ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

JONATHAN BANK

p r e s e n t s

-PLEASE KEEP FOR YOUR RECORDS-I ordered tickets for SUSAN AND GOD for________________ 2006 @ ________pm.

Paid By: ❍ Visa/MC/Amex ❍ Check #_____________ All tickets are HELD at the Box Office. NO LATE SEATING!

Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday at 7pmFriday-Saturday at 8pm & Saturday-Sunday at 2pm

How to purchase your tickets for SUSAN AND GOD• By Mail or In-Person: Mint Theater Company

(No Service Charges) 311 West 43rd Street, Ste. #307New York, NY 10036

• By Phone: (212) 315-0231 ($2.50 per ticket service charge will apply)

• By Fax: (212) 977-5211 (No Service Charges)

• On-line: www.minttheater.org (No Service Charges)

• Call for special group rates (groups of 15 or more)

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*All sales are final. There will be no exchanges or refunds.

PREVIEW PRICING: $35 FOR PERFORMANCES JUNE 6 - JUNE 18(2 WEEKS ONLY!)

$45 FOR PERFORMANCES JUNE 20 - JULY 16

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BOX OFFICEHOURS

Now thru June 2:Monday - Friday

12-6 pm

Beginning June 5:Monday - Saturday

12 - 6 pmSunday 12 - 3 pm

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JUNE 6th

thruJULY 16TH

TUES • WED • THURS – 7PM FRI • SAT – 8PM SAT • SUN – 2PM

PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER

JENNIFER GRUTZA

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER

SARA KMACK

PRESS REPRESENTATIVE

DAVID GERSTEN& ASSOCIATES

SET DESIGN

NATHAN HEVERIN

DRAMATURGE

HEATHER J. VIOLANTI

GRAPHIC DESIGN

JUDE DVORAK

COSTUME DESIGN

CLINT RAMOS

LIGHTING DESIGN

JOSH BRADFORD

PROPERTIES DESIGN

JUDI GURALNICK

SOUND DESIGN

JANE SHAW

CASTING

STUART HOWARD, AMY SCHECTER & PAUL HARDT

BY RACHEL CROTHERSDIRECTED BY JONATHAN BANK

$35 June 6-18 $45 June 20-July 16

To order tickets call (212 ) 315-0231OR VISIT OUR ON-LINE BOX OFFICE: W W W. M I N T T H E AT E R . O R G

WITH

OPAL ALLADIN

HEIDI ARMBRUSTER

JENNIFER BLOOD

MATHIEU CORNILLON

ALEX CRAMNER

TIMOTHY DEENIHAN

KATIE FIRTH

ROB GOMES

LESLIE HENDRIX

ANTHONY NEWFIELD

P e r f o r m a n c e s a t M i n t T h e a t e r 3 1 1 W E S T 4 3 r d S t R E E T , 3 r d f l o o r

SUSAN AND GOD IS

SUPPORTED IN PART BY

AN AWARD FROM THE

NATIONAL ENDOWMENT

FOR THE ARTS.

DON’T FORGET: Mint’s Fourth Annual BenefitCelebrating! American Women PlaywrightsMonday, June 19, 2006

Dinner, performance and reception: $150 per personPerformance and reception: $100 per person

Dinner at Le Madeleine Restaurant 403 West 43rd Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6:00pm

Raffle Prize Viewing at Mint Theater311 West 43rd Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7:30pm

Program at Mint Theater 311 West 43rd Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8:00pm

Guest stars Carolyn McCormick, Byron Jennings and a cast ofMint friends read Act I of The Leading Lady by Ruth Gordon.

Broadway star Mary Testa sings selections from the never-performed musical adaptation of Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding by Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer.

Wine and Sweets Reception and Raffle DrawingAfter the Performance

Raffle Tickets: $20 each or 6 for $100Fabulous prizes include:Dinner for two at the hot new restaurants Aquaterra and TelepanHandpainted pottery by Mexican national treasure Salvador VasquezSix-month membership at the Excelsior Athletic Club

Check our website www.minttheater.org formore events and updates on times and dates.

SURROUND EVENTS:Discussions last approximately 50 minutesand are open to the public free of charge.

SATURDAY JUNE 10TH following the matinee

Panel Discussion on AmericanWomen PlaywrightsThree distinguished scholars will discuss thework and careers of Rachel Crothers and othersignificant American women such as SusanGlaspell, Lillian Hellman, Sophie Treadwell, etc.

Judith Barlow, editor of Plays By AmericanWomen, 1900-1930, and Plays By AmericanWomen, 1930-1960 and a Professor at SUNYAlbany.

Brenda Murphy, editor of The CambridgeCompanion to American Women Playwrightsand a professor at the University of CT.

J. Ellen Gainor, author of The Plays of SusanGlaspell: A Contextual Study and a professor at Cornell University.

Panel moderator will be Susan Jonas, co-editorof Dramaturgy in American Theatre: A SourceBook and co-author of the New York StateCouncil on the Arts report assessing the status of women in the theater.

SUNDAY JUNE 11TH following the matinee

Susan and God in ContextSharon Friedman is a Professor at NYU in the Gallatin School. Her publications related to women and theatre include “Feminism AsTheme in Twentieth-Century American Women’sDrama” in American Studies. Dr Friedman willdiscuss Susan and God in the context ofCrother’s overall body of work.

SATURDAY JUNE 17TH following the matinee

Growing up with Rachel CrothersAnne Sheffield will share her childhood remi-niscences of summers spent in CT withCrothers. Sheffield’s grandmother was Rachel’slong-time companion and Anne is now executorof the Crother’s estate.

POST-SHOW DISCUSSION PERFORMANCES SELL OUT FIRST. PLEASECALL RIGHT AWAY TO BOOK TICKETS FOR THESE WEEKEND MATINEES,WE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO FILL MAIL-ORDERS. CALL 212-315-0231 FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO BOOK YOUR SEATS.

Mint is proud to celebrate our three Drama Desk Award Nominations:

OUTSTANDING REVIVAL OF A PLAY:Soldier’s Wife

OUTSTANDING FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY:Judith Hawking (Soldier’s Wife)

OUTSTANDING SET DESIGN OF A PLAY:Roger Hanna (Walking Down Broadway)

MTC_SUSANandGODflyer 5/1/06 4:11 PM Page 1

NON-PROFIT ORG.

U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDNew York, NY

Permit No. 7528

SUSAN AND GODBy Rachel Crothers

“Rachel Crothers is back onBroadway! Sing Hallelujah!”

That’s how one critic greeted Susan andGod, Rachel Crothers’ triumphant return toBroadway in 1937. After a five yearabsence, audience and critics rejoiced tosee the “first lady” of American playwrightsback where she belonged.

Susan and God marked the culmination ofCrothers’ career as both playwright anddirector. For over thirty years, her plays hadlit up the Great White Way. Now, withSusan and God, she once again reignedsupreme. The play’s initial run lasted 288performances. John Golden, Crothers’ long-time producer, considered it her best work;he boasted that Susan and God played tosold-out houses with 20 standees a night.The National Arts Club voted Susan andGod the season’s most outstanding playand awarded Crothers its Gold Medal.Burns Mantle included it in his yearlyanthology of Best Plays.

In 1938, selections from Susan and Godwere the first dramatic scenes broadcast ontelevision, still an experimental medium.In 1943, the play was chosen to open CityCenter, with Gertrude Lawrence reprisingher role as Susan.

Audiences were charmed by the endearinglyselfish Susan, a socialite who embraces anew religious philosophy while abroad andreturns home eager to change everyonearound her. “Although all her friends recognizethe insecurity of her prattle,” writes BrooksAtkinson in his 1937 New York Timesreview, “her drunken husband in a momentof abject despair thinks that perhaps shemeans what she says and that by faith hecan pull himself up by his bootstrap.” He’sready to reform, but she’s ready to divorce.Confronted with her husband’s sincereefforts, Susan must learn the differencebetween public facade and personal faith.

On one level, Susan and God satirizes thetrendier aspects of the Oxford Group,a religious movement of the 1920’s and1930’s. Pre-dating the spiritual trends of ourday, the Oxford Group inspired everythingfrom evangelical soirees to the foundationof Alcoholics Anonymous.

Satire was not Crothers’ main goal, however.World War II loomed on the horizon.

Crothers understood the longing for certaintyin an increasingly uncertain world.Explaining her reasons for writing the play,her words resonate today as powerfully asthey did in 1937:

It seemed to me that in this sick world,heartbroken over its own failures, thatside by side with more universal horrorthan the world has ever known, there isa more universal hunger and reachingout for a spiritual healing, a widersearch for the Infinite Truth that cananswer our fumbling questions andhelp us to go on believing inGoodness—in God.

The result, voiced one Los Angeles critic,was “a real miracle play...a miracle oftoday, of a divine truth which penetratedthe lacquer finish of those sophisticateswho pride themselves on the strict mainte-nance of a scoffing mood.” The New YorkWorld Telegraph declared Crothers’ comedy“a play that will rejoice your heart.” StarkYoung deemed Susan and God “significant,profound, charming, and rightly theatric.”Citing the play’s scintillating dialogue anddeft characterization, Brooks Atkinson ofThe New York Times ranked Crothers among“the front rank of theatre writers…MissCrothers knows how to write a play thatworks.”

“Biting, sensible, comic,warming,delicious.”

(Morning Telegraph, 1937)

“Although it is rare now to find anyone whohas heard of her,” The New York Timeswrites in 1980, “Miss Crothers at the apexof her career was a symbol of success in thecommercial theater. Between 1906 and1937, she saw close to 30 of her playsopen on Broadway.” Mint is excited to callattention to the remarkable career of one ofAmerica’s most successful and talentedplaywrights.

Susan and God remains a miracle play forour own time. Please don’t miss this rareproduction of a poignant comedy about thesearch for certainty in an uncertain world.

R a c h e lC r o t h e r s(1878-1958) was bornin Bloomington, Illinois.When he r mo the rembarked on a medicalcareer, Crothers wassent to live with an auntin Massachusetts. She learned early aboutthe struggle to balance a career with familylife. The lesson would prove a recurrenttheme in her plays.

In 1896, Crothers moved to New York.After one term as a student at Stanhopeand Wheatcroft School of Acting, she washired as a teacher. She began to write anddirect her own plays. When Nora (1903), aone-act about a widowed actress’s battle tokeep her son, debuted at the school, onecritic predicted “a new dramatic authormay have arrived.”

Nora imitates the work of Ibsen andStrindberg, but Crothers gradually grewconfident enough to recast the “problemplay” in a distinctly American idiom.A Man’s World (1910), heralded as “thefirst great American play,” followed a youngwoman’s struggle to establish an artisticcareer while raising an adopted son.

During World War I, she wrote “gladnessplays”—sentimental comedies with melo-dramatic overtones. One of these, A LittleJourney (1918), was nominated for thePulitzer. Her postwar output abandonedsentimentality in favor of realism and socialissues. Nice People (1921) examined theflapper phenomenon and provided TallulahBankhead and Katherine Cornell with theirfirst important roles.

Crothers’ plays revolve around the everydaychallenges facing women—getting a job,becoming independent, raising a family.She sympathized with various women’smovements, but never allied herself withthem. She was criticized for being apolitical,she was called old-fashioned—but shemanaged to survive thirty-one years onBroadway.

Toward the end of her life, Crothers focusedon charity work. During War World II, shehelped found the American Theater Wingand contributed to its relief work overseas.Crothers died in her sleep at herConnecticut home on July 5, 1958.

311 W. 43rd Street Suite #307 New York, NY 10036www.minttheater.org

Don’t Miss

TICKETSONLY $35For preview performancesJune 6th thru June 18th

$45 June 20-July 16

BY RACHEL CROTHERS

A high spirited spiritual comedy

Susan has just come home from her latest European caper wearing the most fashionable spirituality—and of course she looks Divine. The only question is: can she practice what she preaches? She’s put to the test when the one person who puts his faith in her is her alcoholic husband; he’s ready to reform, but she’s ready to divorce.

SUSAN AND GOD was inspired by the Oxford Group, an early 20th century religious movement that helped to give birth to Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps.

“A whacking good evening in the theater.” Morning Telegraph, 1937

MINT THEATER COMPANY: LOST PLAYS FOUND HEREThe award-winning Mint has brought you lost treasures such as:

Walking Down Broadway, The Daughter-in-Law, Far and Wide and Echoes of the War.

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