Crowded Fire Theater: The Late Wedding

Show Details

Christopher Chen

Following his success of The Hundred Flowers Project, playwright Christopher Chen is up to his meta-theatrical antics once again. This time around, Chen takes his cue from the sly writings of Italian fabulist writer, Italo Calvino. His winking second person narrative, delivered by a six-person shape-shifting cast, deftly guides you on a wild and delightful examination of love and longing.

At once an anthropological tour through marriage customs, a spy thriller, and a sci-fi love story, the only thing you can expect from the inventive, mind-bending The Late Wedding is the unexpected!

Cast

Featuring: Michele Leavy★◼, Lawrence Radecker★, Lauren Spencer, Michael Anthony Torres◼, Kathryn Zdan◼, Ogie Zulueta◼
Dramaturg: Laura Brueckner★
Assistant Director: Amanda Melton★
Stage Manager: Sohaa Mina Smith★
Scenic Design: Melpomene Katakalos
Costume Design: Miyuki Bierlein★
Lighting Design: Stephanie Buchner★
Sound Design: Cliff Caruthers
Scenic & Props Design: Devon LaBelle
Production Manager: Stephanie Henderson★

★ Crowded Fire Resident Artist
◼ Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Reviews

“beguiling and relentlessly inventive…another of Chen’s slyly metatheatrical, blissfully funny, whiplash-smart creations.” — SF Chronicle, Robert Hurwitt

“Wild, witty … Christopher Chen’s new, 90-minute comedy, ‘The Late Wedding,’ is…about the vagaries of love and marriage, both homo- and heterosexual, and the way that we both cherish and distort the past,….maybe a ‘Saturday Night Live’-type faux-anthropological sketch about the marriage rituals of non-existent tribes; a scene in a space ship; a play-within-a-play set in a lifeboat, who knows?” — The Examiner, Jean Schiffman

“…as smart as it is funny and as challenging as it is intriguing.” — TheatreDogs, Chad Jones

“Artistic director Marissa Wolf’s deft staging fully embraces and accentuates the weirdness of Chen’s assemblage of fragmenting vignettes. The terrific six-person cast continually morphs from one role to another, with some roles echoing others with similar interactions or snippets of repeated language.” — KQED Arts, Sam Hurwitt

Marriage Customs: Crowded Fire’s New Play Looks to an Italian Fabulist for a Story if Nostalgia and the Search for Love — an interview with director Marissa Wolf and Playwright Christopher Chen by SF Weekly’s Lily Janiak

Christopher Chen finds inspiration for new play in success of old. — an interview with Christopher Chen by SF Chronicle’s Chad Jones

Photos

Kathryn Zdan and Lauren Spencer are part of a fluid six person ensemble of actors who rotate in and out of multiple characters. As members of the Glynn Tribe whose marital customs celebrate the “promise” of marriage, the characters embark on two separate honeymoons to extend the sense of longing and embalm the anticipation of what could be.

Actor Michael Anthony Torres serves as one of six narrators in Christopher Chen’s The Late Wedding guiding the audience on an anthropological tour of imagined tribes and their marital customs.

Christopher Chen’s The Late Wedding takes on many flights of fancy including a play within the play featuring actors Michele Leavy and Ogie Zulueta as space voyagers performing the rumored plight of a crew member and his wife.

Kathryn Zdan portrays a playwright on an unusual journey while searching for her long lost wife. Michael Anthony Torres portrays the captain charged with manning the spaceship on this voyage to the mythical Calaman Islands.

Mythologizing the beloved is a strong undercurrent of Christopher Chen’s meta-theatrical The Late Wedding. Members of the Bakaan Tribe, Michael Anthony Torres and Lawrence Radecker, are filled with nostalgia for times gone by in a scene about remembering.

Funders

2014 Season Funding
Corporate Sponsor: Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP
Season Producer: Dugan Moore
San Francisco Grants for the Arts/Hotel Tax Fund
Kenneth Rainin Foundation

Production Specific Funding:
Corporate Sponsor: Weaver Austin Villeneuve & Sampson LLP
Producers: Carol & Burton Goldfield, Luis Tamayo & David Thompson, Andrew Meisel, Brad Rubenstein
Faculty Research Grant, Lehigh University
Fleishhacker Foundation
The National Endowment for the Arts
Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation

The Late Wedding is a Crowded Fire Matchbox Commission. Development for the piece is supported by funding from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the San Francisco Foundation, and The Tournesol Foundation.

The Late Wedding