Box Office Help Needed--PASS IT AROUND

We're looking for 3-4 people to work up at the beee-auuuutiful Bruns Amphitheater (Orinda), and possibly fill in here at our Heinz office (West Berkeley) during our June-October summer season. Hours vary, but generally it's 4-8pm or 4:30-8:30pm Mon.-Sat., or 1-5pm on Sundays. Person must have a car; box office or customer service experience is preferred, and sound computer skills are required.

For more information, drop a line to rdolan@calshakes.org or call 510.548.9666.

To apply, fax cover letter and resume to 510.843.9921, Attn: Box Office Manager, or mail hard copies to:
Box Office Manager
California Shakespeare Theater
701 Heinz Ave
Berkeley CA 94710

Sarah Nealis and Joel Sass on your FM dial THIS THURSDAY!

Last year's Cordelia and this year's Marina--a.k.a. blogger and actress Sarah Nealis--will accompany Pericles adapter and director Joel Sass to the basement studios of KALX, UC Berkeley's popular radio station, this very Thursday. The occasion? An appearance on Arts in Review, Greg Scharpen's weekly afternoon arts round-up. So tune into 90.7 FM between noon and 12:30 this Thursday (May 15) to hear Nealis (a Berkeley grad) and Sass (as articulate a director as you'll find anywhere) speak the truth to the youth!

Sarah Nealis returns to the Blogosphere

Hello Cal Shakes fans and aimless internet wanderers alike, this is Sarah returning to the land of Blog for some more notes and musings on life in the theater.

Why am I doing this? That’s the question on my brain right now. It’s a bit nuts. I am currently quite overwhelmed with “double-duty,” rehearsing Pericles during the day and still performing in The Trojan Women at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley at night. These days are crazy. Par exemple, as the French say, yesterday I spent the morning ruminating on what it’s like to reunite with one’s parents (one long-lost, the other presumed dead), then spent a little time romping around a sea of rugs, trying to escape rape at the hands of both Alex Morf and Danny Scheie (yikes!, I mean he’s a dear friend and all, but…YIKES!) at two different times. Not to mention an evening of Greek tragedy over at the Aurora spilling my guts out to my “mother” (Hecuba) and a room of women who think I’m crazy. I mean, really, why am I doing this? And always the same silly answer always comes up, loud and clear, “What else would I do?”

Enough of that. Pericles!!! Joel Sass! I love them both. This show is going to be such a delight to perform, a nice change from rubbing a bunch of poop on my face (makeup), throwing on a bloody wedding dress (paint), and lamenting my being cursed by Apollo (Cassandra in The Trojan Women). Not in Pericles! We all get to play mucho characters, who all move and speak in tempo with their own worlds of origin. We are making up all of these worlds, rather than taking them literally, historically from some big smarty-pants text. Our worlds are ancient, of another element than we are used to; at least, that is our goal. So far, the process if delightful.

Another exciting thing about this piece, selfishly, is that I get to go from playing a daughter corrupted into incest by her… hmmm… confused, lonely, and creepy father, to the daughter of our hero Pericles, who herself goes on a hero’s journey of sorts. And of course, she is good, speaks from the heart and all that. So, you see, very different. Today actually, Ron Campbell (who is playing the creepy father) and I started off the morning by (again!) rolling around on the carpet to create a sort of dance that suggests the development of the perversion of our relationship. Sounds kinky, eh? It’s so much fun. We have a group of truly fearless artists, willing to jump right in and find these worlds that can only exist in the farthest stretches of our imaginations. Don’t miss it!

Gloriously funny, magnificent—the usual.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a review of the the 11th annual Pacific Playwrights Festival in Costa Mesa, CA. The article winds up with an enthusiastic, four-paragraph mention of You, Nero, a play by Amy Freed (who wrote Restoration Comedy, a huge hit for us in 2006) which had a staged reading at the festival. One of the readers—deemed "magnificent" by the Times—was our very own Danny Scheie, who appeared in Restoration Comedy and who is in the rehearsal hall as I type this preparing for his Pericles roles (Helicanus, Simonides, and Boult).

In case you don't feel like reading through the whole review, here are the paragraphs regarding You, Nero:

"...the festival drew to a close with a reading of Amy Freed’s You, Nero, an uproarious comedy set during the declining years of the Roman Empire. Even in a bare-bones staged reading—a format hardly congenial to a broad, bawdy gagfest—Ms. Freed’s play delighted almost from start to finish.

A spoof of theater through the ages—from Sophocles to A Chorus Line—You, Nero makes lively sport of contemporary American culture, as Ms. Freed imagines the mincing Nero (a magnificent Danny Scheie—but Nathan Lane might want to call his agent now) commissioning an image-primping pageant from a down-on-his-luck dramatist. Nero has banished tragedy, preferring fancy spectacles and saliva-generating gore-fests.

The slams at the puerile appeal of popular movies and television are predictable but still enjoyable, the theatrical in-jokes silly but inspired. Indeed, Ms. Freed’s gloriously funny play is its own argument for the continued viability of an endangered species, the stage comedy. I’m tempted to quote at length, but the play’s delirious charm would surely fizzle in sober newsprint.

For evidence of its irresistible appeal I’ll just report that the audience staggered out into the sunny spring afternoon with stomachs sore from laughter, and that I await a New York production with unusual relish."

As promised yesterday ... set and costume photos!

This is the Pericles set model (by Melpomene Katakalos). Actual Bruns hills will not, presumably, be red this season.

Set details. Note the onstage "offstage" areas, where characters transform to serve the storytelling.

Below, Raquel M. Barreto's costume sketches.


Prince Pericles of Tyre, his own self.




















Antiochus' sullied daughter.





















The grateful and kind (but foolish) governor Cleon.




















Pericles' bride, Thaisa.


















Cleon's wife, the duplicitous Dionyzia.


















Thaliard, the assassin with a heart of gold.


















Pericles' virtuous daughter, Marina.


















A bawd in the house of ill repute. I think she kinda looks like Amy Winehouse; she also makes me wonder if they're going to put Delia MacDougall in a fat suit.

Met. Greeted. Pericles!

Last Wednesday we had our first Meet & Greet of the 2008 season. The Meet & Greet is where—before the actors can get down to the business of their first script read-through—two things happen: Everyone—from the stage crew to the actors to the publicists and development department—introduces themselves (which caused much hilarity when the actors attempted to pronounce their unfamiliar, Grecian character names); and then the director, costume designer, and any other members of the creative team who happen to be present let a large group of staff, board members, and other special guests in on their vision for the production. In other words, last Tuesday we got to:

hear about Joel Sass' plans for creating Pericles' story-upon-story structure, beginning with a group of nomadic types unloading their cart onto a beach in Morocco (or some place like it), laying out a rug, and beginning to spin a yarn that eventually includes the whole epic tale. He spoke a bit about casting, how eight actors and four ensemble members are not just a matter of economy: "it makes sense to have a recognizable mother figure playing different variations on that," to have one actor who keeps playing the baddies (mostly), one who is the revered advisor is then the brothel costumer," "who has fallen completely off his moral axis." He also told us a bit about the otherwise-engaged Greg Brosofske's original score—how a musical premonition becomes Marina's theme, and how the music helps provide continuity and consistency in this often wild and chaotic storyline.

see Melpomene Katakalos' set, inspired by ancient Middle Eastern cityscapes and archeological relics; and including one magical tree and a set of onstage "offstage" areas constructed from weathered wood and more rugs. There will also be a large water urn in which to float a boat, drown an assassin, and any other watery business necessary!

learn about lighting designer Russell H. Champa's plans to imbue the production with a handful of truly magical moments; to illuminate instruments stashed in the sand; and to trick out clumps of stage grass with hidden light bulbs so that those points can sparkle at will.

look over Raquel M. Barreto's costume sketches, which borrow from different styles and cultures (from ancient Persia to the Caribbean to the world of Japanese fishermen and beyond) while still allowing actors to transform from one character to another with a minimum—or maximum, as the theatrical case may be—amount of fanfare. Raquel talked a bit about how each stop on the hero's journey is its own world: the dark creepy world of Antioch with its bones and leather, the bright, colorful kingdom of Simonides and Thaisa, et cetera.

Images of the set and costumes to follow tomorrow. Stay tuned!

There's less than a week left to vote us your favorite nonprofit

The Volunteer Center is holding the Volunteer Choice Awards to honor nonprofits. But voting ends May 1, which is next Thursday! So vote for us today ... or tomorrow ... or the day after tomorrow... you get the picture.