Magi Theatre has a magnificent production opening April 28 Another Winner at Theatreworks

Magic Theatre presents Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge……a unique theatrical experience
Drama lies in extreme exaggeration of the feelings,
An exaggeration that dislocates flat everyday reality.
Eugene Ionesco

“The Lily’s Revenge isn’t a play; it’s an event, a wedding, a bar mitzvah and a big, big party.”

Get ready for a fantastic cornucopia of movement, dance and drama, a party, a circus and a social experience all crammed into a five hour happening featuring an abundance of local talent and the inimitable, beautiful and unforgettable Taylor Mac. “The Lily’s Revenge is like nothing ever experienced at Magic Theater,” says publicist Pattie Lockard. “It promises to be the most extravagant and entertaining theatrical event of the spring season….representing the diversity of the Bay Area….in an unparalleled social experiment.”
Playwright and burlesque performer Taylor Mac, along with dozens of local Bay Area artists, tackle love, marriage, and Prop 8–using vaudeville, haiku, drag queens, ukuleles, feminist theories, dream ballets, public dressing rooms, and everything else in Mr. Mac’s theatrical arsenal. If a flower falls in love with a blushing bride, can he complete a quest to become a man and win her love? The answer is The Lily’s Revenge, a rambunctious cross examination of the human experience.
Robert Browning observed that artistic expression is the only way to really express truth, and truth is what Taylor Mac is all about. His statements on the social conditions that threaten to stifle us all will disturb you even as they motivate you to resist the cliché’s that limit us. His inventions, his bizarre interpretation of what life is about insists we burst out of the bubble of conformity, if we are to be truly alive.

His current play, The Lily’s Revenge is so much more than theater. It is an opportunity to re-examine the world we have allowed to happen and cast aside its petty limits so that each of us can become what we can be. To see Taylor Mac in action is witness living proof that you can find your unique nirvana simply by being human, vulnerable and real in an uncaring world.

This Magic Theatre production features local actors, directors and designers coming together to paint a fantastic, opulent and very touching story of a flower in love. “Lily was inspired by anti-gay marriage agendas, which use tradition and nostalgia as an argument for discrimination (“marriage has always been between a man and a woman”), says Taylor Mac. “ It was also inspired by the ever-growing homogenization of our cities (“things aren’t the way they used to be”) and, perhaps most of all, the millions of flowers, suffocated in plastic, and thrown on the White House lawn, Buckingham Palace, and The Vatican in honor of Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II, and Princess Diana’s funerals.”

At the first meeting of cast, directors and the press, Artistic Director Loretta Greco said she hoped this production will inspire more people to take a chance on something extraordinary …a piece destined to create national ripples. And indeed it already has done just that. “In its bravery, scope, creativity, extremity and sheer generosity of spirit, The Lily’s Revenge, to my mind, surpasses any American theater in New York this year. (Taylor Mac) is one of the most exciting theater artists of our time.” says Adam Feldman in TimeOut NY.

“The Lily’s Revenge is theatrically epic,” says Greco. “A five act party experienced over five hours, with six directors, a creative company of 50 in collaboration with six adventuresome Bay Area performing arts companies. It may be the most ambitious production Magic has ever launched in its 44-year history. This production is a tremendous boost to Magic’s momentum, affirming our national impact and the importance of creating this once-in-a-lifetime experience for Bay Area audiences.”

The production combines realism with theater of the ridiculous. “”I want you to give yourself permission to go a little crazy,” says Taylor Mac. “We need to make bold choices.” Indeed putting this immensely complicated, multifaceted event together is a very bold choice for Magic Theatre. It has collaborated with the queer performance collective, THE OFFCENTER, TheatreWorks, Crowded Fire, Erika Chong Such Project, Shogun Players and Climate Theater to make this happen. ”As we strive to capture the pulse and pride of San Francisco, these budding relationships solidify Magic’s ability to push the boundaries of theatrical innovation and community inclusivity,” says Greco.

Creating a happening as all inclusive and encompassing as The Lily’s Revenge demands bold imagination and the courage to smash theatrical limits and plunge into new dramatic territory. But it must be seen to be understood. It is a visual, dramatic experience that word cannot recreate. “There are so many reasons audiences should come to see this show,” said Taylor Mac. “A few of them are: because it's freaking fun, because I truly do believe it is a transcendent experience, because it's a rare theatrical event to have thirty-five performers on (as intimate of a stage as) The Magic Theater, because every single one of those performers are from the Bay Area, and because the play is furthering the conversation of San Francisco companies like The Cockettes (with it's wild aesthetic and large ensemble) and The SF Mime Troupe (with it's node to agit-prop theater) but it's a new play and so (though I love a good museum piece), it's not a museum piece but a play of this moment that addresses issues our community are dealing with in this moment.”

That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

The Lily’s Revenge previews April 21 and opens April 28 and plays Tuesdays through Sundays at Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center Bldg D in San Francisco . Tickets range from $30-$75 with senior and educator discounts. To purchase, call: 415 441 8822 or visit www.magictheatre.org.

The color, the grace and levitation, the structural pattern in motion, the quick interplay of live beings, suspended like fitful lightning in a cloud, these things are the play.
Tennessee Williams

TheatreWorks present…Snow Falling On Cedars..... a statement of who we once were and still could become


Racism is man’s gravest threat to man
The maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason
Abraham J. Heschel

Snow Falling On Cedars is a magnificent achievement on every level. Robert Kelley,
Director of the production and Artistic Director of TheatreWorks has elevated an excellent, if fragmented script packed with too much information into an unforgettable work of art. This is an ensemble piece and no one actor outshines the rest, yet thanks to Kelley’s masterful orchestration of the movement, the lighting and the cameo scenes, each has his special moment. The story is based on David Guterson’s disturbing, and beautifully rendered novel of the prejudice, cruelty and persecution of the Japanese after World War II. Anyone who was alive during that time will recall the propaganda that encouraged us as Americans to despise anything Japanese, German or Italian.
I can still recall the stories of those camps where we imprisoned American citizens of Japanese descent who had done no wrong. They were enemies even though they had done no crime.

Snow Falling On Cedars takes place on an island in Puget Sound and is the story of a murder trial of a Japanese American Veteran, Kabuo Miyamoto (Tim Chiou) who fought for the United States in World War II and is accused of murdering Will Springhorn Jr. (Carl Heine, Jr.) the son of the man who took Miyamoto’s father’s land from him. Miyamoto’s lawyer, Nels Gudmundsson (beautifully portrayed by Edward Sarafian) is the character whose dialogue keeps us focused on what this story is really about. Kabuo Miyamoto is on trial for what he is, not what he has done and Gudmundsson’s eloquence in reminding the jurors (and the audience) that to try a man because of his parentage is not only un-American, it is inhumane.

“In Snow Falling on Cedars” we see the big picture of American life through the specific experiences of a few families on a remote island at the extreme northwestern edge of the country,” said Robert Kelley. “ ‘The legacy of prejudice, the frailty passed on from generation to generation’ as David Guterson describes it, plays out in a microcosm of a community divided against itself in the months after Pearl Harbor and later haunted by that experience in the halcyon days of the mid-fifties. Humanity’s penchant for discrimination overwhelmed this community as it did our own here in the Bay Area, and many Americans, both Asian and Caucasian, paid its price. Snow Falling on Cedars is about a fracture of the human spirit; about how evil for a time overwhelmed the good; about the choice to forgive and the chance to revive”…..and he continues, “(Ishmael’s) story…..is about a love that should have been and a hate that should have not.”

This is a must see for every thinking human being in today’s world. The hatred spewed out against the Muslim community, the checkpoints, arrests and searches of people whose only sin are the parents who bore them and only a few examples of how irrational prejudice and fear has seeped into this society. Snow Falling on Cedars is as immediate as the headlines in the news, artistically developed in the skilled hands of a talented and creative director, with lighting that highlights the sense of place by Steven B. Mannshardt, and settings that enhance the action, designed by Andrea Bechert. Snow Falling On Cedars is a production to be seen not once but again and again so we never forget the time when the color a person’s skin and the slant of his eyes was a crime.

Snow Falling on Cedars continues until April 24, 2011 as The Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro Street in Mountain View. Tickets are $24-
$67. Information: 650 463 1960 or www.theatreworks.org.