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News & Notes

In recent years, Bread & Butter has focused on small-cast contemporary dramas (Red, The North Pool, the world-premiere of Funeral Game), and we’re proud to be adding Skylight to this list of productions.

The play features Bread & Butter Theatre’s Lana Palmer and Bruce Avery alongside Tyler Aguallo, and is directed by Bill Peters.

About Playwright David Hare

David Hare is one of the UK’s most prolific and critically acclaimed writers, having written extensively for the stage, television and film. Hare was recently described by the Washington Post as ‘the premiere political dramatist writing in English’. For his work in theatre he has received eight Laurence Olivier Award nominations, winning the award twice, for Racing Demon in 1990 and Skylight in 1996. He has also received three Tony Award nominations for Plenty in 1985, Racing Demon in 1996 and Skylight in 1997.

Hare has received various award nominations for his film work, including two Academy Award nominations for The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008); two Golden Globe Award nominations; and five BAFTA Award nominations.

The North Pool

By Rajiv Joseph

In this riveting psychological thriller, a high-school vice principal and a Middle Eastern–born transfer student engage in a politically and emotionally charged game of cat and mouse, with dangerous consequences.

FEATURING:

Bruce Avery

Zaya Kolia

DIRECTED BY:

Lana Palmer

Opens January 11 at Potrero Stage in San Francisco.

THE NORTH POOL is presented as part of PlayGround’s Potrero Stage Presenting Program.

News & Notes

Bread & Butter Theatre presents John Logan’s RED

Bread & Butter Theatre announces its first 2018 production: the Tony Award-winning Red, by John Logan.

Master abstract expressionist Mark Rothko has just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art, a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that follow, Rothko works feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when Ken gains the confidence to challenge him, Rothko faces the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing. Raw and provocative, RED is a searing portrait of an artist’s ambition and vulnerability as he tries to create a definitive work for an extraordinary setting.

Red was nominated seven Tony Awards, winning the 2010 Tony for Best Play.

Runs March 23-31st at the Phoenix Theatre in San Francisco

Directed by: Lana Palmer

Featuring:

Bruce Avery as Rothko
Nick Moore as Ken

Set design by: Giulio Cesare Perrone

News & Notes Productions

Director’s Notes: As You Like It

As You Like It is one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies. Written around 1599, it may have been the first play performed at Shakespeare’s playhouse, The Globe. Jaques quotes the Globe’s motto, “totus mundus agit histrionem,” when he begins his famous “seven ages of man” monologue with “all the world’s a stage.” It’s easy to imagine him gesturing to the wooden building around him, and to the audience before him, when he first uttered those words in the newly built theater.

Jaques and his speech are only part of this play’s appeal. Rosalind, played in our production by noted Bay Area actor Melissa Claire, is one of his most revered characters. Her eloquent wit, her courage, and her agile humor make her a remarkable creation. In Shakespeare’s original staging she would have been played by a boy. That this boy plays a woman, Rosalind, was a convention of the stage in Shakespeare’s time and in itself would have been unremarkable. But Shakespeare’s restless intelligence led him to probe the nature of gender and affection, as the boy playing Rosalind then embodied Rosalind dressing up like a boy, Ganymede, who then “pretends” to be Rosalind for Orlando to woo. If mathematical terms might help us understand this equation, it goes something like boy=girl=boy=girl.

It’s confusing, but delightful, to watch the permutations of behavior and romance that ensue from Rosalind’s hijinks. In this production we loosely set her and her fellows in late 19th century California, on and around a ranchero that has been usurped from his older brother by Duke Frederick. Property rights, brothers and their rivalries, and the fracturing and restoring of community are themes we explore in the play, along with the dizzying spectacle of love-at-first-sight.

Performances:

July 22, 23, 29, 30

Oakmont Golf Club, Santa Rosa

August 8, 9

Dance Palace, Point Reyes Station