2004/2005 Season

Kid Simple

By Jordan Harrison
directed by Founding Artistic Director Scott Feldsher

June 3-4, 2004 Previews, 8pm
June 5, 2004 Opening Night, 8pm
June 6 - July 11, 2004 Thursdays through Sundays

West Coast Premiere - Moll invents The Third Ear, an astonishing machine for hearing sounds that can't be heard. But, when The Mercenary steals the machine, not to mention Moll's heart, Moll must enlist her friend, the virgin, Oliver, to go on a journey over mountains and across chasms to reclaim her creation before it destroys sound as we know it. Sound is visible and visual elements are auditory in a production that interlaces science, fantasy, and the senses.

Alternative Guest

Exciting Collaboration
Opening September 2004

Exciting Collaboration - The Alternative Guest is back! Keep an eye on this one - we're concocting a great surprise. Past guests have included monologist's Josh Kornbluth's Red Diaper Trilogy, Matthew Wilder's provocative staging of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, and DFILM, the digital film festival.

A Dream Play

by August Strindberg
directed by Kirsten Brandt

October 14-15, 2004 Previews, 8pm
October 16, 2004 Opening Night, 8pm
October 17- November 22, 2004 Thursdays through Sundays

Classic Reinvention - Time and place do not exist in the dream world. When the Daughter of the God Indra descends to earth to see how humankind is faring, she assumes the role of Agnes, a woman who works to save an Officer, marries a Lawyer, bears a child, meets a Poet, suffers for and with others until she finally returns to her father. Imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations as characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, and assemble in this classic play by one of the world's greatest playwrights.

Bright, Shiny Objects

by Ensemble Member David Tierney
directed by Artistic Director Kirsten Brandt
Original Music by Ensemble Member Ruff Yeager

February 10-11, 2005 Previews, 8pm
February 12, 2005 Opening Night, 8pm
February 13- March 20, 2005 Thursdays through Sundays

World Premiere - Anne is a modern dancer who no longer practices her art, married to a businessman who is never home. Jack obsesses over all things piratical, and lives at home with his father who dresses like Jack's dead mother. Anne escapes her life by imagining herself as the dancer she might have been while Jack escapes into a fantasy existence of freedom on the high seas with a band of pirates. When they meet, they realize that the possibility for a real life almost as good as their dreams exists. Anne and Jack must now choose between "doing the right thing" and remaining in the prisons that forced their fantasies, or succumbing to a dangerous new world that could set them free. announced. In 1989, the original Sledgehammer production of Blow Out the Sun was staged at The Carnation Factory as the first project under the auspices of the ReinCarnation Project. Designed by Robert Brill and directed by Scott Feldsher, it was considered the signature of the Sledgehammer aesthetic, with then-Union-Tribune theatre critic Welton Jones writing, “More productions like this are needed as part of this city’s much heralded theatrical renaissance.” In the original production, the audience followed the action of the play from location to location, watching the action through doorframes, windows and automobiles. The new site-specific version, again directed by Feldsher, will use the same aesthetic, but will revisit the piece in consideration of both the new site and today’s socio-political climate. Be prepared to explore Sledgehammer’s brand of theatre. Appropriate attire suggested. Sneakers or combat boots recommended. This is no sit-down affair.