Cutting Ball Theater to Close 17th Season with A DREAMPLAY

Cutting Ball Theater closes its 17th season with August Strindberg's A DREAMPLAY.

In A DREAMPLAY, Indra's daughter comes down to earth to better understand the plight of humanity. Through this surreal journey, she meets an officer, a lawyer, and a poet, and experiences joy, excitement, pain, and suffering. Strindberg structured this play using a dream logic that was later adopted by Expressionist playwrights. Paul Walsh, who translated all five plays in Cutting Ball's 2012 Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep, provides this translation of one of Strindberg's most admired and influential dramas. Cutting Artistic Director Rob Melrose, who directed all of the plays in Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep, helms A DREAMPLAY.

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. The company has commissioned, developed, and produced new experimental plays, and has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, and the Magic Theatre/Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works. In addition to producing West Coast Premieres and re-imaging various classics, Cutting Ball Theater has produced nine World Premieres and seven World Premiere translations. Cutting Ball received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts, and was voted "Best Theater Company" in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay issue. The company also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 and "Best Experimental Theater Company" in 2012 from SF Weekly, and was selected by San Francisco magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010, 2012, and December 2014 issues of American Theatre Magazine. In 2012, Cutting Ball was awarded a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a three-year residency for resident playwright Andrew Saito. The American Theatre Wing, best known as the creator of the Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards, awarded the company with a 2013 National Theatre Company grant. Cutting Ball was also featured in the February 2015 issue of American Theatre Magazine.

IF YOU GO:

A DREAMPLAY

Previews: May 20, 21 at 8pm; May 22 at 5pm

Opens: May 26 (Press opening: May 26; Gala opening: May 27)

Closes: June 19, 2016

All performances Thursday at 7pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 5pm

At The Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., San Francisco

For single tickets ($10-50) and more information the public may visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205; group discounts available. Pay What You Can tickets are available to neighborhood residents for all productions. Free student rush tickets are available to students with valid student ID.

A DREAMPLAY Special Events (for more information visit cuttingball.com):

May 26 - Paul Walsh, foremost translator of Strindberg and Ibsen in the U.S., and translator of A DREAMPLAY, will give an hour -long talk about Strindberg.

June 11, 18 - Matty Bloom, lead docent at Berkeley Rep Theater, is working with Cutting Ball to begin the company's first docent program which will debut 45 minutes before curtain