GHOST QUARTET Comes to Oakland Theater Project Next Month

Oakland Theater Project and New Performance Traditions are thrilled to present Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey from Tony-nominated composer and playwright Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812), directed by Oakland Theater Project Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director William Thomas Hodgson (Is God Is) November 1—24 at Oakland Theater Project and December 5-8 at ODC.

I don’t know if this is me at all
Or just some ghost of me
That I dreamed up just to sing myself to sleep…

A camera. A fiddle. An astronomer. A subway train. A raven.

In Dave Malloy’s captivating ghost-story-musical, a group of friends trade tales over whiskey—of love, longing, heartbreak, and betrayal. As the vignettes spanning seven centuries begin to unfold, characters, themes, events, and choices from one story begin to reverberate into others, weaving a collective tale that unearths the bonds of the human spirit.

At once innovative, haunting, and life-affirming, Ghost Quartet offers a one-of-a-kind musical experience that is sure to enchant Bay Area audiences.

The cast includes award-winning artist Rinde Eckert (piano, organ, slide guitar, percussion, vocals), an inaugural Doris Duke Artist (2012), recipient of an Alpert Award (2009), Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), and a Marc Blitzstein Award (2005), and a 2007 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Eckert is joined by Ami Nashimoto (cello, ukulele, erhu, percussion, vocals), Veronica Renner (accordion, autoharp, percussion, vocals), Monica Rose Slater (glockenspiel, accordion, harp, percussion, vocals), and Michael Perez (percussion, vocals).

“Halloween is the perfect time for a ghost story,” said Director and OTP Co-Artistic Director William Thomas Hodgson, “and the show enraptures you. In the stories that overlap, there are all these iterations of ghosts that relate to each other. It’s a meditation on a lot of different types of ghosts: like the ghost of regret, a past lover, a mistake, a thing that haunts you—or a literal ghost, an apparition. It’s also about love and betrayal and keeping memories alive—and all of that is encapsulated in a ghost story.”

Oakland Theater Project is delighted to partner with New Performance Traditions to present OTP’s first musical collaboration.

“New Performance Traditions is thrilled to partner with the Oakland Theater Project in co-producing Ghost Quartet,” said NPT Artistic Director Paul Dresher. “Ghost Quartet is a unique and wonderful music theater work that features long-time Paul Dresher Ensemble collaborator and performer extraordinaire Rinde Eckert. Over the past seven years, we’ve watched Oakland Theater Project grow and become one of the Bay Area’s most innovative theater companies.  The idea of collaborating has long been on the table and so we’re extremely excited to have found the right project to start what we believe will be a long and wonderful partnership.”

Ghost Quartet is the sixth production in Oakland Theater Project’s 2024 Season: Ghosts of Past, Present and Future, a collection of seven plays that echo from the past into the present—in hopes of illuminating the future.

“In our 12th year, we seek to interrogate the ghosts that haunt our collective past, present, and future so that we might gain clarity about our global predicaments and find inspiration to move forward,” said OTP Co-Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran. “With seven shows from divergent lenses all focused on this central theme, we hope this season helps to illuminate how our experiences can inspire solidarity across differences.”