The Play About the Baby

BERKELEY —A Boy and a Girl are naked and in love. They have had their baby. Or have they? When a mysterious Man and Woman visit a young couple, all the strands of reality become unloosed. Do the boy and girl know each other at all? Are the man and woman a vicious threat or a benign blessing? Did you really drink your tea this morning? Edward Albee’s The Play about the Baby spins a thrilling dramatic tale over the most elusive of questions: what matters more–the truth or the truth we tell ourselves?

The Play about the Baby runs through December 28 at La Vals Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berkeley.

Edward Albee’s elegant, sinister, hilarious The Play about the Baby receives its West Coast Premiere with the Shotgun Players. Part absurdist comedy, part existential thriller, The Play about the Baby is a wholly original theatrical event from the most adventurous American playwright of the last 50 years. The Play about the Baby is quite unlike anything Albee has written and finds "one of the few genuinely great living American dramatists" (New York Times, in its review of The Play About the Baby) in the full heat of his talent. In a truly unique way Albee employs many of his favorite themes: the ritualized games we play to survive, the way memory weaves and twists reality, the hope for human connection in a godless universe, and the battle over shared territory and the brutal relief of the truth.

The Play about the Baby premiered at the Alley Theatre in 2001 and soon transferred to New York in a production Variety called "unquestionably the main event of the Off-Broadway season." The New York Times claimed that the play "rockets into that special corner of theatre heaven where words shoot off like fireworks into dazzling patterns and hues."

Albee is the author of many classics of contemporary American theater including the Tony Award winning Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee won Pulitzers for A Delicate Balance, Seascape and Three Tall Women.

His newest play The Goat or Who is Sylvia? recently won the Tony Award for Best Play.

Mr. Albee was awarded the Gold Medal in Drama from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1980 and in 1996 received both the Kennedy Center Honor and the National Medal of Arts.

He is a member of the Dramatists Guild, P.E.N. American, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, International Theatre Institute, USA (President), and The Edward F. Albee Foundation, Inc. (President).Director Reid Davis has directed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, American Conservatory Theatre Advanced Training Program, California Shakespeare Festival, Eureka Theatre and the Playground Emerging Playwrights Festival.

He is a company member of Berkeley's Shotgun Players, where he directed Bent, Loot, Christmas on Mars and Three Sisters (Critics Circle Nominations for Production, Ensemble and Best Actress), and acted in As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida and Henry V (SF Weekly Black Box award for acting).Designer Ariel Parkinson has had two solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and two at the Library and Museum of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. In addition, she has had set and costume designs at the San Francisco Ballet and San Francisco Opera and a solo show at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum. Her regional theatre credits include: Berkeley Stage, California Shakespeare Festival, South Coast Repertory and the North Carolina School of the Arts.

CONTINUES THROUGH

DECEMBER 28TH :

Thursdays-Saturdays

@ 8 PM

Sundays @ 7 PM through (Note: Closing is on a Saturday)

The La Vals Subterranean, 1834 Euclid in North Berkeley

TICKET PRICES:

Pay What You Can Previews and Press Night | $10 Thursdays | $12 Seniors, Students & Theatre Bay Area members | $18 Regular |

(1834 Euclid near Hearst, north of the UC Berkeley campus, under La Val's Pizza Northside)

ps. The theatre is tiny, so please make sure you call early enough to reserve good seats.