BENEFIT PERFORMANCE
A Play in Two Acts
By Paul Enger
Music Composed By Michael Valenti

Benefit Performance tells the story of Bea, a retired pop singer, who has returned to her hometown in the Upper Midwest from California to care for her ailing mother, now gone.

Learning of Bea’s return, several local residents drop in for a visit, hoping to persuade Bea to come out of retirement to sing at a benefit.  Although outwardly opposed to the idea, insisting that she's too old and out of practice, inwardly Bea wants to be recognized and courted by the town where she has always felt snubbed.  Her estranged husband – a pop piano player – arrives and encourages her to perform – also advocating that she reconcile with their adult daughter, now living in Chicago.  Too successful in her efforts to dissuade the locals, Bea soon learns that a younger, and better-known, singer has been engaged to sing at the benefit.  The news pushes Bea into a depression and, a reformed alcoholic, she falls off the wagon, retreating into bitterness.  When the younger singer reneges on her commitment, Bea is convinced to appear at the benefit, over the objections of the local promoter, who is convinced by Bea’s recent behavior, and past reputation, that she won’t stay sober.  Bea triumphs at the benefit, in spite of the sniping and worries that she won’t make an appearance.  And unbeknownst to Bea, her daughter shows up in the audience for a touching reunion.

Benefit Performance is a play about the trappings of celebrity and the burdens and fallout of success, that exposes the injuries visited upon those adored and adoring alike, and explores the many ways love and patient understanding can heal the wounds of painful neglect and want.

 

PAUL ENGER

Paul Enger began his career as a newspaper reporter in his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, later working for United Press International in Indianapolis and New York, before joining CBS News as a staff writer.  Paul has written for all the major news and public affairs programs on CBS, as well as for ABC-TV’s Good Morning, America and its daytime serial All My Children.  In recent years, he has written scripts for A&E Cable and The History Channel.  He holds three awards from the Writers Guild of America for broadcast scripts in news and public affairs, and is the recipient of the International Radio New York Festival Gold Award for a script he wrote for Walter Cronkite's 20th Century.  While writing for broadcast (both radio and television) Paul has written nine full-length plays, including Vestigial Parts, and Harmon and Ruth.  His plays have been performed Off Broadway in New York; at Stage West (Massachusetts) (where he was a Ford Foundation grant recipient); the Asolo Center for Performing Arts in Sarasota (Florida); Actors Theatre of Louisville (Kentucky) (which commissioned his one-act play, The Anchor); and theatres in Phoenix and Carefree (Arizona), Berkeley (California), and New Harmony (Indiana).  His play, In The Air, was produced by Stageplays Theatre Company, Off Broadway at Theatre 315 in New York City.  Paul Enger is a graduate of the University of Minnesota.  He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, East. 

TOM FERRITER

Tom Ferriter directed and produced the world premieres of Kathleen Anderson Culebro's The Crying Woman/La Llorona, a cross-cultural drama on international misunderstandings, Off Broadway at the Beckett Theatre, Paul Enger's In The Air, a love story during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918, Off Broadway at Theatre 315, James MacGuire's Nanny (also co-producer), an American comedy of extended families at the Nottara Theatre-Bucharest, and the European premiere of Harding Lemay's From A Dark Land, a World War-II drama of complicity, at the National Theatre of Romania-Craiova (co-producer), after having produced and directed the premieres of Marlene Shyer's First Wife, at the Emelin Theatre (Mamaroneck), Diane Leslie's and Mary Orr's family musical, Enchanted Afternoon, and Frank O'Donnell's Twisters, Off Broadway at the Nat Horne Studio Theatre on New York's Theatre Row. Tom is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Actors' Equity Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and is a graduate of the Commercial Theatre Institute's Master Producing Class.

Tom Ferriter has been a visiting professor to the Academy of Theatre in Bucharest, and a guest professor at the Academy of Theatre in Oslo. He was Performance Coach to America's Health Network, a 24-hour cable TV network transmitted by satellite to more than 10 million households across America, and was a member for three years of the faculty of The Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute, where his classes included Acting for Film and Television, TV Commercial Acting, and Basic Acting Techniques. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Business Management from California State University - San Francisco and an Associate of Arts degree in Economics from Santa Barbara City College.