New play? No problem!

This year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) began its New Play Development Program. And we're beyond proud to announce that Cal Shakes has been chosen as one (of just five!) of the inaugural selections. As a recipient of Arts Endowment support for a NEA Distinguished New Play Development Project, Cal Shakes will receive $20,000 toward early development activities, such as read-throughs, public readings, and workshop productions, for Pastures of Heaven. Followers of this blog and of Cal Shakes probably already know about Pastures--it's our latest New Works/New Communities project, an adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven to be written by Octavio Solis and developed in partnership with San Francisco’s Word for Word Performing Arts Company.

Administered by Arena Stage, the New Play Development Program is intended to help the nation’s nonprofit theaters bring more new plays to full production. For us that means more workshops, more research trips, and more than two years of communication between our two very different theater companies, and urban and rural Northern Californians. Our artists will continue to talk to their artists, our playwright will continue to talk to the communities, and, in 2010, these stories of fragile farm life in Salinas Valley will premiere on the California Shakespeare Theater Main Stage, directed by Jonathan Moscone.

Read our news story about the grant here, or, for national news outlets’ coverage of this story, check out Playbill and Variety.

Associate Artist Round-Up: One More

(See last week's round-up here.)

Catherine Castellanos will be working with Central Works Theatre Ensemble on Blessed Unrest, a new play adapted by Gary Graves and written in collaboration with Castellanos, Marvin Greene, Kristin Fitch, Gregory Sharpen, and Jan Zvaifler. Inspired by a book from one of the world's leading environmental and social activists, Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming--a manifesto for hope in the 21st century.

The production runs October 25-November 23 at the Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant Ave, Berkeley. Performances Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 5pm.

Associate Artist Round-Up Addendum

Earlier this week we posted an "Associate Artist Round-Up" to our news page. No sooner had I checked its formatting on the website than additional ones started rolling in from the rest of our artistic family. So go there, read the first one, and then come back here and read these. (Or vice versa--it makes no nevermind to me).

Nancy Carlin is directing Sands Hall's adaptation of Little Women for Foothill Theatre Company in Nevada City, CA; the production runs Nov 20-Dec 28.

As mentioned in the original news item, Jim Carpenter is going into closing week of Rock 'N' Roll at A.C.T. After that, he and wife Cass will be taking a short trip up to Ashland, OR as a 35th Anniversary present to themselves; shortly thereafter Jim goes back to A.C.T. reprising his role as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

Joan Mankin, who has been posting to this blog from China, will be back in the USA on October 20. She has two main projects upon her return: to begin work on a piece with the third-year students at the A.C.T. Conservatory, a collaboration with Glide Church which will will attempt to address the situation of homeless people; and to direct a show about conservation of our resources with clowns from the S.F. Circus Center, to tour elementary schools all over Alameda County.

Lynne Soffer has been in Arizona since August rehearsing and performing in Enchanted April, directed by Timothy Near. Next up is dialect and text coaching at Berkeley Rep and Marin Theatre Company.

Dan Hiatt will be playing Rutherford Selig in Joe Turner's Come and Gone at Berkeley Rep, directed by Delroy Lindo and running Oct. 31-Dec. 14.

Clive Worsley is finishing up residencies in Fruitvale Elementary and Charlotte Wood Middle schools, while directing Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Clackervilles for Orinda Intermediate School's Bulldog Theatre. And of course, he's still "steering the ship" as Artistic Director of Town Hall Theatre.

Have you seen our Associate Artists anywhere (besides Cal Shakes) recently? Do you plan on attending any of the above mentioned productions? Let us know in the Comments section!

Clowning in China, by Joan Mankin PART 2

I am learning so much about clowning by being in a place where I understand no one, and no one understands me. When I say I understand no one, I am referring to words, of course, verbal interactions (which for me are limited to "hello" and "thanks"). But when I have no hope of conversing with someone in the usual, more facile manner, I must look into their eyes and read their body language, and respond in ways that touch different chords in my body energies. And Chinese people have the most truthful smiles. Either their faces are composed and distant, or they smile completely--there is no half-smile, they don't do it unless they mean it. And that makes me be more truthful in what I say and do. I feel like I am revisiting the core of what clowning means.

Last night Jonah (a student from the SF Circus center) and I were walking home along Stinky Tofu Alley (our name, not the official name) and we started singing "Country Roads" ("country roads, take me home, to the place I belong, West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads") and when we got to the "West Virginia" part someone started singing along with us. It was a Chinese man, who somehow knew the words (although I'm sure he had no idea what they were about) and loved the song. So all three us walked down this alley in the heart of downtown Nanjing, singing about West Virginia at the top of our lungs--we even did harmony! And when we finished, he went to get into his car, and he held out his hand to shake mine, to thank us for letting him sing with us. And I couldn't help bursting into "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?"--and I sang to him and his friends with all my heart and soul as they drove away, leaving me and Jonah in the smoggy, dark Nanjing night.

(Pictured above: Joan with Arthur Keng in SF Playhouse's 2008 production of Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge.)

Did you see the Bruns cat?

Did you see this little guy? The stray cat suddenly, mysteriously appeared at our amphitheater two weeks before Twelfth Night (and our season) ended, clearly lost but clean and definitely cared for. The actors, house and box office staff, and backstage crew fed the little fella and grew to love him, and he definitely became one of the family, even wandering onstage during one of the actor Q&A sessions that follow student matinees.

House and box office staffer Carol Marshall (who took the picture above) took the cat home and cleaned him up. (Though he'd shown up in good order, the Bruns is a dirty place to live.) After a few days, Carol took the cat to the Berkeley animal shelter for adoption and, lo and behold, the shelter discovered that the cat's owner had implanted a microchip in the kitty that allowed them to identify him, and locate his owner.

No one is quite certain how the cat got to the Bruns, but he's home now, giving the tale a Dickensian twist--the little lost orphan cat was actually a feline of station.

Clowning in China, by Joan Mankin

I've been in Nanjing for two and 1/2 half weeks now, teaching Western clowning and acting to Chinese acrobats (and a few magicians). The workshop itself is in Nanjing, but the acrobats are from troupes all over China: Beijing, Wu Han, Yin Chuan, An Hui, Tai Yuan. They were brought together by the Chinese Arts and Cultural organization to try and raise the level of comic acting in the acrobatic performances, and to encourage them to connect on a more personal level with their audiences.

China is going through a transformative phase now, letting go of some of the attachment to tradition and seeking out new artistic and performative channels. It's exciting to be in on this surge of interest in Western comedy forms. There are very few Westerners in Nanjing (a city of five and 1/2 million people) so I get stared at a lot (which I kind of like) and laughed at a lot (which I really like). I'm here with three other people from the Clown Conservatory at the San Francisco Circus Center, and we're all intrigued by the cultural differences and similarities. The students threw themselves with tremendous dexterity and gusto into every gag we ask them to do--running into walls, tripping, falling, slapping--but ask them to reveal something true and vital about themselves in front of other people, and they run into a different kind of wall.

We will do two performances at a College here in Nanjing in the middle of this month; I'm so excited to see how they take in what we have brought.

I miss eating salads sooo much. Best to all from Joan Mankin.

Zing!

An excerpt from today's Student Discovery Matinee Performance: At the post-show Q&A, some students asked if it was hard to remember all those lines.


Danny Scheie (seen at left with Dana Green) jumped in and said, “Alex (Morf, who plays Viola and Sebastian) has more lines, but I’m older.”





Here he is (at right) in his Feste drag. Photos (and observation) courtesy of Jay Yamada.