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Thank You!
Thank you for making Cutting Ball’s 2008 –2009 Season an enormous success. Our first season in residence at the EXIT on Taylor was our best attended; Mud and Thom Pain enjoyed extended runs, and Victims of Duty was nominated for four Bay Area Critics Circle Awards, winning for best production.
As successful as we were artistically and at the box office, we still need help reaching our Annual Fund goal. We need to raise $11,000 by July 31st. One of our donors has agreed to match all gifts dollar for dollar. Please consider making a tax-deductable donation to The Cutting Ball Theater by clicking the following link:
Your support will help ensure that The Cutting Ball is here for years to come, and that our 10th Anniversary Season will be our best ever. I am so excited to announce our new season below.
Thank you for believing in The Cutting Ball Theater and for your support!
Rob Melrose
Artistic Director
by Eugène Ionesco
In a new translation by Rob Melrose
Directed by Rob Melrose
October 23 – November 22, 2009
Opening Night: October 29 at 8pm
Steven Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Saturday Night Live are all examples of how much our culture loves absurdity. But when did this love affair begin? The Cutting Ball Theater opens its 10th season with the play that started it all, Eugène Ionesco’s comic masterpiece THE BALD SOPRANO. The Smiths are a couple from London who have invited another couple, the Martins, over for a visit. Mr. and Mrs. Smith mourn the loss of Bobby Watson, but can’t quite decide which Bobby Watson they are mourning. Mr. and Mrs. Martin are pleased to have just met even though they have been married for many years and have two children together. This hysterically funny play, the perfect follow up to last season’s hit production of Ionecso’s Victims of Duty, which garnered a Bay Area Critics Circle award for Best Production, premiered in Paris in 1950 and was Ionesco’s first work for the theater. Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose directs THE BALD SOPRANO, about which The New York Times said, "The play has not aged. One might even suggest that we have caught up with [it]."
A New Play by Marcus Gardley
Directed by Amy Mueller
A co-production with Playwrights Foundation
March 12 – April 11, 2010
Opening Night: March 19 at 8pm
Set on the banks of the Mississippi during the final days of the Civil War . . . AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI is a poetic journey of forgiveness and redemption. Inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, this thought-provoking fantasia play combines traditional storytelling, gospel music, and a wicked sense of humor to create a rich, imaginative world that allows trees to preach, rivers to waltz, and Jesus to moonwalk. Amy Mueller directs this profoundly moving story, which was workshopped during Risk is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival, the only play festival in America solely dedicated to experimental works for the stage.
About the production, Gardley says, “Jesus Moonwalks is in a lot of ways my signature play . . . this play has a personal resonance to me because it is based upon a story my great-grandmother used to tell about her father who fled the bonds of slavery and traveled the country in search of his family . . . It is my hope that the play opens the door for dialogue about the impact of myth, spirituality, and history on our national culture.” One of the Bay Area’s most important new poet-playwrights, Gardley was among Dramatists Magazine’s 50 writers to watch in 2007.
By Eugenie Chan
Directed by Rob Melrose
May 21 – June 20, 2010
Opening Night: May 23 at 5pm
Back by popular demand, Cutting Ball Theater presents playwright Eugenie Chan’s BONE TO PICK. Re-telling the myth of Ariadne in a dizzyingly postmodern look at the costs of love and war, this incendiary play, commissioned by Cutting Ball Theater and Magic Theatre/Z Space New Works Initiative and nominated for the Glickman prize for Best New Play in the Bay Area, received its World Premiere during our 06-07 season as part of Avant GardARAMA!, becoming a stand-out of the season. The San Francisco Chronicle dubbed the production “richly rewarding right down to its marrow,” noting Paige Rogers’ performance as “riveting;” Rogers will reprise her tour de force role for this re-staging.
Accompanying BONE TO PICK is a newly commissioned companion piece, also by Chan, called DIADEM, a romantic retelling of the earlier parts of Ariadne’s myth, when she was young and in love. Together, these two original works will convey the complete story of Ariadne’s epic romance.
at the EXIT on Taylor
277 Taylor Street, San Francisco
The HCRS is a great opportunity to see rarely produced classics in an intimate and up close setting. Each reading is followed by a talk-back with the director and cast. Now in residence at the EXIT on Taylor, we are excited to move this successful program from Modern Times Bookstore to our new home.
The Knights
By Aristophanes
September 27, 2009
Sunday at 1pm
Full of Aristophanes’ trademark bawdy humor and political satire, THE KNIGHTS tells the story of two servants who come across an oracle that will change their lives, as well as the life of an honorable but lowly street vendor. Attacking corruption, injustice, and public figures, THE KNIGHTS reminds us that it’s never a good idea to get on Aristophanes’ bad side.
Based on the writings of Chaucer and Homer, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA is The Bard’s most satiric and biting critique of war. Wickedly funny and devastatingly poignant, this play chronicles a doomed love story set in the middle of the Trojan War.
The grudge match is on! Euripides’ play is the original story of the infamous sorceress Medea, who exacts the ultimate revenge on her cheating husband. Seneca’s version is the one that Shakespeare used as the inspiration for his Lady Macbeth and is perhaps the most modern and compelling. Cutting Ball will be presenting readings of both plays with identical casts, a discussion to follow, and a vote from the audience for the best version of MEDEA.
The tragicomedy WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN by Shakespeare’s contemporary Thomas Middleton sizzles and surprises with its potent blend of love, lust, adultery, incest, and murder. This Jacobean rarity feels surprisingly contemporary as it examines how love sometimes makes you do outrageous, unspeakable, and even deadly things.
Cutting Ball continues its series of Strindberg’s Chamber Plays, going back to the beginning of it all with STORM, in which a man returns to visit his ex-wife and his now grown daughter, but finds that the ghosts of his past still haunt him.
Count Anselmo’s obsession for valuable antiques make him a prime target for scams. Arlecchino, Brighella, Pantalone, and Columbina are all in on the act. This comedy by the author of The Servant of Two Masters is a rare treat to one of Italy’s most uproarious plays. This reading of THE ANTIQUARIAN’S FAMILY will be followed by a discussion on the art of commedia dell’arte.
© 2009 The Cutting Ball Theater |