Diverse Local Talents Combine to Present a World Premiere
Three different theatre companies, with distinct performance styles, are
working together on the world premiere of Gilgamesh, by Rick Foster, funded
by the National Endowment for the Arts, which opens August 3rd at California
Stage. Although the grant was won by the Sacramento-based Short Center
Repertory, a company of developmentally-disabled actors; Crom Saunders, of
the nationally touring American Sign Language company, ICEWORM, is joined by
members of the Sacramento Theatre Experiment, a local cutting-edge theatre
troupe that creates a high-energy movement-based theatre style, to round out
the innovative staging of this production which plays Fridays, Saturdays at
8 pm and Sundays at 2 pm until August 19th at California Stage, 1725 25th
St. (25th and R Streets) in midtown Sacramento. Space is limited. For
reservations call 916 451 5822. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for
persons with disabilities, seniors & SARTA members and $5 for children under
12. Performances on Saturday, Aug 11th and Sunday, Aug 19th will be fully
ASL interpreted.
Brian Hillebert, a featured company actor since 1994, will play the
demanding title role in Gilgamesh and has worked the last six months with
playwright Rick Foster and James C. Anderson, Artistic Director of the
company, to develop the piece. Hillebert is joined by six other members of
The Short Center Repertory, which has toured nationally with its particular
brand of theatre since 1988. Founding member Brenan Wever of Fair Oaks
plays the dual roles of Ishtar the Goddess of Love and Ninsun the Priestess
of the Sun, Marcus Higgins of Sacramento, another founding member who
returns after a ten-year hiatus, will play the thousand-year-old sage
Utnapishtim. Company members David Cravey, Andrea Michaels and Ted Yeager
round out the repertory cast in multiple roles as monsters, scorpion people
and gods. Each of these actors has lived with a significant developmental
challenge such as Down syndrome or childhood brain trauma.
The play unfolds from the narration of a Dream Teller, a
master-of-ceremonies who dreams this ancient myth as a personal journey of
development. This important role is played by veteran company member,
Robert Maciejewski, a talented actor/musician from Carmichael who also
created and performs the “sound score” for the play. Saunders, who tours
nationally with ICEWORM, will play the major role of Enkidu, the “wild man”
who civilizes Gilgamesh and guides him on his quest. “Enkidu’s Voice”, a
character in the play, will be played by skilled ASL interpreter and
actress, Tracy Brennan. Sacramento Theatre Experiment members will function
as a chorus in the show.
“Short Center Repertory is a company of adult actors who have grown up with
developmental disabilities”, said James C. Anderson, Artistic Director.
“But the opportunity these actors have had to train and perform together
over such a long period of time gives them a depth and a professionalism
that you don’t find in most actors and theatre performances. We have been
reaching out in recent years to provide opportunities for actors with other
kinds of challenges. This time we will be joined by Regina Brink, a gifted
singer and actress who is blind, in the dual roles of Shamhat, the Priestess
of the Goddess of Love, and Siduri, who tempts Gilgamesh to abandon his
quest.”
California Stage producer Ray Tatar, who has presented the Short Center
Repertory, ICEWORM and Sacramento Theatre Experiment independently says,
“The intriguing mix of these theatrical elements, the skill of all the
performers, and the wonderfully epic script will make for an enthralling
evening of theatre.
“I’ve wanted to do something with the Gilgamesh story since I first
encountered it over forty years ago”, said playwright Foster. “It is the
oldest literature we have, with fragments of clay tablets dating back over
4000 years. For more than a millennium Gilgamesh was the common intellectual
property of Mesopotamia, which is roughly modern Iraq, and the cradle of
Western Civilization. Uncounted poets and storytellers appropriated his
character and developed his quest to express the mythic struggles of their
eras. Then he passed from the stage of history and his texts lay underground
until modern archaeology began to discover them in the 1800s. But it’s not
just the age of the stories that caught me. It is also, paradoxically, their
youth. Gilgamesh, the story and the character, is obsessed with the
awareness of death, as if no one had ever dealt with the problem before. In
short, it takes the reader through the same harrowing territory we all
traverse in our youth as we begin to face our mortality. It is both
sophisticated and raw, wise and achingly vulnerable.”
“When I first saw the work of Short Center Repertory it came to me that
these were the people to enact Gilgamesh. I still can’t articulate the
reasons very well. I sensed a quality of intensity in the lives of these
actors, a quality that transfers to their work on stage. Perhaps it is that
the conditions of their lives force them to confront, every day, a stratum
of reality that the rest of us have the luxury to ignore most of the time.
Whatever the reasons, I’m thrilled with the results of their work with my
latter day development of the ancient myth."
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