In this chilling adaptation of the spellbinding Victorian ghost story, the horror comes both from things that go bump in the night to make their presence known and from things kept quiet so that secrets stay buried. A governess uncovers some frightening truths about her predecessor in a gothic tour de force journey into the unknown. Critics call the play, "as scary as one of the better Halloween movies, but with as much intellectual substance as an Ingmar Bergman film. The beauty is in its sheer inventiveness."

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A Mapcap Romp through the Holiday Season

EVERY CHRISTMAS STORY EVER TOLD by Michael Carleton, John Alvarez and Jim Fitzgerald November 19 - December 21, 2008

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and you can find him and just about every other Christmas character in pop culture history in this fast-moving, irreverent comedy, in which three actors decide that rather than perform A Christmas Carol once again, they'll retell Every Christmas Story Ever Told in 90 minutes. Using costumes, special effects and, of course, their wits, they take holiday cheer to the extreme.

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Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award Winner

I AM MY OWN WIFE by Doug Wright February 11 - March 8, 2009

I Am My Own Wife is the miraculous and fascinating true story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazis and then Communism behind the Berlin Wall. When the wall came down and the West walked in, Charlotte was still standing. Her incredible life story, told in her own words to the playwright through a series of interviews, is also about what dark secrets she chooses not to tell, and how it colors Wright's efforts to chronicle her amazing life. The end result, says The New York Times, is "a story that is both moving and intellectually absorbing [and] quite powerfully makes the case for storytelling in our lives."

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Waking the Dead

CUMBERLAND BLUES by Michael Norman Mann Songs by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter April 1 - 26, 2009

A decade after San Jose Stage Company presented the World Premiere of Cumberland Blues, a musical based around songs made famous by the Grateful Dead, the show is coming back home. Drawing on the evocative music and lyrics of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, Michael Norman Mann crafted a story of betrayal, redemption and love gone wrong in a Maryland mining town. Characters and images from songs like Friend of the Devil, Bertha, He's Gone and Box of Rain come to life in a show The New York Times called "ingenious and good-natured," while proving that the Grateful Dead?s music has power beyond the cultural iconicity of the band that made it famous.

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Explosive Reinvention of Theatre
The U.S. Premiere of Electric Company Theatre's Visionary Work

STUDIES IN MOTION: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge by Kevin Kerr May 13 - May 24, 2009

From the creative team that brought you Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla, Studies in Motion is inspired by the life and work of 19th century photographer Eadweard Muybridge, whose work at Stanford University in instantaneous photography, as well as exhaustive studies in animal and human locomotion, would foretell the invention of the cinema. This physically and visually explosive spectacle explores themes of memory, identity and the quest for meaning and the beginning of our culture's obsession with the image. denominations.

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