The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Biography
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a musical comedy with music by William Finn centering around a fictional spelling bee in a geographically ambiguous Putnam County. It was workshopped and developed at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires prior to its off-Broadway run at the Second Stage Theatre before transferring to Broadway's Circle in the Square Theatre. It was directed by James Lapine. One unusual aspect of the show is that real audience members are invited to compete in the spelling bee alongside the performers. In each performance, four audience members compete against six actors. During the 2005 Tony Awards, former Presidential candidate Al Sharpton had a cameo as one of the competitors. Another unusual aspect of the show is its periodic "Parent-Teacher Conferences," also known as "adult night at the Bee," in which audience members must be over 17 to attend. These performances are peppered with sexual references and cursing, and grew from R-rated ad-libs made during rehearsals. Another amusing aspect of the show is that the official pronouncer provides ridiculous usage examples when asked to use words in a sentence. For instance, for the word "palaestra," he said, "Euripedes said, 'What happens at the palaestra stays at the palaestra.'" The musical was based upon C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E, an original play by The Farm, a New-York-based improvisational comedy troupe. Sarah Saltzberg, Wendy Wasserstein's weekend nanny, was in the original production, and Wasserstein recommended that Finn see the show. Finn brought Shenkin on board and the improv show became a scripted musical. Dan Fogler, Rebecca Feldman, Jay Reiss, and Sarah Saltzberg were the only cast members that remained from C-R-E-P-U-S-C-U-L-E. Robb Sapp (later replaced by Jose Llana), Dashiell Eaves (replaced by Derrick Baskin), Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Celia Keenan-Bolger (who joined the cast as Olive Ostrovsky in the summer to replace Rebecca Feldman's character of Beth Margolies in the workshop), Lisa Howard, and Deborah Craig were added to the cast and a full script was created. Dana I. Harrel served as the Producer of Stage II and oversaw both productions. Michael Barakiva and Rebecca Feldman directed the workshop, and Michael Unger and Rebecca Feldman directed the summer production. Dan Knechtges choreographed both the workshop and summer.
