Berkeley Rep Blog
American Idiot coming to the big screen
posted by Karen McKevitt on Tue, Jun 14, 2011
in News , Shows on tour
The Hollywood Reporter and Playbill.com reported that the film version of American Idiot will be released in 2013, with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong in the role of St. Jimmy -- the same role he played in several Broadway performances that drew huge box office receipts. Additional casting for the film has not been announced. Tom Hanks' company Playtone holds the film rights, and Michael Mayer -- the director of the Berkeley Rep and Broadway runs -- will direct the film. Of course, American Idiot premiered here at Berkeley Rep in 2008.
The national tour of American Idiot begins this fall and will come to San Francisco in June 2012.
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Berkeley Rep artists at the Tony Awards
posted by Karen McKevitt on Mon, Jun 13, 2011
in News
Quite a few past Berkeley Rep artists made appearances at last night’s Tony Awards. Colman Domingo, who performed at many Bay Area theatres and played Franklin in Passing Strange, was nominated for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical for Scottsboro Boys. Joshua Henry, who was in the ensemble of American Idiot, also received a nomination for Scottsboro Boys as Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. Mark Wendland, who was the scenic designer for Master Class starring Rita Moreno, was nominated for his scenic design of The Merchant of Venice. But it was Brian Ronan, sound designer for American Idiot, who walked away with a Tony Award last night for Best Sound Design of a Musical for The Book of Mormon. He was also nominated for Anything Goes. Congratulations all!
Colman Domingo (in the top hat) along with Rebecca Naomi Jones, Chad Goodridge, de’Adre Aziza, and Daniel Breaker in Passing Strange. Photo by Kevin Berne.
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Puff the house manager dragon
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Jun 10, 2011
in Backstage buzz
By Aleta George, House Manager
Everyone has dreams relating to their work. An actor might go up on her lines. A director's cast doesn't show up. A prop master is asked for ketchup and has to go to India to find it. Usually we keep these dreams to ourselves, but this one I had to share.
In mine, I had a pet dragon that helped me house manage at the Berkeley Rep.
My dragon was jade green and about 8 feet tall. It flew around the Roda lobby helping to get people into the house. It was friendly and only used fire when absolutely necessary. The coolest part of the dream was when it soared and swooshed in the Roda Theatre to get everyone settled and ready for the show. The house quieted as a beautiful dragon flew through the air above their heads.
No need to analyze, please!
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Les and Will reunite at Steppenwolf
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Jun 10, 2011
in News
Even though he just directed the critically acclaimed Three Sisters, it's not quite the end of the season for our Associate Artistic Director and director extraordinaire Les Waters. In fact, he's reuniting with playwright Will Eno (TRAGEDY: a tragedy) over at Steppenwolf to direct Will's play Middletown. Its first performance is next week, June 16. Break a leg, guys!
Photo of Steppenwolf ensemble member Tim Hopper, director Les Waters, and playwright Will Eno by Joel Moorman.
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Linger in the lobby
posted by Karen McKevitt on Thu, Jun 9, 2011
in
Have your tickets to Anna Deavere Smith in Let Me Down Easy yet? If so, come early, grab a
refreshment from our cafe counter, and enjoy our audio and visual lobby display.
Photojournalist Diana Walker accompanied Anna Deavere Smith throughout her travels in Africa and some in the United States as she prepared for Let Me Down Easy. Peruse her vivid photos in the lobby as you listen to the original compositions by Joshua Redman, a world-renowned saxophonist, Berkeley native, and founding artistic director of SF Jazz.
Diana Walker is a photojournalist, based out of Washington D.C. She has worked extensively for publications such as Vanity Fair, People, Life, and Time magazine -- where she was a White House photographer for more than two decades and covered five presidencies and many campaigns. Her work has been recognized by World Press, the White House News Photographers Association and the National Press Photographers Association. Read more about her and see some images on NPR.
Photo by J.L. Curtis.
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Anna Deavere Smith's books on sale
posted by Karen McKevitt on Wed, Jun 8, 2011
in Our shows
Supplement your Let Me Down Easy experience with the following books by Anna Deavere Smith, now on sale in our gift shop. Come early to the performance and check 'em out!
Fires in the Mirror: Anna Deavere Smith's award-winning breakout show is based on interviews with people who experienced or observed New York's Crown Heights racial riots in 1991.
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992: The Tony Award-nominated Twilight: Los Angeles is based on scores of interviews with victims, witnesses, adversaries, and others of the violent aftermath of the Rodney King trial and verdict.
Letters to a Young Artist: In this series of letters addressed to a fictitious young artist, Anna Deavere Smith offers practical advice (dealing with stage fright, how to audition) and addresses issues of the spirit, such feeling disappointed.
Talk to Me: Listening Between the Lines: Anna Deavere Smith talks about her philosophy of acting and observations about Washington, DC. The book also includes outtakes from House Arrest.
House Arrest and Piano: Two Plays: In House Arrest, Anna Deavere Smith examines the relationship between American presidents and those that observe them (both in and out of the press). Piano follows the lines of race, sex, and exploitation in a prosperous Cuban household on the eve of the Spanish-American War.
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What audiences say about Let Me Down Easy
posted by Karen McKevitt on Tue, Jun 7, 2011
in Our shows
Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy has been playing a little over a week to packed houses -- and tickets are still selling fast. The critics are raving about the show, but we wanted to hear from our audience members too --and share their comments with you. Here are some select raves:
Her beautiful illuminations of people's responses to suffering and death have stayed with me all day. Much to think about.
As a retired home care and hospice nurse, I could definitely relate to her work and the issues in health care today.
Outstanding, and we usually don't like one person shows.
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You look fabulous!
posted by Cari Turley on Mon, Jun 6, 2011
in Events
Last Thursday was our final night/OUT event for the LGBT community of the season (don't worry, we'll be back in September!), and it was a blast. Right after Anna Deavere Smith's brilliant new show, Let Me Down Easy, the audience filled the courtyard for a couple hours of food, drinks, and music. We had a delicious spread courtesy of Bistro Liaison, wine from Raymond Vineyards, and the guys from Ale Industries were on hand to pour beer all night (you've gotta try their Orange Kush!). Meanwhile, DJ Pauline kept the music coming, and we even had a special live performance by genre-bending queer musician Maia Papaya.
But the final touch was a photo booth courtesy of our friends at Magnolia Photo Booth. They brought a suitcase full of props and let our partygoers take as many pictures as they wanted, even printing out free strips of photos to take home and treasure forever (in duplicate, no less!). If you missed it--or if you didn't, and you're looking for your new Facebook profile photo--here's a gallery of our fabulous friends. Check out a few of our favorites below!
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Missed out? Don't worry, you'll get a second chance at 30-Below, coming up on June 17. If you're under 30 (and old enough to drink), join us for the party! Get a half-price ticket to Let Me Down Easy with the code 30BELOW, or call the box office at 510-647-2949 and mention 30-Below. Tickets to the show start at just $23.50, and you'll get to enjoy the post-show party for free! We'll have snacks from Picante, beer from Triple Rock Brewery, more wine from Raymond Vineyards, DJ Ome playing all your favorite music (she takes requests!), and of course another fabulous photo booth. 30-Below is sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, so be sure to say hi to those guys when you drop by, too. See you there!
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Critics are in awe of "Let Me Down Easy"
posted by Karen McKevitt on Fri, Jun 3, 2011
in Our shows
The reviews are in, and the critics are in awe of Anna Deavere Smith in Let Me Down Easy. If you're thinking of checking out this astounding show, don't wait too long, because the tickets are selling fast. No kidding, on a daily basis, it's selling as much as Green Day's American Idiot, and it absolutely has to close on July 10. But here's a tip: today we released a bunch of seats for the June 10 performance. Buy tickets here.
In the meantime, here are some choice excerpts from the reviews:
- Tour de force
- "Let Me Down Easy," Smith's extraordinary solo about our bodies and our challenged health care system, opened Wednesday as a fortuitous substitute for Rita Moreno's postponed one-woman show. This is Smith at the top of her unique documentary theater form, in writing, performance and timeliness. As she did in her landmark 1990s "riot" plays - "Fires in the Mirror" (about the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn) and "Twilight: Los Angeles" - Smith picks a topic, conducts numerous interviews and weaves excerpts from a dozen or more into a compelling, multifaceted dramatic exploration.
- The result is pure theatrical gold and something more - a topic of vital interest looked at from so many different angles that it can't help but advance the conversation. Director Leonard Foglia's sleek stagings on Ricardo Hernandez's multi-mirrored set enhance the impact
- Smith segues so smoothly that she's metamorphosed into the next character well before she puts on his or her jacket, sweater, scarf or specs. Almost every segment is a gem, whether it's Armstrong, fire-dancer Streb or sportswriter Sally Jenkins on how and why athletes push their bodies to extremes, or cancer patients Richards and film critic Joel Siegel peppering end-of-life insights with acerbic humor. Doctors and patients discuss long-term and personal aspects of the health-care crisis. Clerics ruminate on the spiritual side.
- They should also be grateful that they're being brought to life by the remarkable Anna Deavere Smith
- In one moving scene, a South African orphanage director recounts a child's death. In another, a hug takes on profound meaning. Dr. Kiersta Kurtz-Burke's searing account of poor patients left stranded in post-Katrina New Orleans is as unforgettable as it is shameful. Smith doesn't push any one viewpoint. She embodies a multiplicity of ideas and experiences so skillfully that we can't help but feel eager to continue the discussion.
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS / BAY AREA NEWS GROUP:
- Now the trailblazer returns to Berkeley Rep with "Let Me Down Easy," a gritty dissection of life and death and health care in America that melds interviews with more than 300 people on three continents into a mind-blowing 105-minute, one-woman show. While some actors lose their laser-sharp edge after taking TV gigs, Smith ("Nurse Jackie," "The West Wing") remains at the top of her craft. As rigorous about her methodology as ever, she captures her subjects verbatim. Her sensitivity to the quirks of speech and the twitches of posture remains dazzling as she shape-shifts from doctors and nurses to cowboys and Buddhist monks. If anything she drills down into the psychology of her characters (and her audience) deeper than before. Certainly the Pulitzer nominee raises the bar for herself in terms of distilling complex ideas, from the politics of class to the relationship between death and culture, into tiny little vignettes that resonate with a universe of nuance. Smith invites us to attend a town hall of one where she channels a chorus of 20 voices that seem to speak for us all. Smartly directed by Leonard Foglia, "Let Me Down Easy" fully surpasses expectations in its regional premiere at the Rep, where it runs through July 10.
- The actress-playwright adroitly wrestles with not just the fragility of life, how we are all dancing with death each day we're alive, but also our deep-seated sense of denial about it. That blind spot keeps us from grasping with the messy reality of things, such as the way class impacts health care.
- So many of the scenes here are heart-tugging, but the portrait of end-of-life care in an orphanage in South Africa where small children regularly succumb to AIDS is powerful enough to beg tears. It's tempting to lose yourself in the catharsis of that time and place, but Smith has other plans, forging ahead toward a curiously restorative ending. Along the way, the quick-change artist goes from one character to another so seamlessly that you scarcely realize she has etched 20 different characters. Some of the people are famous (Lance Armstrong, Ann Richards), but the most unforgettable passages are the everyday folks.
- by the end of the evening the echoes of all their voices ring in our ears. It's that chorus that throws us back relentlessly on ourselves, forcing us not only to consider our own mortality, which is tough enough, but also to carve out some sense of peace about it, which is revelatory.
- We have followed Anna Deavere Smith for years, always in awe of her prodigious talent and ability to not only get into character but tug at the heart. In her new one-woman show "Let Me Down Easy," although the content and central themes are complicated, the heart has not skipped a beat.
- We see famous people like Lance Armstrong, Lauren Hutton and Governor Ann Richards, plus others whose stories are even more compelling, including a tear-inducing representation of Smith's own Aunt Lorraine Coleman, a painfully honest reflection by Doctor Kiersta Kurtz-Burke who was an attending physician at New Orleans's Charity Hospital during Hurricane Katrina, and a fascinating journey into motivation from heavyweight boxer Michael Bentt who spent three days in a coma after being knocked cold.
- If the show has a fault, it is that Smith occasionally brings us so vividly into the lives of her characters, that we want very much to see them again.
- Anna Deavere Smith: Easy to love
- Anna Deavere Smith returning after a too-long absence from Bay Area stages. More than any of these other solo performers, Smith raises the form to a fine art. She has the instincts and drive of a journalist, the performance style of a skilled thespian and the soul of a poet striving for grace.
- Let Me Down Easy fascinates, compels and ultimately moves us as Smith gives voice to bodies and minds involved in life-and-death struggles.
- Let Me Down Easy meanders mindfully through a seemingly unrelated assortment of people as it builds a portrait of a nation at odds with dying and a medical system and government ill equipped to deal with the truly ill (especially if the ailing are poor). Politics certainly plays a big part in many of the monologues, but this is a show more about the heart and mind, which is why it’s ultimately so moving. You leave the theater feeling nourished and provoked.
- the most powerful words come from ordinary people like the doctor at a charity hospital in New Orleans that was practically ignored after the Hurricane Katrina disaster knocked out its power and water. We also hear from a woman in a South African orphanage where AIDS devastates her young charges, and it’s heartbreaking. When Smith becomes former Texas Governor Ann Richards, the stage practically explodes with energy. Though battling cancer, Richards is (not unlike Smith) a force of nature
- That people represented in the play – like Richards and Siegel – are no longer on the planet only makes their presence and their words and Smith’s evocation of them all the more potent.
- For a work of art that deals so matter-of-factly with death, Let Me Down Easy, with its treasures of grace, is remarkably uplifting.
- Anna Deavere Smith astonishes in ‘Let Me Down Easy’
- bold and interesting
- From her spot-on impersonation of Lance Armstrong, whose body is so kinetic it can’t stay still, to pretending to be the bed-ridden, cancer-stricken film critic Joel Siegel, to her poignant portrayal of Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, an intern who was shocked by the way her superiors at Charity Hospital in New Orleans treated Katrina victims, Smith is mesmerizing in her ability to channel the words and quirks of her characters.
- a heart-wrenching portrait of our attitudes toward our bodies, their strengths and weaknesses, and our feelings about death.
- Their words and stories are interesting, but the real star is Smith. Her ability to capture the nuances of each of the characters is remarkable. She has Lance Armstrong lifting his left leg numerous times to scratch his thigh. She nails Ann Richards’ Texas accent and irreverent attitude about her cancer, and her appreciation for her medical team. She becomes them, and her transcendence is so captivating that the audience wouldn’t dare to avert their eyes, even for a minute.
- Anna Deavere Smith’s (The West Wing) eagerly awaited return to the Bay Area stage last night in Berkeley flat out rocked. Let Me Down Easy, a one-woman show based on 320 interviews conducted across three continents, stuns with its riveting exploration of human strength, life and death, and body politic.
- After the two-hour performance, as we made our way through the Roda lobby, and with the raucous standing-O still ringing, I turned to doe-eyed Loni and whispered, “wow!” – chalk me up, I’m a believer…
- Many of these people are well known, but the manner in which they are revealed here on stage — channeled so convincingly through Anna Deavere Smith — makes this a uniquely remarkable theatrical experience.
- The star, of course, is Anna Deavere Smith. Her impressions are spectacularly thorough. Nuances — Lance Armstrong itching his thigh, or Lauren Hutton’s glamorous, laissez-faire body language — are a strong point, as are the many accents. These are not caricatures. Instead we’re seeing these people — some living, some dead — fully realized before our very eyes. By the time we visit with former Texas Governor Ann Richards (“Poor George. He can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”) I was subsumed: we we’re experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime journey into some of the most fascinating lives on the planet.
- On this evening, Anna Deavere Smith did anything but leave us in the dark. It was as if a giant crack of lightning crushed the Berkeley sky: “THIS is why LIVE theater MATTERS!”
- This solo show on Berkeley Rep’s big stage is a masterpiece of stagecraft.
- She masterfully uses the whole stage with technical adjuncts to present a variety of characters ranging from a Harvard minister to a Texas governor.
- Her facial motility, amplified by projections, makes her story poignant and personal.
Photo of Anna Deavere Smith by Mary Ellen Mark.
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Teens fill 24 hours with dramatic fundraising!
posted by School of Theatre on Fri, Jun 3, 2011
in Events , School of Theatre , Teen Council
by Ben Hanna, Community Programs Manager
In May, 18 teens from Teen Council gathered at the School of Theatre for a 24-hour fundraising "Dramathon." Yes, you read that right. Noon to noon, a nonstop theatre extravaganza! Here’s just a taste of this fundraising excursion of epic proportions:
Saturday, May 21
12pm - Teens sign up for play readings and warm up their bodies and voices in prep for 24 hours of performance.
1:15pm – Teens near the end of The Importance of Being Earnest, with a twist: a cross-gender cast!
3:11pm - Teen Council member Gideon Lazarus performs a monologue from Macbeth, sparking a series of monologue performances from the teens.
5:20pm – Participants delve into the world of one-acts, including works by playwrights Anton Chekhov, John Patrick Shanley, and David Ives.
6:47pm – Students scarf down a pizza dinner in prep for the Chicago sing-a-long. Peet’s coffee and tea are served, giving everyone a much-needed boost of energy.
9:07pm - Bay Area actress and School of Theatre teaching artist Elena Wright arrives as a special guest to read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard with the teens. In Elena's words, "One of the hardest reads I've ever done -- three hours of Stoppard cold from nine to midnight!"
Sunday, May 22
12:45am – Over 12 hours down, 12 to go. Students are clad in pajamas, and Christopher Durang’s The Idiots Karamazov has begun. Lots of hysterical laughter all around, perhaps due to the late-night giggles!
2:30am - Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” is blaring over our sound system, and a five-minute theatrical dance party ensues!
3:07am – Let’s do the time warp again! Eyes are drooping and the second round of Peet’s coffee is served! A cult classic is in order! Rocky Horror Picture Show is projected on our classroom wall for a read-through and sing-a-long!
6:45am - Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore has begun -- for those of you who saw it at Berkeley Rep, you can imagine the dramatic action all throughout the School!
9:03am - Improv games are played to wake-up the crowd. Education Fellows Candice McDowell and Allison Whorton pump up the energy, leading some intense “dance-offs.”
11:45am - The top three teen fundraisers for the Dramathon are announced and given great Berkeley Rep prizes in appreciation of their hard work!
Over the course of the evening, teens read 8 full-length plays, 10 one-acts, and 10 monologues as well as participated in 3 sing-a-longs and numerous improv games. Major kudos to these diehard theatre-lovers who raised over $3,500 for the Berkeley Rep Teen Council's programming next year.
Weren't able to sponsor a teen but want to help support Teen Council programming? Donate to the Teen Conference Fund and help send seven teens to represent the youth voice of American theatre at the TCG Conference this June.