Help us celebrate our 10th Anniversary Season!
2009-2010 Special Events
A showcase of experimental scenes by local and national Latino & Latina playwrights
*This evening of readings is free of charge. If you would like to make a donation to the Cutting Ball Theater in honor of the Vanguardia Festival, please follow the tickets link above. Your purchase will be considered a donation to our non-profit arts organization, will reserve your seat in our theater, and you will receive a receipt. Thank you so much for your support!
Kristoffer Diaz
fucking vigwan
Directed by Sean San Jose
There are a lot of horrible people in the world. fucking vigwan is a horrible play about some of those horrible people. Warning: play contains sex, drugs, police brutality, horrendously (and stupidly) foul language, necrophilia, neo-colonialism, and some approximation of true love. This play should probably not be seen by anyone.
Marisela Treviño Orta
Ghost Limb
Directed by Evren Odcikin
Set somewhere between nightmare and reality, Ghost Limb is the story of a mother whose son is kidnapped during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Using her injured arm as a divining rod, she searches for her son while the world around her withdraws into a perpetual winter.
Octavio Solis
The Origin of Rigor Morin
Directed by Rob Melrose
The Origin of Rigor Morin is one of playwright Octavio Solis’ earliest works, written in Dallas in the early ‘80s when he was a self-proclaimed “naive young punk,” and performed with a live band at the 500 Club. A tongue-in-cheek interplay of myth, Nuevo-wavo, verse, song, and dance, The Origin of Rigor Morin is an installment from a 10-play cycle depicting the life and times of Geometricia, a heroine whose comic adventures are based upon a real high-school friend of the playwright.
Caridad Svich
IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (a rave fable)
Directed by Adriana Baer
IPHIGENIA… hurls one of Greek tragedy’s most compelling sagas into a sleek netherworld of sex, drugs, and trance music. Iphigenia is the daughter of a political celebrity who embraces sensuous excess with a transgendered glam rock star named Achilles in a desperate attempt to flee her inevitable fate.
Enrique Urueta
Colombian Book of the Dead
Directed by Paige Rogers
After her son, David, is killed in a shooting at a Virginia university, Luz Miranda meets a hillbilly demon named Bubba, who offers her a chance to save her son. If she can find her son in the afterlife and bring him back within 24 hours, he’ll be allowed to live, in exchange for her life. But the afterlife is nothing like Luz imagined. In her journey through the Appalachian afterlife, she struggles against headless Frenchmen, cumbia dancing corpses, and other beings from beyond as she makes her way to the one place she knows she will find her son: the afterlife of San Francisco.
Karen Zacarías
El Virgen
Directed by Mark Rucker
A blonde falls off a burning building and lives to tell the tale. A virgin Latino boy finds himself in a family way. Is this the beginning of the end of the world, or a just a good ol’ Mexican-style miracle?
Saturday, August 7, 2010, 8pm (but the festivities start at 6pm!)
Join us for the preshow soiree at 6pm. Enjoy a delicious dinner, including tamales, tortilla chips with salsa and guacamole, and aguas frescas.
And be sure to stick around for the after-party (starting at 9:30 after the showcase) — the celebration includes tequila shots, a DJ, and great company.
- No one turned away for lack of funds. No reservations are necessary; donations are gladly accepted at the door.
- Location: Cutting Ball Theater in residence at the EXIT on Taylor — 277 Taylor Street (at Ellis), San Francisco
Questions? Contact paige@cuttingball.com
Kristoffer Diaz is a playwright and educator, currently living and working in Minneapolis, where he is a 2009-10 Jerome Fellow. His full-length plays, including The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Welcome to Arroyo’s, and Guernica, have been produced and developed at Second Stage, Victory Gardens, InterAct, Mixed Blood, American Theatre Company, The Orchard Project, Hip-Hop Theater Festival, The Lark, Summer Play Festival, Donmar Warehouse, and South Coast Repertory. Kristoffer was one of the creators of Brink!, the apprentice anthology show at the 2009 Humana Festival of New American Plays. He is a playwright-in-residence at Teatro Vista, a recipient of both the Future Aesthetics Artist Regrant and the Van Lier Fellowship (New Dramatists), and a member of the Ars Nova Play Group. Kristoffer is currently working on a commission for the Center Theatre Group. ?As an educator, conference presenter, and dramaturg, Kristoffer has worked with El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice, the Guthrie, the International Thespian Festival, Florida Thespians, Cleveland Play House, No Passport, Austin Scriptworks/Latino Playwright Initiative, Rising Circle Productions, Future Aesthetics Artist Dialogue, the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and the Playwrights Center. ?His one-act play The Trophy Thieves: A High School Love Story is published by Playscripts, and his play Welcome to Arroyo’s will be published in 2009-10 as part of the first critical anthology of hip-hop theater.
Poet and Playwright Marisela Treviño Orta received an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. While studying at USF, Marisela became the Resident Poet of El TeatroJornalero!, a theatre company comprised of Latino immigrants. Marisela’s first play Braided Sorrow received workshop readings at the 2005 Bay Area Playwrights Festival and the 2006 [Inside] the Ford Summer Reading Series. Braided Sorrow won the 2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama, received its world premiere at Su Teatro in Denver, CO., in 2008 and most recently won the 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama. Her other plays include: American Triage (commissioned by Marin Theatre Company, 2007 MTC Nu Werkz new play reading series, 2008 MTC workshop production); Ghost Limb (Just Theatre 2007 New Play Lab); Woman on Fire (2006 Primer Pasos: Un Festival de Latino Plays, 2007 full-length commission by the Latino Playwrights Initiative, 2007 Bay Area Playwrights Festival BASH, and 2008 Playwrights Foundation’s In The Rough reading series). Marisela is a Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco and member of the 2009-2010 Playground writers pool. Currently she is working on two new plays: Heart Shaped Nebula and Wolf at the Door.
Octavio Solis is a San Francisco-based playwright and director whose plays include John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Don Quixote, Ghosts of the River, Lydia, June in a Box, Man of the Flesh, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, La Posada Mágica, El Otro, Dreamlandia, The 7 Visions of Encarnacion, Bethlehem, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, Gibraltar, Lethe, and Marfa Lights. They have been mounted at a variety of theaters including the California Shakespeare Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Dallas Theater Center, Magic Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum, Campo Santo/Intersection for the Arts, Yale Repertory Theatre, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, South Coast Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Latino Chicago Theatre Company, Teatro Vista in Chicago, El Teatro Campesino, Undermain Theatre in Dallas, and Thick Description.
Caridad Svich is a US playwright of Cuban-Argentine-Spanish-Croatian descent. Key works include Iphigenia…a rave fable, 12 Ophelias, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man’s Blues, Instructions for Breathing, The Tropic of X, Wreckage, the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations and her stage adaptation of Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, which receives regional premiere at Denver Theatre Center this fall. She’s translated nearly all of Federico Garcia Lorca’s plays and also works by Julio Cortazar, Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca and contemporary work from Cuba, Mexico and Spain. She’s alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, contributing editor of Theatre Forum, and associate editor of Contemporary Theatre Review. She’s received awards from the NEA, TCG, Pew Charitable Trusts, and Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She’s listed in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino Literature. Visit her at www.caridadsvich.com
Colombian-American, by way of Virginia and San Francisco, Enrique Urueta has an MFA in playwriting from Brown University. His plays have been developed or produced by Brown University/Trinity Repertory Theatre Consortium, American Repertory Theatre, Aurora Theatre, The Queer Latino Artists Coalition, Playwrights Foundation, Impact Theatre, The Lark Play Development Center, Golden Thread Productions, and The Queer Cultural Center. He is a recipient of a Creating Queer Communities grant from the National Queer Arts Festival, a Theatre Bay Area CASH grant, The Global Age Project Award, and the Theater Bay Area New Work Fund award. His other plays include Learn To Be Latina and The Danger of Bleeding Brown, which was selected by David Hare as a runner-up for the 2009 Yale Drama Series Award. The SF Weekly named him Best Up-And-Coming Playwright in their Best of San Francisco 2010 awards, and Southern Theatre Magazine named him one of ?“40 Groundbreaking Playwrights” who are “changing the U.S. theatre.” He is a proud member of NoPassport, a pan-American theater coalition devoted to the advocacy of Latino/a and hemispherically-minded work. ?
Karen Zacarías plays include Legacy of Light (which will be at San Jose Rep next season), Mariela in the Desert, The Book Club, The sins of Sor Juana, the adaptation of the best-selling book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and children’s musicals Looking for Roberto Clement, Chasing George Washington, Ferdinand and the Bull, Einstein is a Dummy, Cinderella Eats Rice and Beans, Jane of the Jungle and Frieda Flies.
Her plays have been produced at The Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, The Goodman Theater, Denver Center, Alliance, Round House Theater, Imagination Stage, Berkshire Theater Festival, The Arden, Cleveland Playhouse and many more. Her awards include: 2010 Steinberg Citation for Best New Play, National Francesca Primus Prize, New Voices, Award, National Latino Play Award, ?ATT/TCG First Stages Award, Finalist Susan S. Blackburn Award and a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding New Play. She has commissions from South Coast Rep, La Jolla and Arena Stage. ?Karen is the playwright-in-residence at Arena Stage and teaches playwriting at Georgetown University.
CUTTING BALL THEATER
“VANGUARDIA”
Evening of experimental plays by Latino playwrights
August 7, 2010
WHAT:
San Francisco’s cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater continues to celebrate its 10th season of critically acclaimed stagework with VANGUARDIA. This one-night only event will be held Saturday, August 7 at 8pm at the Cutting Ball Theater in Residence at EXIT on Taylor. “With Vanguardia, Cutting Ball is reaching out to the Latino/Latina theater community,” said Associate Artistic Director Paige Rogers. “The six playwrights involved are spectacularly talented and their scenes give us a flavor of their particular experimental voice.”
Spanish for “avant garde,” VANGUARDIA features an evening of readings of experimental plays by six Latino playwrights: Kristoffer Diaz, Marisela Treviño Orta, Octavio Solis, Caridad Svich, Enrique Urueta, and Karen Zacarias.
The line up for VANGUARDIA is as follows:
fucking vigwan
By Kristoffer Diaz
Directed by Sean San Jose
There are a lot of horrible people in the world. fucking vigwan is a horrible play about some of those horrible people. Warning: play contains sex, drugs, police brutality, horrendously (and stupidly) foul language, necrophilia, neo-colonialism, and some approximation of true love. This play should probably not be seen by anyone.
GHOST LIMB
By Marisela Treviño Orta
Directed by Evren Odcikin
Set somewhere between nightmare and reality, GHOST LIMB is the story of a mother whose son is kidnapped during Argentina’s “dirty war.” Using her injured arm as a divining rod, she searches for her son while the world around her withdraws into a perpetual winter.
THE ORIGIN OF RIGOR MORIN
By Octavio Solis
Directed by Rob Melrose
The Origin of Rigor Morin is one of playwright Octavio Solis’ earliest works, written in Dallas in the early ‘80s when he was a self-proclaimed “naive young punk,” and performed with a live band at the 500 Club. A tongue-in-cheek interplay of myth, Nuevo-wavo, verse, song, and dance, The Origin of Rigor Morin is an installment from a 10-play cycle depicting the life and times of Geometricia, a heroine whose comic adventures are based upon a real high-school friend of the playwright.
IPHIGENIA CRASH LAND FALLS ON THE NEON SHELL THAT WAS ONCE HER HEART (a rave fable)
By Caridad Svich
Directed by Amy Mueller
IPHIGENIA… hurls one of Greek tragedy’s most compelling sagas into a sleek netherworld of sex, drugs, and trance music. Iphigenia is the daughter of a political celebrity who embraces sensuous excess with a transgendered glam rock star named Achilles in a desperate attempt to flee her inevitable fate.
COLOMBIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
By Enrique Urueta
Directed by Paige Rogers
After her son, David, is killed in a shooting at a Virginia university, LuzMiranda meets a hillbilly demon named Bubba, who offers her a chance to save her son. If she can find her son in the afterlife and bring him back within 24 hours, he’ll be allowed to live, in exchange for her life. But the afterlife is nothing like Luz imagined. In her journey through the Appalachian afterlife, she struggles against headless Frenchmen, cumbia dancing corpses, and other beings from beyond as she makes her way to the one place she knows she will find her son: the afterlife of San Francisco.
EL VIRGEN
By Karen Zacarias
Directed by Mark Rucker
A blonde falls off a burning building and lives to tell the tale. A virgin Latino boy finds himself in a family way. Is this the beginning of the end of the world, or a just a good ol’ Mexican-style miracle?
Following VANGUARDIA, Cutting Ball Theater opens its 11th season in November with a distinctive take on Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST.
The season continues with BONE TO PICK, Eugenie Chan’s retelling of the Ariadne myth, accompanied by a newly commissioned companion piece, DIADEM, in January. The company is poised to present the Bay Area Premiere of Will Eno’s LADY GREY (in ever lower light) and other plays in March. The RISK IS THIS…THE CUTTING BALL NEW EXPERIMENTAL PLAYS FESTIVAL returns to round out the season in May with five exhilarating new works for the stage, three of which were commissioned by Cutting Ball.
Co-founded in 1999 by theater artists Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers, Cutting Ball Theater presents avant-garde works of the past, present, and future by re-envisioning classics, exploring seminal avant-garde texts, and developing new experimental plays. Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, the Magic Theatre, and Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works. The company has produced a number of World Premieres, West Coast Premieres, and re-imagined various classics. Recipient of the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts, Cutting Ball Theater earned the Best of SF award in 2006 from SF Weekly and was selected by San Francisco Magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007. Cutting Ball Theater was recently featured in the February 2010 issue of American Theatre Magazine.
WHEN: Saturday, August 7, 8pm(pre-show soiree at 6pm)
WHERE:
The Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor
277 Taylor St., San Francisco
TICKETS:
$15-20 sliding scale; no reservations necessary, pay at the door. For more information visit cuttingball.com
The Cutting Ball Theater’s productions are made possible in part by grants from The Compton Foundation, The Creative Work Fund, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The San Francisco Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, and the Zellerbach Foundation.
