UBUNTU THEATER PROJECT PRESENTS “I AM MY OWN WIFE” BY DOUG WRIGHT; MARCH 4 - MARCH 20
Colin Blattel
I'm excited to share here that the Ubuntu Theater Project is ready to launch our third show in our inaugural season - I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright.
We hope you will join us!
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Colin Blattel
Managing Director
cbla...@ubuntutheaterproject.com
510-910-2494
ubuntu theater project continues inaugural season with
“I Am My Own Wife” by Doug Wright
march 4 - march 20, 2016
‘I Am My Own Wife’ is the third play in Ubuntu Theater Project’s Inaugural 2016 Season: Threatened Homes featuring seven plays at site-specific venues, pay-what-you-can price.
"Polished, serene, impeccably credentialed."
– The Washington Post
Berkeley, CA
(February 12, 2016) – The Ubuntu
Theater Project is proud to continue its inaugural season, fresh off of the
success of two new plays – Marcus Gardley's Gospel
of Lovingkindness and the West Coast
Premier of Exit Cuckoo: (nanny in
motherland) by Lisa Ramirez – with the re-imagined contemporary classic and
Pulitzer Prize winning play, I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright. The
Ubuntu Theater Project will continue its season with Grapes of Wrath adapted by Frank Galati and from the novel by John
Steinbeck, Más by Milta Ortiz, Hurt Village by Katori Hall, and we are
thrilled to announce our final show in our 2016 Season – Othello by William Shakespeare.
This contemporary classic follows playwright Doug Wright’s fascination of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf’s story, a transgender person and her survival of Nazi Germany and the Stasi surveillance in East Berlin. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's story is both a celebration of courage and resilience and of self-preserving compromises, which enabled her to survive the two of the harshest regimes of the 20th century. The play speaks to the complexity of survival when one’s most intimate home—the body—is the source of persecution.
Co-Artistic Director Michael
Socrates Moran directs this one-person play that features Co-Artistic Director William Hodgson, recently
seen in Ubuntu’s production of Dance of
the Holy Ghosts by Marcus Gardley, playing all 35 characters in the play. Lighting design by company member Stephanie
Anne Johnson. I Am My Own Wife has two previews on March
4 and the March 5 matinee and
runs from March 4 - March 20, 2016 at Haba
Na Haba House, 1936 Thousand Oaks, Berkeley, CA 94707. For tickets ($15-35
online; pay-what-you-can at the door) and information the public can call (510) 646-1126 or
visit www.ubuntutheaterproject.com.
Flex passes are also available on the Ubuntu Theater Project website.
The Ubuntu Theater Project seeks to re-imagine
this story as an intersection between historic account, memory, and a
theatrical revelation of Charlotte’s inner life. The production will be
set in a cozy, historic home in the hills of Berkeley that has converted its
original ballroom into a theater space. The space offers a personal feeling to
the kingdom of antiques Charlotte harbors and protects. Audience members will
descend into this beautiful, brick and stained wood lodging filled with the
mist of memory, a piano accompaniment and dancers evoking the essence of a
German cabaret.
With furniture and objects dressed in white lace and theatrical solutions to a play we all think we know, Ubuntu Theater Project hopes to create a more expressionistic version of Doug Wright’s masterpiece that reveals how the ghost of Charlotte’s story remains eerily relevant a decade or so after it was written.
I Am My Own Wife received international renown and critical acclaim, including the Pulitizer Prize along with Tony Awards for its celebrated run on Broadway. Notoriously, the production requires a virtuosic acting performance. William Hodgson is a UC San Diego MFA Acting graduate who has recently worked with the La Jolla Playhouse in Hunchback of Notre Dame and the lead role in An Octaroon at Mixed Blood Theater in Minneapolis.
The Ubuntu Theater Project also provides a critical professional training ground for up-and-coming local bay area actors and partners with Laney College’s Theatre Arts Department to provide professional opportunities for students. Michael Torres, Chair of the Laney College Theatre Arts Department, says “the Ubuntu Theater Project brings what I think is much needed theater to the Bay Area and Oakland specifically. They have been a critical partner in providing our students with unique opportunities to learn alongside more seasoned artists who are also still young and just as diverse as they are.”
“The Ubuntu Theater Project seeks to create a theatrical experience that is affordable to all, socially charged, and building a deeper sense of connectedness amongst our audience members that transcends beyond our performance,” says Managing Director, Colin Blattel. “The Ubuntu Theater Project is committed to a model that brings the highest quality art for a diverse and accessible audience. And that the experience of attending the theater with people who are completely different than yourself feeds the mission of understanding and strengthening the truth that we are all interconnected.”
The word Ubuntu is from a Zulu Proverb: “I am a person through other people. My humanity is tied to yours” or most simply translated as “I am because we are.” The Ubuntu Theater Project believes that as a culture we are not fulfilling our full potential to make lasting and powerful human connections: and therefore diminishing our collective human experience and understanding of one another. Co-Artistic Director, Michael Socrates Moran said, “we believe in creating a theatrical experience that invigorates and enlivens our interconnectedness that is too often neglected.”
Tickets are sold online for $15-$35, and tickets are also sold at the door each night on a pay-what-you-can basis and no one will be turned away for a lack of funds. To buy tickets, or for more information regarding the festival, visit www.ubuntutheaterproject.com.
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PRODUCTION CALENDAR
I Am My Own Wife by Doug Wright
Fri 3/4 @ 8:00pm – Preview #1
Sat 3/5 @ 2:00pm – Preview #2
Sat 3/5 @ 8:00pm – Opening Night
Sun 3/6 @ 7:00pm
Fri 3/11 @ 8:00pm
Sat 3/12 @ 2:00pm
Sat 3/12 @ 8:00pm
Sun 3/13 @ 7:00pm
Fri 3/18 @ 8:00pm
Sat 3/19 @ 2:00pm
Sat 3/19 @ 8:00pm
Sun 3/20 @ 7:00pm
Haba Na Haba House
1936 Thousand Oaks Blvd
Berkeley, CA 94707
2016 SEASON CALENDAR
The Gospel of Lovingkindness
by Marcus Gardley
January 13th – 31st
Exit Cuckoo (nanny in motherland)
by Lisa Ramirez
February 11th – 28th
I Am My Own Wife
by Doug Wright
March 4th - 20th
The Grapes of Wrath
by Frank Galati
from the novel by John Steinbeck
April 6th – 24th
Más
by Milta Ortiz
May 11th – 29th
Othello
by William Shakespeare
June 8th – 26th
Hurt Village
by Katori Hall
July 13th – 31st
ABOUT UBUNTU THEATER PROJECT
The Ubuntu Theater Project is a collection of artists that are committed to creating compelling works that unearth the human condition and unite diverse audiences through revelatory, heart-pounding theater. Founded in Oakland, California, in 2012, the Ubuntu Theater Project shared three annual summer theater festivals and produced 14 plays in five Bay Area cities during that time. The Ubuntu Theater Project is now proud to offer year-long theater for Oakland and the Bay Area with our inaugural 2015-16 season: Threatened Homes.
--
Managing Director
Ubuntu Theater Project
439 International Blvd | Suite 1 | Oakland, CA 94606
C: 510-646-1126 | E: cbla...@ubuntutheaterproject.com
ubuntutheaterproject.com
"I am because we are"