Hoch's 'Taking Over' to Tour

Tony Taccone, artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, is taking over North America with solo shows. In April, the renowned director of Sarah Jones' Bridge & Tunnel announced a national tour for Carrie Fisher's Wishful Drinking. Today he revealed that Danny Hoch's TAKING OVER – which made its world premiere at Berkeley Rep in January – is also headed on the road.

Audiences and critics alike embraced TAKING OVER during its extended run in Berkeley. Now the show will travel to Los Angeles, Montreal, and New York City – making it the third work that Taccone has sent to Manhattan in as many years and the fifth for Berkeley Rep in that period. In 2007, he staged Bridge & Tunnel, which extended its Broadway stay for five months and won a Tony Award for its star, as well as Tony Kushner and Maurice Sendak's Brundibar, which sold out its run at the New Victory Theatre and was nominated for two Drama Desk Awards.

"I'm proud of this piece and pleased that it will travel," Taccone remarks. "By examining gentrification in his own neighborhood, Danny is grappling with issues that affect cities everywhere. Audiences at Berkeley Rep loved it because of his insight and humor, and I look forward to sharing it with a wider community."

Here is the current schedule for the tour of TAKING OVER, with additional stops likely to be announced at a later date:

 ·         July 8, 2008: Montreal
Just for Laughs Festival / Centaur 2 / 453 St. François-Xavier St / 888.244.3155 / hahaha.com

 ·         Fall 2008: Manhattan
The Public Theatre / 425 Lafayette St / 212.967.7555 / publictheater.org

 ·         January 23 – February 22, 2009: Los Angeles
Mark Taper Forum / 135 North Grand Ave / 213.628.2772 / centertheatregroup.org

 
Speaking of tours, Berkeley Rep also announced that it has postponed David Henry Hwang's Yellow Face; the Theatre hopes to present the show in the fall of 2009 and then tour its production to other cities. Taccone is now selecting a new script to conclude the 2008/09 Season.

Berkeley Rep has helped develop and send 16 shows to New York in the last 21 years. Beginning with Hard Times in 1987, this string of successes includes Philip Kan Gotanda's Yankee Dawg You Die (1989); José Rivera's Each Day Dies with Sleep (1990); Craig Lucas' Prelude to a Kiss (1990); Laurence Yep's Dragonwings (1992); Heather MacDonald's Dream of a Common Language (1992); Gotanda's Ballad of Yachiyo (1997); Anne Galjour's Alligator Tales (1997); Hoch's Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop (1998); Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses (1999); Naomi Iizuka's 36 Views (2002); Brundibar (2006); Bridge & Tunnel (2006); Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice (2007); and Stew's Passing Strange (2007).

"It is a striking body of work, a reminder of the importance of regional theaters," the New York Times noted in a recent feature. "Berkeley Rep has a tradition of playing host to formidable talents before their big breaks [and] the company continues to pride itself on producing provocative, often overtly political theatre, the kind that generates loud and clamorous debate."

In TAKING OVER, Danny Hoch captures the indelible characters of his New York neighborhood, where the melting pot is boiling over with ethnic and economic tensions. He transforms effortlessly across the boundaries of race, age, and gender, masterfully depicting a city in transition with comical and compassionate results. A pioneer of hip-hop theatre, Danny took Berkeley Rep by storm with the world premiere of Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop in 1997. He went on to win an Obie Award for that show and to start the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, which wows audiences across America every year. Moviegoers have become accustomed to his magnificent characterizations in recent films such as We Own the Night. Now he's back, and he's Taking Over.

The San Francisco Chronicle can't say enough good things about this show: "The remarkable Danny Hoch lights up the stage like a dynamo, illuminating the entire Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg through nine impeccably drawn, vividly diverse characters (including himself) in an angry, funny, nuanced, and provocative 100-minute look at the perils, complexities, and injustices of gentrification. Sharply staged by Tony Taccone for its world premiere, Hoch's latest solo tour de force is hard-hitting, riveting, gritty, and irresistible."

Danny Hoch is the creator of Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop; Pot Melting; Some People; and Till the Break of Dawn. His work has toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries, earning him numerous awards including two Obies, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, a Tennessee Williams Fellowship, and the CalArts/Alpert Award in Theatre. A senior fellow at the New School's Vera List Center for Art and Politics, his writings on hip-hop, race, and class have appeared in American Theatre, Harper's, The Nation, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and several books: Creating Your Own Monologue, Extreme Exposure, Out of Character, and Total Chaos. Danny's film and television credits include American Splendor, Bamboozled, Blackhawk Down, HBO's Def Poetry, Lucky You, Prison Song, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, War of the Worlds, Washington Heights, We Own the Night, and Whiteboys. In 2000, Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival, which has presented over 100 hip-hop generation plays and appears annually in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. As a director, his work includes the bilingual Representa for the San Francisco International Arts Festival at La Peña Cultural Center and Will Power's hit show Flow at the New York Theatre Workshop, which was named one of the Top 10 Plays of 2003 by the New York Times.

Tony Taccone is artistic director of Berkeley Rep, where he has staged more than 35 shows, including the world premieres of The Convict's Return, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, The First 100 Years, Geni(us), Ravenshead, Taking Over, Virgin Molly, and Zorro in Hell. He commissioned Tony Kushner's legendary Angels in America, co-directed its world premiere at the Taper, and has collaborated with Kushner on six projects. Their latest piece, Brundibar, featured designs by beloved children's author Maurice Sendak. It debuted at Berkeley Rep and then traveled to Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven and the New Victory Theatre in New York City. Taccone recently made his Broadway debut with Bridge & Tunnel, which was universally lauded by the critics. He also staged the show's record-breaking off-Broadway run, workshopped it for Broadway at Berkeley Rep, and directEd Jones' previous hit, Surface Transit. In 2004, his production of David Edgar's Continental Divide transferred to the Barbican in London after playing the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Berkeley Rep, La Jolla Playhouse, and England's Birmingham Rep. His other regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arizona Repertory Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, San Jose Repertory Theatre, Seattle Repertory Theatre, and San Francisco's Eureka Theatre, where he served six years as artistic director before coming to Berkeley Rep.

The show features four brilliant designers familiar to local audiences. Annie Smart (scenic design/costume design) has created sets and costumes for countless theatres in the United States and her native England. Berkeley Rep audiences will recall her stunning designs for Big Love, Fêtes de la Nuit, Finn in the Under­world, Honour, Irma Vep, Passing Strange, Suddenly Last Summer, To the Lighthouse, and Yellowman. Alexander V. Nichols (lighting design) has de­signed scenery, costumes, lights, and projections for dance and theatre companies across Amer­ica, including 14 previous shows at Berkeley Rep: Civil Sex, Continental Divide, Culture Clash in AmeriCCa, Fêtes de la Nuit, The Guys, Honour, The Life of Galileo, Menocchio, Mother Courage, Ravenshead, Rhinoceros, Surface Transit, Wishful Drinking, and Zorro in Hell. The show also features original music by Asa Taccone and Drew Campbell (composers). An Emmy-winning musician and composer, Asa Taccone composed the famed "Natalie Portman Rap" and "Dick in a Box" for Saturday Night Live. A composer and producer, Campbell owns Adeline Studios in Oakland; his tracks have been featured everywhere from MTV to Dance Dance Revolution.

Born in a storefront, Berkeley Rep has moved to the forefront of American theatre. Founded in 1968 by Michael Leibert, the Theatre quickly earned respect for presenting the finest plays with top-flight actors. In 1980, with the support of the local community, Berkeley Rep built the 400-seat Thrust Stage where its reputation steadily grew over the next two decades. It gained renown for an adventurous combination of work, presenting important new dramatic voices alongside refreshing adaptations of seldom-seen classics. In recognition of its place on the national stage, Berkeley Rep was honored with the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre in 1997. The company celebrated by unveiling a new 600-seat proscenium stage in 2001, the state-of-the-art Roda Theatre. It also opened the Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, the permanent home for its tradition of outreach and education programs. The addition of these two buildings transformed a single stage into a vital and versatile performing arts complex, the linchpin of a bustling Downtown Arts District which has helped revitalize Berkeley. In four decades, four million people have enjoyed 300 shows at Berkeley Rep, including 50 world premieres. The Theatre now welcomes an annual audience of 180,000, serves 20,000 students, and hosts dozens of community groups, thanks to 1,000 volunteers and more than 400 artists, artisans, and administrators. Now America gets a taste of Berkeley with Passing Strange, Taking Over, and Wishful Drinking.

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