Each production will be directed by a TDPS faculty member, lecturer, or local guest artist in close collaboration with TDPS production staff and student actors, designers, and technical theater artists. Additional details of each production will be available at least two months prior to the opening performance.

Single tickets are now available online, with a 25% season discount for patrons who purchase tickets to four or more shows in one transaction. Group discounts are also available when purchasing 10 or more tickets in a single transaction. For more information, contact the TDPS Box Office at tdpsboxoffice@berkeley.edu.

Who Shot Miguelito?

By Sean San José

Directed by Sean San José

October 17–20, 2019

The Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall

Who Shot Miguelito? parallels the murder of a young street artist in San Francisco’s Mission District with the death of immigrant, working class neighborhoods. Mapping the Mission in murals, tags, stickers, stencils, and socio-political protest art, this performance piece invites viewers to see, hear, and move with refugees, immigrants, first gens—and ghosts. Incorporating immersive video and lighting, an original score, and stories from UC Berkeley students, director Sean San José will reinvent the piece for a new cast and a new audience.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle

By Bertolt Brecht

Directed by Christine Nicholson

November 15–24, 2019

The Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall

This captivating play within a play tells the corresponding stories of an agrarian land dispute and a young servant who sacrifices her own well-being to raise an abandoned child. Bertolt Brecht masterfully employs historification and distancing to reveal the hidden (and not so hidden) oppression of the powerless by the powerful. We are challenged not only to see the inequality inherent in power structures, but also to find ways to change our relationship to those structures—to find our way to justice, fairness, and compassion in the face of overwhelming odds.

Berkeley Dance Project 2020

Directed by Lisa Wymore

Choreography by TDPS Faculty & Students

February 20–29, 2020

The Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall

In 2020, the annual TDPS dance concert will challenge choreographers, performers, and audience members to ask how dance and community can inform each other: How can dance create inclusive exchanges between audiences and dancers? How can dance making be a form of community making? How do communities use dance performance to bring forth new narratives and framings of the world? The program will feature student work from the Fall Choreography Showcase as well as new dances created by TDPS faculty and local guest artists.

The Arsonists

By Max Frisch

Directed by Patrick Russell

March 12–15, 2020

Durham Studio Theater

In a nameless town. At an unknown time. A community is on edge as arsonists wreak havoc in the night, going door to door, setting homes ablaze. When the self-assured businessman Biedermann finds himself face to face with the arsonists, will he be prepared for their cunning and coercive tactics?

As timeless as it is timely, Max Frisch’s cautionary comic parable on greed, apathy, and the power of persuasion has the urgency of a ticking time bomb.

Snowflakes, or Rare White People

By Dustin Chinn

Directed by Mina Morita

April 24–May 3, 2020

The Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall

In 23rd Century Nueva New York, the dwindling white American population is protected by the federal government. Two of the last are brought to the Museum of Natural History as a living exhibit in the Hall of Caucasian Peoples, only to be freed by a sympathetic gift shop employee. Is society ready for their return?

Inspired by the “Hall of Asian Peoples” at the American Museum of Natural History and articles bemoaning the dwindling majority of white Americans, Dustin Chinn’s cuttingly smart comedy explores American conceptions of race and ethnicity, social status, and representation.

Charting the rise and fall of the Trueba family in an unnamed Latin American country, the play spans five decades as the country moves through enormous socio-political changes that culminate in a devastating dictatorship. The play is told from the point of view of the youngest of three generations of women, Alba, who is held for interrogation by the government as the play opens. The swirling memories, frightening and amusing, lyrical and fantastic, illuminate the stage as Alba records her family’s history and finds the strength to recover her own story.

“This play deals with the touch point between the personal and political on an epic scale,” said director Michael Moran, a TDPS acting lecturer and the director of Ubuntu Theater Project. “The piece is also highly theatrical in its magical realism. It’s a memory play and that metaphysical mystery of memory is always an exciting opportunity to create something unique on the stage.”

Originally published as La Casa de los Espiritus in 1982, The House of the Spirits is a National Bestseller and Allende’s debut novel which catapulted her to literary stardom. When Allende’s novel first appeared on the international literary scene, it was widely heralded as a feminist response to Gabriel García Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Svich’s adaptation, first produced in 2009, won the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Francesca Primus Prize.

A much-anticipated campus visit by Allende and Svich will highlight the play’s opening weekend. The play’s director will moderate a conversation between the author and playwright at 12 p.m. on Thursday, April 25 at BAMPFA. Svich will also participate in a talkback following the play’s opening night performance on Friday, April 26 in the Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall.

Production Details

The House of the Spirits opens Friday, April 26 and continues through Sunday, May 5, 2019 in the Playhouse at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Performances take place Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. General admission tickets are $18 online and $20 at the door; tickets for students, seniors, and UC Berkeley faculty/staff are $13 online and $15 at the door. Tickets are on sale through the TDPS online box office or at the door.

The House of the Spirits features scenic design by Nina Ball, costume design by Courtney Flores, lighting design by Jack Carpenter, and sound design by Michael Kelly.

The cast includes: Hernan Angulo, Veda Baldota, Natalya Brown, Abril Centurion, Brenda Cisneros, Jessenia Duarte, Jaymee Epperson, Abrar Haque, Beatriz Hernandez, Daryanna Lancet, Abner Lozano, Aryan Nair, Julian Schwartzman, Anna Sharpe, Vanessa Son, Peter Stielstra, Stefan Wayne, Arthur Weiss, Drew Woodson

About TDPS

The Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies teaches performance as a mode of critical inquiry, creative expression and public engagement. Through performance training and research, we create liberal arts graduates with expanded analytical, technical and imaginative capacities. As a public institution, we make diversity and inclusion a key part of our teaching, art making and public programming.

About the Director, Michael Moran

Michael Socrates Moran grew up in Richmond, Calif. before attending Boston University to pursue his BFA. He has worked as a professional actor in regional theaters in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and at an off-Broadway house in New York City. He recently graduated from UC San Diego’s world-renowned MFA Directing program where he founded the award-winning Ubuntu Theater Project: a professional theater company based in Oakland, dedicated to inspiring compassion across socio-economic and racial barriers. Michael now serves as Ubuntu’s Executive Director. Having directed over 15 productions, favorite professional credits include: Dance of the Holy Ghosts by Marcus Gardley, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Waiting For Lefty by Clifford Odets, Othello by William Shakespeare, The Grapes of Wrath adapted by Frank Galati, Gospel of Lovingkindness by Marcus Gardley, Yellowman by Dael Oerlandersmith, Dutchman by Amiri Baraka the West Coast Premiere of TO THE BONE & Exit Cuckoo: (A Nanny in Motherland) by Lisa Ramirez, and the World Premiere of Rashomon by Phililp Kan Gotanda. Michael is the recipient of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for Best Director in the East Bay.

According to Prof. Peter Glazer, who is mentoring the student directors, the three plays confront the human desire to make sense of the world. Whether addressing memory, communication, or relationships, Glazer said, “the plays are about losing something that still lives in us, that doesn’t go away, and how we try to come to terms with that.”

Unlike more traditional works, Silence relegates a sense of plot to the periphery, and works to explore the characters’ interpretations and recollections of the events of their lives. “It explores the way our perception of the past can vary from person-to-person, and can even change for ourselves as we age and our view of personal experience begins to blend and reform,” said student director Benjamin Arsenault. “The play exists almost as an anthology of half-remembered things and analyzes the way we cling to our memories, trying to piece together the few fractured and fleeting moments that we retain and deem our ‘history.’”

Footfalls explores grief and loss in a deeply expressive way: the onstage actress is confined to pacing nine steps, back and forth, at the front of the stage. Slow and methodical, Footfalls presents a story that underpins a lived experience — by participating, our own stories and experiences of grief and loss may be challenged and reinforced. The woman, together with the mysterious voice she suddenly hears, allows us to reflect on the rituals we all keep to preserve the dead and the lost from falling out of our memories.

Springtime examines the values of heteronormative marriage and subverts the roles to portray what student director Gabriela Pool calls “a beautiful story between two womxn.” Fornés uses the relationship of these womxn to explore and dissect the values pledged through marriage vows, leading, as Fornés states, “the humanity [to be] not so much in the character, but in the situation.”

Patrons may purchase tickets for Beckett / Fornés / Pinter in advance on the TDPS website or at the door of Durham Studio Theater up to one hour prior to each performance.

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Production Details

Beckett / Fornés / Pinter opens Thursday, March 14 and continues through Sunday, March 17 at Durham Studio Theater on the UC Berkeley campus. Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. General admission tickets are $15 online or the door; tickets for students, seniors, and UC Berkeley faculty and staff are $10 online or at the door. Tickets are on sale through the TDPS Box Office: http://tdps.berkeley.edu/events/one-acts-2019/

Beckett / Fornés / Pinter features direction by TDPS students Benjamin Arsenault, Marie Shelton, and Gabriela Pool with mentorship by Prof. Peter Glazer, and stage management by Ryan Advincula with mentorship by Laxmi Kumaran. The cast includes Steve Benetier, Sofie Herbeck, and James Perkins in Silence; Brigit Comeau, Rose Escolano, and Xun Zhang in Springtime; and Carmel Suchard and Julia Reilly in Footfalls.

About the Supervising Director

Peter Glazer, TDPS Associate Professor, is mentoring the student directors for Beckett / Fornés / Pinter. Glazer holds a Ph.D. in Performance Studies from Northwestern University. He is a professional director and playwright whose plays, adaptations, collaborations and directing projects include Woody Guthrie’s American Song (Bay Area Drama Critics award, with Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations Off-Broadway and Joseph Jefferson Award winner in Chicago), O’Carolan’s Farewell to Music (Delaware Theater Co.), Michael, Margaret, Pat & Kate (Marin Theater Co., Victory Gardens Theater), Measure for Measure, Seven Lears, Murder of Crows, and Marisol (UC Berkeley), Heart of Spain and Foe (UC Berkeley and Northwestern University). He is presently co-writing a musical based on The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness, by Berkeley storyteller Joel ben Izzy, and co-writing a new play with Celtic harp virtuoso and storyteller Patrick Ball, Come Dance With Me In Ireland: A Pilgrimage to Yeats Country. He is also adapting Karen Shepard’s historical novel The Celestials for the stage. He is a longtime member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and sits on the board of the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley.

About TDPS

The Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies teaches performance as a mode of critical inquiry, creative expression and public engagement. Through performance training and research, we create liberal arts graduates with expanded analytical, technical and imaginative capacities. As a public institution, we make diversity and inclusion a key part of our teaching, art making and public programming.

From a “haunting” solo to a multi-dancer “mosaic,” the dance pieces in BDP 2019 represent a wide range of sources and styles: Goode incorporates spoken word and song into a piece based on the buddhist concept of “the undefended heart;” Tangen presents an organic creative response to a “re-mapping” and “re-storying” of campus based on Ohlone histories and perspectives; Tigner honors researcher, instructor and choreographer Ruth Beckford, recognized as the mother of African diasporic dance in the Bay Area; and Hill draws from supernatural elements of her Jamaican Maroon ancestry.

Goode, who is also directing BDP 2019, notes a uniting principle in the choreographers’ work despite wide-ranging styles: “A kind of serendipity happened where each of us were keen to instill in our casts the idea that a dance is about more than just the dancing—that a dance can be value based, can teach the world something, and maybe even bring the audience into some insight about their own interior landscape.”

Marking 50 years since the founding of the dance program at UC Berkeley, BDP 2019 will be accompanied by a photographic retrospective exhibition in the lobby of Zellerbach Playhouse and a brief residency by dance program co-founder and professor emerita Marni Thomas Wood. Wood will participate in a panel discussion about the history of the dance program on Feb. 21 from 4–5 p.m. in 44B Dwinelle Hall. On Friday, Feb. 22, Wood will lead dance classes for current students and alumni in Bancroft Dance Studio.

About the Choreographers

Joe Goode is a choreographer, writer, and director widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery. He is the founder and artistic director of the Joe Goode Performance Group, and a faculty member in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at UC Berkeley.

Cherie Hill holds a BA in Dance and Performance Studies from UC Berkeley where she was a McNair and Haas Scholar and recipient of the Eisner Award for Dance, an MFA in Dance from the University of Colorado Boulder, and graduate certificates in Somatics and Women and Gender Studies. She is the Director of IrieDance, a dance teaching artist, communications manager, and chief of staff at Luna Dance Institute, and a former research assistant for hip-hop dance legend Rennie Harris.

Rulan Tangen is an internationally accomplished dance artist, choreographer, and director with over three decades of experience in multiple movement genres, recently acknowledged with the Kennedy Center Citizen Artist fellowship for work that embodies ideals of service, justice, freedom, courage, and gratitude. She is the Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer of DANCING EARTH, which has toured to 18 states and 8 countries, making opportunities for global Indigenous peoples to co-create contemporary dance theater that is rooted in cultural cosmologies.

Latanya D. Tigner performs professionally with Dimensions Dance Theater, traveling nationally and internationally. She studies various African diasporic dance forms in addition to contemporary and jazz. Tigner coordinates Dimensions’ Rites of Passage program for youth, directs Dimensions Extensions Performance Ensemble, serves as co-artistic director of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, teaches dance at UC Berkeley, and is an Artist in Residence at Mills College. She holds a BA in PE/dance and an MA in arts administration.

Production Details

Berkeley Dance Project features choreography by Joe Goode, Cherie Hill, Rulan Tangen, Latanya Tigner, and Katie O’Connor; costume design by Wendy Sparks; and lighting design by Jack Carpenter. The cast includes: Madeline Aragon, Elizabeth Bobrovnikov, Jeremy Brooks, Rowan Cassius, David Cha, Joyce Chan, Dayah Colbert, Brandon Davis, Jeze Fabijanic, Bruna Gill, Olivia Hanson, Yara Kanaaneh, Kyra Katagi, Sadie Kimball, Jennifer Laybourn, Mi Le, Victoria Marsh, Aldair Rivera, Elizabeth Rivera, and Erin Sezgin.

We wish you the best during this holiday season! Here in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, we’ve enjoyed a productive and exciting year filled with performances, talks, classes, workshops, and so much more. Through the performing arts, and the study of performance, we continue to find common ground from which to better understand ourselves and others.

TDPS encourages diverse voices to be heard and witnessed. We build community that collaboratively responds to a rapidly changing world. We are not only training the next generation of artists and scholars, but also shaping a generation of empathetic, engaged citizens who understand the value of the arts in society. We have an important role to play and we can use your help!

While we are experiencing an increase in student demand for our classes, we have not received an increase in funding from the university. In order to provide excellent student experiences, we rely on support from our friends, like you. Gifts to TDPS greatly impact our ability to invite guest artists and scholars (see how the Shelly Osborne Visiting Artist Fund is being utilized). Donations also directly support students through our workshops, scholarships, productions, and facilities improvements. 

Please support TDPS today with a gift that is meaningful to you. Any amount, whether $25 or $2,500, will help us continue our forward momentum and enable us to offer students unparalleled hands-on learning experiences. Together, we can make TDPS a home where students become inspired and collaborative arts innovators and human beings.

Thank you for your generous support.

Lisa Wymore
Department Chair

HOW TO MAKE A GIFT 

MAKE A GIFT ONLINE
Click here to make a gift to TDPS

MAKE A GIFT BY MAIL
Make checks payable to UC Berkeley Foundation and mail to:

TDPS Annual Fund
Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
University of California, Berkeley
15 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-2560

WAYS TO SUPPORT 

There are a variety of ways to support the work of TDPS. Every gift, no matter the size, is valuable and appreciated.

• Annual Fund – Providing yearly support to our operating budget through the generous donations of supporters of TDPS, the Annual Fund supports artist residencies, visiting scholars, special workshops/lectures, and professional development coaching for students. The Annual Fund also helps support the smaller class sizes necessary to develop artistic and expressive skills in young artists and thinkers.
• David Wood Endowment – The David Wood Endowment provides a base of support for TDPS  in perpetuity. Income generated from the fund helps to underwrite dance program expenses above and beyond the annual dance budget.The endowment was established to honor David Wood and the dedication with which he and Marni Thomas Wood worked to establish the dance program here at UC Berkeley.
• In-kind Kindness – As we host receptions, donor gatherings, student celebrations and holiday parties throughout the year, we are always grateful for “in-kind” donations of food, drink, or party-hosting.
• Planned Gifts – By making a gift in your will or estate plans, you can show your support and appreciation for TDPS’s mission, while accommodating your personal and philanthropic goals. If you are interested in making a planned gift, please contact the Office of Gift Planning at 510-642-6300 or ogp@berkeley.edu.

Production Details
70 Scenes of Halloween opens Thursday, October 11 and continues through Sunday, October 14, 2018 at Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC Berkeley campus. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8pm and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. General admission tickets are $18 online and $20 at the door; Tickets for students, seniors, and UC Berkeley Faculty & staff are $13 online and $15 at the door. Tickets are on sale through the TDPS Box Office at http://tdps.berkeley.edu/events/70-scenes-of-halloween/ or at the door.

70 Scenes of Halloween features scenic design by Alexandra Grabow, costume design by Miyuki Bierlein, lighting design by Jack Carpenter, and sound design by Ian D. Thomas. The cast includes Komi Gbeblewou, Edward Im, Devin Lizardi, Jade Moujaes, Verity Pinter, Lauren Richardson, Theo Rosenfeld, and Madeline Yagle.

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About TDPS
The Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies teaches performance as a mode of critical inquiry, creative expression and public engagement. Through performance training and research, we create liberal arts graduates with expanded analytical, technical and imaginative capacities. As a public institution, we make diversity and inclusion a key part of our teaching, art making and public programming.

About Christopher Herold
Mr. Herold teaches acting and directing for TDPS.  His directing credits at Berkeley include productions of  Metamorphoses, Summertime, The Ruling Class, Our Town, Sauce For the Goose, Suburban Motel, Three Sisters, Escape From Happiness, Orestes, Pterodactyls, Good, Noises Off, The Crucible, Funeral Games, Infancy, and How I Got That Story.  He is also a member of the faculty at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where he serves as the Director of the Summer Training Congress.  At A.C.T., he has directed studio productions of Fuddy Meers, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, The Kentucky Cycle Part II, Galileo, and Escape From Happiness.  Mr. Herold has also taught at Stanford and The Berkeley Repertory School of Theatre.  The former Artistic Director and a founding member of Jawbone Theater Ensemble, his work with that company includes direction of the San Francisco premier of Manfred Karge’s Conquest of the South Pole and Samuel Beckett’s Play for the Bay Area Intimate Theater Festival.  Other directing credits include the San Francisco premier of Tick, Tick . . . Boom for Theatre Rhinoceros and the critically acclaimed Achilles and Patroclus for Central Works.  Locally, he has appeared in roles at Aurora Theatre, The Magic, Central Works, Theatre Rhinoceros, Shotgun Players, the Victoria Theater, and Yerba Buena Gardens.

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For Calendar Editors

70 SCENES OF HALLOWEEN by Jeffrey M Jones
In this quirky and inventive play, ordinary married couple Jeff and Joan seem set to spend Halloween on their couch in a state of mild antagonism and mutual boredom. But as time fragments and reassembles, dark forces emerge and the couple must contend with ghosts, beasts, and witches banging on windows, wafting through rooms, and wielding butcher knives.

Directed by Christopher Herold
October 11-14, 2018
UC Berkeley Dept. of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA
Performances: Thurs-Sat 8 PM; Sat-Sun 2 PM
Pricing: Prices range from $13-20.
Tickets: Visit tdps.berkeley.edu for more information and to purchase tickets.

ADDITIONAL PROJECTS
A series of student workshops will be announced at a later date.

Gordon spent much of his career at the University of California, Berkeley’s department of theater, dance, and performance studies (formerly the department of dramatic art) at UC Berkeley as a faculty member from 1990-2015.

While at Berkeley, the inquisitive and light-hearted Gordon was known for lively and provocative undergraduate teaching, which included theater history, playwriting, acting, and a very popular course on bad acting. He also taught about less-studied theater traditions in circus and Yiddish theater.

Gordon’s wide range of publications included books and articles on Commedia dell’arte (Lazzi); Yiddish theater; the Grand Guignol (1988/1997); and a number of more or less sensational aspects of German popular and political culture of the 1920s and 1930s: “Voluptuous Panic” (The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin, 2000); Erik Jan Hanussen: “Hitler’s Jewish Clairvoyant” (2001), “The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber” (2006).

More recently, he wrote about his ongoing study of bad acting and was working on a new project about fascist love cults from 1922 to 1942.

Gordon also wrote film scripts, conducted many interviews on radio and TV/YouTube, and contributed numerous encyclopedia and museum entries. Occasionally he put his knowledge of acting theorists and European theater into practice while directing his own productions, in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and – early in the 1990s – on the Berkeley campus.

Born on Feb. 18, 1947 in Detroit, Gordon was raised by what he referred to as left-wing politically radical parents who encouraged free-thinking and critical curiosity. He was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and earned a Ph.D. from New York University in theater history, directing, acting theory and practice.

Gordon taught acting from the late 1970s to early ‘80s at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Acting, and then at the Michael Chekhov Studio in New York City. He became an assistant professor and then a tenured associate professor at NYU before coming to Berkeley in 1990.

Early in his career, Gordon established himself as a world expert in Stanislavsky and acting theory with his book “The Stanislavsky Method” (1988) and his essay “Nine Misconceptions about Stanislavsky and his Method.” He also worked extensively on the techniques of Vsevolod Meyerhold, and co-authored a book called “Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Biomechanics” (1996). He continued to lecture and write extensively on these topics, building on his distinctive and rare array of knowledge concerning Russian and East European theater, movies and actor training of the early 20th century.

At an event honoring Gordon’s retirement in 2015, Berkeley colleague Mark Griffith, recalled, “Mel seems to have been everywhere where anything theatrical ever happened; and to have spoken directly to almost everyone who ever did anything interesting in the theater.”

Similarly, Margaret Fisher, a former Ph.D. student of Gordon’s, recalled his resourcefulness and dedication, his inspiration and friendship: “The future of theater, as Mel knew, requires that we confront its feverish distortions, sensuality, tension, violence, and thrills—then, and now. As intellectual, teacher, actor, and director, Mel kept all four engines going at full throttle.”

Gordon is survived by his brother, Norman Gordon of Prescott, Ariz. A memorial service is being planned. 

Gotanda is excited to be revisiting the Dream of Kitamura again after many years away from the play. For the TDPS production, he is working with a culturally and racially diverse student cast – Korean, Native, Black-South Asian, Irish, Latinx, White, Guatemalan, Filipino, Costa Rican – a change from previous productions where the cast was exclusively Asian. Gotanda sees this production as a strong learning opportunity for the mixed group of actors—and for himself. “Although it is the same script, my approach now is different,” Gotanda shares. “How I engage the world now is quite different. How I think about American Theater is different, in particular as seen through the practice of teaching at the University. the Dream of Kitamura at TDPS is a new play.”

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Production Details
The Dream of Kitamura opens Friday, April 20, 2018 and continues through Sunday, April 29, 2018 at Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC Berkeley campus. Performances are Friday and Saturday at 8pm, and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets for students, seniors, and UC Berkeley Faculty & staff are $13 online in advance and $15 at the door; General admission tickets are $18 online in advance and $20 at the door; Tickets are on sale through the TDPS Box Office at http://tdps.berkeley.edu/events/dream/ or at the door.

The Dream of Kitamura is written and directed by Philip Kan Gotanda, in collaboration with choreographer Katie Faulkner; costume design by Christine Crook under the direction of Wendy Sparks-Rehl; and lighting design by Jack Carpenter. The cast includes: Melissa Chapman, Erica Chung, Katia Coate, Amainary Contreras, John Hildenbrand, Eleanor O’Malley, Ivan Oyarzabal, Julie Pagaduan, Paris Shockley, and Drew Woodson.

About TDPS
The Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies teaches performance as a mode of critical inquiry, creative expression and public engagement. Through performance training and research, we create liberal arts graduates with expanded analytical, technical and imaginative capacities. As a public institution, we make diversity and inclusion a key part of our teaching, art making and public programming.

About Philip Kan Gotanda
Over the last three decades, playwright Philip Kan Gotanda has been a major influence in the broadening of our definition of theater in America. Through his plays and advocacy, he has been instrumental in bringing stories of Asians in the United States to mainstream American theater as well as to Europe and Asia. Mr. Gotanda holds a law degree from Hastings College of Law and studied pottery in Japan with the late Hiroshi Seto. Mr. Gotanda is a respected independent filmmaker; his film Life Tastes Good was presented at the Sundance Film Festival. Mr. Gotanda, alongside Michael Sasaki, had a chinglish version of “My Boyfriend’s Back,” with Joan Chen singing lead, on the Hong Kong pop charts before it was banned. Mr. Gotanda is the recipient of a Guggenheim as well as other honors and awards. He resides at Gotanda Art Plant in the Berkeley Hills with his writer-producer wife, Diane Takei, and their famously ill-behaved dog, Toulouse.

About Katie Faulkner
Katie Faulkner is a dancer, choreographer, teaching artist, and founder of little seismic dance company. Since receiving her MFA in Dance from Mills College in 2002, she has performed the works of Bill T. Jones, Stephen Petronio, Randee Paufve, Victoria Marks, Susan Rethorst, Alex Ketley and Ann Carlson. She has worked with several of these choreographers as a dancer with AXIS Dance Company, with whom she performed both locally and nationally from 2003-2007. She has been an active educator around the country and is currently on faculty at the University of San Francisco, UC Berkeley, and ODC.

Since founding little seismic, Faulkner has received support in the form of numerous commissions, residencies, and awards. She was an artist-in-residence at ODC Theater from 2009-2011 and has also been in residence at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts, the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, the Rauschenberg Residency, and the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. She has received several Isadora Duncan Dance Awards and nominations, the top prize for her work in the Joyce Theater A.W.A.R.D. Show!/San Francisco competition, and the SF Bay Guardian GOLDIE Award for dance. In 2015, she received her certification in Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analysis from the Integrated Movement Studies program. She was recently invited to be a 2017-2018 Truth Fellow with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

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For Calendar Editors

the Dream of Kitamura
Lord Rosanjin dreams that the ferocious demon Kitamura is coming to kill him in this mythic, ghostly tale based on a haunting dream that acclaimed playwright Philip Kan Gotanda translated to the stage. This darkly evocative and movement-driven play is directed by Gotanda in collaboration with choreographer Katie Faulkner.

April 20 -29, 2018
UC Berkeley Dept. of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
Zellerbach Playhouse on the UC Berkeley Campus, Berkeley, CA
Performances: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM
Pricing: Prices range from $13-20.
Tickets: Visit tdps.berkeley.edu for more information and to purchase tickets.