By Robert Hurwitt · February 3, 2012

“It’s easy to identify with the stoned teenagers in ‘Jesus in India.’ Playwright Lloyd Suh brightly captures the hazy reactions, silly non sequiturs and ephemeral blissed-out epiphanies of weed-stoked adolescent male bonding in the world premiere that opened Wednesday at the Magic Theatre.

“He also has more fun with the words ‘mung bean’ than anyone has a right to. And director Daniella Topol and her creative team not only mine the comic riches of the script but also adorn it with the most ingeniously delightful camel ever seen onstage.”

Damon Daunno as Jesus

“Even at his most self-absorbed, [Damon Daunno as Jesus] radiates a charismatic, handsome, boyish goodwill that mediates both his more cavalier actions and his goofy punk rock persona. He’s also a scintillating guitarist and a clever folk-punk composer. (He wrote the show’s music.) The scenes in which Jesus and his bandmates discover his musical talent are highlights, and his ‘Mary had a little lamb’ spin-off is a gem.

“Bobak Bakhtiari is a gentle intellectual lost soul as drummer Gopal, whose rejection of Hinduism for Buddhism intertwines with Jesus’ dissatisfaction with the wrathful God of the Old Testament. Jomar Tagatac is a congenially angry cartoon of punk rock fundamentalism as Sushil. Mahira Kakkar does striking double duty as his giddy little sister Mahari, Jesus’ personal groupie, and as a calm, firm, all-knowing Mary, Jesus’ mother.

“Clearly we’re not in biblical territory here, except when we’re meant to be. Brandin Barón’s T-shirt-and-shorts costumes and Michael Locher’s dynamic grunge set – with its sticker-plastered walls and mound of trashed bicycles – anchor the action in the near past. As does the profanity-rich language of Jesus and his Judean companion Abigail in the early scenes.”

“…so much of the writing is so clever, comic and intriguing, and the teen male behavior so well observed and performed, that ‘Jesus’ is highly entertaining.”

Read the full review on the SFGate website here!

Get YOUR tickets to see Jesus in India while you still can!

Director Daniella Topol

October 2, 2011

Workshop DAY TWO:

The production team of the Jesus in India workshop was very busy today even though there was no rehearsal with our cast of actors. Lloyd, Daniella, and Shirley are all being put up in a house together for the duration of their stay in San Francisco. This heightened togetherness really gives them the opportunity to be even more enveloped in the play, plus it is helping them to develop a sense of community that will continue to evolve over the course of the production.

While Lloyd spent the whole day in the house writing, Daniella and Shirley were at Fort Mason. Daniella and Shirley saw the closing show of Magic’s Why We Have A Body and then joined the staff, cast, and crew for the closing night potluck celebration. After the potluck, Daniella met with the Jesus in India designers to discuss concepts for the production. Tomorrow, we get back to working with the actors!

Read about Day One here! Click here to see a fun video about the workshop.

Jesus in India opens TONIGHT and runs through February 19th. Get your tickets here!

By Robert Hurwitt · January 29, 2012

Three years ago, playwright Lloyd Suh galvanized Magic Theatre audiences with the world premiere of “American Hwangap,” a funny, affecting family reunion for a separated Korean American couple and their disaffected children. Now Suh, 36, is preparing for another premiere at the Magic, “Jesus in India,” described as a play about what happens when a teenage Jesus of Nazareth runs off with Abigail of Galilee to the land “of Maharajas, punk rock and really good weed.”

The concept isn’t as snarky as it may sound. Suh grew up in the suburbs of Indianapolis among a “fairly active Korean church population” that “would gather every Sunday for services and Bible study in Korean.” He now lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their infant daughter. We reached him during a work break from rehearsals, at the Lark Play Development Center in Manhattan.

Playwright Lloyd Suh

Q: You started in theater as an actor?

A: It’s not necessarily untrue. I started in theater in college, which is a great way of being able to do all kinds of things without having to self-identify as an actor, a writer or a director. Before that I very much wanted to be a novelist. But when I got to Indiana University, I really liked being able to try on a lot of different hats. So I took an acting class, playwriting classes, directing classes, in addition to the focused fiction curriculum that I was on. Through that process I stumbled on the thought “maybe I would rather be a playwright.”

I think it was kind of rooted in the community aspect of theater, being able to do something similar to what a novelist does but with people in the room and building a kind of community. That really appealed to me.

Q: This is your second world premiere with the Magic. What was it like last time?

A: It was fantastic. Loretta Greco is really warm and supportive and smart, and rigorous too, which is a great combination. And it was right after the theater was coming out of that difficult financial time. So there was great energy around being able to keep on going and making exciting work. There was a feeling that there was a lot at stake for everybody.

One of the great things about the Magic is that there is a kind of premium on discovery in every aspect of what they do. They very much encourage writers, directors, actors to use the time to continually discover, even knowing there’s a schedule and this is when people show up – not wanting to limit that energy of constant investigation and constant discovery, from the first moment to the last.

Q: It’s a long process.

A: Absolutely. I’m the kind of writer who – I like constantly looking at it, thinking about it and looking for opportunities to deepen or strengthen, clarify. I’m kind of crazy that way. Part of what I like about theater is that it’s so present tense, that it always feels like, OK, what is it today?

Q: How would you describe the play?

A: I’ve always been interested in the fact that we don’t know anything about what happened in the life of Jesus Christ from about the age of 12 until 30, the lost years. That’s when you really discover who you are, and I remember hearing in a class that there was evidence to support the idea that he may have traveled east, through India and Tibet.

I thought it would be a really interesting idea for a play, an 18-year-old Jesus backpacking through India the way a contemporary college student backpacks internationally, trying to find himself. But I never knew my way into that story until I started thinking about – you know, all these movies in the past five years or so, like prequels? And we’re at the dawn of a new century, a time of re-examining our big cultural markers in order to figure out who we are.

That was the beginning of my way in, looking at one of our biggest cultural markers and personalizing it in a way that was honest to being that age, trying to figure out where one belongs and who one is – not in terms of political identity or even religious identity but in a deep personal way. So I hooked into this idea of a parable, and I found that a very freeing way to take that story without having to be accurate about the historical Jesus or the historical situation in Galilee or Judea or India.

So it’s a contemporary parable looking at the coming of age of a young man before he became what we think of when we think of Jesus. It’s like a biblical prequel. I feel simultaneously great and really sheepish about that. It may seem like an overreach, but I’m not trying to write another book of the Bible. I’m just trying to tell an honest story about now, using the stories of then.

Q: This can be a controversial topic.

A: It could, yeah. I’m sensitive to the fact that a lot of people could come into the play with deep-seated ideas of what that character means. I never wanted that to limit me, but I always wanted to be mindful of it. It’s my hope that even if people look at the play in the early going as potentially sacrilegious or blasphemous, that by the end they’ll see that’s not my intention, that what seems profane is in the service of an honest and more reverent intention.

Q: Loretta says you “ask some really profound spiritual questions” with this play.

A: One of the things that’s been most rewarding and most challenging is that there are never easy answers to questions like that, but it’s exciting to ask them. I don’t think any play can or should try to answer all of them, but I’m trying to ask the right ones.

Click here to read the interview on the SF Gate website!

Don’t wait to get your tickets to see Lloyd Suh’s Jesus in India now through February 19th!

Lloyd Suh, playwright of JESUS IN INDIA

October 1, 2011

Workshop DAY ONE:

A playwright, a director, a dramaturg, a few actors, and a couple of interns gathered around a table with scripts in hand.

And so began the first day of our five-day workshop for the Jesus in India script! Many of the artists in the room were meeting for the first time, and the excitement to dive into the task at hand was evident. Lloyd Suh (playwright), Daniella Topol (director), and Shirley Fishman (dramaturg) were joined by actors Bobak Bakhtiari, Erin Gilley, Jomar Tagatac, Juliet Tanner, and Tobie Windham. After introductions were made, we jumped right in.

Dramaturg Shirley Fishman

We all listened while the actors cold-read the entire script out loud. As a group, we discussed each character and some of the major themes apparent in the script—parent/child relationships, personal identity, destiny, religion (just to name a few). Director Daniella Topol guided the discussion, addressing questions that were key to the script’s story and characters. As Lloyd jotted down notes, it was clear that the discussion was filling him with all kinds of ideas for what he wanted to explore in his next set of rewrites.

Keep checking back to read more about the rest of the workshop and to watch some video interviews!

Jesus in India opens TOMORROW and runs through February 19th. Get your tickets while you can!

By Andy Propst · January 26, 2012

Playwright Luis Alfaro has won a 2012 Joyce Award. The annual prizes, which carry a $50,000 cast grant, are given to commission artists of color to help them create new works with cultural institutions.

Working with Enrique Adyanthaya and Marlina Gonzalez, Alfaro will write a season of plays based on the ideas behind the fusion of Latino and Asian cultures, that will be created in collaboration with two Minneapolis/St. Paul theater companies, Teatro del Pueblo and Pangea. The plays will range from love stories of interracial couples exploring tensions between their two communities to a children’s story adapted from a fable.

Alfaro’s plays include Electricidad, Downtown, No Holds Barrio, Body of Faith, Straight As A Line,Bitter Homes and Gardens, Ladybird, and Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.

Other 2012 Joyce Award winners include visual/multimedia artists William Pope.L and Rafael Lozano-Hammer, and choreographer Reggie Wilson.

Click here to read the article on the Theatre Mania website!

Back in the fall of 2009, Lloyd Suh (American Hwangap, Magic Theatre, 2009) started working on a new piece—Jesus in India. The script was chosen to be part of Magic Theatre’s Virgin Play Series both in 2010 and 2011 where the script was workshopped by Lloyd and a group of other artists. A table-read of the script followed in NYC, which brought Lloyd together with Daniella Topol, director of the world-premiere production happening right now at Magic.

Early in October of 2011, we had artists fly in from all over to participate in a five-day workshop focusing on the script development of Jesus in India, which is about to have its world premiere here at Magic. Over the course of about twenty hours of cumulative rehearsal time, Lloyd, Daniella, and dramaturg Shirley Fishman worked with professional actors to explore the script in great depth.

Stay tuned to this blog, and I’ll give you an insider’s look of what happened throughout the workshopping process with day-by-day observations, photos, video interviews!

Keep checking back for more behind the scenes insights into the Jesus in India workshop and world premiere production!

Jesus in India opens on February 1st! Click here to get your tickets!

Do you remember your very first encounter with live performance?

When I was about six years old, my mother allowed me to take the day off from school so she and I could go see The Nutcracker together. I was immediately transported to another world, and I just remember that I wanted someone to wave a magic wand and turn me into a ballerina. I’ll never forget the day, several years later, when my mother revealed to me that those ballerinas work very hard and that their feet become ugly and deformed from the rigors of that profession. That discovery really opened my mind to the passion and dedication required in the creative arts.

Why do you think theatre is an important art form?

There’s something magical about watching live performance that I don’t get from going to the movies or watching TV. Because the other audience members, actors, stage manager, house manager(s) and ushers are all present before, during, and after the performance, I really experience it as an immediate social event shared with a floor full of people who are actively engaged in the production.

Of all the shows you’ve seen at Magic, which has affected you most and why?

Wow, that is SUCH tough question because I can’t think of a Magic production I haven’t loved! I guess the one that really hit me over the head was Mauritius because I hadn’t expected that story to bring up issues I’d had with my own family about the hierarchy of power among the bereaved and the pain of being at the bottom of that hierarchy. I went to the show wondering, “How can a story about a stamp collection be compelling?” Then, as I witnessed Zoe Winters as Jackie in that emotional meltdown scene, I was overwhelmed by her incredible performance. The other thing is, every actor in that production surprised me in some way. Warren David Keith’s Philip shocked me as he turned conspirator; James Wagner’s Jekyll/Hyde turn as Dennis shocked me; Arwen Anderson’s Mary was so icy I had a hard time silencing my inner dialogue; and Rod Gnapp as Sterling, selling us on the sexual excitement of that idiotic stamp, was just too hilarious. I loved how the humor and pain were tightly knit together in that production; the direction of Mauritius was better than anything I’d ever seen.

What makes Magic unique?

Magic is like no other theatre I go to because such big work is presented on this little thrust stage. It’s big in terms of its literary quality and value, its directorial genius, the captivating performances by the actors, the top-notch talent in the stage, set, costuming, and sound teams, and the genuinely warm and supportive patron services team. I became a subscriber about three years ago; now I can’t imagine not being a subscriber.

Why do you think featuring the new work of emerging playwrights is valuable?

I have a BA in English Literature, and I studied all the classics in college. When I got out and had time to find my own stuff to read, I remember discovering author Zora Neale Hurston at a local bookstore. I remember browsing a couple of pages of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and I just could not believe that no one had ever mentioned her in my literature classes. I immediately bought about 5 novels by her and read them all. What I love about Magic Theatre is that you get to see masterpieces in the making. When I reflect back on seeing Oedipus el Ray by Luis Alfaro or Annapurna by Sharr White, I think, “This must be like what it was to live in the 1500s and discover Shakespeare.”

Why is it important to support the arts in one’s community?

I think if we don’t support the arts in our own community, we risk losing that local creative energy. I feel so spoiled by the high quality of art we have in the Bay Area. We have wonderful art museums, one of the world’s best orchestras in the San Francisco Symphony, and several amazing theatres. Magic Theatre is my favorite; production after production, the quality of what Magic gives us is like nothing else on the West Coast.

Have your own Magic experience that you’d like to share? Leave a comment—we’d love to hear what you have to say!

Also, Magic needs YOUR help to reach our goal for this year’s annual fund. Click here to find out how you can help!

December 6, 2011 · By Clinton Stark

Magic Theatre in San Francisco is one of the all-time greats. Since we began covering theater on Stark Insider in 2009, we’ve seen umpteen memorable shows and performances there: Mauritius, Or, The Brothers Size, Oedipus el Rey, among so many more. Those that have been on the Bay Area theater scene longer than I know that Gods have tread upon its legendary stage including Sean Penn, Peter Coyote, Danny Glover, and Ed Harris.

Magic Theatre in Fort Mason

Based at Fort Mason (building D), the location is also a gem. It’s one of those experiences that only live theater can afford; the intimate thrust stage configuration is icing on the cake.

Playwright Sharr White (Annapurna) recently said, “Magic Theatre is once again one of the most exciting venues in America for new work.”

Now Magic wants us to “help make magic together” by raising $100,000 by the end of 2011.

A lofty goal, but if we can get the word out and turn on our Tweets and Facebooking into overdrive, we might be able to make a difference.

Unfortunately, for the arts in general, fundraising is an on-going process. I can only imagine how tough it is to raise money in this economic environment.

In an email, Michaele James, Magic Theatre Trustee and Chair, Development Committee wrote, “Ticket sales cover less than half the cost of putting exciting plays on our stage. Please support our mission of developing and producing electrifying new plays by the most captivating playwrights.”

Any donation counts. Click here to be taken to a page where you can help us all continue to make Magic together.

Click here to read the article on the Stark Insider website.