CUTTING BALL THEATER ANNOUNCES ANDREW W. MELLON FOUNDATION GRANT

Company receives $166,000 grant to fund three-year playwright residency for Andrew Saito
San Francisco, California - San Francisco’s cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater announces that the company has been awarded a grant for $166,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a three-year residency for resident playwright Andrew Saito. The grant will give Saito a full time salary and health benefits at Cutting Ball for the entire three years, with options to receive additional developmental funds. The grant is Cutting Ball’s largest grant to date.

As part of Saito’s residency, Cutting Ball Theater will present the World Premiere of KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT, a poetic portrayal of the heart of the city in the spirit of Alan Ginsburg’s Howl, William S. Burroughs, and the plays of Suzan-Lori Parks. KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT dazzles with sublime, surreal language and images fit for a Dalí painting in a play about love and longing in the neglected neighborhoods of a fictional city. At the center is Scarlett, a woman who takes care of her grandmother by pulling wild animals out of her ears and letting them loose in her backyard menagerie. She makes her living as best she can off of the dreams and desires of married men who are willing to sacrifice everything for her. Drumhead, a lowly morgue worker with a wild imagination, comes across a carnival poster boasting of the wonders of Scarlett and can’t get her out of his head. He too has a relative to care for: his Navy veteran father who lost his legs in a war and spends his days reenacting great battles in the bathtub. KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT follows these seeming misfits on their journey to find each other. Artistic Director Rob Melrose helms the production, (May 17-June 16), which was workshopped during Cutting Ball’s 2011 RISK IS THIS…festival.

Additionally, During Saito’s residency time at Cutting Ball, the company plans to produce an additional World Premiere main stage production penned by Saito, develop two commissioned plays and two translations. Cutting Ball will commission a piece that adapts and responds to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick,