The Cutting Ball Variety Pack
The Directors
Series
Have you ever wondered how you would stage a production? What choices would you make? What would you want your audiences to feel? To think? Hop on a fast moving conveyor belt of four short pieces featuring music, theater, and movement.
The Directors Series is a program of four short works across a single evening of performance dedicated to directorial exploration with the aim of introducing audiences to a broad array of interdisciplinary, experimental techniques. This series promotes collaboration between the mediums of theater, music, movement, and more and crosses cultural and linguistic boundaries. Placing a premium on the inventive capacities of its lead artists and providing these artists the opportunity to experiment, The Directors Series is rooted in a firm commitment to brave artistic choices.
See all four works together on the following nights:
Friday, February 2 at 8pm - Opening Night Party!
Saturday, February 3 at 8pm
Sunday, February 4 at 5pm
Friday, February 9 at 8pm
Saturday, February 10 at 8pm
Sunday, February 11 at 5pm
Ode
Randee Paufve of Paufve Dance has worked with Cutting Ball as a choreographer on A Dreamplay in 2016 and the upcoming Timon of Athens. She makes her performance debut in Ode, a piece created and choreographed by Daria Kaufman.
In Kaufman's words, "Ode is a solo dance theater piece that approaches the ballerina’s pointe shoe as a tool for exploring sexuality and persona. It is concerned with how this appendage re-figures the body, how it alternately restrains and liberates, and the illusions that it grants." Ode's scenic design is by legendary East Bay artist Lauren Elder.
Daria Kaufman is a contemporary choreographer and performer whose work deconstructs notions of perception, gender, and communication. Her personal and collaborative projects have been presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Europe, at venues including: UferStudios (Berlin, DE), Atelier Concorde (Lisbon, PT), Festival Cidade PreOcupada (Montemor-o-Novo, PT), Galeria da India (Lisbon, PT), Escola Superior de Dança (Lisbon, PT), ODC Theater (SF, USA), Joe Goode Annex (SF, USA), NOHspace (SF, USA), Garage Artspace (SF, USA), Mills College (Oakland, USA), The Milkbar (Oakland), Subterranean Arthouse (Berkeley, USA), Foundry Nights (Berkeley, USA), and on KQED Spark TV (Bay Area). In 2015, she was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance Award (the “Izzie”) for Individual Performance. Her work has been generously supported by Artist-in-Residencies at spaces such as Lake Studios Berlin (DE), ÇATI Dans (Istanbul, TR), Devir-Capa (Faro, PT), Cultivamos Cultura (Sao Luis, PT), and Shawl-Anderson Dance Center (Berkeley, USA). Her projects have received funding from GDA Foundation, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, European Cultural Foundation, and Zellerbach Family Foundation. Kaufman holds a MFA in Dance from Mills College. After performing and presenting in the Bay Area for 8 years, she moved to Lisbon, Portugal in 2014, where she continues to work.
More info: www.dariakaufman.com
Randee Paufve, artistic director of the East Bay-based Paufve | dance, was nominated for a 2016 Theatre Bay Area choreography award for her work with Cutting Ball Theater and received a 2015 Isadora Duncan Dance Award for her solo show, Soil. Recent press includes reviews in the SF Chronicle, the NY Times and a feature spot on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Randee holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from UC Davis and has served on the faculties of USF, UC Davis, Lewis & Clark College, Reed College and CSU Sacramento. Randee currently teaches in the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College, at Shawl-Anderson Dance Center and directs the Marin Academy Dance Company.
More info: www.paufvedance.org
Proben im Haus
Finally coming together, after many years of trying, Artistic Director Paige Rogers and Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s principal cellist Leighton Fong create an original piece of theater-music fusion. Actor Carla Pauli (seen in Cutting Ball's Pelleas & Melisande and Hedda Gabler) joins Rogers and Fong in examining questions of rehearsal: how it intersects with home life and what it means to perform. Cello selections featured in the piece are George Crumb’s "Sonata for Violoncello 1" and Gaspar Cassado’s "Cello Suite 1" as well as lauded New York City based composer Eve Beglarian’s "Testy Pony" with text by poet Zachary Schomburg.
Artistic Director Paige Rogers (director) co-founded Cutting Ball Theater with her husband Rob Melrose in 1999. Cellist Leighton Fong co-founded Left Coast Chamber Ensemble with his wife Anna Pressler in 1992. Both organizations are known for pushing boundaries. Working together on pieces by Gaspar Cassadó and Eve Beglarian, Rogers and Fong are exploring intersections between classical music and theater.
Leighton Fong (performer) is a longtime member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. He is the Principal Cellist of the California Symphony. He plays regularly with Eco Ensemble and Empyrean Ensemble, and was a member of the SF Contemporary Players. Mr. Fong studied at the SF Conservatory, the New England Conservatory, the Bern Conservatory in Switzerland, and the Royal Danish Conservatory in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has taught at UC Berkeley since 1997.
Carla Pauli (performer) has worked with numerous companies around the Bay Area, including AlterTheater Ensemble (The River Bride, References To Salvador Dali Make Me Hot), Marin Shakespeare Company (All’s Well That Ends Well), Porchlight Theatre, The Pear Avenue Theatre, Golden Thread Productions, The Eugene O’Neill Foundation and Brava, among others. Carla studied drama at American Conservatory Theatre Studio. She is a teaching artist and M.A. student in Drama Therapy at CIIS. She is a company member at AlterTheater Ensemble and a winner of the 2012 TBA Titan Award.
Iago: Images Unseen
Jonathan Vandenberg (director) is a director, writer, and designer. In New York, he has directed Oresteia inspired by Aeschylus at Classic Stage Company, The Kingdom for Mabou Mines / Suite, The Crossing of the Visible at the Center for Performance Research, the site-specific installation Tantalus, and collaborated with director Robert Woodruff on Festenmacher at NYU Graduate Drama. Regionally, he has directed works for the Middlebury College Museum of Art, Magic Theatre Young California Writers Project, and San Francisco Theatre Festival. He has taught at Middlebury College, Columbia University, and Classic Stage Company. He received an MFA in Directing from Columbia University.
Ed Berkeley (Othello) is a Bay Area based Actor originally from the East coast (New England). He’s predominantly a Stage Actor who has been enough to have worked with companies such as: San Francisco Playhouse in Colossal, Custom Made Theatre in In Love and Warcraft, and New Conservatory Theatre Center in Warplay, and The Cutting Ball Theater in Phédre. Berkeley is happy to be working with The Cutting Ball Theater again with this wonderful team and this original conception of a classic.
María Ascensción Leigh (Desdemona) is a Bay Area based actor and collaborator. Recent work includes Idiot String: Elixir of Life, The Breadbox: MacBitch, We Players: Romeo & Juliet, Custom Made Theatre Company: Of Serpents & Sea Spray, and Tartuffe co-produced at Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington D.C.).
Max Forman-Mullin (Iago) is very excited to be part of his first production with Cutting Ball. He recently moved back to San Francisco from New York, and since then has performed as Marco in A View From the Bridge (Shelton Theater), Archie in The Speakeasy (Boxcar Theatre), and, most recently, understudied for Imaginary Comforts (Berkeley Rep). In New York, Max performed in a variety of new plays and worked as an applied theatre practitioner in schools and prisons.
Pezzetti 2
Beatrice Basso directed Pezzetti ("little pieces" in Italian) featuring co-creator and actor Valentina Emeri for last season’s Avant GardARAMA! Their piece investigated dislocation, childhood games, and the loss of one's mother in a trilingual solo performance. Continuing to explore these themes and deepen the work begun last season, this duo returns with Pezzetti 2: a second installment, this time bringing Basso onstage as well.
Beatrice Basso (creator/peformer) is a theater practitioner, on her directorial debut at Cutting Ball. As a performer, she worked at Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Brava, and Western Stage, among others, and appeared in short films at international film festivals. Bea is also a dramaturg, translator, and producer who served as Director of New Work at A.C.T. and as Long Wharf Theatre’s Literary Manager. She is a graduate of the University of Padua, is currently a student at Wesleyan University’s Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance, and is ensemble member with Affinity Project, whose work has appeared at FURYFactory, CounterPulse, and YBCA.
Valentina Emeri (creator/director) was born in Bolzano, Italy and studied in Rome at the National Academy of Dramatic Arts “Silvio D’Amico.” Valentina has appeared in more than 50 theatre productions and 18 movies, performing in Italian, German, and English. She studied with Peggy Hackney and is a Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst.
The Director Series is made possible in part by Shira Katz, Lucinda Lee Katz, Kate Knickerbocker and Laura Irvin