CUTTING BALL THEATER HIDDEN CLASSICS READING SERIES “ELECTRA”

San Francisco, California - Cutting Ball Theater presents the third installment of this season’s Hidden Classics Reading Series. Set a few years after the Trojan War, Electra’s father Agamemnon has been murdered by her mother Clytemnestra.  Her brother Orestes has been missing for years and is thought to be dead. In order to avenge her father’s death, she must do the unthinkable and kill her mother. ELECTRA is in many ways the female version of Oedipus Rex and Hamlet, exploring the complexities of mother/daughter relationships. It is from this Greek tragedy that we get the psychological concept “Electra Complex.” Rob Melrose directs this new translation by Anne Carson, featuring Ponder Goddard as Electra, Courtney Walsh as Clytemnestra, Patrick Jones as Orestes, Paul Gerrior as the Tutor, Derek Fischer as Agisthus, Maura Halloran as Chrysothemis, and Maryssa Wanlass and Sarah Moser as the Chorus.

This season, Cutting Ball’s Hidden Classics Reading Series presents a variety of extraordinary works ranging from the ancient Greeks to the Elizabethans and modern experimentalism. The series offers a profound look at some of the greatest authors ever to write for the stage in a program that continues to be one of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets.

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, and the Magic Theatre/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. Cutting Ball received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts, and was voted “Best Theater Company” in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay issue. The company also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 and “Best Experimental Theater Company” in 2012 from SF Weekly, and was selected by San Francisco magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010 and 2012 issues of American Theatre Magazine.

WHEN:           Sunday, January 27, 2013, 1pm

WHERE:         The Cutting Ball Theater in Residence at EXIT on Taylor, 277 Taylor St., San Francisco

TICKETS:       Readings free and open to the public. For more information, visit cuttingball.com or  call 415-525-1205

The Cutting Ball Theater’s 2012 - 13 season is made possible in part by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, The Columbia Foundation,The Compton Foundation, The W.A. Gerbode Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Mental Insight Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, The RHE Foundation,
The San Francisco Arts Commission, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and by individual donors.