Cutting Ball Theater Concludes This Season's Hidden Classics Series With THE KEYS TO HEAVEN

Cutting Ball Theater concludes this season's Hidden Classics series with THE KEYS TO HEAVEN, part of the company's celebration of August Strindberg's centennial. In THE KEYS TO HEAVEN, the death of a man's three children from the plague causes him to go on a surreal journey to the afterworld. His travels take him to the ruins of the tower of Babel, Jacob's Ladder, and the Gate of Heaven. Along the way, he meets Romeo and Juliet, Tom Thumb, Don Quixote, Bluebeard, Hamlet, and Ophelia. One of Strindberg's most peculiar and rarely performed plays, THE KEYS TO HEAVEN was never performed during the playwright's lifetime. Robert Estes helms THE KEYS TO HEAVEN.

While August Strindberg is credited with being one of the three pioneers of realism in the theater along with Chekhov and Ibsen, he is decisively the precursor of expressionism both in theater and painting. This reading will be followed by a discussion of the play and Strindberg's influence on expressionism.

This season, Cutting Ball's Hidden Classics Reading Series explores and celebrates the works of, and inspired by, August Strindberg. The series offers a profound look at one of the greatest authors ever to write for the stage in a program that continues to be one of San Francisco's best-kept secrets. The company will produce all five of Strindberg's Chamber Plays, in new translations by Paul Walsh, in a festival entitled Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep in fall of 2012, the first time all five of Strindberg's Chamber Plays will be performed together in repertory in any language.

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. Cutting Ball Theater has partnered with Playwrights Foundation, and the Magic Theatre/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. Voted "Best Theater Company" in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay issue, Cutting Ball Theater also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 from SF Weekly, was selected by San Francisco Magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007, and received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010 and 2012 issues of American Theatre Magazine.

Readings free and open to the public. For more information, visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205.