San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
A four-page Borges story unfurls onstage
In Jorge Luis Borges’ four-page short story “The Book of Sand,” from 1975, the narrator opens his door to a stranger peddling a strange book. It’s different every time he opens it, the page numbers are mathematical oddities following no sequential logic; and try as he might, he can never find the first or the last page.
The world-bending story is partly about how any book might have wonders between its covers, and partly about how treasures become burdens; how our delight in them can become acquisitiveness.
Now Lisa Ramirez (pictured) — an actor with her own uncanny world-shifting abilities, and a playwright with a keen sense of lyricism and a solicitous ear for how people actually talk — adapts the short story for Oakland Theater Project, where she serves as associate artistic director. Susannah Martin, who makes scripts shine, directs.