About This Show
Berkeley Rep presents the world premiere two-play cycle Continental Divide, by David Edgar, directed by Tony Taccone.
Internationally acclaimed playwright David Edgar turns his attention to American politics with this two-play cycle examining both sides of a gubernatorial campaign. These two plays, which can be seen in either order, explore what has happened to the revolutionary fervor that took hold of both the Right and the Left in the 1960s, and how it has been transmuted and carried on in politics today.
A joint commission by Berkeley Rep and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
MOTHERS AGAINST
It is five weeks before the election and Sheldon Vine, the Republican candidate for governor in a very tight race, has gathered with his key advisors to prepare for the big debate with his Democratic opponent. Vine’s own leanings are distinctly libertarian, but revealing his true beliefs and running a forthright campaign would risk alienating the voters. Over the course of the weekend one thing becomes clear: this battle–the one he must fight with his advisors, including his own family, over what kind of campaign to run–is the most crucial of his career, with implications that could change his entire life.
DAUGHTERS OF THE REVOLUTION
Michael Bern, a former campus radical and retiring community college dean, discovers years later that the political collective of which he was a prominent member in the ’60s had been infiltrated and betrayed to the FBI by one of their own–a betrayal with consequences for Michael’s career and marriage long after he thought he had left his radical past behind. As he sets out on a journey to find the traitor, he must come to terms with the man he has become and the relative success, or failure, of his political ideals.
