A Dream Play
August Strindberg
Adapted and directed by David Stein
June 9 through July 1, 2007
Saturdays and Sundays, starting at 3pm.
An angelic being descends to earth to bear witness to the difficulties of everyday life. Characters converge and divide, locations change in an instant, and a locked door becomes an obsessively recurrent motif.
Where: Berkeley Art Center, Front Lawn, 1275 Walnut St. (at Berryman) in Berkeley - Admission: Free.
These images were first presented to Stockholm audience for the first time one hundred years ago in 1907, and none have lost their power to haunt the mind.
As Strindberg himself wrote in his Preface, he wanted "to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream." Anything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.
In this reimagined and updated variation, the beautiful Berkeley Art Center will serve as the backdrop to this surrealistic tale where nothing is what it seems as the audience follows the performers through site-specific locations throughout the center.
"A Dream Play" continues Actors Ensemble of Berkeley's 50th Anniversary celebration, as we go outside our Live Oak Theatre home to inhale the good summer air on the Front Lawn of our close neighbors at the Berkeley Art Center, 1275 Walnut Street @ Berryman (directly behind our theatre) near the gourmet ghetto in Berkeley.
Cast
Maureen Coyne
Anthony Croson
Jose Garcia
Michael Kelly
Kat Kneisel
Sarah Meyeroff
Steven Morales
Andrew Nolan
John Anthony Nolan
Meira Perelstein
Thomas West
Production
Directed by ..................... David Stein
Stage Manager ............... Christianna Gunn
Costumer ....................... Helen Slomowitz
This site-specific adaptation, boldly adapted and visualized by director David Stein, will use the unique and lush Berkeley Art Center as a natural backdrop. In this “roaming” adaptation, audience members are invited to follow along with the actors from one scene to the next throughout the art center, inside and out as the story unfolds.
Along with his recent original production of the musical "Emperor Norton" in San Francisco, Mr. Stein has directed energetic and well-received productions of George Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple", Sam Shepard's "Seduced" and Euripides “The Bacchae” (performed in 2003 in John Hinkel Park) for Actors Ensemble.
View the press release.
