The SF Playhouse Presents the West Coast Premiere of ANIMALS OUT OF PAPER
By: Gabrielle Sierra Dec. 24, 2009
The SF Playhouse (Bill English, Artistic Director; Susi Damilano, Producing Director) is thrilled to announce the West Coast Premiere of Rajiv Joseph's Animals Out of Paper will fill their previously unannounced Winter slot.
Hailed as "alternatively wrenching and funny" by The New York Times, Animals Out of Paper is a quirky comedy about origami experts that deftly explores how life can get messy as it unfolds. When a world renowned origami artist opens her studio to a teenage, hip-hopping, origami prodigy and his school teacher, she finds that life and love can't always be neatly arranged.Amy Glazer will direct the three person cast featuring David Deblinger*, Lorrie Holt* and Aly Mawji*. (*Appear courtesy of Actors Equity).Local origami artists who will be providing art for the show, including a 48" hawk, a 16" T-Rex, a "Hissing Cockroach," and an Amazonian toad, are Robert J. Lang, Linda Mihara, Bernard Payton, Goran Konjevod, and Jeremy Shafer. They are among the World's most distinguished origami artists and are featured in the award winning documentary "Between the Folds" by Vanessa Gould,which will run in the lobby before and after the show. Robert J. Lang provided additional inspiration for the play when he was hired by the medical association to use origami to develop the heart pouch referred to in the story. We met Robert at the SF International Origami Convention and he was thrilled to report that Rajiv had gotten all his points correct. Talkbacks with the artists will be scheduled throughout the run.In his 2008 interview with The Brooklyn Rail, Rajiv described his inspiration for the play, "I came into the subject in a strange way, since I don't fold origami at all," he explains. "I had always been interested in writing a play about a young prodigy. I've always liked chess, but chess-prodigy stories have been done. One night I was sitting on a Greyhound bus next to a woman who was folding origami and we started talking. She told me she teaches children origami, and she noted that every once in a while, a kid will understand how to fold in a way that most other people cannot. She said these kids 'see folds before they happen', which I thought was fascinating, and which led me to the creation of this play."
Rajiv Joseph (Playwright) was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1996 with a B.A. in Creative Writing. Following graduation Joseph joined the Peace Corps, serving three formative years in the West African Republic of Senegal.He earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2004 where he teaches Essay Writing with intermittent trips to Romania as part of the Ecrivains sans Frontieres (ESF) organization. Joseph's first production, Huck & Holden, debuted at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 2005. The play also had a West Coast run at the Black Dahlia Theater in Los Angeles the following year. All This Intimacy premiered at New York's McGinn/Cazale Theater in 2006. The TBG Theater featured Joseph's re-imagining of The Leopard and the Fox in 2007. Joseph returned to the Upper West Side in the summer of 2008 for Second Stage Theatre's premiere of Animals Out of Paper. Joseph's sensation Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, directed by Moisés Kaufman, debuted at the Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, May, 2009. It can next be seen at the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles (April 14 - May 30, 2010). In 2008, Joseph was awarded the Vineyard Theatre's Paula Vogel Award given to emerging playwrights. Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo was chosen by the NEA in 2008 as one of two Outstanding New American plays and Joseph received the 2009 Kesselring Fellowship awarded to emerging dramatists and received a prestigious Whiting Writers' Award in 2009, an international award given annually to 10 writers of fiction, nonfiction, plays, and/or poetry who show "exceptional talent and promise in early career". Animals Out of Paper received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for 'Outstanding Play' on April 2, 2009.
Founded by Bill English and Susi Damilano in 2003, The SF Playhouse is San Francisco's fastest growing and most awarded Theater Company and hailed as a "small delicacy" by SF Weekly, "eclectic" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and "local theater's best kept secret" by San Francisco Magazine. Located in Union Square, The SF Playhouse offers intimate, professional theatre with top notch actors and world class design. It has received multiple awards for overall productions, acting and design including the SF Weekly Best Theatre Award, Bay Guardian's Best Off-Broadway Theatre Award. The San Francisco Chronicle raved, "San Francisco's newest theatre isn't just another tiny stage carved out of a storefront . . . it's an enticing introduction to a new company." The SF Playhouse has quickly become the intimate theatre alternative to the traditional Union Square theatre fare, providing a creative home and inspiring environment where actors, directors, writers, designers, and theatre lovers converge to create works that celebrate the human spirit.
WHERE: The SF Playhouse
533 Sutter Street (one block off Union Square, b/n Powell & Mason)
www.sfplayhouse.org.
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