WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? trailer (2016)

WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
Produced by The Shotgun Players
Written by Edward Albee
Directed by Mark Jackson
Set Nina Ball. Sound Sara Witsch. Costumes Ashley Holvick. Lights Heather Basarab. Properties Kirsten Royston. Performed by Josh Schell, David Sinaiko, Megan Trout, and Beth Wilmurt.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? played at The Shotgun Players October 2017 through January 2017
It’s at once an honor, a joy and a trauma to work on WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Albee crafted one of the great American theatre scores, a soaring, searing jazz-opera written “in the key of marriage,” as critic Peter Lewis once put it. Virginia Woolf is a perfectly unsolvable mystery, not unlike a human being or longstanding relationship. With uncommon panache, unapologetic honesty, and deeply felt wit, Albee expertly conducts his quartet of voices in their arias, duets, trios and quartets about not only marriage, but the American dream, the blurry line between truth and illusion, and the direct connections between each of us and our collective national character.
Our hope with this production was to put the breadth of possibilities inherent in what Albee wrote front and center, to clear away the familiar nicknacks and casting tropes and make the play itself clear, visible, and audible. Now that may seem pretty basic. But it’s really hard! To begin with, Albee took pains to make it hard! I’m grateful to him for assuming the intelligence of his audience, not to mention our appetite for the truth, and for trusting us all-no matter how often various of us might argue with him on this or that-to engage with what he offers.
But also, there are people who come to WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? with their expectations firmly in place, something often the case with great and well-known classics. Expectations are famous for killing possibilities. And so this is the opportunity with classics: to question expectation, to see and hear anew. Luckily, many more than not at Shotgun were excited by the possibilities in Albee's play, and the production enjoyed a very engaged response.
PRESS:
"Jackson hasn’t come up with a concept so much as an assault; not an interpretation but a demand: that the play, the actors, the direction, the design, and the audience come together and perform a collective act of creation. And that’s what Albee probably wants - for us to see what the imagination really is and how the world around us is a product of its violent desires for happiness and peace... As the play unfurls its way to Albee’s haunting end, the production becomes so simple and alive that it hardly feels as if the brilliant cast is acting at all. They have become everything that we have imagined, and so they just say the lines and we happily and painfully fill in the rest. It’s like a carpet-bombing inside your head. Albee is dead, but Shotgun’s production brings his imagination bracingly back to life." - KQED.ORG
"Tight direction by Mark Jackson... This performance succeeds beyond expectations. I sat on the edge of my seat, totally engrossed during the entire three-act, three-hour performance... Kudos to director Mark Jackson and actors Beth Wilmurt and David Sinaiko for capturing the essence of this complex, still vital drama. This is a great play extremely well done. I highly recommend it." - BERKELEYSIDE.COM
"Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? strips bare the deceptions and bonds that hold together two horrible marriages. Shotgun Players’ current staging of the 1962 classic strips bare the dynamics of those relationships, without distractions. It’s a sizzling approach to a scathing drama, and thoroughly gripping for virtually every minute of its three-hour length... In the Berkeley theater’s very capable hands, Albee’s language and explorations of mystifying bonds that can keep people together are as powerful today as ever." - HUFFINGTON POST
MORE INFO AT:
www.markjackson-theatermaker.com