ARCTIC REQUIEM: THE STORY OF LUKE COLE AND KIVALINA to Play Z Below Theater, 10/23-11/15

BootStrap Theater Foundation is pleased to announce the world premiere of "Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina" created by Sharmon J. Hilfinger and Joan McMillen, directed by Tracy Ward. This multifaceted theatrical production will run October 23 - November 15 at San Francisco's Z Below Theater 450 Florida Street with an Opening Night on Sunday, October 25, 5 p.m.

"Arctic Requiem" is an unconventional play with music presented as a collage of stories in layered timeframes.The production is directed by Tracy Ward, with a book by Sharmon J. Hilfinger, music by Joan McMillen, and dramaturgy by Brian Thorstenson.

The cast of "Arctic Requiem" features Damon Sperber***, Michael Torres*, Lawrence Radecker**, Cathleen Riddley*, Lynne Soffer* and Gendell Hing-Hernandez* (*AEA) (**SAG/AFTRA).

Choreography is by Christy Funsch, set design by Giulio Perrone, and costume design by Callie Floor. Alva Henderson is the Musical Director. Nancy Shelby, who was Luke Cole's wife and is a San Francisco theater artist and company member with Word for Word Performing Arts Company, has provided significant guidance in the creation of Arctic Requiem and connection to the community that knew Luke and his work. The recent Kickstarter campaign was a resounding success reaching 165% goal with worldwide contributions.

On a human level the play "Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina" is a powerful, true story about the first climate change refugees in the United States and San Francisco lawyer Luke Cole's response to their life threatening situation. Kivalina, Alaska is an Inupiat Eskimo village where the habitat has been dramatically mutated by pollution and climate change. Their island and way of life are vanishing. Luke and the Inupiats stand together against greed, corruption, prejudice and pollution in an arctic environment whose transformation may be irreversible. In "Arctic Requiem" Raven, the Inupiats's mythical creator and archetypical champion of transformations, leads Luke through an end-of-life dream about Kivalina.

"When Cole filed one of the first major Global Warming lawsuits in the U.S., Kivalina vs Exxon et al in 2008, discussions of climate change were not in the forefront of the daily news. Now, seven years later, the news is catching up. Currently, President Obama is considering a visit to Kivalina on his upcoming Alaska trip," remarks playwright Sharmon J. Hilfinger

For more information about Arctic Requiem visit www.arcticrequiem.org. Tickets will be on sale to the public in August 2015.

Kivalina and Luke Cole Kivalina is a tribe, a village, a barrier reef island. It is on the west coast of Alaska, 70 miles above the Arctic Circle. This is the home of a tribe of Inupiat Eskimos. There are no roads to Kivalina; to get there, you take a plane from Kotzebue.The village and people of.Kivalina have been ravaged by the effects of melting ice, vicious storms, and have been polluted by the world's largest zinc mine. Luke Cole was a fierce environmental justice lawyer, an avid bird-watcher, a root beer and chocolate aficionado, and a most beloved mentor and friend to many, many people. He was widely known for his work representing minorities in environmental discrimination cases. Luke Cole graduated from Stanford in 1984 and then worked for three years in Washington as one of Ralph Nader's so-called Nader's Raiders, editing a consumer advice newsletter. After receiving his law degree from Harvard in 1989, he moved to San Francisco and soon after started the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment. One of his most important legal legacies is the groundbreaking Global Warming suit filed on February 26, 2008: Kivalina vs Exxon et al. He also helped residents of Kivalina, an Inupiat village in northwest Alaska, sue the Teck Cominco Corporation, claiming that the company's zinc mine had polluted the village water supply for years. A settlement called for Teck Cominco to stop depositing mining tailings into the Kivalina River and to build a pipeline to the ocean, about 50 miles away. From 1996 through 2000, Mr. Cole served on the E.P.A.'s national environmental justice advisory council.

Sharmon Hilfinger (Playwright / Producer) has been writing plays for twenty-nine years. Arctic Requiem is her fifth play with music written in collaboration with composer Joan McMillen. Their play about Emily Dickinson,Tell It Slant, was co-produced with the Pear Avenue Theater; Hanging Georgia (2011) is about Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and was co-produced with TheaterFirst. Imaginal Disks: A Tale of Transformation (2001) premiered at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts. Hilfinger and McMillen's environmental activist play for high school actors, got water? (2003) premiered at the SF Fringe Festival. Sharmon's other full-length plays include An Ideal Mother (Menlo Player's Guild, 1993), A History of Things that Never Happened (BootStrap, 1999, Heartland Theater 2005) , and Deuce (BootStrap and Pear Avenue Theatre co-production, 2006). Hanging Georgia scheduled for February 2016 production at Columbia College, Columbia, SC. Arctic Requiem is her eighth full-length play to be produced. In 1998, she founded BootStrap Theater Foundation. As Executive Director, she has developed a model for creating new works which emphasizes ensemble acting, music and movement. Before a play goes into rehearsal, Sharmon designs workshops that include writers, musicians, actors and a director.

Joan McMillen (Composer) is a composer and classically-trained improvisational pianist, with degrees in piano and music history. McMillen has directed several choruses and written many choral song cycles including; Remembering the Way: Ceremony in Honor of the Labyrinth at Chartres, Journey of the Raindrop and Winter Solstice Celebration. Her collaboration with playwright Sharmon J. Hilfinger has resulted in four plays with music; Imaginal Disks: A Tale of Transformation, got water?, Tell It Slant, Hanging Georgia and continues with Arctic Requiem: The Story of Luke Cole and Kivalina. In Portland, OR, she has collaborated on Melissann Reed's autobiographically-based play Dancing the Labyrinth and composed a solo/choral vocal score for Ken Arnold's play The Garden.

Tracy Ward (Director) is an award-winning freelance director based in the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing on New Works for the American Theater. She is proud to be both workshopping and directing the world premiere of Arctic Requiem. Recent productions include: The Dragon Play (2 Top Ten lists in the Bay Area) and What Every Girl Should Know at Impact Theatre. Theatre for Young Audiences : National Tours of The Magic School Bus Live: Climate Challenge and Strega Nona the Musical with Bay Area Children's Theatre/Maximum Entertainment and Rock the Block: a Walk and Roll Musical, currently touring the Bay Area. BACC Best Director Nomination for Hunter Gatherers by Peter Nachtrieb. Other productions include work at AlterTheatre, Shotgun Players/Encore Theater, ODC, and Z Space. She is a member of Playground. www.tracyward.org

Nancy Shelby (Producer) is an actor, director, and founding member of Word for Word Performing Arts Company celebrating twenty-one years of bringing short works of fiction to life on stage. She has appeared in the award winning ensembles of Olive Kitteridge, Stories by Tobias Wolff, and Winesburg Ohio, as well as stories by Alice Munro, Richard Ford, John Sayles, Virginia Wolf, Barbara Kingsolver, Edith Wharton. Nancy has appeared on numerous stages in the Bay Area and in Los Angeles, on film, and on television, and has directed works by Julie Orringer, Greg Sarris, Susan Lori Parks, and a number of poets. She also has a consultancy - preparing writers for public readings. As Luke Cole's widow, she has provided significant guidance to the script of Arctic Requiem, and she is instrumental in promoting the play to the community that knows Luke and his work.

Brian Thorstenson (Dramaturg) many plays include: The Horses (Alter Theater Ensemble), Over the Mountain (Brava Center for Women in the Arts, The Global Age Project, 2003 Bay Area Playwrights Festival), Wakefield; or, Hello Sophia and Shadow Crossing (Central Works Theater Ensemble), Drop (Alter Theater Ensemble), Heading South (The Studio at Theater Rhinoceros, The 450 Geary Theater), and Summerland (Alternative Theater Ensemble, 2000 Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Wings Theatre Co., NYC). He has collaborated on two dance theater pieces, Tuesday and Sugarfoot Stomp, with Stephen Pelton Dance Theater. His radio adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here was broadcast nationally on the Pacifica Radio Network. He has been an artist in residence at the Blue Mountain Center and the Djerassi Resident Artist's Program. Brian is a member of the Resident Playwrights Initiative at the Playwrights Foundation, and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

CAST:

Gendell Hing-Hernandez: Actor (Raven)- was born in Havana, Cuba, and has been a bay area Actor, Director and Teaching Artist since 1997. He has worked as an actor for Berkeley Rep, Word for Word, Theaterworks, Camposanto, San Jose Rep, Center Rep, New Pickle Circus and many others. Productions include Around The World In 80 Days, The Cook, Blood Wedding, Oil!, Food Stories, House on Mango Street and References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot to name a few. He has been a company member of: Theater of Yugen, where he studied classical Japanese theater; Red Ladder Company, where he performed with at-risk youth and maximum security inmates; and The Felonious Collective, where he helped develop, direct, and perform original Hip-Hop theater pieces. As a director he has worked with Felonious, Quixotic Players, Teatro del Juglar, The NY Hip-Hop Theater Festival, Oakland Public Theatre, Berkeley Rep's School of Theatre and the Pacific Alliance Stage Company. He has also been an Event Manager and Producer for Felonious: One Love Hip Hop, Theater Of Yugen and The Cuban-American Cultural Institute.

Cathleen Riddley, Actor (Colleen)- just concluded an extremely successful run in Tree at San Francisco Playhouse. She was previously seen there as Aldonza in Man of La Mancha. Favorite roles include Nurse in Medea at African American Shakespeare Company, Pirate King in Pirates of Penzance at Berkeley Playhouse, Calpurnia in To Kill A Mockingbird at TheatreWorks, and The River Bride at Alter Theater. She has been seen in many Bay Area theaters including Marin Theatre Company, Central Works, ACT, Lorraine Hansberry Theater and Magic Theatre. Cathleen is a proud member of AEA and TBA, an Associate Artist at Alter Theater, and is a PlayGround company member. Cathleen has been nominated for several BATCC Awards as well as a TBA award. She is an alumna of The Juilliard School Drama Division, a certified ASL Interpreter and has an MA from UPenn. A current project close to her heart is working with incarcerated men in San Quentin in their violence prevention program called No More Tears/Healing Circle.

Lynne Soffer: Actor and Dialect Coach (Lucy) - has appeared as an actor with ACT, Berkeley Rep., Theatreworks, San Jose Rep., Sacramento Theater Co., California, Marin and Sherwood Shakespeare Theaters, Alaska Rep, The Magic, Encore, Word for Word, Golden Thread, Aurora, Central Works, SF Opera and Arizona Theater Co. among others. She has served as dialect and/or text coach for over 250 productions at theaters across America including The Old Globe (San Diego), Dallas Theater Center, Arizona Theater Co, Seattle Repertory Theater, Denver Center, most of the Bay Areas theaters and the World Premiere of "The Laramie Project" in Denver and New York, and for several motion pictures including Fruitvale Station (2013) Duets and Metro. A professional actor, teacher, director and dialect coach for the past 40 years. Most recently, her work has included directing "Hay Fever" for Stanford Repertory Theater and coaching dialects for the SF Opera production of "Sweeney Todd". She is an Associate Artist at California Shakespeare Theater, a graduate of the MFA Program at ACT and, as a proud member of Actors' Equity union for over 34 years, and is the recipient of their Lucy Jordan Humanitarian Award for her work with actors.

Damon K. Sperber, Actor (Luke Cole)- is an actor, teacher and native San Franciscan. A graduate of UCLA (BA in World Arts and Cultures-Theater) and the American Conservatory Theater (MFA), Damon has appeared in theater (A.C.T., Berkeley Rep, San Jose Rep), television (most recently in HBO's Looking), film (most recent credits include Testby Chris Mason Johnson and the soon to be released In Freefall), commercials and on radio.

Michael Torres, Actor (Joe) is a founding member of Campo Santo where he has acted for eighteen years, originating roles for the country's greatest writers including Richard Montoya, Christopher Chen, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Dave Eggers, Jessica Hagedorn, Denis Johnson, Jose Rivera, Greg Sarris, and Octavio Solis. Michael received Back Stage West and San Francisco Bay Guardian's Outstanding Performance awards, and eleven Best Ensemble awards in his twenty seven year old career. Michael has played at Shotgun Theater, The San Francisco Playhouse, Word for Word, Thick Description, Encore, Berkeley Repertory, B St Theater, Teatro Campesino, California Shakespeare Festival, The Eureka, The Magic, Teatro De La Esperanza, and in France, Spain, and Germany and throughout the United States. Michael directed Donald Lacy's hit show Colorstruck, whose national tour included the Congressional Black Caucus and National Black Theater Festival. He is on the board of directors for The Shotgun Players and the up and coming Ubuntu Theatre Project. Recently, Michael recreated the role of Crow for the movie The Other Barrio co-written and starring Richard Montoya (in post production). Presently, you can see him as Po in the film About Cherry written and directed by Stephen Elliot and starring James Franco. Michael was also the deputy coroner on the TV series Trauma.

Lawrence Radecker: Actor (Enoch) is a resident artist with Crowded Fire Theater Company where he has developed and debuted roles in a number of their world premieres including Chris Chen's The Late Wedding, Thomas Bradshaw?s The Bereaved, Marilee Talkington?s Sticky Time, Caridad Svich?sWreckage, Liz Duffy Adams? The Listener and Dominic Orlando?s Juan Gelion Dances for the Sun. He has also worked with Magic Theatre, Golden Thread, Thick Description, Marin Theatre Company, Brava! For Women in the Arts, Cutting Ball and Uncle Buzzy's Hometown Theatre Show. He can also be seen and heard in a variety of industrials and voiceovers, as well as a few films and television series.

Helen Newby: Cellist - An avid interpreter of contemporary music, Helen Newby continually seeks ways to expand the technical and expressive boundaries of her instrument through close collaboration with other innovative performers and composers. She received her Bachelor's in Music from the Oberlin Conservatory and her Master's in Cello Performance at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her principal cello teachers have included Darrett Adkins, Jennifer Culp and Rachael Lonergan.

Helen was a two-time recipient of Oberlin's Creativity and Leadership Fund, traveling to and touring Norway in January 2013 and touring the northeastern United States in June 2013. She has performed across North America and Europe in venues that range from Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall and The Fillmore to jazz clubs, dive bars and art galleries. This past summer, Helen was the cello fellow of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, a 7-piece ensemble committed to the performance of new and contemporary compositions at the Aspen Music Festival. She was recently awarded a partnership with the Center for New Music in San Francisco.

Helen is a founding member of string trio Chartreuse, string quartet Amaranth, and jazz sextet deturtle.

CREATIVE TEAM:

Christy Funsch (Choreographer) is a dance maker, performer, and teacher. Since forming Funsch Dance Experience in 2002, she has had her work presented in Amsterdam, Chicago, London, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Toronto, and throughout California. Christy has enjoyed rich collaborative partnerships with Stephen Pelton, Nol Simonse, Julie Mayo, and Sue Roginski. She has also worked with Susan Rethorst, Katie Faulkner, Dandelion Dancetheater, Maxine Moerman, Leslie Seiters, Mary Armentrout, and many others. She has been awarded choreographic residencies at CounterPULSE, Djerassi, the U Cross Foundation, and Yaddo. Christy has been awarded a New Stages for Dance Award from Dancers' Group and the MetLife Foundation, and an Individual Artist Commission Award from the San Francisco Arts Commission.

Giulio Perrone (Set Designer) is Inferno Theatre's Producing Artistic Director, is an award winning playwright, set and costume designer as well as a stage director. He began his career in his native Italy. He has directed and designed for both the theatre and opera internationally and in the US, with over 200 professional productions to his credit, including the following companies, La Scala, Pontedera Teatro, the San Diego Repertory Theatre, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Dell'Arte International, Opera San Jose, California Shakespeare Festival, TheatreWorks, Marin Theatre Company, Word for Word, The Magic Theatre, and The Alley Theatre in Houston..

Alva Henderson (Music Director) is a composer known for his operas and vocal music. He completed his first opera Medea for a 1972 production by the San Diego Opera with Metropolitan Opera star Irene Dalis in the title role brought him to national attention. Among his other compositions are the operas West of Washington Square, premiered by Opera San Jose in 1988, Achilles, The Tempest, the cantata The Ancient Ones, premiered by the Schola Cantorum in 1983, and a dramatic musical, Far From the Madding Crowd. In June of 2004 Schola Cantorum, a San Francisco Bay area chorus of 140 voices gave the premiere of Mr. Henderson's Winter Requiem, poems by Dana Gioia. Also in 2004 Mr. Henderson's opera Nosferatu, with libretto by Dana Gioia (after the film by F. W. Murnau) was given its World Premiere. In 2008 he was commissioned to write From Greater Light, a cantata with baritone and tenor solos, chorus and orchestra for the opening of the City of Hope in Orange County, California.

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