 | "We're making a play for tomorrow." |
| "We're making a play for tomorrow." |
First Seen, the Bay Area producing playwrights' collective, continued its 2003 season with Trucker Rhapsody, Toni Press-Coffman's original drama about the 1992 Los Angeles riots and their lingering effect on the lives of Reginald Denny, the trucker whose bloody assault at the corner of Florence and Normandie became an iconic representation of the events, and Damian Williams, one of the men imprisoned for attacking Denny. Press-Coffman's play draws in part on interviews she has conducted with Williams over the past several years. Trucker Rhapsody was directed by First Seen Artistic Director Katherine Murphy. It was presented at EXIT Stage Left, 156 Eddy Street, San Francisco, November 14 to December 13, 2003.
Says Press-Coffman, "The day after four white police officers were acquitted of having beaten motorist Rodney King, my son joined a group of students in his 10th grade math class who walked out of their high school classes in protest of that verdict. 500 miles south of that high school, Reginald Denny was being pulled out of his truck and assaulted by, among others, a young man named Damian Williams, three years my son's senior, outraged and out of control. Four people -- three of whom saw his assault on their televisions and ran into the street to help him, and all of whom were black -- saved Denny's life that day. I wrote the first draft of Trucker Rhapsody ten years later, turning around and around in my unconscious the complex meaning for race relations of these events. Denny recovered and testified -- essentially on his behalf -- at Williams' trial, and became friends with the young man's mother. Following his lead perhaps, I contacted Damian Williams, who is in jail for another crime of which he claims to be innocent. In his first letter to me, Damian asked 'How did you know my name?' I suppose it was then that I realized, at least in my creative imagination, that whatever else Trucker Rhapsody would become, it was Damian's play. Each of the characters in Trucker Rhapsody -- two of Denny's rescuers, Damian's mother, a graffiti artist from New York City, and Denny himself -- has a story. Their stories then are each a part of Damian's story."
The author of 20 plays, Toni Press-Coffman was born and raised in the Bronx. In 2000, she was awarded a highly competitive NEA/TCG Playwright Residency Award with the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, IN, with which she developed her play, Bodies and Hearts in the Face of the Monster (subsequently re-titled That Slut!), which received a West Coast premiere with First Seen in May 2002. Press-Coffman's play Touch was created with a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, was produced at the 2000 Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, and is currently under option for a New York production. Touch has won several national playwriting awards and has been produced in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Columbus, Columbia, SC, and Athens, Greece. Her play about Richard III, Two Days of Grace at Middleham, was produced in 1998 at Tucson's Borderlands Theatre. It was subsequently produced by First Seen in San Francisco in June 2000 and then traveled to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This production of Trucker Rhapsody was funded in part by grants from the Puffin Foundation, a national foundation that supports work in the arts that deals with social justice issues, and the San Francisco Arts Commission.
Director Katherine Murphy lives and works in San Francisco. She received a BA and an MA in Drama, from U.C.-Irvine, and San Francisco State University, respectively. While in Los Angeles, Murphy worked with The Los Angeles Theater Collective and The Pacific Shakespeare Company, where she was a founding member of both companies. Since moving to San Francisco, Murphy has divided her time between acting, writing, and directing. She has worked as a Guest Artist at Mills College where she directed Hedda Gabler. She returned in Spring 2001 to direct The Vagina Monologues. With Bare Bones Theatre, Murphy has performed in two Beckett pieces and one original work, as well as co-directing and co-writing Cutting Through the Fog. As a director with other companies her work includes a collaborative effort entitled WiseAcres at New Langton Arts and two shows by Harold Pinter for Brown Bag Theatre Company. She directed the world premiere of Kerry Reid's Unhampered by Sanity in Summer 2002. In the fall of 2000, Murphy assisted John Miller-Stephany on a new adaptation of Jean Anouilh's Léocadia by Jeffrey Hatcher at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theatre. She also assistant directed with Miller-Stephany at the Guthrie in Fall 2001 on a revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. When she returned to San Francisco, Bare Bones and First Seen co-produced the world premiere of Greater America in May 2002. Her latest work, To Hades and Back (Again) will be produced by First Seen in 2004. Also a founding member of the improv troupe Too Many Larrys, she has performed at The Punchline, Spanganga, The Field, and Sweetie's, and appears regularly at The Marsh's Mock Cafe and on Liberation Radio. Murphy joined First Seen as a playwright member in October 2000, and is now an Artistic Director.
First Seen is run collectively by the member playwrights, and has been presenting new work in all stages of development -- readings to full productions -- since 1998. The company's goal is to provide the playwright, audiences, and other theater artists the opportunity to see and hear new work onstage. The company grew out of the Bay Area playwrights' workshop ThroughLine.
Since its founding, First Seen has staged thirteen readings, three workshops, and seven full productions. Member playwrights have had their work produced at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre in Louisville, KY, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis, IN, and many other national stages. First Seen has received funding from the California Arts Council, The Zellerbach Foundation, Bank of America, the City of San Francisco's Cultural Equity Grants program, the Puffin Foundation, and the CA$H grants program of Theatre Bay Area (sponsored by grants from the Hewlett and Packard Foundations and San Francisco's Grants for the Arts). Theatre Rhinoceros is the fiscal sponsor for First Seen.
What happens when a piece of history is explored over a decade later and adapted for the stage? For playwright Toni Press-Coffman, a riveting drama unfolds, exploring race relations, justice and perception. Directed by Katherine Murphy, this First Seen production explores the life of Damian Williams, a black man sent to prison for the beating of white trucker Reginald Denny that took place during the 1992 L.A. riots. Incorporating actual footage of the uprisings that transpired after the Rodney King verdict was announced, and drawing on interviews conducted with Williams, now imprisoned for an unrelated crime, Trucker Rhapsody follows not only the character of Williams to tell his story but also those of New York graffiti artist Riot 208 (who renamed himself after Denny's truck); William's mother, who demanded a fair trial for her son; and two of the people who took Denny to the hospital after the beating. From L.A. to New York, from childhood to adulthood, Trucker Rhapsody spans distance and time in an attempt to piece together the events that unfolded. The top-notch script is brought to life with a powerhouse of theatrical talent. This is one not to be missed.
-- Anna Mantzaris, special to SF Gate