{"id":17854,"date":"2013-08-15T15:37:32","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T19:37:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=17854"},"modified":"2013-09-23T10:03:43","modified_gmt":"2013-09-23T14:03:43","slug":"book-publisher-merle-good-writes-new-off-broadway-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2013\/book-publisher-merle-good-writes-new-off-broadway-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Publisher Merle Good Writes Off-Broadway Play"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Returning to professional theater after a 30-years hiatus, Merle Good\u2019s latest play \u2013 on the interactions between a female psychiatrist, two male pastors, and an estranged daughter \u2013 will be produced, directed and staged by veteran artists in the New York City theater scene.<\/p>\n<p>The visionary at the top of the production team for Good\u2019s new play, <i><a href=\"http:\/\/thepreacherandtheshrink.com\/\">The Preacher and the Shrink<\/a>, <\/i>is acclaimed executive producer <a href=\"http:\/\/crcproductions.org\/staff.php\">Carolyn Rossi Copeland<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>She was pivotal in the production of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Smoke_on_the_Mountain\"><i>Smoke on the Mountain<\/i><\/a>, a musical centering on a rural Baptist Church in North Carolina in the WWII era (performed more than 500 times in New York in the 1990s). She was also producer of <a href=\"http:\/\/freudslastsession.com\/\"><i>Freud\u2019s Last Session<\/i><\/a>, a drama about an imagined meeting between Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis, which had a two-year run off-Broadway into 2012; it then moved to venues in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Sydney, Australia. Copeland and her employees have racked up countless other successful theater productions over the last 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love working on new plays,\u201d Copeland told the Eastern Mennonite University news service. \u201cI don\u2019t want to do revivals \u2013 they don\u2019t interest me. I want to see fresh creations, like <i>The Preacher and the Shrink, <\/i>be brought to their full potential.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Upon Copeland\u2019s recommendation, the director will be long-time theater artist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stevenyuhasz.com\/\">Steven Yuhasz<\/a>, with whom she collaborated on the comedy <i>Flamingo Court<\/i>, which ran for two summer seasons off Broadway. Yuhasz, who brings directing, producing and acting experience (plus an MFA in directing, set and costume design), will be adding this directing stint to his regular workload as executive director of the non-profit <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shakespeareonthesound.org\/\">Shakespeare on the Sound<\/a> in Norwalk, Conn.<\/p>\n<p>The Goods, Copeland, Yuhasz, and a handful of other creative collaborators heard Merle\u2019s script performed by talented professional actors in a \u201ctable reading\u201d in April in NYC, which stoked everyone\u2019s sense of enthusiasm for the play\u2019s potential, said Yuhasz.<\/p>\n<p><span>Post-reading, Good felt inspired to re-draft parts of his play, on which he had been working intermittently since 2006. Among other revisions, he cut about 12 pages from it to yield a faster-paced production.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe play has a great story to tell,\u201d said Yuhasz. \u201cThere are universal themes in it. It\u2019s a story about relationships and how people evolve into a new place with them. I believe everyone [in the audience] will walk away with something different from it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Yuhasz said a director has to \u201cget into the head of the playwright,\u201d which he feels he is able to do with Good. In his playwriting, \u201cMerle has a way of bringing out people\u2019s hearts and souls, and the real world that they live in,\u201d said Yuhasz.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>On Good\u2019s part, he is looking forward to watching Yuhasz do the casting in September. \u201cHe\u2019ll assemble a superb, highly professional cast,\u201d Good said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Good stresses that <i>The Preacher and the Shrink<\/i> is not a \u201cMennonite play\u201d or a \u201cchurch play\u201d or a \u201cChristian play,\u201d as they are often defined. \u201cIt is a play written for the general theater-going public,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is not an allegory or a parable. It is first and foremost a straightforward story, with all of its complexities. It looks at the estrangement between a father, who happens to be a mainline Protestant pastor, and his daughter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>When Good was living in NYC in the early 1970s, pursuing an MDiv at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.utsnyc.edu\/\">Union Theological Seminary<\/a>, he began to ponder the way psychiatrists were taking the place of pastoral religious leaders as \u201clisteners\u201d for people feeling troubled. This insight is explored in his new play, he noted.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>After three years of graduate study in New York, Good (a \u201969 grad of EMU) <span>and his wife Phyllis (class of \u201970) returned to their home turf in Lancaster, Pa., where they ran a summer theater for a decade, among other business pursuits. Good, who was <\/span>the lead in the first official play produced at EMU, <i>Murder in the Cathedral<\/i>, <span>oversaw 400 productions of 10 plays he wrote during this period, always on themes pertaining the Mennonites and Amish. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>He also assisted in writing the script for <i>Hazel\u2019s People<\/i>, a feature-length film about modern-living Mennonites made in the 1970s. It was based on his only published novel <i>Happy as the Grass Was Green<\/i> (1971). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>In subsequent decades Good immersed himself in succeeding at the business of book publishing. This he has accomplished, in partnership with Phyllis. The flagship of their cluster of family businesses, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodbooks.com\/\">Good Books<\/a>, has about 200 books on the market currently. In recent years daughter Kate Good \u201999 came aboard as assistant publisher. She\u2019s an English major (like both parents) who earned an MFA in creative writing at George Mason University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span>The Preacher and the Shrink<\/span><\/i><span> will be performed Nov. 2 through Jan. 4 in an intimately warm venue chosen by Copeland. It\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/www.theatrerow.org\/index.htm\">The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row<\/a>, a complex of five small off-Broadway theaters at 410 West 42<sup>nd<\/sup> Street near Times Square in Manhattan. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Good said members of his church, <a href=\"http:\/\/ecsmc.org\/\">East Chestnut Street Mennonite<\/a> in Lancaster, have already chartered a 56-seat bus to take hometown folks to see the play, and the bus seats are almost all taken.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI wanted to give persons and groups in Phyllis\u2019s and my circle of acquaintances first chance at tickets,\u201d said Good. \u201cSo I\u2019m trying to get the word out in August before the play is marketed to the wider public, beginning Sept. 1.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Those who are hoping to bring a group may want to plan early and reserve early. \u201cThere will be only ten Saturday matinee dates during the run,\u201d said Copeland. \u201cSo if you have a specific weekend in mind to bring your group, it\u2019s best to reserve early. The Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year seasons will most likely sell out first.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The seven weekly performances of <i>The Preacher and the Shrink <\/i>will be Tuesdays at 7 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Tickets are available through Telecharge.com, 800-447-7400 (for group sales, call 800-432-7780). Groups also can be booked through Your Broadway Genius Groups at 877-943-2929. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Returning to professional theater after a 30-years hiatus, Merle Good\u2019s latest play \u2013 on the interactions between a female psychiatrist, two male pastors, and an estranged daughter \u2013 will be <a href=\"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2013\/book-publisher-merle-good-writes-new-off-broadway-play\/\" target=\"_self\" class=\"more-link\">... read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">about Book Publisher Merle Good Writes Off-Broadway Play<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":17867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266,5583,5623],"tags":[14037,12501],"feature":[],"class_list":["post-17854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-campus-community","category-special-programs","tag-good-books","tag-theater"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - 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