Aurora Theatre Company to Feature Works of Kristoffer Diaz, Neil LaBute et al. in 2012-2013 Season

Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company has announced the lineup for its 21st season.

The company opens the season with the highly-coveted Bay Area Premiere of Kristoffer Diaz's Pulitzer-nominated powerslam of a play, THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY, directed by Jon Tracy. Aurora Theatre Company founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company to direct WILDER TIMES, a collection of short plays by iconic American playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Aurora Theatre Company is also poised to present the World Premiere of Anthony Clarvoe's OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN. Originating as one of Aurora Theatre Company's Global Age Project (GAP) finalists in 2011, this family drama is the third main stage production to develop from the GAP; GAP director Allen McKelvey, as well as original GAP cast members Julia Brothers, Joy Carlin, and Anne Darragh, reprise their roles for Aurora's main stage production. Award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson returns to Aurora Theatre Company to put his spin on Alistair Beaton's new translation of Max Frisch's West End hit THE ARSONISTS. The 21st season concludes with the Bay Area Premiere of Neil LaBute's searing dark comedy/drama THIS IS HOW IT GOES, directed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross, and featuring Aldo Billingslea, Gabriel Marin, and Carrie Paff.

The regular season will be staged August 2012 through July 2013 at the intimate Aurora Theatre in the downtown Berkeley arts district. For single tickets ($32-$60) or subscriptions ($150-$260), the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit http://www.auroratheatre.org.

The Aurora 2012-13 season is as follows.

THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY by Kristoffer Diaz, directed by Jon Tracy

The Bay Area Premiere runs Aug 24-Sep 30, 2012 and opens Aug 30 with Diaz's smart, hilarious powerslam of a play, THE ELABORATE ENTRANCE OF CHAD DEITY. Jon Tracy makes his main stage directing debut at Aurora with this sardonic critique of pop culture and political correctness, called "big, brash, outrageous, brilliantly written" by the Chicago Sun-Times and "more pertinent than ever as the 2012 presidential campaign swings into high gear" by the LA Times. Set in the world of professional wrestling, this metaphor for modern-day America received its World Premiere in 2009 at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago before moving Off-Broadway; it received the 2011 Obie Award for Best New American Play, the Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Play, and was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

In wrestling, as in life, behind every winner lies the story of a really excellent loser, but in a culture ripe with reality TV values, is swallowing one's integrity just too much to pay for the rewards of the media spotlight? Macedonio "The Mace" Guerra is a middle rank pro-wrestler who may have discovered his ticket to the big time in a charismatic, Indian kid from Brooklyn whom he recruits as the perfect foil to the All-American wresting star and champion, Chad Deity. But when their wrestling rivalry is used to exploit racial stereotypes in the name of ratings, all three men find themselves fighting for much more than just a championship title belt. Tackling racism and body slamming globalization, this smack-down of a play, according to The New York Times, "has the delicious crackle and pop of a galloping, honest-to-God, all-American satire."

WILDER TIMES, a collection of one-act plays by Thornton Wilder, directed by Barbara Oliver, runs Nov 2-Dec 9, 2012 (Opens: November 8).

Founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company for its 21st season to direct WILDER TIMES. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright and former Berkeley resident, Thornton Wilder is best known for his full length play Our Town, but he was also an accomplished master of the short play form, specifically creating shorter works to be staged in spaces such as Aurora's, with the audience seated on three sides of the action or in the round. Lifelong friends with Gertrude Stein and a mentor to Edward Albee, Wilder tirelessly experimented with theatrical forms and conventions. Aurora Theatre Company has put together a program of four of Wilder's greatest shorter works, including The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (1931), which features the first appearance of Wilder's narrating Stage Manager character (seven years before Our Town was produced), and The Long Christmas Dinner (1931), perhaps Wilder's most famous short work, in which he breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, following 90 years of an extended family's holiday dinners.

The New York Times noted about The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, "if God were to dabble in anthropology, and the recording angels to write with wry humor and infinite tolerance of human folly, this is how the holy books would read," while Wilder himself said of The Long Christmas Dinner, "Of all my plays it is the one that has found the widest variety of receptions. At some performances it has been played to constant laughter; some listeners are deeply moved and shaken by it."

OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN by Anthony Clarvoe (Pick Up Ax, Show and Tell, Ambition Facing West), directed by Allen McKelvey, will host its world premiere Jan 25-Mar 3, 2013 (Opens: January 31).

Aurora Theatre Company continues its 21sr season with this family drama, which originated as one of Aurora Theatre Company's Global Age Project (GAP) finalists in 2011 and is the third main stage production to develop from the GAP. In OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN, three generations of family gather over three holidays in a home none of them expects to long survive the rising sea. They do chores, text each other, and dance. They watch the birds, and watch each other, while struggling for loyalty, legacy, and turf. By the end, everything has shifted and a new generation is in charge, but of what? OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN addresses the changing tides of communication, gender roles, and society in a place where even the notions of home and family remain fluid. GAP director Allen McKelvey helms this six character play, featuring original GAP cast members Julia Brothers (The First Grade), Joy Carlin (Thérèse Raquin), and Anne Darragh (A Delicate Balance), reprising their roles for Aurora's main stage production.

OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN 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, several new plays dealing with global age concerns will be chosen from an international pool of playwrights and presented in a series of developmental readings during the run of OUR PRACTICAL HEAVEN.

THE ARSONISTS by Max Frisch and in a new translation by Alistair Beaton, directed by Mark Jackson, will run Apr 5-May 12, 2013 (Opens: April 11).

What is the great evil we are failing to face up to today? Award-winning Bay Area auteur Mark Jackson (Salomania, Metamorphosis, Salome, Miss Julie) returns to Aurora Theatre Company to direct British playwright Alistair Beaton's elegant new translation of THE ARSONISTS. Beaton's translation of Max Frisch's classic comic parable about appeasement (sometimes known as Beidermann and the Firebugs or Fire Raisers) opened to rave reviews at The Royal Court Theatre 2007; about the first major UK revival of the production since its premiere at the Royal Court in 1961, The Guardian (UK) said "The Arsonists still burns brightly."

Fires are becoming something of a problem, popping up all over town. But Mr. Biedermann has it all under control. In his business life and in the domestic arena, he tries to live a life of blameless middle-class decency. He's a respected member of the community with a loving wife and a booming business, so surely nothing can get to him. It is this sense of bourgeois propriety that renders Biedermann defenseless when two arsonists turn up at his house. Far from kicking them out, he helps them light the fuse in the hopes that appeasement will prevent catastrophe.

Inspired by the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, this absurdist allegory satirizes the way that people can be manipulated into accommodating the very thing that will destroy them.

THIS IS HOW IT GOES by Neil LaBute, directed by Tom Ross in its Bay Area premiere June 14-July 21, 2013 (Opens: June 20), closes Aurora's 21st season.

Neil LaBute's dark, edgy comedy/drama THIS IS HOW IT GOES, directed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross (The Shape of Things, A Delicate Balance), and featuring Aldo Billingslea (Collapse), Gabriel Marin (Collapse, Jack Goes Boating), and Carrie Paff (A Delicate Balance, Collapse, Betrayal). THIS IS HOW IT GOES, about which the Chicago Tribune raved "Highly Recommended! LaBute's play has a lot of sting and nothing is as it seems!" presents a one-two punch after LaBute's Fat Pig (staged at Aurora in 2009), tweaking perspectives of truth and interpretation to broach sharp questions about race, love, and manipulation.

Belinda and Cody Phipps appear to be a typical Midwestern couple. Typical except that Cody is in almost every respect an outsider - a successful businessman and one of the few black faces in a small white town. When a white, male high school acquaintance returns to town and rents the room over their garage, the fragile balance of Belinda and Cody's relationship is upset, raising questions about who they want to be, who they are, and what made them that way. As a battle for Belinda's affections is waged, Belinda and Cody frankly question the foundation of their initial attraction, opening the door wide to a swath of bigotry and betrayal. THIS IS HOW IT GOES, called "smart and stylish" by New York Magazine when it premiered at The Public Theater in 2005, unblinkingly challenges the notions of gender, ethnicity, and even love itself, exploring the myriad ways in which the wild card of race is played by both black and white America.

Nominated for 33 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for 2011, 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 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] lives up to its reputation as a theater that feeds the mind," and the Oakland Tribune declared "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."

Performances run Tuesdays at 7 pm; Wednesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm; and Sundays at 2 pm and 7 pm. The Aurora Theatre is located at 2081 Addison Street in Berkeley, Calif. For single tickets ($32-$60) or subscriptions ($150-$260), the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit http://www.auroratheatre.org. Discounts for students, groups, and Under 30 are available.

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