The Owl and the Pussycat - ActorsNet production

in residence at The Artist Showcase Theater

1150 Indiana Avenue

Trenton, NJ

presents

The Owl and the Pussycat

by Bill Manhoff

directed by Joe Doyle

September 26 through October 12, 1997

starring:

Kimberly Eberhardt as Doris - the hooker with a heart of gold

George Hartpence as Felix - the bookworm

There was also an extended one weekend run at

the Pebble Hill Church (an interfaith community and peace site)

in Doylestown, PA a week or so after the initial run.

ActorsNet The Owl and the Pussycat poster

(note small date typo on poster)

ActorsNet The Owl and the Pussycat program cover

I wanted to give this special show its own page on my web site becasue it signaled a lot of firsts in my acting experience.

It was the first play I did with The ActorsNet of Bucks County, then in its second season. I had seen their production of The Petrified Forest the previous season. That show is one with which I had fallen in love upon seeing the production a few years earlier at The Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario. Seeing that compelling but infrequently produced show mounted so well by a local company made me want to work with them. And I told Cheryl Doyle, one of the company's co-founders, so.

And it was the first time I worked with Joe Doyle, co-founding director along with his wife Cheryl, of the ActorsNet.

It marked the beginning of a long and pleasurable (and on-going) relationship with The ActorsNet.

That coupled with the familiarity of working in The Artist's Showcase Theater, where I had performed in many Shakespeare`70 productions since 1990 AND the added bonus of working with a lovely and talented actress, Kimberly Eberhardt, made the experience all the more pleasurable.

Kimberly Eberhardt was a Philadelphia based actress, who went on to try her luck in New York City shortly after this production. A oddly synergistic coincidence was also working. My last name - Hartpence - is an Anglicization of the two German names of my ancestor who immigrated to America in the middle 1700's. Johannes Eberhardt Penz, the founder of the family in America (not yet the United States), moved to Hunterdon County, New Jersey and contracted his last name into something a little easier to say and sounding more like his new neighbors' names. So Eberhardt Penz became Hartpence. Another relative in the middle of the 1900's further simplified his last name to help advance his political aspirations and thereby, Gary Hartpence became Gary Hart - today one of our country's leading elder statesmen. So by way of making a long story amusing, I told Kimberly that surely we must be related somewhere way back in our family trees.

A final "first" for me, this was the first performance in which I participated where an audience member contacted the theater to say that seeing our show had resulted in a "life changing" experience for her and her husband. It seems she and her husband hadn't been communicating with each other for a very long time when they came to see our show at the Pebble Hill Church Peace Center. However, after watching Doris and Felix work out their differences on stage, the couple sat down after the show and began to talk again. She called to thank us. The power of theater!

George Hartpence

Plot and Production History Summary of Bil Manhoff's "The Owl and the Pussycat":

In a late 1960's San Francisco, low-rent bachelor pad instead of a 'pea-green boat' the unlikely duo in this hysterical comedy are certainly at sea!

'The Owl' is a wannabe intellectual author - the evidence is the number of rejection slips he's received - while 'the Pussycat' is a wannabe actress and model - however, to pay the bills she entertains gentleman callers!

Having accidentally noticed the traffic at her apartment through his binoculars, the owl did his civic duty by informing her landlord. So now the pussycat has nowhere to spend the night! Why not get revenge by imposing on the owl for a bed? And then, through a battle of wits, words, and wisdoms they both start to 'educate' the other in ways they never knew they could...

On stage, Alan Alda was the original Owl, playing opposite Diana Sands' Pussycat. The play opened on November 18, 1964 and ran until November 27, 1965 for a total of 427 performances. A film was made in 1970 starring George Segal and Barbra Streisand, with Buck Henry doing the screen adaptation of Bill Manhoff's play, which was directed by Herbert Ross.

Here a snapshot of the publicity article the ActorsNet sent out to local newspapers: