Randle joins Creative Team of CalShakes' new Tempest

Ben Randle has joined the creative team as Assistant Director of California Shakespeare Theater's upcoming production of Shakespeare's The Tempest directed by Cal Shakes Artistic Director Jonathan Msocone. The production will open the company's 39th seaon and plays May 30-June 24, at CalShakes' Ampitheatre in Orinda, California.

As described in press materials, Tempest features "a story-telling ensemble of six actors and three dancers conjure a highly-theatricalized, dance-filled world of romance, treachery, revenge and redemption. Actors switch characters in front of your eyes as both a celebration of theater and a revelation of the mutability of character in a world where identity is defined by relative positions of power".

The production features the return to the Bay Area stage of Oregon Shakespeare Festival company member and Broadway and TV veteran (from “The Gilmore Girls”) Michael Winters as the wizard Prospero and the drunken butler Stephano, and celebrated choreographer Erika Chong Shuch as the spirit Ariel. The company of The Tempest also includes: James Carpenter (last seen at Cal Shakes in the title role of Titus Andronicus) as King Alonso; Catherine Castellanos (Pastures of Heaven, Romeo and Juliet; Phedre at Shotgun Players) as Caliban and Antonio; Emily Kitchens (Clybourne Park at A.C.T.) as Miranda and Sebastian; and Nicholas Pelczar (Titus Andronicus, Taming of the Shrew) as Ferdinand and Trinculo. The island sprites will be played by professional dancers Melanie Elms (Margaret Jenkins Dance Company) and Travis Santell Rowland (Deborah Slater Dance Company), and by first-year ACT MFA student Aaron Moreland.

The design team includes scenic design by Emily Greene, costume design by Anna Oliver, lighting design by Gabe Maxson, and sound design/music by Cliff Caruthers. Others on the artistic team include Associate Artist Domenique Lozano (vocal/text coach); Philippa Kelly (dramaturg), Corrie Bennett (stage manager), and Jannette Coté (assistant stage manager).

For more information and tickets, visit calshakes.org

BATCC Awards: Clear Blue Sky, Ray of Light among winners

The Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards were handed out April 2, in a ceremony at The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.

Sleepwalker Theatre's production Into the Clear Blue Sky, by JC Lee and directed by Ben Randle, won an award for Best Lighting Design (for a Play, 99 seats and under) for Alex Senchak and Christian Mejia.

Also, big winners that night were Ray of Light Theatre, who won 8 awards (Musical, 300 seats and under) for their 2011 production of Assassins by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. Among the winners were Maya Linke and Cathie Anderson, for Best Scenic Design and Best Lighting Design, respectively. Both designers will repeat their duties for Ray of Light Theatre's upcoming productions of The Fully Monty, to be directed by Artistic Director Jason Hoover, and Sweeney Todd, directed by Ben Randle.

See the complete list of winners, here.

For more information on the upcoming Ray of Light season, visit their website.

Into the Clear Blue Sky, Treefall, Chalk Boy score 11 BATCC nods

 The Bay Area Critics Circle released their nominations for "Outstanding Achievement in Bay Area Theatre during 2011" and Into the Clear Blue Sky received 7 nominations, including Best Director and Best Scenic Design for Ben Randle.

In the Drama Category for theatres with 99 seats and under, Into the Clear Blue Sky by JC Lee and produced by Sleepwalkers Theatre received nominations for Best Original Script and Best Production for Lee and Sleepwalkers, respectively. Blue Sky also received nominations for Dina Percia as Best Principle Actress; Christian Mejia and Alex Senchak for Best Lighting Design; Colin Trevor for Best Sound Design; and the 2 nominations for Ben Randle.

Two other productions directed by Ben Randle in 2011 also received nominations. Treefall by Henry Murray and produced by New Conservatory Theatre Center received nominations for Evan Johnson as Best Actor; Christian Mejia for Best Lighting Design; and Josh Senick for Best Sound Design. The Chalk Boy by Joshua Conkel and produced by Impact Theatre received a nomination for Maria Giere for Best Featured Actress.

The awards will be given out at a reception April 2, 2012.

SFBATCC is a private non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and serving theatres of all types and sizes in the greater region by recognizing excellence and outstanding achievement in the field.

For more information, visit sfbatcc.org

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus at CounterPULSE now on sale

Tickets are now on sale for the CounterPULSE production of Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus by trixxie carr and directed by Ben Randle, playing February 17-19, 2012.

The production is part of CounterPULSE Winter Special and will feature trixxie carr, Talia Lipskind, Norm Munoz, Angelica Roque, Travis Santell Rowland, and Jarrad Webster.

Tickets are available here.

Set in contemporary San Francisco, Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus is the story of "Tiny Dionysus, a god banished from Mount Olympus, who is called a upon by a group of unemployed San Francisco artists to teach them how to survive The Great Recession. Exploding from their adventures are lavish production numbers, eruptions of classic rock and pop songs, drag, puppetry, and original music by trixxie carr."

According to press notes, "Dionysus (dy-uh-NY-suhs) was the Greek God of wine, and ancient festivals in his honor were the driving force behind the development of Greek Theater. He was also a liberator, whose wine, music and ecstatic dance freed his followers from fear and care, and subverted the oppressive restraints of the powerful."

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus is a response to the economic and political turmoil today and unrest that ripples from the headlines. “It is about our society, right now, this city, this country,” says director Ben Randle. “In the times we’re living in, and the anxiety and fear that surrounds everything we do, we need art that not only takes us away from reality, but springs from it and acknowledges it. Only then, can it heal us.” The success of a workshop production in 2009 at Mama Calizo Voice Factory as part of Randle’s DIY Residency encouraged him to further develop the political heart of the piece. “When we did it a couple of years ago, the response was beyond anything we could have imagined. People were hungry for this material. People would say to us, ‘You’re telling my life onstage’! And so, we made revisions to hopefully deepen that connection. Now, with the Occupy movements around the world and a society losing faith in its leaders, I think we need Tiny Dionysus more than ever.”

The production will features performers and design artists from a variety of performance backgrounds, such as dance, theatre, drag, and clowning. “And because the pains of this Recession affect all of us, it was important to bring many communities together to work on this show,” Randle explains. In each performance, there will be a cameo made by a different celebrated local legend, drag queen or performer. Puppets featured in the production, including a 7-foot, festival-style Minotaur puppet - were made by visual artists experienced in making large-scale festival puppets, but never for a theatrical production. “Tiny Dionysus is starting that conversation”, says playwright trixxie carr, “of who you want to be regardless of your gender, regardless of your class status, regardless of where you came from, or your race, or your religion. ”

CounterPULSE calls Winter Special "an experiment in offering radically affordable and accessible performance opportunities to a diverse array of emerging performance-makers.  Ten lead artists present eight weeks of contemporary dance, experimental theater, multimedia performance, provocative drag and more."  Ranging from raw experiments to polished premieres, Winter Special features productions by Miriam Wolodarski and Rosemary Hannon, CatherineMarie Davalos, Kitka, Mohamed Lamine Bangoura, Erin Malley, Ben Randle with trixxie carr, and Katsura Kan and Shoshana Green.

Tickets are available here. More information at counterpulse.org

 Randle to direct in 2nd annual SF One-Minute Play Festival

The Second-Annual San Francisco One-Minute Play Festival directed by Jessica Heidt, Jon Lowe, Jill MacLean, Evren Odcikin, Christine Young, and Ben Randle will be held December 17th and 18th at Thick House, as a presentation of Playwrights Foundation and The New York One-Minute Play Festival.

Press notes describe the festival as "80 plays, 30 actors, 5 directors, 1 minute".

Randle will direct a series that includes work by Steve Yockey, Lauren Gunderson, Eugenie Chan, Tim Bauer, Christopher Chen, Kate E. Ryan, Ignacio Zulueta, Joan Holden, Aaron Loeb, and Geetha Reddy.

The full 2011 roster of Playwrights whose work will be featured in the festival are Trevor Allen, Crish Barth, Tim Bauer, Erin M. Bregman, Eugenie Chan, Christopher Chen, Anthony Clarvoe, Megan Cohen, Bennett Fisher, Elizabeth Gjelten, Philip Kan Gotanda, Garret Jon Groenveld, Lauren Gunderson, Daniel Heath, Joan Holden, Robert Henry Johnson, Aaron Loeb, Jonathan Luskin, Patricia Milton, Cherrie Moraga, Marisela Treviño Orta, Evelyn Jean Pine, Kenn Rabin, Geetha Reddy, Kate E. Ryan, Andrew Saito, Steven M. Salzman, Marissa Skudlarek, Michael Gene Sullivan, Tom Swift, Brian Thorstenson, Steve Yockey & Ignacio Zulueta.

The One-Minute Play Festival (OMPF) is an NYC-based theatre company, founded by director/dramaturg Dominic D’Andrea, working in partnership with institutional theatres and collectives across the country who share playwright or community-specific missions. OMPF creates local playwright-focused community events, using a specific playmaking process, with the goal of promoting the spirit of radical inclusion by representing the culture of playwrights of different age, gender, race culture, and points of career. OMPF attempts to reflect the theatrical landscape of local artistic communities by creating a dialogue between the collective conscious and the individual voice.

OMPF has partnered with theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New Brunswick, Atlanta, South Florida, Boston, and New York, where it is now an annual tradition.

Since 2007, OMPF has commissioned and produced close to 1,000 new one-minute plays by close to 300 playwrights using a specific playmaking methodology and process developed for this work.*

Notable OMPF Alumni include: David Henry Hwang, Neil LaBute, Tina Howe, Rajiv Joseph, Kristoffer Diaz, Lisa Loomer, Donald Margulies, Jason Grote, Mike Daisey, Erik Ehn, Michael John Garces, Rachel Axler, Elizabeth Meriwether, Migdalia Cruz, Philip Kan Gotanda,Qui Nguyen, Craig Lucas, Michael Hollinger, and others.

For more information, visit oneminuteplays.wordpress.com

Jason Robert Brown's Last Five Years  opens December 2nd

Poor Man's Player's production of The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown and directed by Ben Randle, with musical direction by Dave Moschler, begins performances December 2, 2011 at Boxcar Playhouse, and plays through December 18th, 2011. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm, and Sunday at 2pm.

The production stars Aleph Ayin and Lauren Spencer. 

The Last Five Years is a two-character musical about a marriage between two New York artists, one a novelist and the other an actress, as they come together and fall apart.

Scenic Design by Ben Randle, Scenic Painting by Maya Linke, Lighting Design by Cameron Growden, and Stage Managment by Wes Newfarmer. 

Tickets are sliding scale $20-$30. Pay-What-You-Can Preview (only at the door) Friday, December 2. T

To Buy Tickets, please visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/210231

Boxcar Playhouse is located at 505 Natoma St, San Francisco, CA.

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus to CounterPULSE in Feb 2012

Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionyus, the collaboration between Ben Randle and Trixxie Carr will be presented February 17-19 at CounterPULSE, as part of Winter Special, their bi-annual co-production series.

According to press notes, Tiny Dionysus is inspired by Euripedes' The Bacchae and is about "Tiny Dionysus, a god banished from Mount Olympus and called a upon by a group of unemployed San Francisco artists to teach them how to survive The Great Recession. Exploding from their adventures are lavish production numbers, eruptions of classic rock and pop songs, drag, puppetry, and original material by Trixxie Carr."

Tiny Dionysus premiered at Mama Calizo Voice Factory in 2009, as part of Ben Randle DIY Residency at the former performance for queer performance artists.

Trixxie Carr is a musician, faux queen, actress, chanteuse, playwright, and San Francisco native, who performs her original music as theatrical pieces at such venues as Supperclub, Folsom Street Fair, and Café Du Nord. From 2006-2010, she was a lead singer for cover band Smash-Up Derby. As a faux queen at Trannyshack and Some Thing, she performed her mix of comedy-burlesque-performance art. Recent credits include Peaches Christ’s touring 'All About Evil'; Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge at Magic Theatre; and Work More, Unbearable Lightness of Raya Light, and Halloween at CounterPULSE.

Design team and ticketing information to be announced soon.

For more information, visit http://counterpulse.org/

Randle and solo-artist Johnson to complete "Pansy" workshop  at NCTC

Ben Randle and Evan Johnson will enter the studio Decmeber 2011 through January 2012 for the third and final workshop of an original solo work by Johnson, with a working title Pansy. The workshop will culminate in an invite-only presentation January 21st, 2012, at NCTC. The workshop and eventual solo work is part of Johnson's residency in the New Conservatory Theatre Center's Emerging Artist Program and is being produced by NCTC.

The first workshop of Pansy took place in Fall 2010 with a invite-only showing in November, and the second workhop was during Summer 2011.

Evan Johnson is a queer theatre and performance maker working in devised/ensemble strategies, playwriting and physical theatre forms. His work includes text, character and story explorations, movement, improvisation and masks. Evan co-founded IT Speaks along with Jamie Van Camp in 2006 as well as 11.11 Art Group with Ernesto Sopprani in 2010. He teaches performance classes to young people at several local sites through SF Rec and Parks. A graduate of The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, Evan presented his original play for one actor, DON'T FEEL: The Death of Dahmer (with 11.11 Art Group) at Mama Calizo's Factory (RIP) as a 2010 DIY Resident Artist. Also at MCVF he co-created SHAME! with Naked Empire Bouffon (2009). IT Speaks has presented it's interactive comedic showcase The Hello Show! in 2007 and 2008 and taught physical theatre workshops to High Schoolers. Since moving to San Francisco in 2009, Evan has begun performing an eccentric female character named Martha T. Lipton (the failed actress) at bars and parties. Johnson studied character-based comedy with Master Clowns, Giovanni Fusetti in Boulder, CO in 2007 and at Dell'Arte with Ronlin Foreman ('05 and '06).

Ben Randle recently directed Into the Clear Blue Sky by LC Lee for Sleepwalkers Theatre; Treefall, Don’t Ask, Doubt (BATCC Nomination, Best Director), Baptized to the Bone, and Friends are Forever at New Conservatory Theatre, and was an Artist in Residence in their Emerging Artists Program; Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus (DIY Residency, Mama Calizo Voice Factory), Come As You Are! (Brava! for Women in the Arts!); Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest 2010 (assoc. dir.); Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, A One Night Stand (Don’t Tell Mama in NYC, Eureka Theater, Rrazz Room); Katya, Back In The USSR (Rrazz Room); Joe Besecker’s  Loving Fathers (SF Fringe, Best of Fringe 2008); and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (Next Stage). Ben has a B.A. in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University and was a member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab 2010.  This fall, he will direct Chalk Boy by Josh Conkel at Impact Theater in Berkeley.



'Last Five Years' in December 2011

Ben Randle will direct "The Last Five Years", Jason Robert Brown's popular musical about a New York couple falling in and out of love, as the debut production of Poor Man's Players. The production is scheduled to run December 2nd - 18th at Boxcar Playhouse, San Francisco.

The cast includes Aleph Ayin as Jamie and Lauren Spencer as Cathie.

The Lighting Designer is Cameron Growden, and Scenic and Costume Designer is Ben Randle. Additional design team to be announced.

Poor Man's Players is the theatre company formed by Dave Moschler, Stephanie Wilcox, and Daniel Reano-Koven.

Ticketing information to be released soon.

'The Chalk Boy' Begins November 3 at Impact

'The Chalk Boy' Begins November 3 at Impact Theater

The Chalk Boy by Joshua Conkel and directed by Ben Randle begins performances November 3rd and opens November 5th at Impact Theater, in Berkley. Performances run Thursday through Saturday at 8pm, through December 10, 2011.

According to press notes, in The Chalk Boy "there's more going on in the tiny town of Clear Creek than the opening of the new Taco Bell. Four of the town's local girls take the audience on a tour of their funny yet brutal reality as they struggle with faith, friendship, sex, the occult, algebra, and the disappearance of Jeff Chalk, a boy in their class. The Chalk Boy is a deathly black comedy that punches as hard as your high school bully."

The Chalk Boy is directed by Ben Randle and stars Impact's newest resident actor, Luisa Frasconi, whom audiences loved as last season's Juliet, as well as Maria Giere, Chris Quintos, and Caitlyn Tella.

Set by Anne Kendall, Costumes by Ashley Rodgers, Lights by Jax Steager, Sound & Projections by Colin Trevor, Props by Tunuviel Luv, Fight Direction by Dave Maier, Stage Management by Solia Martinez-Jacobs.

Joshua Conkel is a playwright, culture vulture and Navy brat who hails from the pine forests of rural Washington State. He is the author of MilkMilkLemonade (Best Off Off Broadway Show of 2009—NY Press, published by Playscripts), Lonesome Winter (with Megan Hill), The Sluts of Sutton Drive, and I Wanna Destroy You, as well as countless short plays, of which he is a prolific and enthusiastic writer. Conkel’s work has been seen all over the country as well asinternationally and has been developed by The Management, Soho Rep, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Old Vic, Dixon Place, The Flea and more. He is the Co-Artistic Director of The Management, and a member of Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Soho Rep Writers/Directors Lab, tosos and The Dramatists Guild. He is currently finishing a graphic novel adaptation of The Chalk Boy for First Second Books, an imprint of Macmillan, and was recently named one of Next Magazine’s “Who’s Next 2011.” Conkel is an alumnist of Youngblood and the TS Eliot Old Vic US/UK Exchange and received his bfa in theatre from Cornish College of the Arts.

Impact Theatre is located at a Val's Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berkeley. Tickets and information: http://impacttheatre.com/

"Chalk Boy" by Joshua Conkel at Impact Theatre in Fall 2011

Impact Theatre presents "Chalk Boy" by Joshua Conkel, directed Ben Randle, November 5th to December 10th, as part of its 2011-2012 season.

"'Chalk Boy' is a deathly black comedy that punches as hard as your high school bully," according to the publisher's description. "Beneath its boring facade there is more going on in the tiny town of Clear Creek than the opening of the new Taco Bell.  Four of the town's local girls are here to take you on a tour of their funny, yet brutal reality.  They struggle with faith, friendship, sex, the occult, algebra, and the disappearance of... The Chalk Boy".

The cast will feature Luisa Frasconi, Caitlyn Tella, Chris Quintos, and Maria Giere. 

Design team is  set to include Set Design by Anne Kendall, Costume Design by Ashley Rogers, Lighting Design by Jacqueline Steager, Prop Design by Tunuviel Luv, and Sound Design by Colin Trevor.

Joshua Conkel is the artistic director of The Management Company in New York. He has written during A Love Story for People Who Hate Everything, Pretty as a Picture or The Story of a Girl Who was Almost in a Warrant Video, Odd Days/Even Days, White Trash Waltzing, and his solo piece The Invisible Boy Says Goodbye. He assisted Craig Lucas on The Light in the Piazza at the Intiman Theater. Joshua most recently directed Self-Obsession in Blue for the first annual Capital Fringe Festival in Washington DC. and recently appeared as a performer in Target Margin's Aristophanic Laboratory at H.E.R.E. He is a graduate of Cornish College.

Ben Randle recently directed Into the Clear Blue Sky by LC Lee for Sleepwalkers Theatre; Treefall, Don’t Ask, Doubt (BATCC Nomination, Best Director), Baptized to the Bone, and Friends are Forever at New Conservatory Theatre, and was an Artist in Residence in their Emerging Artists Program; Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus (DIY Residency, Mama Calizo Voice Factory), Come As You Are! (Brava! for Women in the Arts!); Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest 2010 (assoc. dir.); Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, A One Night Stand (Don’t Tell Mama in NYC, Eureka Theater, Rrazz Room); Katya, Back In The USSR (Rrazz Room); Joe Besecker’s  Loving Fathers (SF Fringe, Best of Fringe 2008); and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (Next Stage). Ben has a B.A. in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University and was a member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab 2010. 

"Chalk Boy" had simultaneous premieres by The Management in New York under the direction of Joshua Conkel, and Company of Angels under the direction of Courtney Sale.

Impact Theatre is located at a Val's Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berkeley. For more information, visit impacttheatre.com.

Randle and solo-artist Johnson explore "Pansy" once more at NCTC

Ben Randle and Evan Johnson will enter the studio June 29-July 5 for the second workshop of an original solo work by Johnson, with a working title "Pansy". The five-day workshop and eventual solo work is part of Johnson's residency in the New Conservatory Theatre Center's Emerging Artist Program and is being produced by NCTC.

The first workshop of "Pansy" took place in Fall 2010 with a invite-only showing in November.

Evan Johnson is a queer theatre and performance maker working in devised/ensemble strategies, playwriting and physical theatre forms. His work includes text, character and story explorations, movement, improvisation and masks. Evan co-founded IT Speaks along with Jamie Van Camp in 2006 as well as 11.11 Art Group with Ernesto Sopprani in 2010. He teaches performance classes to young people at several local sites through SF Rec and Parks. A graduate of The Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, CA, Evan presented his original play for one actor, "DON'T FEEL: The Death of Dahmer" (with 11.11 Art Group) at Mama Calizo's Factory (RIP) as a 2010 DIY Resident Artist. Also at MCVF he co-created "SHAME!" with Naked Empire Bouffon (2009). IT Speaks has presented it's interactive comedic showcase "The Hello Show!" in 2007 and 2008 and taught physical theatre workshops to High Schoolers. Since moving to San Francisco in 2009, Evan has begun performing an eccentric female character named Martha T. Lipton (the failed actress) at bars and parties. Johnson studied character-based comedy with Master Clowns, Giovanni Fusetti in Boulder, CO in 2007 and at Dell'Arte with Ronlin Foreman ('05 and '06).

Ben Randle recently directed Into the Clear Blue Sky by LC Lee for Sleepwalkers Theatre; Treefall, Don’t Ask, Doubt (BATCC Nomination, Best Director), Baptized to the Bone, and Friends are Forever at New Conservatory Theatre, and was an Artist in Residence in their Emerging Artists Program; Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus (DIY Residency, Mama Calizo Voice Factory), Come As You Are! (Brava! for Women in the Arts!); Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest 2010 (assoc. dir.); Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, A One Night Stand (Don’t Tell Mama in NYC, Eureka Theater, Rrazz Room); Katya, Back In The USSR (Rrazz Room); Joe Besecker’s  Loving Fathers (SF Fringe, Best of Fringe 2008); and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus (Next Stage). Ben has a B.A. in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University and was a member of Lincoln Center Theatre Directors Lab 2010.  This fall, he will direct Chalk Boy by Josh Conkel at Impact Theater in Berkeley.

'Katya Takes You Home' Opens May 12

San Francisco's favorite Cabaret Countess, Katya Smirnoff-Skyy's newest "spectacular", Katya Takes You Home premieres May 12th, and plays through May 22nd, at The Jewish Theatre.

Katya Takes You Home is the latest from writer and performer J. Conrad Frank, fresh from his New York debut at Don't Tell Mama's, and is directed by Ben Randle, with musical direction by Joe Kanon.

Katya Takes You Home is described in press materials as "a comedic romp around the world with San Francisco's favorite Russian countess opera diva turned Macy's cosmetic counter lady, with songs ranging from Porter and Bizet to Tina Turner and Katie Perry".

The Countess Katya Smirnoff-Skyy has enthralled Bay area audiences for years with her unique blend of opera, pop, and booze. With a career spanning, well, a very, very long time, Katya claims to have invented Popera in Moscow, romanced William Shatner in London, and lived next to John Lennon at the Dakota in New York City during the 1970's. Once Eastern Europe's greatest Mezzo-Soprano (understudy), the Countess now spends her days beautifying the masses at Macy's Department store, as everyone's favorite Chanel counter lady. Luckily for you, she spends her evenings crooning and drinking her away through the finer theaters, bars and bath houses of America.

Named "Best Drag Act" in 2008 by the San Francisco Bay Guardian and "Best Actor" in a musical Bay Area Theater Critics Association for Katya a Holiday Spectacular 2009, Katya has appeared in various theatrical runs and nightclubs including sold out Shows at theRRazz room, The New Conservatory Theater, The Eureka Theater, Trannyshack, and monthly shows at San Francisco's Premiere piano bar -- Martuni's. Katya recently made her New York debut in Katya, A One Night Stand at Don't Tell Mama's.

Katya Takes You Home plays:

May 12-14, 17, 19-21 @ 8pm

May 22 @ 4pm: Special Happy Hour Performance!

Tickets are available on Brown Paper Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/171153

REVIEW, The Idiolect: "I'll Fly Away"

by Sam Hurwitt

Sleepwalkers Theatre’s entire current season is devoted to 28-year-old playwright J.C. Lee’s This World and After trilogy, which got off to an intriguing start with This World Is Good back in August. The current production, Into the Clear Blue Sky, doesn’t have any of the same characters, but it shares many themes and other elements with the first play. There’s talk of apocalyptic events, which in This World were speculation about the future and in Clear Blue Sky are a vaguely defined status quo—and a completely different doomsday scenario than the one outlined in the previous play in any case.  Both plays are very much about the relationship between a brother and a sister, one of whom leaves the other behind in a dramatic fashion, and in both cases there’s a brooding mom who communicates mostly in monologues through letters read aloud (this time it’s not her fault because she’s the one left behind).

Into the Clear Blue Sky takes place in a post-apocalyptic New Jersey where cannibal mutants roam the streets and “dogs the size of Chevys are tearing through libraries.” But the cataclysmic event that brought all this on is left vague, because ultimately it’s not something that happened out in the world at all but a traumatic night in the home. “Ever since her little hands went black, the world’s gone to hell.” Young Mika’s hands have turned pitch black. She wears white gloves to cover them, but nothing will wash the black away. At the beginning of the play she runs off on a quest to swim to the moon in seas that are rising because of global warming, in hopes that someone up there will be able to fix her. Her brother Kale chases after her, to try to protect her, bring her home and make her forgive him for something that’s revealed (or at least more explicitly suggested) very late in the play.

It’s hard to tell how old the characters are supposed to be. Dina Percia, who played a different sister in the previous play, has the swagger of a fearless 10-year-old as Mika, who talks through her adventures as if they’re a child’s game, which maybe they are. “Come any closer and I’ll scramble your DNA,” she says. “You won’t have any relatives.” When she’s on the sea she trash-talks Poseidon to do his worst, which strangely enough is the same thing I used to do on the beach as a kid. She’s a picture of defiance, even if it’s unclear for the longest time what she’s defying.

Eric Kerr has an earnest, pleading, somewhat tortured adolescent quality as Kale, who’s fixated on finding Mika to the exclusion of everything else. He’s quickly joined—well, first captured and then joined—by Adrian Anchondo’s achingly sensitive Cody, the boy next door who’s in love with Kale. Shirtless and war-painted, Cody pretends to be a battle-hardened badass, but he’s touchingly needy and vulnerable as he can’t bring himself to read Kale the poem he wrote for him even when he’s asleep.

Pamela Smith is stern and a little at sea as their heavily-accented mother, whom they call Margaret instead of Mom. Margaret comes off as angry all the time and shows few signs of softness or tenderness. When Mika sends her letters carried by birds, she just complains that the birds shit all over the place. Whenever Kale talks about rescuing Mika, Margaret yells at him not to touch Mika or look at her, so whatever’s going on it can’t be good.

Their father, a scientist, left on a homemade shuttle to find an antidote—whether it’s for his daughter’s condition or the state of the world isn’t clear, but they amount to the same thing. Largely absent for the first part of the play, Christopher Nelson as the dad gives an apologetic monologue about how Margaret wouldn’t put up with his scientific ways, then he reappears as a peevish, sad-sack doctor on the moon.

Lee’s language is lushly poetic, full of funny turns of phrase and gags about what a hellhole New Jersey is. “I am the sinless sibling, the sanctified sister,” Mika says, and she identifies herself as one of the “Underage Sheroes of Camden, first class.” It’s also packed with strong imagery, such as the letters delivered by paper birds on a stick, and that’s definitely true of Ben Randle’s visually appealing production as well.

Randle’s evocative set is all black-and-white, with overlarge scraps of handwritten notes hanging on the back wall and a pattern of white shards on the black floor that looks like a rectangle that quickly shatters into chaos but is later revealed to represent a tree. Wes Crain’s costumes also stick to the B&W palette, and Colin Trevor’s sound design is heavy on loud thundering sound effects. There’s a lot of creative use of flashlights in Christian Mejia and Alexander C. Senchak’s lighting design, particularly for underwater scenes.

The play would be endlessly frustrating to the literal-minded, because all the action takes place within the realm of metaphor.  Something terrible and personal and real happened in the past, but it has spun out into an elaborate fantasy landscape that sets the terms for everything that’s happening now. None of this is spelled out, but the upshot is that nothing can be taken literally except the way people feel. It’s like magical realism without the realism. Both female characters feel a bit impenetrable—it’s hard to get a sense of what they’re thinking, while the boys wear their hearts on their sleeves. But the play does resonate on an emotional level, and the ending is touching, bittersweet and really creepy at the same time. It certainly piques my curiosity to see the last installment this August, The Nature Line, and get a better sense of what threads tie the three together.

Into the Clear Blue Sky runs through April 30 at the Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason St., San Francisco.http://sleepwalkerstheatre.com

REVIEW, SF Bay Times: Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Energy of Youth

by Lily Janiak

Into the Clear Blue Sky, a Sleepwalkers Theatre world premiere currently running at the Phoenix Theater, shows that you don’t need a huge budget to create magical and moving art - even if your subject is post-apocalyptic, suburban New Jersey. The script, by young playwright J.C. Lee, is itself a work of impassioned poetry, endowing each of its five characters with rich, incandescent inner lives. And under the inventive direction of Ben Randle, the stage itself becomes poetic, too. Into the Clear Blue Sky, in its brief 70 minutes, is a refreshing reminder of what theater - and only theater - can accomplish: collective acts of extraordinary imagination. 

In Lee’s play, the world is a scary place. Beaches no longer exist; displaced seagulls could fly into your kitchen at any moment; suburbia’s ocean of concrete casts restless young girls into the real ocean, where sea monsters lurk in the waves. But for Mika (the superb Dina Percia) and her family, the world of home is just as scary: Her scientist father (Christopher Nelson) both lets his experiments run horrifically amuck and runs away himself. Her mother Margaret (Pamela Smith) tries to scrub the past off her children, scouring too harshly skin that just won’t get clean. And brother Kale (Eric Kerr) is rebuffed as the family’s would-be hero, finding solace only in his friend Cody (Adrian Anchondo), who, much to Kale’s annoyance, pines for recognition as a poet - and a lover. 

Percia shines as the emotional anchor of the production. With her bell-like voice, wide eyes and small stature, she certainly looks the part of a young girl. But the intelligence and stage-presence she brings to the role ensure that Mika, who says things like, “my steely justice materialized,” and who wields her middle school debate trophy “like a saber,” is precocious without becoming precious. So adept is Lee’s playwriting, however, that every other actor gets his or her own moments of transcendence: Nelson brings out both his character’s noble intentions and the shame that debilitates them; Smith, in reading aloud the letters runaway Mika writes to Margaret (a favorite, and effective, device of Lee’s), somehow reconciles her character’s perceptive wisdom with her willed ignorance; and Anchondo, as Cody, comes to terms with his unrequited love through profound acts of the imagination. 

Randle’s direction makes imagination literal. Flashlights (by lighting designers Christian Mejia and Alexander Senchak) create both undersea plunges and starry nights. Sound (by designer Colin Trevor) leavens the proceedings with the sort of background music a B-movie might use in an action scene, even as it constantly destabilizes, with spaceships taking off and thunder crashing. The set, by Randle and Maya Linke, is like a collection of building blocks: characters transform it into everything from roaring ocean waves to an imposing gate to a scientific lab on the moon. 

Into the Clear Blue Sky is the second installment in a trilogy by Lee, but the play more than stands on its own as an impeccable example of the exciting, visionary work a young playwright and a young company can do. And, for whatever it’s worth, the night I attended, I encountered a highly sought-after but almost unheard-of theatrical phenomenon: an audience composed almost exclusively of young people. 

Into the Clear Blue Sky continues (Thursday to Saturday, 8pm) until April 30 at the Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason Street, San Francisco. Tickets ($15 to $17), call (415) 913-7272 or at sleepwalkerstheater.com. 

Check out Lily’s blog at http://lilyjaniak.blogspot.com/ 

Read the review on their website here.

REVIEW, Theaterdogs: 'Apocalpyse Wow: 'Into the Clear Blue Sky" Captivates

by Chad Jones

  Welcome to, as the producers put it, “your friendly neighborhood apocalypse.” Playwright JC Lee is in the midst of unfurling his world-premiere trilogy This World and After, and he’s getting some big-time help from Sleepwalkers Theatre, the company that produced Part One, The World Is Good, last summer and is now unveiling Part Two, Into the Clear Blue Sky.

If this is what post-apocalyptic life looks like, I don’t think I’ll mind so much when everything goes to hell. Not that life isn’t wretched. In addition to the horrors mentioned above, there are sea beasts to contend with, not to mention the fact that, due to acceleration of global warming, the very shape of the earth is changing and you can now, for reasons more poetic than scientific, find your way through the ocean to the moon.

But in Lee’s ravaged world, human beings are, mercifully, still human beings. His play, directed with flair by Ben Randle, is full of horror and wonder, but it’s all on a human scale. Lee has a graphic novelist’s flair imaginative drama and a playwright’s love of the poetic. He can be comic-geek funny one moment and Gabriel Garcia Marquez beautiful the next. As I said, human scale.

Our front-row seat to the mayhem is — where else? — right smack in New Jersey, described by one of the characters as “the worst of the 50 states.” It’s hard to image in any state being anything but horrific at this grim moment in history. We don’t know exactly what happened, or if there was even a defining event, but it seems the trajectory of world destruction and evolutionary mutation has picked up quite a bit of speed.

Lee’s focus is a family: brother and sister Kale (Eric Kerr) and Mika (Dina Percia), respectively, and their poetry-loving mother, Margaret (Pamela Smith) and cowardly scientific father (Christopher Nelson).

The father is cowardly because he has escaped into the clear blue sky. Something terrible has happened between Kale and Mika — so terrible that it turned Mika’s hands black and left permanent black handprints on Kale’s back. The family has ruptured as a result, and the father has fled in a silver pod of his own creation.

Mika embarks on a quest to somehow get the black off her hands, and Kale, joined by his childhood friend Cody (Adrian Anchondo) begins a parallel quest to find his sister, even though she now wants nothing to do with him.

Along the way, Mika — given the compassionate soul of warrior poet in Percia’s appealing performance — corresponds with her mother via letters delivered by angry seabirds. The letters are heartbreaking in their succinctly but perfectly expressed emotion.

Mika’s journey ends on the moon, where, among other lost souls, she may find the opportunity for a fresh start.

Kale’s journey is more complicated. A somewhat emotionally twisted young man, he doesn’t really know what he wants. His mother has essentially cast him out of the family home. His father has abandoned him, and his sister is running from him. The only person fully on his side is Cody (a funny, expressive and mostly bare-chested Anchondo).

Cody is fully in love with Kale, but Kale toys with his friend’s overflowing heart. It’s mainly due to Kerr’s compassionate portrayal of Kale that the character remains somewhat sympathetic, even though he treats Cody badly and has presumably done something terrible to his sister. How can Kale not love Cody, a man who says he has been compared to “a transgender Chita Rivera“?

In only about 70 minutes, Lee and director Randle fashion an epic quest full of family drama and end-of-the-world nightmares with help from Randle and scenic artist Maya Linke’s paper-strewn black-and-white set.

Horrible things happen and yet Lee never lets his characters journey too far from hope. As more than one character repeats, “Things will be good again.”

Into the Clear Blue Sky is good right now.

Correction: The set was designed by Ben Randle, not Maya Linke. Linke was the Scenic Artist.

JC Lee’s Into the Clear Blue Sky continues through April 30 at the Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason St., sixth floor, San Francisco. Tickets are $15 online and $17 at the door. Call 415-913-7272 or visit www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com for information.

You can read the review here.

SF Chronicle: 'Into the Clear Blue Sky': Apocalypse rolls on

by Nellie Bowles, Chronicle Staff Writer

J.C. Lee anticipated the apocalypse when he was 22.

"Bush was in power," the playwright says. "The environment was collapsing."

Lee's apocalyptic vision laid the groundwork for his "This World and After" trilogy, which is being staged by Sleepwalkers Theater and is "the most ambitious thing we've ever done," says producing artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp. The second part of that trilogy, "Into the Clear Blue Sky," opens tonight.

Set against a surreal New Jersey landscape, "Into the Clear Blue Sky" follows Mika, a young girl who discovers that the world is ending. Waking up to find her hands charred a deep black, she flees to the moon. Her brother Kale chases behind. As the world - and set - melt away, they struggle through a chaos of ridiculous demons and cannibal Canadians.

"The play is about a little girl and her imagination, trudging through wilderness," says Lee, who cites comic books and "The Lord of the Rings" as his greatest influences. "She's a modern Frodo."

Lee's "This World and After" trilogy is "about redemption and cohesion" in an increasingly chaotic world. In each, his protagonists are teenagers.

"Things make sense when you're a teenager that don't later," he says. "There's theatricality in the imagination."

The first play of the trilogy, "This World Is Good," came out in August 2010 and focused on a family crumbling. The final play, "The Nature Line," is set to come out in August and is "about putting back together the human body."

"Into the Clear Blue Sky" focuses on the dyad, on a severely damaged relationship and a secret.

Lee - a native New Yorker who wrote most of his trilogy during two years in Berkeley - says he sees his work as political, its whimsy an attempt to make sense of chaos.

"We try to protest, we try to vote, and none of it seems to work. Then there's climate change - now radiation, this war in Libya," Lee says. "The mechanisms to solve the problems around us are failing - they are beyond our capacity. And that's the apocalypse.

"The mythology of the end of the world helps us cope with the anxiety we have."

But despite the heavy themes, the atmosphere on set is youthful and surprisingly jovial.

"People might be on apocalypse overload right now," Ingersoll-Thorp says. "It might be too real. But it's an exciting plot, so you can ignore those themes and enjoy it." 

8pm tonight-Sat. Through April 30. $15-$17. The Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason St., Sixth Floor, S.F. www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com.

Read the article on Chronicle's website here. 

JC Lee's new play, "Into the Clear Blue Sky" begins rehearsals for April bow

"Into the Clear Blue Sky", a new play by JC Lee and directed by Ben Randle, started rehearsals February 19th, in a production presented by Sleepwalkers Theatre. The show previews April 7 & 8th, opens Saturday, April 9th, and runs through April 30th at The Phoenix Theatre.

According to press materials, in "Into the Clear Blue Sky" a "young girl flees to the moon pursued furiously by her brother in post-apocalyptic New Jersey. In a world populated by mutant dogs and monster sea horses, no one is safe."

The cast features Adrian Anchondo, Eric Kerr, Christopher Nelson, Dina Percia, and Pamela Smith.

"Into the Clear Blue Sky" previews April 7 & 8, opens April 9th and runs through April 30th at The Phoenix Theatre,located at 414 Mason Street, 6th floor. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm. Tickets are $15 online and $17 at the door for the first 3 weeks, $17 online and $20 at the door for the closing weekend.  Tickets are available at http://sleepwalkerstheatre.com/tickets/ .

'Doubt' nominated for 3 BATCC Awards, 'Best Director'

New Conservatory Theatre's production of John Patrick Shanley's "Doubt" directed by Ben Randle has been nominated for 3 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards. in the 99 Seats and Under Category, the production was nominated for Best Director (Ben Randle), Best Performance by an Male Actor (Andrew Nance), and Best Ensemble.

The Critics Circle gives awards for excellence in three categories: Theatres with (1) 99 seats or less; (2) 100-300 seats; and (3) Over 300 seats. Representing the print and electronic media, 28 members of the Critics Circle voted for 36 Drama awards and 38 Musical awards from 400+ nominated actors, designers, productions and more, from shows they reviewed in 2010. During that year, over 400 productions were seen by Circle critics, from Santa Cruz to Santa Rosa, San Francisco to Concord.

Winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony on April 4, 2011. 

REVIEW, SFWeekly: In Treefall, a Young Cast Rises New Conservatory Theatre

by Chris Trenchard

San Francisco, in all its identities and identity crises, may be the perfect place for a play like New Conservatory Theatre Center's Treefall to spread its primal, jarring gospel of misaligned familial instincts, idiosyncratic faith, and sexual desperation. We, after all, are a varied bunch, never quite sure what being a "San Franciscan" really means, but knowing that somewhere in our sundry ways there's a common bond that goes beyond geography.

In Treefall,  New Conservatory Theatre director Ben Randle (Don't Ask, Doubt, Friends are Forever) has another ambitious work on his hand, from the daring pen of playwright Henry Murray. Randle has said he continues to be drawn to the provocative, and this post-apocalyptic story of three boys who cling to each other for sanity and survival's sake pushes the Randle oeuvre further into the fringes.

The fringes of civilization are exactly where we find our postmodern family, the progeny of women who brought them to safety in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest. Various apocalyptic forces have claimed the lives of their mothers, and now those feminine spirits remain, which the boys have come to worship. Randle shows us vestiges of a society that women were a part of: a wig from one of their mothers, a dress, lipstick, and high heels, all of which decorate a mannequin on an altar, where the boys pray in memory.

Evan Johnson's Flynn is the de facto Alpha male of the group, and various attempts to manipulate his mercurial "wife" August (Josh Schell) and their quasi-schizophrenic "son" Craig (Sal Mattos) are rationalized as an attempt to keep the family together. The casting of Johnson as the alpha male at first seems odd, given that he comes off more effeminate than Schell. But in a world without women, it makes sense that the straight male with no women to chase would be easily subjugated. In other words, where heterosexuality isn't possible, the homosexual is king of the jungle.

To borrow a recent term, the naïve August is a bit of a Tiger mom to Craig, resenting his childishness and denial of their tragic predicament. At first he is OK with wearing the dress Flynn insists he wear, but foul play between the two forces August to question the merit of their arrangement. Schell's transformation from abiding, role-playing wife to self-discovering man stirs the brain as we reconcile man's need for family and his instinctive sexual desires.

Mattos seems a precocious actor on the scene. His flits between his character's personality and alter-ego are riveting, capturing the bifurcation of an only child left to socialize with dolls (Drew) and his own imagination. While Mattos provides much of the play's comic relief in these moments, he also finds the right amount of innocence in his tone and physicality. We'll expect more bravura from him in the future.

If there's a criticism to impart on these young, maturing actors, it's the delivery of dialogue, which came off as too brisk. We're not completely convinced that these characters are thinking about what they're saying. But when their pace slows and their volume subsides, we see in their eyes characters that feel real.

We're reminded of the power of subtlety when the boys stumble upon a skittish nomad, who goes by the nickname "Bug." At first distrustful of their new friend, they soon discover why their new boyish acquaintance refuses to open up. And how they discover their friend's secret is a clever (and foreshadowing) turn from Murray/Randle. Corinne Robkin, who refreshingly comes to NCT from San Francisco Clown Conservatory (!), plays Bug with a smug charm, but also with an understated bravado.

Kuo-Hao Lo's set is rife with hieroglyphic-like figures on the walls -- faces, numbers with cryptic meanings, and words labeling basic settings are used not only to cue the audience on where we are, but also to suggest these are humans acting instinctually, as our ancestors did at the origin of our species. Christian Mejia's lighting has the refined chiaroscuro of a blue and cubist period painting set in a mountain bunker. Lo, Mejia, and cast work swimmingly together to change scenes organically. Suggestion trumps production value again.

Treefall continues through Feb. 27 at New Conservatory Theatre Center.

Read review at SFWeekly here.