OLD GLOBE SEASON 2023 PREVIEW
by Jacqueline Bull Coming off of a very successful postpandemic 2022 season, the Old Globe is continuing their momentum. (“We’ve had really full houses; it’s been really gratifying,” Erna Finci Viterbi Artistic Director, Barry Edelstein, remarked.) The 2023 season offers many of the things we look forward to: Shakespeare, world premiere commissions and vibrant variety. Barry Edelstein talked us through some selections of the new season.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci JAN. 21–FEB. 26
This show is from the mind of Mary Zimmerman who is known for her adaptations. “This is an existing piece that heralded her arrival on the scene when
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she was really kind of new in the 90s. I remember seeing it. I saw it when I was living in New York at the time and this young future of American theater director showed up with this piece that I went to see. And it just knocked me out because the material is not dramatic. It is literally Da Vinci’s notebook and sketches and scientific formulas and what Mary has done is figured out how to make a piece of theater out of it using all kinds of techniques: movement, music, narrative and using flying set design. It is really a total piece of theater. It doesn’t tell a story that goes ‘A’ to ‘B’ to ‘C.’ It is kind of impressionistic and you really sort of feel like you are diving into Leonardo’s mind through these beautiful, beautiful images that Mary makes,” Barry said.
Under a Baseball Sky FEB. 11–MAR. 12
This is a world premiere and Globecommissioned piece that came out
of the collaboration of writer José Cruz González and director James Vásquez who had earlier found a fruitful partnership on “American Mariachi.” “Typically what happens is a very close collaboration. The writer writes the play and a third figure is Danielle Mages Amato who is the dramaturg here at the Globe. And it was a very deep collaboration among the three of them. José writes a draft of the play and the director and the dramaturg read it and then everybody gets together and talks about it. [It’s] a long period of collaboration, discussion, reading drafts, rewriting, [then] a workshop where you add actors to the mix way before the first day of rehearsal.” “José discovered that there was a baseball culture here in Logan Heights/ Barrio Logan. And apparently in the earlier part of the 20th century, it was a massive Mexican American baseball culture. Baseball is such a powerful metaphor of being American and
PHOTO: LIZ LAUREN
Bright New Voices & Bold Adaptations