Bay Area stage shows aimto get people to vote
It’s less than month before the election and tensions are running high, to put it mildly.
With theaters still shuttered because of COVID-19 precautions, two of the Bay Area’s biggest stage companies are gearing their online offerings toward getting out the vote and emphasizing the high stakes of this precarious moment in American history.
Shortly before the 2016 election, Berkeley Repertory Theatre premiered a new stage adaptation of “It Can’t Happen Here,” Sinclair Lewis’ cautionary 1935 novel about the United States turning into a fascist dictatorship virtually overnight by the election of a folksy, charismatic demagogue who stirs up fear and hatred while promising a return to American greatness.
Original ly adapted by then- artistic director Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen and directed by Lisa Peterson, that all-too-timely drama now lives again, newly adapted into a four- part radio play featuring most of the original cast plus Academy Award nominee David Strathairn.
Presented in partnership with many other theaters around the country (including at least eight other Bay Area companies), the radio drama is available through No. 8o n YouTube, once again very much as a lead-up to the presidential election.
You can link to it at berkeleyrep.org or theatreworks.org.
Meanwhile TheatreWorks Silicon Valley is doing its own new online initiative in anticipation of the election.
Intended to help stir up the vote, amplify diverse
voices and advocate for racial justice, “Voices of Democracy”
features a variety of online events, including: • Readings of stirring poems by Beau Sia (read by a stellar cast of nine Bay Area performers) and Langston Hughes (read by actor Aldo Billingslea and new artistic director Tim Bond).
• An interviewwith Tony Award winner and TheatreWorks veteran James Monroe Iglehart by former artistic director Robert Kelley.
• Streaming productions of “It Can’t Happen Here” as well as TheatreWorks’ 2018 production of “Hold These Truths,” Jeanne Sakata’s Japanese internment drama based on the true story of Gordon Hirabayashi and starring Joel de la Fuente (streaming through Nov. 3, .theatreworks.org).