Arts & Events

Around & About Theater: Inferno Theater with a New 'Dracula' at South Berkeley Community Church

By Ken Bullock
Wednesday November 14, 2012 - 08:09:00 PM

Giulio Cesare Perrone, one of the most talented theater designers here, and formerly with both the Grotowski Institute in Italy and Dell'Arte Theater School at Blue Lake near Eureka, has written, directed and designed a new adaptation of 'Dracula,' one that plays up the power of suggestion, possession and somnambulism, for his Inferno Theatre, the European-style physical theater company that performed notably at the Berkeley City Club in Perrone's 'Galileo's Daughters' and 'The Iliad' the past two years. Inferno's a unique company in the Bay Area. 

In residence now at the extraordinary old Arts & Crafts-designed South Berkeley Community Church, near Shattuck in the Lorin neighborhood, Perrone directs Simone Bloch, Valentina Emeri, Paul Davis, Julia Ellis, AeJay Mitchell, Ilya Parizhsky, Christina Shonkwiler and Shana van Spronsen in a truly mobile enbemble piece that employs design, music (Norman Kern's, played by Cairo McCockran) and dance to bring across Dracula as the ultimate outsider, bent on controlling society--and how society's ability to overcome contagion. 

Thursday through Saturday, November 29-December 1, and Thursday through Sunday, December 6-16 (Thursadys-Sundays at 8, Fridays-Saturdays at 9),1803 Fairview, at Ellis, a block west of Shattuck--& southwest of the Ashby BART Station. $12-$25, sliding scale. 788-6415, infernotheatre.org