Andrea Gordon is on a mission to save small theater. The longtime director and playwright, born in Berkeley and now living in Oakland, staunchly supports the essential work smaller, local theaters do in nurturing new drama and new talent, something that was emphasized at the recent Tony Awards, when Tony-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, author of Purpose, urged the viewing audience to support local theaters.
To that end, Gordon chose and has been directing all the plays in San Francisco’s Magic Theatre Classics! free reading series with her own company, Rainbow Zebra. All the selected plays had their world premieres at the Magic, and the reading series is a salute to that theater’s vital role in launching major works. The series includes Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love (1982), Julie Hébert’s True Beauties (1986), Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey (2009) and Wendy MacLeod’s The House of Yes (1990).
The series concludes on June 30 with another Shepard play, Buried Child, which premiered at the Magic in 1978, where Shepard was playwright-in-residence. The piece didn’t resonate with all viewers at that time. One theater student asked another at intermission, “What do you think of it?” The reply was, “I think he has damn little to say and is taking a damn long time to say it.”
This opinion was notably overridden, as Buried Child won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Obie Award for Playwriting, and the 1996 Broadway revival received five Tonys, including “Best Play.” Set on an Illinois farm during the rural economic ravages of the 1970s, it follows the disintegration of a family and the failure of the American Dream.
“They are dealing with how [the Dream] has become an illusion,” Gordon said. Although an actual child’s death is involved, “the family’s secrets are the buried children,” she said.
The cast includes Brian Rivera, Chanel Tilghman, Khary L. Moye, Donald E. Lacy Jr., Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Chuck Lacson and Caleb Cabrera. Gordon is passionate about using talented local actors and laments that some Bay Area theaters do not make better use of them.
The reading will be followed by a talkback, as all the others have. Gordon tracks the comments as part of her quest to find out what brings contemporary audiences to the theater. “We need this information to make theater sustainable,” she said.
Readings, Gordon said, allow audiences to focus on the text, and, with casts of outstanding professional actors, are deeply engaging. Taking another look at plays that premiered decades ago, she has reexamined them—for example, she said, reversing the genders in Fool for Love.
The reading of Oedipus El Rey, she added, was a reminder to audiences of playwright Alfaro’s talent, as the Magic prepares to present his new piece, Aztlán, which “links 959 years of history through three playlets,” according to theater materials, “… using mythic Mayan imagery to tell a contemporary tale of a young man on parole, attempting to reimagine a new future for himself.” Aztlán opens June 25 and plays through July 13.
In August, Gordon will launch the nine-month-long Rainbow Zebra/Magic Theatre Reading Extravaganza, featuring all new plays. First up is Michael Lynch’s House of Glass on Aug. 19. She is working on a series of plays by women over 50, which she intends to anthologize in book form, available for other theaters to present. “They all have good roles for older people,” she said.
She will also be involved in revitalizing the Magic’s Young People’s Theatre. “I’m writing the play [for the program] this year,” she said, reinforcing that exposure to live theater at a young age is crucial in creating a theater-goer for life.
Buried Child,’ the final reading in the Magic Classics! series, takes place at 7pm, June 30, at Magic Theatre, 2 Marina Blvd., Landmark Building D, Third Floor (in Fort Mason). Free, but donations are welcome: giving.classy.org/campaign/687874/donate. There will be a post-show discussion. 415.441.8822. magictheatre.org
