Berkeley to Hong Kong 8 · Those who can 14 · An interview with playwright David Henry Hwang 28 · The program for Chinglish 31
the berkeley rep m aga zine 2 012 –13 · i s s u e 1
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i n t h i s i s su e
Unless otherwise noted, all events are for Chinglish. Docent presentations take place at 7pm before each Tuesday and Thursday performance, and after weekday and weekend matinees.
Augu st 24 29 29
First performance, 8pm Opening-night dinner, Hotel Shattuck Plaza, 6pm Opening night, 8pm
5 7 11 13 18 22 23 24 28 28
Teen Council Meeting, 5pm Teen Night, 6:30pm Corporate Night Post-show discussion, 8pm Post-show discussion, 8pm Backstage tour, 10am School of Theatre Sunday Sampler, 1pm School of Theatre fall session begins Unscripted Happy Hour, Hotel Shattuck Plaza, 5:30pm Post-show discussion, 8pm
sep t e m ber
october 3 Teen Council meeting, 5pm 7 Middle School Sneak Peek, 1pm 7 Final performance, 7pm 12 Teen Night, An Iliad, 6:30pm 12 First performance, An Iliad, 8pm 17 Opening-night dinner, An Iliad, 6pm 17 Opening night, An Iliad, 8pm School of Theatre event Donor appreciation event
Be r k e l e y R e p p r e s e n t s Chingli s h · 31 m e e t t h e c a st & c r e w · 32 P rol o g u e A letter from the artistic director · 5 A letter from the managing director · 7 R e p ort First we’ll take Manhattan... from Berkeley to Hong Kong · 8 Do you know the way to Berkeley? · 12 Those who can: Teaching artists are as engaging in the classroom as they are onstage · 14 Raymond Vineyard’s theatrical transformation · 18 It starts here: Downtown Berkeley unveils new image · 20 The Ground Floor takes off · 22 F e at u r e s Stranger than fiction · 24 Chinglish decoded: how we lose things in translation · 26 A conversation with playwright David Henry Hwang · 28 Con t r i bu t or s Foundation, corporate, and in-kind sponsors · 40 Individual donors to the Annual Fund · 41
t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e 201 2–1 3 · i s s u e 1 The Berkeley Rep Magazine is published at least seven times per season. For local advertising inquiries, please contact Ellen Felker at 510 548-0725 or efelker@berkeleyrep.org. Editor Karen McKevitt Art Director Cheshire Isaacs Designer Mary Kay Hickox
Writers Neena Arndt David Henry Hwang Cheshire Isaacs Pauline Luppert Karen McKevitt Madeleine Oldham Kyle Sircus Brandon Weinbrenner
Contact Berkeley Rep Box Office: 510 647-2949 Groups (10+): 510 647-2918 Admin: 510 647-2900 School of Theatre: 510 647-2972 Click berkeleyrep.org Email info@berkeleyrep.org
40th Anniversary Campaign · 43 Michael Leibert Society · 43 A b ou t B e r k e l e y R e p Staff and affiliations · 44 Board of trustees and sustaining advisors · 45 F YI Everything you need to know about Berkeley Rep’s box office, gift shop, seating policies, and more · 46
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Dorothy Mayers at the Tate Museum, 1965.
My Life Here Is
PICTURE Perfect.
Meet Dorothy Mayers, resident, educator, and photographer. Her passion is taking the perfect picture. Her life is wonderfully framed by friends, family, and a vibrant, independent way of living. If every picture tells a story, Dorothy’s writing her next, best chapter at St. Paul’s Towers. To learn more, or for your personal visit, please call 510.891.8542.
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prol og u e from the Artistic Director sever al ye ars ago, my girlfriend, Morgan, and I traveled to Vietnam. It was a fantastic trip, full of endless intrigue and exotic beauty, and it filled us with wonder and happiness. Towards the end of our stay in Hanoi, we decided to spend a day at the Ho Chi Minh Museum, a “must-see” according to every guidebook we read. “Limited English translation” the books boasted, easing our fears that we wouldn’t be able to understand any of the descriptions of the various exhibits. Little did we realize that the phrase “limited English translation” might reflect the limited abilities of those responsible for the translations. As we made our way through the museum (a massive stone structure built on Soviet testosterone and brimming with interesting historical artifacts), we started to convulse with laughter. The descriptions of the exhibits were hysterical. They made little to no sense. And since the subject matter being described was substantial and serious, the linguistic contrast made the results fantastically absurd. This gap between very different languages, and by extension, different cultures, is a subject that our esteemed colleague David Henry Hwang mines to full effect in his latest play Chinglish. We watch an American businessman travel to China to score a lucrative contract. The people he encounters may understand every word he is saying or not a single word. When translated, every sentence seems hopelessly mangled. The result is a story that is both laugh-out-loud funny and a subtle description of the minefield of misunderstanding and manipulation that appears when people of different cultures attempt to do business with each other. What begins as a pure farce turns into a treacherously amusing study of humanity, and the “common ground” that we assume links us all together begins to shrink until it practically disappears. Director Leigh Silverman, who has a rich history of working with David, returns to Berkeley Rep (after expertly directing In the Wake for us two years ago) with a distinguished group of designers and actors. After the run here in Berkeley, the show moves to our friends at South Coast Rep and finally to Hong Kong, where the response should be fascinating. Can you imagine? I wish I could stand in the lobby and ask people questions flanked by an army of translators and armed with a recorder. The transcription might have the makings of a great sequel. Sincerely,
Tony Taccone
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September 2012 Volume 45, No. 1
Paul Heppner Publisher Susan Peterson Design & Production Director Ana Alvira, Kristi Atwood, Deb Choat, Robin Kessler, Jana Rekosh Design and Production Artists Mike Hathaway Advertising Sales Director Marty Griswold, Ann Manning, Lenore Waldron Seattle Area Account Executives Staci Hyatt, Marilyn Kallins, Terri Reed San Francisco/Bay Area Account Executives Denise Wong Sales Assistant Jonathan Shipley Ad Services Coordinator
Aurélia Thierrée in “Aurélia’s Oratorio,” presented by Berkeley Rep in Dec. 2009. Photo by Richard Haughton.
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Paul Heppner Publisher Leah Baltus Editor-in-Chief Scott Wagner Vice President Dan Paulus Art Director Jonathan Zwickel Senior Editor Jake Newman City Arts Festival, LLC Executive Director www.cityartsonline.com
Paul Heppner President Mike Hathaway Vice President Deborah Greer Executive Assistant April Morgan Accounting Jana Rekosh Project Manager/Graphic Design Corporate Office 425 North 85th Street Seattle, WA 98103 p 206.443.0445 f 206.443.1246 adsales@encoremediagroup.com 800.308.2898 x105 www.encoremediagroup.com Encore Arts Programs is published monthly by Encore Media Group to serve musical and theatrical events in Western Washington and the San Francisco Bay Area. All rights reserved. ©2012 Encore Media Group. Reproduction without written permission is prohibited.
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prol og u e
Reflect Your Own Personal Style
from the Managing Director we kick off the new se a son with a story that seems straight out of the headlines, yet David Henry Hwang wrote Chinglish long before the fall of Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai and his wife Gu Kailai. Just another example of life following art. What seemed unimaginable becomes inevitable. It is such a treat to bring this distinguished playwright and his brilliant Broadway hit to our stage —and to bring this timely new play to you. I am very pleased to tell you that, following a run in Costa Mesa with our co-producing partners at South Coast Rep, we will be sharing this show with other audiences as well. Our production will travel to Asia where it will be part of the prestigious Hong Kong Arts Festival. We are very proud to serve as ambassadors of the American theatre with this funny, audacious play about the limitations of language and cultural understanding in our global age. As we send Chinglish overseas, we will in turn welcome other artists and stories from around the globe as part of our exhilarating new season. We’ll travel the world together, so fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride. Warm regards,
For your home. For your life. For our environment. www.woodmodenorcal.com ©2010 Wood-Mode, Inc.
Susie Medak
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r e p ort
First we’ll take Manhattan... from Berkeley to Hong Kong B y pau l i n e lu p p e r t
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one could say pl ays developed at berkeley rep really get around. Eight have enjoyed Broadway runs, including American Idiot, Bridge & Tunnel, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), Passing Strange, and Wishful Drinking—and 20 played off Broadway, including Brundibar, Compulsion, Eurydice, In the Wake, and Taking Over. In the last 10 years alone, Berkeley Rep has helped send 17 shows to New York and 2 to London while 2 turned into films and others toured the nation. Now, for the first time, Berkeley Rep will be sending a production to Asia. The Theatre recently announced that its production of Chinglish will play at the 2013 Hong Kong Arts Festival in March. Founded in 1973, the Festival takes place in over a dozen venues attended by more than 150,000 audience members. It presents a diverse range of artistic fare, from classical music to modern dance, and has included artists and groups such as the Bolshoi Theatre, Buena Vista Social Club, José Carreras, the China National Peking Opera Company, Yo-Yo Ma, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Bobby McFerrin, Moscow Art Theatre, Paris Opera Ballet, the People’s Art Theatre of Beijing, Pina Bausch Tanztheater Wuppertal, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Tisa Ho, executive director of the festival, says, “If the arts offer a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected, then the 41st Hong Kong Arts Festival offers many mirrors reflecting many perspectives, and David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish offers possibly the most acute confrontation of perspectives, taken from an American point of view. We’re delighted to welcome this Berkeley Rep production to Hong Kong, a city in which east and west have met and mingled for over a century with varying degrees of mutual understanding.” Over the years, playwright David Henry Hwang met with producers and Chinese officials and hoped to find “a powerful sponsor” for the show. After several thwarted efforts he learned, “You never know when your powerful sponsor is going to get deposed.” David expressed his fear Chinese government officials would not permit a production of Chinglish in China. “Chinglish deals with issues like government corruption, and it includes a romance between a Communist party cadre and a detested foreigner,” he explains. Furthermore, David’s work has a controversial history in China. “My best-known play, M. Butterfly, cannot be staged in China,” he says about his Tony Award–winning drama. “Even as little as two or three years ago they tried to do it in Shanghai, in an English version for like five performances, and it got shut down after three shows.” Chinglish has been performed for culturally diverse audiences in the U.S. that included substantial numbers of Asians, Asian Americans, and non-Asian Americans. David believes it has been a positive influence on mutual understanding between the Chinese and Americans. “A play like this, just as long as it can get us talking about some of these misunderstandings and laughing together, hopefully is a step in the right direction.”
Highlights of the 2013 Hong Kong Arts Festival include Einstein on the Beach, An Opera in Four Acts—the first full revival of the seminal opera in 20 years—helmed by creators Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, along with choreographer Lucinda Childs (it can also be seen at Cal Performances this fall) Romeo and Juliet by the American Ballet Theatre Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti Empress Dowager Cixi and Princess Deling by the China National Peking Opera Company Les Musiciens du Louvre under the baton of Marc Minkowski The Australian Chamber Orchestra with conductor Richard Tognetti La Traviata and Il Marito Disperato by Teatro di San Carlo, Naples The Grammy Award–winning Spanish viol player Jordi Savall One Man, Two Guvnors by the National Theatre of Great Britain Green Snake, a world-premiere theatre production by the National Theatre of China
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Asian and Asian-American work at Berkeley Rep "it 's always thrilling to go to new pl aces," says Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone. "This is especially true for us in the case of Hong Kong, since we have produced a significant amount of Asian-American work and have had a longstanding love affair with Asian art." Here's a sampling of Asian and Asian-American artists and stories seen at Berkeley Rep: Hope Alexander-Willis in Kabuki Medea (1984)
p h oto by k en fr i ed m a n
Tom Hewitt and Charles Tuthill in The Tale of Lear (1988)
ph oto by to m b a m b er g er
Tan Dun in Soundshape II (1994) p h oto g r a p h er u n k n o w n
The Woman Warrior (1994) p h oto by k en fr i ed m a n
Keong Sim in after the quake (2007)
p h oto co u r t e s y o f k e v i n b er n e .co m
1984 Kabuki Medea by Shozo Sato, West Coast premiere 1987 Clytemnestra by Tadashi Suzuki 1988 The Tale of Lear by Tadashi Suzuki, West Coast premiere 1988 Yankee Dawg You Die by Philip Kan Gotanda, world premiere 1991 Fish Head Soup by Philip Kan Gotanda, world premiere 1992 Dragonwings by Laurence Yep, world premiere 1994 Soundshape II by Tan Dun, world premiere 1994 Day Standing on Its Head by Philip Kan Gotunda, West Coast premiere 1994 The Woman Warrior, adapted from Maxine Hong Kingston, world premiere 1994 Airport Music by Jessica Hagedorn and Hang Ong, West Coast premiere 1994 Last of the Suns by Alice Tuan, world premiere 1995 Ballad of Yachiyo by Philip Kan Gotanda, world premiere 1996 Journey to the West, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman, West Coast premiere 2001 36 Views by Naomi Iizuka, world premiere 2007 after the quake, adapted from Haruki Murakami 2010 Concerning Strange Devices from the Distant West by Naomi Iizuka, world premiere 2012 Chinglish by David Henry Hwang, West Coast premiere 2012 The White Snake, adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman, world-premiere production
Bri 040312 sparkle 1_3v.pdf 1 0 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
Ships’ registry: Bermuda. ©CUNARD 2012.
QUEEN MARY 2, Day 2, Transatlantic Crossing: Satisfied smiles compliment a delicious breakfast served with timeless British custom. The indulgence continues as muscles, mind and spirit are rejuvenated in the first Canyon Ranch SpaClub® at sea. Enjoy your own grand discovery – visit Cunard.com to request a complimentary brochure or DVD, and explore Cunard’s QUEEN MARY 2,® QUEEN VICTORIA® and QUEEN ELIZABETH.® For further information, contact your Travel Agent or call Cunard at (800) 728-6273.
r e p ort
Do you know the way to Berkeley? Berkeley Rep finds fans at home and abroad By Brandon Weinbrenner the secret ’s out. Rumors of Berkeley Rep’s excellent productions, innovative programming, and skillful staff have reached the ears of those near and far. We love that our patrons come from all nine Bay Area counties and even throughout the state. Yet in the spirit of Chinglish, which features an American abroad in China, we wanted to pay homage to a few of our approximately 50 fans who hop a plane to Berkeley Rep. Paula Feinberg’s son loves Lemony Snicket. The books, the movies, and the games were not enough for him, so in 2010 Paula took to the internet to find more things Lemony. She stumbled across a new production called Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead, receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Rep. Paula’s son would love this! The only problem was…the Feinbergs live in Texas. Knowing how much the show would mean to her son, Paula threw together a trip to California. “The show blew me away. It was seamless,” she says. Paula found Berkeley Rep to be such “a great theatre, with such a top-notch production, the rest of the shows must be great too.” She went from one-time 1 2 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
Having traveled to New York and London to see shows, Paula Feinberg finds Berkeley Rep’s productions to be “just as good, if not better.”
visitor to a season subscriber and generous donor just like that. The distance is no problem. “Every show has been so good that it’s been a motivator.” Paula values being able to change the date of her season tickets, as she can align business trips to the Bay Area with a performance at Berkeley Rep. And why wouldn’t she? Having traveled to New York and London to see shows, she finds Berkeley Rep’s productions to be “just as good, if not better.” Paula defines good theatre as “a combination of a commitment to professionalism and giving the audience what it demands.” The fact that she found this winning combination 1,200 miles from her El Paso home is inconsequential. At least she found it. For Yasmine Fruchart, even the Atlantic Ocean isn’t too large to traverse to get to Berkeley Rep. Hailing from Marrakech, Morocco, Yasmine traveled to Berkeley to attend classes at the School of Theatre this summer. The Frucharts have visited Berkeley several times, so they already know it’s a great
place to foster growth and creativity. On one of their visits, their friend recommended Berkeley Rep to the family. It was then that Yasmine’s mother Jamila found the School of Theatre and thought, “The theatre would help Yasmine to gain confidence, especially when she speaks in public.” Dubravka Butigan of Croatia wishes the same for her daughter Mia, who also attended the School of Theatre this summer. Dubravka’s cousin is a Berkeley resident and suggested that Mia could practice her language and acting skills at the School. “Instead of just sitting and not doing much over the summer, she will be doing something very productive and completely new,” Dubravka says. “I feel like this is a big opportunity for Mia because we don’t have anything like this in Croatia.” Paula, Yasmine, and Mia represent the many fans Berkeley Rep has across the country and around the globe. Thanks to the recommendations of our enthusiastic patrons and supporters here at home, the secret is out that Berkeley Rep is in.
Fall 2012 term begins October 1 This fall at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute...
Join us for a spectacular term!
OUTSTANDING FACULTY: Pulitzer Prize winner Leon Litwack The Honorable Lise Pearlman Bay Area film critic Michael Fox Journalist Larry Bensky COMPELLING COURSES: 2012 Election Countdown Landscape Painting en Plein Aire Afghanistan and the World America in Crisis: Civil War to 2012 Charles Dickens's Great Expectations Plus 19 more courses! Enjoy a community of peers engaged in learning the latest in science, the arts, and politics
Fall Open House — Sept 11, 2012 Doors at 9:30 am, Program at 10:00 am Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse 2020 Addison St, Berkeley
Hear from the faculty and meet OLLI members
Visit olli.berkeley.edu, or call 510.642.9934 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 1 3
Alex Moggridge (left) teaches a class at Berkeley Rep’s School of Theatre
r e p ort
Those who can
Berkeley Rep’s teaching artists are as engaging in the classroom as they are on stage By Cheshire Isaacs Interested in taking a class at the School of Theatre? Visit berkeleyrep.org/school for more information.
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if you’ve ever taken a class at the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, chances are you’ve come away feeling you had a great teacher. That’s not just a guess; on post-class surveys, more than 80 percent of the School’s students called their instructors “excellent.” There’s a reason for that high caliber: the School employs professional artists, and they’re a versatile bunch. They teach traditional acting, playwriting, technical theatre, and more for youth, teens, and adults at the School and Arpeggio building in downtown Berkeley. They also fan out to schools all over the Bay Area and bring theatrebased workshops that cover multiple California content standards through interactive learning. And the School of Theatre’s artists are actors at the top of their game,
performing on the most prominent local and national stages. In fact, you’re seeing one of those artists in this production. Alex Moggridge, who plays Daniel in Chinglish and appeared as Andrei in Three Sisters, not only teaches at the School but also has contributed as an inhouse playwright. Alex received his mfa from American Conservatory Theater in 2000 and began teaching there in 2001. He went on to teach at mcc in New York and now splits his time between coasts. He joined at Berkeley Rep’s School of Theatre in 2009. This summer he worked with middle- and high-school students in the Summer Theatre Intensive, leading a playwriting class and penning scripts for Theatre Intensive students to perform. “The joy of playwriting is that anything goes,” he says. “It’s really
Laurie Anderson Dirtday! Tue, Sept 18, 8 pm, Zellerbach Hall “The reigning performance artist of her time.”— Boston Globe Enjoying a public visibility greater than virtually any other avant-garde figure of her era, the revolutionary and genre-busting Laurie Anderson returns to Cal Performances. In the third and last in her series of solo story works — which includes Happiness and The End of the Moon—Anderson turns her critical gaze on politics, theories of evolution, families, history, and even animals. Set against a detailed and lush sonic landscape, the powerful and soulful collection of songs and stories creates a unique picture of a hallucinatory world made of dreams and reality. Dirtday! is the culmination of Anderson’s groundbreaking work in this genre.
Théâtre de la Ville Rhinocéros by Eugene Ionesco
Thu & Fri, Sept 27 & 28, 8 pm; and Sat, Sept 29, 2 pm Zellerbach Hall “A masterpiece. A veritable tour de force on the part of the director...a magical embrace between the show and the spectator.”— Le Monde The esteemed Parisian theater company presents a legendary production! Director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota has reunited his remarkable 2004 cast of actors for encore performances of Eugène Ionesco’s masterpiece of the absurd, Rhinocéros. When first presented in Paris, critics were ecstatic. In Rhinocéros, a lone hero watches his friends turn into rhinoceroses one by one until he alone stands unchanged. With a marvelous sense of dark, subversive humor, Ionesco expresses his horror of ideological conformism, inspired by the rise of the fascist state in 1930s Romania.
Mark Morris Dance Group The Hard Nut
Music by Tchaikovsky Members of the Berkeley Symphony Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir Robert Geary, artistic director
Fri, Dec 14, 7:30 pm*; Sat, Dec 15, 2 pm & 8 pm Sun, Dec 16, 3 pm; Thu & Fri, Dec 20 & 21, 7:30 pm* Sat, Dec 22, 2 pm & 8 pm; and Sun, Dec 23, 3 pm, Zellerbach Hall *Half-Price for ages 16 and under Dec, 14, 20 & 21 performances “Seriously entertaining, gorgeously danced, and improbably touching.” — San Francisco Chronicle A swirl of dancing snowflakes…a heartwarming “Waltz of the Flowers”…a hilarious and slightly skewed family holiday party! Be part of this popular Bay Area holiday tradition as Mark Morris’s classic The Hard Nut — a retro-modern take on the beloved Nutcracker tale — returns to Zellerbach Hall. The seasonal favorite has enchanted audiences for more than 20 years, and still has the power to delight.
Order Now for the Best Seats!
Order Online calperformances.org Season Sponsor:
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Ticket Office Zellerbach Hall
Tue-Fri Noon – 5:30pm; Sat-Sun 1 pm – 5 pm
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Report r e p ort
“ The joy of playwriting is that anything goes. It’s really exciting to see kids creating characters right in front of you. I love to watch it dawn on the kids that their imaginations are the most important element of the class.” alex moggridge exciting to see kids creating characters right in front of you. I love to watch it dawn on the kids that their imaginations are the most important element of the class.” Indeed, on a recent afternoon in the School’s Blue Room, Alex coached four trios of middle-school students who wrote and performed original short scenes, which all shared the same opening line but diverged dramatically from there — Buckingham Palace politics, an uncomfortable car ride, and, well, a tempest in a toilet. After each group performed its scene, he encouraged the rest of the class to think about what they’d seen and discuss the positive ideas they could take away from it. “One of my favorite things about teaching here is asking and pushing the students to try anything,” Alex says. “The secret to good writing and good acting is a willingness to take risks and say yes to artistic impulses. And of course the hope is that they will be able to apply this confidence and creativ1 6 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
ity to their navigation of the big bad outside world.” Though he spent his summer leading classes in downtown Berkeley, Alex has been one of many teachers who have dedicated themselves to working in local schools as a Berkeley Rep Teaching Artist. But what is a teaching artist? Statewide conversations about teaching artistry only started taking place in 2008. Berkeley Rep’s School has trained dozens of teaching artists who engage students in classrooms all over the Bay Area. They are trained in the curriculum they teach, adept at integrating the arts into class lessons, understand classroom management, and reinforce what’s being taught. Dave Maier, the School’s Jan & Howard Oringer outreach coordinator, says the School takes a great deal of care in training its educators. “We provide teaching artists with carefully structured curriculum, insuring a common vocabulary and methodology.”
That consistency is key, considering how widely the School is involved in the educational community. It serves 1,300 youth, teen, and adult students and employs 90 additional teachers at its Addison Street space. In the 2011–12 season alone, 14 teaching artists traveled to 142 Bay Area schools, working with 9,863 students in 355 classes. The School’s students aren’t the only ones who benefit by learning from artists. Alex’s acting and playwriting experience certainly helps him in the classroom—and vice versa. Then audience members like you see the results on stage. “It’s always good to go back to fundamentals. And teaching keeps you in the right performance headspace.” He adds that the focus on teaching playwriting “reminds me to think about such simple things as the order of words and how they can so beautifully form a story.” That certainly doesn’t hurt when you’re acting in a play that’s all about the power of language.
2012–13 We’re proud to announce our upcoming season, featuring an array of accomplished artists who have collectively earned 11 Obie Awards and five Tony Awards.
We s t coa s t pre m ie re
Wo rLD pre m ie re
Chinglish
Fallaci
Written by David Henry Hwang Directed by Leigh silverman
Written by Lawrence Wright Directed by Gregory mosher mar 8–apr 21
a co-production with south coast repertory
aug 24–oct 7
An Iliad adapted from Homer by Lisa peterson & Denis o’Hare translation by robert Fagles Directed by Lisa peterson
Pericles, Prince of Tyre Written by William shakespeare Directed by mark Wing-Davey apr 12–may 26 We s t coa s t pre m ie re
oct 12–Nov 11
Dear Elizabeth
Wo rLD - pre m ie re pro D u c tio N
Written by elizabeth Bishop & robert Lowell arranged by sarah ruhl
a co-production with La Jolla playhouse
The White Snake adapted and directed by mary Zimmerman a co-production with oregon shakespeare Festival
Nov 9–Dec 23
Wo rLD pre m ie re
Troublemaker
or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright Written by Dan LeFranc Directed by Lila Neugebauer Jan 4–Feb 3
Directed by Les Waters may 24–Jul 7
s pecia L pr e s e N tat i o N !
The Wild Bride adapted and directed by emma rice presented by Kneehigh theatre Jan 26–Feb 17
To order your ticket package, visit berkeleyrep.org or call the box office at 510 647-2949 seasoN spoNsors
Rreepport ort
Clockwise starting at the upper left Raymond's Red Room; Library Room with a wall of wine bottles; the Crystal Cellar featuring a Baccarat chandelier; the Barrel Room
Raymond Vineyard’s theatrical transformation B y K a r e n McK e v i t t For more information, visit raymondvineyards.com
je an-charles boisset, president of Boisset Family Estates, answers the phone at his Napa office with a hearty “bonjour!” We’ve been trying to connect by phone for days, and he eked out 15 minutes between his return from China (coincidentally) and departure to France. “Bonjour,” I answer, completely mangling the pronunciation of the most basic French word. I hope I won’t need a translator for this conversation. “Being in partnership with Berkeley Rep in the world of art makes total sense,” JeanCharles says (happily, no translation was necessary). “We’re very interested in the experience you provide audiences. Raymond is becoming all about art and creativity too.” In 2009, Boisset Family Estates purchased Raymond Vineyards, which Roy Raymond Sr. started in 1970 with his sons. For the past 10 years Berkeley Rep has enjoyed a rich relationship with Raymond Vineyards. The winery has sponsored all of the Theatre’s major events, including opening nights and our annual gala. It has been the exclusive wine
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“ We want to provide a stage for our guests where they can go into another world, where the journey is so unusual and unexpected.” jean-charles boisset provider at our concessions counter and the exclusive wine donor for the John C. Mendel Room. Raymond Vineyards has undergone quite an evolution under Jean-Charles, who likens his role as a wine-styler to that of a stage director. Witness the winery’s Theater of Nature, a two-acre educational exhibit on Biodynamic farming in the Napa Valley. Guests can embark on a self-guided tour by following signs or listening to an audio tour on their smartphones, or they can choose a desktop tour at theaterofnature.com. What’s more, the exhibit is divided into five acts: the soil, plants, animals, the vineyardist, and wholeness. “We called our Theater of Nature a theatre because we are all actors of nature and we all have a role on this beautiful stage,” Jean-Charles explains. “Life is a beautiful act.” Guests can also play “winemaker for a day” in Raymond’s Blending Room, making their own wines, labels, and packaging. Or learn about the art of decanting beneath a Baccarat chandelier in the Crystal Cellar—while tasting wines served in historical decanters from that famed French crystal-maker. The contemplative Library offers vertical tastings of Raymond’s best vintages dating back to 1974, while the Rutherford Room hosts classes in the art of blending, wine and food pairing, and more. And that’s just a sample of the nine experiences Raymond Vineyards offers. “We want to provide a stage for our guests where they can go into another world, where the journey is so unusual and unexpected that they have a fantastic time, they learn from it and they keep wanting to come back,” Jean-Charles reveals. “Raymond should provide experiences where people come to see us dream and experience the best of the best, another dimension of life.” 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 1 9
It starts here
Downtown Berkeley unveils a new image by kyle sircus while on your way to this performance of Chinglish, you may have noticed how spiffy downtown Berkeley looks nowadays. Perhaps you saw the cleaner sidewalks and the weed-free tree wells. Or maybe you’ve met one of the friendly ambassadors in brightly colored jackets as you walked into Berkeley Rep’s lobby. It’s all part of a strategic plan spearheaded by the Downtown Berkeley Association (dba), a 22-yearold organization that presides over the 30 square blocks surrounding Berkeley Rep. John Caner, ceo of the dba, says, “Berkeleyans understand that a city center can be a much more exciting, vibrant place for community gatherings, culture, and shopping.” So what began as a main-street historic-preservation project has grown to encompass projects to improve the quality of life, urban beautification, and hospitality. Earlier this year, the association’s cleaning ambassadors took on the Herculean task of removing 8,500 pounds of trash; painting poles, boxes, and bins; powerwashing city sidewalks; and —get this—removing 25,000 gum stains. They’ve also installed 10 planters in bart Plaza, hung 180 flower baskets, and installed 88 color banners. The dba’s hospitality ambassadors help citizens and visitors by providing directions, information, and even public-safety services. Berkeley Rep’s managing director, Susan Medak also serves as president of the dba’s board. She says, “The Theatre is proud to be part of the growth of downtown Berkeley, along with other organizations like Aurora Theatre, the Jazz School, and a number of restaurants. With the dba’s energized focus on hospitality and renewal, we were able to make it a more welcoming neighborhood that really connects with the ethos and history of the city.” With a new image comes a new brand, generated by Radiant Brands. Along with his board members, John thought of some ideas for a new image that would reflect all of the great aspects of Berkeley’s city center and its character. Ditching the old image, which John called “very ‘ye olde lamp post,’” the dba adopted a new tagline: It Starts Here. Paired with it is another branded mantra: Taste. Create. Experience. Downtown certainly boasts plenty of homegrown institutions for these three options. A plethora of restaurants dot Berkeley Rep’s neighborhood (for a list of them, visit berkeleyrep.org/planyourvisit). You can create and experience many genres of art and music at places like the the Jazz School, the Magnes Collection, Freight & Salvage, and more. “People have responded well to our efforts,” says John. “Especially after some time away, visitors come back and notice the changes. We want to encourage everyone to come and enjoy downtown with all of its richness.” So hang around downtown after the show. Have a nightcap and discuss the play. Visit the other companies that make the Downtown Arts District such a vibrant and exciting neighborhood. And before your next play at Berkeley Rep, enjoy the area’s restaurants and bistros. 2 0 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
courtesy of downtown berkeley association
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We’re big on Berkeley
Making a difference with $3 million in 3 years Wells Fargo has achieved a lot of growth since we first came to Berkeley in 1875, and one of the best things about our size today is what it allows us to give back. We’ve given $3 million to Berkeley community groups over the past 3 years, and our Alameda County team members recorded 9,384 volunteer hours in 2011 alone. We’re proud to support our community.
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Rehearsal of Erika Chong Shuch's After All, held at Berkeley Rep's new Arpeggio space. Pictured left to right: Beth Wilmurt, Warren David Keith, Rotimi Agbabiaka, and Erika Chong Shuch
r e p ort
The Ground Floor takes off By Madeleine Oldham
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the ground floor’s inaugural Summer Residency Lab this past July was a raging success, if we do say so ourselves. With it, we launched our very own research and development lab that brought in artists from across the country to work on projects in various stages of development. Having artists making art all over our building at the same time was exhilarating, and our walls pulsed with activity. With huge thanks to the Irvine Foundation and ArtPlace for providing seed funding, we are off and running! Here are some highlights of July 2012: · The Food Project brought Lynn Nottage, Danny Hoch, Rinne Groff, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Richard Montoya together with 12 other writers and 2 directors to immerse themselves in learning about our nation’s food system, and figure out how to create a theatrical event about it comprised of short plays.
Madeleine Oldham, Carson Kreitzer, Storm Lever, Katie Gucik, and Erin Kamler rehearse music for Kreitzer and Kamler's Runway 69 Dan LeFranc, whose play Troublemaker, or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright, will premiere at Berkeley Rep in January
· Dan LeFranc discovered that his play, Troublemaker, has a three-act structure, rather than a two-act structure. · Heidi Stillman learned that her adaptation of Marguerite Duras’ The North China Lover was indeed a play. (She wasn’t sure.) · Amelia Roper fleshed out her early draft of She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, and in a public reading, realized that the end of the play didn’t work—a good discovery which will allow her to move forward with finding an ending that does. · Meiyin Wang interviewed people about what they would say if they were apologizing to their mothers and also filmed an instructional video about how to make dumplings (which pleasingly resulted in dumplings for all!) —in an effort to collect and shape the pieces of her show Motherland/Foreign Relations (we all here, why you never call?) · Greg Pierotti realized that he had started to drift away from an original idea for the structure of his play Apology, and that he needed to listen again to that original impulse. · Erika Chong Shuch challenged herself to work in a completely different way—instead of creating individual, intact building blocks and fitting them together like she frequently does, she wanted to see if she could sketch out a whole piece at once, which she did, as evidenced by her public showing of After All. Watching these and the other artists exchange thoughts over meals, cheer each other on, offer constructive comments after readings, and relax together after a long day of work confirmed for us that this type of environment is something all too rare. Being given the time and space to focus on one project in depth without the distractions of grocery shopping and laundry, and to be around other artists doing the same proved to be a welcome experience for them, and a vibrant one for us. We made a place where artists feel safe to risk exploring ideas they might veto too soon in other situations. The lab gave us a glimpse of what’s really brewing artistically both here and around the country, and the future is fertile indeed.
Madeleine Oldham, Mina Morita, and Michael Mitnick in rehearsal for Mitnick's Little Boy Blue Some Ground Floor artists share project updates with the public and Berkeley Rep staff
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Stranger Than Fiction A British businessman’s death mirrors a Broadway hit.
B y D a v i d H e n r y H w a n g
in my pl ay chinglish, which had a well-reviewed run on Broadway, a Midwestern American businessman travels to the inland Chinese city of Guiyang in hopes of landing a contract for his firm, only to become enmeshed in multiple misunderstandings, from language to love. The play, a comedy, seemed to strike audiences as one small step toward greater cultural understanding. Chinese nationals with whom I spoke after the show, however, sometimes raised one quibble about my script, which includes an extramarital affair between the American businessman and the wife of a Communist Party official. This, they said, might make for good drama, but couldn’t actually happen in China. Such a woman would never enter into a close relationship with a foreign man. Against that backdrop, the dramatic fall of former Chinese Politburo member Bo Xilai has been particularly fascinating. The scandal is set in the inland Chinese city of Chongqing, where Bo rose to become a party leader, with a cast of characters that includes his wife, Gu Kailai, who is being investigated in the mysterious death of British businessman Neil Heywood. Bo, meanwhile, has been stripped of his government post. As the story broke, I began receiving email from journalists and China experts who had seen my show. “Chinglish à la Agatha Christie!” wrote one. “Chinglish as a murder mystery!” suggested another. It’s true that the Bo story has taken similarities between art and life to a whole new level. The play features a British 24 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
This, they said, might make for good drama, but couldn’t actually happen in China. Such a woman would never enter into a close relationship with a foreign man.
consultant who arranges for the son of a Chinese official to be admitted to an English university. Neil Heywood got Bo’s son into England’s Harrow School. In Chinglish, an official is arrested on corruption charges, which serve as a pretext for a behind-the-scenes power struggle. Similarly, the downfall of Bo and his wife is widely regarded as a bid to remove him from office in advance of a major Chinese leadership transition. More than two decades ago, I wrote another play, M. Butterfly, inspired by the true story of a French diplomat’s 20-year affair with a Chinese citizen, who turned out to be (A) a spy and (B) a man in drag. In those days, Western nations dominated the world. A European man involved with a Chinese woman could still live the fantasy of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, in which a richer and more powerful Western male dominates a stereotypically submissive and self-sacrificing Asian female. Today, recession-battered Westerners seeking a foothold in booming China must assimilate to its customs and ways of doing business. I experienced this firsthand starting in 2005, when I began traveling there regularly. As a Chinese-American born in Los Angeles, I was raised with few customs from my parents’ homeland. Yet China had become interested in Broadway musicals, and I happen to be the only even-nominally Chinese person who has ever written a Broadway show, so I found myself there discussing proposals for productions. These ideas ultimately amounted to nothing, but provided me with an amazing opportunity to learn about China today. Though I took a couple of years of Mandarin in college, I basically speak only English. Like any monolingual American, I needed an interpreter for my Chinese meetings. On one trip, I was taken to a brand-new cultural center, which featured gorgeous Brazilian wood, Italian marble, state-of-the-art Japanese sound systems. The lone flaw was the signage, which had been translated into laughable English, commonly known as “Chinglish.” The handicapped restrooms, for instance, were labeled “Deformed Man’s Toilet.” I began imagining a play about doing business in China that would deal with the issue of language. Roughly one-quarter of the dialogue in Chinglish is in Mandarin, with English translations projected onto a screen for non-Chinese speakers. Just as the English supertitles allow Western audiences to understand what would otherwise remain mysterious, I wanted the story to illuminate differences between Chinese and American cultural assumptions. Though I’d often heard stories about foreign firms and deals gone wrong, I still had more to learn. An early draft of my play, for instance, included a scene where a British consultant visits a disgraced Chinese official in prison. Our show’s cultural advisers spoke with numerous
experts before deciding that such a scenario would be impossible; no such visit would ever be allowed. So I rewrote it. In today’s China, unlike that of M. Butterfly, a Western man involved with an Asian woman might well end up as the submissive partner. So has any news outlet suggested a sexual relationship between Madame Gu and Neil Heywood? Not in China. Between the lines, however, one can read implications: Madame Gu grew “too close” to a foreign businessman, leading to his murder, she suffered from “bouts of depression,” she apparently asked those in her “inner circle” to “divorce their spouses” and swear allegiance to her and her husband. Still, to my knowledge, no article in China has explicitly suggested a romantic affair. The story in Hong Kong, however is different. There, on April 12, the Apple Daily published a piece headlined: CUCKOLDED BO ORDERED THE KILLING. GU KAILAI RUMORED TO BE ROMANTICALLY INVOLVED WITH MURDERED BRITISH BUSINESSMAN. It read: “There are rumors that Heywood was murdered because he knew the secrets about the Bo family fortune and had an affair with Mrs. Bo. There are even rumors that Bo was angered he was cuckolded so he ordered the killing. ... Some reports claim that two days after the death of Neil Heywood, Gu Kailai and Heywood’s widow met at a Chongqing cafe with military police guarding the entrance and clearing out all other customers. According to these reports, people could hear Gu weeping, and in the end, Heywood’s widow agreed to forgo an autopsy. The official report would declare excessive alcohol as the cause of death, and the body would be cremated.” That piece came two days after a government announcement that Madame Gu was under investigation for the “intentional homicide” of Heywood, and that Bo had been stripped of his party roles. The Apple Daily version of events may be sensationalized fiction. But it at least made explicit the suspicions of many people. Still, it’s unlikely we’ll ever learn the true facts of this case. For Chinese officials, obsessed with “face,” the real scandal is that ordinary Chinese, even foreigners, have seen the inner workings of the nation’s ruling elite. Chinglish uses power struggles, plot twists, and translated supertitles to make transparent what is normally hidden to outsiders. In the real China, though truth may be as strange as fiction, it is almost always less transparent. David Henry Hwang is a Tony Award-winning playwright. He has been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize. This piece first appeared in the April 23, 2012 issue of Newsweek, and is reprinted with permission from the author.
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Chinglish Decoded How we lose things in translation
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By Neena Arndt “i like your smile, but unlike you put your shoes on my face,” reads a sign situated near a lawn in China. “The little grass is sleeping. Please don’t disturb it,” reads another similarly placed sign. “Your careful step keeps tiny grass invariably green,” reads a third. All three are attempting to communicate the same message, which in America is crisply rendered as “Keep off the grass.” Signs like these are a common sight in China, where tourists puzzle and giggle over the mistranslations commonly known as “Chinglish.” English-speakers are directed to “slip carefully” (“don’t slip”) and to use the “deformed man’s toilet” (“handicapped restroom”). They are informed that “the civilized and tidy circumstance is a kind of enjoyment” (“don’t litter”). Any native speaker of English can snicker at these malapropisms, but most don’t know enough about Chinese language or culture to understand the factors that result in Chinglish signage. In fact, as the character Daniel points out in Chinglish, “If you are American, it is safe to assume that you do not speak a single *&%^ing foreign language.” Though most Americans are exposed to foreign languages during their school years, few attain proficiency. And many monolinguals, who acquired their native language in infancy and haven’t had a good reason to think about language since, operate under what linguists call the naïve lexical hypothesis: that is, they assume that differences between languages lie solely in their vocabulary, and that each word in a given language has an equivalent word in all other languages. Both Chinglish (the linguistic phenomenon) and Chinglish (David Henry Hwang’s play) are humorous but potent reminders that there’s no such thing as a direct translation and that language is usually more slippery than we expect. Translators would do well to heed the Chinglish warning: “slip carefully.” An English speaker learning Mandarin Chinese will rapidly discover that it differs from English not only in its sound system, but also in its structure. Those who learned a Germanic or Romance language in high school will recall the arduous task of conjugating verbs in past, present, and future tenses. Mandarin learners need not study up on verb tenses because Mandarin doesn’t use them; it relies instead on other cues within a sentence to indicate if something has already happened, is happening presently, is expected to happen in the future, or if the speaker is using the verb as a command. Adding an ending to a verb (such as -d or -ed to indicate past tense in English) would be an unfamiliar concept for a Mandarin speaker. This illuminates, for the English speaker, how someone might create a sign that reads, “Be sloppily dressed excuse me for not receiving,” when a more apt translation might be, “Entrance may be denied to underdressed customers.” While “be sloppily dressed” sounds like a command to English speakers, a native
Mandarin speaking translator could easily misunderstand the relative subtleties involved in using verbs in English. Another significant structural difference between the two languages concerns plurals. In Mandarin, it is rare to combine morphemes—units of meaning—to create more complex words. The English word dogs contains two morphemes—dog, which means furry quadruped, usually friendly, and -s, which means that there are two or more of them. While English denotes plurality by adding -s, Mandarin often goes without denoting it at all —the listener must either infer it from contextual clues, or proceed without knowing whether her neighbor is talking about his single dog or his 50 dogs. If a speaker needs to make this distinction clear, he or she can use words like some or many, or can indicate a specific number, but this is often unnecessary. This explains why a person might create a sign that says, “Don’t forget to carry your thing,” when he is attempting to prevent foreigners from leaving their personal belongings behind: in English, we draw a (key) distinction between “your thing” and “your things,” but a Mandarin speaker could be hard-pressed to see the difference. Of course, good translation between the two languages is possible, and the real causes of Chinglish signage are carelessness and poor knowledge of English. Some companies assign translation duties to the employee whose knowledge of English is best—but the “best” English speaker in a company may possess only partial proficiency. Unwilling to defy or disappoint her superiors by revealing her lack of ability, this employee will attempt the translation —with mixed results. In some cases, companies rely on online translators, which tend to create literal, dictionary-based translations that don’t take into account connotations or multiple definitions of words. Nor do such translators consider how each language uses metaphors and idioms differently. It may make sense, to the Chinese mind, to say that undisturbed grass is “sleeping,” but English doesn’t normally utilize that metaphor, and an adept human translator would find a more familiar phrase. (The opposite scenario —English idioms sounding odd or unintelligible in Chinese — can also be true. A literal translation of phrases like “bad egg” or “nest egg” would surely prove either disastrous or amusing.) In David Henry Hwang’s play, as in real life, many Chinese people are ashamed of Chinglish and aim to eradicate it. Certainly tourists would benefit from clearer signage, but would also miss out on windows into the Chinese language —which, though often comical, are thought-provoking insights into a culture that so often remains elusive and mysterious to westerners. This piece originally appeared in the program for the Goodman Theatre’s 2011 production of Chinglish. 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 7
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A few weeks before Chinglish premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2011, David Henry Hwang spoke with the Goodman’s Neena Arndt about his writing process and the timeliness of the play. You’re working with a translator, Candace Chong, to create the Mandarin text for Chinglish. Is this the first time that you’ve worked closely with a translator on a show? Yes, and I’m really enjoying this experience; it enables me to write a little more deeply about China without actually knowing Chinese. And to write a bilingual play without being bilingual. In Chinglish, there’s a bilingual character, Peter, who’s been in China for 20 years and knows the country very well. Peter is from England, but says he feels more at home in China —unfortunately, his Chinese colleagues don’t always accept him as one of their own. In writing that character, what issues about cultural identity were you aiming to explore? I’ve spent a good portion of my career writing about the dilemma of identity as it relates to Asian Americans. I’m a Chinese American, and when I’m in China, they certainly don’t consider me Chinese. And in America, there are some questions about Asians and to what extent we are either perpetual foreigners or “regular” Americans. The more I’ve gotten a chance to travel and meet people in different parts of the world, the more I realize that this is not a dilemma that is unique to Asian Americans. Especially as the world grows smaller and there’s more transnationalism and more people relocating across borders, this sense of dislocation and insecurity about identity applies to a lot of people. And I think Peter was an opportunity for me to explore these sorts of feelings of identity confusion but with the shoe on the other foot. Having spent some time with the ex-pat community in China, I would say it is more difficult for someone like Peter to be accepted as a Chinese person in China than it is for a Chinese American to be accepted as an American. One of the other major themes of the play is the difference between the American ideal of marriage, which dictates that marriage should be based on romantic love and open communication, and the Chinese ideal of marriage, which relies on different values altogether. Can you speak about that cultural difference? In a way I would say it’s not even an America versus China difference, as much as it is a new-world versus old-world difference. If you talk to people from Europe, they have a much more practical notion of what marriage is supposed to be —that it’s essentially an institution. It’s a partnership; the romance is going to fade and you don’t necessarily go from one marriage to another trying to chase romance. I think that’s something that older cultures, like China’s, tend to realize more. The emphasis on romance as an integral part of marriage is a relatively new idea in China. Whereas in America, I feel that romance is sort of our secular religion. Like, “All you need is love.” As our attachment to traditional religion has diminished, I feel as if what’s taken its place is this humanistic religion of romantic love, which is what all our songs and mov-
ies are about. In the Middle Ages all art was to glorify God, and now, all our art—at least all our popular art—is to glorify romantic love. Art, and the value of art, is another subject that you address in the play. Some of the characters are building a cultural center in a provincial Chinese city and there’s discussion about what kind of performances will go on there. Yes. Many regional capitals now have big cultural centers, which were constructed as monuments of civic pride. Cities are left with the question, “What are we supposed to do with this now that we’ve got it? What goes into the cultural center?” Certainly, traditional work— Chinese opera and traditional Chinese music—is one possibility. But on the other hand, China is moving rapidly into a market-dominated economy. And the dilemma in the play has to do with a bureaucrat who is very interested in preserving the traditional forms, which aren’t going to make the most money (the same is true in our culture). And so there’s a lot of pressure for him to use the cultural center in a way that’s going to be more market-friendly. Why isn’t Chinese opera market-friendly? Chinese opera is a total theatre form that involves acrobatics and singing; it has been the high art form of Chinese theatre for 400 or 500 years. There are still a lot of people who practice it with excitement and are innovating in the form. But, much like Western opera, it’s somewhat esoteric. It’s not as accessible and not as popular as pop music and American movies. That brings up a question: if something cannot make money, is it valuable? So what do we put in the cultural center? That’s one of the questions of the play. And it’s the same question that we struggle with in Western culture in terms of how we value or don’t value the arts. Another problem the characters face with the cultural center is making sure that all the signs are translated into English properly—which is often not the case in China. Yes. And those mistranslations have been very much in the news—particularly in China. As they were gearing up for the Olympics there was a desire to get rid of all the Chinglish. And then there started to be a certain number of counterarticles written about how Chinglish is actually very interesting and we should preserve it. So that was in the air during a lot of the time that I’d been going over. And then as I started to think about writing a play about doing business in China, I went to a brand-new cultural center. It was made out of beautiful Italian woods and had a Japanese sound system —but all I noticed were the mistranslated signs and how ridiculous they were. It seemed like it would be fun to use that as the jumping-off point for a play about doing business in China. This piece originally appeared in the program for the Goodman Theatre’s 2011 production of Chinglish. 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 9
P H O T O BY J E N N Y G R A H A M
The White Snake Adapted and directed by Mary Zimmerman A co-production with Oregon Shakespeare Festival World-premiere production Nov 9–Dec 23
Berkeley Repertory Theatre, in a co-production with South Coast Repertory, presents the West Coast premiere of
writ ten by
david henry hwang
direc ted by
leigh silver m an augus t 24– oc tober 7, 2012 Roda the atre · m ain sea son Chinglish runs 2 hours with a 15-minute intermission Chinglish is made possible thanks to the generous support of s e a s o n pro d u ce r s Marjorie Randolph Jack & Betty Schafer The Strauch Kulhanjian Family Execu tiv e Pro d u ce r s Gail & Arne Wagner pro d u c e r s Richard & Robin Edwards Virginia Foo & Timothy W. Foo a s s o ciate pro d u ce r s The Alafi Family Foundation Sandra & Ross McCandless Season sponsors
B e r k e le y R e pe r to ry T h e at r e To n y Tacco n e , A r t i s t i c D i r e c to r S u s a n M e da k , M a n ag i n g D i r e c to r
cast Zhao Vivian Chiu Miss Qian/Prosecutor Li Celeste Den Xi Yan Michelle Krusiec Bing/Judge Geming Austin Ku Daniel Cavanaugh Alex Moggridge Peter Brian Nishii Minister Cai Larry Lei Zhang
produc tion s taff Scenic Design David Korins Costume Design Anita Yavich Lighting Design Brian MacDevitt Sound Design Darron L West Projection Design Jeff Sugg & Shawn Duan Assistant Director Oanh X. Nguyen Associate Scenic Design Rod Lemmond Associate Costume Design Nancy A. Palmatier Lighting Design Re-creation Jennifer Schriever Stage Manager Michael Suenkel Assistant Stage Manager Leslie M. Radin Casting Amy Potozkin, csa Artistic Associate Lily Fan The performers and stage managers are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States. Chinglish was first developed at the Lark Play Development Center, New York City in cooperation with The Public Theatre (Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director). Chinglish was first premiered by the Goodman Theater in Chicago, IL (Robert Falls, Artistic Director; Roche Schuffer, Executive Director) on June 18, 2011. Mandarin Chinese translations by Candace Chong. Berkeley Rep gratefully acknowledges the California-Asia Business Council (Cal-Asia) for its assistance. 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 3 1
be r k e l e y r e p pr e s e n t s
profiles
Vivian Chiu
Michelle Krusiec
Alex Moggridge
A member of the original company of Chinglish on Broadway, Vivian is thrilled to make her Berkeley Rep debut. Her New York credits include Agamemnon, directed by Gisela Cardenas at Vortex Theater Company; Limbs: A Pageant at here Arts Center; and an off-Broadway revival of Night Over Taos, directed by Estelle Parsons at intar Theatre. Regionally, Vivian has appeared in Drums on the Dame, written by Hélène Cixous, at Northwestern University; The King and I at the Cider Mill Playhouse; and South Pacific at Metropolis Performing Art Centre. Her TV and film credits include Closed, Infinite Challenge (Korean mbc networks), Kids in Suits, Nom Wah, a Sesame Workshop Mandarin pilot, and twv Project, directed by Victor Quinaz. A native of Taiwan, Vivian earned her MA in theatre from Northwestern University and is a founding member of DreamLab. Visit iamvivianchiu.com.
Michelle is best known for her starring role opposite Joan Chen in the romantic comedy Saving Face, directed by Alice Wu. The role garnered her a nomination for the Chinese Language Oscar, also known as the Golden Horse, for Best Actress in 2005. This is Michelle’s Berkeley Rep debut. On stage she originated her tour-de-force solo show Made in Taiwan, which premiered at the 2002 hbo Aspen Comedy Arts Festival, the 2003 LA Women’s Theatre Festival, the 2005 New York Asian American Theatre Festival, and the 2010 New York International Fringe Festival and Fringe Encores. She also developed the original role of Creta Kano in workshop productions of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (3-Legged Dog, Asia Society). Michelle’s selected film credits include Duplex, Far North, A Helping Hand, Henry Poole Is Here, Knife Fight, Nanking, Nixon, Pumpkin, Sweet Home Alabama, What Happens in Vegas, and Zoom Hunting (Taiwan). In TV, Michelle starred in the series One World and Travelers, and her favorite recurring/guest appearances include Blue Bloods, Community, Dirty Sexy Money, Fringe, Grey’s Anatomy, The Mind of the Married Man, Monk, Nip/Tuck, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Touch, and Weeds.
Alex appeared as Andrei in Berkeley Rep’s production of Three Sisters. He was last seen by Berkeley audiences in Salomania at the Aurora Theatre Company. In the Bay Area, he has performed at act in The Beard of Avon, A Christmas Carol, and The Threepenny Opera; the Aurora in Betrayed and The Entertainer; San Jose Repertory Theatre in By the Bog of Cats and The Weir; as well as at Center Repertory Company, the Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, SF Playhouse, and Shotgun Players. Regionally, he has appeared at atl, Artists Repertory Theatre, B Street Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Utah Shakespeare Festival. Alex’s film and TV credits include Batman Begins, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Trauma. His play The Squirrel appeared off Broadway as part of the Summer Play Festival.
ZHAO
Celeste Den
MISS Q IAN/ PROSE C UTOR LI
Celeste is making her Berkeley Rep debut. She appeared in the world premieres of 11 Septembre 2001 and Peach Blossom Fan with the Center for New Performance; Between Two Friends and Island at Actors Theatre of Louisville; Laws of Sympathy with Playwrights’ Arena; Spit, Shine, Glisten with the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts; and Wild Swans at American Repertory Theatre and the Young Vic Theatre in London. Her regional credits include Attrapee with Poor Dog Group, Conjunto at Borderlands Theater, The Joy Luck Club at East West Players, The Merchant of Venice with Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company, Othello at the Theatre @ Boston Court, and The Waste Land with Filament Theatre Co. Her film and TV credits include Criminal Minds, The Doctor, Larry Crowne, and Powder Blue. Celeste received her bfa in theatre from the University of Florida and mfa in acting from the California Institute of the Arts.
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X I YAN
Austin Ku
BING/ J U D GE GEMING
Austin is making his Berkeley Rep debut. A former Bay Area resident, Austin now lives in New York City where his theatre credits include shows at New York Musical Theatre Festival, the new musical Tokio Confidential off Broadway, and many other new works. He is also a member of the uso Liberty Bells. Austin has performed principal roles at regional theatres nationwide, including the Hangar Theatre, Kansas City Starlight Theatre, Ogunquit Playhouse, and Walnut Street Theatre. He has also performed at 42nd Street Moon, Marin Theatre Company, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, San Jose Stage, TheatreWorks, the Willows Theatre, and more. Austin has starred in several independent films, including Blind Love, which won awards at multiple festivals. Austin was a Broadway World Boston nominee for his role as The Monk in Sunfish, an IRNE nominee for his role as Thuy in Miss Saigon, and he won a Dean Goodman Choice Award for his role as Anthony in Sweeney Todd. He attended Boston Conservatory, UC Berkeley, and Rice University. Visit austin-ku.com.
DANIEL C ava n au g h
Brian Nishii PETER
Brian is a trilingual performing artist from Tokyo. For the past 20 years, he has collaborated with New York dance and theatre companies such as Crossing Jamaica Avenue, Fluid Motion Theater & Film, Imua! Theatre & Film Company, Great Jones Repertory Company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Maura Donohue/In Mixed Company, Project 400 Theatre Group, Robert Wilson, the South Wing, and Velocity Theatre Company. His film and TV credits include Greg Pak’s Robot Stories and Super Power Blues, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Sex and the City. In his spare time, Brian provides lead vocals and antics to the Japanese/ Okinawan folk band HappyFunSmile.
Larry Lei Zhang MINISTER c a i
Larry is an original cast member of Chinglish. As a Bay Area resident (Fremont), he performed in Don Giovanni Meets Xi-men Qing (Chinese Culture Center with San Francisco Opera), Blue and Black at the Palace of Fine Arts, and Long Day’s Journey into Night at Tao House, Danville. His Shanghai credits include Emperor Romulus and Mourning at
Theater Academy, Mei Lanfang at the Majestic, and Yin and Yang at the Lyceum. He has appeared in the films Eyes of Birch, Golden Sand River, Over this Land, and Still, and on television in The Legend of Bruce Lee, Made in China, Ms. P.R., Tribe of Knowledge Youth. Larry is a graduate of Shanghai Theatre Academy.
David Henry Hwang PLAY W RIGHT
David’s plays include Bondage, The Dance and the Railroad (1982 Drama Desk Award nomination), Family Devotions (1982 Drama Desk Award nomination), fob (1981 Obie Award), Golden Child (1997 Obie Award and 1998 Tony Award nomination), M. Butterfly (1988 Tony Award and 1989 Pulitzer Prize finalist), and Yellow Face (2008 Obie Award and 2008 Pulitzer Prize finalist). He also wrote the libretti for three Broadway musicals: Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida (co-author), Disney’s Tarzan, and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Flower Drum Song (revival, 2002 Tony Award nomination). In opera, his libretti include 1000 Airplanes on the Roof, Icarus at the Edge of Time, Sound and Beauty (at the Court Theatre), and The Voyage (Metropolitan Opera) with Philip Glass; as well as Howard Shore’s The Fly, Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar (two 2007 Grammy Awards), and Unsuk Chin’s Alice in Wonderland (Opernwelt 2007 “World Premiere of the Year”). David penned the feature films Golden Gate, M. Butterfly, and Possession (co-author), and cowrote the song “Solo” with Prince. He sits on
the Council of the Dramatists Guild, and by appointment of President Clinton served on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Sea at Second Stage Theatre and many other regional productions. She also directed Wit at the Vaudeville Theatre in the West End. Leigh is on the board of sdc.
Leigh Silverman
David Korins
Leigh directed Lisa Kron’s In the Wake at Berkeley Rep, a co-production with Center Theatre Group. The play went on to The Public Theater where she received an Obie Award and Lucille Lortel nomination. Chinglish, which she directed both at the Goodman Theater (Jeff nomination) and on Broadway, marks Leigh’s second premiere of a work by David Henry Hwang, having previously directed Yellow Face at ctg and The Public. She also directed the world premieres of: Lisa Kron’s Well (which transferred to Broadway after premiering at The Public, the Huntington Theatre Company, and American Conservatory Theater), Beebo Brinker Chronicles at Hourglass Group/37 Arts, Blue Door at Playwrights Horizons and Seattle Repertory Theatre, Close Up Space at Manhattan Theatre Club, Coraline at mcc/True Love, Creature at New Georges/ P73, From Up Here at mtc (Drama Desk nomination), Go Back To Where You Are at Playwrights Horizons (Obie Award), Hunting and Gathering at Primary Stages, Jump/Cut at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company/Theater J and Women’s Project, Oedipus at Palm Springs at nytw, The Retributionists at Playwrights Horizons, and also Danny and the Deep Blue
David designed Berkeley Rep’s productions of Finn in the Underworld, In the Wake, and Passing Strange. His Broadway credits include Bridge & Tunnel, Bring It On: The Musical, Chinglish, An Evening with Patti Lupone & Mandy Patinkin, Godspell, Lombardi, Magic/ Bird, Passing Strange, and The Pee-Wee Herman Show, as well as the upcoming productions of Annie and Motown. He has designed shows for many off-Broadway and regional theatres, as well as several concerts for Kanye West. David has received a Drama Desk Award, two Hewes Design Awards, a Lucille Lortel Award, and the 2009 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Design. Visit davidkorinsdesign.com.
D IRE C TOR
S C ENI C D ESIGNER
Anita Yavich
C OSTUME D ESIGNER
Anita designed Dael Orlandersmith’s costume for the world premiere of Black n Blue Boys / Broken Men and The Oresteia at Berkeley Rep, and she was the costume designer for the Broadway run of Chinglish. Her work has been seen in the Broadway shows Anna in the Tropics and Venus in Fur. Her other New York credits include Civil Sex, Kit Marlowe, Measure for Pleasure, Pericles, and The Winter’s Tale at
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be r k e l e y r e p pr e s e n t s The Public/New York Shakespeare Festival; Coraline, The Submission, and The Wooden Breeks at mcc; Coriolanus, Macbeth, Svejk, and The Taming of the Shrew at Theatre for a New Audience; Henry V with the New Victory Theater and the Guthrie Theater; Iphigenia 2.0 at Signature Theatre Company; and New Jerusalem, Orlando, and Texts for Nothing at Classic Stage Company. Anita’s opera designs include Cyrano de Bergerac at La Scala, the Met, and the Royal Opera House; Fidelio, Das Rheingold, Salome, and Die Walküre at Washington National Opera; Der Fliegende Hollander and The Silver River at the Spoleto Festival usa; Madame Butterfly at Houston Grand Opera and Grand Théâtre de Genève; the international tour of Steve Reich’s Three Tales; and Les Troyens at the Met. She also was the puppet and costume designer for Salzburger Marionettentheater’s The Sound of Music. Anita is the recipient of a 2006 Obie Award.
Brian MacDevitt
LIGHTING D ESIGNER
Brian has designed over 60 productions on Broadway including The Book of Mormon, for which he earned a Tony Award, as well as Chinglish; Death of a Salesman, directed by Mike Nichols, and Mountaintop with Samuel Jackson. He also designed The Enchanted Island and Le Compte Ory at the Met. He also directed Proof at Theatre Three. Brian has worked with many dance companies and choreographers, including American Ballet Theatre, Nancy Bannon, Merce Cunningham, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company, and Tere O’Connor Dance. Brian has received a number of awards, including a Bessie Award, a Drama Desk Award, a Hewes Award, an Obie Award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, and five Tony Awards. He is a member of Naked Angels and is on the faculty at the University of Maryland. Brian is the father of Jake and Georgie and offers special thanks to Jennifer Schriever and Ariel Benjamin.
Darron L West
SOUN D D ESIGNER
Darron is an award-winning sound designer whose work for theatre and dance has been heard in over 500 productions nationally and internationally, on Broadway and off. His past Berkeley Rep credits include Compulsion, Finn in the Underworld, and To the Lighthouse. His accolades for sound design include the 2006 audelco Award, the 2010 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award, the eddy Award, the 2004 and 2005 Henry Hewes Design Award, the 2006 Lucille Lortel Award, the Obie Award, the Princess Grace Award, and the 2012 Tony Award. Darron is the sound designer and founding member of Anne Bogart’s siti Company, and the former resident sound designer for Actors Theater of Louisville and the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
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profiles
Jeff Sugg
Leslie M. Radin
Jeff is a New York–based artist, designer, and technical advisor. His work has been previously seen at Berkeley Rep in Compulsion. Some of his theatre designs include The Accidental Trilogy (St. Ann’s Warehouse), As You Like It (the Shakespeare Theatre Company), The Book of Grace (The Public), Bring It On: The Musical (Broadway, tour, ctg, and the Alliance Theatre), Magic/Bird (Broadway), Tribes (Barrow Street Theatre), and The Truth: A Tragedy (production design for Soho Rep). He earned a Henry Hewes Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and an Obie Award for his work on The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island with Vineyard Theatre and earned another Hewes Award for 33 Variations (Broadway, Arena Stage, and La Jolla Playhouse). Jeff has also worked with many renowned companies and artists including The Wooster Group and Laurie Anderson.
Leslie is in her 10th season with Berkeley Rep. She started as the stage management intern in 2003 and is very pleased to be here working on Chinglish after most recently stage managing Black n Blue Boys / Broken Men last season. Her favorite past productions include In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Passing Strange, The Pillowman, and The Secret in the Wings. She has also worked with Center Rep, SF Opera’s Merola Program, SF Playhouse, and the New Victory Theatre in New York, where she traveled with Berkeley Rep’s production of Brundibar/But the Giraffe.
PRO J E C TION D ESIGNER
Shawn Duan
PRO J E C TION D ESIGNER
Shawn is a New York–based projection designer and media consultant. He was the video designer for Chinglish on Broadway, and his regional and off-Broadway credits include Assassins at 2nd Avenue Theatre, Citizen Ruth at Minetta Lane Theatre, Knickerbocker at The Public, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at Symphony Space, Most Happy Fella at Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Mr. Joy at Riverside Church, the tour of Al Pacino’s One Night Only, Prima Donna at New York City Opera, Tarzan at North Shore Music Theatre, The Who’s Tommy at Abrons Art Center, and the 2011 tour of Yo Gabba Gabba! Live! He has also served as a design associate, technical consultant, and programmer for various theatrical, opera, and event productions in New York and across the country including the Alliance, the Geffen Playhouse, the Goodman Theatre, the Kennedy Center, New York City Opera, The Public, and the Winspear Opera House.
Michael Suenkel STAGE MANAGER
Michael began his association with Berkeley Rep as the stage management intern for the 1984–85 season and is now in his 19th year as production stage manager. Some of his favorite shows include 36 Views, Endgame, Eurydice, Hydriotaphia, and Mad Forest. He has also worked with the Barbican in London, the Huntington, the Juste Pour Rire Festival in Montreal, ljp, Pittsburgh Public Theater, The Public and Second Stage Theatres in New York, and Yale Rep. For the Magic, he stagemanaged Albert Takazauckas’ Breaking the Code and Sam Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss.
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
Amy Potozkin
C ASTING D IRE C TOR
Amy is in her 23rd season with Berkeley Rep. She has also had the pleasure of casting projects for act (Seattle), Arizona Theatre Company, the Aurora, B Street Theatre, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Dallas Theater Center, Marin Theatre Company, the Marsh, San Jose Rep, Social Impact Productions Inc., and Traveling Jewish Theatre. Amy cast roles for the film Conceiving Ada, starring Tilda Swinton; Haiku Tunnel and the upcoming Love and Taxes by Josh Kornbluth; and the upcoming feature film Beyond Redemption by Britta Sjogren. Amy received her mfa from Brandeis University, where she was also an artist-in-residence. She has been a coach to hundreds of actors, teaches acting at Mills College, and leads workshops at Berkeley Rep’s School of Theatre and numerous other venues in the Bay Area.
Oanh X. Nguyen
ASSISTANT D IRE C TOR
Oanh co-founded Chance Theater and has been serving as the artistic director since 1999. He also serves as the producing associate at South Coast Repertory, where he spearheads Studio scr: the alternative theatre presenting series. Oanh is a recipient of tcg’s New Generations Grant and the tcg Nathan Cummings Young Leaders of Color fellowship. He was also awarded the Outstanding Artist Award by Arts Orange County and was inducted into Anaheim High School’s Hall of Fame. Oanh serves on the advisory board of the Anaheim High School Performing Arts Conservatory and recently served four years on the board of the Network of Ensemble Theatres. His directing credits include productions at Chance Theater, East West Players, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Old Globe, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, and South Coast Rep. Oanh is a proud member of sdc and sag-aftra.
Rod Lemmond
ASSO C IATE S C ENI C D ESIGNER
Rod has worked with David Korins for over 10 years as lead associate on more than 100 projects on Broadway, at regional theatres, in TV and film, and for musical concerts. His Berkeley Rep credits include Finn in the Underworld, In the Wake, and Passing Strange. He worked on the Broadway production of Chinglish, as well as Bridge & Tunnel, An Evening with Patti Lupone & Mandy Patinkin, Lombardi, Magic/Bird, Passing Strange, and The Pee-Wee Herman Show, plus upcoming productions of Annie, Misery, and Motown. Rod holds an mfa from nyu’s Tisch School of the Arts.
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Nancy A. Palmatier
ASSO C IATE C OSTUME D ESIGNER
Nancy has been an associate costume designer on Broadway for Bombay Dreams, Chinglish, Guys and Dolls, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The King and I, Lestat, Life x3, The New 42nd Street, and more. She has designed for Queens College, the Metro Stage Company in Pittsburgh, and Rockland Opera. Nancy is happy to be working on this production of Chinglish.
Jennifer Schriever
LIGHTING D ESIGN r e - c r e at o r
A New York–based designer, Jen’s recent regional designs include Pippin at McCarter, A Second Chance at Signature, and Taming of the Shrew at the Folger. She designed John Leguizamo’s one-man show Ghetto Klown at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, and her other New York credits include A Bullet for Adolf at New World Stages, An Evening Without Monty Python at the Town Hall, Inner Voices Solo Musicals at 59E59, Stuffed and UnStrung at Union Square, and Triassic Parq at Soho Playhouse. Jen is designing the upcoming Die Fledermaus at the Met, and other opera designs include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Mariinsky Theatre in Russia and The Pearl Fishers at English National Opera in London. In addition to designing her own shows, Jen has been an associate to Brian MacDevitt for the past 10 years. Visit jenschriever.com
Lily Fan
A r t i s t i c A s s o c i at e
Lily is one of the original co-producers of Chinglish on Broadway and is thrilled to be working with Berkeley Rep on this beloved show. She was born and raised in Hong Kong, and Chinglish is her first language. Lily offers enormous gratitude to her family and much love to David Henry Hwang and Leigh Silverman.
South Coast Repertory Tony Award-winning South Coast Repertory, founded in Costa Mesa, California in 1964 by David Emmes and Martin Benson and now under the leadership of Artistic Director Marc Masterson and Managing Director Paula Tomei, is widely recognized as one of the leading professional theatres in the United States. scr is committed to theatre that illuminates the compelling personal and social issues of our time, not only on its stages but through
Homer & Moses: Poets of Their People Learn more about Berkeley Rep’s An Iliad before you see it
Join a classics expert, a rabbi, and a theater docent to explore the epic! Thursdays, October 18 & 25 7 pm Lehrhaus in Berkeley Sunday, October 21 1 pm See the play at Berkeley Rep
More info and to register: www.lehrhaus.org
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be r k e l e y r e p pr e s e n t s profiles
Ignite your imagination Classes for youth, teens, and adults of all levels Fall session begins September 24 For more information visit berkeleyrep.org/school or call 510 647-2972 Financial aid available for youth and teen classes
its wide array of education and outreach programs. While its productions represent a balance of classic and modern theatre, scr is renowned for its extensive new-play development program, which includes the nation’s largest commissioning program for emerging and established writers and composers. Each year, it showcases some of the country’s best new plays in the Pacific Playwrights Festival, which attracts theatre professionals from across the country. Of scr’s more than 460 productions, one-quarter have been world premieres, whose subsequent stagings achieved enormous success throughout America and around the world. scr-developed works have garnered two Pulitzer Prizes and eight Pulitzer nominations, several Obie Awards, and scores of major new-play awards.
Tony Taccone
ARTISTI C D IRE C TOR
Tony Taccone is artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre. During his tenure, the Tony Award–winning nonprofit has earned a reputation as an international leader in innovative theatre. In those 15 years, Berkeley Rep has presented more than 60 world, American, and West Coast premieres and sent 18 shows to New York, two to London, and one to Hong Kong. Tony has staged more than 35 plays in Berkeley, including new work from Culture Clash, Rinde Eckert, David Edgar, Danny Hoch, Geoff Hoyle, Quincy Long, Itamar Moses, and Lemony Snicket. He directed the shows that transferred to London, Continental Divide and Tiny Kushner, and two that landed on Broadway as well: Bridge & Tunnel and Wishful Drinking. Tony commissioned Tony Kushner’s legendary Angels in America, co-directed its world premiere, and has collaborated with Kushner on seven projects. His regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arena Stage, Center Theatre Group, the Eureka Theatre, the Guthrie Theater, the Huntington Theatre Company, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Public Theater, and Seattle Repertory Theatre. As a playwright, Tony recently debuted Ghost Light and Rita Moreno: Life Without Makeup.
Susan Medak
MANAGING D IRE C TOR
Susan has served as Berkeley Rep’s managing director since 1990, leading the administration and operations of the Theatre. She has served as president of the League of Resident Theatres (lort) and treasurer of Theatre Communications Group, organizations that represent the interests of nonprofit theatres across the nation. Susan chaired two panels for the Massachusetts Arts Council and has also served on program panels for Arts Midwest, the Joyce Foundation, and the 3 6 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
National Endowment for the Arts. Closer to home, Susan chairs the Downtown Berkeley Business Improvement District and serves as president of the Downtown Berkeley Association. She is the founding chair of the Berkeley Arts in Education Steering Committee for Berkeley Unified School District and the Berkeley Cultural Trust. Susan serves on the faculty of Yale School of Drama and is a proud member of the Mont Blanc Ladies’ Literary Guild and Trekking Society. She lives in Berkeley with her husband.
Karen Racanelli
GENERAL MANAGER
Karen joined Berkeley Rep in November 1993 as education director. Under her supervision, Berkeley Rep’s Programs for Education provided live theatre for more than 20,000 students annually. In November 1995, she became general manager, and since then has overseen the day-to-day operations of the Theatre, supervising the box office, company management, and IT. She has represented the League of Resident Theatres during negotiations with both Actors’ Equity Association and the Union of Stage Directors and Choreographers. Prior to her tenure at Berkeley Rep, Karen worked for Theatre Bay Area as director of theatre services and as an independent producer at several Bay Area theatre companies. She has served on the boards of Climate Theater, Overtone Theatre Company, and Park Day School, and is currently on the board of the Julia Morgan Center. Karen
is married to arts attorney MJ Bogatin and they have two children.
Madeleine Oldham
Lawyers, she serves on the National Advisory Panel of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.
D IRE C TOR , THE GROUN D F LOOR / RESI D ENT D RAMATURG
Jack & Betty Schafer
Madeleine is the director of Berkeley Rep’s Ground Floor and its resident dramaturg. As literary manager and associate dramaturg at Baltimore Centerstage, she produced the First Look reading series and headed up its young audience initiative. Before moving to Baltimore, she was the literary manager at Seattle Children’s Theatre, where she oversaw an extensive commissioning program. She also acted as assistant and interim literary manager at Intiman. Madeleine served for four years on the executive committee of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and has also worked with act (Seattle), Austin Scriptworks, Crowded Fire Theatre Company, Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Kennedy Center, New Dramatists, Playwrights Center, and Portland Center Stage.
Betty and Jack are proud to support Berkeley Rep. Jack, one of the Theatre’s board members, also sits on the boards of the Jewish Community Endowment, San Francisco Opera, and the Straus Historical Society. He is co-chair of the Oxbow School in Napa and an emeritus trustee of the San Francisco Art Institute, where he served as board chair. Betty, a retired transitions coach, has resumed her earlier career as a nonfiction writer and poet. She serves on the boards of Brandeis Hillel Day School, Coro Foundation, Earthjustice, and jvs and represents the Jewish Community Foundation on a national allocation committee.
Marjorie Randolph SEASON PRO D U C ER
Marjorie is president of Berkeley Rep’s board of trustees and a longtime supporter of the Theatre. She recently moved back to Berkeley after retiring as head of worldwide human resources for Walt Disney Studios. During her tenure at Berkeley Rep, she has produced 29 plays. A member of the California Bar and a former president of California Women
SEASON PRO D U C ERS
The Strauch Kulhanjian Family SEASON PRO D U C ERS
Roger Strauch is a former president of Berkeley Rep’s board of trustees and a current member. He is chairman of The Roda Group (rodagroup.com), a venture-development company based in Berkeley and best known for launching Ask.com, PolyServe, and Sightspeed. Roger serves on the board of Game Ready, and his firm is the largest investor in Solazyme, a renewable oil and bio-products company based in South San Francisco (nasdaq:szym, solazyme.com). Roger is a
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member of the engineering dean’s college advisory boards of Cornell University and UC Berkeley. He is vice-chairman of the board of trustees for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (msri) and a co-founder of the William Saroyan Program in Armenian Studies at Cal. He is also an executive member of the Piedmont Council of the Boy Scouts of America. His wife, Julie A. Kulhanjian, is an attending physician at Oakland Children’s Hospital. They have three teenaged children.
Gail & Arne Wagner
E X E C UTI V E PRO D U C ERS
Arne Wagner is an attorney with Calvo Fisher & Jacob in San Francisco. Gail Wagner is a hematologist and oncologist at Kaiser in Hayward. She is the founder of Tiba Foundation (tibafoundation.org), an organization investing in community healthcare in an underprivileged district of western Kenya, in partnership with Matibabu Foundation. Mama Sarah Obama, President Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, is a Matibabu patient! Arne and Gail have been attending Berkeley Rep since they were students in 1972.
Richard & Robin Edwards PRO D U C ERS
Robin and Rich have been strong supporters of Berkeley Rep for more than 20 years when they started serving on the gala committee. Rich was co-chair of the Narsai Toast for five years. They are thrilled to be producers of Chinglish and especially excited to see Berkeley Rep bring Chinglish to Hong Kong. Robin retired from active practice as a partner of snr Denton us llp (formerly Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal) in January 2012. She recently joined Berkeley Rep’s board of trustees. Robin is also actively involved with the Bay Area Major Gifts Committee for Mount Holyoke College, keen sf (Kids Enjoy Exercise Now), and the Women’s Leadership Council for United Way of the Bay Area. Rich retired in 1998 as a senior partner at San Francisco’s Robertson Stephens & Co., a high-tech-focused investment bank. He is a professional photographer and has been very active as a board member and fundraiser for numerous Bay Area nonprofit organizations, including the College Preparatory School, Jewish Family & Children’s Services of the East Bay, and Oakland Museum of California.
Virginia Foo & Timothy W. Foo PRO D U C ERS
Being native Hong Kongers, Tim and Virginia Foo have a better than casual familiarity with Chinglish, or at least the particular form practiced there. Having also spent many years in the midwestern United States, they fully understand those who may have difficulty with 3 8 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
something as intractable as Chinglish. David Henry Hwang’s play is a masterful illustration of the crosscultural currents we experience today. Tim and Virginia are elated that this production of Chinglish by Berkeley Rep will be featured at the 41st Hong Kong Arts Festival in March 2013.
BART
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We acknowledge the following Annual Fund supporters whose contributions from July 2011 through June 2012 helped to make possible the Theatre’s artistic and community outreach programs. Supporters noted with K made gifts in-kind. Donors whose names are noted with M have used matching gifts to double or triple their initial contributions.
con t r i bu tor s institutional supporters G if t s o f $ 100,000 an d above
G if t s o f $25,000 –49,999
G if t s o f $5,000 –9,999
The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation The James Irvine Foundation The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Shubert Foundation The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust
Anonymous The Ira and Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund Walter & Elise Haas Fund Koret Foundation The Mosse Foundation for Education and the Arts National Endowment for the Arts Wallis Foundation Woodlawn Foundation
Berkeley Civic Arts Program JEC Foundation Ramsay Family Foundation Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation
G if t s o f $50,000 –99,999 The Bernard Osher Foundation
G if t s o f $10,000 –24,999 Anonymous Edgerton Foundation The Green Foundation Thomas J. Long Foundation The Drs. Ben and A. Jess Shenson Trust, administered by The San Francisco Foundation
cor p or at e s p on s or s S e a so n s p o n so r s
G if t s o f $12 ,000 –24,999 Genstar Capital The Morrison & Foerster Foundation Union Bank Mechanics Bank Wealth Management
G if t s o f $6,000 –11,999
G if t s o f $25,000 –49,999
Armanino McKenna LLP Bank of the West BluesCruise.com Charles Schwab & Co. Deloitte Meyer Sound Oliver & Company, Inc. Panoramic Interests Peet’s Coffee & Tea Schoenberg Family Law Group STG Asset Management, Inc. UBS U.S. Bank
G if t s o f $1,000 –4,999 California Arts Council Joyce & William Brantman Foundation Civic Foundation Entrekin Foundation
G if t s o f $1, 500 –5,999 4U Field Hockey Aspiriant Bingham McCutchen LLP Gallagher Risk Management Services Heritage Capital Private Asset Management Macy’s The Safeway Foundation SEI
Is your company a Corporate Sponsor? Berkeley Rep’s Corporate Partnership program offers excellent opportunities to network, entertain clients, reward employees, increase visibility, and support the arts and arts education in the community. For details visit berkeleyrep.org or call Daria Hepps at 510 647-2904.
I n-K i n d s p on s or s m at c h i ng g i f t s
Act Catering Autumn Press Back to Earth Organic Catering Blue Angel Vodka Bobby G’s Pizzeria Bogatin, Corman & Gold Cyprus Darling Flower Shop Distillery No. 209 ecoVINO Wines Etc Catering Four Seasons San Francisco Gather Restaurant Gecko Gecko Green Waste Recycle Yard Hotel Shattuck Plaza
Kevin Berne Images La Bonne Cuisine Catering & Events La Note Latham & Watkins, LLP Left Coast Catering Match Vineyards Meyer Sound Mt. Brave Wines Patricia Motzkin Architecture Phil’s Sliders Picante Quady Winery Revival Bar + Kitchen Ricola usa Spy Valley Wines
4 0 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
St. George Spirits Staglin Family Vineyard Sweet Adeline Tres Agaves Venus Restaurant Zut! on 4th Raymond Vineyards is the official wine purveyor of Berkeley Rep. Hotel Shattuck Plaza is the official hotel of Berkeley Rep. Pro-bono legal services are generously provided by Latham & Watkins, LLP.
The following companies have matched their employees’ contributions to Berkeley Rep. Please call the Development Department at 510 647-2906 to find out if your company matches gifts. Alexander & Baldwin · American Express · Amgen · Apple · Argonaut Group, Inc. · AT&T · Bank of America · Bank of the West · Bristol Myers Squibb · Charles Schwab Corporation · Chevron Corporation · Clorox Company · Franklin Templeton · Gap · Google · Hewlett Packard · IBM Corp. · JD Fine and Company · John Wiley & Sons, Inc. · Johnson & Johnson · Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory · Levi Strauss · Lexis-Nexis · Macy’s Inc. · Microsoft · Morrison & Foerster LLP · Motorola · MRW & Associates LLC · NORCAL Mutual Insurance Company · Patagonia · Ruppenthal Foundation for the Arts · S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation · Salesforce · Schwab Charitable Fund · Sony Corporation of America · The Doctors Company · The Morrison & Foerster · VISA U.S.A., Inc. · Willis Lease Finance Corporation
con t r i bu tor s donors to the annual fund Great theatre is made possible by the generosity of our community. We gratefully acknowledge the following contributors to Berkeley Rep, who champion the Theatre’s artistic and outreach programs. To make your gift and join this distinguished group, visit berkeleyrep.org/give or call 510 647-2906.
Leg e n d in-kind gift M matching gift K
P roduc e r C IRC LE s e a s o n pro d u ce r s
pro d u c e r s
$5 0,0 0 0 & u p
$ 12 ,0 0 0 –2 4 ,9 9 9
Wayne Jordan & Quinn Delaney Marjorie Randolph Jack & Betty Schafer The Strauch Kulhanjian Family
e xecu tiv e pro d u c e r s $ 2 5,0 0 0 –49,9 9 9
Rena Bransten Martha Ehmann Conte Bill Falik & Diana Cohen Mary & Nicholas Graves Frances Hellman & Warren Breslau John & Helen Meyer Pam & Mitch Nichter Dr. & Mrs. Philip D. Schild Jean & Michael Strunsky Gail & Arne Wagner
David & Vicki Cox Thalia Dorwick Robin & Rich Edwards Virginia & Timothy Foo Jill & Steve Fugaro Kerry Francis & John Jimerson M Bruce Golden & Michelle Mercer Jack Klingelhofer Dugan Moore Patricia Sakai & Richard Shapiro Joan Sarnat & David Hoffman Michael & Sue Steinberg Guy Tiphane Anne & Paul Wattis
a s s o ciat e pro d u c e r s $ 6,0 0 0 – 11,9 9 9
Anonymous (3) The Alafi Family Foundation Shelley & Jonathan Bagg Barbara & Gerson Bakar
Carole B. Berg Kimo & Kerry Campbell Stephen K. Cassidy & Rebecca L. Powlan Robert Council & Ann Parks-Council Oz Erickson & Rina Alcalay William Espey & Margaret Hart Edwards K John & Carol Field Kristina Flanagan David & Vicki Fleishhacker Paul T. Friedman M Scott & Sherry Haber Doug & Leni Herst Ms. Wendy E. Jordan Jean & Jack Knox Wanda Kownacki Ted & Carole Krumland Randy Laroche & David Laudon Zandra Faye LeDuff Dixon Long Dale & Don Marshall Sandra & Ross McCandless Martin & Janis McNair Stephanie Mendel
Steven & Patrece Mills M Mary Ann & Lou Peoples Kaye & Randy Rosso Pat Rougeau Jack & Valerie Rowe Richard A. Rubin & H. Marcia Smolens Deborah Dashow Ruth Jodi Schiller & Ben Douglas Liliane & Ed Schneider Emily Shanks M Pat & Merrill Shanks Sally Smith & Don Burns Karen Stevenson & Bill McClave Tides Foundation, recommended by an anonymous donor advised fund Felicia Woytak & Steve Rasmussen Saul Zaentz
D onor C i rc l e pre s id e n t s $ 3,0 0 0 – 5,9 9 9
Anonymous (3) Edith Barschi Neil & Gene Barth Valerie Barth & Peter Wiley M Stephen Belford & Bobby Minkler Judy Belk Drs. Don & Carol Anne Brown Tracy Brown & Greg Holland C. William Byrne K M Jennifer Chaiken & Sam Hamilton Susan Chamberlin Earl T. Cohen & Heidi M. Shale Karen & David Crommie Ed Cullen & Ann O’Connor Richard & Anita Davis Lois M. De Domenico Delia Fleishhacker Ehrlich M Nancy & Jerry Falk Ann & Shawn Fischer Hecht Earl & Bonnie Hamlin Ruth Hennigar, in memory of Emerson Hennigar James C. Hormel Kathleen & Chris Jackson Anne Kaiser K Robert Kelling Duke & Daisy Kiehn Leonard Merrill Kurz Nancy & George Leitmann Neil & Leah Mac Neil Peter & Melanie Maier Charlotte & Adolph Martinelli Eddie & Amy Orton Sandi & Dick Pantages Peter Pervere & Georgia Cassel David Pratt Len & Barbara Rand Ivy & Leigh Robinson David S. H. Rosenthal & Vicky Reich Howard S. Rowen & Ryan C. Reeder/ UBS Financial Services
Riva Rubnitz Gaile B. Russ Pam & John Walker Sheila Wishek Steven & Linda Wolan Sally Woolsey
d irec to r s $ 1, 5 0 0 –2 ,9 9 9
Anonymous (5) Jim & Ginger Andrasick Pat Angell, in memory of Gene Angell Ross E. Armstrong Nina Auerbach Ken & Joni Avery Jane & Bill Bardin Becky & Jeff Bleich Caroline Booth Linda Brandenburger Broitman-Basri Family Thomas & Tecoah Bruce Tom Cantrell & Robert Lane Lynne Carmichael The Cheitlin Family Andrew Combs The Connemara Fund Julie Harkness Cooke John & Stephanie Dains Ilana DeBare & Sam Schuchat Harry & Susan Dennis K Becky Draper Edward Durbin & Joan Morris Steve & Sharon Edelman Merle & Michael Fajans Cynthia A. Farner Tracy & Mark Ferron Donald & Sylvia Fillman Lisa & Dave Finer Linda Jo Fitz Frannie Fleishhacker Herb & Marianne Friedman James Gala Karl & Kathleen Geier
Dennis & Susan Johann Gilardi Daniel & Hilary B. Goldstine Deborah & Howard Goodman Dan Granoff Garrett Gruener & Amy Slater Richard & Lois Halliday Migsy & Jim Hamasaki David & Vera Hartford Tom & Bonnie Herman Gail & Bob Hetler Richard N. Hill & Nancy Lundeen Rick Hoskins & Lynne Frame Ron & Virginia Iverson George & Leslie Hume Beth & Fred Karren Rosalind & Sung-Hou Kim Lynn Eve Komaromi Michael Kossman John Kouns & Anne Baele Kouns Suzanne LaFetra Helen E. Land Louise Laufersweiler & Warren Sharp Ellen & Barry Levine Bonnie Levinson & Dr. Donald Kay Jennifer S. Lindsay Tom Lockard & Alix Marduel Greg & Liz Lutz Vonnie Madigan Lois & Gary Marcus Sumner & Hermine Marshall Rebecca Martinez Jill Matichak Phyra McCandless & Angelos Kottas Karen & John McGuinn Miles & Mary Ellen McKey Susan Medak & Greg Murphy Toby Mickelson & Donald Brody Roger & Satomi Miles Gregory Miller John & Katrina Miottel Scott Montgomery & Marc Rand Judith & Richard Oken K Janet Ostler
Judy O’Young, MD & Gregg Hauser Gerane Wharton Park Bob & MaryJane Pauley Tom & Kathy Pendleton Gladys Perez-Mendez Jonathan & Hillary Reinis Bill Reuter & Ruth Major James & Maxine Risley John & Jody Roberts Deborah Romer & William Tucker Ronald & Karen Rose Enid & Alan Rubin Mitzi Sales & John Argue Lisa Salomon & Scott Forrest Monica Salusky & John K. Sutherland Jeane & Roger Samuelsen Stephen C. Schaefer Jackie & Paul Schaeffer Joyce & Jim Schnobrich Stephen Schoen & Margot Fraser Linda & Nathan Schultz Edie Silber & Steve Bomse Amrita Singhal & Michael Tubach Kae Skeels Sherry & David Smith Stephen & Cindy Snow Carl & Joan Strand Stephen Stublarec & Debra S. Belaga Andrew & Jody Taylor Deborah Taylor Alison Teeman & Michael Yovino-Young Susan & David Terris Buddy & Jodi Warner Jonathan & Kiyo Weiss Beth Weissman Jeffrey A. White Patricia & Jeffrey Williams Wendy Willrich Steven Winkel & Barbara Sahm Charles & Nancy Wolfram Alan & Judy Zafran Martin & Margaret Zankel Jane Zuercher
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con t r i bu tor s donors to the annual fund pl ay w ri g h t s $ 1,0 0 0 –1, 49 9
Anonymous (6) · Donald & Margaret Alter · David Beery & Norman Abramson · Dr. & Mrs. Gerald & Carol Block · Jennifer & Brad Bowers · Maria Cardamone · Naveen Chandra · Ed & Lisa Chilton · Richard & Linnea Christiani · Constance Crawford · Barbara & Tim Daniels M · Ann Doerr · Corinne & Mike Doyle · David & Monika Eisenbud · Cary and Helen FitzGerald · Thomas & Sharon Francis · Christopher R. Frostad M · Phyllis & Eugene Gottfried · Geoffrey & Marin-Shawn Haynes · Gareth & Ruth Hill · Elaine Hitchcock · Bill Hofmann & Robbie Welling · Paula Hughmanick & Steven Berger · Lynda & Dr. J. Pearce Hurley · Harold & Lyn Isbell · Helmut H. Kapczynski & Colleen Neff · William & Adair Langston · Eileen & Jay Love · Laurentius Marais & Susan Hendrie-Marais · John E. Matthews · Erin McCune & Nicholas Virene · John G. McGehee · Kirk McKusick & Eric Allman · Patricia Motzkin & Richard Feldman K · Herbert & Sondra Napell K · Claire Noonan & Peter Landsberger · Richard Ostreicher & Robert Sleasman · Ken & Dorothy Paige · Stephen E. Palmer · Lucas Reiner & Maud Winchester · Susan Rosin & Brian Bock · Boyard & Anne Rowe · Randee & Joseph
We gratefully recognize the following members of the Annual Fund whose contributions were received in June and July 2012. S u pp o r te r s $ 2 5 0 –49 9
Anonymous (3) · Barbara Jones Bambara & Massey J. Bambara · Michelle L. Barbour · Sophia and Virginia Cafaro-Mirviss · Kathleen Cody · Ruth Conroy · Jeanene E. Ebert · Michael Katz · Juliet Moser · Shanna O’Hare & John Davis · Dr. & Mrs. Harry L. Roth · Cynthia Sears · Annie Stenzel · Debbie & Bob Sternbach, in honor of Sally Smith · Nick Themely · Joseph Veni
Co n trib u to r s $ 15 0 –2 49
Anonymous (3) · Andrea Arrick · Tami Busse · Jim & Jeanette Cottle · Nancy & Stewart Daniels · Richard DeNatale · Christopher Donahue · Michael & Lori Ferguson · Laura Fichtenberg · Rosalind Hamar · Peter Hobe · Elizabeth Jasny · Seymour Kaufman · Mr. & Mrs. Gary Morrison · Wil & Joyce Pinney · Devon Proctor M · Arthur Reingold & Gail Bolan · Sam Saberi · James Simpson & Tamara Wood · William & Martha Slavin · Barbara Slotnik & Steve Kerns M · Betty & Claudia Smelser · Mary Lou Solecki · Suzanne & Svend Svendsen · William van Dyk & Margi Sullivan
Seiger · Neal Shorstein, MD & Christopher Doane · Kim Silva · George & Camilla Smith · Annie Stenzel · Tim Stevenson & David Lincoln King · Pate & Judy Thomson · Lee Yearley & Sally Gressens · Stan Zaks K · The Zeiger Family, in memory of Phyllis Sagle
ac to r s $5 0 0 – 9 9 9
Anonymous (18) · Bob & Evelyn Apte · Steven & Barbara Aumer-Vail · David Balabanian · Barbara Jones Bambara & Massey J. Bambara · Leslie & Jack Batson · Don & Gerry Beers · Robert Berman & Jane Ginsburg · Marilyn Bray · Ellen S. Buchen · Rike & Klaus Burmeister · Robert & Janet Campbell M · Robert & Margaret Cant · Ronnie Caplane · Charles & Kristine Cardall · Bruce Carlton · Paula Carrell · Paula Champagne & David Watson · Patty Chin · Dennis Cohen & Deborah Robison · Blair & Robert Cooter · James Cuthbertson · Robert & Loni Dantzler · Pat & Steve Davis · Francine & Beppe Di Palma · Dan Dougherty · Drs. Nancy Ebbert & Adam Rochmes · Jeanene E. Ebert M · Anita C. Eblé · Burton Peek Edwards & Lynne Dal Poggetto · Michael Ehrenzweig · Cele & Paul Eldering M · Roger & Jane Emanuel · Bill & Susan Epstein ·
Frie n d s $ 75–149
Anonymous (12) · Beresford Amoroso · Charles & Joyce Anderson · Jill Armbrust · Patricia Ascher · Phil & Jane Batson · Steven Birnbaum · Byron Brown · Douglas Bury · Jacob Butcher & Naomi Stein · Tom Cantrell & Robert Lane · Joyce S. Cross · Stacey Daraio · Judy Derman & Richard Berger · Veronica & Tom Devitt · Ellen Dietschy & Alan Cunningham · Drs. Linda & Gilbert Duritz · Barbara Edwards · Caroline Erickson · Terry Faria · Paula M. Feinberg · Susan Ferreyra · Tina Fleming · Mark Flynn · Suzanne & Richard Gerson, in memory of Richard Heggie · Lucia Gilbert · Barry & Erica Goode · Joan & LeRoy Green · R. Glenn & Ann Hammonds · Grace B. Hartdegen · Constance Hiatt · Geoff Holton & Margaret Norman · Melissa Itamura · Roxy Jones · Christopher Knudsen · Kim & Barbara Marienthal · Steve & Patricia McMahon · Gloria Mikuls · Jennifer Miller · Susan Neuhaus · Barbara Porter · Laurel Przybylski, in memory of Maryann Herber · Eileen Raphael K · Erica Rayas · Agnes Rogacsi · Marlene Saritzky · Pixie Hayward Schickele · Andrew Sessler · Marlene Stein · Kourosh Taghavi & Sara Hosseinizad · Henry Timnick · Janis Turner · Mark Wasserman & Judy Freeman M · Louis Weckstein & Karen Denevi · Carolyn & Larry Zaroff
Pat ro n s $ 1–74
Anonymous (9) · Susan Akeson · Jean Alspaugh · Bonnie Andersen · Nikkah Bahar · Mark Bailie and Barbara Mercer · Gladys
42 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1
Gini Erck & David Petta · Barbara & Marty Fishman · Stephen Follansbee & Richard Wolitz · Nancy H. Francis · Donald & Dava Freed · Dorothy & Chuck Garber M · Judith & Alex Glass · Bonnie Goldsmith & Allan Griffin · Ian M. Goldstein M · Rob & Susie Goodin · Sheldon & Judy Greene · Dan & Linda Guerra · Harriet Hamlin · Bob & Linda Harris · Kate Hartley & Mike Kass · Joe Hartzog · Richard L. Hay · Irene & Robert Hepps · Dixie Hersh K · John & Elise Holmgren M · In honor of Julie & Patrick Kennedy · Mr. & Mrs. Edwin Ives · Ken & Judith Johnson · Barbara E. Jones in memory of William E. Jones · Judi and Buz Kanter, in honor of Susie Medak and Marge Randolph · Ken Katen · Dennis Kaump · Steve Kispersky · Carla Koren & Neal Parish · Jennifer Kuenster & George Miers · John Leys · Ray Lifchez · Mary A. Mackey · Bruce & Pamela Maigatter · Joan & Roger Mann · Helen Marcus & David Williamson · Josephine Maxon & Karl Ruppenthal M · Nancy McCormick · Marie S. McEnnis · Christopher McKenzie & Manuela Albuquerque · Caryl & Peter Mezey · Harrison Miller & Clare McCamy · Rita Moreno · Barbara Morgan · Juliet Moser · Jerry Mosher · Moule Family Fund · Ron Nakayama · Jeanne E. Newman · Pier & Barbara Oddone · Steve
Olsen · Robyn & David Owen M · Nancy Park · James F. Pine M · Wil & Joyce Pinney · Charles Pollack & Joanna Cooper · Susie & Eric Poncelet · Paul Popenoe · Chuck & Kati Quibell · David & Mary Ramos · Ian Reinhard · Charles R. Rice · Paul & Phyllis Robbins · Horacio Rodriguez · Gary Roof & Douglas Light · Dace P. Rutland · John Sanger · Dorothy R. Saxe · Barbara & Jerry Schauffler · Bob & Gloria Schiller · Paul Schneider K · Mark Schoenrock & Claudia Fenelon · Teddy & Bruce Schwab · Steve & Susan Shortell · Mark Shusterman, M.D. · Dave & Lori Simpson · Jerry & Dick Smallwood · Dr. Scott & Mrs. Alice So K · Louis & Bonnie Spiesberger · Dr. Suzy J. Spradlin K · Lynn M. & A. Justin Sterling · Rocky & Gretchen Stone · Monroe W. Strickberger · Nancy & Fred Teichert · Tracy Thompson · Karen Tiedemann & Geoff Piller · Deborah & Bob Van Nest · Gerald & Ruth Vurek · Louise & Larry Walker · Dena & Wayne WatsonLamprey · Sallie Weissinger · Dr. Ben & Mrs. Carolyn Werner · Fred Winslow & Barbara Baratta · Susan & Harvey Wittenberg · George & Kathy Wolf · Margaret Wu & Ciara Cox
Balmas · Jana L. Baumann · Francine Beall · Noemi Beas · Philip J. Beilin · Ruth Ann Binder & Matt Rossiter · Evan Bloom · Beverley Bolt · Lorraine Bonner · Randy Borden · Angela Bortugno · Edward Boscacci · Jan P. Boyce · Latriecia Brown · Megan Brown · Ken Bruckmeier · Jean Burke · Ann Butcher · Katherine R. Campbell · Eileen Carey · Bessie Chin · Yvonne Chong · Paul Chu · Sharene Chuang · Paula A. Clark · Martha Conklin · Janet Cooper · Jennifer Cruz · Ed Cullen & Ann O’Connor · Alyse Danis · Doris Davis · Gail Debellis · Joanne K. Delehanty · Jacqueline Dennis · John Diller & Melissa Levine · Sebastian & Jennifer Doniach · Claudia Dougherty · Janet Eadie · Kathleen Ecker · VickiLee Edge · Cele & Paul Eldering M · Emma Ernst · David Fankushen · Farhad Farzaneh · Jerome Fishman · Stephanie L. Flaniken · Susan Floore · Carol L. Fones · Bharbara Foxcroft K · Loretta D. Garcia · Carlie Gehle · Gerry & Steve Gerardin · Kathleen Gesley · Dan Grace · Bettyanne Green · Patrick Guillemot & Sallie Blytt · Victoria Hale · Jeanne Halpern · Marjorie Hamm & Angela Bottum · Eleanor Hansen · Mrs. Karen Heather · Judith Hebert · Mary Kay Henderson · William Herkelrath · Elizabeth Hodder · Anne L. Hoffman · Don & Janice Holve · Dr. J.J. Hostynek · Doris Iaroli · Roger Jaeckel · Julie Jones · Leo Kane · Mark Kannett & Sandy Cohn · Paul Katz · Leslie Kessler · Mary King · Jenifer & Grayson Kirtland · Gretchen Klug · Carole J. Krause · Alison Kuhns · Clara Kwun · Jane Lang · Jean Rowe Lieber, R.N., N.P. · Janet L. Linnekin · Fred Lipschultz · Christine Liu ·
Carol Lonergan · Rebecca Malkin Chocron & Lionel Chocron · Alan Mayer & Clara Greisman · Ms. Joan McCauley · Diana & James McClelland · Kellie McElhaney · Donna McIlvaine · Chris Mehling · Holly Middleton · Lucy Milgram · Mary-Leigh Miller · Gaurav Misra · Mary Jean Moore · Suzanne Moullen · Susan Munn · Jaleh Niazi · Jennifer Normoyle · Megan O’Reilly-Lewis · Janet Ostler · Lynette Pang & Michael Man · Lisa S. Park Steskal · Karin Patterson · Dr. Ruth Pease · Ann Peden · Marie Pedersen · Judith Pelzner · Therese Pipe · Karen Platt · Dawn ShifreenPomerantz · Walter Price · Gillian Printon · Jill Ratner · Cynthia Richards · Virginia N. Rigney · Kashara Robinson · Milton Ruiz · Elisabeth Russell · Dawn Sagorski · Bonnie Sanders · Sarah Sawyer · Susie Schlesinger · Nina Schloesser · Sonja Schmid · Steven Schultz & Nancy Ulmer · Chris & Kerri Shannon · Geraldine Shanteau · Marian Shostrom · Sarah Showalter · Jeff & Mardi SicularMertens · Alice Smith · Sharon Smith · Donna Smith-Harrison & Samuel Harrison · Leon Somplinsky · Jordan Stark · Dorian Stull · John Takeuchi · Eleanor Tandowsky · Avis Taylor · Ruby Unger · Norma Van Cott · Meredith Van Schoick · Joan Waranoff · Verie Waters Clark · Dave Wedding Dress · Mary Weinstein · Janet & Gerry Weitz · Bobby White · Ginger Wick · G. Geoffrey Wood & Lora Condon · Ronald Wyatt · Lily Yang · Dr. & Mrs. Mark J. Yanover · Helen Ying · Samuel Zabor
Named funds The Dale Elliot Fund The Bret C. Harte Young Directors Fund The Jan & Howard Oringer Outreach Coordinator Position The Bernard Osher Foundation New Play Development Program The Peter F. Sloss Dramaturgy & Literary Fellowship Fund The Strauch Kulhanjian Artistic Innovation Fund The Harry Weininger Sound Fellowship Fund
We acknowledge the following donors for their generous support of the 40th Anniversary Campaign: I n v e s to r s c i r c le Anonymous Wayne Jordan & Quinn Delaney The Bernard Osher Foundation The Strauch Kulhanjian Family s e a s o n pro d u c e r s C i rc le Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Ira & Leonore Gershwin Philanthropic Fund Marjorie Randolph Jean & Michael Strunsky pro d u c e r s C i r c le Anonymous S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation David & Vicki Cox Walter & Elise Haas Fund Rick Hoskins & Lynne Frame The James Irvine Foundation John & Helen Meyer Jan & Howard Oringer Joan Sarnat & David Hoffman Betty & Jack Schafer Felicia Woytak & Steve Rasmussen Martin & Margaret Zankel a s s o c iat e pro d u c e r s C i r c le Shelley & Jonathan Bagg Becky & Jeff Bleich Thalia Dorwick Robin & Rich Edwards Bill Falik & Diana Cohen Kerry Francis & John Jimerson Mary & Nicholas Graves
The Hearst Foundation, Inc. William & Flora Hewlett Foundation Koret Foundation Sarah McArthur & Michael LeValley Sandra & Ross McCandless Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Dugan Moore Mary Ann & Lou Peoples Peter Pervere & Georgia Cassel Richard A. Rubin & H. Marcia Smolens Cynthia & William Schaff Michael & Sue Steinberg The Harold & Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust Guy Tiphane Wayne & Gladys Valley Foundation
d i r e c to r s C i r c le Rena Bransten John & Carol Field Susan Medak & Greg Murphy Len & Barbara Rand Stephen & Cindy Snow The Tournesol Project Arne & Gail Wagner Woodlawn Foundation
pr e s i d e n t s C i rc le American Express Philanthropic Foundation Ken & Joni Avery Kimo Campbell Jennifer Chaiken & Sam Hamilton William Espey & Margaret Hart Edwards David & Vicki Fleishhacker, in memory of Peter Sloss Scott & Sherry Haber Julie Matlof Kennedy & Patrick Kennedy Wanda Kownacki Carole & Ted Krumland Dixon Long David & Connie Lowe Dale & Don Marshall Eddie & Amy Orton Beth & David Sawi
pl ay w r i g h t s c i rc le Anonymous (2) Stephen K. Cassidy Mel & Hella Cheitlin East Bay Community Foundation Kristina Flanagan Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson Bob & Linda Harris Roger & Silvija Hoag Patrick & Holly O’Dea Patricia Sakai & Richard Shapiro Kae Skeels Douglas Tilden Wells Fargo Foundation We thank these additional donors for their support of the 40th Anniversary Campaign: Anonymous (3) Pat Angell in memory of Gene Angell Susan & Barry Baskin Alvin Baum Harry & Suzie Blount Lynne Carmichael Kristin Carpenter Susan Chamberlin
Harry & Susan Dennis Alex Edwards Entrekin Foundation Cynthia A Farner Steven, Jill, & Kevin Fugaro Mary Hamilton Earl & Bonnie Hamlin Harlan & Joanne Heydon Deborah & David Kirshman Jack Klingelhofer Lynn Eve Komaromi Zandra Faye LeDuff Nancy & George Leitmann Ellen & Barry Levine George I. Lythcott, III Neil & Leah Mac Neil Helen Marcus & David Williamson Miles & Mary Ellen McKey Ron Nakayama Barbara & Pier Oddone Judith & Richard Oken Regina Phelps Aaron Phillips James & Maxine Risley Barbara & Richard Rosenberg Sarlo Foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund, in honor of Rebecca Martinez Dr. & Mrs. Philip D. Schild Sherry & David Smith Mr. Leon Van Steen Dave Wedding Dress Julie M. Weinstein Alexis Wong
To learn more about the 40th Anniversary Campaign, contact Lynn Eve Komaromi, Director of Development, at 510 647-2903 or lynneve@berkeleyrep.org.
Sustaining members as of July 2012: Anonymous (2) Sam Ambler Carl W. Arnoult & Aurora Pan Ken & Joni Avery Nancy Axelrod Edith Barschi Fritzi Benesch Carole B. Berg Linda Brandenburger Jill Bryans Bruce Carlton & Richard G. McCall Stephen K. Cassidy Andrew Daly & Jody Taylor Rich & Robin Edwards William Espey & Margaret Hart Edwards Carol & John Field
Dr. Stephen E. Follansbee & Dr. Richard A. Wolitz Kerry Francis Dr. Harvey & Deana Freedman Paul T. Friedman Laura K. Fujii Marjorie Ginsburg & Howard Slyter Mary & Nicholas Graves Elizabeth Greene Richard & Lois Halliday Linda & Bob Harris Fred Hartwick Douglas J. Hill Robin C. Johnson Lynn Eve Komaromi Bonnie Killip Hoskins/Frame Family Trust Zandra Faye LeDuff
Ines R. Lewandowitz Dot Lofstrom Dale & Don Marshall Sumner & Hermine Marshall Rebecca Martinez & Peter Sloss Suzanne & Charles McCulloch Miles & Mary Ellen McKey Susan Medak & Greg Murphy Toni Mester Sharon Ott Amy Pearl Parodi Barbara Peterson Margaret Phillips Marjorie Randolph Bonnie Ring Living Trust Betty & Jack Schafer Brenda Buckhold Shank, M.D., Ph.D. Michael & Sue Steinberg
Karen Stevenson Dr. Douglas & Anne Stewart Jean Strunsky Phillip & Melody Trapp Janis Turner Dorothy Walker Grace Williams Karen & Henry Work Martin & Margaret Zankel
Gifts received by Berkeley Rep: Estate of Suzanne Adams Estate of Nelly Berteaux Estate of Nancy Croley Estate of John E. & Helen A. Manning Estate of Richard Markell Estate of Margaret Purvine Estate of Harry Weininger
Members of this Society, which is named in honor of Founding Director Michael W. Leibert, have designated Berkeley Rep in their estate plans. Unless the donor specifies otherwise, planned gifts become a part of Berkeley Rep’s endowment, where they will provide the financial stability that enables Berkeley Rep to maintain the highest standards of artistic excellence, support new work, and serve the community with innovative education and outreach programs, year after year, in perpetuity. For more information on becoming a member, visit our website at berkeleyrep.org or contact Daria Hepps at 510 647-2904 or dhepps@berkeleyrep.org.
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a bou t be r k e l e y r e p staff and affiliations Artistic Director Tony Taccone
Managing Director Susan Medak
General Manager Karen Racanelli
a r t i s t ic Artistic Associate & Casting Director Amy Potozkin Artistic Associate Mina Morita Director, The Ground Floor/ Resident Dramaturg Madeleine Oldham Literary Associate Julie McCormick Artists under Commission David Adjmi Glen Berger Marcus Gardley Dan LeFranc Tarell McCraney Dominic Orlando Stew/Heidi Rodewald
Tailor Kathy Kellner Griffith First Hand Janet Conery Wardrobe Supervisor Barbara Blair Assistant Costume Designer Amy Bobeda
Aleta George Michael Grunwald Ayanna Makalani Kyle Sircus Concessionaires Amy Bobeda Natalie Bulkley Mariko Conner Alex Friedman Jamaica Montgomery-Glenn Stephanie Graham Wendi Gross Kathryn Gucik Emily Hartman Mary Kay Hickox Champagne Hughes Kimberly “Mik” Jew Maria Jimenez Anya Kazimierski Devon LaBelle Alling Langin Hannah Lennett Margot Leonard Kathleen Martinelli Candice McDowell Vita O’Shea Gayle Reiss Benjamin Sandberg April Sizemore-Barber Andrew Susskind Nancy Villatoro Amanda Warner Brandon Weinbrenner Usher Coordinators Nelson & Marilyn Goodman
p roduc t ion Production Manager Tom Pearl Associate Production Manager Amanda Williams O’Steen Company Manager Megan Wygant s tag e m a nag e m e n t Production Stage Manager Michael Suenkel Stage Manager Kimberly Mark Webb Assistant Stage Manager Leslie M. Radin Production Assistants Megan McClintock Amanda Warner s tag e op e r at ion s Stage Supervisor Julia Englehorn p rop e r t i e s Properties Manager ashley dawn Assistant Properties Managers Gretta Grazier Jillian A. Green s c e n e s hop Technical Director Jim Smith Assistant Technical Director Colin Babcock Shop Foreman Sam McKnight Carpenters ET Hazzard III Jamaica Montgomery-Glenn s c e n ic a r t Charge Scenic Artist Lisa Lázár costumes Costume Director Maggi Yule Draper Kitty Muntzel
e l e c t r ic s Master Electrician Frederick C. Geffken Production Electricians Christine Cochrane Kenneth Cote s ou n d Sound Supervisor James Ballen Sound Engineer Angela Don a dm i n i s t r at ion Controller Suzanne Pettigrew Director of Technology Gustav Davila Executive Assistant Andrew Susskind Bookkeeper Kristine Taylor Human Resources Manager David Lorenc Human Resources Consultant Laurel Leichter Database Manager Diana Amezquita de v e l opm e n t Director of Development Lynn Eve Komaromi Associate Director of Development Daria Hepps Director of Individual Giving Laura Fichtenberg Senior Campaign Manager Amber Jo Manuel Institutional Grants Manager Bethany Herron Special Events Manager Lily Yang Individual Giving Associate Sarah Nowicki Development Database Coordinator Jane Voytek Development Associate Beryl Baker pat ron s e r v ic e s Patron Services Manager Katrena Jackson House Manager Debra Selman Assistant House Managers Natalie Bulkley Octavia Driscoll
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b ox off ic e Ticket Services Director Christine Bond Subscription Manager & Associate Sales Manager Laurie Barnes Box Office Supervisor Terry Goulette Box Office Agents Rae Bittle Amy Bobeda Christina Cone Luisa Frasconi Sherice Jones Eliza Oakley Tom Toro Amanda Warner m a r k e t i ng & c om m u n ic at ion s Director of Marketing & Communications Robert Sweibel Director of Public Relations / Associate Director of Marketing & Communications Terence Keane Art Director Cheshire Isaacs Video & Multimedia Producer Pauline Luppert Communications Manager Karen McKevitt Marketing Manager Kyle Sircus Audience Development Manager Cari Turley Webmaster Christina Cone Program Advertising Ellen Felker
op e r at ion s Facilities Director Emiel Koehler Facilities Coordinator Lauren Shorofsky Building Engineer Thomas Tran Maintenance Technician Johnny Van Chang Facilities Assistants Kevin Barry Sonny Hudson Sophie Li Carlos Mendoza berkeley rep s c ho ol of t h e at r e Director of the School of Theatre Rachel L. Fink Associate Director MaryBeth Cavanaugh Jan & Howard Oringer Outreach Coordinator Dave Maier Community Programs Manager Benjamin Hanna School Administrator Cassie Newman Registrar Katie Riemann Faculty Renzo Ampuero Jeffrey Bihr Amy Bobeda Jon Burnett Rebecca Castelli Sally Clawson Deborah Eubanks Nancy Gold Gary Graves Marvin Greene Benjamin Hanna Melissa Hillman Gendell Hing-Hernández Andrew Hurteau Ben Johnson Ken Kelleher Krista Knight Devon LaBelle Julian López-Morillas Dave Maier Marilet Martinez Patricia Miller Michael Miranda Alex Moggridge Christopher Morrison Michael Navarra Dael Orlandersmith Roxie Perkins Lisa Anne Porter Diane Rachel Elyse Shafarman Michael Storm Maggi Yule Outreach Teaching Artists Michael Barr Gendell Hing-Hernández Ben Johnson Devon LaBelle Marilet Martinez Sarita Ocón Carla Pantoja Lexie Papedo Tommy Shepherd Elena Wright Teacher Advisory Council Drea Beale Julie Boe
Amy Crawford Beth Daly Jan Hunter Marianne Phillip Richard Silberg John Warren Jordan Winer Docent Committee Thalia Dorwick, Chair Matty Bloom, Co-Chair Charlotte Martinelli, Co-Chair Chinglish Docents Joy Lancaster, Lead Docent Nona Hungate Jean Holmes Selma Meyerowitz Arlene Roberton Joan Sullivan 201 2–1 3 B e r k e l e y R e p F e l l ow s h i p s Bret C. Harte Directing Fellow Brandon Weinbrenner Company/Theatre Management Fellow Leah Barish Costume Fellow Timothy Bruno Development Fellow Jamie McClave Education Fellows Ashley Cleveland Amanda Spector Graphic Design Fellow Mary Kay Hickox Harry Weininger Sound Fellow Emily Fassler Lighting / Electrics Fellow Anthony Jannuzzi Marketing & Communications Fellow Jacob Marx Rice Peter F. Sloss Literary/ Dramaturgy Fellow Nora Sorena Casey Production Management Fellow Read Tuddenham Properties Fellow Ann Vollrath Scenic Art Fellow Betty Lin Scenic Construction Fellow Ali Dineen Stage Management Fellow Rachel London
Affiliations The director and choreographer are members of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, Inc., an independent national labor union. The Scenic, Costume, Lighting, and Sound Designers in lort Theatres are represented by United Scenic Artists Local usa-829, iatse.
boa r d of t ru st e e s Marjorie Randolph
B oa r d M e m b e r s
e xecu tiv e vi ce Pr e s id e n t
Helen Meyer
Vi c e Pr e s id e n t
Richard Shapiro Vi c e Pr e s id e n t
Emily Shanks Tre a s u r e r
Scott R. Haber S ecre ta ry
Roger A. Strauch
Ch air , T ru s te e s Co m m it t e e
Pamela Nichter
Ch air , Au d it co m m it t e e
Pa s t Pr e s id e n t s
Helen C. Barber A. George Battle Carole B. Berg Robert W. Burt Shih-Tso Chen Narsai M. David Nicholas M. Graves Richard F. Hoskins Jean Knox Robert M. Oliver Harlan M. Richter Richard A. Rubin Edwin C. Shiver Roger A. Strauch Warren Widener Martin Zankel
Carrie Avery Steve Buster Martha Ehmann Conte Robin Edwards William T. Espey William Falik Lisa Finer David Fleishhacker Kerry L. Francis Paul T. Friedman Jill Fugaro David Hoffman, PhD Carole S. Krumland Dale Rogers Marshall Julie M. McCray Susan Medak Jack Schafer Jean Z. Strunsky Tony Taccone S u s tain in g a dvi s o r s
Carole B. Berg Rena Bransten Stephen K. Cassidy Diana J. Cohen John Field Nicholas M. Graves Richard F. Hoskins Sandra R. McCandless Dugan Moore Pat Rougeau Patricia Sakai Michael Steinberg Michael Strunsky Felicia Woytak Martin Zankel
Sunday, October 21 at 1pm Sunday, November 11 at 1pm Saturday, December 1 at 1pm
p h oTo Co u r T e S y o f k e v i n b e r n e . Co m
Thalia Dorwick, PhD
Geoff Hoyle in Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead
Pre s id e n t
CPS 091511 open 1_6v.pdf
Please don’t remain silent. Founding Director Michael W. Leibert Producing Director, 1968–83
Advertise in the Berkeley Rep Magazine. Email efelker@berkeleyrep.org or call 510 548-0725. 2 0 1 2– 1 3 · issue 1 · t h e b e r k e l e y r e p m ag a z i n e · 45
F YI Latecomers
Please arrive on time. There is no late seating, except at the discretion of the house manager.
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Visit our website berkeleyrep.org You can buy tickets and plan your visit, read our blog, watch video, sign up for classes, donate to the Theatre, and explore Berkeley Rep.
Emergency exits Please note the nearest exit. In an emergency, walk—do not run —to the nearest exit. Accessibility Both theatres offer wheelchair seating and special services for those with vision- or hearing-impairment. Infrared listening devices are available at no charge in both theatre lobbies. Audio descriptions are available in the box office; please request these materials at least two days in advance of your performance date.
No food or glassware in the house Beverages in cans, bottles, or cups with lids are allowed. Please keep perfume to a minimum Many patrons are sensitive to the use of perfumes and other scents. Recycle and compost your waste Help us be more green by using the recycling and compost containers found throughout the Theatre. Phones / electronics / recordings Please make sure your cell phone, pager, or watch alarm will not beep. Doctors may check pagers with the house manager and give seat location for messages. Use of recording equipment or taking of photographs in the theatre is strictly prohibited. Please do not touch the set or props You are welcome to take a closer look at the set, but please don’t step onto the stage. Some of the props can be fragile, and are placed precisely. No children under 7 Many Berkeley Rep productions are unsuitable for young children. Please inquire before bringing children to the Theatre. No babes in arms.
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Tickets/box office Box office hours: noon–7pm, Tue–Sun Call 510 647-2949 Click berkeleyrep.org anytime Fax: 510 647-2975 Under 30? Half-price advance tickets! For anyone under the age of 30, based on availability. Proof of age required. Some restrictions apply. Senior/student rush Full-time students and seniors 65+ save $10 on sections A and B. One ticket per ID, one hour before showtime. Proof of eligibility required. Subject to availability. Group tickets Bring 10-14 people and save $5 per ticket; bring 15 or more and save 20%. And we waive the service charge. Entourage tickets If you can bring at least 10 people, we’ll give you a code for 20% off tickets to up to five performance dates. Learn more at berkeleyrep.org/entourage. Student matinee Tickets are just $10 each. Learn more at berkeleyrep.org/studentmatinees. For Group, Entourage, and Student matinee tickets, contact Cari Turley at cturley@ berkeleyrep.org or 510 647-2918. Sorry, we can’t give refunds or offer retroactive discounts.
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Educators Bring Berkeley Rep to your school! Call the School of Theatre at 510 647-2972 for information about free and low-cost workshops for elementary, middle, and high schools. Call Cari Turley at 510 647-2918 for $10 student-matinee tickets. Call the box office at 510 647-2949 for information on discounted subscriptions for preschool and K–12 educators.
Theatre store Berkeley Rep merchandise and show-related books are available in the Hoag Theatre Store in the Roda Theatre and our kiosk in the Thrust Stage lobby.
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Only subscribers may exchange their tickets for another performance of the same show. Exchanges can be made online until midnight (or 7pm by phone) the day preceding the scheduled performance. Exchanges are made on a seat-available basis.
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Request information To request mailings or change your address, write to Berkeley Rep, 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA 94704; call 510 647‑2949; email info@berkeleyrep.org; or click berkeleyrep.org/joinourlist. If you use Gmail, Yahoo, or other online email accounts, please authorize patronreply@ berkeleyrep.org.
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THE NEW SEASON
AMERICAN C O N S E R VATO R Y T H E AT E R
2012 13
J O I N U S F O R W O RL D P RE M I E RE S,
RE I M AG I N E D C L A SS I C S, A N D
T H RI L L I N G T H E AT RI C A L E V E N T S ! FE ATU R I N G
Direct from Broadway!
World Premiere Musical Event
THE NORMAL HEART
S T UCK EL E VATOR
The landmark drama—winner of the 2011 Tony Award
A visionary and visually spectacular hip-hop opera about a Chinese deliveryman trapped in an elevator for 81 hours
The Revitalized Classic
S O P H O C L E S’
ELEKTR A Featuring Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis
Stoppard’s Masterwork
ARCADIA
Stoppard’s most ravishing play— a lush romance that spans centuries AND MUCH MORE!
4 - P L AY PA C K A G E S S TA R T A S L O W A S
$ 3 5 P E R P L AY ! ACT-SF.ORG/JOIN | 415.749.2250
Photo by Ashley Forrette
Photo by Gene X. Hwang/Orange Photography
leave a little different
It’s ambitious, but we’re trying to change the world, one play at a time. To help, visit berkeleyrep.org/consider