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Berkeley Shakespeare Festival
California Shakespeare Theater ("Cal Shakes") is a regional theater located in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Its performance space, the Lt. G. H. Bruns III Memorial Amphitheater, is located in Orinda, while the administrative offices, rehearsal hall, costume and prop shop are located in Berkeley. History Founded as the Emeryville Shakespeare Company, the company began performances with Hamlet, performing several shows at scattered churches and venues around the East Bay. It became established 1974 in John Hinkle Park in Berkeley, with productions of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' with Deborist Benjamin as Peaseblossom, following her role as Celia in the premier production of ''As You Like It'', and '' The Tempest'' (with Rolf Saxon). It was founded by a group of amateurs who wanted the enjoyment and experience of acting and production: no one was paid, and the plays were free. The company produced several more plays in 1974–1975, including ''Pantagleize'' by Mi ...
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Orinda, California
Orinda is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city's population as of the 2020 census is estimated at 19,514 residents. History Orinda is located within four Mexican land grants: Rancho Laguna de los Palos Colorados, Rancho Acalanes, Rancho El Sobrante and Rancho Boca de la Cañada del Pinole. The area was originally rural, mainly known for ranching and summer cabins. The Moraga Adobe was built in 1841, and is the oldest building in the East Bay. In the late 19th century, the land was named by Alice Marsh Cameron, probably in honor of the poet Katherine Philips, who was also known as the "Matchless Orinda". In the 1880s, United States Surveyor General for California Theodore Wagner built an estate he named Orinda Park. The Orinda Park post office opened in 1888. The post office's name was changed to Orinda in 1895. Orinda was also the site of Bryant Station, a stop on the failed California and Nevada Railroad around the turn of the 20th century. La ...
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Zelda Fichandler
Zelda Fichandler (née Diamond; September 18, 1924 – July 29, 2016) was an American stage producer, director and educator. Life and career Zelda Fichandler came from a family that emigrated from Russia when she was an infant. Her father, Harry Diamond, was a brilliant scientist who created the proximity fuse. Zelda started working in pursuing sciences until the day that she spilled hydrochloric acid down her shirt and burned herself; she decided to pursue acting instead. At age 4, she moved from Boston area to Washington D.C. as her father accepted a job at the National Bureau of Standards. Aged 8, she performed as Helga in ''Helga and the White Peacock'' at the Rose Robison Cowen’s Studio for Children's Theatre. Zelda Diamond's husband, Thomas C. Fichandler (August 9, 1915 – March 16, 1997), along with Edward Mangum, a professor of theater at George Washington University and Zelda's teacher, cofounded the Arena Stage theatre in 1950 in Washington. It was the city's first ...
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Stephen Barker Turner
Stephen Barker Turner (born June 27, 1968) is an American stage, television, and film actor. Career Turner was born in St. Louis, Missouri on June 27, 1968. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Juilliard School. Career After starring in numerous stage productions, Turner made his film debut in '' Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2''. He had a small but important nonspeaking role in ''Cosmopolitan'' (2003). He has also appeared in the television shows '' Swift Justice'', ''Sex and the City'', ''Law & Order'', and '' Law & Order: Special Victims Unit''. He played title role of Charlie in '' Seducing Charlie Barker'', an independent film adaptation of Theresa Rebeck's stage play '' The Scene'', released in December 2011. He is an associate artist at the California Shakespeare Theater, where he appeared as the titular character in their 2005 production of ''The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby ''Nicholas Nickleby'' or ''The Life and Adventures of Nichola ...
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Annette Bening
Annette Carol Bening (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over four decades, including a British Academy Film Award and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and four Academy Awards. Bening began her career on stage with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival company in 1980, and played Lady Macbeth in 1984 at the American Conservatory Theater. She received nominations for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her Broadway debut in ''Coastal Disturbances'' and for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for '' All My Sons''. She is a four-time Academy Award nominee for her performances in the films '' The Grifters'' (1990), '' American Beauty'' (1999), ''Being Julia'' (2004), and '' The Kids Are All Right'' (2010). In 2006, she received a motion picture star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her achievements in the film industr ...
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Mahershala Ali
Mahershala Ali (; born Mahershalalhashbaz Gilmore, February 16, 1974) is an American actor. He has received multiple accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. ''Time'' magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019, and in 2020, ''The New York Times'' ranked him among the 25 greatest actors of the 21st century. After pursuing an MFA degree from New York University, Ali began his career as a regular on television series, such as ''Crossing Jordan'' (2001–2002) and ''Threat Matrix'' (2003–2004), before his breakthrough role as Richard Tyler in the science fiction series ''The 4400'' (2004–2007). His first major film role was in the David Fincher-directed fantasy '' The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'' (2008). He gained wider attention for supporting roles in the final two films of ''The Hunger Games'' film series, and in ''House of Cards'', for which he received his first Primetime Emmy Awa ...
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Todd Rosenthal
Todd Rosenthal is an American scenic designer. He won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Scenic Design and the 2009 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Set Design for Steppenwolf Theatre Company's '' August: Osage County''. A native of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, Rosenthal received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University and a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama, where he received the Donald M. Oenslager Scholarship for Stage Design. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York and Moore College of Art. Rosenthal made his Broadway debut with ''August: Osage County''. He considered the three-level set, which he called a juxtaposition of the "gothic and the whimsical," to be a central character in the play. Of it he said, "It's immovable, an indelible image ... people move out, but the house never changes." Rosenthal's regional theatre credits include productions for the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Centerstage in Baltimore, Alley Theatre i ...
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Brian Sidney Bembridge
Brian Sidney Bembridge (born 1973) is an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer for theater and film. His work has been seen on stages and screens throughout the country and Internationally in Australia, Germany, Prague, Ireland, and Great Britain. Mr. Bembridge has also taught and lectured at many universities across the country. He holds a BFA from University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Career Bembridge has designed sets, lights, and costumes for many Off-Broadway productions and regional theaters. He has also taught and/or lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, Southern Methodist University, Webster University, the Theater School at DePaul University, Loyola University Chicago, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Lake Forest College. Theaters Mr. Bembridge's work has been seen Off Broadway at The Public Theater, Second Stage Theatre, Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre at Bouwerie Lane Theatre, Firework Theater Co ...
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Christopher Akerlind
Christopher Akerlind (born May 1, 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American lighting designer for theatre, opera, and dance. He won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design for ''Indecent''. He also won the Tony Award for Best Lighting Design and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lighting Design for '' Light in the Piazza'' and an Obie Award for sustained excellence for his work Off-Broadway. He attended Boston University College of Fine Arts (1985) and the Yale School of Drama, training with Jennifer Tipton. He was Head of Lighting Design and Director of the Design & Production Programs at the CalArts School of Theater. He has designed many Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, working on both musicals and straight plays. He is noted for his work for director Lloyd Richards on the first productions of the plays of August Wilson, including ''The Piano Lesson'' (1990) and ''Seven Guitars'' (1996). He was the Resident Lighting Designer for twelve years at the Opera Theatre ...
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Kate Whoriskey
Kate Whoriskey (born 1970)
by Misha Berson, Seattle Times, September 4, 2010
is a freelance theatre director.


Personal life

Whoriskey grew up in . She majored in theater at (Experimental Theater Wing) (graduating in 1992) and in 1998 she completed a post-graduate program in directing from the 's (A.R.T.)
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Amanda Dehnert
Amanda Dehnert is an American regional theater director and professor at Northwestern University. Career Dehnert grew up in Illinois and graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University with a degree in musical theater. She received training as a concert pianist as child and also learned to play the French horn, flute, trumpet and harpsichord, but in college she discovered musical theater. In 1994, at the age of 21, Dehnert entered Trinity Repertory Company's conservatory program in Providence, Rhode Island as a student. She performed there as a musician before becoming a musical director, and later was put in charge of a production. Some of the shows she staged for Trinity Rep were ''West Side Story'', ''A Moon for the Misbegotten'', ''The Skin of Our Teeth'', ''Peter Pan'', ''Noises Off'', ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'', ''My Fair Lady'', ''Othello'' and '' Saint Joan''. Iris Fanger wrote that "Audiences have applauded ehnert'singenuity in setting George Bernard Shaw's "St. Joa ...
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Richard III (play)
''Richard III'' is a play by William Shakespeare. It was probably written c. 1592–1594. It is labelled a history in the First Folio, and is usually considered one, but it is sometimes called a tragedy, as in the quarto edition. ''Richard III'' concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy (also containing ''Henry VI, Part 1'', ''Henry VI, Part 2'', and ''Henry VI, Part 3'') and depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. It is the second longest play in the Shakespearean canon and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of ''Hamlet'', otherwise the longest, is shorter than its quarto counterpart. The play is often abridged for brevity, and peripheral characters removed. In such cases, extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere to establish the nature of the characters' relationships. A further reason for abridgment is that Shakespeare assumed his audiences' familiarity with his ''Henry VI'' plays, frequentl ...
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Henry VI, Part 1
''Henry VI, Part 1'', often referred to as ''1 Henry VI'', is a Shakespearean history, history play by William Shakespeare—possibly in collaboration with Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe—believed to have been written in 1591. It is set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas ''Henry VI, Part 2'' deals with the King's inability to quell the bickering of his nobles and the inevitability of armed conflict and ''Henry VI, Part 3'' deals with the horrors of that conflict, ''Henry VI, Part 1'' deals with the Hundred Years' War#French victory: 1429–1453, loss of England's French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, as the English political system is torn apart by personal squabbles and petty jealousy. Although the ''Henry VI'' trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III (play), ''Richard III'' to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of t ...
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