Impact Briefs: Puberty Open At Impact Theater In Berkeley 5/1

Impact Theatre concludes its record-breaking Bar Mitzvah 13th season with its ninth collection of short plays, Impact Briefs: Puberty, directed by Alan Goy. Impact Briefs: Puberty opens May 1, 2009 and plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm until June 6, 2009 (with a preview April 30) at Impact's home, La Val's Subterranean in Berkeley.

Impact Briefs is a not-quite-annual tradition for the company, as well as a perennial audience favorite. Last time out, Impact Briefs 8: Sinfully Delicious heated up the summer of 2007 with steamy burlesque and deadly funny shorts, netting the show a nod from the East Bay Express in its roundup of the year's best theatrical moments. Now Impact returns with a new bunch of comedies, all centered around that awkwardly hilarious period known as puberty. Selected from more than 400 submissions, no uncomfortable stone is unturned, from "the talk" to nocturnal emissions.

Many of the authors and all of the actors are familiar with the Impact stage. Writers David Kongstvedt, Andrew Shemin, Impact Managing Director Cheshire Isaacs, and former Impact Artistic Associate Pete Caslavka (most recently Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he also assistant-directed) have written for past Briefs productions. The cast features players from earlier this season as well as a couple of returning favorites: Luisa Frasconi (Moth in Midsummer), Cindy Im (Desdemona in Ching Chong Chinaman), Jon Nagel (Dr. Randall Asswagon in A Very Special Money & Run Winter Season Holiday Special), Bryan Quinn (Scotto in Tallgrass Gothic), Emily Rosenthal (Layla Venezuela in Money & Run, Episode 3), and Seth Thygesen (Demetrius in Midsummer). The show will be directed by Alan Goy, a founding member of the celebrated improv troupe Un-Scripted Theater Company.

Tickets for Impact Briefs: Puberty start at $12, and there are two pay-what-you-wish performances. Tickets are available online at impacttheatre.com.

For more information, please call 510-464-4468 or visit impacttheatre.com. 

Since 1996 Impact Theatre has spoken to a new generation of theatregoers and enthusiasts alike who want to see something fresh and bold on stage. Impact's audience ranges from students to professionals to seniors, all of whom share a taste for exciting, unpretentious theatre that doesn't conform to stale assumptions of what constitutes high culture.
Impact's primary mission is to directly contribute to the future of American theatre through focusing on new plays by emerging playwrights. Impact has produced 17 full-length world premieres, including 12 by local playwrights, as well as dozens of world-premiere ten-minute plays by burgeoning writers nationwide in the Impact Briefs series. Impact also prides itself on its fast-paced, vital, contemporary spins on classic drama.

Impact shows compel, provoke, and inspire, at prices everyone can afford. And nowhere else in the Bay Area can you eat pizza and drink beer while you're watching a play. The East Bay Express named Impact "Best Small Theatre Company of 2008" and included Impact's Ching Chong Chinaman and Jukebox Stories: The Case of the Creamy Foam in its list "Top Ten Plays of 2008."