PERICLES
"Our Vessel Is From Tyre"

A production initially staged as a guest director at San Domenico School, mixing theatre students with professional actors (a large cast)...this production of Shakespeare's romance was then revived in a second iteration at a site specific presentation (a smaller cast) at the historic Victorian landmark, the Haas Lilienthal House in San Francisco.

Performed by former students and colleagues from three local companies - and featuring dancer Chris Van Raalte and vocalist Constance Doolan. Mr. Van Raalte played Neptune, wearing the fascinating BodySynth to "sing the body electric" - EMG's awash with storm, sea and supernatural potential. The ensemble led the audience throughout the house, and finally to a billowing ballroom of blue silk. This event, Our Vessel Is from Tyre, was the inaugural public project of UTB, and allowed us to introduce our various uses of Object Theatre. (2000/2001)

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Ah, for the pre-electronic days, when the family would gather in the parlor and tell stories and read aloud. Perhaps a weekend salon would be held, and neighborhood poets would gather to speak their words aloud. Let us go back in time then, gathering tonight on the glorious first floor of this historic house, the Haas Lilienthal home, to share our haunting tale.

As a native San Franciscan who eagerly soaked-up my grandfather George's accounts of the Great Conflagration of 1906, I am aware that this edifice - the Haas Lilinethal - survived by just one city block when the dynamiting of Van Ness Avenue finally stopped the flames of that explosive April. Water mains had been snapped by the earthquake, and the pipes were empty, even as the City was surrounded by the wettest of water. As the peripetetic Pericles might tell us from his experience, disaster could be just around the next corner, so keep your powder dry. Within the spirit of adapting a classic is always a deep reverence for the original, and so we offer a distilled essence of Shakespeare's play Pericles, we show you our good boat and proclaim that Our Vessel Is From Tyre.

I am a fool for plays of the Sea. This one lures me into its net for many theatrical reasons: - the epic scope - the lament for the Absent - pirates versus virtue - clowns, kindnesses and spirit. Within Shakespeare's transcendent final Romances, the four elements are often named and held high: billowing winds, parched earth, flame from heaven and always, always the tossing briny ooze. Floating in these final plays of the Folio (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest) we may find ourselves clinging to a bard's strong bark of words, rolling on deep emotions, but we are held up forever on the soft and ferocious mother ocean.

And as haunting events go, staging tonight's benefit in this residence has felt like being within a stately ship, its' strong bones and parapets and varnishes and fabrics and lifts and garrets…and so, we nod to the Victorian ghosts of the place, and recount our ancient Phoenician story with a touch of turn-of-last-century flourish.

Not enough can be said about the ensemble of both fresh and experienced theatre artists who agreed to jump in, and rehearse this evening's entertainment in such short order. I am grateful beyond measure and delighted by their talent and beauty.