Best of the Bay 2011: BEST SITE-SPECIFIC CLASSICISTS

Pub date July 26, 2011
SectionSpecial

This year marks the end of We Players’ three-year collaboration with the National Parks Service on Alcatraz Island. The project showcased the island’s scenic isolation in a number of artistic and community-building endeavors. The stage company’s 2010 marathon production of Hamlet was a tour de force of site-specificity, taking actors and audiences all over the island, including areas normally off-limits to the public. In their imaginative stagings of Macbeth, Hamlet, and Iphigenia, as well as their ongoing art exhibitions for, by, and about incarcerated juveniles and adults, the Players highlight themes of isolation, incarceration, justice, and redemption. They wield their art as a catalyst rather than as nostalgic revival. Their Alcatraz residency ends in the fall. In 2012, it partners with the California Parks Service to stage The Odyssey on Angel Island.

www.weplayers.org