The Director
Circle’s production of Fuddy Meers is guest-directed by George H. Brown, acting and directing professor for Texas Christian University’s Theatre department. Mr. Brown also directed Daddy’s Dyin’, Who’s Got The Will?, Sylvia, Blithe Spirit, and The Woman In Black for Circle Theatre.

The Cast
Includes: Sara Weeks (Claire) *courtesy of Actors’ Equity; Dorothy Sanders Gray Palmer (Limping Man) *courtesy of Actors’ Equity; Terry D. Seago *courtesy of Actors’ Equity (Richard);Scott Milligan (Millet); Grant V. Denney (Kenny), April Stroud-Johnston (Heidi).

The Play
Meet Claire, a psychogenic amnesiac who loses her memory every night when she goes to sleep. Things go really awry when a furtive, limping, lisping half-deaf man in a ski mask kidnaps her. Other characters we meet along the way are her husband, who will stop at nothing to get her back, her overgrown eighth-grade son who has issues of his own; her mother who speaks in “stroke talk”; an ex-convict with a foul-mouthed puppet; and an intense woman in uniform.

History
Fuddy Meers, directed by David Petrarca., opened at the Manhattan Theatre Club in October of 1999. It subsequently ran at the Minetta Lane Theatre for a commercial run. The New York cast was as follows: Claire – J. Smith Cameron; Limping Man- Patrick Breen; Richard-Robert Stanton; Gertie- Marylouise Burke; Millet – Mark McKinney; Kenny-Keith Nobbs; Heidi- Lisa Gorlitsky.

In an interview for American Theatre Magazine, the playwright stated:  “I saw a TV news report on a book about neurological disorders.  The author talked about the kind of amnesia where, when you go to sleep, you forget everything you’ve remembered during the day, and when you wake up you’re a blank slate.  I thought of the first scene and then the very last one.  I tried not to know where I was going with it.  When the masked man stepped from under the bed, I didn’t know who he was or what he was doing there.  Later on I had to go back through the script and tinker with it like a Rube Goldberg contraption.   As farcical as the play is, I don’t consider myself a joke writer.  I’m trying to write outrageous farce with an underlying sadness, a real weight that peeks through the silliness.  When we remember things, it’s in a very selective way-we remember or don’t remember certain details based on what helps us function.  Of course, you can’t really ever escape who you are and what you’ve done.  Aren’t we all destined to re-create our lives every day, to relive our mistakes?”

The Playwright
David Lindsay-Abaire has written many plays, including Kimberly Akimbo, Wonder of the World, A Devil Inside, Dotting & Dashing, Jiminy Christmas (which starred Janeane Garofalo), A Show of Hands, and The Kitchen Sink Drama among others. After attending Sarah Lawrence college for his undergraduate degree, Mr. Lindsay-Abaire pursued his Master’s degree from the Juilliard School’s Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwrights Program. Fuddy Meers was nominated for several awards, including the John Gassner Playwriting Award.