the MAGIC THEATRE and PLAY ON SHAKESPEARE announce: Richard II
A new translated version by NAOMI IIZUKA
from William Shakespeare
Directed by Karina Gutiérrez
The Second Premiere Play of the Iizuka Repertory
following the premiere of Garuda’s Wing
August 21 -September 8, 2024
The Magic Theatre is proud and excited to present Richard II by William Shakespeare, translated by Naomi Iizuka and announce the cast and creative team for this brand new production. This profound and potent new play is directed by Karina Gutiérrez. Richard II will perform from August 21 – September 08, 2024 in the Young Performers Theatre (Southside Theater) in Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Boulevard, Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). The opening party performance and press opening will take place on Saturday, August 24 at 8:00 p.m.
About RICHARD II
This production is the second half of the Naomi Iizuka Repertory and it continues Magic Theatre’s Residency with Play On! Shakespeare. The acting company of Garuda’s Wing will perform in both this brand new play and the new version of Richard II, to be directed by Karina Gutiérrez, premiering at the Magic Theatre in August. This is the first of many with this ambitious project: the first production with the Magic Theatre and Play On Shakespeare!; the first production as part of Play On Shakespeare! as a Resident Company of the Magic Theatre; the first Repertory Project in years for the Magic Theatre; the first time Naomi Iizuka has returned to the Magic Theatre and to work with long time collaborators Campo Santo in years; and the first time this new version of Richard II will be premiered. Iizuka wrote her original translation as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival initiative Play On- to create new versions of all the Shakespeare plays, NOT changing anything or editing, but rather updating and translating language for the modern ear to hear. Play On Shakespeare has not only had all the Shakespeare plays translated by an amazing array of contemporary writers, but now have productions across the globe, being taught in universities and many are published. Iizuka’s Richard II was one of the first published of these plays, and had an earlier production premiere locally with African American Shakespeare. This version is a more updated version, with a further condensed script, and featuring a largely cast of women and non-binary actors, along with two male actors. The Magic Theatre and Play On ethos is to “translate” in the sense, that it is still the Shakespeare story and words, but embodied with the people seldom featured in the Shakespeare plays- which is to say Women, Queer folx, People of Color, immigrants– the people who are at the center of our community. A model of this ethos is in production with the Magic Theatre’s Lead Director Sean San José’s version of Coriolanus produced by and at Portland Center Stage and currently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
About Naomi IIzuka
Naomi Iizuka is a playwright, producer, professor, and screenwriter. Naomi Iizuka’s plays include 36 VIEWS, POLAROID STORIES, ANON(YMOUS), LANGUAGE OF ANGELS, ALOHA, SAY THE PRETTY GIRLS, TATTOO GIRL, SKIN, AT THE VANISHING POINT, CONCERNING STRANGE DEVICES FROM THE DISTANT WEST, LAST FIREFLY, CITIZEN 13559, and WAR OF THE WORLDS (a collaboration with Anne Bogart and SITI Company), among others. In addition to teaching and playwriting, Iizuka is now a well regarded television and film writer, with credits as writer and producer on shows ranging from Michael Mann’s Tokyo Vice for HBO; to the adaptation of the multiple Emmy nominated The Sympathizer from Viet Thahn Nguyen, directed by heralded auteur Park Chan Wook. Her plays have been produced at theatres across the country including Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the Goodman, Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, the Guthrie Theatre, Cornerstone, Children’s Theater Company, the Kennedy Center, the Huntington Theater, Portland Center Stage, the Public Theatre, Campo Santo + Intersection for the Arts, Dallas Theatre Center, Seattle Children’s Theatre, and Soho Rep.
Her play GOOD KIDS was the first play commissioned by the Big Ten Consortium’s New Play Initiative and has since been produced at universities across the nation. Most recent projects include an adaptation of SLEEP, a short story by Haruki Murakami, in collaboration with the ensemble theatre group Ripe Time which was produced at BAM’s Next Wave Festival, the Annenberg Center, and Yale Rep’s No Boundaries series, and WHAT HAPPENS NEXT, a play written in collaboration with USMC veterans and their families, produced by La Jolla Playhouse Without Walls and Cornerstone Theater Company. Iizuka’s plays have been published by Overlook Press, Playscripts, Smith and Kraus, Dramatic Publishing, and TCG.
Naomi lizuka was named the Berlind Playwright-in-Residence at Princeton University. She is an alumna of New Dramatists and the recipient of a PEN/Laura Pels Award, an Alpert Award, a Joyce Foundation Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Stavis Award from the National Theatre Conference, a Rockefeller Foundation MAP grant, an NEA/TCG Artist in Residence grant, a McKnight Fellowship, a PEN Center USA West Award for Drama, a Hodder Fellowship, and a Jerome Fellowship.
A long time member of the Theatre Department at the University of California at San Diego, part Playwriting Faculty, Iizuka for the past decade and more has been the Head of Graduate Playwriting. She has taught a generation of now established writers from Lauren Yee to Jeff Agustine, and many others who are regularly produced throughout the country, as well as some who are active writers in television. Prior to her time at UC San Diego, Naomi was the Head of Playwrighting for the University of California at Santa Barbara. At UCSB, she founded and produced an annual Summer New Plays Lab- that brought incredible artists from across the country together to both develop their own brand new works and too, to work with students in new play workshop intensives. Artists through the years included Luis Alfaro, Daniel Jones, Chay Yew, Jessica Hagedorn, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Campo Santo new performances group, and dozens more.
In 1996 Naomi Iizuka was part of the anthology project Pieces of the Quilt – a collection of short plays by multiple authors showing the human face of AIDS. That project was conceived as a benefit project by the current Lead Director, Sean San José, in his first undertaking as a producer. That project opened the Magic Theatre’s 1996/97 season and included the short play, Scheherazade by Naomi Iizuka, which launched a long, ongoing relationship between Iizuka, Sean San José, and Campo Santo that has yielded numerous works throughout the country. Garuda’s Wing marks an exciting new chapter in the trio’s creative relationship. Campo Santo, the Magic Theatre’s first Home Resident Company, has a storied history with Iizuka, creating multiple premiere productions from Polaroid Stories, Language of Angels, 17 reasons (why), Blood in the Brain. These are plays that now have been produced throughout the country and have been subsequently produced.
About Karina Gutiérrez
Karina Gutiérrez (She/Her) is a Bay Area-based director, dramaturg, and scholar. She is passionate about supporting new play development, fostering local artists, and creating welcoming, equitable, and accessible theatre spaces and classrooms. She considers theatre a powerful space for social change and the mending, healing, and restoring of communities. She is thrilled to join the fearless team of artistic collaborators at Crowded Fire.
As a director and dramaturg, Karina has had the pleasure of working with Bay Area Children’s Theatre, BRAVA, Magic Theatre, Crowded Fire, Huntington Theatre, Magic Theatre, PlayGround, Playwright’s Foundation, Shotgun Players, Stanford University, TheatreFirst, Townhall Theatre, UC Berkeley, West Edge Opera, and Word for Word. She is additionally a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons Steering Committee, Theatre Bay Area, and a founding member of the Bay Area Latinx Theatre Alliance Network (BALTAN).
Karina received her Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from Stanford University, where she was awarded the Carl Weber Prize for integration of Creative Practice and Scholarly Research. Her scholarship concentrates on the intersection of politics and performance, specifically how digital interventions, institutionalization efforts, and historical narrative affect the development and sustainability of social and politically engaged performance companies and collectives in the Americas. She is currently a professor of Theatre History and Performance Studies in the Department of Theatre and Dance and Santa Clara University.
About Play On! Shakespeare
Play On Shakespeare is a non-profit company promoting and creating contemporary modern verse translations of Shakespeare’s plays that originated out of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Since its inception in 2015, Play On Shakespeare has commissioned dozens of contemporary playwrights and translators to translate 39 Shakespeare plays into modern English, with a majority of the commissions being helmed by BIPOC and womxn playwrights. Far from a paraphrasing exercise, each playwright was tasked with matching Shakespeare’s linguistic rigor as they approached the text, preserving rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, meter, imagery, symbolism, rhetoric, and the structure that make Shakespeare’s plays engaging and accessible to today’s audience. Play On Shakespeare partners with artists and organizations across the globe to deliver and advocate for these translations through theatrical productions, podcasts, and publications. For more information, visit playonshakespeare.org. Play On Shakespeare is made possible through the generous support of the Hitz Foundation.
About the Magic Theatre
Since the company’s founding in 1967 by visionary John Lion, the Magic Theatre has identified and cultivated writers on the cutting edge of American theatre, serving as a vital center for the creation and performance of new American plays. Sam Shepard developed and premiered his Pulitzer Prize-winning Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love during his decade-long Magic residency (1974-84), forever altering the shape of American drama. The Magic Theatre has entered a new Golden Age with the appointment of Sean San José as the new Artistic Director in June, 2021. With this new leadership, we are dedicated to making the Magic Theatre a home to more people by rightfully centering People of Color throughout the organization. While continuing to premiere bold and new plays as it has done for 55 years, we have expanded the vision with these new Programs: new Residency Program– which includes Home Resident Company Campo Santo, the historic Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (Artistic Director Margo Hall), along with Black Artists Contemporary Cultural Experience (Co-Artistic Directors Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and Rotimi Agbabiaka), Ellen Sebastian Chang/ Sunhui Chang, Saint John Coltrane Church, TigerBear Productions, and Play On! Shakespeare; new Performances Program, telling theatrical stories in dance, poetry, and music led by San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; and Resident Artists, highlighted by Playwright In Residence Star Finch and Resident Curator Juan Amador, and designers Russell Champa, Tanya Orellana, Joan Osato, Christopher Sauceda, and Brittany White. In addition to the new Leadership Team and Staff (Daniel Duque-Estrada, Brechin Flournoy, Oliver Holmes, Stephanie Holmes, Sara Huddleston, Kevin Nelson, Sean San José, Christopher Sauceda, Liam Vincent), we have energetically, artistically, and aesthetically shifted the whole space in ethos and activation, a redesign of the spaces (lobby, cathedral, and theatres) including multiple wall sized murals by local artists Mister Bouncer (Miguel Perez), Cece Carpio from the Trust Your Struggle collective, Adrian Arias, Ka’ala, and a space filled with legendary Black art from the Saint John Coltrane Church by Emory Douglas, Mark Roman, and Deacon Mark Doox. The space is open year round for engagement and entertainment, arts and activation from the plays to the people- the Magic Theatre is Home for bringing the City inside.
The Magic Theatre is located in the Marina District of San Francisco, at the historic Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture (Fort Mason, 2 Marina Blvd., Building D, 3rd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94123). For more information, visit MagicTheatre.org or call the box office at (415) 441-8822. The performance schedule is Wednesday through Saturday at 8:00pm and Sundays at 4:00pm.