Dave Malloy music, lyrics, and text – William Thomas Hodgson director
Rinde Eckert TENOR piano – organ – slide guitar – percussion Monica Rose Slater SOPRANO glockenspiel – accordion – harp – percussion Ami Nashimoto SOPRANO cello – ukulele – erhu – percussion Veronica Renner ALTO accordion – autoharp – percussion Michael Perez BARITONE percussion
Dave Malloy’s quirky and wondrous ghost story musical is as life-affirming as it is astounding. The piece is author-described as “a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey” in which “a camera breaks and four friends drink in four interwoven narratives spanning seven centuries.”
Audiences won’t want to miss this stunning musical from the creator whose work has recently delighted Bay Area audiences at Berkeley Rep (Octet) and Shotgun Players (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812). Ghost Quartet is considered Malloy’s most enchanting work.
In partnership with Oakland Theater Project, this production will be performed at 7:30 PM [Thursday|Friday|Saturday] and 2:00 PM on Sunday.
San Francisco from December 5 to 8
ODC B. Way Theater
3153 17th Street – San Francisco
A co-production between New Performance Traditions—an initiative of the Paul Dresher Ensemble—and Oakland Theater Project. The performances in San Francisco are supported in part by Grants for the Arts, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bernard Osher Foundation
He has written thirteen musicals, including Octet, a chamber choir musical about internet addiction; Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electropop opera based on a slice of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (12 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, Score, Book, and Orchestrations); Ghost Quartet, a song cycle about love, death, and whiskey; Preludes, a musical fantasia set in the hypnotized mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff; Little Bunny Foo Foo, a forest entertainment for small people; Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert’s “Winterreise”.
He has won two Obie Awards, a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, a Theater World Award, the Richard Rodgers Award, an ASCAP New Horizons Award, and a Jonathan Larson Grant. He has been a MacDowell fellow and Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre.
WILLIAM THOMAS HODGSON (Director) has made theater with Berkeley Playhouse since 2010. William is an actor, director, and educator based in Oakland, CA. He received his MFA from UC San Diego and is the Co-Artistic Director of the Oakland Theater Project. Other directing credits include Ragtime, Fun Home (Berkeley Playhouse), Red Red Red (Oakland Theater Project), and Passing Strange (Shotgun Players). Acting credits include Every Brilliant Thing (Center REP), An Octoroon (Mixed Blood Theatre), I Am My Own Wife (Oakland Theater Project), Cyrano (Aurora Theatre Company), Shrek The Musical (Sierra Repertory Theatre), Mrs. Christie (TheatreWorks Silicon Valley), It Can’t Happen Here (Berkeley Repertory Theatre), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (La Jolla Playhouse), As a movement director, William has worked with Oregon Shakespeare Festival (Tempest), TheatreWorks (Little Shop of Horrors), CenterRep (Red Bike).
Rinde Eckert – Tenor piano, organ, slide guitar, percussion, vocals
Rinde is a writer, composer, librettist, musician, performer and director. His opera / new music theater productions have toured throughout America and to major European and Asian theater festivals. With a virtuosic command of gesture, language, and song, this total theater artist moves beyond the boundaries of what a ‘play,’ a ‘dance piece,’ an ‘opera,’ or ‘a musical’ might be in the service of grappling with complex issues.
Writing and directing credits include The Schick Machine, a solo theater work for percussionist Steven Schick composed/produced by Paul Dresher. As a composer, Eckert composed dance scores for choreographers Sarah Shelton Mann and Margaret Jenkins, including the evening-length Woman, Window, and Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company.
Eckert’s work has been produced in New York by the Foundry Theatre, Culture Project, Theater for a New Audience, and the New York Theatre Workshop. American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Center Stage in Baltimore, Cleveland’s Dobama Theatre Company, REDCAT in Los Angeles at the Roy& Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, and Berkeley Repertory Theater have also produced his work. In 2012, he was named an inaugural Doris Duke Artist. He was honored to receive the 2009 Alpert Award in the Arts for Theatre, a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, and The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award. In 2007, Rinde Eckert was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.
Ami Nashimoto – Soprano cello, ukulele, erhu, percussion, vocals
Ami Nashimoto (she/they) is a cellist, composer, arranger, teacher, multi-instrumentalist and San Francisco native. They’ve been a prominent member of the Bay Area musical theater scene since 2010 and have played in such original productions as Larry the Musical, Coming Soon, The Beat Goes On, and with companies including Shotgun Players, 42nd Street Moon, SF Playhouse, and Transcendence Theatre Company. Ami also performs classical repertoire with Peninsula Symphony and Golden Gate Symphony, as well as pop arrangements with groups including Eclecta Quartet, Vybe Society, and Lucky Devils Band. Ami is excited to bring her many musical talents to the stage for Ghost Quartet.
Veronica is a multi-hyphenate creative. She received her BA in Theatre with Honors in Acting from the University of California, Irvine. She continues her education by pursuing an MA in Drama Therapy from the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is excited to return to Malloy after performing as Sonya in Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Shotgun Players). Her favorite roles include Sarah in Company, Leonide in Triumph of Love, and Li’l Bit in How I Learned to Drive. She would be a skeleton if she were to be any kind of dead guy. Love to Aaron and Nomu. veronicarenner.com
Monica Rose Slater – Soprano glockenspiel, accordion, harp, percussion, vocals
Monica Rose Slater is a Brazilian-American singer-actor-educator. Since her cross-country move from Virginia to San Francisco in 2021, Monica has performed with Word for Word (Who’s-Dead McCarthy, readings of Paradise and Annunciation), Cinnabar Theater (Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music), 42nd Street Moon (She Loves Me, Falsettos), Lamplighters Music Theatre (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Iolanthe), Berkeley Playhouse (Cinderella), Pocket Opera (Traviata), and Foothills Music Theater (Violet).
Monica has an MM from San Francisco Conservatory, where she studied opera, and a BM from James Madison University, where she studied music and writing.
Alongside her theatrical career, Monica has a private voice studio and works with the non-profit Music Education for Everyone. In her free time, you’ll find her rollerblading, painting impressionistic landscapes, and writing creative non-fiction. She sends out hearty, loving thank-yous to her parents, Vovó e Vovô, Tia Liane, and Glenny, for their incessant support.
Get in touch on IG @monicaroseslater and www.monicaroseslater.com!
Michael Perez, an actor and musician from Houston, TX, is thrilled to be making his Oakland Theater project musical debut in Ghost Quartet. Perez studied Acting at The Academy of Art University, and previous theater work includes American Idiot (42nd St Moon), The Music Man (Queensbury Theater), What in Tarnation? (Exit Theater), Hair (AAU School of Acting), and The Barbary Coast Revue: Season 3. Perez is ecstatic to be a new addition to the OTP family. This show is dedicated to his loving family and his late little brother Matthew.
