Go Gi Go Productions Inc

Go Gi Go Productions Inc. presents

Joel Rooks

SAY GOODNIGHT GRACIE LOGO

Written by

Rupert Holmes

Directed by

Michael White

Portions of the play have been adapted from the reminiscences of George Burns. “Say Goodnight Gracie” is produced with the full approval and cooperation of the George Burns and Gracie Allen Estate.

Originally produced at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

Exclusive tour direction by Scott Stander & Associates, .

13701 Riverside Drive Suite 201, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423, www.scottstander.com

Cast

George Burns...... Joel Rooks

Voice of Gracie Allen...... Didi Conn

The show will be performed without an intermission.

The original Broadway production of Say Goodnight Gracie opened at the Helen Hayes Theatre on October 10, 2002. It was directed by John Tillinger, and was produced by William Franzblau, Jay Harris, Louise Westergaard, Larry Spellman, Elsa Daspin Haft, Judith Resnick, Anne Gallagher, Libby Adler Mages, Mari Glick Stuart, Martha R. Gasparian, Bruce Lazarus, Lawrence S. Toppall and Jae French.

Use of cameras, videotape recorders, audio recorders and/or any other type of recording device during a performance is strictly prohibited. For the enjoyment of the audience, please turn off all cell phones and pagers prior to entering the theater.

“Say Goodnight Gracie” is the hit Broadway play that invites you to spend a hilarious, heart-warming evening in the uplifting company of the world’s favorite and funniest centenarian. George Burns, who spanned one hundred years of American entertainment history, is now miraculously alive and kicking in a stunning tour de force. Say Goodnight Gracie was Broadway’s third longest running solo performance show and was nominated for a 2003 Tony Award for “Best Play” and won the 2003-04 National Broadway Theatre Award for “Best Play.”

In Say Goodnight Gracie, we discover George in limbo between this world and the next, unable to join his beloved wife and partner Gracie Allen until he gives the command performance of his lifetime for God. He looks back upon his impoverished, plucky youth on the lower east side of New York… his disastrous but tenacious career in Vaudeville ... the momentous day when he meet a fabulously talented young Irish girl named Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen … their instant chemistry, with his flawless timing a perfect mate to her dizzy delivery ... his wooing of her, their marriage and their rise to the pinnacles of vaudeville, movies, radio and relevision. Gracie’s demise forced George to start from square one in life and in his career, eventually achieving an equal level of success as a solo raconteur and Academy Award-winning actor, portraying everything from a Sunshine Boy to, Oh, God.

Say Goodnight Gracie is a multimedia presentation that also features the skillful vocal talents of actress Didi Conn (“Frenchie” from Grease) as well as evocative music and moving images from George’s long life and good times. The play has been created with the approval and cooperation of the estate of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Its author is multiple Tony Award-winning playwright Rupert Holmes, whose Broadway credits include the Tony Award-winning musical The Mystery Of Edwin Drood and who is also creator and writer of the nostalgic Emmy Award-winning comedy series Remember WENN and currenlty on represented on Broadway in the new Kander & Ebb musical Curtains. The Say Good Night Gracie production is hallmarked by a sense of wit, warmth and intimacy.

Say Goodnight Gracie is a tender, funny, life-affirming love story ... a personal guided tour through an American century in the company of George Burns, a man who laughingly lived and loved each day for all it had to offer, until he finally went “gently into that good night” to forever reunite with his beloved Gracie.

About Joel Rooks

Joel has appeared on Broadway in Say Goodnight Gracie, Taller Than A Dwarf and The Tenth Man. His Off-Broadway credits include Iron, Rocket To The Moon, Under The Bed, The Secret Order, Louis Slotin Sonata, Comic Potential, More Stately Mansions, Requiem For A Heavyweight, Richard II, School For Scandal and many others. He has toured in the national companies of The Sisters Rosenweig and Say Goodnight Gracie. His regional theater productions include Once In A Lifetime, Street Scene, God Of Vengeance (Williamstown Theater Festival), The Great White Hope (Arena Stage), Brightwings (Long Wharf), Astapovo (Yale Rep), Sheer Boredom (George Street Playhouse), The Rainmaker (Clarence Brown Theater), the archbishop’s ceiling, the last night of ballyhoo (Vineyard Playhouse), A Thousand Clowns (Dorset Theater Festival), Three Sisters, Bus Stop, A Streetcar Named Desire (River Arts Rep). Film and TV work includes It Runs In The Family, The Sightseer, On The Run, His & Hers, American Blue Note, Mark Of The Bear, The Gig, Cop Shop, Ed, Law & Order, L&O-Svu, L&O-Criminal Intent, Winchell, The Beat and assorted doctors, lawyers and cops on various daytime dramas. He has taught at the William Esper Studio for many years and is a member of Ensemble Studio Theater, Circle East and The New River Dramatists.

Who’s who in “Say Goodnight Gracie” production.

MICHAEL WHITE (DIRECTOR) began a lifelong love affair with the American Theater while still in high school. As a young actor, director, designer and technician, he won numerous awards in statewide theater competitions and earned a scholarship to the prestigious University of Texas Department of Drama. In addition to his work on stage, he wrote and directed his first original play while still a high school junior. By the time he graduated, he was already a veteran of nine Equity productions on the professional stage.

After a distinguished collegiate career, Michael returned to the professional theater wherein he served as an actor, director, designer and stage manager in playhouses from coast to coast. Memorable roles include Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the narrator in Albee’s Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Lago in Othello, and a two-and-a-half year, box-office-record-setting tour of the comedy Hanky Panky. In addition, he stage managed or assistant stage managed over twenty-five Equity shows.

After permanently relocating to Southern California, Michael began a career in film and television that has seen his work in such films as Body Double, Best Seller, The Elian Gonzales Story, The New Women and the A Day Without A Mexican. On television, Michael has appeared in Kitchen Confidential, Strong Medicine, L.A. Heat, Murder, She Wrote, Melrose Place, Saved By The Bell, The Bold & The Beautiful and Days of Our Lives to name just a few.

Behind the scenes, Michael served as assistant director on the national tour of The Odd Couple (Female Version) starring Barbara Eden and most recently helmed the world premiere of playwright Lizzie Maxwell’s Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl.

After innumerable assignments on stage and in film and TV, he still lists as his all-time favorites the roles of being dad to his amazing daughter, Michelle, and husband to his beloved wife, Jennifer. And today, more than thirty years after Michael first set foot on a professional stage ... the love affair is still going strong.

DIDI CONN (Voice of Gracie Allen). Broadway: Lost in Yonkers, Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird and A Christmas Carol. Off-Broadway: The Vagina Monologues, The Primary English Class, Consequences and the Lesson. Regional credits: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (LA premiere), Division Street, Birdbath, Room Service, It Had to Be You, Anything Goes, Enter Laughing and six years in the acting company of the Sundance Playwright’s Lab. Films: starring roles in You Light Up My Life, Grease and Grease II, and she is the executive producer of the Paramount/ABC television movie “We’ll Always Be Together!” Other films include The Magic Show, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Almost Summer, Thomas and the Magic Railroad and the title role in the Oscar-winning short Violet. Television: a series regular in Danny Thomas’s “The Practice,” “Benson” and “Shining Time Stations” (PBS). She lives with her husband, composer David Shire, and their son Daniel, in Hudson Valley.

GO GI GO PRODUCTIONS’ (Producer) first project was Ethel Merman’s Broadway, which played internationally and is scheduled for London and Toronto openings and its 100th birthday celebration on Broadway in 2008. GO GI GO was a co-producer of Bermuda Avenue Triangle with Renée Taylor, Joe Bologna and Lainie Kazan, and produced a special engagement of Love Letters, which reunited Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman for the first time on stage. Currently, Love Letters is on a national tour with Barbara Eden and Hal Linden as the stars. Recent productions include the 30th anniversary tour of Plaza Suite starring Lee Meriwether, Milton Berle’s 90th Birthday Celebration tour, The Odd Couple: The Female Version with Barbara Eden and Rita McKenzie, and If You Ever Leave Me…I’m Going With You! starring Renée Taylor and Joe Bologna at the Apollo Theater in Chicago which was followed by its Broadway engagement.