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It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right

posted by A Susskind on Wed, Aug 5, 2009
in At the theatre , News

Last week we announced the creative team for Green Day's American Idiot (you can read about it in Rolling Stone). This week, we announced the cast, a group of extremely talented performers, all of whom bring tremendous abilities to our stage (Playbill.com,  Variety and the LA Times are among those who've picked up the story).

Berkeley Rep is a great place to work because we not only endeavor to maintain an environment in which talented artists can do their best work, but we also have a fantastic corporate culture for our full-time and seasonal staff that provides them with opportunities to interact with our visiting artists and to spend time working cross-departmentally on special projects.

Last week, a group of us helped our Company Management Department with a very special project... Meeting the cast of American Idiot at the Oakland Airport and driving them to their local housing.

Euphrates, Andrew, Jamie, Jonny, John and Megan waiting at the airport for the cast to arrive

I had five of the actors in my van: Matt Caplan, Mary Faber, Chase Peacock, Libby Winters, and Brian Charles Johnson. We made a quick stop-off at In-N-Out (for a few, it was their first time eating at the California favorite) and made it to their apartment building just as the luggage van was rolling up (we had so many people we needed a van just for their luggage!). After a brief break we went to Whole Foods and Safeway so the new Bay Area residents could pick up some essentials.

During our drive they sang with the radio and we talked about San Francisco, Berkeley, New York, musical theatre, and Green Day. They talked about how great it was to work on this project and how awesome it was to hang out with Billie Joe, Tre Cool, and Mike Dirnt after a concert over the weekend.

This is a wonderful group of people -- this show is going to totally kick ass.