Provocative Theatre: 'The Lyons' Director Barbara Damashek, Theatre Arts Professor

KQED-FM -- Barbara Damashek is a slight woman, with a passion for playwrights who are “bad boys.” She teaches at SF State, and freelances as a director on Bay Area stages. Most recently she led productions of Enda Walsh’s “The New Electric Ballroom” at Shotgun Players, and David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” at the Aurora Theatre. Both the productions made San Jose Mercury News critic Karen D’Souza’s top 10 list for last year. Now she’s directing “The Lyons,” at the Aurora, Nicky Silver’s ruthless comedy about a dysfunctional family that won rave reviews on Broadway in 2012. “I like plays that are edgy. They’re bad-boy plays,” Damashek tells KQED’s Cy Musiker. “But I think that as a culture our heroes are anti-heroes. We are a country of émigrés, of people who ran away from persecution, and most of our heroes are renegades. It’s the lone cowboy in the west fighting the law.”