Place/Settings: Berkeley

For the Audio Program portion of Repisodes, we read out loud from the dramaturgy material from the show’s program in an effort to make the information around our shows accessible to all audiences, in multiple formats.

For the BECKY NURSE Program, we will read The Origin Story - about the play's development process - and dramaturg Madeleine Oldham's essay about how the play intersects with Arthur Miller's THE CRUCIBLE.

and a special treat! Playwright Sarah Ruhl reads out loud from her program note. It's a delightful peek inside her brilliant and lovely mind.

For this edition of The Core for WHITE NOISE we highlighted selections from our Wednesday Night Speaker Series, in which we interviewed some of the Bay Area's leading thinkers on what they saw in the play.

How does Brandi Wilkens Catanese, a professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies at UC Berkeley, look at playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ career and where this play falls in it?

What does Pendarvis Harshaw, a journalist at KQED, think about how the characters in this play embody and push up against hipster culture in the Bay Area?

How does Taylor Crumpton, a music, pop culture, and politics writer, look at the gender politics at play in White Noise? And what story does she think the sound design is telling to the audience?

WHITE NOISE runs September 26–November 10 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

In this Repisode we talk with Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright of WHITE NOISE, about play’s four contrasting perspectives, and how it anchors difficult topics in love and laughter.

Suzan-Lori Parks was named one of time magazine’s “100 Innovators for the Next New Wave,” and is the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Topdog/Underdog. She is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” prize recipient. Broadway credits include the Tony Award-winning Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Other plays include In the Blood (Pulitzer Prize finalist) and, more recently, Father Comes Home from the Wars (parts 1,2&3)(Pulitzer Prize finalist). Parks has authored a novel: Getting Mother’s Body. Her screenplays include Girl6 (directed by Spike Lee), Their Eyes Were Watching God (produced by Oprah Winfrey), Anemone Me, and an adaptation of Native Son. New work includes The United States vs Billie Holiday, a stage-musical adaptation of the film The Harder They Come, and she’s currently the show-runner for genius: Aretha Franklin for National Geographic. Parks is now The Public Theater’s Master Writer Chair. She also writes songs and fronts her band: Suzan-Lori Parks & The Band.

WHITE NOISE runs September 26–November 10 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

For the Audio Program portion of Repisodes, we read out loud from the dramaturgy material from the show’s program in an effort to make the information around our shows accessible to all audiences, in multiple formats. For the WHITE NOISE Program, we will read two essays, one about Suzan-Lori Parks' writing style and one about the contemporary landscape of plays by writers of color.

We think of the Audio Program as a story we are reading out loud to you, so enjoy!

WHITE NOISE runs September 26–November 10 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

Yes, the events of THE GREAT WAVE really happened. In this Repisode, lead actress Jo Mei (who plays Hanako) talks with Robert S. Boynton, who wrote the authoritative book about the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens, The Invitation-Only Zone.

THE GREAT WAVE runs September 12–October 27 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

You’re listening to The Core edition of Repisodes, where we talk to members of the community to see where the onstage and offstage worlds of our season intersect. Check back here for more Repisodes: In Conversation, where we talk with the creators behind the plays, and Audio Program, where we strive to make our program articles accessible to all audiences by reading the essays from the program out loud.

Robert S. Boynton is the author of The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea's Abduction Project (FSG, 2016) and The New New Journalism (Vintage, 2005) He directs NYU's Literary Reportage program, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, and elsewhere. https://www.robertboynton.com/

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

In this Repisode we talk with Mark Wing-Davey, the director of THE GREAT WAVE. We sat down with him in our in-house studio during a break from rehearsals, right before we went into tech, so you'll be catching him mid-process in this conversation.

THE GREAT WAVE runs September 12–October 27 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

Mark Wing-Davey first came to prominence in the United States in 1992 with his celebrated production of Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest at New York Theatre Workshop. Since then he has worked extensively in New York for Labyrinth Theater Company, Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theatre Club, Playwrights Horizons, and The Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival. The Great Wave is his sixth show at Berkeley Rep. His other credits include productions of new writing and classic plays at theatres across the U.S., as well as shows at the Edinburgh Festival, London’s National and Royal Court Theatres, and musicals in the West End and Australia. He is an Arts Professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and Chair of its Graduate Acting Program.

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

Welcome to the 2019-2020 season and welcome back to Repisodes: the Berkeley Rep podcast! We are so excited to produce new podcasts for this fresh season, the first with Artistic Director Johanna Pfaelzer.

For the Audio Program portion of Repisodes, we read out loud from the dramaturgy material from the show’s program in an effort to make the information around our shows accessible to all audiences, in multiple formats. For THE GREAT WAVE Program, we will read an essay about the historical tensions between Japan and Korea. We think of the Audio Program as a story we are reading out loud to you, so enjoy!

THE GREAT WAVE runs September 12–October 27 and tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org.

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.

Welcome The Core for KISS MY AZTEC! In The Core, we talk to members of the community to see where the onstage and offstage worlds of our season intersect. In this Repisode, Literary Fellow Maddie Rostami sat down with Composer/Co-Lyricist Benjamin Velez and some members of the cast to talk about the show's diverse musical palette and the exuberant process of creating a show that celebrates the complexity of Latinx culture!

KISS MY AZTEC! runs now through July 14th. Tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org!

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music Credit to Peter Yonka

Welcome to a special edition of The Core for THE GOOD BOOK with guest host, podcast extraordinaire, and actor Lance Gardner. In The Core, we talk to members of the community to see where the onstage and offstage worlds of our season intersect. In this Repisode, Lance and Berkeley Rep's literary manager Sarah Rose Leonard took a trip to The Center for the Tebtunis Papyrus at UC Berkeley to investigate the complicated history of writing, the process of how texts are passed down and interpreted, and the ethical and moral questions surrounding antiquities, all with an incredible spin from Lance's podcasting expertise.

The Good Book runs through June 9. Tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org!

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

In our "In Conversation" part of Repisodes, we talk to members of the creative team to learn more about their process and the world of the play. Here, we sat down with KISS MY AZTEC! creators John Leguizamo and Tony Taccone in the middle of a workshop this March to talk about their personal connection to the story and the importance of creating art that showcases the vibrancy of Latinx culture.

KISS MY AZTEC runs May 28 - July 14. Tickets are available at berkeleyrep.org!

Follow Berkeley Rep on SoundCloud to keep up with the whole series. You can also listen on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher.

Music credit to Peter Yonka.