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| Adrian Anchondo |
| Playwright J.C. Lee |
Here are some signs that Berkeley-based playwright
J.C. Lee is a big deal. In 2010, Sleepwalkers Theatre dedicated its entire season to his
This World and After trilogy, one of the most poetic, tender, and witty bodies of work to grace our stages in recent years -- and by a young, and then relatively unknown playwright. Now a graduate of Julliard, he is the playwright-in-residence at Marin Theatre Company, the third writer to be granted that honor. Finally, it was just announced that he's a finalist in the Aurora's Global Age Project, which means that his
Luce, about American parents who adopt an African child, will get a staged reading in February. Until then, just try to keep up.
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| Pak Han |
| Actress Rami Margron, with Zehra Berkman, in Precious Little at Shotgun Players. |
If you've been lamenting contemporary theater's penchant for small casts, the actress
Rami Margron in and of herself might embody a solution. In Shotgun Players' recent
Precious Little, a beautiful new play by Madeleine George, Margron played so many different ensemble roles as to singlehandedly conjure an entire affluent society and many of its failings. Yet her characters were not placeholders in a societal scheme but distinct, fully realized individuals with unique physical repertoires and modes of speaking. In 2013 she moves toward classic work, with
Pericles at Berkeley Rep and
Lady Windermere's Fan at Cal Shakes.
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| Pak Han |
| Director and Actress Susannah Martin |
Everything director
Susannah Martin touches turns to, if not gold, then wrenchingly taut drama. At the Boxcar, she mastered the unruly beast that is
A Lie of the Mind, Sam Shepard's play about the demise of an American family, making every moment of that sprawling tragedy both gorgeous and chilling. At Shotgun, she made twisted killers into sympathetic everymen with Stephen Sondheim's
Assassins. Next up, with her longtime collaborators at Mugwumpin, she's a creator/performer in
The Great Big Also, which explores prophets and their movements throughout American history. We'll do some prophesying of our own and predict that Martin's work will continue to make the theatrical waters part.
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| Pak Han |
| Actor Wiley Naman Strasser in Invasion! at Crowded Fire |
Whether spewing the partially comprehensible jargon of a postmodern artist making a film about Mao, heckling an Orientalist play-within-a-play as a grade schooler, or wrestling his scene partner as if both were caged feral animals, actor
Wiley Naman Strasser exudes commitment and passion. He plunges deep where other actors might take more measured steps, losing himself fully in a part in a way that looks personal and painful. He takes his next step off the edge in Cutting Ball's
Risk Is This reading series and then with Martin in
The Great Big Also.
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| Pak Han |
| Costume Designer Ashley Rogers |
A recent graduate of S.F. State, where she got an MFA in costume design,
Ashley Rogers will have very little trouble making the transition from grad school to the real world because, almost from the start of her program, she's already been in the real world. Working with director Mark Jackson, Shotgun Players, Impact Theatre, Just Theater, and Mugwumpin, Rogers creates costume designs so meticulously crafted, so richly detailed, that a world is created, that characters seem to talk to each other, even before they open their mouths.
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| Nathaniel Justiniano |
| Performer Ross Travis |
Performer
Ross Travis doesn't play many easy parts. Whether he's marching around Angel Island and flying at the top of a mast with the site-specific theater company the We Players or rollicking with Nathaniel Justiniano in Naked Empire Bouffon's latest show,
You Killed Hamlet! (which is touring to international Fringe festivals this year), he is undoubtedly getting a rigorous workout. He can contort his face and body into silly, grotesque positions in farcical satire, yet he can also deliver Shakespeare with the crisp clarity and deep sense of character that makes you remember how funny the Bard can be.
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