The California Repertory Company has announced its upcoming season, with the theme “We shall not cease from exploration,” which will run from Sept. 23, 2011 through May 12, 2012 in the Queen Mary’s Royal Theater.
The season opens with a nuclear double-bill. To begin, artistic director Joanne Gordon will direct The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Carson Kreitzer, winner of the Lois and Richard Rosenthal New Play Prize. As the father of atomic energy “dares to disturb the universe,” this love song fuses male and female, creation and destruction, life and death. Gordon, a recent recipient of the Women in Theatre Red Carpet Award, said she’s looking forward to bringing this hot-button topic to the Queen Mary: “In a world of prevarication, artists need to tell the truth,” she said. This production will run Sept. 23 through Oct. 15.
Part two of the double nuclear theme is Paul Mullin’s Louis Slotin Sonata, which traces a brilliant scientist’s last nine days. When a hand slips, humanity must live with the fallout. Director Eberhard Koehler, of the Pokoleniy Theatre in St. Petersburg and the UA in Berlin, brings a dynamic, European sensibility to this historical and vitally relevant drama. Sonata will run Nov. 18 through Dec. 10.
In the spring, Cal Rep partners with Long Beach’s censorship festival, “The B-Word Project,” taking a trip to the dark side with Quills, Doug Wright’s provocative treatise on the artist’s need to create. With themes of madness, censorship and oppression, Quills forces us to consider which is more pornographic— the Marquis De Sade’s philosophy, or social convention? The production will be directed by Larissa Paige Kokernot, artistic director for Chalk Repertory Theatre in Los Angeles, and a newcomer to the Cal Rep family. It will run Feb. 17 through March 10.
Thomas P. Cooke will return to Long Beach to direct Tom Stoppard’s classic Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Hamlet’s sidekicks are back, gambling with death and gamboling with Shakespeare. This production will run from April 20 through May 12.
Cal Rep’s company members bring a wealth of theatrical experience, with stage work at San Diego Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, South Coast Repertory and more. They also frequent film and television, with guest star spots on such hits as The Office, Desperate Housewives and Curb Your Enthusiasm, recurring roles on The Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives, and featured roles in films like Gods and Generals and A.I.
Cal Rep performances are in the Royal Theater aboard the Queen Mary. Productions run Tuesday through Saturday, with limited 2pm Saturday matinees. Tickets are $20 for general admission, $15 for students, military, and seniors (55 and older). Parking at the Queen Mary is $8 for patrons of Cal Rep performances, $6 for CSULB students and patrons who have dinner aboard the ship. Long Beach Public Transit also runs directly to the ship. For tickets and information call (562) 985-5526 or visit calrep.org or queenmary.com.
