LITTLE ERIK World Premiere and More Set for Aurora Theatre Company's 2015-16 Season
By: BWW News Desk Apr. 02, 2015
Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company proudly announces the lineup for its 24th season.
The company opens the season with the Bay Area Premiere of award-winning playwright Marisa Wegrzyn's MUD BLUE SKY, directed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross. The company is also poised to present the Bay Area Premiere of Pulitzer Prize-nominee Amy Freed's THE MONSTER-BUILDER, directed by Art Manke and featuring Danny Scheie. Award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson returns to Aurora with the World Premiere of LITTLE ERIK. Acclaimed actress and director Joy Carlin returns to direct the West Coast Premiere of Sarah Treem's THE HOW AND THE WHY, to be staged in the company's second stage performance space, Harry's UpStage, located in the Nell and Jules Dashow Wing. Aurora continues the season with the West Coast Premiere of David Ives' THE HEIR APPARENT, directed by Josh Costello. Timothy Near makes her Aurora directing debut with the company's season closer, Athol Fugard's modern classic "MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys, featuring L. Peter Callender.
The regular season will be staged August 2015 through July 2016 at the intimate Aurora Theatre in the downtown Berkeley arts district. For single tickets ($32-$60) or subscriptions ($99-$305), the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org. Subscriptions on sale April 2. Single tickets on sale for subscribers July 28 and on sale August 4 to the general public.
In chronological order, the Aurora 2015-16 season is as follows:
MUD BLUE SKY
Directed by Tom Ross
Bay Area Premiere
August 28-September 27, 2015 (Opens: September 3)
Aurora Theatre Company opens its 24th season with the Bay Area Premiere of award-winning playwright Marisa Wegrzyn's (Hickorydickory, The Butcher of Baraboo) MUD BLUE SKY. There was a time when air travel was considered glamorous, but when three middle-aged flight attendants reunite during a layover near O'Hare Airport, it's enough to make anyone question their aspirations in life. Joined by an unlikely fourth companion, a teenage boy adrift on his prom night, the women are poised on the brink of looking back and moving ahead. A comedy about finding common ground, MUD BLUE SKY offers an edgily humorous and tender look at work, motherhood, and missed connections, and how the small kindnesses we afford each other can inspire us to grab onto life before it flies by.
MUD BLUE SKY premiered at Center Stage in Baltimore in 2013. Aurora Artistic Director Tom Ross (Fifth of July, A Bright New Boise, This Is How It Goes, Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance) helms this profoundly compassionate, fiercely witty new play.
THE MONSTER-BUILDER
By Amy Freed
Directed by Art Manke
Bay Area Premiere
November 6 -December 6, 2015 (Opens: November 12)
Aurora Theatre Company presents the Bay Area Premiere of Pulitzer Prize finalist (Freedomland) Amy Freed's THE MONSTER-BUILDER. A maniacal scheme of fantastical proportions lurks deep inside world-renowned mega-architect Gregor Zubrowski's post-modern steel and glass structures. His commanding celebrity and curious creative process both titillates and manipulates design professionals and patrons alike into submission. It is only after he casually, and cruelly, steals a career-making project that two fledgling architects dare to challenge this monster-builder at his own game.
Art Manke, who directed the World Premiere of THE MONSTER-BUILDER at Portland's Artists Repertory Theatre in 2014, makes his Aurora directing debut with this viciously funny comedy. Bay Area favorite Danny Schieie (The Mystery of Irma Vep) returns to the Aurora stage as Gregor Zubrowski in this examination of the cult of personality, the vacuousness of ambition, and the uncomfortable marriage of form and function in high art.
LITTLE ERIK
A contemporary adaptation of Ibsen's Little Eyolf
Written and Directed by Mark Jackson
World Premiere
January 29-February 28, 2016 (Opens: February 4)
Aurora Theatre Company continues its 24th season with the World Premiere of LITTLE ERIK, written and directed by award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson (The Letters, The Arsonists, Salomania). Joie brings in the big bucks from the tech industry. Her husband, Freddie, wants to write a great novel about human responsibility. On a weekend getaway to the new home they have built in the mountains north of San Francisco, their crippled son, Erik, drowns and their world turns upside down. This new play, developed at Aurora, grapples with the unsolvable mysterious forces that bind marriage, family, nature, and technology to our deepest hopes and dreams.
LITLE ERIK will be the fully staged anchor production in this season's Global Age Project, an Aurora Theatre Company initiative that encourages playwrights and directors to explore life in the 21st century and beyond. In addition, new plays dealing with global age concerns will be chosen from an international pool of playwrights and presented as developmental readings during the run of LITTLE ERIK.
THE HOW AND THE WHY
By Sarah Treem
Directed by Joy Carlin
West Coast Premiere
March 18-April 24, 2016 (Opens: March 24)
Evolution and emotion collide in the West Coast Premiere of Sarah Treem's (Netflix's House of Cards, HBO's In Treatment) thought-provoking THE HOW AND THE WHY. More than science is at stake when two women of different generations clash over what it means to be female. On the eve of a prestigious conference, an up-and-coming evolutionary biologist wrestles for the truth with an established leader in the field. As the two women thrash out their views, they struggle to find the middle ground between research and relationships. Dubbed "a smart, densely textured work about men and women, love and conflict, genes and destiny" by The New York Times when it premiered at the McCarter Theatre in 2011, THE HOW AND THE WHY explores evolution and emotion, and the difficult choices faced by women of every generation.
Joy Carlin (Talley's Folly, After the Revolution, Body Awareness, Jack Goes Boating, Awake and Sing!) helms this intimate and keenly perceptive play.
This production will be presented in Aurora Theatre Company's second stage performance space, Harry's UpStage, located in the Nell and Jules Dashow Wing.
THE HEIR APPARENT
By David Ives
Directed by Josh Costello
West Coast Premiere
April 15-May 15, 2016 (Opens: April 21)
Master playwright David Ives (Venus in Fur, All in the Timing) reinvigorates Jean-François Regnard's 1708 comedy about greed, love, and intrigue in Aurora's West Coast Premiere of THE HEIR APPARENT. Penniless Eraste desperately wants to marry Isabelle, but first he needs to secure an inheritance from his elderly uncle, Geronte. The ailing Geronte, however, is not yet ready to be fitted for a shroud. In fact, he's ready to be measured for bridegroom's attire and is eager to marry Isabelle himself. The plot unravels as Eraste and his resourceful servants enact a series of increasingly absurd schemes to part the old man from his money and his life.
Josh Costello (Detroit, Wittenberg) helms THE HEIR APPARENT. Commissioned by Shakespeare Theater Company in 2011, this comedy of avarice and errors is hell-bent on drawing laughs.
"MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys
By Athol Fugard
Directed by Timothy Near
June 17-July 17, 2016 (Opens: June 23)
Aurora Theatre Company closes its 24th season with Athol Fugard's (Blood Knot, My Children! My Africa!) modern classic "MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys. An ordinary rainy afternoon in 1950s South Africa turns into a profound and life-changing experience for a white teenager and his family's two black servants. Hally, who has grown up in the affectionate company of Sam and Willie, even though they work for his family, learns that his viciously racist alcoholic father is on his way home from the hospital. In retaliation for his family situation, Hally lashes out as he never has before, triggering the young man's irrevocable passage into the culture of hatred fostered by apartheid.
At once a coming of age drama and a scathing indictment of inequality, this brilliant, searing coming of age story is considered by many to be Fugard's masterpiece. Not simply a polemic against the policy of apartheid, "MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys is about human relationships that are put to the test.
Former San Jose Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Timothy Near makes her Aurora directing debut with "MASTER HAROLD"... and the boys, which premiered on Broadway in 1982 and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play and was a Tony nominee for Best New Play. Bay Area favorite L. Peter Callender (Breakfast With Mugabe, The Soldier's Tale and Permanent Collection) returns to the company in this drama about which The New York Times said, "Fugard creates a blistering fusion of the personal and the political."
Voted Best Theater Company in 2012 by SF Weekly, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company, declared "one of the best regional theaters around" by 7x7 magazine, has been called "one of the most important regional theaters in the area" and "a must-see midsize company" by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has "nothing but praise for the Aurora." The Contra Costa Times stated "perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close," while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed Aurora Theatre Company is "arguably the finest small theater in the Bay Area," and the Oakland Tribune stated "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."
Main stage performances: Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm, 7pm; Harry's UpStage performances: Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm. The Aurora Theatre is located at 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA. For single tickets ($32-$60) or subscriptions ($99-$305), the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org. Subscriptions on sale April 2. Single tickets on sale for subscribers July 28 and on sale August 4 to the general public.
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