Don’t miss this unique, compelling multi-media production of David Hare’s (screenwriter for the film, “The Reader”) two monologue play about the meaning of the Berlin Wall and reflections on the state of affairs between the Israelis and Palestinians. This production will include an integrated live performance by Ted and Dan Rubright of the Wire Pilots, performing original world, experimental, fusion music scored for this production!
EVENT: A staged reading of David Hare’s Berlin/Wall, produced by Upstream Theater and directed by Bonnie Taylor, Ph.D. and member AEA.
WHEN: will be performed on Sunday, January 17, 2:00 p.m. No admission fee.
WHERE: Rialto Ballroom in the Centene Center for Arts & Education, 3547 Olive (1/2 block east of Grand). Reception following. I am hoping you can include this event information in the online calendar of upcoming events as well as in Friday’s “Go!” and Saturday’s calendar—any help you can give at this late date would be very much appreciated.
WHO: Christopher Limber, member Actors’ Equity and Education Director for Shakespeare Festival St. Louis, will read “Berlin,” and Joan Lipkin, playwright and Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre Company and the DisAbility Project, will read “Wall.” Composers and musicians Dan and Ted Rubright of the Wire Pilots will provide live music.
BERLIN/WALL: In two short monologues, David Hare shares his musings on famous modern walls: one missing in Berlin and another dividing Israel. Observing the mindsets, attitudes, and values of local residents, Hare reports, questions, and discovers the impact of walls—absent and present—and wonders about the future of freedom. (Berlin/Wall is a sequel to Hare’s 1999 play, Via Dolorosa that was staged by the New Jewish Theatre in 2007.)
DAVID HARE: Born in Sussex in 1947, Hare is one of Britain’s most internationally performed playwrights. He has written more than twenty stage plays, among them Plenty, The Secret Rapture, Racing Demon, The Absence of War, Skylight, The Permanent Way, and Stuff Happens. Hare also directs and writes screenplays. Screenplays include The Hours and The Reader.
WHY BERLIN/WALL NOW: Adhering to its mission of bringing international work to St. Louis theater and of “moving audiences to think,” Upstream Theater believes British playwright David Hare’s play is timely as the world commemorates the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, November 9, 2009, and anticipates the completion of the Israeli Security Fence in late 2010. By scheduling the reading on Martin Luther King weekend, the reading will provide food for thought regarding our own history (walls) of racism in the United States.
