Berkeley Rep Adds DEAR ELIZABETH and FALLACI to Season

Today Tony Taccone, artistic director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre, revealed two new plays that he's selected to complete the Tony Award-winning nonprofit's 45th season. In keeping with its reputation for debuting smart and adventurous shows, the Theatre presents the world premiere of Fallaci, written by Lawrence Wright and directed by Gregory Mosher, and the West Coast premiere of Dear Elizabeth, the latest collaboration from Sarah Ruhl and Les Waters. With the addition of these fresh scripts, the upcoming season features an incredible array of accomplished artists who collectively have earned five Tony Awards and 11 Obie Awards – including David Henry Hwang, Denis O'Hare, Lisa Peterson, Leigh Silverman, MarK Wing-Davey, and Mary Zimmerman – while also introducing local audiences to a talented team of Troublemakers: Dexter Bullard and Dan LeFranc. Best of all, since Berkeley Rep insists that scintillating art should be accessible and affordable, theatre lovers can see three or more shows for as little as $27 each!

"With its powerhouse lineup of playwrights and directors, next season already promised to be a year of great theatre," Taccone remarks. "I'm proud to add these smart, sensitive, and thought-provoking shows to the mix. Lawrence Wright and Gregory Mosher are a great team, and they'll bring Oriana Fallaci blazing back to life with the premiere of this play. And we all know how well Sarah Ruhl and Les Waters work together. I'm delighted to welcome them back to Berkeley Rep and continue our collaboration with these beloved artists."

The Main Season for 2012-13 begins in August with the West Coast premiere of Chinglish, the hilarious Broadway comedy written by Hwang and staged by Silverman. Then Zimmerman gives the Bay Area a beautiful gift for the holidays with The White Snake before Berkeley Rep brings the Bard back with a bang in Wing-Davey's production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The Limited Season features Peterson and O'Hare's visceral new version of An Iliad alongside the exuberant world premiere of LeFranc's Troublemaker, or The Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatright, staged by Bullard. Fallaci enters the fray in March and the season concludes with Dear Elizabeth. This entire experience is generously supported by BART and Wells Fargo, who have stepped forward as official season sponsors for the eighth straight year.

Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci was larger than life. Her childhood courage resisting the Nazis fueled her work as a war correspondent with an antiauthoritarian zeal that perfectly matched the '60s and '70s. She gained fame by grilling Kissinger, Castro, Khomeini, Qadaffi, and other public figures who squirmed under her ferocious questioning. With Fallaci, Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright turns the spotlight on a fellow reporter and her fascinating contradictions. In this world premiere, a young woman interviews the fiery author at the end of her life, when she became a darling of the right. What begins as a discussion of journalism ends with two women exchanging life-changing lessons about destiny and empathy. Don't miss this sizzling new play staged by legendary director Gregory Mosher and penned by a revered writer from The New Yorker.

"The journalist Lawrence Wright possesses a knack for clarifying complicated problems," notes the New York Times. "Obviously this comes in handy in his regular line of work, but it is just as useful in his secondary vocation, as a public raconteur trying to elucidate thorny topical issues from the unlikely pulpit of an Off Broadway stage." "Like that cool professor whose courses always fill up first, Wright is the kind of conveyer of wisdom who doesn't so much lecture as seduce," says the Washington Post. He is a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, screenwriter, and playwright whose previous scripts include The Human Scale and My Trip to al-Qaeda. The latter was also staged by Mosher, former artistic director of the Lincoln Center and Goodman Theatres, whose many Broadway credits include Glengarry Glen Ross, Our Town, Speed-the-Plow, and A View from the Bridge. He has earned every major American theatre award and has also directed in London. Now Mosher reunites with Wright to bring Fallaci to the Roda Theatre.

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