The Ghost Sonata


James S. Craft in Roberto Zucco by Bernard-Marie Koltès

by August Strindberg
in a new translation by Paul Walsh
Directed by Rob Melrose
November 8

In the night, a building has collapsed. A young man has been working all night long pulling survivors from the wreckage and tending to their wounds. As he drinks from the water fountain, he meets an old gentleman who has read about the young rescuer in the paper. It seems that the old gentleman knows everything about the younger man and even has the young man’s future all planned out for him. As the young man steps into the web of fate, he goes on a mysterious journey that takes him to the opera, a ghost supper, and finally to an encounter with the girl of his dreams in "the hyacinth room." This is Stringberg’s masterpiece on the forces of the past. In Sweden, it is performed all of the time (Ingmar Bergman directed it three times) but it is rarely seen in the U.S.

The Cutting Ball Theater’s 2015-16 season is made possible in part by Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Fleishhacker Foundation, Grants for the Arts / San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mental Insight Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, The RHE Charitable Foundation, The San Francisco Arts Commission, The San Francisco Foundation, and The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and Season Producers John and Paula Gambs, Ken Melrose, and Velia Melrose.