GOBLIN MARKET

A MUSICAL in One Act

By Polly Pen, Peggy Harmon, and Christina Rosetti
Directed by Teresa Thuman
August 10 – 27, 2017
(run time about 90minutes)
Center Theatre at Seattle Center Armory

– A dark and atmospheric musical about two grown sisters in the Victorian age who revisit their sexually charged childhood fantasies in an imaginary world of seductive goblins.

Based on the poem by Christina Rossetti

Previews begin: August 10th
Opening Night: August 12th

CAST:

Claire Marx
Kelly Mak
Justine Yu-Ping Davis
Miranda Troutt

These four accomplished actor-singers will perform as an ensemble and rotate in their featured roles as the sisters Lizzie and Laura, as well as creating a kaleidoscope of shadow and mirror characters.  In this unique exploration, they will creating four different potential cast combinations to reflect their complex emotional and psychological journey through the “Goblin Market.”

ROTATING CASTS

GOBLIN MARKET is cast as an ensemble and  we rotate the actors playing the roles of Lizzie and Laura.   The reasons for this were to further dramatize the close inter-dependent nature of their relationship while expanding the opportunities for our regions gifted musical theatre women artists.  More details

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS:

POLLY PEN writes book, music and lyrics. She received an Obie Award in 1996 for the score of Bed and Sofa, which also received seven Drama Desk nominations. Bed and Sofa premiered at the Vineyard Theatre and received its London premiere at the Finborough Theatre.  Polly’s first Off-Broadway production as both composer and co-author, Goblin Market, received five Drama Desk nominations and the BEST PLAYS Special Citation for Musical Composition and Adaptation in 1985.  Other works include The Night Governess (McCarter Theatre), Her Lightness (Sarasota Opera), The Dumb Cake (a radio musical for NPR), Embarrassments (Wilma Theater) and Christina Alberta’s Father  (Vineyard Theatre), which received a Richard Rodgers Award, an Obie and a Drama Desk nomination for Outstanding Music.  Polly is the recipient of several NEA grants, The Kitty Carlisle Hart Award and the Gilman & Gonzalez-Falla Award for Musical Theatre.  She has been honored by a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center and received the 2009 Flora Roberts Award for a distinguished body of work. She has been a National Theatre Artist-in-Residence at McCarter Theatre and is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Polly has served on the Council of The Dramatists Guild, the nominating committee of the Tony Awards and currently serves on the Board of Dramatists Play Service. Polly’s latest work, Arlington, premiered at The Magic Theatre in San Francisco and The Vineyard Theatre, NYC. In another life, Polly has worked extensively as an actor on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in repertory theatres throughout the U.S. Polly Pen’s most recent work, Arlington – for which she composed the music- is a new musical for solo voice and piano currently playing at the Vineyard Theatre in New York, which charts the restless wandering of the an Army Wife’s mind as she muses lightly on her past and more darkly on the war and its impact on her husband.

PEGGY HARMON, after receiving her BA in Theatre Arts from Brown University, Peggy spent 15 years as a theater professional. During those years, she worked at Boston’s Charles Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival, New York’s Public Theatre and as an original cast member in the Broadway production of Big River. Peggy is also the co-author of the acclaimed musical Goblin Market, which ran Off-Broadway at Circle in the Square Downtown and received a special citation in Best Plays of 1985-1986. After over 20 years as a development professional in independent schools as Director of Development at Seabury Hall, Maui Preparatory Academy and Oak Mountain Academy in Carrollton, Georgia, Harmon is currently Director of Development at The Maui Academy of the Performing Arts in Hawaii.  

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ABOUT THE POET:

Read the Poem

Christina Rossetti was the youngest child in an extraordinarily gifted family. Her father, the Italian poet and political exile Gabriele Rossetti, immigrated to England in 1824 and established a career as a Dante scholar and teacher of Italian in London. He married the half-English, half-Italian Frances Polidori in 1826. By her sixteenth birthday Christina, who was regarded as the poet in the family, had written more than fifty poems that were transcribed into a notebook by her sister. In 1847 a collection of her poems, titled Verses, which was privately printed by her grandfather Polidori. “Goblin Market,” with its theme of a fallen woman being saved by a “sister,” can also be seen as informed by Rossetti’s experiences at the St. Mary Magdalene Penitentiary. Her interest in this topic reflects the Victorian concern about prostitution as a social evil. Rossetti is best known for her ballads and her mystic religious lyrics. Her poetry is marked by symbolism and intense feeling and Goblin Market and Other Poems, published in 1862 is Rossetti’s best-known work. The collection established Rossetti as a significant voice in Victorian poetry.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR: 

TERESA THUMAN (STC Founder/Producing Artistic Director) Teresa founded Sound Theatre Company in 2006, for which she has directed productions of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Holiday of Errors, School for Lies, Dogg’s Hamlet, Cahoot’s Macbeth, The Illusion, The Foreigner, Pygmalion, Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged), The Tempest, Troilus and Cressida, Top Girls, The Last Five Years, The Further Adventures of Anse and Bhule in No-Mans Land and The Belle of Amherst. Other local directing credits include Othello, Henry VIII, The Bacchae, As You Like It, King John (GreenStage); Opera Workshop, A Little Night Music, Big Fish, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Down In The Valley, Sweeney Todd, Dido And Aeneas, Working, She Loves Me, Into the Woods, The Impresario (Shoreline CC); The Underpants, The 39 Steps (Mount Baker Theatre), Pericles (Cornish College of the Arts); Fiddler on the Roof, Anything Goes, High Society, My Way (Seattle Civic Light Opera); HAIR, Picasso at the Lapine Agile, The Who’s Tommy, Noises Off, Urinetown, Kiss Me Kate, The Producers, Secret Garden (Bainbridge Performing Arts); Miracle Worker, Tartuffe, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Oliver! (Driftwood Players); The Book of Nathan (Theater Schmeater) and numerous new-work projects and festivals. Teresa has taught at UW School of Drama PATP, UNC Chapel Hill, Shoreline Community College, Cornish College, George Fox University, Allan Hancock College, Freehold ETI and served eight years as an Artist-in-Residence at PCPA Theatrefest. She holds an MFA in Directing from University of Portland and a BFA in Acting from Webster University Conservatory of Theatre Arts.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]