Berkeley Rep Blog
Sing song, sell tickets
posted by Chad Jones on Fri, Feb 12, 2010
in Backstage buzz , Our shows
Tickets to the Broadway production of Green Day's American Idiot go on sale at midnight, Sunday, February 14 (what a sweet way to celebrate Valentine's Day!), and to commemorate this auspicious event, we'd like to share Michael Riedel's column from the New York Post.
After describing the Tony Awards as the "Toyota of awards shows," Michael points out that the most lucrative awards show on television is turning out to be the Grammy Awards. On this year's broadcast, Green Day was joined by the Broadway cast of American Idiot to perform the Grammy-nominated song "21 Guns."
Apparently the 26.6 million viewers liked what they saw. Michael reports:
"By the end of the night, American Idiot had sold nearly $1 million worth of tickets. Sales have been strong through the week, sources say, and the musical is beginning to show real hit potential."
We could have told him that. Read the column in its entirety .
For tickets to American Idiot at the St. James Theatre, visit the show's official site .
Above photo: Rebecca Naomi Jones and Billie Joe Armstrong perform "21 Guns" at the Grammy Awards. Photo courtesy of greenday.com
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How does Berkeley Rep enrich your community?
posted by Lynn Eve Komaromi on Wed, Feb 10, 2010
in News
Berkeley Rep has been invited to participate in GreatNonprofits’ 2010 Arts Appreciation Campaign. The campaign’s purpose is to recognize top-rated nonprofits that enrich your community through the arts.
We need your help. If we receive at least 10 positive reviews by February 28 via our page on the Great Nonprofits website, Berkeley Rep will receive exposure to potential donors via their Top-Rated Arts Nonprofits list, as well as on Guidestar, the premier site for philanthropic research on the web. Your review of Berkeley Rep can make an impact (more than 450,000 people visited GreatNonprofits website last year). Already, we have received a 4-star rating on Charity Navigator – so help keep the trend going!
Your review needn’t be long. Just share how you feel Berkeley Rep makes a difference in our community. When you visit the site, be sure to choose "Arts Appreciation Campaign" from the drop-down menu of campaigns in the review template.
Thank you. As ever, we appreciate your help and support.
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Berkeley Rep audiences raise thousands for Haiti
posted by Chad Jones on Tue, Feb 9, 2010
in Events , News
Tremendous thanks to Berkeley Rep’s generous audiences for donating to Haiti earthquake relief efforts through a small-change campaign in our Theatre lobbies.
Audiences at Aurélia’s Oratorio in the Roda Theatre and Coming Home on the Thrust Stage donated $7,835 to Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian group that, to quote the website, “works in more than 60 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.”
Since the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, Doctors Without Borders has treated more than 11,000 patients in Haiti, and there’s so much more to be done. You can make a donation to Doctors Without Borders here.
Again, our thanks to Berkeley Rep audience members for their generosity.
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African Film Festival at BAM/PFA
posted by Chad Jones on Wed, Feb 3, 2010
in
In the spirit of Athol Fugard's Coming Home, a play that invites audiences to explore the rich complexity of African culture, comes news of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive's African Film Festival.
Here's a message from our friends at BAM/PFA:
Become a BAM/PFA member and receive discounted tickets to the African Film Festival, showing now at PFA through February 24. This annual series invites Bay Area audiences to experience the vibrant voices and visions of recent cinema from across the African continent. Members also receive discounted PFA tickets year round, free admission to BAM/PFA's new live performance series L@TE: Friday Nights @ BAM/PFA, and more!
Among the upcoming films are:
Sacred Places - Thursday, February 4 (Cameroon/France, 2009). Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Marie Téno profiles a poor but lively neighborhood in the capital of Burkina Faso, where a cine-club proprietor tries to include Burkinabe films among the action and Bollywood fare. (70 mins)
Dance Dance Revolution: Contemporary African Dance on Film - Wednesday, February 10
(U.S., U.K., Mozambique, 2007–2008). Two remarkable films on contemporary African choreography: Nora, a dance-film about and starring Zimbabwean choreographer Nora Chipaumire; and Movement (R)Evolution Africa, which follows nine African choreographers on a U.S. tour. (100 mins)
Prince of Broadway - Thursday, February 18 (U.S., 2008). Director Sean Baker in person. “It’s a hard knock-off life” for a Ghanaian immigrant saddled with a baby boy amid the hustlers of New York’s Garment District. From the director of Greg the Bunny; winner of the L.A. Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize and the Special Jury Award from Locarno. (100 mins)
For a complete schedule and for more information visit, bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries. Or call the BAM/PFA membership office at 510 643-9632 before February 28 and receive 20 percent off the purchase of any membership over $50 when you mention the African Film Festival.
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Green Day, American Idiot cast rock the Grammys
posted by Chad Jones on Mon, Feb 1, 2010
in News , Our shows
Congratulations to Green Day, winners of the Best Rock Album trophy at Sunday's Grammy Awards!
The broadcast was full of, shall we say, memorable performances (Pink turned into a sprinkler, Lady Gaga played with fire and Elton John), but the best — and we're biased here — came from Green Day and the Broadway cast of American Idiot performing "21 Guns."
If you missed the outstanding performance, check it out.
Here's a clip from CNN that takes us to a Grammys rehearsal. Dave Matthews is up first, but then Green Day is interviewed at the 1:46 mark.
And if that wasn't enough to satisfy you, there's a video of Green Day and the American Idiot cast recording "21 Guns" in Oakland just a few days after the show closed at Berkeley Rep.
Top photo: Rebecca Naomi Jones performs "21 Guns" on the CBS broadcast of the Grammys.
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posted by Christopher Dawe on Mon, Feb 1, 2010
in At the theatre
Now in its fourth year, the Berkeley Rep green initiative works to model responsible environmental behavior that is in harmony with the Theatre’s core mission. Part of that goal is helping to create a framework within which the arts industry as a whole can shift towards practices that can contribute to sustainable development.
In a continuing effort to meet that mandate, Berkeley Rep is constantly reviewing and monitoring operations in all facets of the Theatre in an effort to ensure they are functioning at levels of environmental responsibility. Where we don’t find those higher levels, we are crafting policies to get there.
Here are highlights of Berkeley Rep’s green initiative:
- We now compost four yards a week (that’s cubic yards of waste not heading into a landfill but rather coming back to gardens and communities in an altered form).
- We recently had to increase our commercial recycle bin size because we’re recycling much more than ever before – and that’s a trend we intend to maintain.
- We’ve replaced a large percentage of the Theatre’s usage of incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents and/or LEDs where possible, thus reducing energy consumption. The bulbs also have a much longer life span, which reduces waste. Incandescent bulbs are about 90 percent heat and 10 percent light. Compact fluorescents and LEDs are much more efficient, utilizing 75 percent less energy and creating 75 percent less heat.
- We’re constantly monitoring our paper usage and trying to use less. For our copy machines, we have switched to 30 percent recycled paper. By making that switch, assuming 24 trees go into making one ton of office paper (and with 40 cases per ton), we’ll save an additional five trees a year. And our goal is to keep using less and less paper.
- In our scene shop, we’re using FSC lumber (http://www.fscus.org/) whenever possible. We build the set frames out steel because the steel frames, compared to wood, are easier to recycle and re-use – and you’re not cutting down a tree.
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In the next Room wins the Glickman Award!
posted by Chad Jones on Fri, Jan 29, 2010
in News , Our shows
Congratulations to Sarah Ruhl! Her In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) has been selected as the winner of the annual Will Glickman Award, which is chosen by a panel of top Bay Area theatre critics and given to the author of the best play to have its world premiere in the Bay Area.
“I'm very honored,” Sarah remarked. “And I'm thrilled to have a home like Berkeley Rep in the Bay Area. I was extremely proud of In the Next Room's premiere.”
“I’m pleased that Sarah and I had another opportunity to collaborate, and delighted that her scripts continue to receive the recognition they so richly deserve,” added Associate Artistic Director Les Waters, who staged the show in Berkeley and on Broadway. “I’ve devoted my career to developing and directing new plays, so I’m particularly proud of In the Next Room and the other work coming out of Berkeley Rep’s commissioning program.”
The Will Glickman Award has been given annually since 1984. Created to honor playwright and screenwriter Will Glickman, the goal of the award is to encourage new plays and their production as invaluable investments in American theatre. Theatre Bay Area, the nation’s largest regional theatre service organization, has administered the award since 2004.
Berkeley Rep debuted three previous winners: Hurricane / Mauvais Temps by Anne Galjour; The People’s Temple by Leigh Fondakowski with Greg Pierotti, Stephen Wangh, and Margo Hall; and Yankee Dawg You Die by Philip Kan Gotanda. Before becoming artistic director of Berkeley Rep, Tony Taccone also worked on another winning script at the Eureka Theatre: Tony Kushner’s legendary Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. Other playwrights who have been honored include Liz Duffy Adams, Adam Bock, John Fisher, Brian Freeman, Doug Holsclaw, Dan Hoyle, Denis Johnson, Cherrie Moraga, Brighde Mullins, Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Octavio Solis, Charlie Varon, and Erin Cressida Wilson.
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American Idiot cast announced, Grammy appearance set
posted by Chad Jones on Thu, Jan 28, 2010
in Backstage buzz , News , Our shows
Lots of news in the world of American Idiot on Broadway!
The cast has been announced, and in addition to the folks we saw last fall at Berkeley Rep — John Gallagher, Jr., Michael Esper, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Christina Sajous, Mary Faber, Tony Vincent, Declan Bennett, Andrew Call, Gerard Canonico, Miguel Cervantes, Joshua Henry, Brian Charles Johnson, Lorin Latarro, Omar Lopez-Cepero, Chase Peacock, Theo Stockman, Ben Thompson, Alysha Umphress, and Libby Winter — the Broadway company is welcoming Tony Award-nominee Stark Sands, Van Hughes, Joshua Kobak, Leslie McDonel, and Aspen Vincent.
"This wildly gifted company takes my breath away," director Michael Mayer said in a statement. "They bring such depth and passion to the material. It is a rare honor to be blessed with such spectacularly imaginative performers."
Green Day, along with the entire cast of American Idiot will perform the two-time Grammy-nominated song "21 Guns" at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards this Sunday, January 31. The awards are broadcast on CBS beginning at 8pm.
The website for American Idiot (as seen above) is now live, and tickets are now available exclusively to American Express cardholders through February 13. Tickets go on sale to everyone on February 14. Performances begin March 24 at the St. James Theatre, and opening is set for April 20.
You can now follow American Idiot on Twitter at AmericanIdiotNY and on Facebook.
There's also a whole new line of American Idiot merchandise available at Green Day's web store, including work shorts (seen at right) for $75.
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Coming Home: more praise and a sneak peek
posted by Chad Jones on Tue, Jan 26, 2010
in
More good reviews of Athol Fugard's Coming Home have arrived.
Leslie Katz in the San Francisco Examiner writes:
"Key to this production’s success are standout performances by Roslyn Ruff as Veronica and Thomas Silcott as Alfred, whose changing emotions, feelings and physical health are revealed in their every word, song and body movement. They sell every line of Fugard’s often lyrical dialogue. Their ongoing friendship, which evolves over a course of years in the play’s two acts, forms the backbone of this compelling piece."
Zachary Ritter wrote a review for The Daily Californian that really should be read in its entirety. Read the article.
The East Bay Express wrote a nice feature on Coming Home. Read it here. And director Gordon Edelstein was interviewed on KPFA's Against the Grain. Listen to the show.
And finally, here's the Coming Home trailer. Please enjoy.
<Top photo: Roslyn Ruff and Kohle Thomas Bolton in Coming Home. Photo courtesy of kevinberne.com
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Fugard, Aurelia in the news
posted by Chad Jones on Thu, Jan 21, 2010
in At the theatre , Our shows
Last night's opening of Athol Fugard's Coming Home was a thrilling experience. Audience members who battled the ongoing El Niño deluge were rewarded with deeply emotional performances by the cast and superb direction by Gordon Edelstein.
This morning's San Francisco Chronicle brought us several post-opening treats, the first of which is Robert Hurwitt's wonderful interview with Fugard, who talks about living in San Diego (surf's up!), his age and health (77 and so-so), and his recent creative spurt.
Here's Fugard talking about Veronica, the young woman we met in Valley Song whose story continues in Coming Home:
"Same woman who left the village at the end and went to Cape Town to be part of the glorious new South Africa, when so many politicians made so many promises. What's happened over the years, not just to this woman but to the nation, I think, has created a degree of disillusion and cynicism unequaled in our history. We had a president, Thabo Mbeki, for whom I had no admiration, who totally ignored the relationship between AIDS and antiretroviral drugs, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of children and adults have died who should be alive.
"Desmond Tutu, that magnificent man, has said that AIDS and its mismanagement by that government in South Africa killed more people than apartheid. That is central to the play."
For more on Fugard and South Africa, you might be interested to read a recent feature on the playwright and his considerable body of work from the Chicago Sun-Times focusing on three Fugard plays — "Master Harold”...and the Boys, The Island, and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead — being produced in the Chicago area over the next six months. Read the story.