San Jose Repertory, having already announced more than half of its 2003-03 season, has announced the final two productions for its next year — the West Coast premiere of Eric Bogosian's Humpty Dumpty and the world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda's The Wind Cries Mary.
Bogosian's play centers around a quartet of urban intellectuals who find themselves trapped in a cabin in the woods after some unknown calamity cuts off their contact with the outside world. Humpty Dumpty finishes its world premiere run at Princeton's McCarter Theatre April 14.
Humpty Dumpty will play San Jose Rep Oct. 19-Nov. 17, the second play of the San Jose Rep season.
Gotanda, best known for his Sisters Matsumoto, replants Ibsen's Hedda Gabler in San Francisco's Asian American community in 1968. Hedda becomes Eiko, a strong and power woman searching for her self in a time of revolutionary rock 'n' roll, political activism and the Civil Rights movement. The Wind Cries Mary will play March 22-April 20, 2003.
After 2001-02's season of world and American premieres, including By the Bog of Cats with Holly Hunter, Ctrl+Alt+Del and Las Meninas, San Jose Repertory Theatre will also look back at the classics with productions of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending, Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona and a retrospective from Latino theatre troupe, Culture Clash. The Culture Clash program, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, revisits the group's greatest hits, plus new material culled from interviews with the Silicon Valley residents. Culture Clash is Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza. Their past shows include Anthology: A 15 Year Retrospective, A Bowl of Beings, Bordertown, Radio Mambo and Nuyorican Stories, which blend political, social and cultural commentary with vaudeville-styled comedy.
Also set for the season is Michael Healey's The Drawer Boy. The 1999 Dora Award winner for Outstanding New Play for its Toronto run, Drawer Boy places Milo, a young actor, in the midst of two middle aged farmers, the shell-shocked Angus and his caregiver Morgan. His arrival inadvertently turns the men's lives upside down, as Milo constructing their life stories as a play, forcing Angus and Morgan to face truths they've both repressed.
San Jose Repertory Theatre is located at 101 Paseo de San Antonio between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. For reservations, call (408) 367-7255. San Jose Repertory Theatre is on the web at http://www.sjrep.com.
— By Christine Ehren
