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The Department of Theatre and Dance presents Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Nov. 17 to Dec. 3 in Main Theatre.

Granada Artist-in-Residence Michael Barakiva is directing the absurdist comedy. Earlier in his fall residency, Barakiva directed his own The Zona Rosa Project as a Sideshow Lab workshop production.

The courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, minor characters in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, star in Stoppard’s reimagining of the famous play. Moving throughout a surreal alternate reality, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead attempts to answer the fundamental question “How do we know what we know?”

“There are times when things make sense and there are times when you’re transported from one space to another, and reality bends to accommodate desire or fear,” Barakiva said. “We're using Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Lorca’s traveling band of actors as inspiration. It's somewhere between Shakespeare and Beckett.”

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, written by Tom Stoppard and directed by Granada Artist-in-Residence Michael Barakiva. Presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance.

WHEN:

• Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 17-19 — 8 p.m.
• Sunday, Nov. 20 — 2 p.m.
• Thursday-Saturday, Dec. 1-3 — 8 p.m.

WHERE: Main Theatre

TICKETS: $17/$19 general admission; $12/$14 students, children and seniors. Advance tickets are available , or in person or by telephone at the Mondavi Center box office, (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787. Box office hours: noon-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and one hour before ticketed events.

MORE INFORMATION

Auditions for Main Stage Dance

The Department of Theatre and Dance has invited students, faculty and staff to audition for Main Stage Dance, part of The Edge Performance Festival to be held in the spring.

The auditions are set for Monday (Nov. 21) in Hickey Gym, with warmup time at 6:30 p.m. and auditions at 7.

The festival comprises Main Stage Dance, Extreme Play Blitz, Undergraduate One-Acts, An Hour of Five-Minute Plays and late-night showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (with audience singalongs, of course), with events scheduled from April 12 to 15 and 19 to 22.