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.

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,