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From Lauryn Axelrod, Resident Dramaturg
Welcome backstage at the Weston Playhouse Theatre Company with our new online StageNotes. Enrich and expand your WPTC experience as you explore the history of the play, read interviews, watch videos or hear music clips, discover connections and contexts, and learn about the playwrights, composers, directors, actors and designers who make your WPTC live theatre experience so memorable. Enjoy the show! |
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OVERVIEW
In the musical comedy, THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE, six young people in the throes of puberty, overseen by grown-ups who barely managed to escape childhood themselves, learn that winning isn’t everything and that losing doesn’t necessarily make you a loser.
This hilarious tale of overachievers’ angst chronicles the experiences of six adolescent outsiders vying for the spelling championship of a lifetime. The show’s Tony-Award winning creative team has created the unlikeliest of hit musicals about the unlikeliest of heroes: a quirky yet charming cast of outsiders for whom a spelling bee is the one place where they can stand out and fit in at the same time.
About the Audience Participants
Before every performance of THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE, four audience volunteers are recruited to participate on-stage as guest spellers. Each new foursome guarantees a new set of hilarious and unexpected experiences – one night is just as unique as the one before it. The willing contestants are chosen through a careful vetting process, utilizing pre-show lobby interviews and audience questionnaires. |
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ABOUT THE PLAY
THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE started as a non-musical play entitled C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, done by the improvisational group “The Farm.” One of the performers in the play, Sarah Saltzberg, happened to be the nanny of the playwright Wendy Wasserstein (The Heidi Chronicles). Wasserstein was impressed by what she saw and suggested to friend William Finn (Falsettos) that he may be able to take the show to the next level. Finn, his former student Rachel Sheinkin, and C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E creator Rebecca Feldman worked together to turn the piece into a full-length musical.
In the winter of 2004, SPELLING BEE had a workshop at Barrington Stage Company in Sheffield, Massachusetts. The following summer, the show had its first full production, in a cafeteria turned theatre.
From there, SPELLING BEE moved to Off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre, where it quickly sold out its original stay and was extended due to glowing reviews and powerful word of mouth. The show broke box office records at Second Stage and moved to Broadway’s Circle in the Square on April 15, 2005 with an official opening on May 2nd. The show again received rave reviews and won two 2005 Tony Awards for Best Book of a Musical and Best Featured Actor. |
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| ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT AND COMPOSER |
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(L to R) Rachel Sheinkin, William Finn,
James Lapine, Rebecca Feldman |
In 2003, Rebecca Feldman and the theater-group The Farm conceived of an improvisational lark called C-R-E-P-U-S-U-L-E. Playing the role of Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre was Sarah Saltzberg, nanny for playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who suggested the show to William Finn. Finn teamed up with book writer Rachel Sheinkin, one of his former students at NYU, to create The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Directing the original production was James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim’s longtime collaborator.
WILLIAM FINN (composer) is best known for writing and composing Falsettos, for which he won two Tony Awards. Other plays include In Trousers and March of the Falsettos, both produced in New York. He wrote the score and lyrics for Elegies: A Song Cycle and A New Brain. He was born in Boston, the son of a salesman. See also Excerpts from an interview with William Finn. |
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RACHEL SHEINKIN (lyrics and book) (B.A. from Brown University, M.F.A. from Yale School of Drama and second M.F.A. from N.Y.U.) Born in Brooklyn, daughter of holistic psychiatrist and psychotherapist, and grew up in Rockland County. Adjunct faculty member at NYU. Recent productions include Striking 12, a hybrid concert-play written in collaboration with the rock band GrooveLily and director Ted Sperling. She is currently collaborating on the new GrooveLily musical Wheelhouse and writing a play, Ten Plagues. Wrote a play, The Doctor of Last Resort.
REBECCA FELDMAN (conceiver) is the conceiver of THE 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE for which she won a Lucille Lortel Award, Drama Desk and Tony Nomination for Best Musical. She directed its world premiere at Barrington Stage Company in the summer of 2004. Rebecca conceived, directed and performed in C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, the play upon which Spelling Bee is based, with her company The Farm. Previous projects with The Farm include Super (Atlantic Theatre Studio), V-Ville (West End Theatre), the work-in-progress Jade Winds or Why I Hate Florida. She has directed and performed in New York and regionally for the past 10 years including: New York Fringe Festival (Best of Fringe '98), Soho Rep, Adobe Theatre, New Dramatists, Mabou Mines and various downtown venues. Rebecca is a Lincoln Center Director’s Lab alum. She is currently in post-production for the upcoming short My First Time Driving as part of the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. |
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DIRECTOR'S NOTE
Theatre writers from Sophocles to Sondheim seem to keep churning out characters who ask the big questions: "Who am I?" "How do I relate to others?" and "Where do I go on my snack break?" But somehow these questions feel like they've never been posed so gently, engagingly, or with such lighthearted musicality as they are in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It is easy to relate to the show's six young spelling bee finalists - a gaggle of gifted geeks who, like most of us, want to better connect with their peers, but (ironically given the context of the show) have trouble finding the words to express it. Through the filter of these young speller's bravado, angst, yearning, and vulnerability, we are given the chance to remember the pain of growing up with those crippling insecurities that can only be overcome by focussing our energies on some special talent that sets us apart. Spelling Bee asks us to rethink the benefits of this "apart-ness;" to reassess the way we define winners and losers - and to re-examine the way in which any competition seems to readily energise us, but not always for the best. The good news is: this gazing inward and outward provides us with a lot of fun along the way. We're all a part of this particular Spelling Bee. It's a brilliant piece of theatrical writing that keeps us all locked in - first by casting us as participants at the event and then by appealing to our natural empathetic instincts. We feel the pain of these adolescents, exposed, and reaching for the life line of letters at center stage. Furthermore, in the true spirit of any bonafide spelling bee, the outcome of every performance becomes fully unpredictable as a new group of audience volunteers joins the onstage competition daily, to wreak havoc on the storyline and to bring chaos to the choreography. After all (as composer William Finn astutely observes): "Life is pandemonium."
On a personal note, this production has a particular family feeling for me. The show started life just south of here as a workshop production by our friends at Barrington Stage. The show's original Mitch Mahoney (Derek Baskin) and its original costume designer (Jennifer Caprio) both worked on shows here in Weston. And my own first viewing of Spelling Bee in NYC happened in the company of old friend, and current cast member, Tracy Michailidis who is just one of the seven returning Weston alumni whom I am fortunate enough to be able to direct again in this wonderful show. Cheers to the entire extraordinary company of the Bee - and, for the rest of us, it's time to work on spelling I-R-R-E-S-I-S-T-I-B-L-E. |
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RESOURCES
VIDEOS
• A series of amusing clips from past National Spelling Bees shown during ABC's broadcast of the 2006 bee.
• Rebecca Sealfon, the first homeschooler to win the National Spelling Bee
• Rebecca Sealfon - in all her ticcy, neurotic, pre-adolescent glory - spells EUONYM, winning the 1997 Scripps National Spelling Bee.
• CNN Interview with 2007 National Spelling Bee winner
• 2008 Winner of the National Spelling Bee
• Vermont Students compete in National Spelling Bee
FILMS
• SPELLBOUND, 2002 riveting documentary about kids in the National Spelling Bee
• BEE SEASON, 2005 film based on the novel
• AKEELAH AND THE BEE, 2006 film
FURTHER READING
• AMERICAN BEE: THE NATIONAL SPELLING BEE AND THE CULTURE OF WORD NERDS, by James McGuire
• BEE SEASON, by Myla Goldberg
• SPELLDOWN, by Karon Luddy |
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