Sunday, August 29th @ 1pm
THE HARVEY GIRLS:
THEY CIVILISED THE WEST
By Julie Jensen
Director David Mong
COMPANY Natalie Blackman, Brenda Sue Cowley, Christopher Glade, Heidi Hackney, Dan Larrinaga, Deena Marie Manzanares, William Richardson, Cassandra Stokes-Wylie
THE PLAY
There were no jobs for young women in the 19th century. Harvey Houses offered them a chance to see the west and to work for an upscale eating establishment, where they would meet interesting people, yet be closely supervised. These jobs were highly sought after. And the women who held them were respected and admired. They were unique in their families and in the country.
This is the story of a group of young women working at the Harvey House in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a rambunctious town at the edge of the west. The world of these Harvey Girls changes radically when an armed woman shows up in the town, her horse having been shot from under her in a train robbery the night before. She applies to become a Harvey Girl and lands the job. Nothing is quite the same after that.
PLAYWRIGHT JULIE JENSEN
Julie Jensen grew up in Beaver, Utah. She has a Ph.D. in theatre from Wayne State University in Detroit, and has taught playwriting at seven different colleges and universities. She worked as a writer in Hollywood for five years and later directed the graduate playwriting program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She is now Resident Playwright at Salt Lake Acting Company.
SLAC has produced six of her full-length plays. They include BILLION DOLLAR BABY, DUST EATERS, WAIT!, TWO-HEADED, LAST LISTS OF MY MAD MOTHER, and WHITE MONEY. Jensen is the recipient of the Kennedy Center Award for New American Plays for WHITE MONEY, the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work for The Lost Vegas Series, and the LA Weekly Award for Best New Play for TWO-HEADED. She has received the McKnight National Playwriting Fellowship for WAIT!, the TCG/NEA Playwriting Residency for WAIT!, and a major grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts for DUST EATERS. She has won the Mill Mountain Theatre Playwriting Competition three times for TENDER HOOKS, LAST LISTS OF MY MAD MOTHER and TWO-HEADED. Her play, TWO-HEADED, was included in the volume Best Plays by Women, 2000, and she has twice been nominated by the American Theatre Critics Association for the best new play produced outside of New York for LAST LISTS OF MY MAD MOTHER and DUST EATERS and twice a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Playwriting for TWO-HEADED and DUST EATERS. Her play BILLION DOLLAR BABY received the Eggerton Foundation Award for new work.
Jensen's plays have been produced in London and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival as well as in this country in New York and theatres nationwide. She has been commissioned by Mark Taper Forum, ASK Theatre Projects, Dramatic Publishing, Penn State Theatre, Kennedy Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Salt Lake Acting Company, Geva Theatre, and Philadelphia Theatre Company. Her work is published by Dramatic Publishing, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Inc., and Smith and Kraus. Recent productions of Jensen's plays include: LAST LISTS OF MY MAD MOTHER at Theatre Artists Studio in Phoenix, AZ, TWO-HEADED at Cleveland Public Theatre in Cleveland, OH, Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, MA, and Black Cat Theatre in St. Louis, MO, and DUST EATERS at Borderlands Theater in Tucson, AZ. Her book on playwriting, Playwriting: Brief and Brilliant has just been published by Smith and Kraus.
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