San Diego REP's 33rd Season

The Good Body

Eve Ensler could have coined the word “provocative.” An irrepressible playwright and social activist, she changed the landscape of dialogue about women and their bodies with her Obie Award-winning The Vagina Monologues. Inspired by its worldwide success, she founded V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.

As she built the movement, Ensler traveled to more than 40 countries interviewing women of all ages and classes — from surgical centers in Beverly Hills, to the beaches of Brazil, the gyms of Moscow, New York and Mumbai, and the beauty salons of Rome, Istanbul and South Africa. With few exceptions, Ensler discovered that each woman had one part of their body that they loathed and believed if they could make that part ‘good,’ everything would change for the better.

Ensler’s response is her intimate tale The Good Body — told with her rare ability to deliver profoundly illuminating commentary with an unchained comic wit. At the center of the story is her own quest to stop trying to be anyone other than she truly is and to “move into herself,” be bold and love the body that was never truly broken.

The Story
Traveling through and beyond Botox, treadmills, closet surgeries and fat farms, Ensler exposes the naked truths from women who share their deepest secrets, obsessions and hard won peace and celebration of themselves — a Puerto Rican street gal who is an expert on “the spread,” a black teenager playing hooky from a fat farm, a too-eager-to-please wealthy Jewish housewife, an African mystic, underground Afghani entrepreneurs in Kabul, and many more.

Extraordinary and ordinary women told Eve their inspiring stories. The Good Body is their story woven through one woman’s global journey from obsession to enlightenment — a personal wake-up call to love the “good bodies” we inhabit.
 

Water & Power

Culture Clash, America’s premier Latino theatre troupe, has been called “The Marx Brothers meet the Rolling Stones.” We call them our favorite ensemble of actor-writers in America. They are sly and incisive theatrical anthropologists, commentators on who we are today, in an America that has never looked the way it does before. Trust us… nobody writes about Californians like they do!

Ensemble leader Richard Montoya has written a truly humorous, tough-minded and penetrating look at Southern California’s power politics, and the Latinos and Gringos who hold our future in their hands. Ranging from the hilarious to the chilling, this is a gripping piece of Southern California noir fiction in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley and the film “Chinatown.” At the center of the intrigue lives the power of brotherly love as two brothers, flush with the temptations of new and immense influence, attempt to save themselves from the abyss of realpolitik.

The Story
A hardworking Chicano father nicknamed his twin sons Water and Power, underscoring the family motto: “There is no power without water, and no water without power.” Water has become a rising star State Senator with his eye on Washington; Power is an honored Police Lieutenant who breaks all the rules.
It has been raining for 17 days and nights. The brothers are trapped inside Motel Paradise on Sunset Boulevard. On the eve of an election that could propel Water’s political career into the fast lane, Power has ignited a life-or-death scandal that threatens to derail the lives and dreams of each of them. The brothers, and the city, are in trouble.

This is theatre of the moment: Montoya’s careening, buoyant imagination bursts forth in an explosive story that is political, social, satirical, ethnic, fearless, often moving and always dramatic. Water & Power won the Los Angeles Theatre Critic’s Circle and Ovation Awards for Best New Play when it premiered in 2006. REP audiences will be the first to see this award-winning work prior to its feature film debut at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009.
 

The Princess and the Black-Eyed Pea

Hans Christian Andersen’s cherished fairy tale, The Princess and the Pea, becomes a soulful musical comedy set in two exotic African kingdoms! Winner of the Richard Rodgers Award for Most Promising New Musical, and acclaimed for concert versions at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, and the International Musical of the Year Competition finals in Europe, this Princess is ready for its world premier.

The Story
Colorful characters rule the exotic African kingdoms of Torel and Kheba — one a tyrannical Queen Mother, and the other a befuddled King, whose teenaged Princess has never been outside the palace walls. When the most feared warrior in the land vows he will force her to be his queen, the defiant Princess climbs the walls, braves a wild storm, and heads into the dangerous forest to seek her freedom.
Meanwhile, in Torel, a sad Prince Gallant has not yet found the princess of his dreams. To assist, the royal couple is inviting the finest lovelies in the land to a “choose your bride” ball. The now ragged and starving Princess from Kheba stumbles upon the palace gate and is rushed inside for food and shelter. Suddenly she is face to face with the Prince — they lock eyes, sparks fly, and the promise of true love is, yes, an ecstatic musical duet!

But will true love prevail? Certainly not before the villainous warrior, a shameless womanizer, and a straight-from-Motown chorus do a whole lot of messin’ around with the wannabe lovers. Messin’ that, of course, includes the ancient test for royal blood, known only to the women of Queen Zauba’s family… the sacred and legendary test of The Black-Eyed Pea!

The quest for true love is the theme. Rousing gospel, funky rhythm and blues, tropical African world beat and soaring pop ballads are the medium. Ambitious women in search of emancipation are the messengers. A giant party in a palace becomes a celebration of our global culture.

With a charming sense of fun and play, this musical is a delight for all ages!
 

Doubt: A Parable

Winner of The Pulitzer Prize, a Tony and the New York Drama Critics Award for Best Play, Doubt is one of the most lauded American dramas in years. Playwright Shanley penned the Academy Award-winning film “Moonstruck,” but Doubt is the triumph of his career, turning headline material into deeply moving and gripping mystery, a quiet indictment of the reverence for righteousness in American culture.

Some of you may have seen Doubt before, but not in the intimate Lyceum Space, where you will sit no farther than 24 feet from the stage to experience one of the finest plays of our time.

The Story
1964. Sister Aloysius, the fierce and regal principal of a Catholic school in the Bronx, has a hunch that the only black student in the school may be in danger. Father Flynn, a devout priest determined to bring a revolutionary gust of fresh air to teaching, may be the danger — or he may be the boy’s only friend.

Sister Aloysius marshals all her personal fervor to prove Father Flynn is carrying on an inappropriate relationship with the student, devoting her formidable conviction to protect the children at any cost. The audience is invited to be judge and jury —
to deduce what is known, what is unknown, what is likely, and finally, who is telling the truth? But what is the TRUTH?

This is the rare play you won’t stop debating about for days… where no matter how unshakable your interpretation may be, your most trusted confidant may very well come to a different conclusion.

According to playwright John Patrick Shanley, Doubt is a play about “our American culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment and of verdict.” Rest assured, Shanley is not a propagandist: “I started the play thinking about black and white and the certainty that this implies. But it wouldn’t make much sense if there was no doubt in a play called Doubt.” The genius of this brilliant play is that YOU render the final verdict.
 

The Threepenny Opera

1928. From the moment the opening ballad of “Mack the Knife” filled the theatre, this radical re-imagining of The Beggars Opera was an immediate, scandalous hit, and is now universally acclaimed as a musical theatre masterpiece of the 20th century. Bertolt Brecht, one of the most controversial and influential revolutionaries of his time, weaves a cunning and glorious story of love, deception and greed run wild. Kurt Weill creates the perfect match, with a legendary score that is jazzy, gusty and as colorful as a Berlin cabaret — an astonishing mix of musical forms and influences. No less than 23 instruments (ranging from ukulele to piccolo to bassoon) come together in an eclectic score combining folk, opera, jazz, atonal, and neoclassical styles, cabaret ballads, political protest songs and military marches. This musical marriage forges its own genre — the music of irony.

The Story
The devilish bandit, Mack the Knife, is in deep trouble when he marries the irresistible Polly Peachum in a ceremony of “doubtful legality.” Mack’s got his old army buddy, now the Chief of Police, in his pocket. But Polly’s father, Jonathan Peachum, king of the underworld, is determined to see Mack sent to the gallows. In the battle for Polly and the control of their seedy Soho neighborhood, Mack the Knife recruits prostitutes, crooked cops, thieves, a street army of real and imposter beggars, and, of course, The Queen!

There are countless accolades for the sting and song of Threepenny. The legendary director Harold Prince said, “Many have tried to imitate Brecht and Weill. No one has succeeded.” Bob Dylan said, “I was aroused straightaway by the raw intensity of the songs.” Join us for our intimate production of one of the most exotic and provocative classics of world theatre in the Lyceum Space. You will have the opportunity to be enthralled, as so many others have been, by this influential masterpiece.