American Conservatory Theatre Premieres

A remarkable creative team stands behind this full production of Brainpeople, including A.C.T. core acting company member René Augesen, renowned actors Lucia Brawley and Sona Tatoyan, and designers Daniel Ostling, Lydia Tanji, and Paul Whitaker. Brainpeople plays at Zeum Theater through February 16. Tickets-starting at $12.50.

A sinister, deeply sensuous allegory, Brainpeople exposes the desperation of three women as they cope with isolation and violence in an apocalyptic future. As playwright Rivera describes his work, "Brainpeople is a play that tries to examine mental states and a society in dysfunction. Ultimately, it is about love, death, and poverty, and how they contribute to madness. At the same time, I wanted to explore the needs of these women and the world that they create." Rivera, who won the OBIE Award for his powerful drama Marisol, is in residence at A.C.T. during the rehearsal process.

"We are delighted to have Chay Yew directing José Rivera's complex and magical new play," says Perloff. "Because Chay is a gifted playwright himself and an artist with whom we have had a long collaboration, he is able to help guide the script towards its final form while creating a startling visual world to envelop José's remarkable characters. It is a real gift that José is able to be in residence with us for the entire process for what promises to be a rich and satisfying collaboration."

The play opens provocatively, with three women beginning a bizarre banquet-the pièce-de-resistance of which is the steaming, exposed viscera of a tiger. We come to understand the banquet, says A.C.T. dramaturg Michael Paller, as symbolizing "a perhaps inappropriate appetite to devour the dripping innards of a fellow creature-a theme that encompasses the characters as they probe into their own viscera, and those of the others-their desires, premonitions, and fears." Throughout the course of an evening fraught with revelations about the dark and surreal pasts of each of the play's characters, the mood of desperation heightens, shedding light on the shadowy world of political and emotional turmoil the play depicts.

Developed under the auspices of A.C.T.'s first look program-a series intended to further A.C.T.'s mission to develop new works for the stage and to forge relationships with artists-Brainpeople was given a reading at Stanford University last August, and was included in last A.C.T.'s first look reading series last January, as well as in a special reading last October. Exploring new work is one of three essential parts of A.C.T.'s mission, alongside mainstage productions and actor training initiatives. Says associate artistic director Pink Pasdar, steward of A.C.T.'s New Works Program, "The New Works Program allows us to nurture the creative lives of theater practitioners with whom we'd like to have an ongoing relationships. This is absolutely a priority for A.C.T., and Chay and José are two such artists." Pasdar adds, "It's also hugely rewarding to have René Augesen's participation, and Brainpeople will provide a fantastic opportunity for audiences to see this amazing actress up close."

The cast of Brainpeople is composed of three accomplished actresses, including, as Rosemary, René Augesen. An A.C.T. associate artist and core acting company member, Augesen made her A.C.T. debut in The Misanthrope. In recent seasons, she has appeared in Celebration and The Room, The Beard of Avon, Blithe Spirit, Buried Child, Night and Day, The Dazzle, The Three Sisters, A Doll's House, A Mother, The Real Thing, The Gamester, The Voysey Inheritance (also at Kansas City Repertory Theatre), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rivals, Happy End, Travesties, Luminescence Dating (at the Magic Theatre), Hedda Gabler, The Imaginary Invalid and, most recently, The Rainmaker. New York credits include Spinning into Butter (Lincoln Center Theater), Macbeth (with Alec Baldwin and Angela Bassett, Public Theater), It's My Party . . . (with F. Murray Abraham and Joyce Van Patten, Arc Light Theater), and Overruled (Drama League).

Regional theater credits include Mary Stuart (dir. Carey Perloff, Huntington Theatre Company); several productions, including the world premieres of The Beard of Avon and The Hollow Lands, at South Coast Repertory; and productions at the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, Baltimore's Centerstage, the Los Angeles Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory Theatre, and Stage West. Film and television credits include The Battle Studies, Law & Order, Guiding Light, Another World, and Hallmark Hall of Fame's Saint Maybe. Augesen is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. -- www.act-sf.org