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HIGHLIGHTSGREEN DAY’S

AMERICAN IDIOTJULY 14-AUGUST 21

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CALENDAR GIRLSNOV. 17-DEC. 18

A companion guide to

I and You by Lauren Gunderson

May 19-June 19, 2016

Caroline (Ivette Deltoro) and Anthony (Davied Morales) are two teens who couldn’t be more different. Then they form an unexpected friendship and learn something startling about what they have in common. All photos of City Lights’ production of I and You are by Susan Mah Photography.

Synopsis Meet Caroline, a cynical high school senior in need of a new liver. Meet Anthony, an idealistic high school basketball star in need of a partner for his project on Walt Whitman. In this poignant and insightful play by San Francisco playwright Lauren Gunderson, the author of last season’s Exit, Pursued by a Bear, two teens who could not be more different discover just how much they have in common as they work together to complete a homework assignment as the clock ticks away—leading to a startling revelation.

Characters In the script of I and You, writer Lauren Gunderson describes the two characters this way:

Caroline (Ivette Deltoro): a girl, 17. She is in comfy clothing, she does not expect company, she is sick but mainly just looks a little weak and frumpy. She doesn't go out. She is cynical, over it, does not let a stray “feeling” near the surface. White.

Anthony (Davied Morales): a boy, 17. He is neat, poised, mature for his age. African-American. He’s an “A” student, a team player, a nice guy. He’s not really great around girls. He takes his homework very seriously. When he likes something (jazz music) he is all in. Throughout the whole play he looks at Caroline like he’s trying to figure her out. Like he really needs to know who she is.

The playwright also adds a casting note: “The race of each character can be altered. The only essentiality is that the characters not be the same race.”

ANTHONY: You’re not—whoa— Are you posting that?CAROLINE: Of course-alutely I am.

ANTHONY: Without a veto option? Come on!CAROLINE: You were being nice. Something had to be done.

Meet the cast I and You is a landmark production for Ivette Deltoro and Davied Morales: both are already experienced performers at a young age, but Caroline and Anthony are their first lead roles. Davied is new to City Lights, while regulars will recognize Ivette from past shows including The Elephant Man, Dealing Dreams and Truce: A Christmas Wish from the Great War. She also works in the office as casting and administrative assistant, and is often a house manager at performances.

The pair met at De Anza College and then both studied theater at Foothill College. They’ve been friends for years, and it shows onstage and off. In a recent interview, they spent as much time laughing at each others’ jokes as they did talking.

Davied says he’s exactly like his character. Ivette’s the opposite of hers. Both sentiments are part of why they were attracted to this script.

“I am Anthony. When I really like something, like my favorite song, I listen to it nonstop, the whole album, the whole thing, and I like to dissect it the way he’s doing,” Davied said. “He’s so lighthearted and loving. And he’s so selfless.”

Meanwhile, Ivette is amused that her character of Caroline is anti-books and anti-poetry, while she’s an avid writer in many genres. “I keep trying to finish a novel, but I get so many ideas and don’t know which one to go with,” she said. (At the moment, the novel is about “rips in time and doppelgängers … a sci-fi adventure through time.”)

And Ivette, who is naturally sweet-natured, finds it liberating to throw Caroline’s tantrums on stage.

Both actors have spent a lot of time analyzing the lines from Walt Whitman’s poetry that they speak in the play. This comes particularly easily to Davied because of his background as a rapper and songwriter. He performs at a lot of local open-mic nights, as well as festivals.

In his first entrance in I and You, Anthony comes on quoting Whitman, greeting Caroline with “I and this mystery, here we stand.” Davied thinks his character is talking about death, but added, “We’re always questioning things, and he (Anthony) has such a playful spirit. The line can be interpreted 14 different ways.”

Ivette’s favorite Whitman line is “I am deathless.” The sentiment contains myriad possibilities: it could be religious, referring to the afterlife and immortal soul. Or, she said: “You could think about it in terms of something more mortal. To be deathless is what you leave behind. Like in Hamilton, your legacy.”

Get to know Ivette and Davied better by watching our video interview with the two actors.

You can find it on our YouTube page at bit.ly/iandyouvideo.

Walt Whitman and “Leaves of Grass”

Walt Whitman’s poetry is about I and you and everyone else. His is an inclusive, humanist voice perfectly in harmony with a play about unlikely—and universal—connections between people. It makes sense that his best-known work, Leaves of

Grass, features the poem Song of Myself, which includes the lines:

“What is a man anyhow? What am I? and what are you?All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,Else it were time lost listening to me.”

Born in 1819 in New York, Whitman first felt a strong connection to the written word at age 12, when he trained as a printer. He was mostly self-taught, reading everything he could. He later worked as a teacher and a journalist, founding the weekly Long-Islander and editing the New Orleans Crescent. “It was in New Orleans that he experienced first-hand the viciousness of slavery in the slave markets,” according to the Academy of American Poets website. “On his return to Brooklyn in the fall of 1848, he founded a ‘free soil’ newspaper, the Brooklyn Freeman, and continued to develop the unique style of poetry that later so astonished Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Emerson’s reaction when he read the first edition of Leaves of Grass, published in 1855 with Whitman’s own funding, is famed. He wrote to Whitman: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.”

Leaves of Grass was ground-breaking, with free-form style, plenty of rhythm,

and frank sensuality. It was controversial, democratic, endlessly inspiring, and frequently reprinted. The work and Whitman’s poetry in general have continued receiving honors and attention, many years after his death in 1892.

Whitman’s words have been set to music by composers including Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Adams. He has a bridge in Delaware named after him, as well as the Walt Whitman Community School, a private high school serving LGBT youth.

I and You director Noëlle GM Gibbs has been a fan of Whitman’s since doing dramaturgy for Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas. Whitman is a character in the play, which recalls his time as a wartime nurse. “He would hold the hands of soldiers on both sides, read to them and pray with them,” Noëlle said.

Playwright Lauren Gunderson identifies with Caroline in I and You when her character describes poetry as spooky. I and You ends with a startling twist, and Lauren had already planned the twist before she started writing it and using quotes from Whitman. It was only later that she found moments in Leaves of Grass that eerily seemed to predict her play’s ending.

For those of you who haven't seen the play yet, we won't spoil anything. But afterwards, you might want to follow this link and read this excerpt from Whitman: bit.ly/iandyouwhitman. Remember these lines from the play? Beautiful.

And spooky.

Walt Whitman at age 35, seen in a steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison, used on the frontispiece to Leaves of Grass.

The hands of our I and You actors.

#welovelaurengunderson

San Francisco playwright Lauren Gunderson is a City Lights favorite. Besides the fact that her writing is insightful, moving and pitch-perfect, she’s also a pleasure to work with. If we have questions about her work, she’s always happy to answer — and when we talk about her plays on social media, you just may see her chime in.

Lauren is originally from Atlanta, which helped create the hilarious authenticity of her Southern revenge comedy Exit, Pursued by a Bear that was part of City Lights’ 2014-15 season. She’s prolific and versatile: a Gunderson play may be a witty modern take on Shakespeare, a musical for children, or a focus on a pioneering woman in science or computing. Last year, American Theatre magazine named her one of the most produced playwrights in the country.

Meanwhile, this is the year of I and You. The play (which won the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award in 2014) made its New York debut in January 2016, right around the time the New York Times dubbed it her “breakthrough play.” Recently, the play was nominated for the 2016 John Gassner Award by the Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators covering the New York theater scene for out-of-town media.

Why does Lauren insist that the two I and You characters be different races? One reason, she says, is:

“The entire point of this play and the Whitman poetry its characters reference is unity, democracy, one-ness. Just having two actors of different racial backgrounds on stage

together is part of telling that story.”

Hear more of Lauren’s thoughts — and see tons of I and You production photos from all over

the country — on her Tumblr page for the play: iandyouplay.tumblr.com.

A screenshot from a Skype interview that Lauren Gunderson did at City Lights last year. We projected it on a large screen in the theater, and the audience got to ask her questions. Not every playwright is this accessible. It was as blast.

Meet the director Noëlle GM Gibbs thinks the language in I and You is JustSoIncrediblyGreat. And we’re not talking about the Whitman poetry. With a resume that includes Children’s Conservatory Director at the Portola Valley Theatre Conversatory and working at Crystal Springs Uplands School, Noëlle knows how young people talk. She says Lauren Gunderson nails it.

“I love that she will put six words in a row with no space and that is a valid sentence,” she said. “My kids do not breathe when they talk, when they’re passionate about something or upset about something. Lauren captures that expertly without mocking them for it. It’s their voice.”

The characters’ voices are part of why I and You was love at first read. After she first got the play, she had trouble sleeping, so she started reading at 1 a.m. She didn’t go to bed until the end. “I had tears rolling down my face when I finished it.”

The person who introduced the play to Noëlle, and thought she’d be a good fit as director, was City Lights Executive Artistic Director Lisa Mallette. When Noëlle won

an ATLAS Award in Directing in 2014 from Theatre Bay Area, part of the prize was being connected with a mentor. She asked for a female director with kids, “because I want to be that person,” she said, “and I wanted someone who would be really hands-on about directing and also running a company.” She connected with Lisa instantly, too.

Noëlle recently took the reins as Producing Artistic Director at PVTC, so now she’s wearing both hats. She sees Lisa as an inspiration. “The commitment to pushing the envelope as a small theater, and doing work that maybe shouldn’t be tackled — but is and is done well — is something that a lot of small theaters don’t get credit for,” she said. “I don’t do theater to entertain. I do theater to hopefully challenge people to seek something beyond themselves, or talk about something they may not even know existed.”

“That edge of life is so poignant” During rehearsals, Noëlle and her cast have spent a lot of time discussing Caroline’s health situation. Specifically, what it would be like to be on a list, waiting and waiting for a liver transplant, knowing your life hangs in the balance and not being able to do anything about it. Is it any wonder that Caroline begins the play withdrawn and even hostile?

Noëlle also kept thinking about a more personal connection, which grew even more vivid as she worked on the play.

A few years ago, her husband’s aunt needed a liver transplant. Noëlle got to know her during a dark time. “Her spirits were really low, and she didn’t want to talk to a lot of people, and her hope was pretty far gone. She had been a choir director and a youth director, and had had a lot of vitality. She was so sick when the liver came through that it looked like she might have lasted only a week.”

Then came the phone call that said a liver was available. “There was so much joy and so much hope from the family,” Noëlle said. Then there was the waiting: the 8-10 hours of surgery, waiting to see if it was successful, waiting to see if she thrived with the new organ. Today Noëlle’s husband’s aunt is flourishing. She’s moved to a new place, started a new chapter. Her family ties and friendships are strong.

“There’s that darkness that comes when you believe you’re going to die. But there’s also the potential for a second chance. And if you’re given a new chance, what does that look like?” Noëlle said. She and her husband, Kevin, thought of writing a play about transplants. “That edge of life is so poignant,” she said. “But we saw this play, and this is way better.”

Now she just hopes to do Lauren Gunderson’s play justice. “We’re not trying to do anything fancy except serve the story,” she said. “It doesn’t need us to. It just needs us to be true.”

A few moments backstage

“Those are not your cookies, guy.”

We apologize if this show makes you hungry. Have you ever seen teens go long without a snack? We had fun tallying up all the foods that are mentioned in one little play:

Anthony carries Pop-Tarts in his backpack and says he’s hungry all the time, but hey, don’t judge. Some of us in this theater confess to a weakness for the s’mores flavor. For her part, Lauren Gunderson said in an American Theatre interview that she prefers the more “natural” flavors. “I’m more into the fruit with the icing," she said. “Most desserts are about the icing.” All right. We’ll give her that one.

cookies waffle fries Pop-Tarts Cokesea salt casseroles meat loaf paprikacandy hot dogs potatoes bubble gum

Sure, this is a serious show, but it has many funny moments, and we always have a good time backstage. Clockwise from top left: Ivette Deltoro and crew member Keenan Flagg with Caroline’s new lamps; poetry magnets we’re giving out in the lobby; a prop Pop-Tart box in the City Lights fridge; and a photo of Caroline’s cat, Bitter, turned into a meme.

City Lights Theater Company presents I and You from May 19-June 19, 2016. Shows are Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. (no show May 22).

The theater is at 529 S. Second St., San Jose. Details: cltc.org, 408-295-4200.

I and You

by Lauren Gunderson

Director: Noëlle GM Gibbs

Stage Manager: Lauren Howry

Assistant Stage Manager: Joseph Hidde

Scenic Design/Production Manager/Technical Director: Ron Gasparinetti

Lighting and Projection Design: Nick Kumamoto

Costume Design: Jane Lambert

Properties Designer: Miranda Whipple

Sound Design: George Psarras

Run Crew: Keenan Flagg

Set Construction: Paulino Deleal, Joseph Hidde

Cast Caroline: Ivette Deltoro

Anthony: Davied Morales

Special thanks: The Ornes family, DJ and Linda Whipple

Performed by arrangement with Playscripts Inc. * playscripts.com

Highlights is researched and written by City Lights dramaturg Rebecca Wallace. Read past issues at cltc.org/highlights.