Photo Flash: Meet the Stars of SECOND TIME AROUND at The Marsh

The Marsh San Francisco is thrilled to present world-renowned cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, a 20-year member of the Kronos Quartet, and award-winning performer/writer Charlie Varon in a collaborative theatre piece entitled SECOND TIME AROUND, A Duet for Cello and Storyteller. The iPhone generation meets the Greatest Generation in this story of the longing for human connection and continuity. SECOND TIME AROUND, developed with and directed by David Ford, plays March 5 - April 17, 2016 (press opening March 19, 2016). Scroll down for a sneak peek at the stars!

SECOND TIME AROUND finds two masters of their art forms collaborating to create an intimate and soulful theatrical experience. Jeanrenaud is known around the world for her 20 years as cellist with the Kronos Quartet, which included some 30 recordings, as well as for her own Grammy-nominated solo CD Strange Toys and dozens of other collaborative and solo works. Varon is the creator of numerous hit solo shows, from the long-running Rush Limbaugh in Night School, to the recent smash Feisty Old Jew.

In SECOND TIME AROUND, Varon continues his cycle of fictional tales about elderly residents in a San Francisco retirement home, begun in Feisty Old Jew. In this new story, told through both words and cello, the audience encounters Ben Rosenau, who was a bomber pilot in World War II. He's being videotaped by a high school student for a history project, but Ben doesn't know what to tell the kid. Should he offer advice about what it is to be a man? Lecture him about spending too much time playing video games? Or can Ben find the courage to tell the boy what really happened on that mission flying over the English Channel? Ben is 92 - this could be his last chance to tell that story.

Varon, Jeanrenaud and Ford spent eight months developing this richly-nuanced, multi-layered performance experience, in which Jeanrenaud's cello and Varon's voice weave in and out to tell the story. Taking turns to embody the characters, the two performers illuminate fictional character Ben Rosenau's 92 years of unexpressed hopes and regrets.

Jeanrenaud's original score grows out of her experience on the forefront of contemporary classical music, drawing a full range of expressive possibilities from her instrument. "Putting words and music together this way is new for all three of us," Varon says, "and every rehearsal has been full of discovery."

Joan Jeanrenaud is a cellist, composer, arranger, and improviser. She was the cellist of the Kronos Quartet for 20 years. Her work with Kronos included more than 30 recordings and over 2000 performances that took her to virtually every major concert hall worldwide. During those years the group became, in the words of The New York Times critic John Rockwell, "the world's best known, most innovative contemporary-music quartet."Jeanrenaud's cello is a Deconet, ca. 1750. A copy of that cello was carved out of ice and played with "bows" made of saws, barbed wire and sandpaper in her four-hour performance piece Ice Cello, an adaptation of Charlotte Moorman's Ice Music for London. Her solo CDs include Strange Toys ("Haunting and compelling" -The New York Times) and Metamorphosis. She has also recorded with dozens of other artists, and performed on many film scores.

Charlie Varon has been credited with "redefining the medium" of solo performance (SF Chronicle). His hit shows at The Marsh have included Rabbi Sam, Rush Limbaugh in Night School, The People's Violin and the recent Feisty Old Jew which ran for over a year at The Marsh. He has also collaborated on and directed Dan Hoyle's many hit shows, including Tings Dey Happen, The Real Americans, and Each and Every Thing.

David Ford is the one of the nation's leading directors of solo theater. He has collaborated with Charlie Varon for over two decades, and with dozens of other performers, including Geoff Hoyle, Brian Copeland, Marilyn Pittman and Echo Brown. For this project David has also taken on the role of conductor (although he will not appear on stage).

Performances run Saturdays at 8:30pm and Sundays at 2:00pm on The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco. For tickets ($30-$45), the public may visit www.themarsh.org or call The Marsh box office at 415-282-3055 (open 1- 4pm, Monday through Friday).

Photo Credit: David Allen

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