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season tickets

Please send an email to tickets@thepear.org and indicate which 5 or 7 plays you would like to attend and send a check with the correct amount to 1220 Pear Avenue, Unit K, Palo Alto, CA 94043.

Metamorphoses

written by mary zimmerman
directed by jeanie forte
Thursday - Saturday 8 PM
Sunday 2 Pm
june 26 - july 12

Cast: Maddie Sykes, Jake Vincent, Patricia Tyler, Diane Tasca, Bill C. Jones, Blaze Mancillas, Tom Ammon, Kristen Lo, Kevin Hsieh, & Shannon Stowe

the play

First performed by students at Northwestern University, where playwright Zimmerman is a professor of performance studies (she is also Manilow Resident Director at the Goodman Theater in Chicago), this play opened at Broadway's Circle on the Square Theater in March 2002. Based on Ovid's transformation myths, the play subtly mixes the ancient stories of pathos and tragedy with contemporary language, humor, and thought, all enacted in and around a large pool of water in the center of the stage. The themes of love, the inevitability of change, and the human ability to adapt to change are timeless, as is amply demonstrated by the sometimes eerie closeness of a vignette to the original lines from Ovid, which still manage to resonate with modern viewers.

director's note

I'm as excited about this production as I have been in a long time-- Zimmerman's text is so rich in language and imagery, and challenging at the same time, generating complex movement and relationships between characters as well as demands on actors playing multiple roles. And, of course, there's the pool-- any theatre that takes on the play has to deal with the technical challenge of creating a leak-proof and safe watery environment in which so much of the action takes place: the weight of the water, the temperature, the possible splashing, the caution against sharp costume trims-- all these considerations and more.

But more intrinsically, the director, cast, and production team have to account for all this water-- what's the justification? Is it just a clever gimmick or does it actually signify? There is the aspect of transformation, of the characters undergoing trials and radical changes in their lives, and coming out transformed; sometimes they learn and grow, sometimes they are doomed by their failure to learn, and always the water stands as the medium for their transformation. Rivers and oceans never stand still, are always moving, you can't stand in the same place twice-- and here, stepping into the water means something regarding the changes about to happen-- it's an unpredictable world, fraught with danger and distraction.

Water equates with change, but also with comfort and consolation-- water as the mother of our soul, both source and solace, where characters can find peace and healing amid the strife, or even a final resting place. And there is, throughout nearly all the stories, a thread of Love-- Love bound and unbounded, misguided, requited or not, the ultimate prize of life-- coming to us unbidden or in disguise, engulfing us when we least expect it, surprising and wonderful and disturbing; just as unpredictable as the changing river. All of this is in both the original Ovid as well as Zimmerman's adaptation, and her brilliant stroke of setting the myth stories in and around a pool simply highlights the power of the metaphor.

Embedded in the text is also a juxtaposition, a counterpoint of classical and contemporary-- the classic myths given more contemporary language and characters, but retaining a relationship with a universe of gods and goddesses, of living elements, of a sense of fate and divine intervention. The Pear's production will play out this counterpoint in set and costumes as well as lighting, making the connection between text and audience more palpable, more immediate-- so that these are not merely classic myths from some ancient culture, but stories for our time, for our own lives, preparing us for our own metamorphoses...

"Mary Zimmerman's beautiful and deeply humane Metamorphoses...arrives in this wounded city like a small gift from the gods" -- Wall Street Journal

"With its emphases on...the transforming powers of...the imagination...the production has been reducing calloused New Yorkers to sobs." -- New York Times