLE PRINCESS (2004)

with composer Andrew Lippa and EVANGELINE (2013) with Tedd Dykstra. He is at work on a play about jazz performer Valaida Snow, and a new musical DOWN THERE with composer Lewis Flinn. He is featured in the documentary ONE NIGHT STAND, in which he writes a short musical in 24 hours with composer Gabriel Kahane. Crawley has developed plays with the Lincoln Center, New York Theater Workshop, the National Alliance of Musical Theatre, and the Eugene O’Neill summer theater conference. Crawley is a member of the Dramatists Guild.

BRIAN CRAWLEY LYRICIST

2016-2017 | SKYLIGHT MUSIC

Sources include Masterworks Broadway, Playbill, Roundabout

Theatre, Music Theatre International, and Broadway World

Spruce Pine, NC In the fall of 1964, Violet Karl waits for a Greyhound bus in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. She is on a pilgrimage to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In a flashback, she sees herself as a young girl happily singing (Water in the Well) before an accident disfigures her face. Violet’s daydream is broken by a fellow passenger’s question, and she explains she is on her way to Tulsa in hopes that a televangelist will heal her scar (Surprised). Violet and the other passengers sing about where this journey may take them (On My Way). Kingsport, TN At a rest stop in Kingsport, Tennessee, the passengers take a break for some food (M&Ms). At the grill, Violet meets two soldiers: Flick, a black sergeant and Monty, a white corporal. After an unpleasant encounter with a racist waiter, Violet joins the men in a game of poker. Violet learns the soldiers are on a journey to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and

as they deal her in, she recalls learning to play poker from her father (Luck of the Draw). Back on the bus, Monty questions Violet’s faith in the televangelist (Question ‘n’ Answer) and teases her with the catechism book she carries with her. This reminds Violet of the day she found the book and her curiosity about her mother, who died when Violet was very young. Nashville, TN As they travel through Nashville, Flick is interested in why Violet wants to change. Violet shows the soldiers physical features she admires from movie magazines (All to Pieces), but their attention wanders and Violet is insulted. She sits alone and recalls her younger self singing just before the accident (Water in the Well [Reprise]), and imagines an encounter between Young Violet and the televangelist (A Healing Touch).

Memphis, TN Flick apologizes for insulting Violet and suggests that she should put her faith in herself instead of the preacher (Let It Sing). They stop overnight in Memphis, passing a hooker on the way to the boarding house. (Anyone Would Do). Almeta, the landlady, is angry that Flick would bring Violet to her hotel because she is white, but Flick slips her some money and she relents. Violet falls asleep to a song on the radio (Who’ll Be the One [If Not Me]), and dreams of her younger self trying to dance, first with her father then with the old lady from the bus. In the dream, Monty appears and dances with both Young Violet and the old woman, but in real life, Monty has actually entered Violet’s room. He finds Violet’s catechism and reads her notes aloud. Violet is startled when she wakes and sees him, demanding he explain what he is doing in her room (Last Time I Came to Memphis). Breaking the tension, Flick enters the room with drinks to start the night (Go to It) and the three go dancing at the Beale Street Music Hall. Flick and Violet dance (Lonely Stranger), and Monty tries to make a pass at Violet, causing Flick to leave the hall. Violet follows Flick back to the boarding house where a tender moment between them is interrupted by Almeta, the landlady. Later that night, a drunk Monty returns to Violet’s room, wakes her, makes love to her, and falls asleep (Lay Down Your Head). The music hall singer, landlady and the hooker end the evening singing about their unfulfilled desires (Anyone Would Do [Reprise]).

Act 1

AUDIENCE GUIDE | VIOLET

Tulsa, OK

Spruce Pine, NC

Memphis, TN

Kingsport, TN

Nashville, TN

Fort Smith, AR

Fort Smith, AR Violet passes through Fort Smith with Flick and Monty on her way to Tulsa. Flick and Violet vow to write each other, but Flick gets upset when he learns about Violet’s night with Monty (Hard to Say Goodbye). Violet rejects Monty, afraid he’ll reject her first, and practices her speech in the bus bathroom. Monty is simultaneously practicing his own speech at the front of the bus, aimed at Flick. At Fort Smith, as the men leave, Monty asks Violet to meet him on her return from Tulsa (Promise Me, Violet), but she promises nothing as the bus pulls away.

Tulsa, OK Violet arrives in Tulsa and confronts the televangelist while he is rehearsing his show with the choir (Raise Me Up). His assistant, Virgil, tries to escort her from the building, which brings back her memory of being carried to the doctor in her father’s arms after the accident (Down the Mountain). She escapes Virgil and goes to the televangelist’s chapel where she leaves her notes from her catechism on the altar (In the Chapel). When the televangelist finds her, she pleads with him to invoke a miracle and cure her face (Raise Me Up [Reprise]). When nothing comes of her desperate attempt, she demands that he recognize her pain (Look at Me). As she prays, the televangelist is replaced by her father. They fight and he eventually apologizes (That’s What I Could Do). Violet senses a change within herself and as she re-boards the bus, she is convinced her face has been healed in a miracle (Surprised [Reprise]).

Fort Smith, AR Violet returns to Fort Smith and Monty is waiting for her. She realizes, after Monty laughs at her false convictions, that she has not been healed and rejects his marriage proposal. Flick is also at the station, and notices a change in Violet. He asks her to stay with him (Promise Me, Violet [Reprise]) and Violet, seeing that Flick truly sees her as she is and loves her, realizes that she wants to be with Flick. Her healing is complete when she commits to a new life with him (Bring Me to Light).

Act 2

Syn

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2016-2017 | SKYLIGHT MUSIC

Costume Designs and Renderings by Karin Kopischke

V iolet’s journey to healing begins in 1964 as she embarks on a bus trip that takes her from her

home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to Tulsa, Oklahoma. On the way, she meets two soldiers: Monty, soon to ship off to serve in Vietnam and Flick, his African-American friend. The characters of Monty and Flick reflect the turmoil and change taking place in America in 1964. At the beginning of the 1960s, many Americans believed that they were standing at the dawn of a golden age when the charismatic John F. Kennedy became president. His confidence seemed to set the tone for the decade. However, Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became president. This series of events marked a monumental shift for American culture. The new President created an expansive agenda of reforms that he believed would make the United States a “Great Society” in which poverty and racial injustice had no place. He developed a set of programs including Medicare and Medicaid, Head Start, and a Job Corps that trained unskilled workers for jobs in the de-industrializing economy.

Johnson also, unfortunately, inherited an American commitment to support anti-communist South Vietnam in a long, costly armed conflict that pitted the communist regime of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict escalated into a full-scale war in 1964. In VIOLET, Monty boasts, “I’m goin’ to Vietnam...Don’t cry. Things’ll be okay. It barely even counts as a war.” Knowing the outcome of the war, we can only speculate about his ultimate fate. More than 3 million people (including 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War; more than half were Vietnamese civilians. By 1969, at the peak of U.S. involvement in the war, more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were involved in the conflict. Meanwhile, civil rights issues challenged the country. The struggle for civil rights defined the ‘60s. Greyhound and other intercity services found themselves in the middle of the conflict when civil rights activists known as “Freedom Riders” rode their buses into the Deep South to protest segregation. Until then, intercity bus companies followed a common practice when crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, forcing black passengers to sit separate from whites in the back of the bus.

In July of 1964, just months before the beginning of Violet’s journey, President Johnson pushed a Civil Rights Act through Congress that prohibited discrimination in public places, gave the Justice Department permission to sue states that discriminated against women and minorities and promised equal opportunities in the workplace to all. Flick would not have been able to sit with Violet and Monty on the bus or in the rest stop had this story taken place one year earlier. But, as we know from current events in 2016, the laws did not solve the problems facing African-Americans and they could not change the way people thought. When a waiter gives Flick a hard time at a bus stop lunch counter, Monty explains that there has been progress, “Last year, he coulda been thrown in jail for sittin’ here.” The legacy of the era remains mixed– it brought us empowerment and polarization, resentment and liberation–and it has certainly become a permanent part of our political and cultural lives today. Many of the revolutionary ideas which began in the sixties are continuing to evolve.

VIOLET in History

AUDIENCE GUIDE | VIOLET

May 14, 1961: White, anti-civil rights protesters attacked a Greyhound bus with Freedom Riders with a fire bomb.

V iolet’s pilgrimage to a renewed life on a Greyhound bus reflects the millions of Americans who

had been relying on Greyhound for more than a century. Started by Eric Wickman in 1914, the company expanded rapidly, and over time, other carriers such as Trailways and Coach USA began serving the intercity market. Americans took to the idea of getting there by bus because it was convenient and affordable. The bus stop was like an oasis for travelers to grab a bite, make a rest room “pit stop” or get to know their fellow passengers and build friendships such as Violet, Monty and Flick’s. Greyhound became a cultural icon in the 1934 movie IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT starring Claudette Colbert as a spoiled heiress on the run and Clark Gable as a reporter chasing her. The film won five Academy Awards. But third billing could have gone to the Greyhound bus featured prominently in the action. Company officials credited the film for spurring interest in bus travel. Over the years, buses were often a background theme for other movies and plays including the 1955 stage play BUS STOP by William Inge and the Horton Foote play THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL. Greyhound references appear in many popular songs ranging from Chuck Berry’s PROMISED LAND to the Allman Brothers’ RAMBLIN’ MAN and perhaps most beautifully in America by Paul Simon. The intercity bus industry was not without challenges. In the mid-1950s, more than 2,000 buses operated by Greyhound, Trailways and other companies connected 15,000 cities and towns. But passenger volume began to decrease as train travel continued to be popular and private car and air travel grew. In 1960, American intercity buses carried 140 million riders; the rate decreased to 40 million by 1990, and continued to decline.

, By 1997, intercity

bus transportation accounted for only 3.6% of travel in the United States. The industry made a commitment to competing with airlines and trains with a variety of amenities. Travel by bus continues to be one of the easiest ways to see America up close. Greyhound, with its subsidiaries, is the largest provider of intercity bus services in the United State with service n the 48 contiguous states, Canada and Mexico.

2016-2017 | SKYLIGHT MUSIC

Sources include Wikipedia.com, Grey-hound Bus website

America and the Age of Transportation

The Journey to Healing

T he notion that prayer, divine intervention or the ministrations of a healer can cure illness has

been attributed to a variety of techniques commonly lumped together as "faith healing”. The United States has always been fertile ground for faith healers and preachers.

The satirical novel ELMER GANTRY, written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926, presents aspects of the religious activity of America in fundamentalist and evangelistic circles and the attitudes of the public toward it. The novel's protagonist, the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, is attracted to preaching by booze and easy money and chasing women. The character of Sharon Falconer in the novel was loosely based on the career of the Canadian-born American radio evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson, another pioneering tent-revivalist. In the 1920s and 30s, Sister Aimee, as she was known, was one of the most publicized Christian evangelical healers; testimonies claimed tens of thousands of people healed - although she herself took no credit for the healings, instead giving full credit to God. By incorporating radio, the new communications media of her day, she became known not only in the United

States but around the world. She even built one of the first megachurches.

In 1952, after years of successful radio preaching, Rex Humbard became the first to have a weekly church service broadcast on television. By 1980, his programs spanned the globe across 695 stations in 91 languages, until then the largest coverage of any evangelistic program. Oral Roberts telecast in 1957 reached 80% of the possible television audience. In a 2014 interview, VIOLET librettist and lyricist Brian Crawley said that author Doris Betts modeled the Preacher in THE UGLIEST PILGRIM on Oral Roberts. Crawley and composer Tesori decided to include him in the musical.

Their most useful research was an audio tape of Reverend A.A. Allen, a lesser-known televangelist in the ’60s. “Allen’s preaching was closely bound up with a gospel choir. For him this music was scripturally justified; what was delicious for me was the model of using a choir to get a congregation worked up and ready for healing. He also welcomed an integrated audience. African-Americans appeared on television in his choir and congregation, which was unusual for the time.”

Electronic media gave rise to further evangelical Protestant Christianity, particularly through the international television and radio ministry of Billy Graham. Other televangelists began during this period, including Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Many of them developed their own media networks and political influence. There is no solid scientific evidence that people are actually healed by prayer, laying on of hands or any other mystical magic. But the true believers don’t need evidence or science— for them, belief is enough. Healing may not mean objective cure of physical disease, but it may provide comfort, a feeling of well-being or an acceptance of an affiliation. Violet’s story is certainly a testimony to that.

Costume Design by Karin Kopischke