A One-Man Show and Jazz Age Party to Honor

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Starring Kurt GravenhorstMarch 2–4, 2012

F. Scott Fitzgerald

1896–1940

Husband of ZeldaFather of Frances “Scottie”

Lover of Sheilah

NovelsThis Side of Paradise (1920)

The Beautiful and Damned (1922)The Great Gatsby (1925)

Tender Is the Night (1934)The Last Tycoon (published posthumously 1941)

Short story collectionsFlappers and Philosophers (1920)

Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)All the Sad Young Men (1926)

Taps at Reveille (1935)Afternoon of an Author (1957)

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories (1960)The Pat Hobby Stories (1962)

The Basil and Josephine Stories (1973)The Price Was High: Fifty Uncollected Stories (1979)

The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1989)

Notable short stories“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” (1920)

“Head and Shoulders” (1920)“The Ice Palace” (1920)

“The Offshore Pirate” (1920)“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (1921)

“The Diamond as Big as the Ritz” (1922)“Winter Dreams” (1922)“The Baby Party” (1925)

“The Freshest Boy" (1928)“The Bridal Party” (1930)

“A New Leaf” (1931)“Babylon Revisited” (1931)

“Crazy Sunday” (1932)

Other notable worksThe Vegetable, or From President to Postman (play 1923)

The Crack-Up (collection of essays, notebook excerpts, and letters 1945)

When F. Scott Fitzgerald’s alcohol-ravaged heart finally gave out at the age of 44, he was an unemployed Hollywood screenwriter living in obscurity with columnist Sheilah Graham, desperately

trying to complete The Last Tycoon, the novel he hoped would restore his forgotten place in American literature. His last royalty check from Scribners for his six novels that were still in print––including The Great Gatsby, Tender Is the Night, and This Side of Paradise––was for $13.13. The New York Times obituary, alluding to the title of a collection of his short stories, wrote that Fitzgerald’s life epitomized “all the sad young men” of his generation. When Fitzgerald died in Hollywood in 1940, he was dismissed as a failed writer who never fulfilled the literary promise of his youth. No one then could anticipate that he would later be recognized and revered as one of America’s greatest writers.

The mysterious process that somehow renders genius from a life of anguish and torment has always fascinated me. I have always been drawn to writers who struggle with their own maladjustment to life, and how this struggle becomes the engine that drives their own fiction. Perhaps more than any other American author, Fitzgerald’s life is inseparable from his work––he seems to have stepped right out of one of his own stories: an emblem of the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties, the Lost Generation, wandering through the dark side of the American Dream. But Fitzgerald was far more than just a chronicler of his age. He once wrote, “Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind,” and to accomplish this, Fitzgerald was not afraid to dig into the darkness of his own character. This, I believe, is why his work transcends the limits of time. With incomparable tenderness, his work has touched some dark place of loss and anguish that is in us all. And I think, perhaps, we all, like Fitzgerald, believe in “the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.”

As a writer, I want to explore this connection between anguish and art in the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but my own words always fail me. As an actor, however, I feel I have a much better chance of conveying his mystery of genius if I can embody it and let Fitzgerald tell his own story in his own words so that it will be true. Perhaps genius is something than can only be perceived and felt, and not ever wholly understood. But if I let Fitzgerald tell his own story, I think then I will have a better chance of communicating the incommunicable heart and soul of this American literary icon.

A Note from Kurt Gravenhorst

Production Staff Producer Cathy Spielberger Cassetta Director Kurt Gravenhorst Technical Director John Palmer Music Director/Pianist Jeremy Harris Bassist Terry Shoup

ONE ACT

Farewell, Fitzgerald A Tribute to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Farewell, Fitzgerald is Kurt Gravenhorst’s third production with The Tabard Theatre Company, following his appearances in It’s a Wonderful Life and The Gifts of the Magi. His recent Bay Area performances include My Antonia and Red Clay (TheatreWorks), The Kentucky Cycle (Willows Theatre), Santos & Santos (Teatro Vision), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (Pear Theatre). A recipient of a Dean Goodman Award, Kurt also has performed for the Exit, Dragon, and City Lights theatre companies.

About Kurt Gravenhorst