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The
People's Temple
Datebook - By Annie Nakao.
San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, April 14, 2005.
" Nearly four years after being commissioned by San Francisco’s
Z Space Studio, the production, directed by Leigh Fondakowski of
“The Laramie Project” fame, unveils the complex tapestry
of the rise and fall of the Peoples Temple, whose demise remains
a wound that goes deep in the Bay Area."
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the full review
Out of Jim Jones’ Shadow - By Don Shirley. Los
Angeles Times, Sunday, April 10, 2005.
" Questions arise from the Jonestown carnage that bear consideration
by just about everyone…questions about the human capacity
for denial, for violence and for cooperating with coercion."
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the full review
Powerful Drama, Remarkable Cast Transform Jonestown Grief
into ‘Temple’ of Healing at Berkeley Rep -
By Robert Hurwitt. San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, April 22,
2005.
"The voices fill the theater with hope, regret, faith, skepticism,
joy, anger, suspicion, panic and immeasurable sorrow. As created
by director Leigh Fondakowski and her remarkable crew, “Temple”
is gripping drama and forcefully honest re-examination of our own
history that turns the theater into a temple of community healing."
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the full review
Beyond Kool-Aid: Looking at Jonestown and Its Ideals
- By Carol Pogash. The New York Times, Monday, April 18, 2005.
"That belief in a larger cause, a blindness to Jones’s
autocratic rule and willingness to follow him even in death are
the subjects at the heart of the production."
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the full review
Paths to Disaster - by Robert Avila. The San
Francisco Bay Guardian, May 4 – 10 2005. Volume 39 no. 31
"It’s one of the accomplishments of this remarkable world
premiere, co-produced by Berkeley Repertory Theatre and Z Space
Studio, that we can’t reduce the history it presents to the
usual pathologies or excuses, holding it at arm’s length like
a foreign object."
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the full review
Jonestown Revisited - by Sam Hurwitt. East
Bay Express May 4-10, 2005.
"One of the marvelous things about this play is how well it
captures the joy of Peoples Temple at its height, even as it foreshadows
the horrific end to come, through growing hints of the screening,
spying, bullying, and paranoia’s just under the surface."
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the full review
Art Can Evoke The Past – If It’s Done Well
- By Steven Winn. San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, April 28,
2005.
“Temple” captures the way historical movements really
happen, the gradual tumbler-click inevitably of one person giving
way and then another and another. Tellingly, the show builds a solid,
textured sense of reality without a single archival photo-projection.
. . . “People’s Temple” finally isn’t just
about Jim Jones and the horror show he unleashed. It’s about
our own clouded motives when we lift the lid – the denial
and morbid curiosity, the revulsion and sympathy, the mystery, the
compulsion to keep watching.
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the full review
I didn’t break the window…. - By Jon
Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, Aril 29, 2005.
"It is always good and sometimes astonishing. Ultimately, the
play is about the survivors, giving voice to their largely untold
stories, and that is as it should be."
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the full review
The People’s Temple - By C.V. SF Weekly,
May 4-10, 2005.
"…the ensemble case does more that portray Jones, congregation
members, journalists, politicians, and families; the actors also
capture the spirit of an entire era, from racial unrest to hippie
euphoria."
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the full review
Homeward Looking Angel - By Robert Hurwitt. San
Francisco Chronicle Tuesday, May 10, 2005.
"It isn’t all that often a local show gets coverage everywhere
from the London Guardian, New York Times, Time, Wall Street Journal
and Christian Science Monitor to “All Things Considered,”
“California Report” and Jim Lehrer’s “News
Hour.”
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the full review
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