Aurora Theatre Company announces that it will add an additional six performances of its current hit production of Obie-winning playwright Annie Baker’s BODY AWARENESS. Joy Carlin (Awake and Sing!, Jack Goes Boating) directs BODY AWARENESS, featuring Amy Resnick (Collapse), Jeri Lynn Cohen (Posing for Gauguin), Howard Swain (Hysteria), and Patrick Russell (Trouble in Mind). BODY AWARENESS plays at the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley now through March 11 (added performances: March 6, 7pm, March 7, 8pm, March 8, 8pm, March 9, 8pm, March 10, 8pm, March 11, 7pm). For tickets ($30-48) and information the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org.
It’s “Body Awareness Week” on a small Vermont college campus and feminist professor Phyllis and her partner, Joyce, are hosting a guest artist in their home, a male photographer who specializes in female nudes. The couple is already going through a rough patch as they try to counsel Joyce’s 21-year old son, Jared, an amateur lexicographer with a fondness for the OED and racy pay-per-view, who they believe suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome. When their guest arrives, both his presence and his chosen subject matter instigate a new level of discomfort. Challenging how we see ourselves and thus define ourselves, BODY AWARENESS examines the mutability of relationships and how fragile people become when they are confronted by the unexpected.
About BODY AWARENESS, Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle said, “The ensemble work [in Body Awareness] is exemplary, as the cast negotiates [playwright Annie] Baker’s smart, provocative dialogue...Well after the laughter dies down, you’ll probably keep finding echoes of Baker’s world all around you.” Karen D’Souza at the San Jose Mercury News/Bay Area News Group declared BODY AWARENESS a “smart and touching new play...Astutely directed by Joy Carlin,” while Chad Jones at Theater Dogs noted, [Playwright Annie] Baker is a humane and very funny writer, and the Bay Area is finally getting a taste of her talent in the Aurora Theatre Company’s utterly delightful production of her Body Awareness. In true Aurora form, the production gives us a meaty play and performances by a quartet of Bay Area actors that defy you to find a false moment in this up-close and intimate space.” Clinton Stark at Stark Insider agreed, “Bay Area theater is off to a phenomenal start this year... And now we can add Body Awareness to that list.”
BODY AWARENESS is the fully-staged anchor production in this season’s Global Age Project (GAP), an Aurora Theatre Company initiative that encourages playwrights and directors to explore life in the 21st century and beyond. This year’s GAP finalists include: The Hummingbirds by Garret Jon Groenveld; In a Word by Lauren Yee; Rasheeda Speaking by Joel Drake Johnson; and Ashes, Ashes by Kevin Christopher Snipes. The selected plays will be presented as staged readings in a four-week festival at the Aurora Theatre, Mondays, February 6-27, 7:30pm. All GAP readings are free and open to the public.
Following BODY AWARENESS, Aurora Theatre Company founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company in April to helm Margret Schaefer’s Aurora-commissioned World Premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s fin-de-siècle gem ANATOL. The 20th anniversary season concludes in June with Aurora Theatre Company’s World Premiere play commission, SALOMANIA, written and directed by Mark Jackson.
Nominated for 15 and winner of 8 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards for 2010, Aurora Theatre Company continues to offer challenging, literate, intelligent stage works to the Bay Area, each year increasing its reputation for top-notch theater. Located in the heart of the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, Aurora Theatre Company, declared “one of the best regional theaters around” by 7x7 magazine, has been called “one of the most important regional theaters in the area” and “a must-see midsize company” by the San Francisco Chronicle, while The Wall Street Journal has “nothing but praise for the Aurora.” The Contra Costa Times stated “perfection is probably an unattainable ideal in a medium as fluid as live performance, but the Aurora Theatre comes luminously close,” while the San Jose Mercury News affirmed “[Aurora Theatre Company] lives up to its reputation as a theater that feeds the mind,” and the Oakland Tribune stated “it’s all about choices, and if you value good theater, choose the Aurora.”
