RISING WATERS THREATENS THEATRES ON BOTH COASTS Obie-winning director who creeped out the Bay Area opens a second scary play in NYC—This one’s by a Berkeley native! BERKELEY CA, NOVEMBER 21, 2005 Last month, Les Waters put fear in the hearts of Bay Area residents. Now he’s headed east to terrify New Yorkers as well. On the West Coast, critics and audiences were bowled over by Waters’ staging of Finn in the Underworld, a psychosexual horror story by Jordan Harrison that had its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in October. Now the Obie Award-winning director is taking his unique brand of terror to Manhattan with his production of Apparition at the Connelly Theatre. Like Finn, Apparition is a non-linear ghost story from the pen of a young writer heralded as an important new voice in American theatre. But this time the playwright is Berkeley’s own Anne Washburn. Returning to the off-Broadway scene, Waters has cast T. Ryder Smith, who comes to the show from the hit, Thom Pain (Based on Nothing). Apparition also features several artists familiar to Berkeley Rep audiences: Maria Dizzia, who played the title role in Waters’ staging of Eurydice; Emily Donahoe, who portrayed Sophie in Artistic Director Tony Taccone’s production of Honour; Christal Weatherly, who designed the outrageous costumes for Waters’ world premiere of Fêtes de la Nuit; and Darron L. West, who created the chilling soundscape for Finn. “It’s an honor to work with such accomplished artists on such a creepy play,” Waters asserts. “I’m particularly glad to collaborate with Anne Washburn, a tremendous talent from our own back yard. In my recent work—Eurydice, Finn and now Apparition—I’ve found myself examining what happens to people when they’ve passed on. What’s our relationship to friends, families and colleagues who are dead? This script is an unruly riff on the world’s unluckiest play—and it asks that very question.” “I was Berkeley born and bred,” Washburn comments. “I remember taking school trips to Berkeley Rep, and have vivid memories of seeing The Diary of Anne Frank, Chekhov in Yalta and particularly Happy End. I still see shows when I’m home, and I always have this delightful thought when I enter the theatre: God knows what’s going to happen on that stage! “In fact, he won’t remember this, but Tony Taccone taught me in a Shakespeare summer program for teens back in 1983. We were completely impressed with him because he was from New York, always wore black and made us do all these rigorous push-up variants…I’m now in the slow, painful process of reducing the black in my wardrobe, but I still care about working with people who are truly committed to theatre. It’s a privilege and a thrill to work with Les, and so fabulous that he’s coming in from Berkeley!” Apparition is billed as “an uneasy play about the under-known.” Combining whispers of dread, slivers of Macbeth, dining demons and a murder that may or may not have happened, Apparition is about the feeling that something is coming to get you—and there’s nowhere to hide. It begins performances on Sunday, November 28 for a limited engagement through January 7, 2006. Les Waters won an Obie Award for his production of Charles Mee’s Big Love. He directed its world premiere at the Humana Festival and subsequent runs at Berkeley Rep, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Goodman Theatre and Long Wharf Theater. He became associate artistic director of Berkeley Rep in 2003, where he has also staged Eurydice, Fêtes de la Nuit, Finn in the Underworld, The Mystery of Irma Vep, Suddenly Last Summer and Yellowman. Waters’ work has been seen at theatres across the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition to Big Love, his New York credits include the Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival and Signature Theatre Company. Elsewhere in America, he has directed for American Conservatory Theater, Goodman Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse and Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In his native England, Waters has staged work with the Bristol Old Vic, Hampstead Theatre Club, Joint Stock Theatre Group, National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre and Traverse Theatre Club. He has a long history of working collaboratively with prominent playwrights like Caryl Churchill and Charles Mee, and champions important new voices, such as Jordan Harrison, Sarah Ruhl and Anne Washburn. Waters’ many honors include a Dramalogue Award, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award, a KPBS Patte and several awards from the Bay Area Critics’ Circle, Connecticut Critics’ Circle and Tokyo Theatre Critics. Anne Washburn‘s work has been produced or developed by 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, Cherry Lane Theater, The Civilians, Dixon Place, New York Theater Workshop, The Public Theater, Soho Repertory Theatre and the Williamstown Theater Festival. Her plays include The Communist Dracula Pageant (Soho Rep summer works, director Steve Cosson), The Ladies (The Civilians/Cherry Lane/Dixon Place, director Anne Kauffman) and The Internationalist (director Ken Rus Schmoll). The latter was originally mounted by 13P in New York City; has been produced or workshopped in Berlin, Budapest and Sydney; and will be produced by New York’s Vineyard Theater next spring. I Have Loved Strangers was created in residence at the Williamstown Theater Festival as part of the LeapFrog project, with Boris Segal directing Johanna McKeon. Washburn is currently working on a loose translation of Euripides’ Orestes, which has received readings with New York Theater Workshop and the Red Bull Theater Company. Apparition was written in Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab (2000/2001) while she was an artist in residence there, and later directed in New York by Linsey Firman at Chashama 125. Washburn is an associate artist with the Obie-winning downtown groups 13P and The Civilians, and a member of New Dramatists. The full cast of Apparition includes Maria Dizzia, Emily Donahoe, David Andrew McMahon, Garrett Neergaard and T. Ryder Smith. The design team is as follows: Andromache Chalfant (scenic design), Christal Weatherly (costume design), Jane Cox (lighting design) and Darron L. West (sound design). The show is being produced by Apparition Off-Broadway LLC. The Connelly Theatre is located at 220 East Fourth Street, between Avenues A and B, in New York City. Tickets are $35–$50 and are available at theatermania.com or by calling 212.352.3101. For photos, interviews, etc. contact: Terence Keane, Director of Public Relations 510.647.2917, tkeane@berkeleyrep.org BACK TO TOP