A Particle of Dread: Oedipus Variations at Antons Well Theater Company and Actors Ensemble of Berkeley @ The Old Finnish Hall

Anton’s Well Theater Company and Actors Ensemble of Berkeley are proud to present the Bay Area premiere of Sam Shepard’s last play, A PARTICLE OF DREAD: OEDIPUS VARIATIONS.

Presented October 18-November 10, Fridays and Saturday, 8PM; Sunday, 2:30PM. One Tuesday performance on November 5, 8PM. No performance on Sunday, October 20. Old Finnish Hall, 1819 Tenth Street, Berkeley, 94710

Tickets are $20-$25 available online or at www.antonswell.org or www.aeofberkeley.org. Reservations available by phone, leave a message at 510-649-5999

Presented at the OLD FINNISH HALL, 1819 10th Street in Berkeley, one block north of University and one block west of San Pablo, just 6 blocks from North Berkeley BART. Built in 1908 in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, this magnificent building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's vast auditorium is a fitting setting for these mythic characters.

Note the Old Finnish Hall is NOT wheelchair accessible, and it is NOT THE SAME as the Finnish Kavela Hall a few blocks away on Chestnut.

The play brilliantly fractures the Oedipus myth into the times of both then and now—with many of the actors playing both the roles of the myth’s central characters: Oedipus, Jocasta, Laius, Antigone, Tiresias, and their modern counterparts: Otto, Jocelyn, Langos, Annalee, and Uncle Del.

As the play delves deeply into the mysteries of family and fate, Shepard’s signature rambunctious language is gorgeously present in numerous monologues, and, in the searing, conflicted encounters between the mythic characters.

It’s as if Shepard is revisiting and deepening his exhumation of society’s buried secrets that began in the 1970s with the world premiere of his family plays (BURIED CHILD, CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS, TRUE WEST, and FOOL FOR LOVE) at the Magic Theater, where he was the resident playwright.

In bringing Shepard’s last play to the Bay Area, where so many of his great plays began, AWTC and AEB hope once again his always timely and prescient theatrical voice will thrill local audiences. The New York Times says the play is a “must-see for fans of Shepard.”

The play is directed by Robert Estes, who previously helmed Anton’s Well’s Bay Area premiere production of Sam Shepard’s AGES OF THE MOON, which the San Francisco Chronicle praised for its “great feeling in the stillness.”