 Dearest Friends,
I am extremely happy to announce next year’s season. But first, let me say that I am extremely happy to be your artistic director here at Cal Shakes. I am coming up on my 10th anniversary, and I can still feel the excitement every time I go to the Bruns. From the minute I see the hills to when I’m visiting with you, shaking hands, hugging, and discussing our work, I feel supported, challenged, and welcomed into a community of audiences that I consider to be among the smartest, most passionate, and adventurous in the country.
Next year, we continue to boldly reimagine the great William Shakespeare with the entirety of our hearts and minds. We bring back to the stage George Bernard Shaw, who delighted and provoked us through our productions of Man and Superman and Arms and the Man. And we bring to the Bruns our first-ever world premiere, inspired by a novel by California’s own John Steinbeck. Brave new world, indeed.
We begin with nationally-renowned San Francisco playwright Octavio Solis’ adaptation—which we commissioned and developed over the last two years with Word for Word Performing Arts Company—of John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven. Octavio’s adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote is currently wowing audiences at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and he is one of our country’s most imaginative, poetic, and wittiest playwrights. Pastures depicts comic and heartbreaking characters in their quest for happiness in the seemingly idyllic landscape of Steinbeck’s own Salinas Valley in 1932.
Following that, we will present Shaw’s provocative comedy, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, in which a young, well-educated girl comes home from Cambridge to discover a shocking secret about her mother and the source of their family fortune. Banned for more than 10 years by the Lord Chamberlain in 1893, the play remains as searing and trenchant as the day it was written. Timothy Near returns to direct, following her triumphant Uncle Vanya for us in 2008.
Next, we will produce two very different Shakespeare plays back-to-back. Director Joel Sass will work with an ensemble of eight actors—as he did in his wildly creative interpretation of last season’s Pericles—to create a highly charged and thoroughly unique interpretation of Macbeth, Shakespeare’s epic tale of unbridled, lustful ambition. Then I will direct our final production of the season, the wonderful, romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing, featuring two witty, warring lovers, sinister villainy, heartbreaking betrayal, and a glorious ending that celebrates the joy of amore and the power of redemption.
I am so grateful to be a member of this community as we continue our journey together to investigate the brilliant works of theatrical literature, imagined by some of the Bay Area’s and our country’s most talented, daring, and altogether original artists.
Thank you for making Cal Shakes such a wonderful theater.
Jonathan Moscone, Artistic Director
Plays, dates, and artists are subject to change.
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