To the delight of South Bay audiences, the San Jose Repertory Theatre is bringing back the much loved A Christmas Story this winter. They are also offering more ways for families to enjoy the play. A Christmas Story runs from November 21 – December 20, 2009, at the San Jose Repertory Theatre, 101 Paseo de San Antonio in downtown San Jose.

The San Jose Rep is again trying to help everyone afford to see a show this season. Besides their Pay What You Will Tuesdays, their second annual Black Friday Ticket Sales Event will be Friday, November 27. You can save up to 41% on tickets for any of their remaining shows of the 09-10 Season. All Balcony tickets will be $29 each if purchased on Black Friday. They are even waiving the handling fee! Tickets are available for all their remaining shows: A Christmas Story, The Weir, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Sonia Flew.

To take advantage of San Jose Rep’s Black Friday Event, patrons may purchase tickets by calling the box office at (408) 367-7255 or in person at the San Jose Rep Box Office at 101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose, CA 95113. The box office will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

And more! Pay What You Will Tuesday for A Christmas Story is November 24. Family Packs, which include two adult and two youth tickets, are available for A Christmas Story at the affordable rate of $99 and $119. New this year, are Stocking Stuffer Gift Packs for $89 and $69. Live theatre makes the perfect holiday gift – it’s good for the environment and uplifting for the human spirit. The $89 stocking includes two ticket vouchers for any show in the 09-10 Season, a box of assorted chocolates from San Jose’s own Schurra’s Confectioners, and a bottle of champagne. The $69 stocking includes two ticket vouchers for any show in the 09-10 Season. A gift of live theatre at the Rep is creative, hassle-free and green. To order San Jose Rep Stocking Stuffers, call the box office at 408-367-7255.

The SJ Rep is helping you help the community – AND see a play!

The San Jose Repertory Theatre has always been a leader in bringing the arts to everyone and giving back to the community. This season they are taking even broader steps in this direction.

In order to help community members who cannot afford regular priced tickets to the outstanding productions held at the Rep this year, they are offering Pay What You Will Tuesdays. The first preview Tuesday for each production of San Jose Rep’s 2009-2010 season, starting with the Tuesday, September 1 production of As You Like It, will be open to all members of the community for a suggested ticket price of $10, however any amount will be accepted. In addition, a canned food drive for Second Harvest Food Bank will have food bins in the lobby hoping for your donations. In this way any member of our community can not only see an exciting new production at the SJ Rep, but they can also help Second Harvest help those who are in even greater need.

Tickets go on sale at San Jose Rep’s box office one week prior to the scheduled performance. Seating is general admission and will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

Pay What You Will Tuesday:

• Groundswell – Tuesday, Oct. 13

• A Christmas Story – Tuesday, Nov. 24

• The Weir – Tuesday, Jan. 26

• Ain’t Misbehavin’ – Tuesday, March 16

• Sonia Flew – Tuesday, May 11.

If you don’t make it to this Tuesday’s preview of As You Like It, you can still see the production of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays at the SJ Rep from August 29 to September 27.

Sibling rivalry, royals in exile, mistaken identities, cross dressing (no kiddin’), and love at first sight, all make an appearance in this bewitching and sophisticated comedy about freeing oneself from the shackles of technology and finding oneself in nature. Really! The actors will be texting onstage, and you can too, during intermission and after the show!

Don’t miss this exciting new production. San Jose Metblogs is excited to attend the September 4 show and we will have our review up by Saturday afternoon. See you at the Rep!

The 48 Hour Film Project is a filmmaking challenge in which anyone can participate, though only the most committed and strong-hearted come through it with their sanity intact – and sometimes not even then. Participants join up as teams and are then given 48 hours to write, shoot, edit and score a film using surprise parameters given to them at the kick-off. Those specific parameters are: a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue. Then each team draws a specific genre of film, such as a Buddy Film, Comedy, Drama, Horror or Mockumentary. Each individual film can be about anything the filmmaker desires, as long as those parameters are followed. And that is the point when the teams are let loose to create their films. No one but the unsuspecting public will see these filmmakers for the next 48 hours.

After the films have been turned in on Sunday night, the fun really begins. This Wednesday and Thursday you can attend the screenings of those films at the Camera 12 theaters downtown. For only ten dollars you can see several of the shorts and even meet the filmmakers of these imaginative films.

The elements for San Jose this year are:

Character:  Zach or Zelda Alexander, Exterminator

Prop:  a piece from a board game

Line of Dialogue:  “Tell me again why this matters.”

The screenings are at 7:00pm and 9:30pm on Wednesday and Thursday. You may purchase tickets HERE. Don’t miss either of these fun and exciting movie evenings!

There are three ways to purchase tickets starting Monday, August 3:

• On-line at http://sjrep.com beginning at 12:00 a.m.

• By phone at 408.367.7255 during box office hours beginning at 10:00 a.m.

• In person at the box office downtown, 101 Paseo de San Antonio, between 2nd and 3rd Streets.

Single ticket prices start at $33. Five and six play subscriptions are also available for as low as $125. Discounts are offered to seniors, students, teachers, ADA or ASL members and groups of ten and more.

San Jose Rep also offers flexibility and value with Design Your Own (DYO) and Flex Pass packages. Choose the plays you want to see, when you want to see them with the Design Your Own package. Simply mix and match the days of the week and select 3, 4 or 5 plays to create an individualized season package. Save up to 20% and receive benefits that include free ticket exchange and complimentary ticket upgrades. For the ultimate in ticket flexibility, choose the Rep’s convenient Flex Pass. At a discounted price from single tickets, the Flex Passes are vouchers that can be redeemed for any main stage performance in the parterre or balcony section. Attend productions with one friend, bring all your friends to one production, give tickets away as gifts – the possibilities are endless.

The Rep launches the 2009-10 season with one of Shakespeare’s most sophisticated and bewitching comedies As You Like It. Next is the Regional Premiere of Groundswell, a haunting, psychological thriller about dashed dreams, enduring hope and the promise for a just post-apartheid society. Back by popular demand is the holiday classic A Christmas Story. In the New Year, the Rep presents the 1997-98 recipient of the “Laurence Olivier Best New Play,” The Weir, by Conor McPherson. In the spring, the joint will be jumpin’ to the musical styling of “Fats” Waller with the Tony® Award-winning musical revue, Ain’t Misbehavin’. The season concludes with a funny and moving family drama Sonia Flew.

Follow the SJ Rep on FaceBook for access to special discounts.

Follow SJ Metblogs on Twitter for instant notifications about new articles.

California Theatre

The best kept cinema secret in San Jose (even among typically well-informed local cineastes) is the summer Friday and Saturday evening programs at the California Theatre.  I recently spoke with filmmaker Alejandro Adams and Cinebanter podcaster Michael Vox about their trip to the Cal Theatre to watch PLAYTIME with fellow filmmaker Jarrod Whaley and Cinequest screenwriting competition winner Mary Szmagaj and her husband Bill.  The beautiful, refurbished Cal Theatre has shown films on its large screen for several years as part of the Cinequest Film Festival, but most film fans aren’t aware that at 7 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, a classic film is unspooled in front of a small, but devoted group of viewers.

The price: $5.  The balcony: available.  The ushers: incredibly polite.  Saturday night popcorn price: free.

For the first time anyone can remember, popcorn and drinks were not only allowed, but encouraged. Take it from someone who has personally been told to put their water bottle away by Mr. Packard himself, this last piece of news is a big deal. Up in Palo Alto, the Stanford Theatre has been showing classic films for years, and now we have our own version of that program right on First Street, a few steps from Original Joe’s. Where else can you listen to a live organist play famous movie scores before the show starts? Where else can you sit in an actual full-sized balcony where the image on the screen will complete with the beautiful design and colors of the theatre itself?

This summer, the programming runs from the much-seen: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, WEST SIDE STORY, SOUND OF MUSIC to the little-seen: PLAY TIME to the silents: KID BROTHER, BLACK PIRATE. This weekend, July 31-August 1, they are playing 1967’s CLEOPATRA.

The price can’t be beat and while watching, it is hard not to feel as if you’ve been transported back in time, when grand movie halls still existed. Do yourself a favor. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

The complete summer schedule can be found here.

The Second City - On Tour Cast: (Top Row L-R) Niki Lindgren, Megan Wilkins, Dana Quercioli (Bottom Row) Cody Dove, Tim Robinson, Mark Raterman

This is an adult show and sometimes blurs the lines of appropriateness, however I never really cringed and certainly did laugh a great deal. I thought the Sing-a-long at the Retirement Center skit was hysterical but almost everything they did was hysterical. It was a really fun evening, and if nothing else, a really COOL evening.

This show is only at the Rep through Sunday, July 19, so you need to get your tickets now before you miss your chance. Due to the volume of ticket sales their ticketing server has been down so you need to call the box office at 408.367.7255 to reserve your seats. Do not miss out on this great show!

Become a fan of the SJ Repertory Theatre on FaceBook for alerts to great discounts to all their shows.

Follow San Jose Metblogs on Twitter to get instant alerts to local news and events.

And why not have dinner downtown before the show? My guest and I went to Gordon Biersch for a light dinner of several appetizers; I cannot recommend their current specials enough. Their coconut shrimp was to die for.

Kevin B. McGlynn as Rafreaky in a spoof of The Lion King

On July 7 I attended a production of Forbidden Broadway at the San Jose Repertory Theatre. I knew little about this show before I attended. It is described as “New York’s longest running musical comedy revue that parodies, jeers and cheers American musical theatre,” but I would say that it skewers the business of Broadway just as much if not more. Because of this, I think it really speaks to those of us who are very much into the history of Broadway, who are familiar with “the business”, and who are aware of many of the personalities important to the Broadway scene. Those of us who are less up on Broadway news but know our Musical theatre will also enjoy it, just in a different way. The short run of this production should serve to keep the theater filled, and if you fall into any of the above categories you should definitely make time for this production and make reservations quickly.

The show is a quick series of musical performances. Some parody specific shows or people, but many point to more than one. In a show that is less than 90 minutes long, I counted at least 30 specific musical or personality references, so you can see that this moves along quickly. The taking over of Broadway by Walt Disney is a running theme throughout the show, along with the new trend of valuing puppets and fuzzy costumes over actual meaningful content. Personality references include Patti Lupone, Liza Minnelli, Harvey Fierstein and Ethel Merman among others. Musical references run the gamut from Fiddler to Hairspray to Phantom to Wicked to Gypsy and everything in between. Special attention is given to producer Cameron Mackintosh, costumer Julie Taymor, choreographer Bob Fosse and composer Andrew Lloyd Webber.

If you are a Broadway fan you should definitely not miss this show. It runs through Sunday, July 12 so get your tickets now!

San Jose Repertory Theatre
101 Paseo de San Antonio, San Jose
408-367-7255
Online

July 14 – July 19 a brand new show will arrive at the Rep: The Second City on Tour! That’s right, Chicago’s legendary comedy theatre will pay a short visit to the SJ Rep and will feature some of the best sketches, songs, and improvisations from The Second City’s forty-five plus year history. Another summer show you won’t want to miss!

Follow The San Jose Rep on Facebook to get information on special ticket offers!

Follow San Jose Metblogs on Twitter to get instant alerts to new items posted!

The side-splitting savagery known as Forbidden Broadway is on the road again with their newest edition! Now celebrating its record-breaking 25th year in New York, this year’s victims include the puppets of “Avenue Q,” the witches of “Wicked,” “Billy Joel’s Movin’ Out,” and a new look at old favorites such as “La Cage aux Folles,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” “Les Miz,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Chicago.” Rounding out the laughs are Mel Brooks’ “The Producers,” ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” and “Thoroughly Modern Millie;”  with lots more Broadway past and present.

The show is running from July 7 through July 12 with a matinee show on Saturday the 11th. For the Thursday and Saturday performances you are invited to join the Rep after-hours in the Curtain Call Patron Lounge for live piano music and premium wine, and you may even see a cast member or two! I think the most interesting deal is the Cabaret Club Package. This “swanky and unique package” includes two seats at intimate cabaret tables adjacent to the stage and a bottle of premium wine for you to enjoy during the show! Having never been to a cabaret style show before I am sure this would be fabulous fun.

San Jose Metblogs will be attending the opening night show and we will have a review up as quickly as possible. It’s a great time to get a babysitter and have dinner and a show downtown! We hope to see you there!

Forbidden Broadway is the recipient of an Obie Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the 2005 Drama Desk Award for Best Off Broadway Musical.

“Wonderful! There’s no Broadway like Forbidden Broadway!” -Entertainment Weekly
“Hilarious and brilliantly wicked” -The New York Times
“Gut-Busting Funny!” -New York Post

The San Jose Repertory Theatre
101 Paseo de San Antonio, CA 95113-2603
Purchase tickets online
Call 408.367.7255 for Cabaret Club Package

Alejandro Adams give the extras instructions

Our first job was to sit in the church sanctuary pretending to be the congregation while two actresses, Jennie Floyd and Marya Murphy, sang some hymns and read church announcements. This was a very easy job to perform while they shot it over and over from different angles. I’m not going to lie, it was HOT outside and we were all happy to just be sitting in the air conditioned church. Some of us agreed later that after a few takes we sort of were paying about as much attention as one usually does during church announcements and hymns, so our vaguely pleasant but bored looks should come off as very realistic.

Next they asked to film us entering the church. This took several tries as we all sort of single file walked quickly through the church doors and into our seats, as if we had all been outside the church chanting “Open-Open-Open” and couldn’t wait to get in. Adams and crewmember Ali Allie patiently asked us to please walk slower and in smaller groups, and eventually we got it.

Walking around outside the church was the next scene. We were put into groups and stood in different spots on the grounds; Allie would say “Action!” and each group was asked to walk to a different spot. These scenes were harder to get through as the temperature was far into the 90s that afternoon and we were sweating up a storm. At least most of us women were wearing dresses, but most of the men had long sleeved shirts, some with jackets. My group also had to walk up several stairs to a dead end balcony about three times; a friend I had brought complained that I had not told her she would be doing cardio work! But we all survived.

Jennie Floyd speaks with Alejandro Adams

At different points during the day we were let into the Fellowship Hall where there was a bounty of snacks and drinks set out for the crew and extras. I noticed the teens especially were thrilled with all the chips, granola bars and sweets available; the adults were mostly interested in the cold water, juice and soda. All in all it was a very relaxing few hours we spent at the church and we were well taken care of. Alejandro Adams was polite and soft-spoken as usual, and the crew was professional and did their jobs as quickly as possible.

When the main shooting was over Adams explained that we were able to leave, however he did need a couple extra people to shoot one final scene. Joann Landers and I were included. About six of us plus the two actresses went into a small church room where we sat down around a conference table. We had to pretend to be discussing the “sermon” we had “just heard” and then Jennie Floyd was to pipe up with a line that was completely shocking, insensitive and inappropriate. The extras just had to go silent as Marya Murphy then had to respond in a manner that was so heartbreaking I wanted to get up and give her a hug after each take. Luckily we only had to do that scene a couple times over; I don’t think any of us could take Marya’s increasingly heartrending performance.

Marya Murphy takes a break from filming

We were let go after that. Jennie Floyd assured me her character was not the insensitive jerk she appeared to be in that scene, and Marya has told me the movie is not depressing; I’m not sure I believe either of them, but there are certainly 20-25 people at that church who cannot wait to see this movie when it comes out! We all would like to thank Alejandro Adams for inviting us into his movie family and letting us be a part of his film. His crew are wonderful people and those he casts are always incredibly talented. We certainly wish him much success with Child of God!

Alejandro Adams’ films:
Around the Bay
Canary
Babnik
Amity
Child of God

Students Catalina Corral and Lizette Calderon enjoyed being stars for a day

So who knew San Jose had its own Roller Derby teams?

We knew, but we forgot. So when I met Ana Z from the Silicon Valley Roller Girls I could not wait to attend a bout.

I took my 17 year old daughter and three of her friends to the June 13th bout with San Jose’s Dot.Kamikazes against the Santa Cruz All-Stars. These two teams seem to have quite a rivalry, and both the derby girls and the audience were looking forward to the match up. We arrived 30 minutes early to San Jose Skate and found the parking lot full! There was still plenty of parking over at the business park next door though. Being new to the whole Roller Derby scene there was quite a lot to take in when we first entered the doors. Everyone was wearing black and green (team colors), there were green hair and wigs, tattoos, and some of the most amazing and interesting people you could imagine.

On the floor of the rink were folding chairs lined up around a taped off skating circle, so our group took seats about four rows back. Premium ticket holders got to sit in comfy couches, but the folding chairs had just as good of a view. While we could see just fine, next time we plan to get there earlier so we can be in the front row. This row does carry a warning in the program though: “Front row is SUICIDE SEATING due to crashing rollergirls. Sit at your own risk please!” While waiting for the bout to begin there were raffle tickets to buy, Roller Derby goodies to purchase, and lots of pizza and nachos and snacks to eat.

The bout began with a helmet and pad check of the girls, then an explanation of rules and demonstration of roller derby. This was really helpful to us newbies, and allowed us to enjoy our experience fully. The basic rule you need to know is the “Jammer” (girl with a star on her helmet) from each team scores points by breaking ahead of the pack to pass the other players. One point for every player passed, including anyone in the “naughty box”. As for the rest of the players, no “unladylike behavior” is allowed. It’s not the knock-down drag-out fight you see in the movies – but don’t think it’s without excitement! Although fighting, and blocking by hands, elbows and head are not allowed, plenty of other pushing IS allowed and the crowd cheered loudest whenever anyone fell (or was pushed) down.

This particular bout was very exciting. The teams were super psyched to face off with each other and you could tell by the play. However, it was the SV Roller Girls, our home team, who took the early lead and never let it go! Final score was 131-100 and it was exciting to the very end.

Multiple raffle prizes were called throughout the bout, everything from skateboards to tattoos. Pizza, nachos, and soda were enjoyed along with all the excitement, and we even had Tasty Hoops hula hoopers for halftime entertainment. All the Derby Girls are awesome, and had great derby names. Everything from Booty Vicious to Juicy K. Tore to Smashleigh to The Undie Taker, the girls go by pseudonames and they don’t ever depart from them. Mistits was a fan favorite, but my personal fave player and Jammer was Smashleigh. I definitely recommend that you find a way to get to a bout and enjoy all the juicy Derby goodness these girls have to offer.

Missed the bout? The next official home bout won’t be until August 8th, but NO WORRIES!! Because today is a FREE Roller Derby Exhibition bout at Roosevelt Hockey Rink, 901 E Santa Clara Street, San Jose. Action starts at 5pm! I recommend you get there early, and then make plans for the August 8th bout as soon as you get home!

Silicon Valley Roller Girls
Calendar and maps
Nocklebeast’s derby photos

Special thank you to Nocklebeast (from the Santa Cruz side!) for the use of his derby photos – you need a very fast shutter speed to catch these girls in motion!  Click on the link to see lots more excitement!