Berkeley Rep Blog
Category archive: News
Berkeley Rep Blog 1.5: RSS, sharing, and more
posted by Cheshire Isaacs on Fri, Jun 5, 2009
in News
In the past couple of days we've been working under the blog hood, and we've made some tweaks and introduced a couple of great features:
- We finally have an RSS feed! The link appears on every blog page in the left column. RSS is an easy way of reading all the blogs you frequent. Find out more about RSS and how to access our feed here.
- Want to tell people about something you read on the blog? Now it's easier than ever. On each page with a single blog post, you'll see a little button marked "Share." Roll your mouse over that button to find multiple ways you can share that story with your friends -- through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, and more.
- The blog home page and monthly/category archives now show excerpts of long posts rather than the whole thing. This makes it much easier to scroll and find articles you want to read.
- Comments are now enclosed in a grey box, which helps reduce visual clutter on the page. It's a minor tweak, to be sure, but we're always looking for ways to improve things.
Anything more you want to see us do with the blog? Let us know in the comments!
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Broadway, Baby!
posted by Megan Wygant on Thu, Apr 30, 2009
in News
It's official.
Carrie Fisher, Broadway baby, best-selling author, musical muse, comedienne, and many many other things (including, oh, yeah, a pop-culture icon for the past 30 years), is heading to Broadway with her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking. Given the wild Hollywood ride that the story details, I find it particularly appropriate that the show will be staged at Studio 54.
It's directed by our artistic director, Tony Taccone, and will be, in essence, the same show Berkeley audiences saw here last year. Of course, since then, the show has been on a six-city national tour, the script has been on the New York Times bestseller list, and I'm sure Carrie has enjoyed many more adventures, which I'm sure will make some appearance.
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Announcing American Idiot
posted by Terence Keane on Mon, Mar 30, 2009
in News
As if sending a show to Broadway and announcing three world premieres wasn't enough news for one month, today we went public with a top-secret project we've been working on:
This September, we're collaborating with the Grammy-winning band Green Day and Tony-winning director Michael Mayer to stage the world premiere of American Idiot!
There's so many reasons this kicks ass. The album rocks. The band grew up here. Michael changed the course of musicals with his production of Spring Awakening. And, once again, Berkeley Rep is responding to tough economic times by taking on a high-stakes project rather than just playing it safe. I love working here.
Here's what the folks involved in the project had to say when we announced:
- From Billie Joe Armstrong, frontman for Green Day: “We are really excited to be working with Michael Mayer on this project. We’d been thinking of bringing American Idiot to the stage, but knew we needed to find the right partners. After meeting with Michael to discuss the possibility, he invited us to see Spring Awakening. We were so impressed with that production, as well as his vision for American Idiot, that we knew we’d found the perfect collaborator. Plus, doing it in our hometown at Berkeley Rep was an obvious bonus. They’re an amazing theatre group, very adventurous, and their willingness to take chances is in keeping with the spirit of the album. The end result will be terrific, and we’re really proud."
- From Michael Mayer: "When I first heard American Idiot, I was struck by its innate theatricality. Here was a new musical drama begging to be staged. Who would have thought that one of the most brutally honest, eloquent, passionate, funny, and poetic theatrical responses to the post 9-11 world would be a Green Day record? The connection I felt to American Idiot surprised me. I knew and liked Green Day, but had no clue that I would ever feel so inside their songs. This work of passion and vision and fierce intelligence seemed to me like the heartbeat of a generation of Americans who were fed up. I hear in these amazing songs the articulation of their frustration, anger, longing for a better world -– a journey from apathy to action. Collaborating with Billie Joe and the band is a mind-blowing thrill, and I can’t wait to begin production at Berkeley Rep, the perfect home for making a new kind of musical event."
- From Artistic Director Tony Taccone: "Green Day is a band that we’ve long admired here in Berkeley and championed as one of our own. American Idiot is an iconic album, and having the opportunity to bring it to the stage is a bit of a dream come true. To preserve the original intention of the album while creating a stage-worthy experience is a challenge that we relish, and bringing a director with the skill and experience of Michael Mayer into our theatre makes it that much sweeter."
For more info, or to buy tickets, go to our home page: berkeleyrep.org.
Green Day photo by Phil Mucci
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More new plays?
posted by Terence Keane on Tue, Mar 24, 2009
in News
We've just announced five of the plays we'll be presenting next season, and it's a pretty ambitious slate. In this economy, we could play it safe. But we're doing what we do best: new plays. As the San Francisco Chronicle said this morning, "Never mind the downturn -- this theater looks forward, not back, in its upcoming season."
The Vibrator Play, which closed last week, was our 50th world premiere. And, even as that show moves to Broadway, we're planning more world premieres. The new season includes two directed by Les Waters, who also staged Vibrator: Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West by Naomi Iizuka and Girlfriend, a musical based on Matthew Sweet's amazing album of the same name (with a book by up-and-coming talent Todd Almond). There's also the world premiere of Five Questions, which reunites the team behind Broadway's Well: Obie Award-winners Lisa Kron and Leigh Silverman.
Then we've got the West Coast premiere of Tiny Kushner -- which I like to call a tale of two Tonys because it's another collaboration between Tony Kushner and Tony Taccone -- and a cool circus-like spectacle called Aurelia's Oratorio, which stars the granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin. Two more shows will be named later, and I suspect you'll see at least one more premiere on that list.
Tony probably put it best in that feature in today's Chronicle: "It may seem counterintuitive in this economy, when many people think you should make the safest choices you can, but we've become who we are. As Kushner would say, 'The world only spins forward.' I'm not saying we're not interested in classics. We'll do classics again. But the contribution we're most excited about now includes a lot of new writers."
Read more about next season here. Meanwhile, we've got to get busy selling subscriptions.
Photo of Aurelia Thierree by Richard Haughton
Photo of Taccone and Kushner by Cheshire Isaacs
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An open Book?
posted by Terence Keane on Wed, Sep 17, 2008
in News
Did you see this hilarious thing from Leah Garchik's column in the San Francisco Chronicle? I was stunned and amused -- yet sort of horrified -- when John told me this story about how Facebook won't let "gay" people on their site...
When "Gay" is a proper noun
A year and a half ago, John Gay - not the creator of The Beggars' Opera but the new house manager of Berkeley Rep - tried to get onto Facebook, to look at some pictures. Administrators sent a note saying they were sorry but the name was "not approved." So he signed in as John Gray and looked at the pictures.
Last year, the theater company he worked for was doing marketing through Facebook, so he went back on and tried to sign in again. The same thing happened, and he sent an e-mail proclaiming himself to be really and truly John Gay. Administrators demanded he provide them information about his birth date and place of birth, in order to prove himself. (A cousin, he said, is registered as "Gaye.") He jumped through hoops, but they finally allowed him to be himself.
Had his name given him trouble before? "When I was a kid," he said, "it was kind of frustrating. Now it's just kind of fun."
So I urge all of you to make a Gay friend on Facebook today!