CUT HERE AND USE THIS FORM TO ORDER YOUR TICKETS NOW.$19.00 for preview performances: September 27-October 6$28.00 for performances from October 9 through October 27(Orders must be received by Oct. 7th. Regular price: $35)Tue., Wed., Thur. at 7:00; Fri., & Sat. at 8:00; Sat. & Sun. at 2:00FOR TICKETS BY MAIL

Fill out the form below including your phone number and e-mail address. Mail orders to Mint TheaterCompany, 311 W. 43rd St. 5th floor, NY, NY 10036. Please allow seven days for processing. Please include a self- addressed stamped envelope if you would like your tickets mailed to you. Otherwise tickets will beheld at the box office.FOR TICKETS BY PHONE:Call (212) 315-0231. A $2.00 service charge will be added to all phone orders. Mention code: “SinGin 28”.FOR TICKETS ON-LINE: Order your tickets on-line at www.minttheater.org

FOR TICKETS IN PERSON: Our box office window is open one hour prior to show time beginning 9/27.

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We now have Personal Listening Systems! Reserve a headset when ordering your tickets.❑ Please hold a headset for me.

Jonathan Bank, Artistic DirectorPresents

September 27ththrough October 27th

Tues., Wed., Thurs. at 7:00,Fri. & Sat. at 8:00, Sat. & Sun at 2:00

$19.00 tickets for previews Sept. 27 through Oct. 6th$35.00 tickets from Oct. 9th thru Oct. 27th.

PAY ONLY $28 IF YOU ORDER BEFORE OCT. 7TH

To order tickets call (212) 315-0231

Or visit our on-line Box Office:www.minttheater.org

With

Christopher FranciosaKristin GriffithBenjamin Howes

Karl KenzlerBecky London

Lee MooreTroy Schremmer

Harmony SchuttlerMichele Tauber

Pauline TullyBruce WardAlice White

Set Design Charles F. MorganLighting DesignWilliam Armstrong

Costume DesignHenry Shaffer

Prop SpecialistJudi GuralnickDialect CoachAmy Stoller

Casting DirectorSharron BowerProduction Stage ManagerSara E. FriedmanPress representative David Gersten & AssociatesGraphic DesignJude Dvorak

Directed by Gus Kaikkonen

Performances at the Mint Theater 311 W. 43rd St. 5th floor

The Award-WinningMint Theater Company

In 2002 the Mint was awarded a special DramaDesk Award for “unearthing, presenting andpreserving forgotten plays of merit.”

“When it comes to the library,” our 2001 Obiecitation states, “there’s no theater moreadventurous.”

SPECIAL POST SHOW EVENTS:

Sunday, September 29thA panel discussion on philanthropy and the nature ofcharity, with special guests Helen Blieberg andStephen D. Solender. Blieberg is an adjunct professorat New School University and City University of NewYork. Most recently she was the Fund Administrator ofthe A.R.T./New York - Andrew W. Mellon FoundationArts Relief Fund. Solender is President-emeritus of theUnited Jewish Communities and recipient of theLifetime Achievement Award of the UJA-Federation,New York.

Saturday, October 5th (following the matinee)Professor J. Ellen Gainor from Cornell University willspeak about St John Hankin. Gainor is the author ofThe Plays of Susan Glaspell: A Contextual Study. Sheholds degrees from Harvard University, PrincetonUniversity, and the Yale School of Drama.

Sunday, October 6th Mint artistic director Jonathan Bank, director GusKaikkonen and members of the cast will take yourquestions about The Charity that Began at Home.

Mrs. Eversleigh: What I can’t understand is why, if you must be kind topeople—which seems to me quite unnecessary—you shouldn’t chooseagreeable people instead of disagreeable ones.

Lady Denison: Mr. Hylton, will you kindly explain to Mrs. Eversleigh whyI have to be kind to disagreeable people? I never can remember.

Hylton: You see, Mrs. Eversleigh, agreeable people don’t need friends tobe kind to them. They have plenty already. Disagreeable people have not.

Mrs. Eversleigh: If people are disagreeable they don’t deserve kindness.

Hylton: It’s not what people deserve, but what they want that matters,don’t you think? In fact, often the less people deserve the more we oughtto help them. They need it more.

Mrs. Eversleigh: I’m afraid that’s hardly a view you can expect me to takeseriously. It’s very modern and original, but it’s not serious.

Hylton: I should hardly have called it modern. Usen’t we to be taught thatit was our duty to love our enemies?

Mrs. Eversleigh: Yes. But only on Sundays. And no one ever dreamed ofdoing it. So of course, that didn’t matter. You want Lady Denison to do it.

Seven of your favoriteMint re-discoveries in onegreat book including photos,historical notes & the storiesbehind the stories from theartists themselves.Introduction by Mint Artistic Director Jonathan Bank.

Order online: www.minttheater.org, or plan on picking up a copy when you come to the show!

MTC-Charity 8/25/02 1:03 PM Page 1

By St John Hankin

311 W. 43RD STREET,5TH FLOORNEW YORK, NY 10036WWW.MINTTHEATER.ORG

NON-PROFIT ORG.

U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDNew York, NY

Permit No. 7528

By St John Hankin

Mint Theater Company, “that truffle hound of half-buried treasures from the past” has a celebrated reputation for re-discovering worthy but neglected plays such as Granville Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance and Rutherford and Son byGitha Sowerby.

The Mint is thrilled to bring you another “delightful discovery,” from 1906 England, a brilliantly witty comedy of how onefamily’s all-consuming commitment to kindness has awful and amusing consequences that turns their household upside down.

Please make plans to join us for the NEW YORK PREMIERE of this neglected treasure.

“St John Hankin is one of the great might-have-beens of the British theatre… I suspect it wasHankin’s wit that made him underrated…elegant, vitriolic jokes, the voice of the ruthlessobserver and true subversive…” - John Peter, Sunday Times

“A writer who has been unjustly neglected….Like Granville Barker at his best, Hankin wroteadult plays for adult people.” - Malcom Rutherford, Financial Times

“…astonishingly unperformed…inhabits a political and dramatic world akin to that of Shaw andGranville Barker…profound and pertinent.” - Micheal Arditti, Evening Standard

By St John Hankin

George Bernard Shaw called St JohnHankin “the Mephistopheles of the newcomedy.” Hankin wrote five full-lengthplays between 1903 and his death at theage of forty in 1909. None of them haveever been seen in New York. Shaw eulogizedHankin as “a most gifted writer of thehigh comedy of the kind that is a stirringand important criticism of life.”

The Charity that Began at Home, Hankin’sthird play, tells the story of how one family’sall-consuming commitment to kindnesshas awful and amusing consequencesthat turns their household upside down.Guided by the principles of the “Church ofHumanity”, Lady Denison and her daughterMargery write letters for orphans, visitthe sick, tolerate incorrigible servants andinvite the most disagreeable, boring andill-tempered people they can find to staywith them, because “It’s not what peopledeserve but what they want that matters.In fact,” say the Church’s charmingfounder Basil Hylton, “often the less peopledeserve the more we ought to helpthem—they need it more.”

In 2001 the Shaw Festival in Canadaproduced Hankin’s second play, TheReturn of the Prodigal, which became thesurprise hit of the season and has beenrevived again this year (running throughOct. 5). The Orange Tree in London alsorevived The Return of the Prodigal in 1993.Both productions were celebrated forbringing light to Hankin’s “insightfulconstruction, and dazzling delineation ofcharacter” and to his “wonderfully fertilecomic invention.” “What a joy to discover”the critics exclaimed, while extollingHankin’s comic gifts; the “crisp, at timesalmost Oscar Wildean dialogue,” andthe “paralysingly funny one-liners.”

But Hankin is a complex comedian; hissometimes cynical voice, “seems somodern and insightful.” Hankin’s is “thevoice of the ruthless observer and truesubversive” and his plays present“a blistering expose of the Edwardianmiddle-class life.” “We leave the theaterdisquieted by what we’ve seen. And isn’tthat what good theater is all about?”

“What a joy to discover”

Hankin, along with Granville Barker andShaw helped further the revolution thatreturned the function of social criticism todrama. Granville Barker produced thepremieres of both The Return of theProdigal and The Charity that Began atHome. Hankin was, in fact, the only livingdramatist other than Shaw to have morethan one full-length play produced at theRoyal Court during the importantVedrenne-Barker years from 1904 to 1907.Granville Barker rated The Charity thatBegan at Home as the best of Hankin’splays and Hankin himself agreed.

St John Hankin was a writer truly aheadof his time. When The Dramatic Works ofSt John Hankin was published in 1912, theNew York Times wrote that, “His influenceis not to be measured by the fact that theLondon stage has apparently found nouse for him.…To have let a little light andair into the English theater at a timewhen the windows had for years beenshut, and the blinds drawn was no meanaccomplishment.”

The Charity that Began at Home will playfor five weeks only, beginning onSeptember 27th. Please make your plansnow to join us for this thrilling discovery.The Charity that Began at Home hasnever been seen in New York, and waslast professionally produced in England in1917. This may truly be a once in a lifetimeopportunity.

St John Hankin (1869-1909)

St John (pronounced Sin Gin) Hankinbegan to contribute humorous essays anddramatic parodies including new “last-acts” for well-known plays to Punchmagazine in 1898. In 1901 some of hiscontributions were anthologized asMr. Punch’s Dramatic Sequels. Hankinalso contributed about seventy dramareviews to The London Times beforebeginning his career as a playwright in1903 with The Two Mr. Wetherby’s.Hankin was actively involved in runningthe Stage Society, a London theater groupthat supported plays of literary merit,founded in part, to avoid the LordChamberlain’s censorship.

During Hankin’s youth his father suffereda nervous breakdown, which left him aninvalid. Hankin himself began to sufferfrom increasing ill health in 1907 and hewas plagued with the fear that he wouldsuffer the same fate as his father. On a“dull, sultry, wet” day in June of 1909, StJohn Hankin tied two seven-pound dumb-bells around his neck and drownedhimself in the river Ithon. He left his wifea letter expressing his fear that he would“slip into invalidism,” which he could notbear and ended by telling her, “I havefound a lovely pool in a river and at thebottom I hope to find rest.” GeorgeBernard Shaw described his death as“a public calamity.”

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