by Leah Nanako Winkler
World Premiere

Shotgun Players, Ashby Stage

DIRECTOR Michelle Talgarow
SET Randy Wong-Westbrooke
COSTUMES Madeline Berger
LIGHTS Spenser Matubang
SOUND Alex Fakayode
PROPS Vincent Khiết Châu

STAGE MANAGER Brooke Cox
FABRICATION CAL SCENIC

CAST Lauren Andrei Garcia, Soren Santos, nic feliciano

Photos by Ben Krantz

“There’s a static quality to the staging of Thirty-Six that enhances its unflinching post-modernity. Paneled white walls — designed by Randy Wong-Westbooke — frame the action like an Instagram reel. Matching clear lucite tables and rolling office chairs are the only furniture, easily transforming from bistro interior to apartment décor to subway seating by the power of suggestion. Table mics on stands, worthy of a podcast studio, pin the actors to their seats during their most intimate moments, allowing that same power of suggestion (and a nod to ASMR) to illustrate a far more ribald encounter than the chastely garbed performers seated on opposite sides of the stage would otherwise suggest.”-KQED

“But in Shotgun Players’ world premiere […] all their actions are narrated by a character called Stage Directions (Nic Feliciano), who perches upstage, clad all in white. She’s a bit like a Greek chorus fused with a guardian angel, intoning into her Britney Spears mic. But in Randy Wong-Westbrooke’s sleek, minimalist Apple Store-adjacent set, she’s less in heaven than in a hipster podcast studio.”-San Francisco Chronicle