Culture Clash will Return to Berkeley Repertory Theatre with CULTURE CLASH (STILL) IN AMERICA

Berkeley Repertory Theatre today announced that Bay Area natives and provocateurs, Culture Clash, are returning with their latest production, Culture Clash (Still) in America. The play, written and performed by Culture Clash and directed by Obie Award winner Lisa Peterson, marks the fifth time the satirical group has performed at Berkeley Rep.

The missionaries of mayhem are back with their unique, badass brand of Chicano satire! Born here in the Bay and Los Angeles-based, Culture Clash first brought their dangerous and subversive version of documentary theatre to Berkeley audiences with Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, gleefully skewering American culture through the lens of the Latino experience.

In this powerful, pointed, and downright hilarious update they turn their razor-sharp wit to everything from pussy hats to MAGA caps, laying down outrageous, biting, and thought-provoking monologues and sketch comedy about the immigrant experience in America right now.

"This is a piece Culture Clash initiated at Berkeley Rep years ago," says Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer, "and being the artists and the citizens that they are, they've continued to revise it as the world has spun into madness around them. I can't imagine a better or more important moment to have these guys - their history, their humor, and their political insights - on our stage."

Previews begin on Thursday, February 20, 2020 and the show runs through Sunday, April 5, 2020. Individual tickets begin at $30 ($15 if you're under 35) and can be purchased online at berkeleyrep.org or by phone at 510 647-2949.

Culture Clash (Writers/Performers)

Culture Clash has previously appeared at Berkeley Rep's larger stages in The Birds, the world premiere of Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, and the world premiere of Culture Clash's Zorro in Hell. 2019 marks their 35th anniversary as a vital American theatre company with works ranging from satire to social realism and drama, with adaptations of Aristophanes' The Birds, Peace, and Frogs aka Sapo to co-writing Frank Loesser's long-lost musical, Señor Discretion Himself, based on a story by the late Budd Schulberg. In 2OO7 Water & Power won the LA Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 2016 they received a Best Production of the Year Ovation Award for their critically acclaimed play Chavez Ravine, remounted at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. In collaboration with the Long Beach Opera, Culture Clash premiered a remixed, reimagined, and refreshed adaptation of Fairy Queen by Henry Purcell, based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2017). In the spring of 2018, Culture Clash premiered Bordertown Now at The Pasadena Playhouse and remounted Culture Clash (Still) in America at the South Coast Rep in now blue Orange County! Founded in 1984 on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo) in San Francisco's historic Mission District, Culture Clash is Richard Montoya, Ricardo Salinas, and Herbert Siguenza. This prolific group's plays include American Night: The Ballad of Juan José (2010) for Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Ashland, Ore.). This play was selected to launch OSF's "American Revolutions: The United States History Cycle," along with other writers David Henry Hwang, Suzan-Lori Parks, Naomi Wallace, and Robert Schenkkan. Their work has been produced by the nation's leading theatres including the Mark Taper Forum, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, Huntington Theatre Company (Boston), Alley Theatre (Houston), South Coast Repertory, and Seattle Repertory Theatre, to name a few. Culture Clash's site-specific theatre work weaves personal narratives culled from interviews bringing voices in from the margins of the U.S. to create an ongoing dramatic American tapestry. Culture Clash has three books of compilations: Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, and Oh Wild West: The California Plays with TCG Books and several books by Samuel French for Montoya's three solo plays: Water & Power; American Night; and Palestine, New Mexico. New works include films based on their plays and a Broadway musical on the life of Ritchie Valens with music by Los Lobos and directed by Tony Taccone! Culture Clash (Still) in America marks their return to the Bay from which they were creatively born and caps a long and fruitful relationship with director Lisa Peterson and her team of amazing designers. Los Clashers look forward to more years of making critical noise and infusing their work with social justice and searing satire. Which was the original intent on a corner in San Francisco's Mission District with curator René Yañez in 1984! Orale!

Lisa Peterson (Director)

Lisa, formerly Berkeley Rep's associate director, returns to the Theatre, where she directed The Good Book (also co-written with Denis O'Hare), Office Hour, Watch on the Rhine, It Can't Happen Here, Madwoman in the Volvo, An Iliad (also co-written with Denis O'Hare), Mother Courage, The Fall, and Antony & Cleopatra. She directed Lauren Yee's The Great Leap at American Conservatory Theater last year. At Center Theatre Group, she recently directed Lynn Nottage's Sweat as well as Culture Clash's Chavez Ravine (2015 Ovation Award, Best Production), Palestine, New Mexico, and Water and Power, among other plays. She co-wrote and directed An Iliad with Denis O'Hare (Broad Stage, New York Theatre Workshop, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards). A two-time Obie Award-winner, she has directed world premieres by Tony Kushner, Beth Henley, Naomi Wallace, Chay Yew, Luis Alfaro, Fernanda Coppel, David Henry Hwang, Stephen Belber, Jose Rivera, Ellen McLaughlin, Marlane Meyer, Philip Kan Gotanda, Lisa Ramirez, John Belluso, Caryl Churchill, Janusz Glowacki, Cheryl West, and many others at theatres including New York Theatre Workshop, The Public Theater, Vineyard Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, Primary Stages, Guthrie Theater, Actors Theater of Louisville, Seattle Repertory, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, the Alley, and McCarter Theatre Center. She was associate director at La Jolla Playhouse for three years and resident director at Mark Taper Forum for 10 years. She is currently working on a new version of her musical adaptation of Virginia Woolf's The Waves, music by David Bucknam and Adam Gwon (premiered at NYTW 1990 and New York Stage and Film 2018); The Song of Rome with Denis O'Hare, commission for the McCarter Theater; and The Idea of Order with composer Todd Almond, commissioned by Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, and Seattle Rep.

The creative team includes Christopher Acebo (scenic designer), Carolyn Mazuca (costume designer), Tom Ontiveros (lighting and projection designer), and Paul James Prendergast (composer and sound designer).

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