Paige Rogers to become Artistic Director
Rob Melrose to be named Founding Artistic Director

After a productive year-long sabbatical, which included directing Much Ado About Nothing at the Old Globe Theater as well as Ondine and A Dreamplay at Cutting Ball, Cutting Ball co-founder Rob Melrose has decided not to return as Artistic Director but rather to continue to focus on his creative work and freelance projects.  He will remain on the Cutting Ball board and will take on the title of Founding Artistic Director.  He will continue to be involved with Cutting Ball creatively including translating a French classic for next year’s season, but he will no longer oversee the day to day operations of the theater.  Co-founder Paige Rogers will be stepping into the role of Artistic Director, one that she has effectively been doing this past year as Acting Artistic Director while Melrose has been on sabbatical.

Full statement from Melrose:

“I am so excited for this next phase in Cutting Ball’s history as well as the next phase of my own creative work.  These past few years, I have had the opportunity to direct at The Public Theater, The Guthrie, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Old Globe, and PlayMakers Rep, among others.  Working at some of the most respected theaters in the country has pushed my work forward and I am excited to pursue more of these kinds of opportunities.

I am also incredibly proud of what we have accomplished at Cutting Ball.  Paige and I dreamed about doing this kind of work when we were studying in Europe on a Fox Foundation Grant in 1997.  Cutting Ball’s first show, Richard Foreman’s My Head Was a Sledgehammer, premiered in San Francisco in 1999 and was rehearsed in a kindergarten classroom with a production budget of $450.  Now Cutting Ball has a budget of over $600,000, a three play season, and our own wonderful space at the EXIT on Taylor in the Tenderloin.  More than the organizational accomplishments, however, I am proud of our productions and their legacy.  We have produced an ambitious program of experimental new plays, seminal avant garde works, and re-envisioned classics that is unique in this country in which realism is the predominant mode of theater.  I’m proud of our new translations of plays by Ionesco, Jarry, Büchner, Maeterlinck, Sophocles, and Strindberg – especially our five play Strindberg Cycle marathon of August Strindberg’s Chamber Plays in new translations by Paul Walsh.  I’m also proud of the many premieres of new plays we have done by playwrights pushing the boundaries of what theater can be: Kat Sherman’s Ondine, Marcus Gardley’s …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, Andrew Saito’s Mount Misery and Krispy Kritters in The Scarlett Night, Eugenie Chan’s Bone to Pick, Diadem, and Tontlawald, Will Eno’s Lady Grey in ever lower light, Sean San José’s Superheroes, Basil Kreimendahl’s Sidewinders, Samuel Gallet’s Communiqué no˚ 10, Kevin Oakes’s The Vomit Talk of Ghosts, and of course Annie Elias’s Tenderloin.  We have also had an impressive number of playwrights come through our Risk Is This Festival including Liz Duffy Adams, Jen Silverman, Phillip Howze, Christopher Chen, Mark Jackson, Janet Allard, Anthony Clarvoe, Bennett Fisher, Trevor Allen, Christine Evans, Brad Chequer, Alex Johnson, and Caridad Svich.  What I am most proud of are productions of the two playwrights we produced the most during my tenure as Artistic Director: William Shakespeare and Suzan-Lori Parks.  Our innovative productions of Shakespeare (As You Like It, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest) helped distinguish us as a company and are what launched my national career.   Paige and I are already talking about a Shakespeare project for me to direct at Cutting Ball in an upcoming season.  Our productions of Suzan-Lori Parks (The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, Pickling, Betting on the Dust Commander, 365 Days / 365 Plays) connected our theater to one of the greatest living playwrights and made us one of the hub theaters for the 365 Days / 365 Plays project with Playwrights Foundation and Z Space.

I am doubly delighted that Paige Rogers will be taking over as Artistic Director.  First, since she is the co-founder as well as my spouse, I know that I will continue to be intimately connected to Cutting Ball.  Second, and more importantly, she has been doing a phenomenal job as Acting Artistic Director during my sabbatical year.  In the eight months since she started, she has secured $150,000 in grant monies to install air conditioning in the theater and to remodel the lobby, she has redesigned the website and rebranded the theater, and she has been working closely with her mentors Marc Vogl and Robert Orchard through the Rainin Foundation and the Bloomberg Foundation respectively to plan for an exciting and sustainable future for Cutting Ball.  Paige recognizes that what Cutting Ball shares with the European theater that inspired it is a deep commitment to the vision of a director.  This commitment is what makes Cutting Ball unique in the American Theater and it is something Paige wants to deepen.  While I have been working at regional theaters to broaden the scope of my work, Paige’s residencies and collaborations with Teatr Zar in Poland and with Russian-born director Yury Urnov (Ubu Roi) has helped her invest more deeply in experimental theater and visionary direction.  She has a bold vision for Cutting Ball’s future and far from watering down the vision that started it, she will only more it more concentrated and potent.  We are both excited about each other’s artistic growth and how we have adjusted our lives to foster it.

Lastly, I’m looking forward to doing more writing and translating.  I was a playwright before I was a director.  At first, I only took up directing to get my play done.  These past two years, thanks to Risk Is This… and the Playwrights Foundation, I’ve had the opportunity to get back to my roots and work as a playwright by working on the experimental electro-rock musical I have been writing with ZONK, Ozma of Oz.  It was such a pleasure to take time out from running a theater and directing plays to focus on writing again.  Cutting Ball has been wanting to produce Ozma but a musical of this size continues to be a challenge for an organization our size.  We are still plotting ways of bringing it to San Francisco sometime in the future.  I’m looking forward to having time to continue to work on Ozma and to writing many more plays to come.

Since I am not going anywhere I don’t want to say goodbye, but I do want to take this moment of transition to thank all the individual donors, the audiences, the deeply supportive foundations in the Bay Area, the city of San Francisco and the NEA, the EXIT Theatre, the Cutting Ball staff past and present, and most especially all the wonderful, talented, committed artists who have worked at Cutting Ball.  A certain person I admire greatly once said, “it takes a village.”  It really took a host of people to get us where we are today and I am eternally grateful.  Thank you.”

Both Daniel, our translator, and Heather, our stage manager, left on Monday and, after nine days, our original group changed form. We miss them. Heather took concise notes of each and every session of movement work with Matej and one with Ola and Tomek. She also called time for us. For those who are not familiar with this, the stage manager calls thirty, fifteen and five minute increments, counting down to places. “Five minutes please! Five minutes.” She organized our daily schedule, picking up quite a bit of the cooking and clean up herself. Contrary to my original fears, our life has not fallen apart completely and we are plugging along nicely with Emma taking on the brunt of kitchen responsibilities and me pounding out the schedule for the day (albeit later than Heather would probably like).

Our first day off was kind of a shock. The noise of Wroclaw, the availability of wifi, the museums, the shops and cafes all kind of shocked our senses. It’s so very peaceful in Brzezinka and our entire focus is on the work. . . okay, and cobbling together some sort of good dinner.

Paige Rogers

August 22, 2014

Hannah Donovan (Ismene) is very excited to be making her Cutting Ball Theater debut in Antigone! Favorite theatrical credits include: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Puck), Spring Awakening (Wendla), and An Absolute Turkey (Lucienne). Hannah received her B.A. in Dramatic Arts from The University of Southern California and attended the British American Drama Academy in London. Following her recent graduation, she has performed in several New York City productions and has just returned from a month-long theatrical immersion program in Ecuador. When she isn't acting, Hannah loves to travel, write poetry, and work with wildlife.

Antigone and Ismene are sisters with a complex relationship. What are some ups and downs for them in the play? Donovan: After the death of their brother, Polyneices, Antigone implores Ismene to help her bury the body. Fearing Creon's death penalty for such actions, Ismene refuses to help, but is unable to stop her from trying.

What are you most looking forward to about the trip to Poland? I'm most excited to simply experience a country I've never been to before: eat the food, see the sights, meet the people, and attempt to speak Polish!

How will this trip to Poland further you theatrical education and career? The Grotowski Method and Teatr ZAR are both very new to me, so to be exposed to and immersed in these practices will, without a doubt, expand my acting vocabulary immensely.

What important items are you bringing to Poland? I'm going to bring my camera. And peanut butter…definitely peanut butter.

What souvenir do you want to bring back from Poland? I'll probably buy a mug. When I traveled in Europe a few years ago I began to collect them and I want to continue the hunt!

Elissa Beth Stebbins (Chorus Lead) is thrilled to be joining Cutting Ball for the very first time as part of Antigone. Elissa was seen most recently as Elizabeth Bennet in Livermore Shakespeare Festival’s Pride and Prejudice. Other recent projects include the TheatreWorks Educational Tour, Wendy in Custom Made’s production of Peter/Wendy, and Joan in Impact Theatre’s What Every Girl Should Know. Elissa graduated from Santa Clara University with a B.A. in Theatre and English, and has continued her training with Shakespeare & Company. She is a proud recipient of Theatre Bay Area’s Titan Award, and is a 2013 TBA FACES honoree.

What role does the Chorus Lead play in the greater production? Stebbins: The Chorus Lead acts as an advisor to Creon, as well as the voice of the people, and, sometimes, the audience.

What is the thing that you are most excited about regarding your trip to Poland? Everything! This will be my first trip out of the country, and the fact that I get to go in order to train with some remarkable professionals (and in the company of this phenomenal cast) makes it pretty much the most exciting thing ever.

How will this experience add to your training/career as an actor? I'm looking forward to building my experience of working in an intensely physical way as an ensemble, while I've done projects and training that touch on this type of work, this is definitely a step up and I'm excited to see how it affects other aspects of my work.

What important item will you take with you to Poland? My notebook. I'm looking forward to the remoteness of our location, and the time for reflection and writing that comes with being away from technology.

What souvenir will you bring back from Poland? I'm not big on physical souvenirs, so mostly the experience itself. And hopefully some ground breaking, monumental revelations about myself. No pressure, Poland.

— Support The Antigone Project: http://kck.st/1mCecg4

July 30, 2014

Click here to read text of his talk.

Michael K. Brown is a Research Professor, Department of Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of several books including Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform (Russell Sage Foundation, 1988); Race, Money, and the American Welfare State (Cornell University Press, 1999), and Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society (University of California Press, 2003), which he co-authored with a team of social scientists. Whitewashing Race received the 1^st Annual Benjamin L. Hooks Outstanding Book Award and a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Books Award. His work has appeared in the Du Bois Review,Studies in American Political Development, and Political Science Quarterly among other journals.

Click here to read this 9-page excerpt featuring Frederick Douglass and Donald Rumsfeld!

Mount Misery receives its world premiere at Cutting Ball Theater May 8-June 7, 2015.

At the beginning of the process of developing Mount Misery we were fascinated with the questions that arose imagining Rumsfeld and Douglass interacting through time. The characters of Edward Covey (the overseer of the plantation Mount Misery and Douglass’ torturer) and Joyce Rumsfeld were originally tangental to the main relationship between these two men.

But as Andrew wrote, we started to become interested in Covey and Joyce. Joyce says, “Let us enjoy dinner, as a family, once again. Let us just enjoy the shops, and the restaurants. Is that too extravagant to ask?” It is a funny line, as is so much of Andrew’s play, but it is also actually quite profound. I don’t make decisions about torturing people or invading countries, but I sleep soundly in Fairfax (please don’t tell ISIS where I live) while my country tortures and invades. I don’t enslave people, but I wear affordable (and sometimes stylish) clothes made by people in sweatshops across the ocean. And yet, I walk around thinking that I am a good person who loves his family. Joyce interests me because she participates in evil in the way I participate in evil and, I suspect, in the way you do too.

In Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt wrote about “the banality of evil.” She noted that so much of the evil of the Holocaust could be found in people “just following orders” and letting things happen. For me, I’m less interested in the evil SS officer ordering people into the gas chamber and more interested in the postman in Dachau who delivers the mail every day and passes by the camp on the way home to dinner with his family. Covey’s devotion to Christianity is a reminder that until 1865, there were plenty of people who participated in slavery and still considered themselves good people. Sometimes it takes a Frederick Douglass or a Harriet Beecher Stowe to make us see the human cost of evil.

Finally, you would like to use a technique called the “waterboard.” In this procedure, the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, which is approximately four feet by seven feet. The individual’s feet are generally elevated. A cloth is placed over the forehead and eyes. Water is then applied to the cloth in a controlled manner. As this is done, the cloth is lowered until it covers both the nose and mouth. Once the cloth is saturated and completely covers the mouth and nose, air flow is slightly restricted for 20 to 40 seconds due to the presence of the cloth. This causes an increase in carbon dioxide level in the individual’s blood. This increase in the carbon dioxide level stimulates increased effort to breathe. This effort plus the cloth produces the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic,” i.e., the perception of drowning. The individual does not breathe any water into his lungs. During those 20 to 40 seconds, water is continuously applied from a height of twelve to twenty-four inches. After this period, the cloth is lifted, and the individual is allowed to breathe unimpeded for three or four full breaths. The sensation of drowning is immediately relieved by the removal of the cloth. The procedure may then be repeated. The water is usually applied from a canteen cup or small watering can with a spout. You have orally informed us that this procedure triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is not in fact drowning. You have also orally informed us that it is likely that this procedure would not last more than twenty minutes in any one application.

As we understand it, when the waterboard is used, the subject’s body responds as if the subject were drowning — even though the subject may be well aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have informed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm. Thus, although the subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. as we explained in the Section 2340A Memorandum, “pain and suffering” as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of “pain” as distinguished from “suffering”…. The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does not, in our view, inflict “severe pain and suffering”. Even if one were to parse the stature more “finely” to attempt to treat suffering as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to suffering.

Oration, language, and words played a significant role in both Frederick Douglass and Donald Rumsfeld’s lives. Included in this program are two speeches from these men as well as an excerpt from the Torture Memos, a series of memos describing various “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Frederick Douglass, August 3, 1857

Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.

Donald Rumsfeld April 11, 2003

I picked up a newspaper today and I couldn’t believe it. I read eight headlines that talked about chaos, violence, unrest. And it just was Henny Penny — “The sky is falling.” I’ve never seen anything like it! And here is a country that’s being liberated, here are people who are going from being repressed and held under the thumb of a vicious dictator, and they’re free. And all this newspaper could do, with eight or ten headlines, they showed a man bleeding, a civilian, who they claimed we had shot — one thing after another.

From the very beginning, we were convinced that we would succeed, and that means that that regime would end. And we were convinced that as we went from the end of that regime to something other than that regime, there would be a period of transition. And, you cannot do everything instantaneously; it’s never been done, everything instantaneously.

We did, however, recognize that there was at least a chance of catastrophic success, if you will, to reverse the phrase, that you could in a given place or places have a victory that occurred well before reasonable people might have expected it, and that we needed to be ready for that; we needed to be ready with medicine, with food, with water. And, we have been.

Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things. They’re also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that’s what’s going to happen here.

Mount Misery: A Comedy of Enhanced Interrogations required me to build new muscles as a playwright in order to create the most demanding and challenging play I have ever written. I have authored an uncountable number of drafts, and the excised pages outnumber those that remain! My full-time playwrighting residency at The Cutting Ball, made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is the sole reason I was able to write so many iterations of Mount Misery. The numerous public and private readings of this play have been invaluable in my growing understanding of my own text and its possibilities. Even more critical, however, has been Rob Melrose’s consistent voice, which has by turns encouraged, challenged, and inspired. The constant washing, filtering, distilling of this play has led me to its kernel, its bone. And it is the bone that this story strikes. As it should. We need to be struck awake. We need to be struck to our feet. Things are not all well. Our country is built on grit and sacrifice and vision and love, but also on theft, murder, and the lashing and suffocation of black, brown, female, and poor bodies. We dishonor ourselves by closing our eyes to the full spectrum of our country’s history and status quo, on whose flowered and bloodied grounds we live.

Cutting Ball Theater: How did you get involved with the project?

Sinaiko: I am an Associate Artist with Cutting Ball and was able to find out about it when it was still in the planning stages. I was very intrigued by the project and made sure I followed its progress.

CBT: What is it that you like about working on a new play?

Sinaiko: The process of approaching new work is always very challenging and rich. Working with the playwright, getting a view into her or his singular perspective and creative sparks is always fascinating. It can also be difficult, exploring ways to make new work, new characters, new words find their rhythm, tone, and intention.

CBT: Can you tell us about your character? What is the trait in your character that you admire most and why?

Sinaiko: I think Donald Rumsfeld is a fascinating character. He was so prominently out front during the Bush administration's war effort and he was really a performer in his role as Secretary of Defense. Despite being someone with whom I disagree on most (if not all) issues, and who I believe made many disastrous decisions, he has a very charming and genial presence, and is very invested and astute about language and words. Arrogant? Definitely – to an incredible degree. But also smart and cunning – almost too much for his own good.

CBT: Why do you think it is important that we produce this play today? How do you think it will resonate with a contemporary audience?

Sinaiko: Mount Misery offers a unique perspective that allows us to look at the legacy of slavery and subjugation side-by-side with the legacy of the "Bush Doctrine," wars of choice, and torture. It is an incredibly germane vision.

CBT: Can you give us one quote from the play that you like particularly? Either for its wittiness, humor or for its beauty/poetry?

Sinaiko: Don: "Joyce, when you let me work, our marriage works."

Biography:

David Sinaiko is a Cutting Ball Associate Artist appearing in more than a dozen of their productions including: Krispy Kritters in the Scarlett Night, The Chairs, The Strindberg Cycle, Tenderloin, Lady Grey & other plays, The Tempest, …and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, The Bald Soprano, Endgame, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It. A founding member of Chicago’s New Crime Productions where credits include: Heart of a Dog, The Balcony, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Other credits: Goodman Theatre, Actor’s Gang, Golden Thread, Crowded Fire, SF Playhouse. Film and television includes The Grifters, Bob Roberts, Carnosaur and The Untouchables. He’s an alumnus of NYU’s ETW and Stella Adler Conservatory.

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Published April 16, 2015