In This Program

• A Star-Studded OVATION
• Celebrating the Legacy of Dr. Nina Kivelson Auerbach
• From Steinbeck to Solis
• Road Tripping
• Show Program
• Bios & Additional Credits
• Making Theatre
• Print Edition
• More about Berkeley Rep

A Star-Studded OVATION

On April 13, 2024, Berkeley Rep held our annual OVATION Gala at the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco to celebrate the power of live storytelling and musical theatre. This year, we honored Tony-award-winning director Michael Mayer and philanthropists Yogen and Peggy Dalal for their many contributions to the American Theatre. Co-chaired by Jill Fugaro and Sudha Pennathur, the event was a resounding success, raising over $800,000 for Berkeley Rep’s artistic, education, and community programs ­— and featured performances that brought the house down by Berkeley Rep favorites John Gallagher, Jr., Raúl Esparza, and more. We extend our sincerest thanks to Gold Sponsors Robin and Rich Edwards, Jill and Steve Fugaro, Bruce Golden and Michelle Mercer, Marcia Grand, Daniel F. Goodman, the Strauch Kulhanjian Family, and Gail and Arne Wagner, along with all of our Silver and Bronze Sponsors for their dedication to the vibrant future of live theatre in the Bay Area and beyond.

Celebrating the Legacy of Dr. Nina Kivelson Auerbach

Berkeley Repertory Theatre wishes to pay special tribute to longtime patron, Dr. Nina Kivelson Auerbach, who passed away in July 2022. Nina was a passionate, lifelong theatre lover and Berkeley Rep subscriber for over thirty years. In addition to being a loyal subscriber, attendee, and supporter, Nina had the foresight to include Berkeley Rep in her estate plans.

As hers is one of the largest legacy gifts to be received in Berkeley Rep’s history, we honor her commitment to our innovative artistic, education, and community programs. Nina’s extraordinary gift ensures that Berkeley Rep will always be at the forefront of American theatre — telling unforgettable stories for generations to come.

Please consider following Nina’s example and become a Michael Leibert Legacy Society member. Legacy gifts of any size are most welcome and greatly appreciated.

From Steinbeck to Solis

By Sarah Rose Leonard

Octavio Solis’ Mother Road descends directly from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Commissioned by The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, the play carries on the legacy of the novel’s protagonist Tom Joad and his extended family as they travel from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Mother Road reverses the Joads’ migration, traveling from “Weedpatch,” a migrant farmworker camp in Bakersfield, California back to Sallisaw, Oklahoma. You will meet two characters who are Joad descendants: William, Tom Joad’s first cousin, and Martín, Tom Joad’s great grandson. Along the Mother Road (Route 66) Solis’ Joad family collects strangers and friends from their past. 

Steinbeck’s fictional Joad family captured the American imagination. Every character’s story is interspersed with prose-poem interludes that paint a wider picture of the circumstances of the Great Depression. Steinbeck effectively causes his readers to understand their struggles as functioning inside of the problematic system of American agricultural economics. His simple, plain-spoken language and rich, detailed plot found wide appeal. The novel brought attention to the struggles of migrant farmworkers in America, arousing nationwide sympathy. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1940.

The novel earned Steinbeck a reputation as the “conscience of America.” Growing up among farmworkers raised his consciousness about workers’ struggles. Steinbeck was born in Salinas — the “salad bowl” of America — in 1902 to a working-class family where he developed a close relationship with nature. He spent his free time in the fields, and often spent summers in Monterey and Big Sur by the ocean. He decided to be a writer as a teenager. While attending Stanford, he signed on only for those courses that interested him: classical and British literature, writing courses, some science. The President of the English Club said that Steinbeck, who regularly attended meetings to read his stories aloud, "had no other interests or talents that I could make out. He was a writer, but he was that and nothing else."

To pay his way as a writer, he worked as a manual laborer and beet harvester. The people he met on these jobs deepened his empathy for workers. His first three novels (Cup of Gold, The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown) did not find success, but he broke through with Tortilla Flat in 1935. This series of humorous stories follows Monterey-based Mexican Americans on various adventures. His next novels followed agricultural laborers: In Dubious Battle (1936) tells the tale of a strike, and Of Mice and Men (1937) dives into the bond between two displaced migrant laborers. In 1939, he published The Grapes of Wrath. Both of those novels became famous films, furthering Steinbeck’s popularity. 

Steinbeck’s impressive body of work, including Cannery Row (1945), The Pearl (1947), and East of Eden (1952), shaped America's perception of rural laborers, raising awareness about the sources of the injustices they faced. His approachable, imaginative writing married social criticism with a fierce love of the land. Each novel contains rich symbolism, lifting up his characters’ struggles to an almost mythic level, while still grounding them with details of their quirks and flaws. Though Steinbeck lived the later part of his life in New York City, where he passed away in 1968, his fictional worlds took shape in California. His ashes reside in the Garden of Memories Cemetery in Salinas.

The playwright Octavio Solis began his relationship with Steinbeck’s work in 2010, when he adapted Steinbeck’s Pastures of Heaven, a collection of short stories. The resulting play premiered at California Shakespeare Theater with the SF-based company Word for Word, which theatricalizes short works of fiction. That project introduced him to the National Steinbeck Center. In 2013, Solis joined the Center on an 11-day trip that retraced the Mother Road route of the Joad family, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath. The journey began in Sallisaw, OK, a region where thousands of impoverished families like the Joads had to abandon their farms, and ended near Bakersfield, where the Joads found paltry work. Solis joined two other artists and staff members in collecting oral histories from Dust Bowl survivors and their descendants. Solis re-read The Grapes of Wrath on that road trip. He reflected, “One young man told me, ‘We’re the new Okies, and I’m the new Tom Joad.’ So, I thought, what if Tom had gone to Mexico and married a Mexican woman? What if Tom’s only descendant today was a Mexican living on this side of the border?”

Solis’ writing, like Steinbeck’s, has strong themes that he deepens and complicates with each new project. His characters live in in-between spaces spiritually and literally — much of his work takes place on, or is psychically about, the U.S./Mexico border. Solis was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, half a mile from the Rio Grande. As a kid, he saw up close the charged encounters between migrants and the Border Patrol. Those early impressions of people struggling with daily life on the border imprinted on his imagination and led him to create a body of work that both draws inspiration from and expands beyond the Mexican American experience. 

Solis began his career as an actor but transitioned to writing partially to create more roles for Mexican American artists. He moved from Dallas to San Francisco in 1989, where he developed rich collaborations with the Magic Theatre and Intersection for the Arts. He wrote plays for El Teatro Campesino, a leader in the Chicano theatre movement during the 1960s that has a perfect tie to Steinbeck: it was founded by a group of farmworkers and artists dedicated to educating workers about the need for a union. Solis’ early years as a writer saw him blending poetic prose with personal-as-political narratives. He also found a love for adapting classics from Shakespeare to Spanish Golden Age theatre. His Man of the Flesh (1987) adapts the Don Juan play, The Trickster of Seville, to Orange County, CA, where a Chicano womanizer is dispatched by his father to work as a gardener for a rich white family. In Dreamlandia (1998), an adaptation of the classic Spanish play Life is a Dream, each dream opens doors to the next, creating a profoundly trippy effect on the audience. The 1990s–early 2000s saw Solis’ plays produced on stages across the country. Most recently, you might have seen his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, entitled Quixote Nuevo at Cal Shakes in 2018. This Quixote rants at his windmills: drones in the sky, operated by border patrol. Solis is now one of the most-produced Latine contemporary playwrights in the U.S. 

His works are full of visions in many forms, not only dreams, but myths embodied, hallucinations, religious revelations. This style of writing is perfectly at home in the theatre, a place where leaps of imagination are required for any travel to happen. And like Steinbeck, Solis’ characters go on epic journeys, but are rooted in their homes (for Steinbeck, California, for Solis, the border). His immigrant characters struggle to leave and struggle to stay. 

In Mother Road the chorus says, “Family new-made of so many.” Solis' Joads create a chosen family on their road trip, and upon their arrival in Oklahoma create a hard won, forged home. This echoes Steinbeck’s Joad family, who lose blood relatives on their journey and gain friends upon their arrival who help them survive harsh circumstances. Both writers articulate the experience of home being something you lose, remake, and find again. In an article on Solis’ work, the theatre scholar Todd London writes that his Joad character’s arrival is “weary, elegiac, and full of a hope that can only come with facing the real-real.”

 Both Steinbeck and Solis define what it is to be American, yet their work centers around people who are perpetually searching to belong. Perhaps this continuous striving for a defined identity is what makes us Americans, never settling for being one thing in a home for immigrants and their descendants. Solis identifies with this in-between state as someone who has always moved between worlds. He says, “The real life, the real me, is Mexican. Still, Mexicans reject us and tell us that we should embrace our Americanness. Instead, we are somewhere between realities.” 

And Steinbeck — through the portals of time — answers: “I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.”   

Road Tripping

An Interview with the Playwright

In 2013, playwright Octavio Solis joined a road trip sponsored by the National Steinbeck Center, which retraced the Joad family’s mythic Route 66 journey from Sallisaw, OK to Bakersfield, CA in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. This literary pilgrimage through the American Southwest along with Steinbeck’s novel served as the inspiration for Mother Road. The Berkeley Rep Artistic staff asked Octavio about this trip, road trips beyond, and his own journey as a legendary figure in Chicano and Americana literature.

What was the most memorable stop on your road trip along Route 66?

The second stop after we arrived in Oklahoma. We drove to Sallisaw, where the local library had prepared for our arrival by decorating the entire library in burlap and old farm implements, posting photos of the Dust Bowl and Depression in the area. They even parked an old Model A truck in front and loaded it up with gear for the long journey west. But the best thing were all the seniors who had survived the era and were ready to be interviewed by us. Over 40 people gave their oral histories. It was very moving.

But the final station of our trip was at Weedpatch itself, which was eye-opening, since the final part of The Grapes of Wrath takes place there, but also since it is still in operation as a federal migrant housing facility. Yet, the most interesting person we met there was Jorge Guillen, who had grown on the camp and had been deeply influenced by the novel. It was his account that led me to the story of my Mother Road. 

When you think of Bakersfield, CA and Sallisaw, OK what comes to mind?

I think of these two cities as twin agricultural communities.

If you could take a road trip in any vehicle of your choosing, what would you want to cruise around in?

Definitely an Airstream would be the ideal transportation for a true road trip.

What’s your favorite song to sing on a road trip?

Golden Earring’s “Radar Love”.
(…The radio's playin' some forgotten song, Brenda Lee's “Coming On Strong”…)

What’s your favorite road trip story, book, or film?

For me, it was always On the Road, Kerouac’s novel of transformative travel. As far as film is concerned, I have been stirred by Y Tu Mamá También, Easy Rider, and Into the Wild, the Walden of my daugh-ter’s generation.

If you were to take another long road trip, who are the three people you would want to travel with?

I would definitely take a long road trip with my wife Jeanne, the director/actor Marissa Chibás Preston, and my artist friend Cody Bustamante.

Mother Road was inspired by Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Which other literary figures have inspired your work?

I have been nursed on the works of Sam Shepard, who understands the desert like no one else. I am also drawn to the literature of Cormac McCarthy.

What’s the most interesting or unusual spark that has inspired your writing?

María Irene Fornés destroyed my idea of how writing happens and then she opened my eyes to the possibilities of true writing. In a long workshop with her and my colleagues, we were definitely schooled in playing outside the box.

What themes, images, or ideas do you see recurring throughout your work? 

My characters are outsiders, people who misbehave, people you don’t want to have over for dinner. These are the people who don’t know the rules and therefore break them with impunity. Love and Death are the two-headed animals in my work; the consummation of one is often the realization of the other. 

What do you read or listen to that brings you peace or comfort?

The works of Arvo Pärt are a constant balm on my soul. Even as an atheist, I find solace in all his devotional works. I find a different comfort in the music of Joe Henry, the poet of love and unlove. The poetry of Mary Oliver is at my nightstand when I feel the nightmares looming. So too the poems of Mark Doty.

So much of Mother Road is about the theme of finding home. What are the three things you need to feel at home?

I require books (and music), I require animals, and I require my wife most of all.   

BERKELEY REPERTORY THEATRE

Johanna Pfaelzer, Artistic Director
Tom Parrish, Managing Director
presents

MOTHER ROAD

BY
OCTAVIO SOLIS

DIRECTED BY
DAVID MENDIZÁBAL

SCENIC DESIGN
TANYA ORELLANA

COSTUME DESIGN
RODRIGO MUÑOZ

LIGHTING DESIGN
CHA SEE

SOUND DESIGN
JAKE RODRIGUEZ

ORIGINAL MUSIC
RITMOS TROPICOSMOS

CASTING
TAYLOR WILLIAMS 

MUSIC DIRECTOR
JONATHAN BAUERFELD 

VOICE AND DIALECT COACH
ADI CABRAL

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER
ZOË SWENSON-GRAHAM

STAGE MANAGER
ELISA GUTHERTZ*

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
CHRISTINA HOGAN*

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
VOLEINE AMILCAR

GENERAL MANAGER
SARA DANIELSEN 

FINANCE DIRECTOR
JARED HAMMOND

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
AUDREY HOO

DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL OF THEATRE
ANTHONY JACKSON 

DIRECTOR OF DEVELOPMENT
ARI LIPSKY

DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES
MARK MORRISETTE

DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES AND DIVERSITY
MODESTA TAMAYO

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS
AMANDA WILLIAMS O’STEEN

World premiere produced by Oregon Shakespeare Festival Bill Rauch, Artistic Director | Cynthia Rider, Executive Director

Mother Road was produced in a developmental production by Goodman Theatre, Chicago in the New Stages Festival Robert Falls, Artistic Director | Roche Schulfer, Executive Director

It was commissioned by the National Steinbeck Center and first read as part of the National Steinbeck Festival

CAST

(in alphabetical order)

Cher Álvarez*
Amelia/Chorus

James Carpenter*
William Joad 

Daniel Duque-Estrada*
Abelardo/Chorus 

Emilio Garcia-Sanchez*
Martín Jodes 

Branden Davon Lindsay*
James/Chorus

Michael Moreland Milligan*
Roger/Chorus

Lindsay Rico*
Mo/Chorus

Benny Wayne Sully*
Curtis/Chorus

Courtney Walsh*
Ivy/Chorus

UNDERSTUDIES

(in alphabetical order)

Scott Coopwood*
William Joad, Roger, Chorus

Marilet Martinez*
Mo, Amelia, Ivy, Chorus

Kenny Scott
James, Chorus

Angel Villalobos
Martín Jodes, Abelardo, Curtis, Chorus

*Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

This theatre operates under agreements with the League of Resident Theatres, Actors’ Equity Association (the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States), the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society, and United Scenic Artists.

Please turn off your cell phones, beeping watches, and electronic devices, and refrain from unwrapping cellophane wrappers during the performance. The videotaping or making of electronic or other audio and/or visual recordings of this production and distributing recordings or streams in any medium, including the internet, is strictly prohibited, a violation of the author(s)’s rights, and actionable under United States copyright law.

June 14–July 21, 2024
Peet’s Theatre

THIS SHOW HAS A 15-MINUTE INTERMISSION

Cher Álvarez*
Amelia/Chorus

Cher is exceptionally thrilled to be making her Berkeley Rep debut. She has created and performed alongside other brilliant artists at Steppenwolf Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Writers Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre, and American Players Theatre. She has also appeared on Apple TV's Sugar, Amazon's Leverage: Redemption, CBS’ NCIS Hawai'i, NBC’s Chicago Med, NBC’s Chicago PD, Showtime's Shameless, and ABC's Station 19. She holds a B.F.A in Musical Theatre from Webster Conservatory of Dramatic Arts. Los quiero much Ademi. 

James Carpenter*
William Joad

James is a former Berkeley Rep Associate Artist, most recently appearing in Wintertime, MacBeth, Three Sisters, Peoples Temple, Fête de la Nuit, and Lieutenant of Inishmore. Other credits include California Shakespeare Theater, Aurora Theatre Company, Marin Theatre Company, Mark Taper Forum, The Old Globe, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Rep, Santa Cruz Shakespeare, Huntington Theatre Company, Intiman Theatre, American Conservatory Theater. Screen credits include The Rainmaker, Metro, For the Coyotes, and the series Nash Bridges. James is co-founder of the Actors Reading Collective (arcstream.org) and the recipient of many San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Awards, including the 2007 Award for Excellence in the Arts and the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2010, he was named a Ten Chimneys Foundation Lunt-Fontanne Fellow.

Daniel Duque-Estrada*
Abelardo/Chorus

Daniel is making his Berkeley Rep debut. He has appeared Off-Broadway in Recent Alien Abductions (PlayCo) and Our Dear Dead Drug Lord (Women’s Project Theater). Regional theatre credits include Resident Actor at Trinity Repertory Company and Dallas Theatre Center (2013-2015); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (2 seasons); and Latino Theatre Co. Bay Area credits: Magic Theatre, Campo Santo, Marin Theatre Company, Shotgun Players, and California Shakespeare Theater. BA: UC Berkeley. MFA: Brown University/Trinity Rep.

Emilio Garcia-Sanchez*
Martín Jodes

Emilio was born and raised in the East Bay (Alameda stand up!) so it goes without saying that he is truly honored to be sharing a story for the first time with Berkeley Rep. After graduating with his BFA from CalArts, Emilio has been featured in: The Society (Netflix), Nate & Gigi (Hulu), Criminal Minds (CBS), Family Guy (FOX), & Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Disney+). Stage performances include: Scene with Cranes (Redcat), Pomegranate Jam (Edinburgh Fringe), The Glass Menagerie (Intl. City Theatre), Shelter (The Kennedy Center). Gracias a todo mi familia, blood and chosen.

Branden Davon Lindsay* (he/him)
James/Chorus

Branden is a Southern gentlemen born and raised in Greenville, SC. Credits include A Soldier’s Play National Tour (Roundabout Theatre), Merry Wives (Public Theater), The Greatest Beer Run Ever (Apple TV+), Three Birthdays (Independent), Awkwafina Is Nora From Queens (Comedy Central), Evil (CBS), and Blue Bloods (CBS). MFA NYU Tisch School of the Arts, BA William Carey University. Instagram: @BrandenLindsay_

Michael Moreland Milligan*
Roger/Chorus

Broadway: La Bete, August: Osage County, Jerusalem. Off-Broadway: Mercy Killers, Thom Pain, The Golem. Shakespeare Theatre Company (DC): King Lear, Don Juan, Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labors Lost, The Alchemist. Chicago Shakespeare Theater: Othello (Iago), Emma, Tug of War. McCarter Theatre: Thom Pain, Candida, Christmas Carol. Television: Somebody Somewhere, The Knick, Law & Order, Chicago Med, Chicago Fire, Chicago Justice, Person of Interest, APB, Next. Awards: Fringe First (Mercy Killers, Edinburgh Fringe Festival); John Houseman Prize (Juilliard, Group 30). Michael is also the Brand Manager of the family knife company – New West KnifeWorks.

Lindsay Rico* (she/her)
Mo/Chorus

Lindsay is making her Berkeley Rep debut. Selected credits include The Skin of Our Teeth (Broadway), Measure for Measure (California Shakespeare Theater/Santa Cruz Shakespeare), Fefu and Her Friends (Theatre for a New Audience), Alligator (The Sol Project/New Georges), A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction (Baltimore Center Stage), River (The Whitney Museum). Other credits include: Ars Nova, The Williamstown Theatre Festival, and LaMama, to name a few. BA Wellesley College. She’d like to thank her friends and family.

Benny Wayne Sully* (he/him)
Curtis/Chorus

Benny is a classically trained actor and an enrolled citizen of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, home of the Sicangu Lakota Oyate. He is no stranger to the stage, having appeared in Jiehae Park’s peerless at 59E59 in NYC, at UCB Franklin on one of their coveted Harold improv teams, and with many prestigious theatre groups including Center Theatre Group, Native Voices, and PAC NYC. In 2022, he was one of twenty actors chosen to participate in the WarnerMedia Access Spotlight Showcase. @TheDoophus

Courtney Walsh*
Ivy/Chorus

Berkeley Rep: Three Sisters u/s. International: Clytemnestra (Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, Cardiff, Sydney, Auckland), Wanderings of Odysseus (Athens), Happy Days (Paris, Montpellier). New York: Mother Lear (Brooklyn Botanic Garden). Bay Area: The Wizard of Oz (American Conservatory Theater), Clue, Jerusalem, and Seared (San Francisco Playhouse), Native Son (Marin Theatre Company), Phèdre, Timon of Athens (Cutting Ball Theater), Mother Lear, Romeo and Juliet (We Players), Boys Go to Jupiter (Z Space), twelve seasons at Stanford Repertory Theater. Theatre Bay Area Awards: Outstanding Performance, Production, Directing, Ensemble. Training: Yale University. Courtney has also been a lawyer for abused children. courtneywalsh.net

Scott Coopwood*
U/S William Joad, Roger, Chorus

Berkeley Rep: Shad Ledue in It Can’t Happen Here (both onstage in 2016 and the Radio Play adaption in 2019) and Lennox in Macbeth. Regional: Arkansas Rep, Artists Rep, Center Rep, Sacramento Theatre Company, Capital Stage, Capitol Rep, Arizona Theatre Company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, San Francisco Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Marin Theatre Company, and the Colorado, Seattle, Utah, Lake Tahoe, and Orlando Shakespeare Companies/Festivals.

Marilet Martinez* (she/they)
U/S Mo, Amelia, Ivy, Chorus

Marilet is a queer, bilingual, multi-hyphenate theatre practitioner and resilience-focused teaching artist. She/they are currently the Director of Youth and Community Arts at PCPA, where she is also a resident director and actor. As a founding core member of @Ratas_De_2_Patas (Chicago’s award winning all Latine queer comedy collective) and co-founder of @tus.tias.productions, it is @mariletmartinezsf mission is to create comedic theatrical experiences that challenge the hetero cis patriarchy while using humor to uplift systemically oppressed voices. Their show, The Invocation of Selena (Tus Tias Productions) was recently featured at La Jolla Playhouse’s Latinx New Plays Festival.

Kenny Scott
U/S James, Chorus

Recent credits include productions with TheatreWorks Silicon Valley (A Distinct Society), Aurora Theatre Company (Paradise Blue), California Shakespeare Theater (Lear), Marin Theatre Company (Two Trains Running), Crowded Fire (Inked Baby, SUBVERiTas), Z Space (The Institute for Counterfeit Memory), The New Conservatory Theatre Center (Mystery of Love and Sex), The Forum (Sarafael), Idiot String (Port Stories), and Quantum Dragon Theatre (Ageless). Kenny is a company member with the Oakland Theatre Project (Hamlet, Mother Courage) as well as Shotgun Players (The Claim, The Light). He attended Morgan State University and was a member of the Laney College Fusion Theatre Project.

Angel Villalobos
U/S Martín Jodes, Abelardo, Curtis, Chorus

Angel is beyond thankful to be making his Berkeley Rep debut. Recent regional credits include Final Request (Frida Kahlo Theater), Macbeth (Prague Shakespeare Company), Llave (Teatro de las Américas), Three Sisters (Center Stage SB). He is a graduate of UCSB’s BFA Acting and Sociology programs, and is a teaching artist with Theatricum Botanicum. Amor y salud! @villaslowbos

FOR THIS PRODUCTION

Sophie Lynd (Lighting Fellow)
Associate Lighting Designer

Rebs Chan (Peter F. Sloss Artistic Fellow)
Assistant Director

Belle Alatorre (Harry Weininger Sound Fellow)
Assistant Sound Designer

Genevieve Bellavance
Production Assistant

Julia Englehorn (Stage Supervisor), Gabriel Holman (Associate Stage Supervisor), James McGregor (Head Stage Technician & Automation Operator), Siobhán Slater, Michael Boomer
Stage Operations

Mika Rubinfeld, Gabby Bañuelos (Costume Fellow)
Wardrobe

Desiree Alcocer
Lighting Programmer and Board Operator

Camille Rassweiler
Sound Programmer and Board Operator

Courtney Jean
A2

Scenic Fabrication by Berkeley Repertory Theatre Scenic & Paint Shops 

Carl Martin, Sean Miller, Drea Ronquillo, Maggie Wentworth, Robin Maegawa, Laurel Capps (Scenic Construction Fellow)
Additional Scenery Fabricators

Kenzie Bradley, Julie Ann Brown, Wyn Di Stefano, Katie Holmes, Neena Holzman, Cayla Ray-Perry, Alexandria Xiong, E. Wayman-Murdock (Scenic Art Fellow)
Additional Scenic Artists

Props Fabrication by Berkeley Repertory Theatre Properties Shop 

Adam Clay, Sofie Miller, Brittany Watkins, Robin Maegawa-Goeser, Katie Owen (Properties Fellow)
Additional Props Artisans

Costumes Built by Berkeley Repertory Theatre Costume Shop 

Janet Conery, Kelly Koehn, Andrea Phillips, Gabrielle Bañuelos (Costumes Fellow)
Additional Costume Technicians

Lighting Services provided by Berkeley Repertory Theatre Lighting Department 

Shy Baniani, Richard Fong, Ann-Christine Hartzell, Jason Joo, Charlie Mejia, C. Swan-Streepy, Matthew Sykes, Ben Visini, Caleb Knopp, Kalani Murray, Jacob Hill, Zoya Nanale
Additional Lighting Technicians

Sound & Video Services provided by Berkeley Repertory Theatre Sound and Video Department

Courtney Jean, Camille Rassweiler
Additional Sound & Video Technicians

Kali Grau
Associate Production Manager

Kayla Badia (Production Management Fellow)
Assistant Production Manager

Peter Orkiszewski
Company Manager

Faith Elder (Company Management Fellow
Assistant Company Manager

Karina Fox
Associate Casting Director

Making Theatre

The Road Story is a genre essential to American culture, and every Road Story — from Kerouac to McCarthy and from Thelma and Louise to Nomadland — has at its center an iconic vehicle.

Perhaps the archetype of Road Story vehicles is the truck used by the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath. For the 1940 movie version of the book, 20th Century Fox chopped down a 1926 Hudson Super Six sedan and gave it homemade truck hindquarters.

True to this “Frankentruck” heritage,  Berkeley Rep props artisans took parts from five different vintage Dodge trucks, resized them for the stage of the Peet's, and then welded them back together (with additional surprises!) to make the central vehicle for our journey along the Mother Road: a shapeshifting truck that serves as the primary scenic element throughout the play. The props artisans have named it Mercy.

We hope you enjoy Mercy's performance as Cesar the truck, along with the rest of the extraordinary cast of Mother Road!

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