TheatreFIRST

TheatreFIRST is delighted to announce the following events to coincide with performances of Future Me at the Berkeley City Club. On the following nights, there will be post-show discussions with professionals in the field of treatment and rehabilitation of sex offenders and their victims. We invite audience members to stay behind immediately following the shows on these dates to hear from people who have devoted their professional lives to this enormously important and difficult area of therapeutic practice. We understand that this is a complicated and highly emotional subject, and we invite our audience members to become as well informed as possible about it. Thank you!

Friday, April 4 Caprice Haverty

Sunday, April 6 Kristin Callahan

Friday, April 11 Roberta Stern & Caprice Haverty

Sunday, April 13 Caprice Haverty

Friday, April 18 Staci Haines

Sunday, April 20 Roberta Stern & Caprice Haverty

Saturday, April 26 Paula Statman

Sunday, April 27 Roberta Stern & Caprice Haverty

TheatreFIRST to open U.S. Premiere of powerful, provocative Future Me

Last year, a play opened at a small theatre in a London pub to almost no controversy. Plenty of emotion, yes, but no mud-slinging, no outrage. Stephen Brown had achieved with Future Me the almost impossible: he had written a play about one of the most rage-inducing social taboos - and had humanized the monster.

TheatreFIRST is delighted to be presenting the U.S. premiere of a play that might well have enjoyed a higher profile opening off- Broadway. Instead, Stephen Brown recognized TheatreFIRST’s unique credentials to produce this compelling piece: our commitment to plays that provoke and challenge, and that explore deeply some of the most urgent social issues; our audience that seeks plays that challenge their perceptions and prejudices; our history of premiering some of the most important British playwrights’ works in the United States (David Hare, Moira Buffini, Shelagh Stephenson, Robin Soans, Edward Kemp, Sue Townsend…).

Peter, Brown’s protagonist, is a successful, intelligent, articulate, sensitive young man. But somehow he falls into a vortex of unlawful desire, and commits an act that makes us ask: are there some crimes that are just too heinous to forgive? Brown’s play is so finely balanced, it makes knee-jerk responses seem trivial and irritating. Instead, we are forced to ask: Is he more than what he’s done? And should he be allowed to build a “Future Me”? Brown’s depth of research into this subject, which few people take the time to consider, pays off handsomely as he presents a range of characters and viewpoints that are bound to unsettle and provoke. This is high-stakes playwriting, underpinned by unswerving honesty and deeply-felt compassion.

TheatreFIRST, which was forced to vacate its downtown premises in Old Oakland last June, has since been involved in a highly challenging quest for a new performance space in Oakland. Unlike Berkeley and San Francisco, Oakland has no small spaces with a performance history that match the needs of TheatreFIRST, or the dozen and more other companies that have since expressed an interest in sharing such a space. The search goes on, and last month the company entered negotiations for a building in the nascent arts district of uptown Oakland (near the Paramount and Fox theaters). If all goes well, the company hopes to announce a four-show season there, opening in the fall of 2008.

Meanwhile, TheatreFIRST will return to the venerable Berkeley City Club, where it presented the highly successful Mooi Street Moves in 2004, for this production. Dylan Russell returns to direct it; she last directed the company’s award-winning production of World Music (starring L. Peter Callender) for the company in 2006. TheatreFIRST has assembled an extremely strong cast for this production, including veterans Dana Kelly (Racing Demon, A Map of the World, etc.), Allison Studdiford (Racing Demon, Death & The Maiden) and Dana Jepsen (Loveplay), along with TheatreFIRST newcomers Maggie Mason (who was featured in the longest-running BBC TV program Grange Hill in the nineties), Ryan Purcell and Peter Ruocco.

Playwright Stephen Brown will be flying in from London for the opening, and a reception and discussion after the show; press are warmly invited to attend this event on Friday, April 4th at 8pm. He will also be available in person for interview between March 29th and April 3rd. Post-show talkbacks will also be held throughout the run: details will be announced soon.

Production details:
Future Me by Stephen Brown
Directed by Dylan Russell

Featuring: Dana Jepsen*, Dana Kelly*, Maggie Mason, Ryan Purcell, Peter Ruocco, and Allison Studdiford*.
(*Members, Actors’ Equity Association)

Dates and location:
Berkeley City Club Theater
2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley
Preview: Thursday, April 3rd - 8pm
Opening: Friday, April 4th - 8pm (including reception with the playwright)
Run: Thursday - Saturday 8pm, Sunday 3pm, through May 4th.
Location is wheelchair accessible.

Ticket prices: Thursday, Sunday $23; Friday, Saturday $28; Preview $10
Under 25’s: Always half price.
Seniors, students, TBA members: $3 discount
Pay what you can: Thursday, April 10th.

Box Office and Information: 510 436 5085
www.theatrefirst.com

Click here for reservations

Watch the Future Me Trailer

Read our dramaturg’s thoughtful essay about working on Future Me, and how it has affected her

TheatreFIRST’s sell-out run of Future Me must close Sunday, May 4th.

Although most shows have sold out, there are still some tickets remaining for the final weekend of Stephen Brown’s provoking and brilliantly-acted new play. Rob Hurwitt in the SF Chronicle calls it “riveting…an evening of intensely well-realized, gripping performances”.( Click here to read Rob Hurwitt’s full review.) Our audience says it’s the most thought-provoking play they have seen in ages, and they are still talking about it days, even weeks later. As one audience member remarked: “Thank God someone has had the guts to take the lid off this subject. We really need to talk about this”.

Just nine months after it received its highly acclaimed opening at London’s Theatre503, this extraordinary drama of transgression and forgiveness is thrilling and engaging Bay Area audiences. Booking is open now, so click on the link above to make your reservation.

TheatreFIRST is in negotiations for a new, dedicated performance space in the Oakland uptown arts district. We are deeply grateful to our donors for making this possible. We will keep you informed as negotiations progress. Meanwhile, see you at the City Club!

Production details:
Future Me by Stephen Brown
Directed by Dylan Russell
April 3 – May 4
Berkeley City Club
2315 Durant Avenue, Berkeley
Location is wheelchair accessible.

Featuring: Dana Jepsen*, Dana Kelly*, Maggie Mason, Ryan Purcell, Peter Ruocco, Allison Studdiford*
(*Members, Actors’ Equity Association)

Preview: Thursday, April 3
Opening: Friday, April 4
Run: Thursday-Saturday 8pm, Sunday 3pm
Closing: Sunday, May 4

In November 2004, TheatreFIRST was awarded the prestigious GOLDIE (Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery) Award for Theater. Here’s what Robert Avila wrote in support of this award:

FOR MORE THAN a decade, TheatreFIRST has introduced Bay Area audiences to timely plays and leading playwrights from the larger English-speaking world and beyond. “We like to use theater to tell a good story” says Clive Chafer, TheatreFIRST’s English-born founder and artistic director. “It’s remarkably good at doing that.” The Oakland-based company proves as much on a regular basis. Since its debut production 11 years ago of Manuel Puig’s Under a Mantle of Stars, the company has emphasized the intercultural nature and possibilities of drama. “One of the things very important for me in deciding to start my own company,” Chafer explains, “was the realization that for me, theater had always been wedded to the idea of transnational culture”

It’s more than his British accent and cheerful demeanor that make Chafer the most conspicuous member of a company that, for its first six years (1993 to 1999), ran as a collective. Chafer not only selects plays and oversees casting, but he also directs most productions, handles publicity, presides at fundraisers, leads the company’s monthly reading series, and can frequently be seen manning the ticket table.

TheatreFIRST’s culturally eclectic approach to programming seems ideally suited to the Bay Area - in fact, its 2003 U.S. premiere of Sue Townsend’s The Great Celestial Cow (a comedy about an Indian family of immigrants in the English Midlands) was partly inspired by the region’s growing, and theater-savvy, South Asian population. Eclecticism is a quality Chafer has always associated with theater’s power and potential. “Because I was a linguist, much of what I studied in dramatic literature initially was actually not in the English language,” he says. “So I had always experienced it as this extraordinary window into another culture.”

As Chafer saw it, such a conception of drama was largely missing from the American landscape. “I was disappointed,” he recalls, “when I looked at the very small number of plays being done professionally here that addressed another set of national values, a worldview that was distinctively different from the worldview here.” He even systematically surveyed the available material, based on all plays in publication (minus the classics), and found the proportion of plays from other countries totaled less than 2 percent.

TheatreFIRST has since staged many Bay Area and U.S. premieres, including last year’s overdue debuts of two works by David Hare, Via Dolorosa and A Map of the World, each a powerful if also entertaining exploration of racism and political strife in Europe’s ongoing colonial legacy. From the larger English-speaking world, the company has introduced playwrights like Paul Slabolepszy, whose two-hander about postapartheid Johannesburg, Mooi Street Moves, had a terrific run at the 67-seat Berkeley City Club in February. Chafer is also eager to produce something from Eastern Europe.

Remarkably, the quality of TheatreFIRST productions has remained high despite a somewhat erratic production history, brought on by the loss of various Berkeley and Oakland venues. (Today TheatreFIRST is the new theater company in residence at Mills College.) Chafer’s rigorous attention to casting has a lot to do with this excellence. TheatreFIRST has always used Equity actors,”even though we’ve barely been able to pay them, up until this year,” Chafer confesses. Even so, some of the best actors in the Bay Area clearly enjoy being part of the company’s intimate, well-crafted productions. And as a director, Chafer always puts a premium on getting the cultural context right.

Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian

Confirming what many of our supporters knew all along, TheatreFIRST is now officially the East Bay’s Best!

This honor was bestowed on the company in May by the East Bay Express in their Best of the East Bay edition. TheatreFIRST was nominated as Best Small Theatre Company for “its commitment not only to producing shows rarely if ever seen in the States, but making sure those shows represent a rich cultural diversity that still is sorely lacking in the Bay Area theater “.

Our thanks go to Lisa Drostova, the East Bay Express reviewer who has steadfastly supported our work, and even exhorted in her review of Mooi Street Moves that “somebody needs to give TheatreFIRST a big pile of money and a dedicated space of its own”!

Best Small Theater Company
And place for actors of color to find work
TheatreFIRST

Among the smaller companies, TheatreFIRST stands out for its commitment not only to producing shows rarely if ever seen in the States, but making sure those shows represent a rich cultural diversity that still is sorely lacking in the Bay Area theater scene. Artistic director Clive Chafer is on a tear, from the racially charged courtroom drama Color of Justice with a massive, multihued cast to the lilting Great Celestial Cow, about an Indian family transplanted to London. Chafer also took a incisive look last year at the clash between cultures with two David Hare works: Via Dolorosa, which chronicles Hare’s trip to the Middle East, and A Map of the World, which pits a V.S. Naipaul-like author against UNESCO at a conference of developing nations. This season, although space problems mean most of the shows will unfortunately have to be presented as staged readings and not full productions, Chafer is still focused on getting the best actors he can, and raising the most salient questions.

<a href=”http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2004-05-05/bestarts18.html” target=”blank”>eastbayexpress.com</a> | originally published: May 5, 2004