Berkeley Rep Blog
Great Performances: "Let Me Down Easy" airs Friday!
posted by Karen McKevitt on Mon, Jan 9, 2012
in Our shows
It's a super-busy and exciting week here at Berkeley Rep: The Wild Bride is selling like crazy and continuing to earn standing ovations, and the much-anticipated world-premiere production of Ghost Light opens Wednesday.
And here's another event to add to your calendar: PBS's Great Performances airs Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy on Friday. It was recorded at Areana Stage last February -- several months before it came to Berkeley Rep, where it enjoyed a phenomenal run (and encore!) that smashed box office records. If you missed that run and want to enjoy it again, check it out!
Watch Let Me Down Easy on PBS. See more from Great Performances.
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"Ghost Light" materializes tonight!
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Jan 6, 2012
in News , Our shows
Ghost Light, the much-anticipated world-premiere production, begins previews tonight. In this haunting show, Artistic Director (and playwright) Tony Taccone conjures an imaginary world based on the historic assassination of Mayor George Moscone. The play is helmed by none other than Jonathan Moscone.
Robynn Rodriguez and Christopher Liam Moore in Ghost Light. Photo by Jenny Graham
Both Tony and Jonathan were guests this morning on NPR’s Forum with Dave Iverson. Miss it? Listen to it now!
Catch a PBS documentary on the creation of Ghost Light! KQED airs The Memory Be Green starting January 17. Watch a screening at Berkeley Rep! Our free Page to Stage event on January 23 features the documentary followed by a conversation with Resident Dramaturg Madeleine Oldham with writer Tony Taccone and documentary-maker Dave Iverson.
Richard Dodds of the Bay Area Reporter filed “Moscone memories,” an insightful article that traces the creation of Ghost Light back to the release of the film Milk.
The San Francisco Chronicle and Mercury News both tapped the play as one to watch for in the new year, and the SF Examiner published a preview piece just today. Pretty cool!
Hope to see you at Ghost Light!
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Beginning 2012 with a look back at 2011's best
posted by Kyle Sircus on Wed, Jan 4, 2012
in News , Our shows
Happy New Year, blog readers! January offers all of us a time to commit to resolutions and reflect back on the year that was. In our case at Berkeley Rep, it was certainly a busy one filled with a whole slate of shows, some of which were lucky enough to receive some "best of 2011" nods from theatre critics around the country. In case you missed it, here's a rundown:
- The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, Mike Daisey's controversial new monologue, appeared on critics' lists in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal for its New York and Washington, D.C. runs, respectively. The production made lists in both the Seattle Times and Seattle Weekly, too. Closer to home, Bay Area News Group, Huffington Post, and the SF Bay Guardian all named it as one of their top picks for the year.
- Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy earned the engaging performer the Barrymore Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play. This knockout performance landed in the Top 10 lists in the San Francisco Chronicle, Bay Area News Group, and Los Angeles Times.
- In addition to his Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance, John Leguizamo's Ghetto Klown was awarded the Biggest Laugh of 2011 by Eric Grode in the New York Times.
- Our co-production of Ruined made lists in the San Francisco Chronicle, Idiolect, and the Boston Globe.
- Les Waters' staging of Three Sisters made Karen D'Souza's Top 10 list in the Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, and Contra Costa Times.
- Speaking of Les, Charles Isherwood of the New York Times recently wrote about the year’s “most promising out of town development: The appointment of the director Les Waters to head Actors Theater of Louisville, which hosts the annual Humana Festival of New American Plays.” After eight years as Berkeley Rep’s associate artistic director, Les will be dearly missed in the Bay Area – but everyone wishes him well with his new adventure!
To close out this post, we are so excited that our current production of The Wild Bride was named the "high point of the year" in Robert Hurwitt's San Francisco Chronicle list. The show's been extended until January 22. If you haven't seen it yet, why not add that to your list of resolutions?
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"The Wild Bride" on paper
posted by Mary Kay Hickox on Tue, Jan 3, 2012
in Our shows
By Mary Kay Hickox, graphic design fellow
Most people might not know that all of the artwork we produce is made in-house by our art director, Cheshire Isaacs, and his graphic design fellow (me!).
Creating new artwork for shows that have their premieres at Berkeley Rep is often a difficult task because we don't have much to go on except the script and interviews with the directors/playwrights. Unlike some other shows, the Wild Bride didn't have a script that we were able to read beforehand. We only had the original Grimm's fairy tale (The Handless Maiden), production photos from Kneehigh, the video, and a performance program.
What we knew that we didn't want was it to look too much like Tim Burton's style or Into the Woods (the musical). Since we knew that blues music plays a big role in this production, we wanted to emphasize that in the logo by choosing an Americana/hand-drawn style typeface.
Here are some very early sketches of what we had in mind. When creating artwork, we need to think about the different formats it will be in -- newspapers with poor printing quality, black and white or color, advertisements that are very horizontal, vertical, small, large, web, print! Having these constraints is good sometimes, as it gives us a better idea of what we should be focusing our time on rather than going in one direction when in reality it's not a good choice.
While we could make these sketches work, they looked very dark and a little spooky (it didn't help we were creating these around Halloween). We decided to change direction, focusing directly on the logotype, instead of an image to go with the title.
This is the first sketch of this version of the logo, hand-drawn by Cheshire, next to the finalized logo. We both liked this direction, as it captured the bluesy/Americana feel, while still keeping it wild. Luckily, everyone else liked this direction too and we went on with cleaning it up and working on each of the letters. The devil "the" was actually a happy mistake.
After we had what we liked, we scanned in the logo into Photoshop, cleaned it up, and placed it on top of one of the production photos from Kneehigh. After the logo was finalized, we created multiple versions of it to fit into different settings. Though we computer-generate almost all our artwork, it was really great to work off the computer and draw with pen and paper! We hope you enjoyed this view into graphic design at Berkeley Rep.
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"The Wild Bride" turns 100!
posted by Karen McKevitt on Wed, Dec 21, 2011
in Our shows
Happy 100th performance to The Wild Bride!
Yep, last Saturday marked the first triple-digit performance of this smash hit show. OK, technically that counts the performances in the UK too, but hey, at least Kneehigh's awesome artists get to celebrate with us!
Stage manager Steph Curtis sent along this 100th performance photo. Note the white flags in the tree.
And, in case you haven't heard, The Wild Bride has been extended to January 22! Yep, it's officially one of the hottest -- if not the hottest -- theatrical events of the season. Come on down! Audiences are totally loving this spectacular show.
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A mingling of plaids: Berkeley Rep’s Ho-Ho Holiday Hoedown
posted by Amy Bobeda on Fri, Dec 16, 2011
in Backstage buzz
Photos by Mary Kay Hickox
There’s nothing like a good ol' fashioned office holiday party. Garlands on the water cooler. Secretaries in short skirts. Drinking so much egg nog that you start dancing on your boss’s desk to Ke$ha’s "Tick Tock"…
Thankfully, the Reptiles celebrate the holidays in a far less cliché style. This year’s festivities were themed Ho-Ho Holiday Hoedown, which meant plaid shirts, denim jackets, and a whole lot of Jack Daniels.
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Teen Council is wild about "The Wild Bride!"
posted by School of Theatre on Tue, Dec 13, 2011
in Our shows , School of Theatre , Teen Council
By Darcy Davis, Acalanes High School, Teen Council Membership chair
Teen Night attendees enjoy Phil's Sliders before the show! Thanks to Phil's Sliders for the delicious food!
Finally. It was here. The Wild Bride. The ad campaign alone had Teen Council clamoring for tickets, and after months of images of colorful dancers whirling through stage lights, Teen Night had come.
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Rita's big break: the making of the Entourage video
posted by Cari Turley on Mon, Dec 12, 2011
in At the theatre , Backstage buzz
It's not every day you get to write a script for Rita Moreno.
Perhaps you've heard of her? Before her star-making turn in "Bring your Entourage to Berkeley Rep," Ms. Moreno appeared in a handful of smaller films like West Side Story, The King and I, and The Ritz. OK, I kid. Obviously, Rita was a huge star well before we talked her into appearing in our video, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up.
Here at Berkeley Rep, we have this amazing program that no one's ever heard of. It's called Entourage. Here's how it works: if we've got a show that you want to share with 10 or more people, we'll send you a discount code for 20% off. You don't all have to come on the same day, and we'll even waive everyone's service fees. Even better, if you can get 15 or more people to come, we'll give you a free ticket to a future show. Basically, you help us spread the word, and we'll make sure you and your friends save big. Win-win.
Or, if you prefer your information in cheesy, black-and-white video format:
Sounds awesome, right? We here in the marketing department were bummed that no one seemed to know about the program, so we decided to make a video to get the word out. We gave ourselves a comfortable schedule to make a storyboard, write a script, and look for filming locations...and then someone suggested asking Rita Moreno (who was here performing Life Without Makeup) if she'd like to make a cameo. Miraculously, she said yes. But since her show was ending in two days, our two-week timeline was out the window. If it was going to happen, we had to do this thing today.
And that's how I ended up writing a script to pitch to an Oscar winner in 15 minutes. Once that was done, we went to the theatre, grabbed as many "volunteers" as we could find, and knocked on Rita's dressing room door.
Boy, was that a terrifying moment. Here I am, some nobody, asking the great Rita Moreno to perform in some ludicrous scene that I wrote. I'm not a screenwriter! I'm not even a regular writer! And then, as if that wasn't frightening enough, I had to act in the scene with her. Look, I was a drama major in college, and I used to dream about this kind of opportunity. But you never expect it to happen with so little warning. I mean, shouldn't I have gotten a few weeks to prepare myself for this? Shouldn't I at least have brushed my hair?
Naturally, it took about three seconds for me to ruin the first take. Mortified, I tried again...and this time Rita tripped over her lines, made a joke about it, and just like that the tension broke. (Stars: they're just like us!) After that, it was just fun. She was an incredibly good sport, as were all the other Berkeley Rep staffers we coerced into performing. The whole thing was over in an hour.
At the end of our adventure in filmmaking, we were left with this little gem. Check it out, and if it sounds like something you might want to do, why don't you get in touch? (I promise I'm not quite as, uh, effusive in person.)
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Critics love "The Wild Bride!"
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Dec 9, 2011
in News , Our shows
The reviews are in and critics love The Wild Bride! It even got a "wild applause" from the Little Man. What can we say? Kneehigh totally rocks!
Here's what the critics are saying:
“The Devil is at the crossroads, a girl is in peril and love is gloriously indestructible in the exhilarating The Wild Bride… A feast of timeless story, irresistible music and wildly imaginative theatricality… Bride is a gift that keeps on giving.” – SF Chronicle
“The Wild Bride will steal your heart from start to finish… An ingenious marriage of dance, theater, puppetry and music… Once upon a time has rarely been so intoxicating.” – Bay Area News Group
“Devilishly entertaining … Anyone who believes in magic should see it!” – SF Examiner
“Without question, the great treat of the holiday theater season!” – Chad Jones’ Theatre Dogs (Love the caption, Chad!)
So, tickets are already going fast, so don't wait, reserve your seats now before shows sell out!
Patrycja Kujawska and Stuart Goodwin. Photo by kevinberne.com
We'll see ya real soon!
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Ridiculous Reptile tradition: Tattoo Friday
posted by Amy Bobeda on Fri, Dec 9, 2011
in Backstage buzz , Costume shop
Some offices do “casual Friday.” Clearly, Berkeley Rep is too unique to partake in such a trite ritual. What do we do instead? Fancy you should ask! Every Friday morning no matter which campus our ducklings find themselves on, we all have one thing in common: temporary tattoos.
Like all good ideas, it began in the costume shop. On a weekly trip to the local Target for Popov, Oxyclean, and environmentally friendly detergent, we trolled the ever-popular dollar section. That day there was something magical in the air, because those bins were stocked to the brim with temporary tattoos depicting hipster animals — octopus DJ! Raccoon bandits! Boston Terriers in cute baseball caps! Clearly, for a dollar I needed to buy three packs and find their purpose later.