MAHABHARATA Comes to Z Space's Steindler Stage Next Month

Oakland Theater Project (OTP) and Z Space are thrilled to ­­present an encore of Geetha Reddy’s 2019 Mahābhārata, an audience favorite from OTP’s 2019 Season, directed by Michael Socrates Moran. Featuring OTP Company Member J Jha in a bold, one-person retelling of the ancient text, the production is reimagined and expanded for Z Space’s Steindler Stage in San Francisco August 10–20.

“It is not a story. No, not like that. History. Unverifiable history… Old History. Legend. Itahasa.”

Dating from around 800 BCE, the great Indian epic boasts 100,000 verses and a cast of thousands, and is told anew to each generation of Indian children in a version that speaks to the time in which they are living.

From tales of triumphant warriors to tantalizing histories woven among the battles, to boundaries broken and pathways blazed—this audience favorite examines the nature of conflict, betrayal, and victory through a contemporary lens, and recounts the history of a cosmic civil war in the hope that humanity will learn not to repeat it.

Z Space is the co-presenter of Mahābhārata. Oakland Theater Project has been awarded a one-week technical development residency at Z Space, funded by Mellon Foundation, as well as substantial subsidies through Z Space’s Subspace program.

“We are thrilled to be remounting Mahābhārata by Geetha Reddy,” said director and OTP Co-Artistic Director Michael Socrates Moran. “One of the core themes of the story is the human capacity for mutual self-destruction and how we, as receivers of this story, might learn the virtue of co-existence instead. When we performed this play in 2019, we were in a different world. And, like every great epic that has stood through time, this extraordinary epic reveals itself to be all the more relevant and resonant today. As part of our season exploring the tension between history and hope, this play that explores one of the world’s great epics offers us a way that ‘unverifiable history, legend, itahasa’ can offer hope in a time when we are at risk of repeating our history.” 

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