TENDERLOIN Documentary Theater Runs Now thru 5/27

Annie Elias brings her years of experience in documentary theater to Cutting Ball with the World Premiere of TENDERLOIN, a piece about the people and places in Cutting Ball Theater's neighborhood. Written by Annie Elias, with theater documentarians Tristan Cunningham, Siobhan Doherty, Rebecca Frank, Michael Uy Kelly, Leigh Shaw, and David Sinaiko (with additional writing by David Westley Skillman), and directed by Elias, TENDERLOIN plays tonight, April 27 – May 27 at the Cutting Ball Theater in residence at EXIT on Taylor (277 Taylor Street) in San Francisco.

TENDERLOIN strives not only to bring Cutting Ball fully into its community, but literally brings the neighborhood into the theater. Using transcripts of interviews conducted by Annie Elias and the cast, six actors portray the subjects they interviewed, creating living portraits from which a portrait of the Tenderloin itself emerges. A powerful and confirming experience, TENDERLOIN honors the essence of the Tenderloin through the stories of the everyday people that make up this historic, and underrated, downtown San Francisco district.

TENDERLOIN was workshopped last spring as part of Cutting Ball Theater's RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival, one of the only play festivals in America solely dedicated to experimental works for the stage. Since the workshop reading last spring, the writer/actors in TENDERLOIN have been gathering material to be used in this documentary theater piece. Each actor conducted three to five interviews with a variety of people who live and work in the Tenderloin, with the intention of getting a broad swath of perspectives on life in the Tenderloin. The interview subjects include activists, healers, police officers, street cleaners, artists, ex-junkies, immigrants, SRO residents, children, and Tenderloin movers and shakers. The interviews suggest a place that may not conform to an outsider's impressions given the neighborhood's harsh exterior, but speak instead of a deep love of the neighborhood and of its surprising beauty.

"When Cutting Ball's Artistic Director Rob Melrose asked me to create a documentary theater piece about the Tenderloin I looked at what my own experience has been with the neighborhood, which is that I would come here to go the theater and I would park as close to the theater as possible, cross the street quickly trying to avoid actually interacting with the neighborhood," said writer and director Annie Elias. Continued Elias, "When I began to scout out possible subjects for the actors to interview, the consistent response from prospective subjects was 'this is such an amazing place' and 'I want people to see what a great place this is.' One of those people was Mark Ellinger who has devoted many hours to photographing the Tenderloin area and working on a history of the community. The real love of the neighborhood that many of our interview subjects speak of has been eye-opening for me, and I am sure that this production of TENDERLOIN will be an eye-opening, as well as entertaining, experience for Cutting Ball's audiences as well."

Writer and director Annie Elias specializes in ensemble playmaking, working with a group of actors to compose new plays from interviews, improvisations, adapted texts, and original writing. She has created and directed three documentary theater pieces; Moon Over Marin; Write a Book, Have a Child, Plant a Tree; and Epiphany, using transcripts of interviews as the basis for scripts focused on cultural issues. She has written and directed numerous plays for Phantom Theater including Rip! The Twenty Year Night, Descent into Mayhem, Raising Rapunzel, Intellect, and Hedda Takes. Elias is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a development grant from the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science and Technology Project for her dance/theater adaptation of Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, and development support from the Magic Theatre for her play Entranced, based on the Sleeping Beauty myth. She was an actor in the acclaimed Chicago commedia company New Crime Productions, holds a B.A. from Mills College, was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow, and studied dramaturgy at the American Repertory Theater Institute at Harvard University. She is the Chair of the Performing Arts Department at Marin Academy.

Cutting Ball Theater has assembled an ensemble of actors for TENDERLOIN. Tristan Cunningham began performing with Vermont's country circus, Circus Smirkus. In the Bay Area, she has worked with California Shakespeare Theater, African-American Shakespeare Company, Shotgun Players, Eastenders Repertory Company, Atmos Theater, New Pickle Circus, Circus for the Arts, and Bay Area Children's Theater. She is an Associate Artist with Atmos Theater/Theater in the Woods and head clown of Circus Bella.

Siobhan Marie Doherty has performed at numerous venues in New York's downtown theater scene, including The Brick (hailed by New York Magazine as one of the top 10 most influential independent theater companies in NYC), The Ontological, and The Algonquin. In the Bay Area, she has performed at Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire Theater, California Conservatory Theatre, Bay Area One Acts Festival, and with the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. She teaches drama at New Conservatory Theatre Center and TheatreWorks.

Rebecca Frank previously appeared in the World Premiere commission Tontlawald, as well as RISK IS THIS...The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival, and Cutting Ball's hit production of ...and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi. Additional stage credits include productions at Intersection for the Arts (Sitting in a Circle), African-American Shakespeare Company (Twelfth Night), and Shotgun Players (This World in a Woman's Hands), among others; she is an Associate Artist at Alter Theater.

Michael Uy Kelly's credits include productions at African-American Shakespeare Company (Twelfth Night), Custom Made Theatre (The Last Days of Judas Iscariot), and Asian American Theatre Company (Mach Bravado, Angry Red Drum).

Leigh Shaw has performed with Brava Theater and at the Off-Market Theater with PianoFight; she produced, wrote, and performed with the SF Theater Pub, and wrote and directed for the 2011 Women on the Way Festival. She currently produces interactive art "experiences" with LightLy productions.

An Associate Artist, David Sinaiko most recently appeared in Cutting Ball's productions of 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 SF Playhouse; Sinaiko has been seen at the Goodman Theatre, The Actor's Gang, and in the Bay Area one-man production of David Sedaris' SantaLand Diaries. He was a founding member of Chicago's New Crime Productions.

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 issue of American Theatre Magazine.

Following TENDERLOIN, RISK IS THIS...THE CUTTING BALL NEW EXPERIMENTAL PLAYS FESTIVAL returns to round out the season in June with two exhilarating new works for the stage and five Risk Translations of August Strindberg's Chamber Plays in new translations by Paul Walsh.

For tickets ($10-50) and more information, the public may visit cuttingball.com or call 415-525-1205.

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