San Francisc Theatre Presents Starving Class

Featuring brand-new revisions by Shepard himself, Curse of the Starving Class is directed by Peter DuBois and plays A.C.T. April 25 through May 25. Press night is May 30. Tickets—starting at $14—are available by calling A.C.T. Ticket Services at 415.749.2228, or by logging on to www.act-sf.org.

“The first time I encountered this amazing play was in its original incarnation, featuring the inimitable Pamela Reed, and we’re so happy to have her back for this production,” Perloff says. “It’s particularly uncanny that we’re presenting this play about the wild underbelly of the American dream of home ownership while the homes of half of America are being foreclosed. It goes to show that, in the theater, you never know what black swan is creeping up on you to give new life and meaning to the work you’re doing.”

Director DuBois, who has recently been named artistic director of Boston’s Huntington Theatre, has gained a good deal of insight into the world of Curse of the Starving Class through a series of private conversations with the playwright, Sam Shepard. “The play is grounded in the story of Sam’s dad coming home from World War II,” DuBois explains, “as part of an entire generation of alcoholic men rendered completely numb by the trauma of the war. This influx gave way to a simmering tension arising from this mass of men who were generally broken by hard experience.”

Pamela Reed, who first appeared at A.C.T. in Pinter’s Old Times in 1998 and later starred in Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?, originated the role of Emma in the play’s 1978 world premiere and appears in this production as Ella. “It’s such a privilege to be able to revisit such a seminal piece in one’s career and to get to play the next generation,” she says. “And with Sam’s new changes, the work is simply better-sharper, more concise, and more decisive.”

To capture both the vastness of the western landscape and the poverty of the lower middle classes depicted in the play, DuBois and scenic designer Loy Arcenas have created a set that offers what Arcenas calls “a cinemascope vision of the west.” DuBois notes, “In addition to a number of changes clarifying the dialogue and the characters, Sam has shifted the play from a three-act to a two-act structure. The changes heighten the absurdity and the humor of the play, which walks a line between pain and comedy in a specific and beautiful way, and the changes deepen that contrast.”

The cast of Curse of the Starving Class features a number of renowned local and national performers, including Pamela Reed. Reed has performed on Broadway in Fools and The November People and off Broadway in Getting Out at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (Drama Desk Award) and many others. Her extensive film credits include the upcoming Descending from Heaven (with Sam Shepard), Proof of Life, Junior, Passed Away, Kindergarten Cop, Cadillac Man, and The Right Stuff (also with Shepard). Reed received an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance.

Playing the role of the furious and befuddled patriarch Weston, Jack Willis has appeared in more than 200 productions throughout the United States, including recent performances at A.C.T. in Blood Knot, The Rainmaker, Hedda Gabler, A Christmas Carol, The Little Foxes, Happy End, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Black Rider. An A.C.T. associate artist and core acting company member, he is also an associate artist at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. On Broadway, Willis has appeared in Julius Caesar, The Crucible, Art, and The Old Neighborhood.

Appearing here as Wesley, A.C.T. associate artist and core acting company member Jud Williford has acted at A.C.T. in The Government Inspector, The Imaginary Invalid, Happy End, The Rivals, The Time of Your Life, and six seasons of A Christmas Carol. Other theater credits include Mark Jackson’s American $uicide with Z Plays and Encore Theatre Company; The Imaginary Invalid at The People’s Light Theatre; and All’s Well That Ends Well, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, and Trinculo in The Tempest at California Shakespeare Theater.

Playing Taylor, Dan Hiatt has been seen at A.C.T. as the Magistrate in The Government Inspector, Bob Acres in The Rivals, Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Smith in The Threepenny Opera, and many others. Other Bay Area credits include Dinner with Friends and Menocchio at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickleby and numerous other plays at California Shakespeare Theater; Spinning into Butter at TheatreWorks; and The Real Thing and Lifex3 at Marin Theatre Company. Rod Gnapp (playing Ellis) is a long-time veteran of Bay Area stages, having appeared at A.C.T. in The Government Inspector, The Rainmaker, Happy End, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Time of Your Life, and others. He was recently seen in the Magic Theatre production of Territories, Marin Theatre Company’s production of Frozen, and in TheatreWorks’s production of The Elephant Man.

Making her A.C.T. debut as Emma, Nicole Lowrance’s New York credits include Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate at Primary Stages and upcoming at Lincoln Center; The Merchant of Venice; All’s Well That Ends Well, Engaged, and Don Juan, all with Theatre for a New Audience; Columbinus with New York Theatre Workshop; and Tatjana in Color with Culture Project. Television credits include Whoopi, Guiding Light, and American Masters (PBS). Playing Malcolm, Craig Marker appeared at A.C.T. in The Circle. Other Bay Area Credits include Brooklyn Boy (Tyler), Dolly West’s Kitchen (Jamie), and Shakespeare in Hollywood (Dick Powell) for TheatreWorks; and The Shape of Things (Adam) and The Persians (Xerxes) for Aurora Theatre Company, each of which earned him a Dean Goodman Choice Award. Other credits include the world premiere of David Edgar’s Continental Divide (Jack Sand, No Shit) for Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the Barbican Theatre (UK), and La Jolla Playhouse.

Filling the role of Slater, Howard Swain has appeared at A.C.T. in The Seagull, The Learned Ladies, Taking Steps, A Lie of the Mind, and numerous others. He has also worked at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Aurora Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, TheatreWorks, Word for Word, Magic Theatre, SF Playhouse, Post Street Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and San Jose Stage, as well as the Oregon, California, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, and Marin Shakespeare festivals. Playing Emerson in this production, T. Edward Webster most recently appeared in Rebecca Gilman’s The Crowd You’re in With at Magic Theatre. He has been seen at A.C.T. in The Rivals, Night and Day, Edward II, The Time of Your Life, and others. Bay Area theater credits also include Our Town, Eurydice, and Suddenly Last Summer at Berkeley Repertory Theatre; and The Skin of Our Teeth, Much Ado about Nothing, and many others at California Shakespeare Theater.

The design team for Curse of the Starving Class features a mix of nationally renowned artists and A.C.T. favorites. Loy Arcenas has designed scenery for the premieres of Love! Valour! Compassion!, Prelude to a Kiss, Once on This Island, Spunk, Dessa Rose, Blue Window, Corpus Christi, A Man of No Importance, and the off-Broadway and national tours of The Vagina Monologues. Directing credits include Lonnie Carter’s The Romance of Magno Rubio at Ma-Yi Theatre Company (OBIE Award) and Victory Gardens Theater. For his design work, he has received Drama Desk Award nominations, an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award, a Jeff Award, Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards, and an OBIE for Sustained Excellence of Set Design.

Costume designer Lydia Tanji recently designed The Rainmaker and the world premiere of Philip Kan Gotanda’s After the War for A.C.T. She has designed Berkeley Repertory Theatre productions of Our Town, Homebody/Kabul, Slavs!, and others. Recently, she designed The Merry Wives of Windsor at California Shakespeare Theater and Pygmalion at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. She has received five Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Awards and two Drama-Logue Awards. Film credits include The Joy Luck Club, Hot Summer Winds, Dim Sum, Gotanda’s The Wash, A Thousand Pieces of Gold, and Life Tastes Good. Japhy Weideman’s recent lighting designs include The Adding Machine at La Jolla Playhouse, Electra at the Theater at Epidaurus (National Theatre of Greece), and Pretty Chin Up (LAByrinth Theater Company). Other notable projects include Jack Goes Boating (The Public Theater); Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Opera de Lyon); Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (Royal Shakespeare Company, Edinburgh International Festival); and David Harrower’s Blackbird (West End, London).

Composer and sound designer Fabian Obispo worked at A.C.T. on The Imaginary Invalid. Other musical theater credits include The Long Season, Black No More, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Yerma, Mother Courage and Her Children, Nothing Forever, The Romance of Magno Rubio, Yellow Moon Rising, and The House of Bernarda Alba. Off-Broadway credits include Durango and Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater; A Very Common Procedure, What of the Night, Last Easter, Bright Ideas, Intrigue with Faye, and Sueno at MCC Theater; La Terrasse, Neat, and Seeking the Genesis at Manhattan Theatre Club; Clean at Atlantic Theater Company; and Phaedra in Delirium at CTC Theatre. His work has been recognized by the American Theatre Wing’s Hewes Design Award, as well as Helen Hayes, Barrymore, NAACP, and Jackie awards.

Director Peter DuBois has served as a director, associate producer, and resident director at The Public Theater over the past five years. Directing credits at The Public include Bob Glaudini’s Jack Goes Boating (with LAByrinth Theater Company), Measure for Pleasure (SSDF Callaway Award for Excellence in Direction), Richard III (a Newsday top-ten New York production of 2004), Biro (New York Times Critics’ Pick), and Glaudini’s A View from 151st Street (also with LAByrinth). He was previously the artistic director of Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska. Other regional credits include productions at Trinity Repertory Company and California Shakespeare Theater. DuBois has received two Rockefeller MAP grants, one for his work as director of The Doll Plays at Atlanta’s Actor’s Express Theatre, and the second for his work on The Long Season at Perseverance and The Public. Prior to his work at Perseverance, DuBois lived and worked in the Czech Republic, where he cofounded Asylum, a multinational squat theater in Prague. He will begin his new position as artistic director of the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston this summer.

Considered one of the foremost modern American playwrights Sam Shepard was born the son of a career Army father and spent his childhood on military bases in the United States and Guam before his family settled on a farm in Duarte, California. In 1963, Shepard moved to New York City, where he began to write plays for the emerging experimental underground theater scene. In 1966, Red Cross, Chicago, and Icarus’s Mother earned Shepard a trio of Village Voice OBIE Awards. In 1967 and 1968, Shepard wrote La Turista, his first full-length play, Melodrama Play, and Forensic and the Navigators, all of which also won OBIEs, and Cowboys #2, which premiered in Los Angeles. He continued to write plays, completing Holy Ghostly and The Unseen Hand in 1969, Operation Sidewinder and Shaved Splits in 1970, and Mad Dog Blues, Back Bog Beast Bait, and Cowboy Mouth (written with poet/musician Patti Smith) in 1971. In 1974, Shepard became the playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, a position he held until 1984. Plays from this period include Action (OBIE Award, 1974), Killer’s Head (1975), Angel City (1976), and Suicide in B-Flat (1976). Beginning in the late 1970s, Shepard applied his unconventional dramatic vision to a more conventional dramatic form, the family tragedy, producing Curse of the Starving Class and Buried Child in 1978 (both of which won OBIE Awards) and True West in 1980. Shepard achieved his warmest critical reception with Buried Child, which also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Throughout the 1980s and into the ’90s, Shepard continued to write plays-Fool for Love (1983) won OBIEs for best play as well as direction, and A Lie of the Mind (1985) garnered the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for outstanding new play-and expanded his work in film. The Magic Theatre premiered The Late Henry Moss, starring Sean Penn and Nick Nolte, before it was moved to the Signature Theatre in New York in 2001. Shepard’s recent projects include the plays The God of Hell (2005) and Kicking a Dead Horse, which premiered in Dublin, Ireland in March 2007, and will have its New York premiere in July 2008 at The Public Theater. In 1985 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which awarded him the Gold Medal for Drama in 1992. In 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. -- www.act-sf.org