Cutting Ball Theater's 14th Season Will Conclude With KRISPY CRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT

Cutting Ball Theater concludes its 14th season with the World Premiere of KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT, San Francisco playwright Andrew Saito's poetic portrayal of the heart of the city in the spirit of Alan Ginsburg's Howl, William S. Burroughs, and the plays of Suzan-Lori Parks. Cutting Ball Artistic Director Rob Melrose directs KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT, featuring Felicia Benefield, Wiley Namen Strasser, David Sinaiko, Marjorie Crump-Shears, Mimu Tsuimara, Maura Halloran, Caleb Caberera, and Drew Wolfe, May 17 through June 16 (Press opening: May 23) at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street) in San Francisco. For tickets ($10-50) and more information, the public may visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205.

KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT dazzles with sublime, surreal language and images fit for a Dalí painting in a play about love and longing in the neglected neighborhoods of a fictional city. At the center is Scarlett, a woman who takes care of her grandmother by pulling wild animals out of her ears and letting them loose in her backyard menagerie. She makes her living as best she can off of the dreams and desires of married men who are willing to sacrifice everything for her. Drumhead, a lowly morgue worker with a wild imagination, comes across a carnival poster boasting of the wonders of Scarlett and can't get her out of his head. He too has a relative to care for: his Navy veteran father, who lost his legs in a war and spends his days reenacting great battles in the bathtub. KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT follows these seeming misfits on their journey to find each other.

KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT was workshopped during Cutting Ball's 2011 RISK IS THIS...festival. Additionally, the company was recently awarded a grant for $166,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a three-year residency for resident playwright Andrew Saito. As part of Saito's residency, Cutting Ball Theater is able to present the World Premiere of KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT. The grant will give Saito a full time salary and health benefits at Cutting Ball for the entire three years, with options to receive additional developmental funds. The grant is Cutting Ball's largest grant to date.

"Andrew Saito's writing is some of the most evocative, innovative writing we have come across in our 13-year history," said Cutting Ball Artistic Director, and director of KRISTY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT, Rob Melrose. "What interests me most about Andrew is his wild imagination and his deep commitment to community and social justice. Andrew is influenced by Suzan-Lori Parks, Marcus Gardley, and Will Eno; all playwrights Cutting Ball has produced and whom Andrew first experienced at our theater early in his career. He is deeply versed in the history of the avant garde and one of the most exciting experimental playwrights writing today. I am really looking forward to working with him and dreaming with him about what it means to be an excellent, forward-thinking theater in this day and age."

Andrew Saito has created more than 15 plays over the past 11 years, ranging from the intimate one-act she & he, to his 13-actor play Landless, to the multi-disciplinary Nuestra Señora de las Enfermedades, a collaboration with performance artist Violeta Luna, visual artist Adrián Arias, musician David Molina, poet Milta Ortiz, and director Lakin Valdez. Awarded an Iowa Arts Fellowship at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Saito has taught playwriting and poetry to immigrant and underserved youth in San Francisco with WritersCorps and Performing Arts Workshop, in rural Mayan villages in Guatemala, and at Kearney Street Workshop's Intergenerational Writers Lab. A Resident Playwright at the Playwrights Foundation and a Core Apprentice at the Playwrights Center of Minneapolis, Saito's work has been developed at Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Asian American Theater Company, Mixed Phoenix Theatre in New York, and presented by Intersection for the Arts, the Magic Theatre, Montalvo Arts Center, and Brava Theater, among others. He was a finalist for New Dramatists, the Princess Grace Award in playwriting, and a Jerome Fellowship, and was awarded a 2012 Fulbright Fellowship to continue his writing about and research of marginalized communities in Papua New Guinea.

Rob Melrose is the Artistic Director and co-founder of the Cutting Ball Theater and works nationally as a freelance director. He has directed at the Guthrie Theater (Happy Days, Pen, Julius Caesar - with The Acting Company); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Troilus and Cressida - in association with The Public Theater), Magic Theatre (An Accident, World Premiere); PlayMakers Rep (Happy Days); California Shakespeare Theater (Villains, Fools, and Lovers); Black Box Theatre (The Creature, World Premiere); Actors' Collective (Hedda Gabler); The Gamm Theatre (Creditors); and Crowded Fire Theater (The Train Play), among others. Directing credits at Cutting Ball include Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep, Pelleas & Melisande, the Bay Area Premiere of Will Eno's Lady Grey (in ever lower light); The Tempest; The Bald Soprano; Victims of Duty; Bone to Pick and Diadem (World Premiere); Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape; The Taming of the Shrew; Macbeth; Hamletmachine; As You Like It; The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World; Mayakovsky: A Tragedy; My Head Was a Sledgehammer; Roberto Zucco; The Vomit Talk of Ghosts (World Premiere); The Sandalwood Box; Pickling; Ajax for Instance; Helen of Troy (World Premiere); and Drowning Room (World Premiere). Translations include No Exit, Woyzeck, Pelléas and Mélisande, The Bald Soprano, and Ubu Roi. He is a recipient of the NEA / TCG Career Development Program award for directors. Melrose has a B.A. in English and Theater from Princeton University and an M.F.A. in directing from the Yale School of Drama. He has taught at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, USF, the University of Rhode Island, and Marin Academy. He recently translated Eugène Ionesco's The Chairs for Cutting Ball's March 2013 production.

Cutting Ball Theater has assembled a talented ensemble for KRISPY KRITTERS IN THE SCARLETT NIGHT. An Associate Artist at Cutting Ball, Felicia Benefield (Scarlett) previously appeared in the company's productions of Victims of Duty, Accents in Alsace, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, The Taming of the Shrew, and Woyzeck, among others. Additional credits include productions at Berkeley Repertory Theater, Word for Word, Women's Will, and Playwrights Foundation.

Associate Artist Wiley Namen Strasser (Drumhead) previously appeared in Cutting Ball's productions of Tontlawald and the 2013, 2012 and 2011 editions of RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival; additional Bay Area credits include productions at Crowded Fire (The 100 Flowers Project), Aurora Theatre Company (Anatol), Mugwumpin (The Great Big Also), Golden Thread Productions, Cabrillo Stage, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, and Playwrights Foundation.

An Associate Artist at Cutting Ball, David Sinaiko (Pap-Pap) most recently appeared in the company's productions of The Chairs, Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep, Tenderloin, Lady Grey (in ever lower light), The Tempest, Krapp's Last Tape, ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi, The Bald Soprano, Victims of Duty, and Endgame. Other Cutting Ball credits include The Taming of the Shrew, As You Like It, The Sandalwood Box, Ajax for Instance, Macbeth, 365 Plays/365 Days, Woyzeck, Chain Reactions, and RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival. Additional credits include productions at Golden Thread Productions, Crowded Fire Theater, and San Francisco Playhouse; Sinaiko has been seen at the Goodman Theatre, The Actor's Gang, and in the popular Bay Area one-man production of David Sedaris' SantaLand Diaries. He was a founding member of Chicago's New Crime Productions.

Making her Cutting Ball debut is Marjorie Crump-Shears (Gra'Ma'Ma). Credits include productions at San Francisco Playhouse, 6th Street Playhouse, Napa Valley Conservatory Theater, Pacific Alliance Stage Company, and African-American Shakespeare Company. Mimu Tsujimura (Snowflake) returns to Cutting Ball Theater after appearing in the 2011 edition of RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival; additional credits include productions at Berkeley West Edge Opera's, San Francisco Lyric Opera, Lamplighters Music Theatre, and Crowded Fire Theater/Asian American Theater Company. Also making her Cutting Ball debut is Maura Halloran (Nurse Candy). Credits include productions at New Conservatory Theatre Center, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, and Bay One Acts Festival. Rounding out the cast are Cutting Ball newcomers Caleb Caberera (Chimp) and Drew Wolfie (Sewer Rat).

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. Cutting Ball received the 2008 San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie award for outstanding talent in the performing arts, and was voted "Best Theater Company" in the 2010 San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay issue. The company also earned the Best of SF award in 2006 and "Best Experimental Theater Company" in 2012 from SF Weekly, and was selected by San Francisco magazine as Best Classic Theater in 2007. Cutting Ball Theater was featured in the February 2010 and 2012 issues of American Theatre Magazine.

The Performing Arts program at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation seeks to support institutions that contribute to the development and preservation of their art form, provide creative leadership in solving problems or addressing issues unique to the field, and which present the highest level of institutional performance. The Foundation's grantmaking philosophy is to build, strengthen and sustain institutions and their core capacities, developing thoughtful, long-term collaborations with grant recipients and investing sufficient funds for an extended period to accomplish and achieve meaningful results.

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