Mrs. Dalloway might not exactly be a play. 
But it is theater, brilliant theater, embracing music, choreography, character and language. And how it moves, dancing across the stage in bursts, in swirls, in ensembles, in solos, all moving right into our hearts. The perfect cast has spun threads that connect us all.

—Lynn Ratener, Audience Member 

Wowsa. Virginia Woolf’s gorgeous stream of consciousness prose and story done in three dimensions with amazing actors. Just say yes; buy yer ticket.

—Karen Falkenstrom, Audience Member

There is a deep satisfaction of spirit one seldom associates with theater. An uplifting of oneself, of being swept away with a completeness beyond mere description.

—Chuck Graham, Review at Let The Show Begin! and TucsonStage.com

Thank you for choosing to create this adaptation.
You did not recreate but expanded the world of this work of fiction! 
As ever, The Rogue does not disappoint.

—Deborah Agriesto, Audience Member

COVID: We are committed to the safety of audience members, performers, and staff. Masks are required inside the theatre. Read more about our COVID-19 protocols and precautions.

Watch the trailer for Mrs Dalloway here !

Supporting Materials

Video of Free “Open Talk” on Mrs Dalloway

Click here to see the video

Moments of Being: Virginia Woolf & Consciousness

presented on Saturday, April 23, 2022 at 2:00 p.m.

Director and Adaptor Cynthia Meier reflects on the life of Virginia Woolf, the modernist movement, and Woolf’s stream of consciousness style, and describes what it’s like to adapt a novel for the stage. We also share a sneak peak of a scene from the play.

This open talk is supported in part by a generous gift from 
Paul Winick & Ronda Lustman and the Arizona Humanities Council

Essay

Read Jerry James’ thoughtful essay:

The Bloomsbury Group
Virginia Woolf and Her Circle

Poster

View the full-sized poster for the play

Video Extras

Listen here to Russell Ronnebaum's preshow music for Mrs Dalloway

Reviews

The Rogue Theatre stages a three-dimensional presentation of Virginia Woolf's iconic novel Mrs Dalloway
Review of Mrs Dalloway by Chuck Graham on May 4 at Let The Show Begin! and TucsonStage.com

Cynthia Meier (Director and Adaptor) is Co-Founder and Managing & Associate Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre and holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from the University of Arizona. She has directed 39 of The Rogue’s 84 productions to date including The Secret in the Wings, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Galileo, Bach at Leipzig, The White Snake, Hamlet, Waiting for Godot, Betrayal, Naga Mandala, and The Four of Us for which she received Arizona Daily Star Mac Award nominations as Best Director, as well as Arcadia and Richard III for which she won Mac Awards for Direction. Cynthia has created stage adaptations for The Rogue of Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Virginia Woolf’s The Lady in the Looking Glass, James Joyce’s The Dead, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tales of the Jazz Age, and (along with Holly Griffith) Moby Dick. She is co-founder of Bloodhut Productions, a company performing original monologues and comedy improvisation, which toured throughout the western United States. She also directed The Seagull (featuring Ken Ruta) for Tucson Art Theatre, and she directed Talia Shire in Sister Mendelssohn and Edward Herrmann in Beloved Brahms for Chamber Music Plus Southwest. Cynthia has also been nominated for nine Mac Awards for Best Actress from the Arizona Daily Star, and in 2008, she received the Mac Award for Best Actress for her performance of Stevie in Edward Albee’s The Goat at The Rogue Theatre.

Cynthia Meier’s direction of Mrs Dalloway is supported in part
by a generous gift from Clay Shirk

Cynthia Meier’s adaptation of Mrs Dalloway is supported in part
by a generous gift from Karen DeLay & Bill Sandel

DIRECTOR AND ADAPTOR’S NOTES

“For a party makes things either much more real or much less real.”

—The New Dress by Virginia Woolf

Many of us probably know a few things about Virginia Woolf—she was part of the influential Bloomsbury group of intellectuals between the World Wars, she wrote A Room of One’s Own—a treatise on the importance of independence for women, she had a love affair with a woman named Vita Sackville West, and she died by suicide.

There’s actually a lot the world knows about Virginia Woolf, since she maintained a diary for most of her adult life, which now comprises a 5‑volume set of over 2,000 pages. And because of her status among artists of her time, she was frequently painted and photographed. And there have been dozens and dozens of books written about her, especially since the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s.

Woolf experimented with the narrative mode of “stream of consciousness.” Consciousness is at the core of Mrs Dalloway—the way our minds follow various paths throughout our days mixing the past and the future with the present. Although Mrs Dallowaytakes place on a single day in June 1923 in London, the characters’ minds traverse over 30 years and dozens of locations. And the progression through the novel (and through our play) is more like moving from image to image rather than from event to event. Mrs Dalloway is a meditation on life and death, on sanity, on growing old, on love, and yes, on consciousness.

Mrs Dalloway was originally titled The Hours in its early drafts. Throughout the novel (and our play), the hours of the day are noted by Big Ben’s chimes—“first the warning musical, then the hour, irrevocable.” 

One has a sense in Mrs Dalloway of the interconnectedness of the characters. Clarissa Dalloway happens to see an open book in a shop window—Shakespeare’s play, Cymbeline. The passage she reads is “Fear no more the heat o’the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages.” It’s a lovely thought: in death, one is no longer subject to the vagaries of life. Clarissa repeats this line—Fear no more the heat of the sun—and then later in the novel, Septimus Warren-Smith picks up the phrase.

I fell in love with Virginia Woolf’s writing over 40 years ago, when I was a student at Eastern Michigan University. A professor suggested I read Woolf’s short stories and I was completely captivated by her imagery, her wit, and her understanding of the way the mind works. My love of Woolf’s writing has only increased over the years. Seven years ago, The Rogueperformed another adaptation of mine calledThe Lady in the LookingGlass, featuring several Virginia Woolf stories. And in 2009, we produced Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Orlando—Virginia Woolf’s novel and love letter to Vita Sackville-West. So when I heard that Mrs Dallowayhad entered public domain, I knew I wanted to try to create an adaptation for The Rogue stage.

If you’ve been to The Rogue at all, you know that we love staging great literature—sometimes in the form of great plays, but often in the form of great novels and short stories. We feel that beautiful language that is worth reading silently, is worth being heard aloud. In fact, the creative possibilities of staging in the theatre can make narrative fiction come alive like no other medium can. We’re always asked to use our imaginations when we come to the theatre, so why not create the world of a novel on stage and use our imaginations to complete the picture?

Adapting Mrs Dalloway to the stage came with some challenges. The novel contains very little dialogue. Generally speaking, most plays are entirely dialogue. But most of the text of Mrs Dalloway is narrative. So, as the adaptor, I made the decision to turn most of the narrative into first person, shared by several individuals, each describing their thoughts, actions, and memories from their point of view.

I also chose to emphasize certain themes, suggested by Woolf—life and death, sanity and insanity, the British social system at work. I was struck by the frequency of memory, the importance of love, the fallibility of the characters throughout the novel. I was also fascinated by the frequent references to the interconnectedness of being. Characters are described as being connected by a spider’s thread to one another; Clarissa throws her party so that she can create connections between people. Peter Walsh recalls what he describes as Clarissa’s “transcendental theory,” in which “our apparitions—the part of us which appears—are so momentary compared with the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive attached to another person, or even haunting certain places after death.”

I also wanted to maintain as much of the poetry of Woolf’s writing as I possibly could. The script is 98% completely Woolf’s words.

In many ways, the cast of Mrs Dalloway are co-creators of the adaptation and without their creativity and insights, the play would be something much less. Together they play over 60 characters. I want to especially acknowledge the support of Matt Bowdren as Assistant Director. His extraordinary ability to work with actors on finding the emotional core in scenes, as well as his creativity in staging, have added significantly to this production.

I encourage you not to expect a traditional play as you watch The Rogue’sMrs Dalloway.Some of you may even decide that it’s not a play at all. I might agree with you. The performance you are about to watch is a rendering of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dallowaywith music, human bodies, characters, theatrical device, and gorgeous language.

—Cynthia Meier, Adaptor and Director
director@TheRogueTheatre.org

Author

Virginia Stephen Woolf (1882–1941) was born in London, one of four children of Sir Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth Stephen. The children were raised in an environment filled with the influences of Victorian literary society. Between the World Wars, Woolf was a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. Her most famous works include Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) Orlando (1928), and A Room of One’s Own(1929) with its famous dictum, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Woolf suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, thought to have been the result of what is now termed bipolar disorder, and died by suicide by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59. She is now recognized as one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century.

Cast

in alphabetical order

Julia Balestracci (Miss Pym) is thrilled to join the cast of Mrs Dalloway in her fourth Rogue production.  She was previously seen as The Woman in Death of a Salesman, Audrey in As You Like It and Clytemnestra in The Oresteia, and has also appeared in The Rogue’s Ambruster play reading series. In past seasons, she has performed with The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre in The Light Princess, The Little Prince, Blood Wedding, Eurydice, and Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, and most recently in the play reading Before the German’s Here, a collaboration with the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Julia has a M.M. in voice from Longy School of Music of Bard College, and a BA in Theater Studies from Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School.  

Julia Balestracci’s performance is supported in part by
a generous gift from Lori Levine & Gary Benna

Bryn Booth (Sally Seton/Elizabeth Dalloway) is a graduate of the BFA Acting program at the University of Arizona. She was most recently seen as Q in Passage, Letta in Death of a Salesman, Viola in Twelfth Night, Edna in The Awakening, Celia in As You Like It, Electra in The Oresteia, Mary Shelley in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and as Catherine in A View from the Bridge. This is Bryn’s fifth season as a member of the Resident Acting Ensemble with The Rogue where she has performed in Moby Dick, Blithe Spirit, Middletown, The Crucible (Mac Award Nominee for Best Actress), The Secret in the Wings, Much Ado About Nothing, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Galileo, King Lear, The Grapes of Wrath, A House of Pomegranates, and Macbeth. In 2018, Bryn played Mag in the Scoundrel & Scamp’s production of Lovers (Mac Award Nominee for Best Actress). Other credits include The Love Talker (Scoundrel & Scamp), Romeo & Juliet (Tucson Shakespeare in the Park), and Othello (Arizona Repertory Theatre). She also had the pleasure of understudying with Arizona Theatre Company in Romeo & Juliet and Of Mice and Men. Bryn wants to thank Joe and Cindy for giving her the best job she’s ever had with the most amazing people she’s ever met.

Bryn Booth’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts
from Shawn Burke and Lori Levine & Gary Benna

Chelsea Bowdren (Miss Kilman) is thrilled to be in her third Rogue show this season, after last appearing as Jenny/Miss Forsythe in Death of a Salesman and Maria in Twelfth Night. Her Rogue Theatre stage debut was many years ago, as Rosalind in Immortal Longings. Chelsea received her BFA in Acting from the University of Arizona and performed in Taming of the Shrew, Diary of Anne Frank, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Medea, & Titus Andronicus as a member of Arizona Repertory Theatre. After exploring for a couple years, she’s ecstatic to be back in Tucson and back in theatre. For Archer & Eloise.

Chelsea Bowdren’s performance is supported in part by
a generous gift from Stu Salasche & Els Duvigneau

Matt Bowdren (Dr. Holmes) is an Artistic Associate for The Rogue Theatre. Matt has performed in many plays at the Rogue including Hamlet (2015 Mac Award for Best Actor), The Crucible, Waiting for Godot, Uncle Vanya, As I Lay Dying, and The Goat. Earlier this season Matt directed Death of a Salesman at the Rogue. Previous Rogue directing credits include Macbeth and Angels in America. Other Arizona credits include Romeo and Juliet with Southwest Shakespeare and Frankenstein and Othello as a faculty fellow and teaching artist with The Arizona Repertory Theatre. Matt currently lives in Chicago and is performing in theatre, television, and film. Recent credits include plays with TimeLine and The Shakespeare Project of Chicago, and feature films The Lot and Happily Never After. He also directed the inaugural production for The Story Theatre (Best New Chicago Theatre 2021) of which he is a founding member. Matt holds an M.F.A. in Performance from the University of Georgia.

Matt Bowdren’s performance is supported in part by
generous gifts from Todd Hansen and Bill & Barb Dantzler

Hunter Hnat (Jim Hutton) is grateful to be in his fourth season as a member of The Rogue Resident Acting Ensemble. You may have seen him in previous Rogue productions as M in Passage, Happy in Death of a Salesman, Sebastian in Twelfth Night, Robert in The Awakening, Le Beau/Sylvius in As You Like It, Brenden in The Weir, Orestes in The Oresteia, Lord Byron/Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Rodolpho in A View from the Bridge, Ray Dooley in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Flask in Moby Dick, Edmund Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the Mechanic in Middletown, Ezekiel Cheever in The Crucible, Ensemble in The Secret in the Wings, Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing, Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Andrea in Galileo, Oswald in King Lear, Steindorff in Bach at Leipzig, and Ensemble for A House of Pomegranates. Other credits include Salomé (Scoundrel & Scamp), U/S in Romeo and Juliet (Arizona Theatre Company), and How the House Burned Down (Live Theatre Workshop). He is a U of A alumnus with his BFA in Musical Theatre, class of 2015. Enjoy the show!

Hunter Hnat’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts
from Ed & Nancy Landes and Paul Winick & Ronda Lustman

Cynthia Jeffery (Clarissa Dalloway) has been a resident of both Hawaii and Arizona for 35+ years. This is her fifth production with The Rogue Theatre; the first being The New Electric Ballroom (Breda) followed by Richard III (Queen Elizabeth), The Lady in the Looking Glass (Narrator) and the staged reading of No Exit (Inez). In Hawaii, Cynthia co-owned and operated Wide Eyed Theatre and co-produced three videos on Teen Crime Prevention with the Maui County Prosecutor’s Office. She has worked as a DJ for K-Hawaii’s Rock N’ Roll and earned 4 Tiki Awards for Best Actress in The Hilo Community Player’s A Streetcar Named Desire (Blanche), Macbeth (Lady Macbeth), Crimes of the Heart (Meg) and Beyond Therapy (Prudence). In Tucson, she received the Carmen Awards for The Little Foxes (Regina) and The Big Meal (Woman #1) and won LTW’s Best Performance recognition for The Glass Menagerie (Amanda). Cynthia also received MAC nominations for Relatively Speaking (Sheila), No Exit (Inez), The Subject was Roses (Nettie), The Little Foxes (Regina), and The Big Meal (Woman #1). Her performance credits include Collected Stories (Ruth), The Birthday Party (Meg), Humble Boy (Flora), The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Mag), Gloria: A Life (Gloria Steinem), The Busy World is Hushed (Hannah), A Kid Like Jake (Judy), An Empty Plate in the Café du Grand Beouf (Miss Berger) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Big Mama). Film credits include Lost River: Lincoln’s Secret Weapon, The Greening of Eritrea, Spin, Animal Planet’s I Shouldn’t be Alive, Finley Wade, Dead West, Survive, and The 3 O’clock.

Cynthia Jeffery’s performance is supported in part by
generous gifts from Todd Hansen and Julia Annas

Christopher Johnson (Septimus Warren Smith) first came to The Rogue in 2011 to play Jewel in As I Lay Dying and now serves as Assistant Artistic Director, Play-Reading Producer, and Board Member. Select acting credits include Joshua in Corpus Christi, Peter in Bug, The Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret (2013 Mac Award Winner – Best Actor, Musical), Doug in Gruesome Playground Injuries, The Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show, Alan in Lemon Sky, Betty/Gerry in Cloud 9, Pale in Burn This, Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2009 & 2014), Chicklet in Psycho Beach Party, Thom Pain in Thom Pain (based on nothing), Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, and Prior Walter in The Rogue’s production of Angels in America, Part 1: Millennium Approaches (2016 Mac Award Winner – Best Actor, Drama). In addition to acting for The Rogue over the years, he has also directed, adapted, and served as stage manager for both full productions and play-readings. He is a member of the Resident Acting Ensemble.

Christopher Johnson’s performance is supported in part by
generous gifts from Art & Katherine Jacobson and Maura Brackett

Michael Levin (Richard Dalloway) is excited to be making his second appearance on The Rogue stage this season, having previously appeared as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night. Michael taught theatre at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy for 24 years where he directed over two hundred productions including Pippin, The Laramie Project, Richard III, Dead Man Walking, Cabaret, Next to Normal, Love and Information, and The Crucible. Roles include: Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Polonius in Hamlet, Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Second Lord in All’s Well That Ends Well (Flagstaff Shakespeare Festival); Ensemble in Fire on the Water and Albert Dussel in Good at Heart (Cleveland Public Theatre); The Giant in The Heartless Giant (Talespinner Children’s Theatre); Jack in The Importance of Being Earnest and Tom/Phyllis/Leslie in Sylvia (Oak Creek Theatre Company); Alan in God of Carnage (Viola Award for Excellence in Performing Arts) and Yvan in Art (Theatrikos). Michael is in his first year of teaching third grade at Leman Academy of Excellence. He would like to thank Cindy and Joe for leading the charge of putting inspirational people in the room and producing profound rehearsals.

Michael Levin’s performance is supported in part by
a generous gift from Denice Blake & John Blackwell

Joseph McGrath (Peter Walsh) is a graduate of the Juilliard School of Drama and Co-Founder and Artistic Director for The Rogue Theatre. He has recently appeared in Passage, Death of a Salesman, Twelfth Night, The Awakening, As You Like It, The Weir, A View from the Bridge, Moby Dick, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Crucible, The Secret in the Wings, Galileo (2018 Mac Award for Best Actor), and King Lear. He also received the Mac Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Tobias in A Delicate Balance. Joe has toured with John Houseman’s Acting Company and has performed with the Utah Shakespearean Festival. He has been a frequent performer with Ballet Tucson appearing in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and for seventeen years as Herr Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker. He has also performed with Arizona Theatre Company, Arizona Opera, and Arizona Onstage. Joe owns, with his wife Regina Gagliano, Sonora Theatre Works, which produces theatrical scenery and draperies.

Joseph McGrath’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts
from Barbara & Gerald Goldberg and Liz Whitaker

Tyler Page (Hugh Whitbread) is thrilled to be returning to The Rogue Theatre stage this season after first appearing as Feste in Twelfth Night and Bernard in Death of a Salesman. Tyler has a BFA in Acting from the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University and will be beginning his MFA in Acting this fall at Northern Illinois University. Some of Tyler’s other credits include Demetrius (Titus Andronicus) for which he was nominated for an Irene Ryan Acting Award, Martin Heller (Angels in America: Millennium Approaches), Richard Greatham (Hayfever), Josh (If / Then), Judas (Godspell), Walter Gifford (The Farnsworth Invention), Rev. Crisparckle (The Mystery of Edwin Drood), Ed (You Can’t Take It With You), Rev. Fred Phelps (The Laramie Project), Grantiare (Les Misérables), King Arthur (Spamalot), East & Dave (Almost, Maine), and understuding in the OCA’s production of Hedda Gabler. Tyler would like to thank Joe and Cindy and the entire Rogue Theatre family for making such a wonderful home here in Tucson, and his family for supporting him in pursuit of his passions.

Tyler Page’s performance is supported in part by
a generous gift from Brock & Chantal McCaman

Carley Elizabeth Preston (Lucrezia) was last seen on The Rogue stage as B in Passage. Now in her third season as a member of The Rogue Theatre’s Resident Acting Ensemble, Carley has also appeared as Olivia in Twelfth Night, Adele in The Awakening, Rosalind in As You Like It, Valerie in The Weir, Beatrice Carbone in A View from the Bridge, Mrs. Bradman in Blithe Spirit, and as Tituba in The Crucible. Carley received her BFA from the University of Arizona where she was a member of the Arizona Repertory Theatre. Some of her other stage credits include Time Stands Still (Mac Award for Best Actress), Molly Sweeney, Enchanted April, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Live Theatre Workshop), Mrs. Mannerly (Mac Award Nominee for Best Actress), Boston Marriage, By the Bog of Cats, Miracle on 34th Street (Mac Award Nominee for Best Actress), Kimberly Akimbo, and Good People. Carley is also the Diversity Specialist for The Rogue. She would like to thank the loves of her life, Jerrad McMurrich and their fur babies Loki Björn Hiddleston and Freyja Laveau for supporting her theatre habit!

Carley Elizabeth Preston’s performance is supported in part by generous gifts
from Julia Annas and Adam Hostetter & Jim Wilson

Teri Lee Thomas (Lady Millicent Bruton) is delighted to make her second appearance on The Rogue stage this season, having previously appeared as Madame Lebrun in The Awakening. A regional theatre veteran, she has enjoyed diverse roles across four decades in seven states. Credits span Shakespeare, classics, contemporary and new plays, musicals, TV, film. Some highlights: Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Gertrude in Hamlet, Mistress Page in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing, Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Ernest, Mrs. Hardcastle in She Stoops to Conquer, the title role in Shaw’s Candida, Creon in Oedipus the King, Countess de Lage in The Women. Musicals include Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret, Ruth in The Pirates of Penzance, Mrs. Higgins in My Fair Lady, Miss Tweed in Something’s Afoot, Yente in Fiddler on the Roof, Mrs. Medlock in The Secret Garden, Doatsey Mae in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Her favorite role was Josie in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Some of the theater companies she has worked with include Village Theatre, Taproot Theatre, Seattle Children’s Theatre, Harlequin Productions, Texas Shakespeare Festival, Seattle Shakespeare, Oregon Cabaret, Oregon Repertory Theatre, Montana Shakespeare, Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan, SecondStory Rep and TV’s Northern Exposure. Up next: Emma Goldman in Ragtime in Seattle, and Three Busy Debras on HBO.

Teri Lee Thomas’ performance is supported in part by
a generous gift from Peggy Houghton & Paul Garner

Russell Ronnebaum—Piano
Janine Patawaran Piek—Violin & viola

Music composed by Russell Ronnebaum unless otherwise noted.

Preshow Music 
Gymnopédie No. 1 by Erik Satie (1866–1925)
Dream Ballet
As Once in May
Clarissa’s Waltz
London Suite

Act 1

London
Connectedness
Flower Shop
Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie
Gnossienne No. 3 by Erik Satie
Sally Seton
Dream Ballet
Clarissa’s Waltz
As Once in May

Act 2

Gnossienne No. 4 by Erik Satie
The Omnibus
Gymnopédies Nos. 1–3 by Erik Satie
Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror) by Arvo Pärt (b. 1935)
As Once in May (Reprise)

Russell Ronnebaum (Music Director, Pianist, Composer) serves as The Rogue Theatre’s Director of Music and Resident Composer. He holds a Master of Music degree in collaborative piano from the University of Arizona where he studied under Dr. Paula Fan. He currently serves as the assistant director of music at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church in Oro Valley, as well as the staff accompanist for the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. As a classically trained pianist, Russell has performed with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, the American Wind Symphony Orchestra, Artifact Dance Company, Arizona Repertory Theatre, and as a concerto soloist with the Tucson Masterworks Chorale. Russell made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2016 performing the music of composer Dan Forrest. Past credits include The Rogue’s recent productions of Passage, Death of a Salesman, Twelfth Night, The Awakening, As You Like It, The Weir, The Oresteia, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, A View from the Bridge, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Moby Dick, Blithe Spirit, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Much Ado About Nothing and The Secret in the Wings (Vocal Director). Russell also composes the music for Rogue Radio, a radio play series produced in partnership with Arizona Public Media, NPR 89.1 FM. Recent composition commissions and premieres include music for live theatre, strings, voice, choir, and piano. Recordings, videos, sheet music, and upcoming concert dates can be found at www.RRonnebaum.com.

Russell Ronnebaum’s music direction is supported in part by generous gifts
from Kathy Ortega & Larry Johnson and George Bradbury & C.M. Peterson

Janine Patawaran Piek (Violin) is a graduate of the Las Vegas Academy for Performing Arts and holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and Master of Music in Violin Performance from the University of Arizona. She has performed and recorded with artists such as the Moody Blues, Louis Bellson, Skip Martin, Katherine Byrnes, and Rick Braun. Janine currently plays for Tucson Repertory Orchestra and Sierra Vista Symphony and is a violin instructor at the Tucson Academy of Music & Dance.

MUSIC DIRECTOR’S NOTES

Composing the music for Mrs Dalloway allowed me to explore just how complimentary Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness narrative style and music can be. As Clarissa Dalloway drifts between memories and daydreams, the music helps to establish the settings and relationships she has with the other characters.

Most of the compositions and underscores are based on original themes which are improvised upon to accompany the actions and motivations of the characters on stage. One prominent exception is the choice to utilize Erik Satie’s set of pieces (Gnossiennes) for the character, Septimus. Satie, a contemporary of Woolf, is also considered a modernist, and his free-flowing compositional style complements that of Woolf’s.

Russell Ronnebaum—Music Director, Pianist, Composer

Designers and Production Staff

Josh Hemmo (Lighting Design) is a NYC based lighting designer who is thrilled to be back at The Rogue! His previous work was seen on Twelfth Night, Middletown and Much Ado About Nothing. Other notable credits include: Revelation: The Musical (Off-Broadway, The Players Theatre), Humanity’s Child (Off-Broadway), Cleopatra: A Pop Experience (Off-Off Broadway, Theater for the New City), Route 66, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (Sierra Repertory Theatre), The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, A New Brain (Florida State University), Talent is Sexy, Ladies of Glen Ross (Randomly Specific Theatre, NYC), Harvey (Out of The Box Theatre), Show Risqué (Hard Rock Casio and Hotel Biloxi), Moscow Ballet’s The Great Russian Nutcracker tour (lighting director of West Coast 2017 tour), and 2016–2017 lighting fellow at Berkeley Repertory Theater. jhemmolighting.com

Josh Hemmo’s lighting design is supported in part by
a generous gift from Bill Krauss & Kate McMillan

Shannon Wallace (Stage Manager) first came to The Rogue in 2015 to stage manage The Picture of Dorian Gray, and now serves as Production Stage Manager and Operations Manager. Her stage management credits at The Rogue include: The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Angels in America, Uncle Vanya, Penelope, Macbeth, A House of Pomegranates, Celia, A Slave, Bach at Leipzig, The Grapes of Wrath, Three Tall Women, King Lear, Galileo, Curious Incident, Much Ado About Nothing, Secret in the Wings, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Oresteia, The Weir, As You Like It and The Awakening. She also served as Production Stage Manager for Twelfth Night, Death of a Salesman, and Passage. She graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, focusing on both stage management and lighting design. During her time in school she worked on over 25 productions with Arizona Repertory Theatre. She has also worked for Arizona Theatre Company, the Oklahoma City Philharmonic, and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival. She spent a year living in Chicago and worked as the Operations Assistant for Mudlark Theater Company. She is grateful to be working full-time as a theater artist in her hometown and would like to thank her parents & her bunnies for their unconditional love.

Shannon Wallace’s stage management is supported in
part by a generous gift from Pam & Richard Duchaine

Shannon Elias (Assistant Stage Manager) got her first big break in theatre at age 11 when she was cast as the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz in school. After that first applause, she was hooked. She began at the Rogue Theatre as an usher in 2008, and volunteered in various roles until she was hired to the box office in 2018. She made her debut on The Rogue stage in The Oresteia in 2020 and has since appeared in the staged-reading of Everybody. She also worked backstage with The Rogue as Assistant Stage Manager for The Awakening and is excited to be returning to the stage management team for Mrs Dalloway. She's performed in a number of productions in both Phoenix and Tucson. Favorite roles have included Olive Madison in The Odd Couple, Aunt Letty in The Magician's Nephew, and The Activist in Power 2K10, a devised theatre piece with the University of Arizona's Studio Series. More recently, she's been seen in productions at The Scoundrel and Scamp Theatre (The Thanksgiving Show) and Strada Company (Job: A Story). Shannon holds a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from the University of Arizona with a minor in Special Education and Rehabilitation Psychology.

Amy Novelli (Scenic Artist) is originally from Ohio and Pennsylvania. She received her Cum Laude BFA from the Columbus (Ohio) College of Art & Design in 1987 and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1994. Novelli’s scenic art career began in New York City at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Studio. Charge Scenic Artist for the Arizona Theatre Company 2010–2014, Amy also painted several sets for Arizona Opera and UA Opera, and presently paints for The Rogue Theatre and until COVID at the Arizona Broadway Theatre in Peoria (Phoenix). Amy created monstrous Halloween decor for Hotel Congress for 20 years, and was lead painter for Marshal-Fields 1998 award winning Easter Window display “Alice in Wonderland”. She supervised four public art projects in the Tucson area with high school youth and won commissions to design and paint five large scale outdoor murals across the country as well as at the Biosphere II and La Posada Hotel on Oracle Blvd. She has taught at the University of Arizona and Pima Community College. Novelli’s fine art work has been exhibited at several Tucson Galleries and in May-August 2020 she had a one woman show at the Tucson International Airport. Amy Novelli has been living in Tucson since 1996. When not painting, Novelli trains rescue horses and dogs and enjoys riding wilderness trails all over the western states.

Amy Novelli’s scenic painting is supported in part by
a generous gift from Meg & Peter Hovell

Peter Bleasby (Master Electrician) lit his first show at 13. Professionally, he was with BBC Television for several years, and was an assistant to the UK lighting designer Richard Pilbrow during the inaugural production of the National Theatre (Hamlet, directed by Olivier.) Although his career was in architectural lighting, he maintained some theatre lighting involvement on both sides of the Atlantic. In 2009, he volunteered for the Rogue’s initial season at the Historic Y. He has been master electrician at the Rogue for every show from 2013 to the present, supporting our lighting designers Deanna Fitzgerald, Don Fox, and Josh Hemmo. He devised the system that enables lights to be quickly re-arranged, allowing more time for the creative process. Elsewhere in Tucson, he directed the technical and logistical aspects of fundraisers for the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation, including the fashion show Moda Provocateur.

Susan Collinet (House Manager) earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Creative Writing and English Literature from the University of Arizona in 2008. Decades before returning to college as a non-traditional student, Susan spent twenty years in amateur theater, mostly on the East coast, as well as in Brussels, Belgium in the American Theater of Brussels, and the Theatre de Chenois in Waterloo. She has worked in such positions as a volunteer bi-lingual guide in the Children’s Museum of Brussels, the Bursar of a Naturopathic Medical school in Tempe, Arizona, an entrepreneur with two “Susan’s of Scottsdale” hotel gift shops in Scottsdale, Arizona, and as the volunteer assistant Director of Development of the Arizona Aids Project in Phoenix. Susan continues to work on collections of poetry and non-fiction. Her writing has won awards from Sandscript Magazine, the John Hearst Poetry Contest, the Salem College for Women’s Center for Writing, and was published in a Norton Anthology ofStudent’s Writing. In addition to being House Manager, Susan serves on the Board of Directors for the Rogue.

Thomas Wentzel (Box Office Manager, Program, Website) is a Scientific Programmer for the National Solar Observatory and holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Arizona. Previously he has worked as a Data Manager for several prevention programs in the Arizona Cancer Center and the Mel and Enid Zuckerman Arizona College of Public Health. He has served on the Board of the Tucson Men’s Cooperative, editing its newsletter for five years, and on the Executive Committee of Sons of Orpheus—The Male Choir of Tucson. He has sung with Furry Day Singers, Sons of Orpheus, AwenRising and Arizona Repertory Singers, and has performed with Tucson Art Theatre in Viktor Slavkin’s Cerceau and Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty. Thomas has designed and built The Rogue Theatre Web site (with great assistance from Bill Sandel and Bryan Falcón in creating the 2020 Website update), and serves as Webmaster and Business Manager. He has also served on The Rogue’s Board of Directors since the founding of the theatre.

Our Thanks

Performance Schedule

Video viewing available from Thursday, May 19 through the summer. Video ticket can be purchased until the end of August 31, 2022.

Performance run time of Mrs Dalloway is two hours and twenty minutes, including one ten-minute intermission.