When most students are about to graduate college, they look for jobs. Actors join theatre collectives. Class Forces Theatre, one of the newest companies in the Bay Area, has cast several American Conservatory Theatre Masters of Fine Arts students in its production of Eric Overmyer's On the Verge, or The Geography of Yearning, running July 20-July 30 at the Yugen/Noh Space. Edward Webster directs the comedy, which opens July 21.
In Verge, three Victorian women discover they are not only traveling geographically, but also through time, as they find themselves not in the 1880s, but 1955. Each deals with the changes differently, as anthropologist Mary finds herself more and more obsessed with "native" mating habits, tabloid journalist Fanny becomes more traditional and homebound, and the youngest Alex faces the future by adapting to rhyming speech and rock-n-roll. On the Verge, which declares "I have seen the future and it is slang," premiered in 1985 at the Center Stage in Baltimore.
Overmyer is the author of Dark Rapture, The Double Bass, In a Pig's Valise, Native Speech and The Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin and Louis Chauvin.
Playing the Victorians are students Renee Penegor (Mary), Heidi Armbruster (Fanny) and Saba Homayoon (Alex). Recent A.C.T. graduate Chris Ferry (A.C.T.'s Edward II) fills out all the other roles in the play from a Yeti to a schizophrenic cannibal to the mysterious Madame Nhu.
Tickets are $15-$8. The Yugen/Noh Space is located at 2840 Mariposa Street at Harrison. For reservations, call (415) 339-8722 or e-mail [email protected]. Class Forces Theatre began producing plays in San Francisco in 1997. Past productions have included Maria Irene Fornes' Mud, Emma Goldman: Love Anarchy & Other Affairs and ZERO STiMULi by Verge actress Penegor.
-- By Christine Ehren
