CURRENT SHOW

Clown Bible

Created by Maya Gurantz, Dave Malloy and the Ensemble
Music and Lyrics by Dave Malloy

Willard Middle School Metalshop Theater
2425 Stuart Street, Berkeley, CA
(Entrance on Regent St., Behind the School). Map it.

All Shows at 8pm
March 22-24 (Thurs-Sat)
March 30-31 (Fri-Sat)
April 5-7 (Thurs-Sat)
April 12-14 (Thurs-Sat)

See Rehearsal Photographs or Opening Night Photographs

Background Information

CLOWN BIBLE

From King David's song of thanksgiving to the Lord:
“with the loyal you show yourself loyal;
with the blameless you show yourself blameless;
with the pure you show yourself pure,
and with the crooked you show yourself perverse.”

Amen. Ten Red Hen Productions, the artistic team behind last year’s {The 99-Cent} Miss Saigon, now presents CLOWN BIBLE. Working directly from Biblical text, we have translated the tales, familiar and obscure, into an experimental, live theatrical event – combining a full musical score, acrobatics and dance with the broad comic performance language of clown (think Charlie Chaplin, not Ringling Brothers).

CLOWN BIBLE highlights and explores themes of masculinity, power, corruption and failure – themes that recur throughout the Bible in the relationship between man and God, and in God's own evolution from the Creation through the Resurrection. The show been created with an outstanding ensemble of performers that includes Jane Chen (The Chinese Clown Cabaret) as God and Jesus.

Just as our Miss Saigon approached the Broadway musical afresh by removing the form’s production values, CLOWN BIBLE offers a fresh take on familiar tales – indeed, some of the oldest in our collective cosmology – by extracting them from their religious context. We neither criticize nor endorse the faiths that hold the Bible to be holy writ—instead, we focus on the wild and wonderful stories themselves. By turns hilarious and tragic, crude and subtle, CLOWN BIBLE reconnects us to the mythic beauty and strangeness of the text, while holding up a mirror to our own human foibles and vulnerability.

Dates and Times

March 22-24 (Thurs-Sat),
March 30-31 (Fri-Sat),
April 5-7 (Thurs-Sat),
April 12-14 (Thurs-Sat)
All Shows at 8pm

Sliding Scale $15-20.
Buy Tickets In Advance at: www.brownpapertickets.com,
or call 1-800-838-3006
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Directions:

Willard Middle School is located on the corner of Stuart Street and Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, California. The entrance to the Metalshop Theater is behind the school, on Regent Street.

Take BART to Ashby Exit. Go North from BART exit on Ashby. Take a left on Telegraph Ave. to Stuart Street (5-7 minute walk). Take a right on Stuart, and your FIRST LEFT onto Regent Street (unmarked). Walk one block. The entrance to the Metalshop Theater is located by the Tennis Courts. Map it.

Cast and Crew

Cast:
Ned Braeur (Adam, Saul, Ensemble)
Dan Bruno (Percussion, Ensemble)
George Chan (Solomon, Banjo, Ensemble)
Jane Chen (God, Jesus, Ukelele, Ensemble)
Sig Hafstrom (Viola, Ensemble)
Will Howard (Cain, Samson, Viola, Ensemble)
Kazumi Kusano (Eve, David, Ensemble)
Dave Malloy (Job, Judas, Piano, Accordion, Ensemble)
Andre Nigoghossian (Guitar, Penny Whistle, Violin, Ensemble)
Conrad Seto (Bass, Ensemble)
Issabella P. Shields (Abel, Moses, Violin, Ensemble)
Alexis P. Wong (Sarah, Ensemble)

Director: Maya Gurantz
Composer, Musical Director: Dave Malloy
Set Designer: Adrian W. Jones
Lighting Designer: Raymond Oppenheimer
Stage Manager: Sarah Elovich
Production Manager: Mike Howard
Clown Trainer: Jane Chen
Acrobatics Trainers: Issabella Shields, Will Howard

Key Biographies

Maya Gurantz (Director) is a director and writer. Over the past 8 years, she has been creating new works in downtown New York, New Haven, Los Angeles, rural Mississippi, San Diego and now the Bay Area. Recent credits include: (with Ten Red Hen) {The 99-Cent} Miss Saigon, 365 Days/365 Plays (Week 4) by Suzan-Lori Parks; (outside) The Rise and Fall of the Rising Fallen, Part I (The Fall) by Banana Bag & Bodice, The Chinese Clown Cabaret, and CLUB*. She's long been active in community-based theater projects, helping to develop new works with King Middle School, Planned Parenthood, and the San Diego Repertory Theater. Maya graduated from Yale University in 1998 and was a 2001 Altvater Fellow with Cornerstone Theater Company. She writes about theater and its discontents on her blog, www.tenredhen.net/blog.html.

Dave Malloy (Composer, Musical Director, Job, Judas) has worked as a composer/musical director in the Bay Area for the last seven years; recent highlights include California Shakespeare Theater's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shotgun Players' Cabaret and Ten Red Hen's {The 99 Cent} Miss Saigon. He is also the composer for Banana Bag & Bodice, a bicoastal collaborative ensemble that has won numerous awards, most recently Best New Production at the Dublin International Fringe Festival for The Sewers. Their newest work, The Fall and Rise of the Rising Fallen, co-written by Mr. Malloy, is a year long multi-part piece that premiered at the San Francisco Fringe Festival last fall and culminates at New York City's PS122 this spring.

Adrian W. Jones (Set Designer) is an award-winning theater director. His regional credits include: Take Me Out at St. Louis Rep (Kevin Kline Nomination); Anna In The Tropics at Coconut Grove Playhouse (Carbonell Award); The Retreat From Moscow, Talking Heads, The Goat and The Dazzle (CT Critic’s Circle Award) at Theaterworks, Hartford; Beauty of the Father at New Theater, Miami; Betrayal at Yale Rep. New York credits include: The Fairy Tale Project with LAByrinth Theater, Baby Steps at Theater Row, Animal Farm, 1984, Phoenician Women, Bloody Poetry, Elephant Man and Machinal with Synapse Productions. Adrian is a graduate of Occidental College, and the Yale School of Drama.

Jane Chen (Clown Trainer, God, Jesus), creator of The Chinese Clown Cabaret, is a Taiwanese-American actor, singer, and teacher. A graduate of Yale University and the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theater, Jane has created and performed original theater which combines such varied forms as opera, clowning, and puppetry. Locally, Jane has performed with Ten Red Hen Productions ({The 99-cent} Miss Saigon), Opera Piccola/Stagebridge (Being Something, Oakland Metro, dir. Ellen Sebastian Chang), Mugwumpin, Shotgun Players, FoolsFury, Kearny Street Workshop (APAture Festival Featured Artist 2003), PuppetLOVE!, and UC Berkeley (Tarnival!). Jane has taught acting and voice for such organizations as U.C. Berkeley, AAA Summer Camp (Walnut Creek), Splash Circus (Emeryville), and Ten Red Hen (Berkeley). She is the lead soprano for the annual Fremont and Grand Lake Montessori School operas, performing alongside talented 5-12 year-olds. Commercially, Jane is represented by JE Talent and has worked for such companies as Microsoft, Genentech, Genesys, Brookstone, Brighton Shoes, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Issabella Shields (Acro Trainer, Moses, Ensemble) is an actor/theatre-maker in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most recently she appeared in Ten Red Hen’s {The 99-Cent} Miss Saigon as a violin-playing bar girl and in the Here Here Theatre Company’s production of Macbeth as Banquo. Issabella is a recent graduate of the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre where she studied Melodrama, Commedia del’Arte and traditional clown. Along with Ten Red Hen, Shields has also worked as an associate company member of the Touchstone Ensemble in Bethlehem, PA where she researched and created several community-based plays. Her production of Suzan Lori Parks’ In the Blood received the Best Direction Award from Lehigh University, where she received her B.A. in Theatre and Journalism.

Cast Biographies

George Michael Chan (Solomon, Banjo, Ensemble) enjoys performing and singing in Bay Area theatrical productions and choruses. Previous performance credits include Sweeney Todd, Evita, Godspell, Tienanmen Square, Pena's Misa Flamenca, Fauré's Requiem, Pärt's Miserere, & Handel's Messiah. George works as a Project Manager at Flex Your Power and is studying Ecological Design at the San Francisco Institute of Architecture.

Alexis Wong (Sarah, Ensemble) is a UC Berkeley trained architectural designer and Asst. Vocal Coach for the SF Academy for the Performing Arts. Recent works: TRH's {The 99-Cent} Miss Saigon (Gigi) and 365 Days/365 Plays, Falsettoland and A Little Bit of Broadway. Alexis made her classical debut last Fall at the St. Joseph's Organ Centennial-Mountain View.