For Immediate Release

Onstage at Theatre Three: Caroline, or Change Playing May 31 -- July 1, 2007

Theatre Three’s Mainstage Season of the 2006 – 2007 season concludes with Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori’s musical, Caroline or Change. Theatre Three’s forty-sixth season features captivating dramas, exciting and innovative musicals, and hilarious comedies that celebrate the underdogs of society who fight back and make audiences stand up and cheer their efforts. Caroline or Change begins previews on Thursday, May 31, 2007 and will close on Sunday, July 1, 2007. “Nothing ever happen under ground in Louisiana cause they ain’t no under ground in Louisiana. There is only under water.” – Caroline in Caroline or Change Caroline Thibodeaux spends a good portion of her life under ground in Louisiana. She is a black maid working for the Gellmans, a Jewish family in Lake Charles and the Gellman’s house just happens to have the only basement that Caroline can remember. It is 1963 and the entire nation is struggling with change: the Civil Rights movement, freedom rides, and church bombings dominate the national consciousness. As a single mother, Caroline struggles to pay all of her bills and raise her children. A tragic change has rocked the Gellman family: Mrs. Gellman died suddenly, leaving a distant husband and a young son, Noah. Stuart Gellman remarries a friend, Rose Stopnick, quickly, but neither Noah nor Caroline gets along with Rose. When Noah consistently leaves spare change in his pockets, Rose decides to make a rule: Caroline may keep any spare change she finds in Noah’s pockets when she does the laundry. What was supposed to be a simple lesson for a small boy forces Caroline to re-evaluate her life, dreams, and priorities. About The Playwrights: Tony Kushner & Jeanine Tesori Tony Kushner: Born in New York City in 1956, and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Kushner is best known for his two-part epic, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. His other plays include A Bright Room Called Day, Slavs!; Hydrotaphia;Homebody/Kabul; and Caroline or Change, the musical for which he wrote book and lyrics, with music by composer Jeanine Tesori. Kushner has translated and adapted Pierre Corneille's The Illusion, S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Sezuan and Mother Courage and Her Children; and the English-language libretto for the children’s opera Brundibár by Hans Krasa. He wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’ film of Angels In America, and Steven Spielberg’s Munich. His books include Brundibar, with illustrations by Maurice Sendak; The Art of Maurice Sendak: 1980 to the Present; and Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict, co-edited with Alisa Solomon. Kushner is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, three Obie Awards, an Oscar nomination, an Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Laura Pels Award for a Mid-Career Playwright, a Spirit of Justice Award from the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and a Cultural Achievement Award from The National Foundation for Jewish Culture, among many others. Most recently, Caroline or Change, produced in the autumn of 2006 at the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, received the Evening Standard Award, the London Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Olivier Award for Best Musical. He is the subject of a documentary film, Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, made by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock. He is working on a screenplay about Abraham Lincoln and a new play entitled The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures. He lives in Manhattan with his husband, Mark Harris. Jeanine Tesori has written three Tony-nominated scores for Broadway; Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, Thoroughly Modern Millie (lyrics, Dick Scanlan) at the Marquis, and Caroline, or Change (lyrics, Tony Kushner) at the Eugene O'Neill. The production of Caroline or Change at the National Theater in London received the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Her first off-Broadway musical, Violet, written with Brian Crawley, received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1997. She has been the recipient of many other honors including Drama Desk and Obie awards, and was cited by ASCAP as being the first woman composer to have “two new musicals running concurrently on Broadway.” Ms. Tesori has composed concert material for Kristin Chenoweth, Sutton Foster, and Audra MacDonald. Her composition, The River is Wide, was hailed by the New York Times as “a remarkable interplay of music, dance and words…both requiem and celebration, reflecting the cross-currents of emotion that hang in the air of Lower Manhattan.” She composed the music for The New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Brecht’s Mother Courage, as translated by Tony Kushner and starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline. She has written songs for the movie Shrek The Third, and is the composer for the forthcoming Dreamworks Broadway production of Shrek The Musical. Her film scores include Winds of Change for ABC, Show Business, and Wrestling With Angels. She has composed songs for Disney DVD releases Mulan II, Lilo and Stitch II, and Little Mermaid III. She has produced sixty CD's for Silver-Burdett Ginn’s Making Music and the original cast albums for Twelfth Night, Violet, and Caroline, or Change. Ms. Tesori, a graduate of Barnard College, lives in Manhattan with her husband, Michael Rafter, and daughter, Siena.

For Further Information Contact: To Contact Theatre Three: By post: 2800 Routh Street, Suite 168, Dallas, Texas 75201 By phone: 214-871-3300 By fax: 214-871-3139 By email: admin@theatre3dallas.com By web: www.theatre3dallas.com