The Tosca Project Among Selections For The 2007

Three plays by three internationally renowned playwrights directed by four leading theater artists will take the stage at American Conservatory Theater's First Look New Plays Festival, running January 16 through January 27 at Zeum Theater.

The plays include The Tosca Project, a movement-based theater piece created by Carey Perloff and Val Caniparoli about the famed San Francisco nightspot; Brainpeople, an apocalyptic dinner-party story written by José Rivera (Oscar-nominated author of the screenplay The Motorcycle Diaries); and the newest version of Constance Congdon's adaptation of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. Each play will receive two script-in-hand workshop performances following an intense week of work by the many artists engaged. Major support for A.C.T.'s new play productions has been provided by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.

Festival Held January 16 through 27 at Zeum Theater; Festival Pass and $10 Tickets Available!

"The three plays that are part of this year's festival are in varying stages of development and have vastly different needs to address," said A.C.T. Associate Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer. "We are fortunate that such talented artists have committed themselves to exploring these works and sharing that process."

The festival kicks off January 16 and 17 with Perloff and Caniparoli's The Tosca Project, directed by Perloff. First developed in a series of workshops conducted earlier this year with international actors and members of SF Ballet, The Tosca Project is a groundbreaking blend of theater, movement, and music that toasts the rich history of Tosca's Café, the famed nightspot located in San Francisco's North Beach district that has been a favorite of opera singers, Beat poets, Russian émigrés, and other eclectic characters since the 1920s. Resident choreographer with Tulsa Ballet and frequent collaborator with SF Ballet, Caniparoli has collaborated with Perloff on the choreography seen in A.C.T.'s current production of A Christmas Carol and the 2004 production of A Doll's House.

"Tosca's is a bold movement-based piece that we explored in prelimary workshop form earlier this year," said Pfaelzer. "Those familiar with this great North Beach bar know of the stories that have come out of it as well as the charismatic and worldly figures that have sidled up to the bar for a drink. This piece captures the energy of that glorious landmark and all its history."

On January 19 and 20, First Look proudly presents Brainpeople, the newest play from José Rivera, Oscar-nominated screenwriter of The Motorcycle Diaries and playwright behind Berkeley Repertory Theatre's Each Day Dies with Sleep and the Humana Festival's Cloud Tectonics. The play unfolds as a surreal dinner party taking place in an unnamed totalitarian state, where three women reckon with the complexities of their pasts. Brainpeople is directed by Erica Gould, who recently directed the world premiere of Neil Labute's autobahn at the Studio Theatre and Labute's Stand-Up at New York's Circle in the Square Theatre.

"Brainpeople is one of the most original and compelling scripts we've ever seen," said Pfaelzer. "José is an extraordinary writer who takes
enormous risks in his art-blending thoughts on faith, politics, love, and the
end of the world and taking his stories into the spaces of surrealism and
magical realism. We can't wait to see how audiences respond to Brainpeople."

First Look concludes January 26 and 27 with a sneak peek at Constance Congdon's world premiere adaptation of Molière's The Imaginary Invalid. Set to close A.C.T.'s 40th-anniversary
mainstage season June 7 through July 8 in a production directed by Ron Lagomarsino (A.C.T.'s The Gamester), The Imaginary Invalid is a rollicking satire about a hopeless hypochondriac who believes in nothing and no one--except the dubious diagnoses his quack doctors keep delivering. The First Look presentation will provide a glimpse into what lay ahead for A.C.T.'s season-closing production,
and it will be directed at Zeum Theater by Lagomarsino.

Said Pfaelzer: "With Connie's The Imaginary Invalid, we are seeing the issues that the artists are wrestling with as they prepare work for the big stage. Not only is this a chance to witness how far this adaptation has come, but it's an exciting time to look into the creative process of a work that's at the pre-rehearsal stage before a fully realized production-a stage that audiences rarely get to see."

A.C.T. inaugurated its popular First Look series in September 2003 with a production of Philip Kan Gotanda's Yohen. In January 2005, First Look produced the American premiere of Hilda, by Marie Ndiaye. Workshops and staged readings done as part of the program include Slay the Dragon, by Victor Lodato; The New Americans, by Cindy Lou Johnson; Splitting Infinity, by Jamie Pachino; Donna Wants by Karen Hartman; Racine's Phedre in a new adaptation by Timberlake Wertenbaker; Warsaw by Paul Webb; The Shaker Chair by Adam Bock; Freeport, Texas, by Michael Springate; Waiting for the Flood and Luminescence Dating, by A.C.T. Artistic Director Carey Perloff; One, No One..., by Luigi Pirandello (in a new translation and adaptation by Marco Barricelli and Beatrice Basso); The Four of Us, by Itamar Moses; La Bella Familia, by Edwin Sanchez; and The Velvet Sky, by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa.

By www.act-sf.org