Latest news with #TheSearchforSignsofIntelligentLifeintheUniverse
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Aurora Theatre moves to lay off staff, vacate downtown Berkeley venue
Since Aurora Theatre Company announced in May that it was suspending production next season, Bay Area theater fans have feared the worst: permanent closure of yet another beloved institution. On Monday, Aug. 11, Artistic Director Josh Costello shared that the company was taking decisive steps toward disbanding. 'We have begun the process of laying off our staff, finding a home for our archives and emptying out this beautiful building on Addison Street in downtown Berkeley,' he said in a video recorded from the theater's peninsula-shaped stage. Still, both the video and an accompanying letter maintained that it was only 'possible,' not certain, that the company would shutter forever. One week of performances remain for 'The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,' Jane Wagner's one-woman play, starring Marga Gomez, of interrelated monologues anchored by a self-described 'bag lady' who gets beamed into other people's consciousnesses. In September, Marin Theatre is partnering with Aurora on the Tony Award-winning 'Eureka Day,' but those performances take place at the Mill Valley company. Costello did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Aurora's landlord, Gordon Commercial Real Estate Brokerage. In his letter, Costello blamed a familiar constellation of factors. 'The economic situation in the Bay Area today simply no longer allows for the small professional nonprofit theater model on which Aurora was built,' he explained. 'As with so many theaters, attendance never recovered from the pandemic — my sense is that social media and a broader cultural shift away from in-person socializing are as much to blame as COVID.' Other cited causes include skyrocketing expenses, an untenable cost of living for artists and arts workers, tech titans' lack of support for the arts (in contrast to philanthropy by other industrialists in previous generations) and 'disarray' in public and other private support. 'I'm tremendously sad that this is happening, and that it's happening on my watch,' Costello said. Established in 1992, the theater eked out a high-quality but anti-razzle-dazzle niche, specializing in contests of ideas that played out like boxing matches or lit tinderboxes. It presented A-list performers such as James Carpenter, Margo Hall, Carrie Paff, Aldo Billingslea and Danny Scheie up so close that, especially if you sat in the front row, you were basically a part of the set. Behind the actors? Most likely fellow audience members, thanks to the theater's rare deep-thrust shape. When everyone laughed together in the theater's blockbuster world premiere of 'Eureka Day' or cringed and tittered at Mark Jackson's production of 'The Arsonists,' the room became an echo chamber in a way that's just not possible when spectators are anonymous in the dark, facing the backs of others' heads. If it does cease to exist, Aurora will join a list of recently closed or hibernating companies and venues that, in of themselves, could sustain a theater scene in a midsize city: California Shakespeare Theater, Cutting Ball Theater, Bay Area Children's Theatre, PianoFight, TheatreFirst, American Conservatory Theater's master of fine arts program, foolsFury, Exit Theatre's Eddy Street venue, Custom Made Theatre Co., Mugwumpin and 42nd Street Moon. Other still-standing companies are making massive cuts, too. In late July, Magic Theatre announced it was indefinitely postponing its autumn show, 'Jerry Garcia in the Lower Mission,' because it couldn't raise the funds. 'I am crushed and confounded to have to make this painful and disappointing decision,' Lead Director Sean San José said in a statement.
San Francisco Chronicle
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: Aurora's possibly last show champions the wonder of human connection
When our narrator says, 'Going crazy was the best thing that ever happened to me,' you not only believe her; soon, you're jealous. As she beams into other people's consciousnesses, like a psychic radio picking up distant stations, the human species starts to look like an untouched banquet hiding in plain sight. Immerse yourself in someone else's yearnings, voice and story, she implies, and you're nourished — if only you'd climb out of the rabbit hole of your own mind once in a while. The bag-lady narrator of 'The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe,' played by Marga Gomez, might be explaining what it's like to give her alien 'space chums' a tour of planet Earth, but she could also be describing Aurora Theatre Company's mission since 1992. The hyper-intimate Downtown Berkeley thrust stage, with just four wraparound rows of seats, always inspires an involuntary hush, like you're wearing a cloak of invisibility at someone else's dinner table. In that way, Jane Wagner's one-woman show of interrelated monologues, which opened Thursday, July 17, has the making of a fitting coda. In May, the company announced it was suspending production next year because of an ongoing operating deficit, taking a possible step toward closure. Artistic Director Josh Costello told the Chronicle he hoped to find a way Aurora could continue to exist but acknowledged that 'The Search for Signs' might well be the theater's last main stage season show in its own venue. Unfortunately, the show is equal parts bang and whimper. Gomez, under the direction of Jennifer King, is one of the Bay Area's most likable performers. Even when she's poking fun at a character — a himbo gym rat, an angsty 15-year-old aspiring performance artist, a posh hair salon customer with a whiff of Katharine Hepburn — it's scrubbed of any meanness. Her subtext is always, 'But hey, aren't we all kind of like this?' and you can't help but agree. She finds delicious little inflections that make the text prickle. A vibrator saleswoman has the disjointed tone of a robot, as if she's spent so much time with the device that she's short-circuited. And few actors are better at making characters come alive through stage business. When a pathetic aerobics student strikes a Statue of Liberty pose, you can tell this is the closest this poor sap will ever get to glory. But as of opening night, Gomez hadn't mastered the text yet, once calling backstage for help. More often, she simply seemed to be groping for her next line instead of driving the show forward. And 'Search' sprawls. Not all characters are equally interesting; in particular, a second-wave feminism tale that dominates the second act is paint-by-numbers. You keep waiting for a twist or clearer raison d'etre that never comes. Part of that might be a function of the 1985 show's age, which reveals itself in other ways. While Wagner has a keen ear for funny-sounding phrases — 'cracker consciousness,' 'Nobel sperm bank,' 'Hamburger Helper for the boudoir' — the wheezy parade of one-liners feels like a throwback to Phyllis Diller or Joan Rivers. But watch as 15-year-old wannabe punk rocker Agnes takes the stage at some club with an act in which she moves the palm of her hand closer and closer to an open flame, all to LeAnn Rimes' 'You Light Up My Life.' It's a lament for and protest against her shambles of a life and the messed-up world that gave rise to it. As Gomez ratchets up the intensity till you start to shift in your seat from the vicarious burn, Agnes is somehow more effective and beautiful in her futility. Like all great theater, it's a gift freely given, infinite in dividends.
San Francisco Chronicle
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Another Bay Area theater is ‘suspending' as industry's free fall continues
Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company plans to 'suspend' producing shows in the 2025-26 calendar, taking a possible step toward closure. The company hopes to continue to exist in some smaller form, Artistic Director Josh Costello told the Chronicle in advance of announcing the news Tuesday, May 13, 'But what it comes down to is the income is just not matching expenses anymore.' He noted a $500,000 operating deficit and a 50% decrease in the company's subscriber count compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic. 'We can't do another season like this in '25-'26, and it's obviously really disappointing,' he said. The move marks the latest major loss in a Bay Area theater scene that's been hemorrhaging companies since the pandemic. Its 'Crumbs From the Table of Joy,' running through May 25, followed by 'The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe' starring Marga Gomez and running July 10 through Aug. 10, could be the last Aurora shows in its 150-seat space, located conveniently near the Downtown Berkeley BART station. For 33 years, the Aurora has been renowned for language-forward theater performed by exceptional Bay Area actors in an up-close venue. Its deep-thrust shape means other audiences' reactions, right across the stage from you, are as much a part of the show as the scenery. The actors — who revere the company for its longstanding tradition of paying union and non-union performers the same — feel the closeness, too. 'They can't hide,' Costello said. 'They can't lie. They have to be fully in it all the way through, and it's exhilarating.' Aurora's productions, said interim board president Rebecca Parlette-Edwards, who's been a subscriber since the company's second season, 'put forth truths that I hadn't really thought about, but there they are.' It's not just coveted gigs and A-list performances under threat by the suspension but also new contributions to the art form. Aurora commissioned and premiered 'Eureka Day,' which just got nominated for a Tony Award. Playwright Jonathan Spector, who wrote 'Eureka Day,' said the suspension inspired not just grief but 'a fear about the Bay Area theater ecosystem more widely.' A vibrant theater ecosystem, he continued, needs 'theaters of different sizes and different styles and different interests that allow people to have an artistic life, and I really wonder about the viability of that in the region in the next five to 10 years.' He placed Aurora firmly in the 'middle rung,' explaining that without such professional but perpetually resource-strapped institutions, it's not clear how artists can climb from theater held together with gaffer tape, Red Bull and college acting class bonds to the art form's upper echelons. After Aurora achieved its emergency fundraising campaign goal of $500,000 last fall, Costello attempted to meet the harsh economic realities by planning a crowd-pleasing season with well-known playwrights — Noël Coward, Lynn Nottage — and cutting more than half of his full-time staff. But audiences still didn't return, he said, and running a company with just four full-timers was 'not sustainable.' 'People have been making a heroic effort, but people are tired,' he said. Costello was outspoken about what he sees as the reason for audiences' changing preferences. 'The pandemic was a trigger point, but I don't think it was the cause,' he said. He blamed social media and smartphones, which isolate us, literally drawing our gaze downward. Theater, he continued, 'is all about being in a room with other people and sharing in a communal act of imagination.' Social media, by contrast, 'makes us feel like it's us or them,' he said. 'It makes us feel that the individual is what matters.' As the staff and board ponder next steps, one option is to move into a smaller space. A second is to turn the venue into an arts hub in which other companies share space and software systems such as ticketing and payroll, helping Aurora pay its rent to Gordon Commercial. A third is to focus on co-producing; Aurora is already partnering with Marin Theatre on 'Eureka Day' in the fall. For now, Aurora is fundraising with a three-to-one match campaign to complete its current season 'with the same kind of integrity this company has always had,' Costello said. The company forewent another emergency drive. 'We all felt it was disingenuous to do it two years in a row, because then it's not an emergency campaign,' he explained. 'It's just, you don't have a business plan.' Costello is only the third artistic director in Aurora's history, succeeding Tom Ross and, before that, Barbara Oliver. He started in 2019, so he didn't even get to have a full season before the pandemic kiboshed his plans. Reflecting on his tenure, he told the Chronicle that his appointment was 'not a stepping stone' but 'a dream job.' Aurora has brought classics to skin-tingling life. In Alice Childress' backstage drama 'Trouble in Mind, ' a triumphant Margo Hall impaled Black stereotypes, and Ross' 'A Delicate Balance' seemed to realize the platonic ideal of Edward Albee's comedy of bourgeois unease. Mark Jackson's take on 'The Arsonists' made excruciating and delicious the backflips and somersaults the privileged will make to avoid seeing the costs of their mistakes, even as fascism approaches. The company has also shown new sides of beloved actors. Elsewhere the ubiquitous James Carpenter often plays Shakespeare's royals, but at Aurora fans could see him twitch as an overconfident lowlife in 'American Buffalo' or smolder with mystery and menace in 'The Children.' In 'Born With Teeth,' Dean Linnard didn't just reveal infinite facets; he sliced from one to another with a jeweller's precision. If Aurora's suspension evolves into a permanent closure, it will hardly be alone. California Shakespeare Theater, Cutting Ball Theater, Bay Area Children's Theatre, PianoFight, TheatreFirst, American Conservatory Theater's master of fine arts program, foolsFury and Exit Theatre's Eddy Street venue have all closed in recent years, while Custom Made Theatre Co. and Mugwumpin both went into long-term hibernation. San Francisco nonprofit musical theater company 42nd Street Moon stopped producing without even making a public statement or responding to press queries. 'For a couple of years now, everybody's been saying, 'I hope this is the bottom, and then we'll start to climb our way out,' ' Spector said, adding he hoped there was no further nadir to plumb. 'But I don't know.'
