Aurora Theatre Company Script Club to Examine Works by Thorton Wilder and Gertrude Stein, 12/3

Berkeley's acclaimed Aurora Theatre Company presents the second Aurora Script Club meeting of the season with Gertrude Stein's Stein Times. Gertrude Stein, a contemporary and friend of Thornton Wilder, wrote numerous plays in addition to the other prolific written and artistic contributions she made in her life. Several of her short works (The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family's Progress (1906-11); Do Let Us Go Away A Play (1916); A Family of Perhaps Three (1922); and A Circular Play (1930) ) will be read together to explore the parallels they have with the one-act plays of Wilder Times, revealing how she influenced, and conspired with, Thornton Wilder to give a brand new, and specifically American, dramatic form to their 20th century world. Aurora Theatre Company Education Director Michael Mansfield hosts this moderated discussion series. The Aurora Script Club was conceived and developed by Aurora Theatre Company Artistic Director Tom Ross. All of the Script Club selections for the season are plays that are penned by female playwrights.

Aurora Theatre Company continues its 21st season with Wilder Times, directed by Barbara Oliver. Lifelong friends with Gertrude Stein, Thornton Wilder tirelessly experimented with theatrical forms and conventions. Aurora Theatre Company has put together a program of four of Wilder's greatest shorter works for Wilder Times: Infancy (1962), a comedy about fulfilling basic human needs in which babies act like grown-ups and grown-ups act like babies; Childhood (1962), in which Wilder renders a child's-eye view of the grown-up world; 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. Wilder Times plays November 2 through December 9 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley.

The next Script Club is set for Monday, December 3, 2012, 7:30pm at Aurora Theatre – Dashow Wing, 2081 Addison Street in Berkeley, Calif. Aurora Script Club is free and open to the public; for more information about Script Club or Wilder Times, the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.

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