"Brilliant, powerful theater. "
– Nancy Scott, San Francisco Examiner
– Nancy Scott, San Francisco Examiner
Staged as a walkthrough of London, TOKENS immerses the audience in a historical musical of the plague of 1665, when masks and quarantines, inspiration and ignorance, selflessness and selfishness are hauntingly reminiscent of today. In the wake of COVID, art will serve as a way to process the experience we have all been through - this play can serve as a catalyst for healing - as it did during the plague of AIDS.
Tokens was a huge production, with a cast of sixty singer/actor/musician/dancers and produced by its author, David Schein, and funded by Whoopi Goldberg. This was at a time, like today, when many in the performing community were scared for their lives. The theater community, performers and audience, came together to make Tokens the event of the year with stellar reviews, awards and packed houses.
Tokens was a huge production, with a cast of sixty singer/actor/musician/dancers and produced by its author, David Schein, and funded by Whoopi Goldberg. This was at a time, like today, when many in the performing community were scared for their lives. The theater community, performers and audience, came together to make Tokens the event of the year with stellar reviews, awards and packed houses.
“I am all admiration for the wonders of the show. It is an opera with contrapuntal, polyrhythmic music, built on medieval and renaissance themes, and it is a ballet with vigorous, acrobatic, sometime brutish choreography.”
– Bernard Weiner, San Francisco Chronicle.
– Bernard Weiner, San Francisco Chronicle.
For many in the cast, Tokens was a life changing experience. Two babies came from cast members who met during Tokens. Peter David Heth, Tokens' designer and costumer died of AIDS a year after Tokens was produced and had his life memorialized in the first Names Project Quilt. Other cast members have followed him in the years to come. For years people have talked about Tokens as a watershed moment of theater mirroring life.
"Anyone interested in theater should see it. It is magnificent."
– A.J. Esta, Hollywood Dramalogue
– A.J. Esta, Hollywood Dramalogue
Now, in the era of COVID, Tokens is more than relevant; it frames the plague as a human experience common through the ages, one that some of us may see again in our lifetimes. Waves of plague have hit like earthquakes from time immemorial. Plague is always current.
We propose a revival of Tokens for 2022, to serve as it did during the time of AIDS, as a sweeping gesture of theater, an act of memory, healing and public mourning.
– David Schein