THE CUTTING BALL THEATER NEWSLETTER
March 29, 2006 Volume 2, Issue 8

Contents:
1. Hidden Classics Reading Series: German Expressionist Texts
2. Rehearsals underway for newest Cutting Ball production
3. Opportunities to work with The Cutting Ball

The Hidden Classics Reading Series is a chance for The Cutting Ball to share lesser-known classics with the Bay Area community. After each reading, there is an opportunity to discuss the plays and consider how a future production might impact its audience.

The German Expressionists were the bridge between the Realistic dramas of Henrik Ibsen, and the powerful, modern dramas of Bertolt Brecht. From Frank Wedekind to Ernst Toller, Oskar Kokoschka, and Carl Sternheim, the world was forever changed with these strange, intriguing masterpieces of language and images. A challenge for audience, actor, and director, these are puzzles to be pondered, torn apart, and examined, just as the playwrights themselves tore apart and examined humanity.

“Man” from Murderer The Women’s Hope

“Woman”” from Murderer The Women’s Hope

Costume designs by Claire Calderwood. More designs will be on display at the reading.

The Newest Production at The Cutting Ball

Rehearsals have begun for our next production, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World by Suzan-Lori Parks. We are very excited by the opportunity to perform the work of this brilliant playwright, who Tony Kushner called “ the greatest playwright writing in the English language today.”

About Suzan-Lori Parks
by William Selig

Suzan-Lori Parks is the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Her diverse background began as the daughter of an army colonel, growing up in six different states before spending her teenage years in Germany. There, her family sent her to German-language schools, rather than the schools available on the base. This experience was seminal in her growth both personally and artistically. “In Germany,” she told one interviewer, “I wasn’t a black person, strictly speaking. I was an American who didn’t speak the language. I was a foreigner.” (1)

Faulkner, Woolf and Joyce were among her greatest influences as a young writer. “I write plays that are theatrical, performative, language based and formally challenging while also being interested in human emotions and the human condition. I am most interested in Time and how people pass through it…A by-product of Time is History – what is remembered, recorded and transported into the next age. History – the destruction and creation of it through theatre pieces and how Black people fit into all of this – is my primary artistic concern.” (2)

Parks’ plays are layered with an unprecedented poetics all her own. Her approach is deconstructive, ripping elements of time, history, memory, and language from their moorings, and jumbling them together with a jazz-inflected sensibility. Her musicality and repetition create waves of dramatic movement that defy comparison. Her representation of African-American history is far from simplistic, “[We’re] not just saying, ‘I denounce this moment, and American culture.’ We’re saying, ‘Let’s play!’ It’s like when Black folks – or any folks – play with language. There’s a great joy in it. You embrace your American English, and yet you fiddle with it. It’s fun. Yeah, it’s fun! There’s also a little bit of sadness in it because of all the other things. But it’s basically funny in a very deep and profound way that makes you think about 9 million things… It’s not all about pain – by saying it’s all about pain we deny ourselves the pleasure.” (3)

1. http://www.tcg.org/am_theatre/at_articles/AT_Volume_17/Oct00/at_web1000_parks.html
2. http://www.alpertawards.org/archive/winner96/parks.html
3. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9944,hannaham,9663,1.html

We welcome volunteers to assist with load-ins of upcoming productions. This is a great way to introduce yourself to The Cutting Ball and find out more about us. Please visit http://cuttingball.com/volunteer.php for more information.

The Wish List

The Cutting Ball Theater relies on donations from individuals to continue producing the high-quality, energetic work on which we pride ourselves. Like most performing arts organizations, the majority of donated funds come from individual theater-lovers, not government agencies or corporate foundations. To make a tax-deductible donation, please visit: http://cuttingball.com/donate.php.

For more exciting Cutting Ball information, please visit www.cuttingball.com .

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