Spare Stage: A Body of Water


           

Nominated for two San Francisco Bay Area Critics Circle awards!

Best 2009 Production

Best Female Performance: Holly Silk


Spare Stage presents

the Bay Area premiere of


by Lee Blessing

Directed by Stephen Drewes





A middle-aged couple awakes in a beautiful summer house on a hill, surrounded by trees and glimpses of water. There's just one problem. They can't remember their own names, much less the relationship between them. Their pursuit of memory yields both comic and terrifying results, leaving them adrift on a leaky raft of postmodern anxiety. A suspenseful and mysterious exploration of the deep relationship between memory and identity.


What they're saying about “A Body of Water”
“A cross between Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett...you stay riveted as you try to puzzle out the play’s reality...Halsey Varady strikes just the right mixture of anger, amusement, cruelty and empathy, keeping us effectively off-balance...endlessly interesting.”
— San Francisco Examiner

“Don't Miss”!
— San Francisco Chronicle

“A cryptic game of cat-and-mouse in the oblique manner of Albee and Pinter...Stephen Drewes' production plays its mind games with dexterity.”
— Silicon Valley Mercury News

With

James Allen Brewer as Moss
Holly Silk   as Avis
Halsey Varady   as Wren

Lighting and sound by Tyler Null
Stage Manager: Justin Schlegel

EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco


Friday Through Sunday, November 6 – November 22, 2009

The Nov. 21 performance featured a special post-show conversation with the author, Lee Blessing.




Stephen Drewes Stephen Drewes (director) is a fifth-generation San Franciscan. He began his career in 1970 as an actor at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Since then, he has performed over forty roles with such companies as the Magic Theatre and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He holds an MA from UC Berkeley in Dramatic Art and an MFA in Directing from Brandeis University.

Drewes accepted his first professional directing assignment in 1975 for the Peoples Theatre in Cambridge, MA, and has since directed over 80 productions in every genre from children's theatre to grand opera. He has been a member of the faculty at Boston University, Middlebury College and Colgate University, and was Artistic Director of the Publick Theatre in Cambridge, MA, where three of his productions won Boston Critics Circle Awards for Directing. Drewes has taught and directed extensively, published theatre and cabaret criticism, and has been the recipient of grants from the Packard Foundation and the California Arts Council. For three years he was the Resident Stage Director for the Pocket Opera. Drewes taught at City College of San Francisco from 1988 to 2008.

Jim Brewer James Allen Brewer (Moss) James Allen Brewer trained as an actor with Uta Hagen at HB Studio in New York City and at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre. He began his professional career as a singer and dancer, touring nationally and internationally, and appeared in regional theatre when he was tapped by cartoonist Garry Trudeau to embody “Doonesbury” rock star "Jimmy Thudpucker," co-writing the music and lyrics and providing the character’s voice for the Academy Award-nominated film, based on the comic strip, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes. In 2005 he produced, co-created, and starred in SIMPLY SONDHEIM – A 75th Birthday Salute, San Francisco’s concert tribute celebrating the life and work of legendary Broadway composer / lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Holly Silk Holly Silk (Avis), a fourth generation San Franciscan, began her career in the arts as a dancer, ultimately touring with Dick Bright’s SRO for 16 years, performing throughout the world. She has been and continues to perform as the “Girl in the Fishbowl” at San Francisco’s legendary Bimbos 365 Club in Northbeach. Her previous experience with Spare Stage was as Cory in Private Eyes.
Halsey Varady Halsey Varady (Wren) grew up in Los Altos and as a teenager sang with the San Francisco Girls Chorus with whom she toured extensively in the US, Japan and China, and performed with San Francisco Opera. She attended Yale University where she sang with a cappella groups touring Asia and Europe. Her Bay Area credits include Pickles in The Great American Trailer Park Musical; Brenda Lee, Petula Clark and Janis Joplin in Beehive, the 1960’s Musical; and Girleen in The Lonesome West, all with the San Jose Stage Company. She played Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew with The Shady Shakespeare Theatre Company, Squeaky Fromme in Assassins at City Lights Theatre Company, Madge in Picnic with the Palo Alto Players, Helen of Troy in The Trojan Women at Foothill College and the title role in Gypsy with the Saratoga Drama Group. In Washington DC she played Belle in Ford’s Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol and performed for then president George W. Bush and first lady Laura Bush at the White House.


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