Cutting Ball Ends Extension of ...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI 4/25

San Francisco's cutting-edge Cutting Ball Theater will close the once-extended production of it's roof-raising production of ...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI, a new play by Marcus Gardley on April 25th.

Set on the banks of the Mississippi during the Civil War ...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI is a poetic journey of forgiveness and redemption. Inspired by the myth of Demeter and Persephone, this deeply personal play combines traditional storytelling, gospel music, and a wicked sense of humor to create a rich, imaginative world that allows trees to preach, rivers to waltz, and Jesus to moonwalk.

About the production the San Francisco Chronicle praised "The mighty Mississippi doesn't just flow in Marcus Gardley's impressive '... And Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi': It undulates, narrates, entices, floods, beatboxes and sings traditional spirituals like an angelic female chorus. And, yes, when the time comes, Jesus can moonwalk with the best." Likewise, the San Francisco Bay Guardian echoed, "In this inspired poetical-historical counter-narrative from Bay Area playwright Marcus Gardley, Greek mythology, African American folklore, personal family history, and Christian theology are all drawn irresistibly along in a great sweep of wild and incisive humor, passion, pathos and rousing gospel music as buoyant and wide as the Mississippi... a work both magnificently simple and eloquently evocative." The San Francisco Examiner noted how " ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi represents another excellent example of what Cutting Ball continues to present as it celebrates its 10th anniversary season - theater of extraordinary intelligence, innovation and imagination, at reasonable prices, too," while the Marin Independent Journal declared "When you go to see Marcus Gardley's ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi - which you should - it feels like what you're witnessing is not just a fascinating new play, but an important one."

About the production playwright Marcus Gardley says, "...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI is in a lot of ways my signature play . . . this play has a personal resonance to me because it is based upon a story my great-grandmother used to tell about her father who fled the bonds of slavery and traveled the country in search of his family . . . It is my hope that the play opens the door for dialogue about the impact of myth, spirituality, and history on our national culture." One of the Bay Area's most important new poet-playwrights, Gardley was among Dramatists Magazine's 50 writers to watch in 2007.

"For me, the spirit of this play is a deeply poetic expression of African-American culture and that specific experience in America," says director Amy Mueller. "The power and meaning of the Mississippi River to African-Americans, expressed so beautifully by Langston Hughes in his iconic poem, is fully explored in this play for all its resonant power - the role of the River in the underground railroad, in the Civil War, in the life-blood of the South, and in its exceptional beauty and role in agriculture and wealth. So for me, to work with the embodiment of that image in the character of the Mississippi River is a theatrical journey of a lifetime."

" ...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI has a mythic landscape and is epic in scope, yet the story is truly simple: that of two families poised on the brink of an unknown future, their fates intertwined. The play poses a singular, but complex, question about what it means to be free," continues Mueller. "The production is full of many, many powerful images and phenomenal poetic language, and it is indeed a huge pleasure to stage. In directing this production, my hope is that audiences walk away with a deeper, emotional understanding of our American past, and see themselves fully in that patchwork landscape."

"When I was on the reading committee for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 2002, I read a play that just blew me away," says Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose. "It was gorgeous poetry for the stage that had a deep personal truth behind it; it was called like sun fallin' in the mouth by Marcus Gardley. Marcus was still in graduate school at Yale when he wrote it and he was included in the festival as the emerging playwright. Now, just eight years later, his plays have been produced all over the country and he is no longer an ‘emerging' playwright, but rather one of our country's great playwrights."

Continues Melrose, "Playwrights Foundation Artistic Director, and longtime Marcus Gardley champion, Amy Mueller, brought ...AND JESUS MOONWALKS THE MISSISSIPPI to me for consideration in our 2007 Risk is This...The Cutting Ball Theater New Plays Festival. I selected it to be part of the festival and fell deeply in love with the play. After tirelessly fundraising to present a full production, it is quite an honor for us to produce this new play, which promises to be a highlight of Cutting Ball's 10th anniversary season."

Co-founded in 1999 by theater artists Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers, Cutting Ball Theater presents avant-garde works of the past, present, and future by re-envisioning classics, exploring seminal avant-garde texts, and developing new experimental plays. In addition to Playwrights Foundation, Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with the Magic Theatre and Z Space New Plays Initiative to commission new experimental works. The company has produced a number of World Premieres, West Coast Premieres, and re-imagined various classics. Recipient of the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts, Cutting Ball Theater earned the Best of SF award in 2006 from SF Weekly and was selected by San Francisco Magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007. Cutting Ball Theater was recently featured in the February 2010 issue of American Theatre Magazine.

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