METAMORPHOSIS Closes Aurora Theatre Season

Closing Aurora Theatre Company's 19th season is the first professional American production of METAMORPHOSIS. Award-winning Bay Area director, performer, and playwright Mark Jackson returns to Aurora Theatre Company, where he helmed the company's acclaimed productions of Salome and Miss Julie, to put his own unique spin on this landmark work of existential literature. METAMORPHOSIS, featuring Alexander Crowther, Megan Trout, Allen McKelvey, Madeline H.D. Brown, and PatRick Jones, plays June 10 through July 17 at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley. For tickets ($10-55) and information the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.

Embodying the isolation of Franz Kafka's unsparing tale, METAMORPHOSIS is a masterful mix of horror and absurdity, telling the story of a traveling salesman's bizarre transformation from man to man-sized insect. This powerful exploration of alienation, a terrifying, yet comic, adaptation of Kafka's classic 1915 novella by British director David Farr and Icelandic actor-director Gísli Örn Gardarsson of Iceland's Vesturport Theatre, was hailed as "a parable for our times" by The Daily Telegraph (UK). Performed in London's West End, Dublin, Australia, and Hong Kong, "It's the story of a very ordinary family where something awful happens," Farr says. "But there is a lot of laughter in among the awfulness."

Vesturport Theatre's 2006 stage adaptation of METAMORPHOSIS played at the Lyric Hammersmith in London; the Lyric Theatre Company toured the UK and premiered their version of the production at BAM in New York City as part of the Next Wave Festival in 2010, accompanied by a unique soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Aurora Theatre Company's production will be the first production of Farr and Gardarsson's adaptation performed by a professional company and an American cast.

Award-winning director, performer, and playwright Mark Jackson returns to Aurora Theatre Company, where he helmed the company's lauded productions of Miss Julie and Salome, to direct METAMORPHOSIS. Jackson most recently directed The Companion Piece at Z Space; other directing credits include Shakespeare's Macbeth, The Forest War, The Death of Meyerhold, and his adaptations of Schiller's Mary Stuart and Goethe's Faust Pt1, all performed at Shotgun Players. Additional productions include Yes, Yes to Moscow at Deutsches Theater Berlin (Germany) and the San Francisco International Arts Festival, his original play American $uicide at Encore Theatre Company, and Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle (American Conservatory Theater MFA Program). The Death of Meyerhold garnered a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Original Script in 2003, which Jackson also received in 2002 for his original one-man show I Am Hamlet. He was the founding Artistic Director of Art Street Theatre (called "San Francisco's Best Experimental Theatre Company" by SF Weekly), for which he wrote and directed a number of plays, was a 2005 German Chancellor Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and a 2003 playwright in residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. In 2007, Jackson was named the Bay Area's "Best Theatrical Auteur" by SF Weekly. Aurora Theatre Company will present the World Premiere of Salomania during the company's 20th anniversary season; the new play commission, written and directed by Jackson, was workshopped at Aurora during 2010.

Aurora Theatre Company has assembled a talented ensemble for METAMORPHOSIS. Alexander Crowther makes his Aurora Theatre Company debut as Gregor, the man who transforms into a bug. An MFA candidate at American Conservatory Theater, Crowther's stage credits include productions at Flower City Theatre Festival and Conservatory productions of The Comedy of Errors, Archangels Don't Play Pinball, Three Sisters, and A Lie of the Mind. Also making her Aurora debut is Megan Trout as Gregor's sister Grete. Trout's credits include productions at Theatre of Yugen (Alice), Young Artist's Ensemble (The Crucible), and Brown Bag Theatre Company (Glengarry Glen Ross, Comedy of Errors). Allen McKelvey returns to the Aurora stage as Gregor's father. McKelvey previously appeared in Aurora Theatre Company's productions of The Devil's Disciple and The Weir, and was a director for this season's Global Age Project. He founded AmeRican CitiZeNs' TheatRE, which garnered numerous Bay Area awards for excellence in directing, technical achievement, and performance under his artistic direction; additional stage credits include productions at TheatreWorks, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, San Jose Repertory Theatre, and B Street Theatre, among others.

Rounding out the cast are Madeline H.D. Brown as Gregor's mother and PatRick Jones as Gregor's supervisoR. Brown's theater credits include productions at SF Playhouse (Wirehead, The Apotheosis of Pig Husbandry, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), Shotgun Players (Three Penny Opera), Brava Theater, and Mugwumpin/Just Theatre. Jones' stage credits include productions at Marin Theatre Company (Animal Vs. Animal), San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and Thrillpeddlers, as well as numerous productions in New York.

Vesturport Theatre was founded in 2001 by Gísli Örn Gardarsson, Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir, and Ingvar E. Sigurdsson; the company quickly established itself as one of Iceland's most inventive award-winning theater and film companies. Vesturport's productions for the stage include Romeo and Juliet, Woyzeck, Dubble Dusch, Love, and Faust. Vesturport has produced three feature films: Children, Parents, and Brim (based on Vesturport's play of the same title).

David Farr is a playwright, screenwriter and stage director, whose plays have been performed all over the world. In recent years he has moved into film and television, working on the long running BBC show Spooks and completing his first feature film, Hanna, recently released by Focus Features. Farr's theater career began when he became Artistic Director of the Gate Theatre, London, in 1995, earning him a reputation as one of the most exciting new talents in British theater. He left The Gate to become Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic in 2002, and in 2005, became Artistic Director of London's Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. While at the Lyric, Farr wrote and directed a hugely successful adaptation of Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS, a collaboration with Icelandic actor and director Gísli Örn Gardarsson, which played in three separate Lyric runs, and toured nationally and internationally; he also directed the acclaimed Water for Filter Theatre. His play The UN Inspector, an adaptation of Gogol's The Government Inspector, opened in 2005 at The National Theatre, starring Michael Sheen. In 2009, Farr left The Lyric for his current position as Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Born in Iceland and raised in Norway, Gisli Örn Gardarsson attended the Icelandic Academy of the Arts. In his last year at the Icelandic Academy in 2001, he co-founded the Vesturport Theatre with Nína Dögg Filippusdóttir and Ingvar E. Sigurdsson. He made his debut as a director with his circus-inspired version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which premiered at the Reykjavik City Theatre and has been performed at the Young Vic Theatre in London and on the West End in London. He directed and adapted Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, with an original score and lyrics by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, which opened at the Barbican Theatre in London in 2005. With David Farr, he directed and adapted METAMORPHOSIS at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, with Gardarsson himself in the role of Gregor Samsa, and music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. He also wrote and directed Love, a romantic musical about two people who find love at the end of their lives, a stage version of the Lucas Moodysson film Together, and a new version of Faust. He recently appeared in the feature film Prince of Persia, directed by Mike Newell.

Despite his great impact on the literary world, Franz Kafka was a relatively unknown author during his lifetime. Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Bohemia; he was the eldest of six children. His father was a self-made middle class merchant who began as a traveling salesman; he raised his children in the hopes of assimilating them into the mainstream society of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka learned German as his first language, but he became fluent in Czech and later acquired knowledge of French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert. Admitted to the Charles University of Prague, Kafka first studied chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. In 1917, he began to suffer from tuberculosis, which required frequent convalescence; during this time he was supported by his family, most notably his sister, Ottla. In 1923, he briefly moved to Berlin in the hope of distancing himself from his family's influence to concentrate on his writing. It is thought that Kafka also suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life; he also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments brought on by excessive stress. Kafka's tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to a sanatorium near Vienna for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924. His body was returned to Prague where he was interred on June 11, 1924, in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov.

Most of Kafka's writing, much of it unfinished at the time of his death, was published posthumously. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories. He finished the novella The Metamorphosis, but never finished any of his full-length novels; his unfinished work was prepared for publication after his death by his friend and literary executor Max Brod. The novella The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) was published in 1915; full-length novels include The Trial (Der Prozeß, 1925), The Castle (Das Schloß, 1926), and Amerika (Amerika or Der Verschollene, 1927).

Following METAMORPHOSIS, Aurora Theatre Company opens its 20th anniversary season in September with Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize-winning brutal comedy of manners A DELICATE BALANCE, featuring an extraordinary ensemble of acting luminaries from Aurora's past and present, and directed by Aurora Artistic Director Tom Ross. Aurora Theatre Company is also poised to present an innovative collaboration with former San Francisco Ballet dancer Muriel Maffre in November with a re-imagined production of THE SOLDIER'S TALE, followed by the Bay Area Premiere of Obie-winning playwright Annie Baker's BODY AWARENESS in January, directed by Joy Carlin. Founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company to helm Margret Schaefer's Aurora-commissioned World Premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler's fin-de-siècle gem ANATOL in April. The 20th anniversary season concludes in June with Aurora Theatre Company's World Premiere play commission, SALOMANIA, written and directed by Mark Jackson.

Nominated for 15 and winner of 8 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for 2010, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company has been called "one of the most important regional theaters in the area" and "a must-see midsize company" by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has "nothing but praise for the Aurora." The Contra Costa Times stated "perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close," while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed "[Aurora Theatre Company] lives up to its reputation as a theater that feeds the mind," and the Oakland Tribune declared "it's all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora."

 

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