Cutting Ball Theater Presents TONTLAWALD, Opening 2/17

San Francisco's cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater continues its 12th season with the World Premiere of TONTLAWALD. This original ensemble-based piece commissioned by Cutting Ball weaves evocative a capella harmonies and visceral movement into a multilayered retelling of an ancient Estonian tale. With text by Cutting Ball's resident playwright Eugenie Chan (Bone to Pick, Diadem), direction by Associate Artistic Director Paige Rogers (Mud) and Annie Paladino, and choreography by Laura Arrington, TONTLAWALD features Madeline H.D. Brown, Rebecca Frank, Sam Gibbs, Cindy Im, Marilet Martinez, Wiley Naman Strasser, Meg O' Connor, and Liz Wand. TONTLAWALD plays February 17 – March 11 (Press opening: February 23) at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street) in San Francisco. For tickets ($10-50) and more information, the public may visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205.

Mistreated Lona endures her cruel stepmother until she unexpectedly discovers a new friend in the mysterious, forbidden TONTLAWALD-the ghost forest. Inspired by the ensemble-based work of Poland's famed Teatr ZAR, the body and song are used to tell Lona's story. Workshopped during Cutting Ball's 2011 RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival, TONTLAWALD creates a world that redefines the definitions of theater, dance, and choral music. Cutting Ball Associate Artistic Director Paige Rogers decided to direct this show after seeing Teatr ZAR, the resident theater company at the Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland, perform in Poland and Los Angeles; this piece is created with a passed down Grotowskian idea or impulse of using actors' bodies to create a unique theatrical language.

"In 2008, Cutting Ball received a matching grant from the SF Foundation which allowed the company to commission Eugenie Chan to create an original script for TONTLAWALD," said Cutting Ball Associate Artistic Director Paige Rogers. "Since then, there have been many iterations of the work, including a 2010 workshop with Venezuelan director Renee Torres, who worked with both Jerzy Grotowski and Pina Bausch. I saw Bausch's work at the Grotowski Festival in 2009 and was motivated to create work in a similar vein at Cutting Ball. Working with local choreographer Laura Arrington on Eugenie's plays Bone to Pick and Diadem, which were both World Premiere productions at Cutting Ball, along with Annie Paladino, who stage managed those pieces, we formed a triumvirate to bring a fully-realized version of TONTLAWALD to fruition on the Cutting Ball stage. We are all thrilled to finally be able to present this profoundly visceral piece to Cutting Ball's audiences."

Paige Rogers is an actress and Associate Artistic Director and co-founder of the Cutting Ball Theater. In addition to TONTLAWALD, her directing credits at Cutting Ball include The Hidden Classics Reading Series, Suzan-Lori Parks' 365 Plays/365 Days, RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival, and Mud. Additionally, Rogers has appeared in Cutting Ball's productions of Eugenie Chan's plays Bone to Pick and Diadem; in the company's hit production of The Bald Soprano; My Head Was a Sledgehammer; As You Like It; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts; Macbeth; Accents in Alsace; and The Taming of the Shrew. She has been seen locally with Berkeley Opera, Lamplighters, Sonoma County Repertory Theater, and on tour with California Shakespeare Theater; national credits include performances at The Kennedy Center, McCarter Theater, Trinity Repertory Company, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Annie Paladino co-directs TONTLAWALD. An Associate Artist at Cutting Ball, Paladino was the assistant director for the company's production of Pelleas and Melisande; she also stage managed Cutting Ball's productions of The Tempest, Krapp's Last Tape, and the World Premieres of Eugenie Chan's Bone to Pick and Diadem. Other production credits include Inkblot Ensemble and FoolsFURY. Paladino's original solo performance, DREAMA, premiered at the 2010 SF Fringe Festival; additional performance credits include Cutting Ball's Hidden Classics Reading Series and productions at FoolsFURY and SF Theater Pub.

Eugenie Chan is Cutting Ball Theater's resident playwright. Her plays have been produced and workshopped across the country at venues including The Public Theater, Magic Theatre, Thick Description, Brava Theater, Mixed Blood, PlayLabs, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, and others. In addition to TONTLAWALD, her work for the stage includes the Cutting Ball World Premiere productions of Bone to Pick and Diadem; Kitchen Table; B'umblebee; Pilgrim; Daphne Does Dim Sum; Rancho Grande; Emil, A Chinese Play, Novell-aah!; Tour Sino; Conset; and Willy Gee!. Her opera libretto Snakewoman was part of the RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival in 2004. She has written political satire for the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe, is a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation, and a member of New Dramatists.

Laura Arrington choreographs TONTLAWALD. Other Cutting Ball credits include Pelleas and Melisande, Bone to Pick, and Diadem. She has been an artist in residence at Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, and has been in residence at CounterPULSE, creating the work Hot Wings under the mentorship of Joe Goode. Her work has been seen at Z Space, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Lab, CounterPULSE, ODC, The Garage, Cell Space, Mama Calizo's Voice Factory, and Supperclub. Additionally, Arrington created and curated the popular performance event SQUART, served as a guest artist in the University of San Francisco's Dance and Social Justice Department, and performed with AXIS Dance/David Dorfman, Jess Curtis, Keith Hennessy, Christopher Williams, Nina Winthrop, and Ellis Wood.

Cutting Ball Theater has assembled a talented ensemble for TONTLAWALD. Marilet Martinez (Lona) has been seen on the Cutting Ball stage as part of the Vanguardia festival and in the company's production of Mud, directed by Paige Rogers. Additional credits include productions at Crowded Fire Theater, Impact Theatre, Woman's Will, Brava Theater, African-American Shakespeare Company, Teatrovision, San Francisco Mime Troupe, California Shakespeare Theater, SF Playwrights Center, Custom Made Theatre, Precarious Theatre, and Shadowlight Theatre, among others. Madeline H.D. Brown's (Ensemble) theater credits include productions at Aurora Theatre Company (Metamorphosis), SF Playhouse (Wirehead, The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Shotgun Players (Three Penny Opera), Brava Theater, Mugwumpin/Just Theatre, CenterREP, Golden Thread, and Noir City Film Festival, among others. Rebecca Frank (Ensemble) previously appeared in RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival and Cutting Ball's hit production of ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi; she will appear in the company's upcoming World Premiere of Tenderloin. Additional stage credits include productions at Intersection for the Arts (Sitting in a Circle), African-American Shakespeare Company (Twelfth Night), and Shotgun Players (This World in a Woman's Hands), among others; she is an Associate Artist at Alter Theater.

Sam Gibbs (Ensemble) previously appeared at Cutting Ball in Taming of the Shrew; additional credits include productions with U-N-M-A-R-K-E-D and The Free Theatre. Cindy Im (Ensemble) appeared last season in RISK IS THIS…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival; additional credits include productions at Shotgun Players (Phaedra) and Crowded Fire Theater (Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven). Wiley Naman Strasser (Ensemble) appeared in last season's RISK IS THIS…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival; additional Bay Area credits include productions at Golden Thread, Cabrillo Stage, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Actor's Ensemble of Berkeley, and Playwrights Foundation. Meg O'Connor (Ensemble) was last seen on the Cutting Ball stage in the 2007 RISK IS THIS…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival. She directed Aristophanes' The Knights for Cutting Ball's Hidden Classics Reading Series, is a founding member of Inkblot Ensemble, and has directed with San Francisco Theater Pub and the Bay One Acts Festival. Liz Wand (Ensemble) has worked at Cutting Ball behind the scenes on productions including Bone to Pick, Diadem, and Krapp's Last Tape; stage appearances include productions at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Teatr ZAR is the resident artist company at the Jerzy Grotowski Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. Teatr ZAR is a multinational group formed by apprentices of the Grotowski Institute during its annual research expeditions to Georgia in 1999–2003. During these expeditions, the group collected musical material, the core of which is a group of centuries-old polyphonic songs that have their roots in the beginning of the human era and are probably the oldest forms of polyphony. The work of Teatr ZAR attempts to demonstrate that theater does not only pertain to the Greek 'thea,' or seeing, but that it is something that above all should be heard. Teatr ZAR takes its name from the funeral songs performed by the Svaneti tribe who inhabit the high regions of the Caucasus, in North-West Georgia. In May 2011, Teatr ZAR performed at the SF International Arts Festival and Cutting Ball hosted Jaroslow Fret, Artistic Director of Teatr ZAR and Director of the Grotowski Institute, for a discussion about his work and the founding of Teatr ZAR.

Co-founded in 1999 by theater artists Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers, Cutting Ball Theater presents avant-garde works of the past, present, and future by re-envisioning classics, exploring seminal avant-garde texts, and developing new experimental plays. Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, and the Magic Theatre/Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works. The company has produced a number of World Premieres, West Coast Premieres, and re-imagined various classics. Voted "Best Theater Company" in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay issue, Cutting Ball Theater also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 from SF Weekly, was selected by San Francisco Magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007, and received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010 issue of American Theatre Magazine.

Following TONTLAWALD, documentary theater veteran Annie Elias directs the World Premiere of her latest work for the stage, TENDERLOIN, in April. RISK IS THIS...THE CUTTING BALL NEW EXPERIMENTAL PLAYS FESTIVAL returns to round out the season in June with two exhilarating new works for the stage and five Risk Translations of August Strindberg's Chamber Plays in new translations by Paul Walsh.