New Works/New Communities play goes to Edinburgh Fringe!

This weekend, Oaklanders will get another chance to see Hamlet: Blood in the Brain as Oakland Technical High School's award-winning drama department presents the play for three nights. Naomi Iizuka's reimagining of the Shakespeare tragedy transports the scandalous classic to the drug-ravaged streets of mid-1980s Oakland; as American High School Theatre Festival winners, Oakland Tech will tour the production around the Bay Area this spring—including a Feb 24 performance at Stanford and an excerpt performance at Oakland's popular street festival. Art Murmur, on March 5—before traveling all the way to Scotland to present Blood in the Brain at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!

Back in 2003, Cal Shakes partnered with renowned playwright Iizuka and San Francisco's Campo Santo—the resident theater company at Intersection for the Arts—to launch this first New Works/New Communities project. The play was developed over the course of three years of grassroots community engagement that included community conversations and public readings, and culminated in a sold-out eight-week run at Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. (Pictured above, Sean San José and Ryan Nicole Peters perform at Intersection; photo by Dave Nowakowski.)

We are so pleased that Oakland Tech is performing this play, and we congratulate them on their AHSTF win. Break a leg!

Click here for more info on the Oakland Tech performances.
Click here for more info on New Works/New Communities, or get regular updates on our new play and community development efforts by signing up for our email list and clicking the box for New Works/New Communities.