““Gods are not immortal. Gods can die—and they do.” So says Elizabeth Fuller of the Sebastopol-based experimental theater company the Independent Eye. She is describing the set-up of “Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods,” a grand and ambitious new show developed as a major collaboration between the Independent Eye and Berkeley’s renowned Shotgun Players. Ragnarok.. features a 10-person cast and two onstage musicians. The play (is) a challenging, visually bold new theater piece. “It’s a big, flashy, fast-moving show,” explains Bishop, “with lots of what you might call clown humor mixed in support of something that is absolutely dead serious: the story of the apocalypse.” Told as a story-within-a-story, Ragnarok begins with a troop of 11th-century actors preparing to perform a grand adventure as a command performance for the earl, who is eager to clip the wings of violent Christian invaders. The Independent Eye is known for its inventive use of mask, puppetry and ceremonial acting styles, and the opportunity to stage a Norse apocalypse on an outdoor stage has provided plenty of grist for creative staging...”

“The governing strategy is simple: “War ‘til the end of time.” The leader, a decider, grasps false intelligence and spreads fear of an evil enemy set on destroying our way of life. The worse things get, the more the governing body sticks to its set path. “Only war,” the military chief declares, “brings peace.” Any perceived parallels with current events are clearly intentional in “Ragnarok: The Doom of the Gods,” the Shotgun Players’ annual free outdoor show which opened Saturday in Berkeley’s John Hinkel Park. The play by Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller, a world premiere, may be a retelling of the fundamental narrative of ancient Norse and Germanic mythology, but it’s studded with references to homeland security, oil politics, global warming, suicide bombers, AIDS, genocide in Darfur and other modern matters... A collaboration between Shotgun and Bishop and Fuller’s Independent Eye — a roving company, now based in Sebastopol, with a long history of working with other groups (and doing the “Hitchhiking Off the Map” series for KPFA) — “Ragnarok” spans different eras. It’s the story, as its name indicates, of the final battle between the gods, or Aesir, and the more ancient race of giants (here called Primals), in which the primeval world and all-encompassing tree of life, Yggdrasill, were destroyed. Unlike the Christian Armageddon, it’s an end of the world long past, from which life as we know it began.”