repertory
A repertory theatre is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation.
United Kingdom
Annie Horniman founded the first modern repertory theatre in Manchester after withdrawing ...
theatre
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...
group located in
San Francisco, California
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
. It was founded in 1972 as the Shorter Players by
Chris Silva
Chris Silva Obame Correia Silva (born September 19, 1996) is a Gabonese professional basketball player for the College Park Skyhawks of the NBA G League. He played college basketball for the South Carolina Gamecocks.
Early life
Silva was born in ...
Carl Lumbly
Carl Winston Lumbly (born August 14, 1951) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Dick Hallorann in '' Doctor Sleep'', NYPD detective Marcus Petrie on the CBS police drama ''Cagney & Lacey'', CIA agent Marcus Dixon on the ABC espiona ...
. In 1974 its name was changed to the Eureka Theatre. In October 1981 the company was staging David Edgar's ''The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs''
when their space in the basement of the Trinity Methodist Church burned in an arson attack. By 1990 the company had moved to an industrial building at 2730 16th Street in the Mission.
The company is noted because in 1986
Oskar Eustis
Oskar Eustis (born July 31, 1958) has been the Artistic Director at the Public Theater in New York City since 2005. He has worked as a director, dramaturg, and artistic director for theaters around the United States. and
Tony Taccone
Tony Taccone (born July 4, 1951) is an American theater director, and the former Artistic Director of Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California.
Early life
Tony Taccone was born on July 4, 1951 in Queens, New York, to an Italian-America ...
, then its artistic director, commissioned a play from
Tony Kushner
Anthony Robert Kushner (born July 16, 1956) is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage he's most known for his seminal work ''Angels in America'' which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award. At the turn ...
. Eustis had seen Kushner's play ''
A Bright Room Called Day
''A Bright Room Called Day'' is a play by American playwright Tony Kushner, author of ''Angels in America''.
Synopsis
The play is set in Germany in 1932 and 1933, and concerns a group of friends caught up in the events of the fall of the Weimar ...
'' in New York. The contract specified it should run no more than 2 hours, and include songs. With help from a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, it eventually turned into ''
Angels in America
''Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes'' is a two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for O ...
'', two three-and-a-half hour plays with no songs. In 1991 the company staged the world premiere of the first part, '' Millennium Approaches'' and staged readings of the second part, ''
Perestroika
''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...
'', which was still being written.
The cost of staging ''Angels in America'', about $250,000, ended the Eureka's career as a production company, although they continued to present plays, In 1998 the company took over the Gateway Theater in Jackson Square. Due to rising costs and the 2013 diversion of San Francisco's hotel tax fund away from the arts
the company closed on 5 July 2017.
The Wayback Machine has a list of the company's productions up to 2001, and details of the 2009 to 2017 seasons.