Fresh off the page

Wow. I'm sitting here at Theater Artaud, our new home, looking out through these amazing leaded glass windows.  It's hard to believe it is true.  We have our very own theater!  Lisa Steindler, our Executive Director here at Z Space, and David Szlasa, our Managing Director, and all of the staff, have been working so hard over the last few months to make this happen and all that hard work has paid off.  Our first event in the space is next Monday, (8/31), and we're starting off with a bang. 

 

Word for Word's "Off the Page" staged reading series begins with T. C. Boyle's story "Killing Babies." It's a very provocative look at intolerance and unchecked anger from both sides of an issue.  Boyle pulls no punches with the character of Rick, (played in our reading by the wonderful Alex Moggridge), fresh from his second stint in rehab and with a big chip on his very hip, southern Californian shoulder.  He's been sent to live with his doctor brother and do menial, minimum wage labor in his brother's clinic.  What Rick doesn't bargain for is his reaction to the band of protestors outside the clinic.

 

We have a terrific group of artists assembled for this reading. Directing for Word for Word for the first time is Matthew Spangler.  Matthew is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at San Jose State University, where he directed the original developmental production of "The Kite Runner", which he adapted from Khaled Hosseini's novel, and which was also produced at San Jose Repertory Theater. He has adapted more than 30 novels and short stories for the stage. His plays, which have been produced throughout the U.S., U.K., Ireland and France, include a one-person show of James Joyce's Dubliners; an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short stories; and Mozart!, a musical-theatre adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's letters.

 

Our most talented cast includes the aforementioned Alex Moggridge, Will Huddleston, our own Amy Kossow, Matthew Purdon, El Beh, Matt Lowe and Nina Moog.  Nina incidentally is interning at Z Space until she returns for her second year at college in Scotland.  We first met Nina when we were in residence at Lick Wilmerding High School, and Nina starred in a wonderful story we staged there by Julie Orringer, called "The Isabel Fish."  That's the great thing about being part of Z Space - there are so many opportunities to develop young talents...and older talents for that matter! You can start out doing a workshop with our Teaching Artists, which leads you to an internship, which leads to an acting role.  Come to the Z to design, or direct, or act in one project, and you might bump into someone else working on a completely different project, you get to talking and before you know it - you're both collaborating on a brand new project!

 

I'm really excited about the Off the Page series.  It gives us and our audience an opportunity to explore many diverse stories.  Much as we'd like to, we can't produce every story that we love and these readings help us narrow down the choices. They also give the audience a chance to see behind the scenes a little - get an idea of our process. 

 

And we have some great writing to experience in the next few months! In September we have a special reading that is also a fundraiser for Z Space and Word for Word: Savory Thymes: a reading of M. F. K. Fisher's story "I Was Really Very Hungry" and a gourmet meal modeled after the one the protagonist of the story describes, served in a gorgeous garden in Mill Valley - don't miss it!  9/12, 5:00 pm.  October 14 brings Nathan Englander's "The Tumblers" - 8pm at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. In November we're thrilled to be able to do a Chapter from Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Olive Kitteridge - for that we'll be back at Artaud on November 23 at 7pm.  On December 14 at 7pm we reprise our reading of Truman Capote's "A Christmas Memory" which was so popular last year.

 

I hope to see many of you here at Theater Artaud for the beginning of our Off the Page series and the beginning of our new chapter in this wonderful new space!

 

-JoAnne Winter