After three years of focusing on the language of great writers (Guthrie, Ibsen, Dickens, Fo, Mamet, Miller, and Wilder), Strawberry Theatre Workshop turns its attention to great lives in a three-year initiative called BIOGRAPH. Beginning with the 2007 production Life of Galileo, the company endeavors to produce seven great plays about historical figures who were challenged by the moral and political ambiguities of their time. The goal is to make clear the parallels that exist between the human struggles of today and those of the Jim Crow south, a homophobic Europe, the Dust Bowl migration, early Nazi Germany, and other troubled eras.

BIOGRAPH is old history told by living voices. The ambition is to revive these figures of the past to make them youthful and vibrant.

Strawberry Theatre Workshop was named winner of the 2007 Genius Award by The Stranger on the strength of the artists we work with. One reason we have been successful recruiting such talent to the Strawshop stage is that we committed upon our inception to paying artists. Strawshop has never been a fringe theatre, has never been a proving ground for inexperienced artists, and has never aspired to build a reputation at the expense of those doing the work. One driving force behind BIOGRAPH is to offer exceptional roles to actors interested in taking the challenge. The opportunity to interpret Galileo Galilei, Billie Holiday, Woody Guthrie, or the "Elephant Man" John Merrick are acting opportunities of a lifetime, and we are glad to be offering them.
LIFE OF GALILEO by Bertolt Brecht

The legend of the famous astronomer whose discoveries challenged the authority of the Church during the Inquisition; Brecht's overt allegory of a righteous man who has to choose his legacy or his life in the face of intollerance.
LENI by Sarah Greenman

An original dialogue between two women playing the same character at different ages; the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl defends her Nazi propaganda films as valid art and illustrates the use of the Fascist aesthetic in American politics today.
GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! by Scott Brown & Anthony King

The most amazing muscial about Johannes Gutenberg... ever! In this two-man musical spoof, a pair of aspiring playwrights perform a backers' audition for their new project--a big, splashy musical about the inventor of the printing press.
THIS LAND: WOODY GUTHRIE

An original play for puppets and actors derived from the drawing, music, and writing of American folk artist Woody Guthrie; a remount of the immensely successful production that inaugurated Strawshop in 2004, and inspired a community to sing and shout for democracy during the Presidential election season.
LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL by Lanie Robertson

The Billie Holiday concert that never took place; a one-woman performance of Holiday's most stirring, and politically charged music, the stories behind their creation, and her descent into heroin-induced dementia.
THE ELEPHANT MAN by Bernard Pomerance

The fictional debate between Dr Frederic Treves and his patient, the horribly deformed John Merrick, about spectacle, the act of viewing and being viewed, and the perspective of normalcy; a play told in 39 two and three-page scenes.
BREAKING THE CODE by Hugh Whitemore

The stunning drama of Alan Turing, the mathematician who broke the Nazi enigma code and became a war hero in England; arrested as a homosexual in the 1950s, police ruined his life and reputation and led a profoundly passionate and articulate man on a journey of self-doubt.