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Meet the Director

MARY ZIMMERMAN is the creator of KC Rep's smash hit Metamorphoses. She is the recipient of a 1998 MacArthur Fellowship for her original production of The Arabian Nights. She also won the 2002 Tony Award for best direction and 10 Joseph Jefferson Awards, including ones for best production and best direction. She is the Manilow Resident Director of Goodman Theatre, a member of the Lookingglass Theatre Company of Chicago, an artistic associate of Seattle Repertory Theatre, and a professor of performance studies at Northwestern University.

Works which she has adapted and directed include Mirror of the Invisible World and Silk at the Goodman Theatre; The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci at the Goodman, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and Seattle Repertory; The Odyssey at the Goodman, Lookingglass, McCarter Theatre and Seattle Repertory; Arabian Nights at Lookingglass, MTC and BAM; Journey To The West at the Goodman, Huntington Theatre and Berkeley Repertory; Metamorphoses at Lookingglass, Seattle Repertory, Berkeley Repertory, Mark Taper Forum and Second Stage; Secret in the Wings at Lookingglass, McCarter and Berkeley Repertory; and Eleven Rooms of Proust at Lookingglass and About Face.

The Arabian Nights

Spencer Theatre

Jan. 30-Feb. 22, 2009

Written by Mary Zimmerman
Directed by Mary Zimmerman

A Co-Production with Berkeley Repertory Theatre

 

Fun for the Whole Family from the Creator of the Smash Hit Metamorphoses

From the creator of the Broadway and Kansas City smash Metamorphoses comes this glorious and extraordinary retelling of one of the greatest epics of world literature. Zimmerman’s stunning theatrical event is a series of stories brilliantly woven by the beautiful princess Scheherezade — one story a night, for 1001 nights, to save her own life. As long as she can keep the king entertained with her magical stories of beauty, honor, love, and the search for wisdom, he will spare her.  With Zimmerman’s famed fusion of gorgeous music, inventive staging, and highly theatrical storytelling, The Arabian Nights gives us an exhilarating view of the lush, rich legacy of the place we now know as Iraq. Creator/director Mary Zimmerman is the recipient of a 1998 MacArthur ”Genius” Grant, the 2002 Tony Award for Best Director and ten Joseph Jefferson Awards. "If you want theatre at its most unpretentiously poetic, most fetchingly stylish, as humane as it is elegant, I commend to you The Arabian Nights." --New York Magazine

The Buzz

“…this ingenious entertainment travels to co-producers Kansas City Rep and Chicago's Lookingglass Theater Company's stages after Berkeley Rep; other nonprofits would be wise to keep it on the road indefinitely.”—Variety

“Enchantment…Stories are flying carpets in Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights. Performed by 15 resourceful actors and staged with a maximum of invention by Zimmerman, the ancient tales magically transport the Berkeley Repertory Theatre audience from a king’s bedroom in Baghdad through markets, harems, courts and a crowded privy, and from heights of hilarity to sobering affirmations of shared humanity…Zimmerman has a genius for building stage spectaculars from the most basic, old-fashioned materials [and] the actors transform themselves into an exhilarating panoply of expertly etched characters.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“a magical night of theater…wildly funny, touchingly emotional, highly dramatic, visually captivating, madly energetic…There is a grand-slam, winning-the-World-Series sort of exhilaration to seeing top-notch theater performed by actors working at the peak of their game. You could feel it Wednesday night in the intermission buzz at Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s production of Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights, a spectacular retelling of the old ‘1,001 nights’ tales staged so wonderfully well that you feel somehow better off just to have been in the theater that night. This rare and breathtaking piece of theater made it into my all-time Top 10 list maybe 15 minutes after it started, and it just kept climbing the chart as its 2 1/2-hour production flew along.”—Contra Costa Times

“A sultry fantasy that refreshes the senses…Berkeley Rep’s Arabian Nights casts a spell of myth and whimsy…Tony-winning theater alchemist Mary Zimmerman has become famous for breathing fresh life into primal fables, from Metamorphoses to Argonautika. Time and again, she reconnects us to the myths and fables dancing at the edges of our collective subconscious…It’s a celebration of the craft of the storyteller from which we too emerge recharged, renewed.”—San Jose Mercury News

“Zimmerman’s got a great gimmick: she creates beautifully designed, expertly acted vehicles for sophisticated storytelling. In a very grown-up way, she turns us into kids slathering for a juicy bedtime story. And she always delivers…Zimmerman’s 15-member ensemble tumbles and spins through the tales with grace and glee. They drum, they play stringed instruments, sing, dance and jump from one character to another with ease and clarity. And they’re gorgeous in the shimmering, flowing robes and gowns and drapes provided by costumer Mara Blumenfeld. [Yet] The Arabian Nights never devolves into frivolity. There’s weight to the stories that comes from sadness and wisdom, and when, at the end, Zimmerman echoes present-day Baghdad, the oft-described ‘city of peace and poets,’ we sense the depth of history and our place in it.”—Examiner.com

“Berkeley Repertory has opened a magnificent production of The Arabian Nights, written and directed by Tony Award-winning Mary Zimmerman…Tales of romance, intrigue and betrayal, brilliantly performed by a superbly talented cast of 15. And it’s all backed by traditional music and a fabulous open set…It’s truly a spectacle to behold, and it’s just perfect for the holidays.”—KGO-AM

“If you want theatre at its most unpretentiously poetic, most fetchingly stylish, as humane as it is elegant, I commend to you The Arabian Nights. [It] sails as smoothly and magically as the caliph’s boat on the moonlit waves of the Tigris.”—New York magazine

“The fables delight and instruct while steaming toward an unsettling finish.”—Washington Post

“[A] feast for the eyes and ears.”—Chicago Magazine

“Zimmerman could stage the Chicago phone book and have it be fascinating.”—USA Today

 

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