On behalf of my collaborators on the Jonestown theater project, I would like to sincerely thank all the former members of Peoples Temple, the Jonestown survivors, and the relatives who have met with us for interviews and supported our process over these last two and half years. We are grateful for the time we’ve spent in conversation with each of you, and grateful for the ways in which your stories have enriched our work and our lives.
I would also like to thank all of you who attended the reading series at the Magic Theater in San Francisco in early June. We were all very moved by your positive response to our work. Your presence there and your feedback afterward were an important part of this process. We have discussed your thoughts and criticisms at length, using these discussions to lay out the work ahead.
As we move into our final writing phase, we are focused on creating a play that we hope finds a home in many cities across the country, and that our audiences can discover – as we have – both the incredible group of people that made up the Peoples Temple, and the layers upon layers of untold stories.
We are pleased to finally announce that Stories from Jonestown and the Peoples Temple (working title) will receive its world premiere production in April 2005 at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in Berkeley, California. Preview performances begin April 15th and the play is scheduled to run through June 5, 2005.
We look forward to seeing you in Berkeley!
Leigh Fondakowski
Playwright and director
and the writing team: Greg Pierotti, Steve Wangh, and Margo Hall
(To contact the writers of Stories from Jonestown and the Peoples Temple, please email Leigh Fondakowski through this website.)