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This production would not have been possible without the help and support of some very special people...

A huge thank you to Frances Stern Rodriguez and her family for allowing us to use their lovely home for the bulk of our rehearsals!

A sincere thank you to the board of directors at Open Variations Theater, as well as all of our donors. 

Thank you to Michelle Orosz and the group at Headwall Theatre, for helping us with access in order to source items for our set!

Thank you to James Abrams, the props master extraordinaire, for assisting with props acquisition as well as serving as our rental coordinator for our lighting team.

A special shoutout to Richie Radici, the artistic director of Good Bad Group, for assisting us with our set build in the eleventh hour!

Song List

Music Rights For This Production Provided By The Following Artists:

"God You Get Me" and "Counting Sheep" by Sarah Katherine Lawless

You can listen to her new EP here: New EP

"Speedway" by Elise Killian

"Slow Dancing at the Disco" by Kat McKinney 

You can find her music here: Linktr

"Other Side" and "One Time" by The Holy 

Find them on Spotify: Here

"It Is Well" by Phillip Bliss and Horatio Spaford, Performed by Olive Schettino

"When We Are Dancin' I get Ideas" by Louis Armstrong, courtesy of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation.

Cast

Creative Team

Meet the Company

Zoe Olson

Melody

Zoe is a Vermont born, New York based actor and singer. Recent roles include Sadie in Psykhodrame, which premiered at Mammoth Lakes Film Festival in 2024, Anna-Kate in Viral, camp counselor, babysitter to two Monopoly fiends, and one third of her unnamed girl band.

Marianne Goodell

Hope

Marianne is thrilled to be in Open Variations inaugural production of Be A Good Little Widow, especially under the direction of her talented son, George Goodell. She met Jeremy, founder of Open Variations and playing Brad, through the indie film Gazer that went to the Cannes Film Festival this year. At Headwall Theatre Company, based in Queens, she appeared as Juliana in The Other Place, Polly in Other Desert Cities, and now serves as their Managing Director. Marianne has worked with other emerging theater companies, independent film makers and on several TV series. Marianne is represented by UGA Talent. www.marianne-goodell.com

Grant Schumacher

Craig

Grant Schumacher is an actor/writer from Indianapolis, IN. He is an alumnus of the Uta Hagen Institute at HB Studio. You can see him in the film Gazer, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this past May and was acquired by Metrograph Pictures for a February 2025 theatrical release! Currently, he resides in Brooklyn with his wife and they are expecting their first child.

Jeremy Cohen

Brad

Jeremy started Open Variations Theater earlier this year. He grew up a classical pianist before discovering his love for acting and writing in both stage and film! You can find him as the lead in "The Life and Loves of Allan Glickman" currently in its film festival circuit. Jeremy also enjoys working on-set in various crew capacities including producing for various film projects, such as features for Traverse Media, Nicely Entertainment and Epic Pictures. Since embracing the role of Artistic Director at OVT, he organized the company's ability to come on as the fiscal sponsor for the debut independent feature film, Gazer, by Ryan Sloan and Ariella Mastroianni. OVT helped facilitate the film's ability to have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was promptly acquired by Metrograph Films. Jeremy has loved this particular play since he was fifteen, and is so proud to have this reimagining be the inaugural stage production for the company!

George Goodell

Director

George Goodell is a writer and director of film and theater based in Brooklyn, NY. His theater work includes Cry, Blueberry (as director, London, UK; Gothenburg, SE), The Ring (as playwright and director, off-Broadway), Eden (as playwright, off-Broadway) and Something to Complain About (as playwright, off-Broadway). His short stories have appeared in Between There and Now, Too (published by 9vt/5) and FU Review: Berlin. His film work includes the documentary, Arianne + Matt (Golden Bridge Film Festival) and the upcoming films One Night Stand and Pool Party. He is very excited to be directing Open Variations Theater's inaugural stage production of Be A Good Little Widow!

Olive Schettino

Stage Manager/Intimacy Coordinator

Olive Schettino is a theater artist, musician, and crossword puzzle addict from New York. A graduate of The Boston Conservatory, she has had the privilege of working on and offstage around the country as well as at the Festival Fringe in Edinburgh. Big thanks to everyone at Open Variations for this opportunity!

Alexandra Cockrell

Assistant Stage Manager

Alexandra Cockrell (she/they) is a UK-trained actor, director and educator. She is a co-founder of Venture Theatre, a company based in Bermuda, and is theatre faculty and the associate director of the High School Repertory Theatre Production at Interlochen Center for the Arts where she recently directed Kate Hamill’s Sense and Sensibility. Credit highlights include: Julius Caesar (Backroom Shakespeare); Self Tape (Alchemical Studio); The Spy, Tar and Feather (Williamstown Theatre Festival); The Nina Variations (Doghouse Ensemble Theatre); Medea (Parallel 45); A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Interlochen Shakespeare Festival) and Coriolanus, The Merchant of Venice, The Country Wife, The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard, 13 (The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). Film/TV credits: ‘Law and Order: SVU’; Missing Out, Runaway. BFA: The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. www.alexandracockrell.com

Zhuosi "Joyce" He

Scenic Designer

Zhuosi “Joyce” He is a Chinese set and production designer currently based in New York. She holds an MFA in set design from NYU Tisch, and a BA in Film Studies and Architectural Studies from Mount Holyoke College. Selected theater credits: Pericles: Prince of Tyre, The Moors, en domstol/en andersson (NYU Grad Acting); The Walt Whitmans of Fort Greene Park (American Opera Project); Koi-Coy, Northbound Train (Columbia University); Two Takes: The Peony Pavilion (LMCC); Relicts (2nd Ave. Dance Company). Film: Terminal (Cannes Film Festival La Cinef selection); False Start; Jules & Dee.

Jiahao (Neil) Qiu 邱嘉皓

Lighting Designer

Jiahao(Neil) Qiu is a Chinese-born theatre collaborator and lighting designer. His recent design credits in the US includes: The Wilderness (Time Collactive Collective), Redemption Story (The Associates Theater Ensemble), Two Takes: The Peony Pavilion - Bloom (LMCC), Seven Cousins For a Hourse (Thrown Stone Theatre), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Yale Repertory Theatre, Connecticut Critics Circle Award). For more information, please visit nealqiu.com | @neilqiu_design

Qixin Zhang

Projection Designer

Qixin Zhang is a media artist, designer, and engineer, seamlessly blending art, design, and technology to create transformative experiences. With a diverse cultural background encompassing both East and West influences, her work reflects a harmonious fusion of creative perspectives. Qixin's art bridges dimensions, utilizing media in innovative ways to captivate audiences and inspire connections. Guided by empathy and a passion for cultural exchange, they also lead projects that celebrate and explore Fuzhou culture, deepening cultural understanding through their creative process.

Multimedia

Donors

 Our work at Open Variations Theater is made possible thanks to our generous donors!

Director’s Statement - George Goodell

Be a Good Little Widow, was written in 2010, which hardly makes it a period piece. And yet, the world has changed so much over the course of the past 14 years. In the original production, Craig was constantly checking emails on his blackberry; when Melody played music she plugged her pink iPod nano into an iHome speaker dock (unless she was playing Craig’s music, in which case she used his blue iPod nano); there was a TV and a cable box that Melody would rely on for everything from the news reports to her yoga video.
It was unsettling (although also very fortunate) how easily each of these now obsolete pieces of technology could be ‘updated’ for our production which takes place in 2024. Melody’s absent TV watching became her absent ‘doom’ scrolling; the hunky television set became an iPad; the cable box became an internet router; the news reports became a Twitter feed. Perhaps the world really hasn’t changed that much since 2010.
Or perhaps only the technology we use has changed - people haven’t. In any case, the problems that Melody faced as a young, newly wed, would-be housewife in 2010 are much the same as the problems that she would face today; feelings of alienation, a lack of love and emotional connection (generated, perhaps, by her constant usage of technology), uncertainty in the face of major life decisions, feeling incapable of living up to the demands that others place upon her and the need to confront and process difficult emotional traumas. These problems are shared by Melody’s fellow personae dramatis; Craig, Hope and even Brad. It is my belief that these are problems that we all share with Melody from time to time - I know I certainly do. And it is my hope that the lessons, often difficult and painful, that Melody, Craig, Hope and Brad learn in their 90 minutes of life on stage can be shared by all of us, too.