Tomorrow marks the first preview of Ghost Light, a new play co-conceived and directed by Jonathan Moscone about the life and death of his father, slain San Francisco mayor George Moscone. Moscone is a regular on the theater scene in the Bay Area, serving currently as artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater and occasional director at both A.C.T. and Berkeley rep, and he says he was inspired to create this piece after watching the film Milk, and realizing his father's role as a gay rights advocate has been overshadowed by Harvey Milk, alongside whom he was killed, and thus has not made it into the history books.
"Milk is a beautifully made movie it just had nothing to do with my father. My father's story has not been told," Moscone said in a 2009 interview with the Chron, and he set about working with Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone to write Ghost Light [Taccone gets full writing credit], which he insists is less a biopic than it is a play about his own memories of his father and "the attempt to piece together a relationship well beyond his death."
As the synopsis goes on Berkeley Rep's site, "When Jon was a boy, his father was shot—and suddenly their lives were part of history. Years later, when staging a production of Hamlet, the son must confront his buried feelings about a crime that shocked the nation."
SFist will have a review for you next week, after the show officially opens. But you can try to snag a ticket now for a preview or later performance on the Berkeley Rep site. As always, if you're lucky enough to be under 30, you should tell them and you get a discount.