Written by David Greig
Directed by Susannah Martin

Photos by Jamie Lyons + Jessica Palipoli
Trailer by Peter Ruocco

Presented by Shotgun Players
May 4 – June 4, 2017

Press
KQED “By the end of David Greig’s The Events under Susannah Martin’s superb direction… I wondered about just what kind of achievement I had witnessed…In the age of President Donald Trump and an ascendant and revolutionary right, here was a full-throated liberal plea for a different world and most definitely a different theater…Martin’s direction possesses an electric clarity that keeps us focused on what’s best in Greig’s script.” – John Wilkins

THE MERCURY NEWS “Director Susannah Martin’s staging is finely nuanced and intense… it’s a powerful exploration of the strange journeys that surviving unspeakable horror can take a thoughtful person on.” – Sam Hurwitt

SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER “The play… under Susannah Martin’s assured direction….rolls out non-linearly with a wonderfully uncompromising Julia McNeal as a fiery and vulnerable Claire, and Caleb Cabrera as not only the youthful shooter but also a clergyperson, a psychotherapist, a politician, Claire’s lesbian lover and other characters that Claire seeks out in her desperate attempt at understanding… The Events feels unnervingly, dangerously, immediate.” – Jean Schiffman

Director’s Note

“I don’t want to understand what happened to me.
I know what happened to me.
I want to understand what happened to him.”

This play is a mystery; a mystery that our protagonist, Claire, spends the play trying to unravel: why? Why did The Boy do it? What or who shaped him? What motivated him? What box can we put him in so that we can stop this from ever happening again? How can we stamp this evil out?

Every time events like these happen, I ask the questions Claire asks. I find very few answers, feel hopeless, and stop my search. Another event happens, the same cycle repeats. These days, it is easy to wander the world in a state of perpetual grief, asking why. There is so much we don’t know about each other. Who shaped us? What motivates us and drives us to do the things we do? Even in – especially in – our “connected” world, is it possible to find any understanding of someone else?

In these strange times, I am grateful for a play like this – a play that is both salt in the wound and a balm to the soul. I am grateful that the play asks the questions that it asks us, and sends us, with Claire, on a search for clarity and understanding. It pushes us to embrace our darkness in order to find the light within the abyss. It invites us to sit with, even sing with, strangers and commune and communicate in the midst of our difference. The play provides no easy answers, no box to put people in. And yet, it shows that rebirth is possible even though evil is – and will always be – in the world.

I am eternally grateful to Shotgun for producing this play. I am grateful to Shotgun for providing a space – and many communities – for us to sit with and bear witness to the mystery.

Cast
Claire / Julia McNeal*
The Boy / Caleb Cabrera

*Member of AEA

Crew
Founding Artistic Director / Patrick Dooley
Assistant Director + Choir Captain / Brady Brophy-Hilton
Assistant Lighting Designer / Joey Postil
Assistant Music Director / Daniel Alley
Choreographer / Shaunna Vella
Costume Design / Alice Ruiz
Dramaturg + Production Assistant / Leigh Rondon-Davis
Fight Director / Dave Maier
Lighting Design / Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky
Master Electrician / Molly Stewart-Cohn
Music Coordinator / David Möschler
Music Director / Lisa Quoresimo
Production Assistant / Kieran Beccia
Scenic + Properties Design / Angrette McCloskey
Sound Design / Jake Rodriguez
Stage Manager / James McGregor
Technical Director / Chris Swartzell

Written by Erin Bregman
Directed by Susannah Martin + Michelle Talgarow
Music by Matt Boehler

Graphics, Photos, & Trailer by Jon Fischer

Presented by 6NewPlays
March 30 – April 1, 2017

About The Show
What would it be like if you got to choose the life you would be born into? San Francisco playwright Erin Bregman begins with this question in her play THAT IT ALL MAKES PERFECT, performed at the A.C.T. Costume Shop in San Francisco from Thursday, March 30th though Saturday, April 1st.

Focusing on life’s simple and often overlooked moments, the play follows a single soul as she “moves from her first breath to her last, while trying to hold onto the beauty and power of life’s seemingly mundane and easily forgotten daily mementos.” Co-directed by Susannah Martin and Michelle Talgarow and produced by Maddie Gaw and 6NewPlays, this production will feature new music by San Francisco composer Matt Boehler (SFMC ’17) and includes a live chamber ensemble (flute, clarinet, french horn, and violin) that is integrated into all parts of the show.

Theater critic Alan Katz has praised the playwright for avoiding “gift-wrapping morals for ready consumption.” Like all of Bregman’s work, THAT IT ALL MAKES PERFECT forces the audience to draw their own conclusions and to stay active participants as they glean meaning from the diverse and intricate elements of the production. The result is a highly profound night of theater, despite the seemingly commonplace and routine nature of the “daily moments” conjured by the players in this unique play. The central question contemplated by the playwright– and the “soul” attempting to discover the best way to be human, can be put simply: “Without memory, what remains of your life after you’ve lived it?”

“Erin’s work always crackles with energy. In this play she finds sneaky ways to tackle life’s biggest questions, with playful language, curious form and head spinning theatricality. I can’t wait to see this one come to life.” —Jonathan Spector, Artistic Director, Just Theater

Performers
Sam Jackson
Nicolina Logan
Sarah Moser*
Marilet Martinez*
Raja Orr
Timothy Redmond*
Wiley Naman Strasser
Stev Täal
Elizabeth Talbert

*Member of AEA

Production Team
Costume Design / Megan La Fleur
Lighting Design / Darl Andrew Packard
Producer / Maddie Gaw
Properties Design / Devon LaBelle
Stage Manager / Shannon Stockwell

THAT IT ALL MAKES PERFECT was originally written during a Just Theater New Play Lab (dir: Joy Brooke Fairfield), and developed with The Brick, and the Bay Area Playwright’s Festival (Bay Area Playwright’s Foundation).

Written by Christopher Chen
Directed by Susannah Martin

Photos by Pak Han
Trailer by Peter Ruocco

Presented by Shotgun Players
September 1, 2016 – January 21, 2017

Press
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE “Caught, under the finely calibrated direction of Susannah Martin, is an ingenious, beguiling play…Throughout this shape-shifting evening, Martin is hyper-attuned to each of the hundreds of micro-beats needed to make the audience first trust a character, then slowly, grain by grain, question that trust, then question that questioning, until it’s no longer just the character’s claims that seem specious but the very premise of the scene.” – Lily Janiak

BERKELEYSIDE “Shotgun Players’ production of local playwright Christopher Chen’s stimulating, creative and complex work, Caught, confounded and ultimately conquered the Ashby Stage audience in its opening night performance…Director Susannah Martin has been involved with Christopher Chen in the development of Caught since the play’s inception. Her intimacy with the project shows in her taut and agile direction.” – Emily S. Mendel

THE MERCURY NEWS “Director Susannah Martin handles the mutating narrative deftly as not just the story but the play itself becomes one radically different thing after another…It’s a labyrinthine play that pulls the floor out from under the viewer again and again, leaving the audience so unmoored that it’s impossible to trust that the show’s really over even when it’s clearly time to leave the theater.” – Sam Hurwitt

MADE IN CHINA
On display at the Ashby Stage
A pop-up art gallery installation created by Lin Bo and Xiong Gallery artists, Made in China is an exploration of perception and identity in the Chinese / American encounter. The exhibit looks at the ways in which globalized consumerism complicates the cultural exchange between East and West, playing its own role in human rights abuses as well as laying the groundwork for a new Orientalism.

CONTRIBUTING ORGANIZATIONS: Shotgun Players, The Xiong Gallery video and/or audio recording of this exhibit by any means whatsoever is prohibited.

Xiong Gallery Statement of Purpose · xionggallery.org we give space and safe haven to artists of Asian descent unable unwilling undesiring of conventional channels we promote produce present projects that cannot be shown in museums and that infiltrate any and all mediums for broadcast purposes we defy disrupt dislodge the idea of gallery you will know our exhibitions when you are in them

EXHIBITION TEAM
Wang Min / El Beh
Bob Levy / Mick Mize
Joyce Anderson / Elissa Stebbins
Lin Bo / Jomar Tagatac*
Wang Min Alternate / Michelle Talgarow

Nina Ball,** Exhibit Designer – Setting
Wesley Cabral, Exhibit Designer – Video
Christopher Chen, Instigator + Writer
Christine Crook, Exhibit Designer – Textiles
Perry Fenton, Exhibition Assistant
Nikita Kadam*, Stage Manager
Devon LaBelle, Exhibit Designer – Mixed Media
Susannah Martin, Director of Collections + Interpretation
Ray Oppenheimer, Exhibit Designer – Illumination Specialist
Leigh Rondon-Davis, Curatorial + Exhibition Assistant
Matt Stines, Exhibit Designer – Noise Architect
Michelle Talgarow, Assistant Director of Collections + Interpretation

*Member of AEA
**Member of the United Scenic Artists Local 829

Written by Dipika Guha
Directed by Susannah Martin

Photos by Ken Levin

Presented by San Francisco Playhouse
June 22-July 16, 2016

Press
TALKIN’ BROADWAY “The production is well worth the price of admission with terrific acting, splendid storytelling, clever dialogue, and excellent direction by Susannah Martin.” – Richard Connema

KQED “The first five minutes of Dipika Guha’s The Rules have the feel of a poorly written soap opera. But the show quickly becomes compelling, then gripping, then hypnotic. And so this poorly written soap opera ends up being the most beautiful and artful one you could ever imagine. SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English’s commitment to showcasing new plays and playwrights isn’t always successful, but it shouldn’t be. When a play like The Rules comes along, you realize how vital and important the company’s “Sand Box” series of new works is.” – John Wilkins

SPLASH MAGAZINES “Shining brightly under the direction of Susannah Martin… The Rules is characterized by the Sandbox Series group as a ‘fable about love and blindness and the promise of happy endings’ and ‘a ‘late’ coming of age story.’… the ending- as it draws attention to, explores and even begs questions about women’s friendships- is priceless.” – Ariel J. Smythe

From Artistic Director, Bill English
When we look back at the last century, since women achieved the right to the vote in 1920, we believe that huge progress has been made. In the 1960s, so much attention was placed on Women’s Liberation. And legislation has been enacted in decades since which protect women from discrimination and guarantee their rights to property and many other areas of life where men traditionally held all the power.  Woman have risen to the top of corporate ladders and universities and it seems likely we shall soon have the first ever female nominee for President.

We have good reason to be positive about the progress of women in our time. And yet, our society’s multigenerational conditioning that women are somehow inferior to men can still have a powerful effect on women today. This effect can afflict even well-educated women who otherwise know the fallacy of such subversive sexism. These conditionings are often unconscious and can manifest in small invisible ways, such as the unwritten rules of how women should behave, the rules of courtship, the rules of relating to other women. Like many of the ways racism expresses itself subtly, women can often find it difficult to counter the programming that has been passed down from their mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. We often can’t feel the impact of this deep conditioning, until a moment of crisis. Then the cultivated virtues of ‘niceness’ are pushed aside and a more ancient archetypal wildness can emerge. Best Selling Author and Psychologist Dr. Clarissa Estes describes this wildness as a savage creativity or the instinctual ability to know what tool to use and when to use this. Without it, women, she argues are spiritually and often physically dead.

Ms. Guha, in order to spark an intense debate on these and other compelling issues of our time, throws three friends in the petri dish with the seemingly perfect man. He appears to be exactly what each of them respectively want from their ideal mate. How will these three friendships be impacted by the simultaneous romance of the same man? What rules will govern the courtships and the friends’ reactions? The playwright offers no clear answers, just an opportunity for us to wade into the complexities of modern courtship and the lives of these three female friends. Will we see ourselves reflected in the characters on the stage? Can we observe how the “rules” of engagement still trap women and men into ancient games of inequality and misogyny? In what ways do our complicity with the existing power structures intertwine with our resistance to it? What will it take to move forward as the curtain closes on this world and we leave the theatre to return to ours?

Cast
Ana / Sarah Moser*
Julia / Karen Offereins
Mehr / Amy Lizardo*
Valmont / Johnny Moreno*

*Member of AEA

Crew
Artistic Director / Bill English
Associate Artistic Director + Production Manager / Jordan Puckett
Costume Design / Ashley Holvick
Lighting Design / Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky
Production Assistant / Breanna Mack
Properties + Set Dressing / Devon LaBelle
Set Design / Angrette McCloskey
Sound Design / Matt Stines
Stage Manager / Katie Sumi
Technical Director / Tish Leung

A New Show Created by Mugwumpin
Directed by Susannah Martin

Photos by Pak Han
Trailer by Angelo Leotta

Presented by Mugwumpin
Co-Produced by Intersection for the Arts
September 25 – October 18, 2015

Press
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE “It’s a fast, compact, testosterone-fueled and -foolish delight… Estlack and White rapidly segue from one character to another with smooth, quick definition and graceful, sometimes fierce physicality… you can’t miss the evocative humor and impact of the result.”— Robert Hurwitt

Artistic Director + Director Notes
CHRISTOPHER WHITE, Artistic Director: When poor Idris Elba, as Stacker Pentacost in the monsters-vs-robots movie Pacific Rim, addresses his troops and says “We have chosen not only to believe in ourselves but in each other,” I couldn’t help but feel for this excellent actor spouting Cheez Whiz. Part of what makes this statement so eye-rolling is that most movies depicting mass mayhem encourage us not to believe in ourselves, and certainly not in each other. We should believe, we are told, in The Hero. He (nearly always he) will deliver us to safety.

A few weeks ago, as the Valley Fire ripped through Lake County, a friend in Oakland noticed a man in line next to her looking visibly shaken. She asked if he was okay, and he described to her his harrowing escape, hours before, from a campsite in the fire’s path. Abandoning much of his gear, he waved down a passing pickup, tossed in his backpack, and jumped into this stranger’s vehicle. Who was driving that pickup truck? I’m guessing it wasn’t Stacker Pentacost. Was that person a hero? Or just a human seeing another human in distress? Probably nobody will make a movie about that story, but I still find it moving.

SUSANNAH MARTIN, director: When Chris, Joe and I first began working on this material at the end of 2013, we put together what we deemed The Playlist: a flip book, if you will, of moments and images, sounds and movement, and first stabs at the speeches and tropes that surround disasters and disaster movies.  What came out of that first workshop—and our first showing—was a collection of frenetic, anxious, funny, dark, and very masculine bits, punctuated by silences. Silences which evoked those moments, after the loudness of an earthquake, or a hurricane, or a fire, where the movement of the world has stopped and all you are left with is debris and fallout. And yet, there is still the possibility of something more—something different that can arise from that emptiness.

So much material has been generated and molded—has been shaped or has morphed—since those first few days that the three of us sat together in a cold room, in the midst of winter darkness, and pondered the disasters and blockbusters that have shaped our worldviews.  But the sound and the fury punctuated by silence remains—and I hope too, so does the possibility of something different arising…

Cast
Mitch in White / Joseph Estlack*
Mitch in Blue / Christopher Ward White
The Camera Operator / Melusina Gomez

*Member of AEA

Crew
Assistant Director / Michelle Talgarow
Assistant Set Design / Daniel Brickman
Assistant Stage Manager / Sienna Williams
Choreographer / Natalie Greene
Costume Design / Ashley Holvick
Lighting Design / Ray Oppenheimer
Properties Design / Devon LaBelle
Set Design / Sean Riley
Sound Design / Theodore J.H. Hulsker
Stage Manager / Katherine Bickford
Video Design / Wolfgang Lancelot Wachalovsky

Written by Thornton Wilder
Directed by Susannah Martin

Photos by Cheshire Isaacs
Trailer by Peter Ruocco

Presented by Shotgun Players
December 4, 2014 – January 25, 2015

Press
SF WEEKLY “It’s possible that three-time Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Thorton Wilder and Bay Area theater director Susannah Martin share DNA….It’s hard to imagine Wilder, who began writing plays while a student at Berkeley High in 1915, doing anything but giving this cast a standing ovation.” – Lou Fancher

MY CULTURAL LANDSCAPE “Takes one’s breath away with its beauty, theatrical craft, earnestness, and simplicity.” – George Heymont

THEATER DOGS “If I could start every new year with a production of Our Town as engaging and as powerful as director Susannah Martin’s, I would gladly do so.” – Chad Jones

Tweet from Tappan Wilder: “Congrats to everyone @ShotgunPlayers on a beautiful production of OUR TOWN last night! Masterful work.”

Director’s Note
Our Town is an American Masterpiece.

Our Town is a quaint piece of sentimental claptrap.

Our Town is a reflection of how we live now.

Our Town is dated.

Our Town is a tone poem.

Our Town is a continuum.

Our Town is performed somewhere in the world every single day.

What does it mean to do Our Town in Berkeley, in 2014?  When people think of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, they think quaint, they think Americana, they think old-fashioned, sentimental, romanticism.  It’s a show locked in time and place: turn-of-the-century New England, where everyone talks like the guy from the Pepperidge Farm commercials. But what if I were to tell you that Our Town is an Expressionist masterpiece and a deeply moving meditation on life, death, and the breadth and scope of the universe? Literally, somewhere in the world that is not here, a group of people are performing this play, right now – why?  What is this play telling us about the way we live and the way we die?  This is a question we have continued to ask as we went through the rehearsal process and the text continues to answer back.

A few things about our production: We approached the play as simply as possible –“no curtain, no scenery”– just as Wilder stated in his opening stage directions.  We’re asking the audience to do exactly what Wilder commanded with that simple stage direction. We’re asking you to imagine the town and connect to it in whatever way you can.

We cast this play with an extraordinary group of performers that reflect the world we live in right now. Sound and music played a large role in our process: there’s a lot of music literally written into the script.  And this music informed us greatly as we worked to discover our little town and how we come together as a community.

We hope, with these choices, that you’ll push your imagination beyond what is provided for you in scenery, and imagine what is provided in words, images, sounds, song, and sighs.  As Wilder’s nephew, Tappan Wilder, said, “This play is about memory and imagination. It is not a play about a small New England town… Our Town is not a New Hampshire chocolate milkshake. It is about how we remember the past.”

Ultimately, the thought I go back to, the one that informs me whenever I get lost, is that Our Town is, as Wilder said, about “the life of a village against the life of the stars…”

So tonight, enjoy watching and listening as this wonderful cast dives into this deceptively simple continuum; this tone poem of a timeless play.  Enjoy the journey.

—  Susannah Martin

Cast
Emily Webb / El Beh
Stage Manager / Madeline H.D. Brown*
Mrs. Soames + Ensemble / Sam Jackson
Doc Gibbs / Tim Kniffin*
Professor Willard + Ensemble / Christine Macomber
Howie Newsome + Ensemble / Wiley Naman Strasser
Mrs. Gibbs / Molly Noble*
Rebecca Gibbs + Ensemble / Karen Offereins
Constable Warren + Ensemble / Valerie Fachman
George Gibbs / Josh Schell
Mrs. Webb / Michelle Talgarow
Simon Stimson + Ensemble / Christopher Ward White
Joe Crowell, Sam Craig, + Ensemble / Eli Wirtschafter
Mr. Webb / Don Wood

*Member of AEA

Crew
Founding Artistic Director / Patrick Dooley
Assistant Directors / Katja Rivera + Beth Wilmurt
Costume Design / Christine Crook
Lighting Design / Heather Basarab
Master Electrician / Bill Brinkert
Music Directors + Arrangers / Abigail Nessen Bengson + Shaun Bengson
Production Assistant / Katherine Bickford
Properties Design / Devon LaBelle
Set Design / Nina Ball
Sound Design / Theodore J. H. Hulsker
Stage Manager + Acting Production Manager / Hanah Zahner-Isenberg*
Technical Director / Anne Kendall
Wardrobe / Ashley Rogers