Clive Barker's PARADISE STREET Comes to EXIT Theatre This December

This December, EXIT Theatre presents the American Premiere of a truly unusual Christmas play by Clive Barker, best-selling author and mastermind behind cult films Hellraiser and Candyman. Stuart Bousel directs Barker's play about England's greatest monarch, the search for meaning in a godless world, and STDs.

Set in Liverpool at the end of the 20th century as the city is undergoing a massive urban revitalization movement, Paradise Street follows the romantic and philosophic misadventures of the Bonner brothers, their lovers, the local doctor, and a homeless prophet as they meet, part, love, fight, prophesy, and debunk miracles on the last Christmas Eve before their street is demolished. At midnight, the celebrated monarch Queen Elizabeth I steps through time accompanied by the famous poet Ben Jonson, her lover, his lover, and their pet ape. Why is she there and what will happen when her entourage crosses paths with the contemporary populace of England's most infamous of port cities?

Director Bousel describes Paradise Street as "A Midsummer Night's Dream crossed with A Christmas Carol crossed with a Blackadder Episode crossed with Look Back in Anger." Bousel says that Barker borrows from these sources "and then throws them in a blender without any reverence and hits the buttons until something freakish looking but amazingly tasty comes out. His characters are incredibly rich, complex people, and so real but also so stylized, so hyperbolic. He thumbs his nose at conventional storytelling demands, while creating work that is incredibly structured, full of parallels and symbols and clues, as tight as a sonnet."

Clive Barker's Paradise Street will open at EXIT Theatre on December 1, 2016 in a production directed by Stuart Bousel. Paradise Street features performances by David Bohnet, Kyle McReddie, Nicole Odell, Jeunee Simon, Cat Luedtke, Phil Wong, Steven Westdahl, Luke Brady, Jayme Catalano, Jan Carty Marsh, and EXIT Theatre's Artistic Director Christina Augello in the role of Queen Elizabeth I. The production features scenic designs by Mary Naughton, lighting design by Amanda Ortmayer, costume designs by Brooke Jennings, sound design by Ryan Lee Short, and music by Clayton Horath.

Performances run December 1 - December 17, 2016. Tickets are $20-$30 and on sale now through Brown Paper Tickets.

EXIT Theatre has been presenting indie theatre since 1983 and operates five storefront performance spaces in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. With a focused mission, the EXIT provides opportunities for artists to create and showcase their work and develop their audiences. In addition to housing the productions of 100 independent theatre companies each year, the EXIT is single-handedly responsible for the annual San Francisco Fringe Festival, the largest grass roots theatre festival in the Bay Area, and is the birthplace of DIVAfest, a year-long producing organization dedicated to the projection of female voices.

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