The Independent Eye to Present KING LEAR, 4/10-26

The Independent Eye presents an inspired two-person take on William Shakespeare's KING LEAR. Played out within the confines of an aluminum cage, King Lear and The Fool are accompanied by nearly 30 life-sized, hand, and finger puppets operated by actors and master puppeteers Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller. KING LEAR plays April 10 through 26 (Press opening: April 10) at The Emerald Tablet (80 Fresno Street) in San Francisco. For tickets ($20, 25) and more information, the public may visit brownpapertickets.com.

King Lear is the puppeteer of his own puppet show. In his mind, he is the only real human in his motherless kingdom of power and commodity, where love is merchandise for barter, quantifiable by the number of knights under his command. As Lear obsessively plays out his loss of family, power, friendship, shelter, sanity, and hope, The Fool, an acid clown who goads Lear in his desperation, stage-manages his story until they both succumb to Lear's madness. This stunning two-person take on KING LEAR puts an ingenious spin on The Bard's tragic tale of family, king, and country.

"We have approached Shakespeare only when we felt that we could bring a unique vision to the work," said director and actor Conrad Bishop. "Most of our puppetry is text-heavy, and for us, Shakespeare is uniquely suited to puppetry because the stories are deeply metaphorical; the medium allows shifts from realistic behavior to literalized metaphor in startling ways. Puppets allow a broad gestural life that's true to the Elizabethan style of acting and totally absent on the live-actor stage today.

Continued Bishop, "Over the years, we have evolved a style that gives credible voice to a mouthless puppet. There's a special force in a story told in a very concentrated 'voice.' It has the channeled intensity of a nightmare, or a tiny window with great dimension; that's what we seek with our version of King Lear. The concept for this production grew from several of our puppet pieces that meshed storytelling with dramatic encounter, interventions between actor and puppet. For us, King Lear is about what absolute power brings about in a man, a king, a nation; blindness, foolishness, and madness passing the point of no return. It's what we feel is rampant in our halls of power today. We think audiences will be drawn in by not only our Lear's beauty, but its resonance; Shakespeare's words put a finger directly into the heart of the wound, or the wound of the heart."

Conrad Bishop (Director, Puppet Designer, King Lear) has a Ph.D. from Stanford and has directed over 100 shows for The Independent Eye and Theatre X, in addition to productions with Actors Theatre of Louisville, Theater of the First Amendment, Jean Cocteau Repertory, City Theatre, Foothill Theatre, and Cinnabar, among others. He has also done extensive mask and puppet creation, as well as scenic and lighting design, and served for six years on the board of San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild.

Elizabeth Fuller (Composer; The Fool) has created more than 50 theater scores. She was twice a recipient of Philadelphia's Barrymore Award for theater music, and was composer and audio engineer for 94 episodes of The Independent Eye's radio series Hitchhiking Off the Map. In addition to her work with The Independent Eye, she has performed roles with Shotgun Players, Theater of the First Amendment, Jean Cocteau Repertory, City Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, and most recently in Sonoma County Repertory's Long Day's Journey into Night, Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble's The Clean House, and Sixth Street Playhouse's The Chairs.

Bishop and Fuller were co-founders of Theatre X in 1969 and The Independent Eye in 1974. Together they have written more than 60 produced plays, staged by companies including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Circle Repertory, Mark Taper Forum, Denver Center Theatre, Barter Theatre, Asolo Theater Center, and Cleveland Public Theatre, among others. They were twice recipients of NEA playwriting fellowships and six-time fellowship grantees of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Additionally, they have played countless on stage roles with Theatre X and The Independent Eye, and have each created two solo and 14 duo shows, most recently Rash Acts, Hands Up!, and Gifts.

Based in Sebastopol, CA, The Independent Eye is a 501(c)(3) theater dedicated to the creation of new works and new visions of classics, focusing on puppetry and cross-genre work for touring. Founded by Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller in 1974, productions have been hosted by New York's CSC Rep, Jean Cocteau Repertory, Theater for the New City, Chicago's Body Politic, Seattle's New City Theatre, Baltimore Theatre Project, and Dell'Arte Players, among others. Additionally, The Independent Eye has produced work for public radio, including two audio drama series, The Want Ads and Tapdancer; a 13-part documentary, Weavers, for WHYY, Philadelphia; a modular dramatic series, Family Snapshots, heard on more than 90 stations; and 94 episodes of Hitchhiking Off the Map for KPFA, Berkeley, and other California stations. More information can be found at www.independenteye.org.

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