By Arthur Miller

Performed
August 11-13, 18-20, 1960
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse

Production Staff

Director	Jon Barry Wilder
Production Designer	Nancy May Wilder
Stage Manager	Kathie Bell
Costumes	Florence Rowlands
House and Staff	Walter Ebaugh Ollie Place Jack Place Betsi Bell Marlyn Hummel Stuart Chamberlain Paul Dano Vinnie Holderman
Lighting	Dave Schlow Pete Wood
Sound	Steve Schlow Marlyn Hummel
Properties	Kenna Holderman Ollie Place
Makeup	Bonnie Wink
Construction	Robin MacKenzie Barbara Vincent Joe Trussell Walter Ebaugh
Publicity	Stu Chamberlain Glenn Sheffer Kathie Bell
Photographic Services	Bill Hillgartner

Program Notes

Modern realistic plays have been accused of sending audiences home with more than a wet handkerchief by which to remember a performance. The back yard, certain critics say, can’t possibly leave us with anything grandly tragic — neither in situation nor in language — simply because it is a back- and not a palace- yard.

Arthur Miller has written widely on this subject, but we suspect that his plays are better arguments than his essays. ALL MY SONS is the product of his early playwriting efforts, and it is tightly structured in a that made Ibsen classic. It deals with “ordinary” people in an “ordinary” setting in “ordinary” times — or times that are as ordinary as the nuclear clock will let them be. That the play will moisten handkerchiefs a world of theatre and movie-goers already knows: it is packed with feeling. As to whether it will do anything else — leave an imprint on world dramatic literature, for instance; stand as a play of all time and not just of these times — we cannot yet tell. But we would like to encourage the idea by reproducing a few of the lines we think you might want to pull out of a drawer some day when your handkerchiefs have long since been Blue Cheer whitened and Lestare Bleached:

CHRIS: one time it’d been raining several days and this kid came to me, and gave me his last pair of dry socks. Put them in my pocket. That’s only a little thing… but… that’s the kind of guys I had. They didn’t die; they killed themselves for each other. I mean that exactly; a little more selfish and they’d ‘ve been here today. And I got an idea — watching them go down. Everything was being destroyed, see, but it seemed to me that one new thing was made. A kind of… responsibility. Man for man. You understand me? — To show that, to bring on the earth again like some kind of a monument and everyone would feel it standing there, behind him, and it would make a difference to him, (Pause.) And then I came home and it was incredible. I.. there was no meaning in it here; the whole thing to them was a kind of a — bus accident. I went to work with Dad, and that rat-face again. I felt… what you said… ashamed somehow. Because nobody was changed at all. It seemed to make suckers out of a lot of guys. I felt wrong to be alive, to open the bank-book, to drive the new car, to see the refrigerator. I mean you can take those things out of a war, but when you drive that car you’ve got to know that it came out of the love that a man can have for a man, you’ve got to be a little better because of that. Otherwise what you have is really loot, and there’s blood on it. I didn’t want to take any of it.

The Cast

(in order of appearance)

Joe Keller	Harold Fishbein
Dr. Jim Bayliss	Gil Aberg
Frank Lubey	Jack Brilhard
Sue Bayliss	Joan Hipsh
Lydia Lubey	Pat Terry
Chris Keller	John Muntone
Bert	Jim Avey
Kate Keller	Anne Grant
Ann Deever	Kay Carr
George Deever	Bert Berdis