For Shotgun Players, it is the year of the woman. Or women. Twelve women, to be exact. All productions in its 2015 season �" six full productions and six staged readings �" come from female playwrights. "This all began when we heard that a major American theatre company had announced a season without including a single female voice," the Berkeley company said in announcing its 24th season. "The challenge was not if we could find six exciting plays to produce, but which plays they would be."
The season ranges from a new adaptation of an ancient story to a murder mystery considered to be the longest-running play in history. It will be the adaptation that launches the season on March 19 at the Ashby Stage, and while the original source material long ago achieved classic stage status, Anne Carson's translation of Antigone hardly seemed the stuff of live theater. The celebrated Canadian poet and translator created a highly irreverent adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy that she titled Antagonick. The words in the 2012 book are printed in Carson's own handwriting and are accompanied by Bianca Stone's surreal illustrations.
Theater director Mark Jackson and choreographer Hope Mohr said their collaboration aims to bring the multi-layered spirit of the printed publication to the stage. Says Mohr, "Antigonick is a mix of theater, poetry, criticism, and, in the case of our production, dance. It sources both high and low culture, past and present. It refreshingly distills language down to the bone." The design of the production takes inspiration from Stone's illustrations and even Carson's penmanship. Antagonick will run through April 25.
Greek mythology also informs the second play of Shotgun's season. San Francisco playwright Marisela Orta's Heart Shaped Nebula, opening in May, moves from Orta's former Texas hometown to the star-gazing mecca of Tonopah, Nevada, where the character Miqueo has traveled on the anniversary of a tragic accident in a ritual release of grief. But his efforts are sidetracked with the arrival of a rebellious teenage girl who, in the play's aura of magical realism, is more than she appears to be. This will be the play's official premiere.
The widely produced Top Girls continues the season in July as English playwright Caryl Churchill explores what it means to be an empowered woman. The 1982 play uses a non-linear and alternately surreal and realistic approach as it follows the upward trajectory of a career-driven woman whose interactions include office politics, fractured family matters, and a dreamlike luncheon populated with historical figures.
It is back to Greek mythology in August with Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice, her unconventional take on the story of the title character's travels to Hades to reclaim husband Orpheus. Ruhl's plays have been popular with Bay Area theaters, and productions have included In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), Dead Man's Cell Phone, and Berkeley Rep's 2004 production of Eurydice.
Left unpaid for her work as a spy for King Charles II, Aphra Behn became one of the first English women to earn a living by writing. October will bring Behn's 1677 play The Rovers to the Ashby Stage. Set in Naples at Carnival time, the comedy follows several romantic adventures as three women fight against their traditional possibilities: wife, nun, or prostitute. Ironically, Charles II was such a fan of the play that he received a private showing.
Shotgun's season concludes in December with Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which has been running continuously in London's West End since 1952. It's a murder mystery set in a country inn where a detective tries to determine which of the guests may be guilty of homicide. It ends with a twist unusual for a traditional whodunit, and at the end of each London performance, audiences are asked not to reveal the identity of the killer to anyone outside the theater.
As an adjunct to its main season, Shotgun is offering the Champagne Staged Reading Series of plays by women. They include The Ohio State Murders by noted African-American playwright Adrienne Kennedy, about a writer returning to her alma mater where her life had been torn apart decades before; Madeleine George's The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence, a whimsical play that spans 1876 to 2011 and has techno-nerds at its heart; Laura Marks' Bethany, which focuses on a single, unemployed mother trying to get her child out of foster care; Irene Maria Fornes' Letters from Cuba, a musical play about separate lives in spiritual connection; and The Children's Hour, Lillian Hellman's 1934 drama about lives destroyed by rumors of lesbianism. One play is still to be announced in the staged-reading series.
Individual tickets to Shotgun's full productions are $5-$30 from opening night on, with pay-what-you-can tickets available during previews. Subscription tickets for the six-play series start at $130. Go to shotgunplayers.org for more information.