April 2010

Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People”

A small town recently built a health spa and with relief they see tourist business picking up. But when the town doctor discovers contamination in the water, he brings his findings to the public — where he finds that some don’t understand, some don’t want to hear it, and some want it suppressed.

Short erotic pieces for the stage
presented in association with the Guywriters Playwrights Group

“MISSING THE MEMO” (by Garret Groenveld) starts a beautiful relationship. A connection is made in public transportation purgatory in Bob Hayden’s “MUNI APHRODITE.” “THE FALL” (by Hunt Scarritt) in a dream prompts a revelation about love and sex. A scene from Eric Rose’s work-in-progress features flirtation between gym “BUNNIES.” Lust for an older man is a fatal tango in Michael Esparza’s “THE MARK.”

Directed by Andrew Calabrese, Joe Frank, Michael Pulizzano, Alan Quismorio and Hunt Scarritt

GUYWRITERS is a volunteer-run community-based network for gay writers in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides opportunities for members to develop new writing (including works for the stage), access publishing resources, and meet other people in the literary world. It is fiscally sponsored by Intersection for the Arts, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Currently, its events and activities are free and no membership dues are required. For more information on GuyWriters, please write to GuyWriters@gmail.com or log on to www.guywritersonline.org (where you can also make tax-deductible donations).

2 Performances
at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

An adult comedy. On Christmas Eve Rachel’s husband admits that he has taken out a contract on her life. She barely escapes and begins a strange journey to make a life for herself.

8 Performances
at The Randall Museum Theatre and
the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

A short play by the American poet
Edna St.Vincent Millay

1 Performance at the
6th Annual San Francisco Theater Festival

In Laredo, in 1875, the four richest men in West Texas are playing their annual high-stakes poker game.
A family passes through town on their way to their new homestead, and the father is tempted to join the game with the family’s entire, but meager, savings.
And that’s just the first five minutes.

This 90-minute one act was a revival from our first season and we are proud to have been able to bring this this entertaining show to a larger audience.

8 Performances at
at The Randall Museum Theatre and
the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

Our annual Classic American Theatre selection. “Chains of Dew” is about a popular poet who lives in the Midwest and works as a bank executive. He complains to his New York friends that his life in Iowa is dull and that his wife and family are a burden, but that he must go on for the sake of those who depend on him. The friends go to his home to liberate him but find the job to be more than they expected. This is the first American production of the play since it was first performed in 1922!

8 Performances at
at The Randall Museum Theatre and
the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

Sunday Salon is a local group of theatre artists engaged in play reading and the development of their new works. The one-act plays “Every Witch Way” by Kristin Anundsen and “Housebroken” by Frank Gigliotti will receive their first performances, directed by JeNeal Granieri.

1 Performance at
the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

This late “problem” comedy is the story of Helen, the orphaned daughter of a famous doctor, who falls in love with the noble Count Rossillion. She must earn her marriage to him and then gain his loyalty to herself by a series of difficult and arduous tasks. Half fairy tale and half folk tale, this unconventional play has intrigued scholars and theatre artists for centuries. Is the Count worth the ordeals Helena must endure to secure her marriage to him? Why does she do it? Is she a resourceful, determined heroine or a ruthless schemer? We presented this lesser known masterpiece as a Gothic fairy tale.

8 Performances at
at The Randall Museum Theatre and
the Eureka Valley Recreation Center Auditorium

This compelling play is about a German judge in the early years of the Nazi regime who must decide a case of assault, charged against S.S. thugs who have beaten a Jewish shopkeeper. It is complicated by many factors; an incomplete police report, conflicting motives of concerned parties, unreliable testimonies and the political pressure of an increasingly totalitarian state. It is a kind of ‘prequel’ to our April 2007 production of Judgment at Nuremberg, depicting the environment that created the defendants of that story.

Performed at
The San Francisco Theater Festival

The epic story of the Antrobus family’s journey in time from dinosaurs and floods, through the ice age to the era of mass media, in peace and in war. Alexander Woollcott called it “a dauntless and heartening comedy which stands head and shoulders above anything ever written for our stage.” Wilder himself said, “It was written on the eve of our entrance into the war and under strong emotion and I think it mostly comes alive under conditions of crisis.”

8 Performances at
at The Randall Museum Theatre