Berkeley Rep Extends TRIBES Through May 18

Berkeley Repertory Theatre announces that today, due to extraordinary ticket demand, it will extend Tribes by seven performances before its first performance. Originally scheduled to run through May 11, audiences now have the opportunity to experience the critically acclaimed family drama by Nina Raine through Sunday, May 18. Directed by Jonathan Moscone, the play follows Billy, a young man who was born deaf into a loquacious and highly opinionated academic family who raised him to lip-read and integrate into the hearing world. When he meets Sylvia - raised by deaf parents and going deaf herself - Billy decides it's time to speak on his own terms and be heard. Tribes start previews Friday, April 11, opens on April 16, and now closes on Sunday, May 18, 2014. Open-captioned performances for Tribes will take place Thursday, May 8 at 8 PM; Friday, May 9 at 8 PM; and Sunday, May 11 at 2 PM. Berkeley Rep is also proud to offer three American Sign Language-interpreted performances on Saturday, May 3 at 8 PM, Saturday, May 10 at 2 PM, and Tuesday, May 13 at 8 PM. For more information or to reserve seats, visit http://www.berkeleyrep.org or call 510 647-2949, Tuesday through Sunday, noon to 7 PM.

Tribes had its world premiere in 2010 at the Royal Court Theatre and its North American premiere off Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre in 2012, where it won the 2012 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. It has since played throughout the country, sweeping critics and audiences off their feet. "Smart and sensitive!" hails the Los Angeles Times. "At the center of the work is an emotionally stirring hush, an eloquent stillness that is an oasis from the punishing din... More to the point of Raine's play, hearing is shown to depend more on an open heart than fully functioning ears." "The best-written, best-plotted, deepest, most daring - and funniest - new play in recent years!" proclaims the Wall Street Journal. "It's a paradox of sorts that a play about deafness should have such scintillating dialogue." "Big, brilliant...smart, lively...Tribes forces us to hear with our eyes," declares the New York Times. "The confrontations that arise from Billy's meeting Sylvia touch on a dizzying assortment of daunting topics...Listen closely, as this play asks, and you'll find yourself suspended on a swaying bridge between two worlds." "Subtle and scintillating," hails the New Yorker. "Tribes is as much about the tyranny of language as it is about the misery of not being able to hear it...In this provocative and original play, Raine keeps the ideas and the ironies coming until the final thrilling, paradoxical image...It forces the hearing audience to understand the poignancy of the struggle to transcend silence and the punishing limitations of speech."

Playwright Nina Raine began her career as a trainee director at the Royal Court Theatre after graduating from Oxford. She dramaturged and directed the hard-hitting verbatim play Unprotected at the Liverpool Everyman, for which she won both the TMA Best Director Award and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award for an Outstanding Production on a Human Rights Theme. Unprotected was also nominated as Best Regional Production by Whatsonstage.com. Rabbit is Raine's first play, for which she won London's Evening Standard Award 2006 for Most Promising Playwright, the Critics' Circle Award 2006 for Most Promising Playwright, and was nominated as Best London Newcomer by Whatsonstage.com. The play was also shortlisted for the Verity Bargate Award 2004. It premiered at the Old Red Lion Theatre in 2006 and after a sell-out run transferred to the Trafalgar Studios in London's West End, followed by a production for Brits off- Broadway in New York, in 2007. Raine's second play, Tiger Country, was shortlisted for the Sphinx Theatre Brave New Roles Award, and is under commission at the Royal Court Theatre.

Director Jonathan Moscone is in his 15th season as artistic director of California Shakespeare Theater, where he most recently directed American Night: The Ballad of Juan José and where he will direct Shaw's Pygmalion for the 2014 season. His other credits include the world premiere of Ghost Light, which he co-created and developed with playwright Tony Taccone for Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Berkeley Rep. In addition, he directed Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park for American Conservatory Theater. For Cal Shakes, Moscone has directed the world-premiere adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven by Octavio Solis, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Candida, Twelfth Night, Happy Days, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, and The Seagull. He is the first recipient of the Zelda Fichandler Award, given by the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation for "transforming the American theatre through his unique and creative work." His regional credits include productions at Intersection for the Arts, the Huntington Theatre Company, Alley Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Goodspeed Musicals, Dallas Theater Center, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Intiman Theatre, and Magic Theatre, among others. Moscone currently serves as a board member of Theatre Communications Group.