Searching for Eden

Description

As one critic wrote about Searching for Eden: “In the beginning—and throughout the play—there was laughter. And the audience found it good.” More than a hundred years after Mark Twain wrote his own short stories about Adam and Eve, James Still combines those stories for Act One of Searching for Eden, and then imagines Adam and Eve in the present day for Act Two to create this completely original and contemporary play about the world’s first love story. Act One takes place at the dawn of time in the Garden of Eden. In the imaginations of Still and Twain, the Garden of Eden is a place where the battle of the sexes begins, where language is deliciously invented, and where loneliness and heartbreak are poignantly discovered. After intermission, we jump forward to the present day—but Adam and Eve have only aged into their 40s and are dealing with middle age and the distractions of high-power careers. Adam has surprised Eve with this trip back to Eden (a last-minute vacation package Adam found on the Internet) as an anniversary gift. The “first couple’ returns to present-day Eden (now an upscale resort simply called “E”) in an attempt to recapture the primal passions of their youth. While Act One is about childhood, discovery, and new love—Act Two is about middle age, rediscovery and trying to make old love new again. At its heart, Searching for Eden is about the pleasures and terrors of knowing one person—and being known by that person—for a long, long time.

The Beaver Island Performing Arts Alliance with generous support from Peter Amster is thrilled to bring this read-through production to the BIC Center stage.

Directed by Peter Amster

About Cindy Gold
Cindy’s recent Chicago area appearances include The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington/Steppenwolf Theatre, Christmas Carol/Goodman Theatre, Indecent/Victory Gardens, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof/Drury Lane, Measure for Measure/The Goodman, Awake and Sing/Northlight, Taming of the Shrew/Chicago Shakespeare, and at Lyric Opera in Showboat and My Fair Lady. Regionally, Cindy performed at Asolo Theatre (Florida) in The Cake, The Kennedy Center (Washington, D.C. National Opera) in Showboat and The Daughter of the Regiment (where she shared a role with RBG!) and Settlements (InterAct Theatre, Philadelphia). She appeared in Music Man at Glimmerglass Opera Company, both in New York and at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Oman. Cindy won a Jeff award for playing Gertrude Stein in Frank Galati and Stephen Flaherty’s Loving Repeating. She was recently seen on TV in Work in Progress, Empire, Chicago Fire, and the pilot episode of TNT’s Leverage. Cindy is a Professor of Theatre at Northwestern University.

About David Breitbarth
David is a 24 year Associate Artist at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Sarasota, Florida, where he has performed in over 80 productions. These include Murder on the Orient Express, A Doll’s House Part 2, The Crucible, Rhinoceros (also at A.C.T. in San Francisco), The Little Foxes, Both Your Houses, The Grapes of Wrath, Glengarry Glen Ross, Clybourne Park, Twelve Angry Men, God Of Carnage, The Kentucky Cycle, Nicholas Nickleby – parts 1&2, The Immigrant, Hobson’s Choice, world premieres of Men of Tortuga and Perfect Mendacity, Once In A Lifetime, A Flea in Her Ear — and at least 62 others. David is also a member of Florida Repertory Theatre’s Ensemble Of Actors since 2012 where he most recently performed in The Importance of Being Earnest and Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help. He spent a year on the road on the first national tour of Spring Awakening and has appeared Off-Broadway, in Los Angeles, and at numerous regional theaters around the country. David is a proud 2013 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow selected by the prestigious Ten Chimneys Foundation. He is delighted to be on Beaver Island for the third consecutive summer and with his good pals Peter, Cindy, and Daphne.

About  James Still
Still grew up in a small town in Kansas, and graduated from the University of Kansas. His award-winning plays have been produced throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. He is a two-time recipient of the TCG-Pew Charitable Trusts National Theatre Artist Residency grant (with the Indiana Repertory Theatre where he is IRT’s first-ever playwright in residence); he is also a winner of the William Inge Festival’s “New American Theatre” award, the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Playwright Award for Distinguished Body of Work, and three of his plays have received the Distinguished Play Award from the American Alliance for Theatre & Education. His plays have been developed and workshopped at Sundance, the New Harmony Project, the Bonderman, and New Visions/New Voices at the Kennedy Center.

His plays published by Dramatic Publishing include Searching for Eden: the diaries of adam and eve; A Long Bridge Over Deep Waters; Looking Over the President’s Shoulder; He Held Me Grand; And Then They Came for Me: Remembering the World of Anne Frank; A Village Fable; Hush: An Interview With Imerlea and The Velocity of Gary (Not His Real Name). Since its world premier in the American Heartland Theatre in Kansas City, Searching for Eden has appeared at several major theaters in the U.S. including Indiana Repertory Theatre, Stages Rep in Houston and Mill Mountain in Roanoke.

In addition to his work in the theater, Still also works in television and film and has been nominated for three Emmy awards, twice a finalist for the Humanities Prize, and a Television Critics Association Award. He is a producer and head writer for the series “Paz” airing daily on both The Learning Channel and Discovery Kids. For Nickelodeon he was a writer and story editor for Maurice Sendak’s “Little Bear.” He wrote “The Little Bear Movie” and the feature film The Velocity of Gary.

Still  now makes his home in Venice, California.

About Peter Amster
Peter Amster is happy to once again be bringing his actor friends to the island to share with you this funny, moving retelling of the story of Adam and Eve. He has been directing and choreographing theatre and opera for over 50 years. In Chicago, he directed and choreographed at the Goodman Theatre, Court Theatre, Northlight, Apple Tree, Route 66, Live Bait, the Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theatre, Chicago Symphony, and Steppenwolf. Elsewhere in the United States, he directed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, Peninsula Players, Weston Playhouse, Indiana Repertory Theatre, the Maltz Jupiter Theatre, Cleveland Play House, Syracuse Stage, Laguna Playhouse, and most recently, Gulfshore Playhouse in Naples. He taught theatre, opera, and performance studies at Northwestern University, Louisiana State University, CalArts, Columbia College, and Roosevelt University.

Peter with his partner Frank Galati (deceased) are among the Founding Families who launched construction of the Beaver Island Community Center.  Together they played a critical role in the design of the theater. Searching for Eden is generously sponsored by Peter.

About the Beaver Island Performing Arts Alliance

“The Beaver Island Performing Arts Alliance produces the Baroque on Beaver Festival and
promotes the performing arts with its partners to enrich the greater Beaver Island community.”

Beyond our signature annual event, the Baroque on Beaver Festival, the BIPAA strives to engage with the BI community broadly and in multiple types of artistic presentations with both summer-season and year-round arts programming. Additional 2023 events include a summer orchestra camp in association with The Dorothy Gerber Strings Program, the Beaver Island Jazz Series in association with the BIC Center and WVBI, music for the annual Independence Day Fireworks Display and a Christmas Concert in association with the BIC Center.  Learn more at www.baroqueonbeaver.org/bipaa.

About the BIC Center
The Beaver Island Community Center serves as the social heart of the community. Its 140-seat theater is the venue for a summer concert series, community concerts and theater, professional meetings, lectures, art sales, special children’s events  and more. Upstairs there are games, a pool table, PCs and printers, and a comfy corner to read a book or watch a movie on the occasional rainy day. The lobby has a concession stand, information racks stocked with brochures about island activities and benches and tables that are ideal for laying out plans for the day or grabbing a quick snack. The BIC Center serves as the trailhead for the island’s Birding Trail, Water Trail and History Trail, and it hosts WVBI-FM, the island’s radio station. Both the BIC Center and WVBI are operated by The Preservation Association of Beaver Island, a privately funded 501(c)(3) organization that does not receive tax support. Learn more about the BIC Center and find a calendar of island events at biccenter.org.