Madame Gufay’s Lovelutionaries

presented by Actors Ensemble of Berkeley

Friday-Saturday, December 12-13 and 19-20, 8:00PM

Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, 510-981-6690

$20

http://www.aeofberkeley.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=305:madame-gufays-lovelutionaries&catid=61:at-live-oak

https://www.facebook.com/sogufay

http://gufay.brownpapertickets.com

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Live-Oak-Theatre/215511328513736

“Growing up in the French provinces, Madame Gufay was fascinated by news reports of the Free Speech Movement (the FSM) which fermented on the campus of U.C. Berkeley and resonated worldwide.  Now, having returned to school late in life, she has arranged to finish her last semester studying at her own personal mecca, U.C. Berkeley.  Madame Gufay is a force of nature, and her wacky, goofy efforts to experience Free Speech in the present day involve most campus life: the administration and academics, the classroom, the library, Sproul Plaza demonstrations and, of course graduation.

Madame Gufay overcomes language challenges, academic arrogance, uncontrollable urges, public drunkenness, lewd and lascivious behavior, to the fulfillment of innocent wacky, goofy dreams. To be sure, Madame Gufay and her activist Lovelutionaries do care passionately about social justice and they advocate for world peace, justice, not to mention lowering tuition for public universities! Madame Gufay’s character is based loosely on the famous director Jacques Tati’s Mr. Hulot who also had hilarious adventures.

Norah Foster, the enticing, engaging and eager retired manager of graduate services at the UC Berkeley Library and new late blooming playwright, wrote Madame Gufay over a period of years, incorporating many events that she personally experienced, as well as plot twists that emanated directly from her vivid imagination. She began working as a volunteer at Actors Ensemble, and as an experiment on our part we produced her play originally as a workshop/staged reading. It showed enough promise (and Norah enough enthusiasm in helping to get to the next step) that we have taken it upon ourselves to produce it as a full play, performed over two weekends in December.”