Barzin Akhavan, Terence Archie & More Set For Berkeley Rep's THE ARABIAN NIGHTS

Today, Berkeley Repertory Theatre announced casting for its holiday revival of The Arabian Nights. This hit show from Tony Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman returns for 24 performances only - from December 11 through December 30. Following an exclusive pre-sale period for subscribers and donors, Berkeley Rep has now put seats on sale to the public. A co-production with Arena Stage, The Arabian Nights will travel to Washington, DC in 2011.

The cast for this limited engagement includes the following accomplished actors: Barzin Akhavan, Terence Archie, David DeSantos, Minita Gandhi, Allen Gilmore, Susaan Jamshidi, Ronnie Malley, Luis Moreno, Maureen Sebastian, Nicole Shalhoub, Amir Talai, Louis Tucci, Stacey Yen, and Evan Zes. The creative team features several talented designers: Daniel Ostling (sets), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), TJ Gerckens (lights), and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman (sound). The stage manager for this production is Cynthia Cahill.

"Mary Zimmerman has a unique ability to bring our oldest stories back to life in ways that make us remember why they're eternal and unforgettable," remarks Tony Taccone, artistic director of Berkeley Rep. "When we presented this show during the holiday season in 2008, it proved enormously popular with our audience. So we're pleased to welcome Mary back and get a second look at this magical show."

"It's beginning to feel like a myth of its own," Zimmerman adds, "the way my work always brings me to the safe harbor of Berkeley Rep. Audiences here are so receptive and supportive that it's always a pleasure to come back."

When Mary Zimmerman staged The Arabian Nights at Berkeley Rep, tickets were harder to come by than water in the Sahara. The show earned stellar reviews, standing ovations, and sold-out houses, both here and on its tour to Kansas City and Chicago. Now she brings her alluring adaptation of this timeless tale back to Berkeley for the holidays. Zimmerman made her career by reanimating ancient myths like Argonautika and Metamorphoses... now she breathes new life into the legend of the 1,001 nights. To save her life, a beautiful bride must spin hypnotic tales of genies, jesters, thieves, and kings - winning her freedom by eventually winning her husband's heart. He falls under Scheherazade's spell, and Zimmerman enchants the audience as well with her signature style that transforms simplicity into the sublime. Amidst a thousand tales of honor, revenge, and humor, only love emerges victorious.

"If you want theatre at its most unpretentiously poetic, most fetchingly stylish, as humane as it is elegant, I commend to you The Arabian Nights," raved New York Magazine. It's "a spectacular retelling of the old '1,001 nights' tales staged so wonderfully well that you feel better off just to have been in the theater that night. This rare and breathtaking piece of theater made it into my all-time Top 10 list maybe 15 minutes after it started, and it just kept climbing the chart as its 2½-hour production flew along," exclaimed the Contra Costa Times. And the San Francisco Chronicle called Arabian Nights one of the year's best shows: "Zimmerman and her cast transport the audience through hilarious and poignant tales of greed, sex and revenge, each tale opening into another and another, to a lingering, redemptive and provocative end."

Mary Zimmerman is the recipient of the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director and a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship. At Berkeley Rep, audiences embraced her acclaimed productions of Argonautika, Journey to the West, Metamorphoses, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, and The Secret in the Wings. These plays - and others that she's adapted and directed such as Candide, Eleven Rooms of Proust, The Odyssey, Silk, and S/M - have enjoyed celebrated runs at About Face Theatre, Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Goodman Theatre, the Huntington Theatre Company, Lookingglass Theatre Company, the Mark Taper Forum, McCarter Theatre Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Second Stage Theatre, and The Shakespeare Theatre Company. Based in Chicago, Zimmerman has won 10 Joseph Jefferson Awards - the city's top theatrical honors - including prizes for best production and best direction. She is the Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman, a member of Lookingglass, an artistic associate at Seattle Rep, and a professor of performance studies at Northwestern University. She also directed classics such as All's Well That Ends Well, Pericles, and The Trojan Women at the Goodman; Henry VIII and Measure for Measure at the New York Shakespeare Festival; A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Huntington; and Pericles at The Shakespeare Theatre. In 2002, Zimmerman created a new opera with Philip Glass called Galileo Galilei, which was presented at the Goodman, BAM, and the Barbican in London. In the last three years, she has staged Armida, Lucia di Lammermoor, and La Sonnambula for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

 

The Arabian Nights is the icing on an already delicious year of theatre at Berkeley Rep. The season features three world premieres - Rinne Groff's compelling Compulsion, starring Mandy Patinkin; a delightful new look at Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead; and a tantalizing show written by Artistic Director Tony Taccone for legendary actress Rita Moreno. Two West Coast premieres take the stage as well: celebrated collaborators Sarah Ruhl and Les Waters reunite for a refreshing new translation of Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters while Berkeley Rep welcomes The Great Game: Afghanistan, an unprecedented cycle of 12 short scripts that caused a sensation in London. The upcoming season also introduces local audiences to Lynn Nottage's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Ruined and two audacious new monologues from Mike Daisey: The Last Cargo Cult and The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs. This ambitious, adventurous, and entertaining line-up is supported by BART and Wells Fargo, the official sponsors of Berkeley Rep's season. The 2010-11 season producer is Marjorie Randolph.

Tickets to The Arabian Nights start at $34 - or only $17.50 for anyone under 30 years of age. Berkeley Rep subscribers save $5 on tickets to the first 10 performances. The show is presented on the intimate Thrust Stage, which is located at 2025 Addison Street, near bus lines, bike routes, and parking lots, and only half a block from BART. For tickets, subscriptions, or information, call (510) 647-2949 or (888) 4-BRT-Tix (toll-free) - or just click berkeleyrep.org.