Aurora Theatre's Founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver to Direct WILDER TIMES, 11/2-12/9

Aurora Theatre Company founding Artistic Director Barbara Oliver returns to the company for its 21st season to direct WILDER TIMES, a collection of one-act plays by Thornton Wilder. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright, and former Berkeley resident, Thornton Wilder is best known for his full length play Our Town, but he was also an accomplished master of the short play form, specifically creating shorter works to be staged in spaces such as Aurora's, with the audience seated on three sides of the action or in the round.

Lifelong friends with Gertrude Stein and a mentor to Edward Albee, Thornton Wilder tirelessly experimented with theatrical forms and conventions. Aurora Theatre Company has put together a program of four of Wilder's greatest shorter works: Infancy (1962), a comedy about fulfilling basic human needs in which babies act like grown-ups and grown-ups act like babies; Childhood (1962), in which Wilder renders a child's-eye view of the grown-up world; The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden (1931), which features the first appearance of Wilder's narrating Stage Manager character (seven years before Our Town was produced); and The Long Christmas Dinner (1931), perhaps Wilder's most famous short work, in which he breaks the boundaries of time as we measure it, following 90 years of an extended family's holiday dinners. WILDER TIMES features Heather Gordon, Gwen Kingston, Soren Oliver, Marcia Pizzo, Stacy Ross, Patrick Russell, and Brian Trybon.

DATES: Previews: November 2, 3, 7 at 8pm; November 4 at 2pm; November 6 at 7pm
Opens: November 8, 2012
Friday Forum: Friday, November 30 – Grow Up
Script Club: Monday, December 3, 7:30pm – Stein Time by Gertrude Stein
Wicked Wisdom: Friday, December 7 – Life and Death Situations
Closes: December 9

SHOWS: Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2pm and 7pm
WHERE: Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA

TICKETS: For tickets (Previews $35; Regular Performances $32-50; Limited Opening Night Seating $60) the public can call (510) 843-4822 or visit auroratheatre.org. Half-off tickets for Under 30, student, and group discounts available.

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