Berkeley Rep Blog
Category archive: Our shows
Why's he naked?
posted by Pauline Luppert on Thu, Feb 26, 2009
in Our shows
A few folks on the blog have questioned/commented about why Dr. Givings is naked in the final scene of In the Next Room (or the vibrator play). We have some answers. Conveniently enough, an audience member who participated in the post-show discussion on February 12 asked Literary Manager Madeleine Oldham and actor Paul Niebanck to shed some light on the subject. Here's what they said. . .
I plan to post more answers here in the coming week.
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Vibrating with the Times
posted by Terence Keane on Wed, Feb 18, 2009
in Our shows
I love the smell of newsprint in the morning... especially when it means we're in the New York Times. On the front page of today's arts section, there's a lovely review by Charles Isherwood of In the Next Room (or the vibrator play). And there's an amusing (and enormous) photo of Maria and Hannah that grabs your eye when the story jumps to the back page.
What does this mean to us? Naturally, we're pleased, proud, and appreciative of the attention. What does this mean for you? If you haven't already bought tickets, you might want to get with the Times.
Here's the review in its entirety...
February 18, 2009
THEATER REVIEW | 'IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY)'
A Quaint Treatment for Women Wronged
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
BERKELEY, Calif. — The contraption looks rather quaint, a small wooden box with a few knobs set on a tall, rolling metal platform. A thin tube with a porcelain doodad on the end protrudes from it.
“It looks like a farming implement,” one baffled character says as she considers the machine for the first time. It would add a contrasting note of the rustic and antique to a living room furnished in sleek modern pieces.
In fact this odd mechanical box is a central player — the title character, you might say — in the new play by Sarah Ruhl, “In the Next Room (or the vibrator play).” A fanciful but compassionate consideration of the treatment, and the mistreatment, of women in the late 19th century, this spirited and stimulating (sorry) new comedy from one of the country’s brightest young playwrights is having its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theater here, in a handsome production directed by Les Waters.
The play is set in a spa town in the vicinity of New York in the late 1800s. Electricity has just begun to spread its mysterious glow in the homes of the well-to-do. It has recently been installed in the parlor of Dr. and Mrs. Givings, and more significantly in the room next door, the doctor’s “operating theater,” where he practices gynecology and the treatment of “hysteria” using that strange electric-powered box.
A new patient, Sabrina Daldry (Maria Dizzia), is suffering from symptoms that alarm her husband (John Leonard Thompson). She is sensitive to light and prone to tears. Referring obliquely to the cooling of the marital fires, and perhaps the real reason for his dissatisfaction, Mr. Daldry adds, “I am afraid there is very little sympathy between us.”
The forthright and self-confident Dr. Givings (Paul Niebanck) sends Mr. Daldry for a short walk while he begins treatment. “We need to relieve the pressure on her nerves,” he says reassuringly. “You will soon have your blooming wife back.”
Enter the magic box. While Sabrina lies supine on a table, her skirts removed and a white sheet placed decorously over her, Dr. Givings makes businesslike small talk while using his new machine to induce a “paroxysm,” the slightly alarming term for what would today be called something else entirely, and is generally considered more recreational than therapeutic.
Sabrina emerges from her first session feeling drowsy and emotional, but rather good. The roses have been restored to her cheeks, and she is not disinclined to return for another session. Tomorrow would be just fine.
Comical though the play’s depiction of Dr. Givings’s methods might seem, it is based on historical fact. The use of primitive vibrators to treat women (and some men) suffering from a variety of psychological ailments referred to as hysteria is well documented. But Ms. Ruhl’s play is hardly intended as an elaborate dirty joke at the expense of the medical profession. Her real subject is the fundamental absence of sympathy and understanding between women and the men whose rules they had to live by for so long, and the suspicion and fear surrounding female sexuality and even female fertility.
For while Dr. Givings, assisted in no small measure by his stalwart female assistant, Annie (Stacy Ross), is pursuing a remarkably successful treatment of Sabrina, his own wife, the candid Catherine (Hannah Cabell), is beginning to languish from loneliness and unhappiness in the parlor next door.
Catherine has recently given birth, but Dr. Givings has decided that her milk is not sufficient for nursing, so a wet nurse must be found. Sabrina’s black housekeeper, Elizabeth (Melle Powers), who recently lost a baby, is given the job, but Catherine feels as if her maternal instincts have been thwarted and denied.
Bored and frustrated, she becomes increasingly curious about what goes on in the room next door, not least because those confused cries of excitement are hard to tune out. In the delightful scene that concludes the first act, Catherine unlocks the door to the operating theater with Sabrina’s hat pin and the two women engage in a liberating session of self-administered therapy, without benefit of prescription or medical supervision.
Ms. Ruhl, the author of “The Clean House,” “Eurydice” and “Dead Man’s Cell Phone,” has not abandoned her affection for unexpected leaps or lyrical language here, although with its traditional construction, old-fashioned set (charmingly realized by Annie Smart) and lavish period costumes (by David Zinn), “In the Next Room” looks almost as if it could be a revival of Shaw or Wilde. (Mr. Zinn’s exquisite dresses are period-appropriate but witty too in their superabundance of buttons and bustles and gatherings that constrict or obscure the natural female form.)
Ms. Ruhl’s characters always exist both on a poetic plane and a flesh-and-blood one, and while the people in the new play speak formal English suitable to the period and the social milieu, they also drift into imagistic reveries that would lead to confused pauses over tea service in real life.
Nor has Ms. Ruhl abandoned her gentle impressionistic touch and her gift for playful symbolism. The play is dappled with images of lightness and darkness, moisture and its absence, that underscore its themes. (There is a single truly vulgar joke, overplayed in this staging, when the sounds of ecstasy in the doctor’s office coincide with Catherine’s arriving late to answer the door in the parlor, calling out what one would quite naturally call out.)
The play’s second act has some structural infelicities. Elizabeth has two lumpy speeches about black-white relations that seem an unnecessary attempt to give this subsidiary character a more central role. (I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of having her enlighten Sabrina and Catherine about the possibility of experiencing the sensations they’ve awakened to with the machine in bed with their husbands.) Ms. Ruhl mostly weaves together the multiple strands of her plot, which includes the arrival of a male patient, a frustrated artist, with dexterity. But there is too much of it, and it becomes clotted in the unraveling.
The cast is mostly fine, with a few standouts. Ms. Dizzia (seen in “Eurydice” in New York) brings to the role of Sabrina a touching hesitancy that slowly blooms into confidence as Sabrina finds herself liberated, not so much by the doctor’s treatment as by the emotions it arouses. Mr. Niebanck’s abstracted expression as he briskly goes about his work is hilarious. And Ms. Ross imbues the smallish role of Annie with a fully human dimension, a sympathy and intuitive wisdom about her work that is affecting.
Although the doctor’s magic box has a liberating effect on Sabrina and Catherine, all the women in the play are ultimately transformed by their interactions with each other. And in the final scene the process is extended to include the doctor himself, as Catherine administers some therapy of her own to her husband. A woman who has never been allowed to listen to the music of her own body teaches her husband to discover the beauty in his own.
IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY)
By Sarah Ruhl; directed by Les Waters; sets by Annie Smart; costumes by David Zinn; lighting by Russell H. Champa; sound by Bray Poor; music by Jonathan Bell; production stage manager, Michael Suenkel. Presented by Berkeley Repertory Theater, at the Berkeley Rep Roda Theater, 2015 Addison Street, Berkeley, Calif.; (510) 647-2949. Through March 15. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes.
WITH: Hannah Cabell (Catherine Givings), Joaquin Torres (Leo Irving), Maria Dizzia (Sabrina Daldry), Paul Niebanck (Dr. Givings), Melle Powers (Elizabeth), Stacy Ross (Annie) and John Leonard Thompson (Mr. Daldry).
Photo of Maria Dizzia and Hannah Cabell
courtesy of kevinberne.com
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Everyone's buzzing about The Vibrator Play
posted by Terence Keane on Fri, Feb 6, 2009
in Our shows
All of us at Berkeley Rep have been working crazy hours getting ready for our 50th world premiere: In the Next Room (or the vibrator play). Earlier this week it felt like we'd drained our batteries, but now that the show's open we feel completely recharged... because everyone's buzzing about this great new play.
(Sorry. It's really hard to resist the countless giggly puns that this show presents. At intermission on opening night, at least four different people told me with a wink that they couldn't wait for the play's climax.)
Below are the reviews that came out this morning. Do you agree with the critics? Do you think they're faking it? If you've seen the show, post a comment below and let us know how you feel. If you haven't been In the Next Room yet, get a ticket and plug into the conversation!
- "Breathtakingly inventive… has the potential to be a modern masterpiece... Directed by Les Waters in a manner that quietly and vividly serves the writing, the play is at its best when it disregards the dramatic rules altogether. There's an acute playfulness at work, an unabashed enjoyment in letting characters test out new possibilities for themselves as they gain insight into the mind-body phenomenon of human sexuality and the oppressive forces that shape its expression." – Los Angeles Times
- "A fascinating, funny and evocative play... It's beautiful. Like most of the play, the end vibrates with sexually charged comedy and affectionate striving... Ruhl develops the story with the enticing blend of irreverent humor and skewed realism familiar from her breakthrough The Clean House and bicoastal success with Eurydice." – San Francisco Chronicle
- "You'll get a charge out of Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Vibrator Play... a wickedly funny production with some poignancy and moments of peace in the ongoing battle of the sexes. For a new work, Next Room is remarkably well-developed, with crackling dialogue and an engaging story that moves audience both to laughter and tears... Les Waters has directed the show masterfully, creating some wild moments of physical humor and an energy to the unfolding story that refuses to let things lag. And the cast is simply phenomenal -- skilled and talented actors who manage to find a charming middle ground in the complex area between comedy and poignancy." – Contra Costa Times
- "A titillating comedy of manners, marriage and masturbation that more than lives up to its buzz... From orgasms and breast-feeding to lesbianism, Ruhl disentangles the web of taboos that laced up Victorian ladies as tightly as their whalebone corsets... The last time Ruhl teamed with director Les Waters, she was an emerging artist. Now she's one of the hottest playwrights around, a Pulitzer nominee and MacArthur 'genius' letting her imagination run wild in a juicy discourse about the politics of desire." – San Jose Mercury News
- "In the Next Room is an incredibly clean and literary play. It revels in transparent metaphors: the many electrical lamps which represent Dr. Givings' fetish for technology (several times in the play he delivers lectures on the wonders of electricity while masturbating his patients); the wet nurse who becomes both an artistic muse and a Madonna figure; the confining zippers, buttons, and ruffled layers that characterize Victorian clothing; and funniest of all, the heavy rain -- and later, snow -- that parallels a series of ecstatic female ejaculations. Such analogies might seem campy had Ruhl tried to make the play pornographic, but given the historical context -- Victorian mores running up against progress and modernity -- it's appropriate that the characters resort to sublimated language and innuendo... But all that happens in the midst of a gentle, sweet, traditional comedy. You see the word 'vibrator' in the title, and you think one thing. Then it turns out to be something else.” – East Bay Express
- "It's a sexual farce that cleverly concerns the romance, loneliness, intimacy, race relations and electricity of six people... The cast of seven excellent actors has a great sense for comedy, plus -- near the end of the play -- a sudden change to serious emotion. I thoroughly enjoyed this play's new dimension with Ruhl's superb writing. It's brilliantly directed by Les Waters and has wonderful lighting, sound and costumes, and a remarkable set. In the world of theatre, this is truly an enjoyable change of pace.” – KGO>
And by the way, as if a night with Dr. Givings isn't satisfying enough, we're thrilled that our journey through 1,001 nights with Mary Zimmerman continues. Our production of The Arabian Nights just opened the first stop on its tour, and the Kansas City Star gave it a rave review:
- "I need to expand my vocabulary. I need new ways of saying a show is exceptional, unique and an example of the highest level of professionalism a theatergoer can expect to see in Kansas City -- or anywhere... The playwright/director gives us a show that is visually mesmerizing, sexy, witty, outrageously comic and, at times, deeply melancholic. More than that, it’s a vivid example of what I choose to call 'pure theater.' It stimulates the imagination in surprising ways with the most basic of theatrical tools -- human beings, a few hand props, judiciously employed musical instruments and atmospheric lighting. All theater is high-tech anymore, but this show embraces a low-tech performance aesthetic that pays big dividends... There’s much wisdom in The Arabian Nights and much humor. This is a brainy show that embraces very low comedy at times. I dare you not to laugh out loud."
The Arabian Nights sold out its run while it was in Berkeley. Don't wait too long to get seats for The Vibrator Play or you'll be sitting home alone, left to your own -- um -- devices. And if you've seen it already, all I can say is...
Please Come Again.
Photo of Maria Dizzia and Hannah Cabell
courtesy of kevinberne.com
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Meet the Vibrator Play...
posted by Pauline Luppert on Fri, Jan 23, 2009
in Our shows
I like shooting the design presentations...The one for In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) was a fun one to put together because Les kept blushing and everyone in the audience kept giggling. I discovered after posting the video that those of us at Berkeley Rep who use Macs (we that work with big multimedia files) and those that use PC's (most admin folks) experience the volume level of videos posted on youtube very differently. The first version I posted sounded fine on my Mac. Alas, almost no one else in the office could hear it on their PC's. So, I went back to Final Cut, boosted the audio gain by many decibels, and re-posted it. This is the LOUD version. If you have a Mac: prepare to be blasted.
Sidebar: It was a bummer that playwright Sarah Ruhl couldn't make it. Though I didn't include it in the final video, she sent along a letter for Les to read to the cast and crew. The letter was very sweet and encouraging.
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In the Next Room (Literally)
posted by Robert Sweibel on Thu, Jan 22, 2009
in Our shows
I've been working in the theatre for the better part of 20 years, and I've served as Berkeley Rep's marketing & communications director for more than four. I've seen and heard lots of rehearsals -- one of the fringe benefits of a life in the arts. Here at the Berkeley Rep annex a block from the theatre, I have a nice office overlooking the rehearsal hall. There's double-paned glass separating the office from the hall, to minimize the transfer of noise. I've been told it's to protect the staff from loud rehearsals (we were given ear plugs when Passing Strange rehearsals began), yet I'm pretty sure it's to protect the artists from the marketing / pr staff. 'Type A' personalities, almost all. The words sometime fly at high volume. So does rubber broccoli, but that's another blog post.
Anyway, the double-paned glass isn't exactly the dome of silence. We hear things. Bits of rehearsal, practiced over and over and over and over and over, that stick with us. For Argonautika, it was the roll call, rapped, culminated by Hercules inarticulate yelling, that routinely drew my gaze away from the onslaught of email. For Passing Strange, it was the show's fabulous opening riffs that distracted me from phone calls not yet returned. With Joe Turner's Come and Gone, the glorious jooba dance, punctuated by the rhythmic pounding of a bench on the floor, pulled me away from my spreadsheets.
Well, let me tell you something: Never in all my years in the business -- even at Berkeley Rep, where we play to an audience willing to be made uncomfortable, and for whom we regularly oblige -- have I heard anything come out of the rehearsal hall that made me blush. I had to look.
In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) begins previews Friday, January 30 at 8pm.
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Behold: Ennio! (& me)
posted by Pauline Luppert on Fri, Dec 12, 2008
in Our shows
So--here's our 15-second TV spot for Ennio, which will premier on KTVU TV2 tomorrow. It features video excerpts of a show Ennio did in England. It was edited by our multi-talented art director, Cheshire. The oh-so-dulcet voice-over was provided by yours truly, and it was recorded and mixed by the exceptionally charming ladies of our sound department:
If we'd all had our druthers and a Hollywood budget we'd have had a professional voice-over artist like Hal Douglas and it would sound more like the commercial for Jerry Seinfeld's new movie:
Alas.
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Taking Over takes New York
posted by Megan Wygant on Tue, Nov 25, 2008
in Our shows
You know it's going to be a good day when, during the morning commute, you spot a familiar face on the front page of the New York Times entertainment section.
Taking Over made its world premiere on Berkeley Rep's Thrust Stage in January. Created and performed by Danny Hoch and directed by Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone, it received raves from critics here. Those great reviews helped springboard the piece to other theatres around the country, where Danny and Tony have continued to collect the highest praise.
On Friday night, Taking Over opened at The Public Theater in New York. The Public, you may recall, was the theatre with whom Berkeley Rep partnered to bring Passing Strange to New York, and ultimately, to Broadway.
And then, today and yesterday, the reviews hit:
“A sustained tour de force… the fiery polemical portrait gallery of a play [contains] pulsing, seamless studies of character clashing with context, of people learning to sink or swim in suddenly unfamiliar waters… Mr. Hoch is a specialist in placing invisible people in the line of vision of folks who might otherwise never see them. Marion has too much pride to yell, ‘Look at me!,’ but her creator is happy to raise his voice – loudly and raucously – on her behalf, by bringing her and her spiritual kin into being. The extravagantly talented Mr. Hoch has been channeling the restless souls of the dispossessed and the marginalized since the early 1990s, becoming a boiling one-man melting pot in shows like Some People and Jails, Hospitals and Hip-Hop. Now he is insisting that attention be paid to the endangered species to which Marion belongs. That’s the hard-core group of New Yorkers in Williamsburg, of varying ethnicity and slender means, who have come under siege from a growing army of upper-middle-class invaders.” – Ben Brantley, New York Times
Hoch gives voice to a range of perspectives utilizing a powerful combination of humor and sharply etched portraits...Many of his characters are depicted with humor, such as the revolutionary rapper, Launch Missiles Critical, but it's also true that Hoch reserves the most biting satire for those that can loosely be grouped together as the gentrifiers: a developer, a real estate agent, and an NYU dropout artist now selling her wares on the streets. Even these characters, however, are allowed to make the occasional good point about the positive effects of their presence.
Reviews will continue to appear over the next week. But it looks like it's going to be a good day indeed.
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Beware... the... evil... ellipsis...
posted by Terence Keane on Fri, Nov 21, 2008
in Our shows
I don't mind waking up early, if it means waking up to good news. If you get the Chronicle, I'm sure you saw Rob Hurwitt's glowing review of The Arabian Nights on the front cover of the Datebook. Or maybe you read the raves in the Mercury News or the Contra Costa Times.
It's extremely gratifying for everyone at the Theatre when a show receives such uniformly positive praise. I think it's fair to say that we've got a hit on our hands. In fact, I kind of feel bad for the folks in our box office, because the phones are about to start ringing like Pete Townsend's ears.
One of the things that PR and marketing people do, when reviews appear, is pull out the juicy quotes that best describe our show. By now, though, everyone is rightfully suspicious of ads that say things like "Spectacular! The... most... AMAZING... show... EVER." We all know to be wary of those ellipses, because who knows what nasty words appeared in between?
Well, with reviews like these, the challenge actually is to decide which of the many, many compliments to keep and which to sadly leave behind. Here's a taste of what the critics have to say about The Arabian Nights, with as few ellipses as possible. I've also provided links to each review, so you can check to see if I cheated:
- "Stories are flying carpets in Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nights. Performed by 15 resourceful actors and staged with a maximum of invention by Zimmerman, the ancient tales magically transport the Berkeley Repertory Theatre audience from a king's bedroom in Baghdad through markets, harems, courts and a crowded privy, and from heights of hilarity to sobering affirmations of shared humanity… Zimmerman has a genius for building stage spectaculars from the most basic, old-fashioned materials [and] the actors transform themselves into an exhilarating panoply of expertly etched characters." – San Francisco Chronicle
- "A magical night of theater… There is a grand-slam, winning-the-World-Series sort of exhilaration to seeing top-notch theater performed by actors working at the peak of their game. You could feel it Wednesday night in the intermission buzz at Berkeley Repertory Theatre's production of Mary Zimmerman's The Arabian Nights, a spectacular retelling of the old ‘1,001 nights’ tales staged so wonderfully well that you feel somehow better off just to have been in the theater that night. This rare and breathtaking piece of theater made it into my all-time Top 10 list maybe 15 minutes after it started, and it just kept climbing the chart as its 2½-hour production flew along.” – Contra Costa Times
- "One thousand and one nights float by like a dream in The Arabian Nights. Tony-winning theater alchemist Mary Zimmerman has become famous for breathing fresh life into primal fables, from Metamorphoses to Argonautika. Time and again, she reconnects us to the myths and fables dancing at the edges of our collective subconscious… Balletic movement, frisky performances and the secrets of an ancient text make Arabian Nights a sultry fantasy that refreshes the senses... It's a celebration of the craft of the storyteller from which we too emerge recharged, renewed." – San Jose Mercury News
- "Zimmerman’s got a great gimmick: she creates beautifully designed, expertly acted vehicles for sophisticated storytelling. In a very grown-up way, she turns us into kids slathering for a juicy bedtime story. And she always delivers… Zimmerman’s 15-member ensemble tumbles and spins through the tales with grace and glee. They drum, they play stringed instruments, sing, dance and jump from one character to another with ease and clarity. And they’re gorgeous in the shimmering, flowing robes and gowns and drapes provided by costumer Mara Blumenfeld. [Yet] The Arabian Nights never devolves into frivolity. There’s weight to the stories that comes from sadness and wisdom, and when, at the end, Zimmerman echoes present-day Baghdad, the oft-described ‘city of peace and poets,’ we sense the depth of history and our place in it." – Examiner.com
- "Berkeley Repertory has opened a magnificent production of The Arabian Nights, written and directed by Tony Award-winner Mary Zimmerman… Tales of romance, intrigue and betrayal, brilliantly performed by a superbly talented cast of 15. And it's all backed by traditional music and a fabulous open set. It's truly a spectacle to behold, and it's just perfect for the holidays." – KGO-AM
I can do my best not to deceive you with those three little dots, but I can't grant you three wishes. So here's some free advice for those who want tickets: you'd better buy them now, because I suspect they're going to sell faster than Sno-Cones in the Sahara.
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We've got the airwaves (and I'm ready to give them back)
posted by Terence Keane on Fri, Nov 7, 2008
in Our shows
Phew! What a week. No one could accuse me of slacking off at the moment.
Wednesday was opening night for Joe Turner's Come and Gone, so -- as I described in an earlier post --all of us were rushing around getting ready for the big event. Many of my friends in the media stay for the post-show party, so I was here late into the night chatting. (OK, I was also hovering over the buffet provided by Tomatina and admiring the new history display in our upper lobby, which was a hell of a lot of work for our department.) Whatever the cause, I didn't get out of here until after midnight.
I slept in the next morning, but it was another long day nonetheless. I took Delroy Lindo to an afternoon interview on KGO-AM with Rosie Allen and Greg Jarrett. Then we fought rush-hour traffic coming back, and I scoured the web looking for reviews. Although you don't see them in the newspaper until Friday, usually you can find them online on Thursday afternoon. And, while the myth that actors don't read reviews during the run of a show is generally true, everyone else at the Theatre is eager to find out what the critics say.
I'm thrilled to report that, in this case, all of the reviews are quite good. Here are some excerpts:
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“A gripping search for love and identity… How far we’ve come. Wednesday’s post-election euphoria was running high before the opening of Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Two and a half hours later, the high of President-elect Barack Obama’s victory had gained deeper resonances from August Wilson’s dramatic depiction of the lives of African Americans just a few generations ago.” — San Francisco Chronicle
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“Riveting… a full scale spiritual tsunami… Mysticism and pragmatism collide head-on across the dining room table of a small boarding house in the Pittsburgh Hills District of 1911…The play is beautifully produced [and] the acting is outstanding.” — Contra Costa Times
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“A stirring revival of the playwright’s masterpiece… In the wake of Tuesday’s historic election, the plays of August Wilson sing with a renewed sense of urgency. It’s the heartbreaking sound of history crying out to be remembered… Delroy Lindo, who was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of Herald Loomis in the original Broadway production, here directs the play with a sure sense of the musicality of the text.” — San Jose Mercury News
Today we were at the Claremont Hotel so that Bob Redell could interview Delroy for NBC's Morning Show. And tomorrow morning, we're right back at it. I pick up Delroy at 7:30 AM so that we can drive into SF to appear on KRON-TV with Jan Wahl. Then we pop across town for a live interview with Dave Padilla on KCBS-AM before zipping back to Berkeley for two other interviews -- one with a print reporter and one with a professor who is working on a textbook that includes a chapter on Joe Turner. How's that for a Saturday?
Next week is more of the same:
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Brent Jennings, who plays Bynum, will be interviewed by C.S. Soong on KPFA's Against the Grain at 12:30 PM on Monday.
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On Tuesday at 11 AM, Teagle Bougere (who plays Herald Loomis) will tape a 30-minute interview with Marcy Solomon for KUSF's Words on Theater -- and I guess I'll have to clone myself, because Delroy will be in Berkeley at the exact same time taping a 30-minute interview with Richard Wolinksy for KPFA's Cover to Cover. (You can hear both of these interviews on Thursday, the former at 7 PM and the latter at 3 PM.)
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On Wednesday morning, Delroy will be on KBLX at 8:00 AM. Luckily, that's a phoner, so I can listen from the comfort of my nice, warm bed. Good thing, too, because I'm one of many people staying late that night for the final dress rehearsal of The Arabian Nights.
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On Thursday, Sam Hurwitt is coming by to interview Les Waters about next year's premiere of In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) for an upcoming edition of Theatre Bay Area -- and I'll be sifting through hundreds of images from the previous night's photo shoot looking for the shots that best capture the play.
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Finally, on Friday, Barry Shabaka Henley (who plays Seth) will tape an interview with Alan Farley for KALW at the NPR studio in San Francisco.
You might think it would be time to rest at that point... but you'd be mistaken. Because we open another show the next week, and the madness begins again.
I think I speak for all of us at the Theatre when I say, I can't wait for Thanksgiving!
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The oil-lamp metaphor
posted by Pauline Luppert on Sun, Nov 2, 2008
in Our shows
Mary Zimmerman's director presentation for The Arabian Nights. . .This was such a cool presentation. Funny, smart, and insightful. Enjoy some excerpts.