Porgy and Bess Program [pdf] - American Repertory Theater

atrical history and bring them forward in a way
that continues to make them feel pertinent and
immediate—to make the audience feel as if
they’re alive with the work, almost as if it were
written yesterday.”
These aren’t platitudes, says Paulus, the
A.R.T.’s artistic director. She says that she
believes in this approach and in these ideals with
all her soul and tries to infuse them into every
aspect of the theater she creates, which includes
the 2009 Broadway revival of another landmark
musical work, Hair. That production landed
Paulus on the national radar, and Porgy marks
another watershed moment for the artistic leader.
Indeed, it stands as her biggest and boldest
project yet—and the one with the highest
stakes—since she took the reins at the A.R.T.
three years ago, dramatically shaking up that
storied institution.
The creative team she’s assembled for Porgy,
including Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Suzan-
Lori Parks and Obie Award-winning composer
Diedre Murray, have been hard at work, shaping
and developing their vision for Porgy, which hasn’t
been seen on Broadway in decades. (Today, it’s
mostly performed as an opera.) The fruits of
Paulus and Co.’s nearly year-long labor was unveiled
at the A.R.T. last month when the curtain
went up on The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess for a
seven-week run, with the production then moving
to Broadway in December. (The star-studded
cast includes four-time Tony Award-winner
Audra McDonald as Bess, Broadway veteran
Norm Lewis as Porgy and actor/comedian David
Alan Grier as Sporting Life.)
The project was launched when Paulus’ Hair
producer, Jeffrey Richards, told her that the
Gershwin estates and the DuBose Heyward trust
(Heyward helped adapt the libretto from his
original novel) had been looking for a team to
revive Porgy as a musical and asked her if she was
interested. “What moved me was their impulse
to come to a team in 2011 and say, ‘The opera
is the opera. But what about Porgy and Bess living
on the musical stage? What could that be? How
could it speak to the next generation?’ That was
the gauntlet they threw down to us—how can
you make this piece dramatically the most
powerful and meaningful version for an audience
today?”
BESS ACTRESS: Stage and screen star Audra
McDonald portrays Bess alongside Broadway
veteran Norm Lewis, who plays Porgy, in the
American Repertory Theater’s production of
The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.
When Porgy premiered in 1935 at the
Colonial Theatre in downtown Boston, it was
immediately embraced. Yet when it moved to
Broadway, it was greeted by a mixed reaction. Its
reputation, however, grew in the 1940s, especially
in Europe. Over time, the groundbreaking
and culturally significant nature of the score was
applauded. Not only did George Gershwin
mash-up the operatic form with folk music styles
like gospel and the dynamic sounds of jazz and
Michael Lutch
THE GERSHWINS’ PORGY AND BESS 7