Blue Door Tanya Barfield Aurora Theatre Company Like Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge, Lewis heads to bed, soon to toss and turn and to spend a night confronted by the ghosts of his life – in his case, direct-line ancestors stretching over a hundred years. As one ghost announces, “This is a summoning” for this distinguished, Black, mathematics professor who before … [Read more...] about Blue Door
Aurora Theatre Company
Manahatta
Manahatta Mary Kathryn Nagle Aurora Theatre Company Two American stories, four centuries apart, interlock in their telling, with characters, events, motives, triumphs, and tragedies strikingly similar in Mary Kathryn Nagle’s Manahatta, which premiered in 2018 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Now in an intimately engrossing and enlightening production at Aurora … [Read more...] about Manahatta
Hurricane Diane
Hurricane Diane Madeleine George Aurora Theatre Company Climate, comedy, and catastrophe are the unlikely combination in Madeleine George’s Hurricane Diane, now in its Bay Area premiere at Aurora Theatre Company. The laugh-out-loud, in-your-face warnings about our potentially disastrous future features in its stormy center a lesbian, permaculture gardener who just … [Read more...] about Hurricane Diane
Cyrano
Cyrano Edmond Rostand, Adapted by Josh Costello Aurora Theatre Company From its premiere night in 1897 Paris when the audience was still applauding an hour after the final curtain fell, through multiple stagings on the Great White Way starring some of Broadway’s finest, and after hundreds of productions worldwide in multiple languages, Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de … [Read more...] about Cyrano
Paradise Blue
Paradise Blue Dominique Morisseau Aurora Theatre Company In Aurora Theatre Company’s award-winning Detroit ’67 in 2018, the sounds of Detroit’s homegrown, Motown music were the background beat of Dominique Morisseau’s funny and frightening, heart-warming and heart-stopping play, Detroit ’67, the first of a trilogy about her hometown and a story that explodes amidst … [Read more...] about Paradise Blue
Wives
Wives Jaclyn Backhaus Aurora Theatre Company “He wrote our history not for us, for himself,” eulogizes the first wife of Ernest Hemingway as Wife 2 and Wife 3 nod in agreement. In Wives – Jacklyn Backhaus’ time-traveling, boundary-breaking script packed with playful yet powerful punches aimed at patriarchally told history – women once married to the rich and famous … [Read more...] about Wives
The Incrementalist
The Incrementalist Cleavon Smith Aurora Theatre Company Following the police-afflicted, brutal murder of George Floyd in May 2020, protests erupted world-wide, including in Berkeley, California where shocked, angry UC students joined local residents in the streets, facing off against aggressive police in riot gear. Oakland resident, Berkeley City College professor, … [Read more...] about The Incrementalist
The Children
What is the responsibility of retired parents to their children? Is it to continue to be supportive, loving, and available, even making sacrifices for them if a grown kid is having problems making it as an adult? Is it to relish and enjoy their grandchildren, spoiling them in ways they could not their own children? Is it to live their own lives, to do the things they now … [Read more...] about The Children
Bull in a China Shop
Mary Emma Woolley (1863-1947) was the first female to attend Brown University, a women’s suffrage advocate, a peace activist, and the president of Mount Holyoke College (MHC) from 1900 to 1937. She was also in a secret relationship with a former student who became an English professor at MHC during the years Woolley was there, Jeanette Marks. Recently, MHC hosted a digital … [Read more...] about Bull in a China Shop
“Exit Strategy”
Exit StrategyIke HolterAurora Theatre CompanyAdam Niemann & Margo HallIt’s 6 p.m. in early August a couple of weeks before school is scheduled to open. A thirty-year-old, boyish-looking, white Vice-Principal is trying his best to make friendly small talk about the chocolate cake he left today in the teacher’s lounge to a stone-faced, African American veteran teacher … [Read more...] about “Exit Strategy”
“The Importance of Being Ernest”
The Importance of Being EarnestOscar WildeAurora Theatre CompanyThe Aurora CastTwo young socialites both are engaged to Ernest, only there is no Ernest – at least not until two young dandies can rush to church for a late-afternoon re-christening, each planning to become Ernest to cover up his habitual propensity for lying. But before such radical altercation of identities … [Read more...] about “The Importance of Being Ernest”
“Everything Is Illuminated”
Everything Is IlluminatedAdapted by Simon Block, Based on the Novel by Jonathan Safran FoerAurora Theatre CompanyJulian López Morillas, Adam Burch & Jeremy Kahn“No one arrives in this world from nowhere.” The driving desire to know his own origins sends a young, aspiring writer in the late 1990s to the Ukraine in search of a woman in a picture identified as Augustine … [Read more...] about “Everything Is Illuminated”
“Detroit ’67”
Detroit ‘67Dominique MorisseauAurora Theatre CompanyHalili Knox & Akilah A. WalkerLast year, many celebrations and exhibitions packed the San Francisco calendar to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of 1967, known here and beyond as “The Summer of Love.” While so-called hippies roamed with peace signs and tie-dyes the streets and parks of The City with their … [Read more...] about “Detroit ’67”
“Eureka Day”
Eureka DayJonathan SpectorAurora TheatreThe Cast of Eureka DayMaybe this is a typical, kindergarten classroom; but probably most of those in America do not have posters hanging on their pristine walls showing a raised fist for “Occupy Oakland,” a sad-faced elephant proclaiming “Global Warming Is a Giant Problem,” or the definition of “eracism” (erasing the belief one race is … [Read more...] about “Eureka Day”
“Widowers’ Houses”
Widowers’ HousesGeorge Bernard ShawAurora Theatre CompanyDan Hoyle, Michael Gene Sullivan, Megan Trout & Warren David KeithOne of the greatest forces in modern, Western literature who wrote over sixty plays during his long career on subjects from religion to politics to social justice began his career with a play just as relevant in the housing strapped Bay Area of 2018 as … [Read more...] about “Widowers’ Houses”
