Berkeley

Save our homes

Andrew Lam
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Save our homes

yael@sfbg.com


This story has been edited


Bay Area activists, fueled in part by the Occupy movement, have recently taken stands against police brutality, for the rights of the homeless, against the corporate power of banks, and much more. But, arguably, nowhere has the movement been more successful than in the fight against foreclosures and evictions.


With the support of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and the Bayview Foreclosure Fighters, several Bayview residents whose homes had already been sold continue to occupy them, and in some cases sales have been rescinded. Occupy Bernal has used civil disobedience to postpone six housing auctions, keeping their neighbors in their homes that much longer. They secured a meeting with Diana Stauffer, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage senior vice president, and David Campos, District 9 supervisor, to delay foreclosure proceedings.


But the activists are pushing for a full moratorium on foreclosures and evictions in San Francisco. Such a moratorium is not without precedent. In recent years, sheriffs have stopped evictions and foreclosures in Wayne Country, Michigan; Cook County, Illinois; Butler County, Ohio; and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.


When Cook County Sheriff John Dart imposed his moratorium in 2010, he said, “I can’t possibly be expected to evict people from their homes when the banks themselves can’t say for sure everything was done properly. I need some kind of assurance that we aren’t evicting families based on fraudulent behavior by the banks.”


San Francisco seems ripe for a similar stance, as Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting recently released a report revealing widespread lawbreaking in foreclosure proceedings. The report found that 84 percent of foreclosures in San Francisco over the last three years involved faulty paperwork, some of it amounting to fraud.


Representatives from the District Attorney’s and the City Attorney’s offices told the Guardian that they are concerned about the report. These bodies may be starting the process of further investigating findings. Last week, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi, whose office carries out the county’s evictions, said he has begun an initiative to collect and analyze the city’s foreclosure data.


But Mirkarimi’s hands may be tied. As he told Ann Garrison of KPFA radio Feb. 25, “I don’t have the latitude or discretion, much as I would like, because there would need to be a change in state law that empowers municipal sheriffs to be able to use that discretion.”


Occupy Bernal formed just a couple months ago, but it has emerged as a powerful advocate for homeowners facing foreclosure. The neighborhood-based branch of the Occupy movement chose to focus specifically on preventing the evictions of Bernal Heights residents, where over 100 homes face foreclosure.


They kept the pressure up Feb. 25, when a group of supporters convened at 1090 Chestnut Street, the residence of John Stumpf, the CEO of Wells Fargo. That bank owns the majority of mortgages on Bernal homes facing foreclosure.


The protest wasn’t meant to block the street and no one tried to enter the building where Stumpf owns three of the 14 floors. But police decided that the group of about 150 warranted blocking off the entire block to traffic, to the annoyance of many neighbors.


“You collected $43.7 billion in taxpayer money and have since made record profits at the expense of low-income communities, while repeatedly breaking your legal and moral obligations as a creditor. You have failed to comply with loan modification requirements under your own lending agreements,” said a blown-up “foreclosure notice” outside Stumpf’s home.


In the spirited street theater scene, activists dressed as an auctioneer and a larger-than-life John Stumpf played out a fake auction of Stumpf’s property.


Dexter Cato, a father of four whose wife was recently killed in a car crash in the midst of months-long loan modification proceedings, faces foreclosure from his Bayview home of 40 years.


“Stumpf, we want a new address for you,” said Archbishop Franzo King of the Western Additions’ John Coltrane church, “850 Bryant Street!”


The crowd then proceeded to chant this address: the San Francisco Hall of Jusice and County Jail.


“We understand that some of our customers are going through difficult times during this economic recovery,” said Jim Foley, president of Wells Fargo’s Greater Bay Area region, in a press release responding to the Feb. 25 protest. The company plans to hold “Home Preservation Workshops” in Richmond March 7 and 8 to help homeowners facing foreclosure.


Public officials may be a long way from locking up CEOs for foreclosure fraud, but some have taken notice of complaints against the banks. On Feb. 2, the Berkeley City Council voted not to extend its contract with Wells Fargo to manage $300 million in city assets, citing its foreclosures on city residents.


On a national level, activists have been successful in persuading people to transfer their money to local banks and credit unions in recent months. Javelin Strategy and Research came out with statistics that 5.6 million Americans have switched bank service providers in the past 90 days, three times the normal transfer rate. Bank Transfer Day in early October was specifically cited as the trigger by 610,000 of those people.


The recent $25 billion settlement between the five largest banks and attorneys general in California and other states over mortgage fraud made big headlines, but activists note that it allocates a measly $2,000 to some people who have lost their homes to foreclosure. Occupy Bernal’s Buck Bagot said people need more protection from powerful banks. “Banks suckered people into this stuff, and they have made billions,” Bagot said. “We’re not saying people shouldn’t have to pay off the money they borrowed, but it took two to tango.”

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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yael@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 29

Funeral for capitalism

Occupy Oakland declares capitalism dead with a funeral procession with New Orleans style brass band, eulogy, and “dancing on the grave to follow.” Organizers want you to “use your extra day to bid farewell to a system that brings us meaningless jobs, billionaires, shopping malls, structural poverty, and ecological collapse.” After all, this is a leap year, so celebrate it right!

6 p.m., free

Oscar Grant/ Frank H. Ogawa Plaza

Broadway and 14th, Oakl

www.leapdayaction.org/event/funeral-capitalism

 

THURSDAY 1

Occupy Education Part 1

As part of a national day of action, join Occupy City College of SF, Occupy SF State, and the Occupy SF Action Council for a teach-in and occupation at the California State Office Building. The event will be followed by a rally at Civic Center Plaza, with speeches and discussions about the causes and effects of deep cuts to the higher education system.

3 p.m., free

California State Office Building

455 Golden Gate, SF

www.occupyed.org

 

Occupy 4 Prisoners benefit

Legendary activist and professor Angela Davis, along with fellow prison-reform activists Elaine Brown and Barbara Becnel, will speak about the prison-industrial complex, followed by a film screening of Broken on all sides: Race, Mass Incarceration, and New Visions for Criminal Justice in the US.

7 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Grand Lake Theater

3200 Grand, Oakl

www.occupyoakland.org

 

SATURDAY 3

The Future of Palestine

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative and president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, comes to Berkeley. His talk will center on the impact of the Arab Spring on Palestinian politics, and how non-violent struggle there has succeeded in recent years. Proceeds from the event will benefit medical relief for children in Palestine.

7:30 p.m., $10

Martin Luther King Middle School

1781 Rose, Berk.

www.mecaforpeace.org


MONDAY 5

Occupy Education Part 2

Every year, students, teachers and supporters march on Sacramento to demand better access to education. This year, fueled by Occupy momentum, promises to be a big one. Hundreds of protesters plan to march from San Francisco to Sacramento—a four-day journey—for this day of rallies, a general assembly, and non-violent action trainings at California’s Capitol building. Join them, sign up for a seat on the bus, or head to Sacramento yourself.

10 a.m., free

Southside Park

2115 Sixth St, Sacra

www.occupyeducationca.org/wordpress

Image Comic Expo showcases new stars and the old guard

Tony Robles
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Comic cons serve a variety of functions. They can be press junkets, costume parties, swap meets, social retreats, even museums. Comics writer Warren Ellis has a habit of referring to San Diego’s huge Comic Con as “nerd prom,” which perfectly captures the glow of excitement for mass socialization in funny costumes. By contrast, this year’s Image Comic Expo was more like a nerd Sadie Hawkins dance – a deliberate reversal of the standard hierarchy, where creator-owned books are championed over the widely beloved DC and Marvel franchises that sometimes seem to oversaturate the comics market. It was also a little less garish and hectic than some larger cons, but the sense of community and pride was still richly evident.

The event coincided with two historic peculiarities – the twentieth anniversary of Berkeley-based Image Comics and the migration of San Francisco’s WonderCon to Anaheim this year. And, fittingly, there was no shortage of Image worship over the con’s three days. In the center of the convention floor like a hub was the main Image vendor, which sold books, distributed tickets to panels and workshops, and hosted signings, all in the shadow of a massive edifice with Image book covers on one side and images from Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint on the other.

Local vendors were well-represented on the con floor, with Berkeley’s Fantastic Comics (shout-out to my hometown comic book guys and gals) and Escapist Comic Bookstore, and San Francisco’s Two Cats Comic Book Store, among others. The “artist alley” was rife with independent artists and creators selling their wares and producing sketches, while several Image creators, including Jonathan Hickman (Red Wing), Nick Spencer (Morning Glories), and the MAN OF ACTION gents, got their own booths around the con.

As for the sort of crowd the Image Expo attracted, based entirely on my casual observations, there was a notable diversity of age, gender, and ethnicity. There were strikingly few cosplayers, though I spotted one full-blown Aang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, a group of ladies in anime-inspired dress (I made out one Sailor suit), and two young’uns dressed as Batgirl (or a female Batman) and Captain America. Among con guests, the Skybound booth featured an Atom Eve cosplayer, and the comedians of Dipstick Swagger sported a variety of disguises including their own mascot, Luchacat.

By virtue of the con’s Image-centric organization, the panels which ran through Saturday and Sunday were occasionally redundant, with guests like Kirkman, Joe Casey, and Brian K. Vaughan each appearing in multiple places. But breaking announcements and a sense of fan enthusiasm for these beloved creators’ upcoming work kept it all going. Among the exciting announcements at Friday night’s keynote speech by Image publisher Eric Stephenson: the long-awaited sequel to Howard Chaykin’s Black Kiss, a third volume of Phonogram from Gillen/McKelvie, a collaboration between Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson called Happy, and several other new titles.

The most enjoyable panels were the ones that featured folks with a less-established fanbase, who were in a position to introduce new readers to their ideas. The inaugural Saturday panel, moderated by G4’s Blair Butler, focused on the forthcoming Kickstarter-funded collection Womanthology, a showcase for comics by female creators. The panel featured Trina Robbins, Mariah Huehner, Nicole Sixx, Fiona Staples, and Bonnie Burton, all of who contributed in various capacities. The audience, though smallish, was enthusiastic about both the cause and the content, and discussions of such exasperating issues as the “brokeback pose” (slightly NSFW tumblr here) drew applause and thoughtful questions.

Also engrossing was Sunday’s “Image Introduces…” panel, with a slate of recently recognized creators whose series are still in their early issues, including Joe Keatinge (Glory, Hell Yeah), S. Steven Struble and Sina Grace (Li’l Depressed Boy), Daniel Corey (Moriarty), Jim Zub (Skullkickers), Brandon Seifert (Witch Doctor), and Kurtis J. Wiebe (Peter Panzerfaust). It was a joy to see their pride in their creations and their genuine pleasure at getting to share their work with potential new fans.

But let us not forget the old guard: at the “Twenty Years of Independence” panel, the founders of Image told their story and the audience got a chance to witness controversial icons like Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld; the “Stories and Scripts: Writing Comics” panel featured Image’s hottest properties, including Jonathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker, Nick Spencer, John Layman, Joe Casey, Steven T. Seagle, and Brian K. Vaughan, who basically all teased each other and had a grand old time.

Since it was an Image-minded convention, creators came first, which is always refreshing, especially for less iconic newcomers with a lot to offer, but the apotheosis of one publisher might wear thin if the convention continues in subsequent years. With a bit of expansion, though, an East Bay comics event might differ enough from WonderCon to hold an audience.

All photos by Taryn Erhardt

 

Compressing the press

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Compressing the press

Journalism in the Bay Area has been in decline for many years, with corporate consolidations, shrinking newsrooms, declining print readership, and struggles with how to pay full-time reporters when content is offered free-of-charge on the Internet. And with its waning institutional strength, the Fourth Estate has lost some of its ability to watchdog the powerful, creating a dangerous situation in a country founded on the belief that a free press is an essential safeguard of liberty and fairness.

One countervailing trend during this time was the creation of robust nonprofit newsrooms, with the two largest ones in the Bay Area being the Berkeley-based Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and the Bay Citizen in San Francisco. But now those two entities have announced that they’re in merger talks — and that the combined newsrooms would be led by Phil Bronstein, who presided over the decline of San Francisco’s two major daily newspapers.

Whether this merger bodes well or ill for a journalistic resurgence remains unclear. Both entities have their strengths and flaws, and both of their boards are in the middle of a 30-day review period to determine whether the merger makes sense and what the combined operations would look like.

As the exclusive Bay Area content provider for The New York Times, Bay Citizen made a big splash when it was launched with $5 million in seed money from billionaire financier Warren Hellman in late 2009. As Hellman (who died in December) told me at the time, he was seeking to create an independent, local, public interest alternative to the San Francisco Chronicle, which was being gutted by its New York-based owners, Hearst Corp., and even threatened with closure if its unions hindered the downsizing.

Many were skeptical that a newsroom funded and overseen by Hellman and other uber-wealthy San Franciscans would deliver the kind of public interest journalism that the city needed, but under the leadership of veteran Editor Jonathan Weber, it produced many strong stories, starting on launch day with an investigation of how the richest home owners in the city avoid paying property taxes the city once relied on. And last year, Bay Citizen broke some important stories and created valuable databases on campaign contributions and danger spots for bicyclists, for which it recently won a Society of Professional Journalists award for computer-assisted reporting.

Acting CEO Brian Kelley told us the Bay Citizen has succeeded in creating a strong “three-legged stool” balancing solid journalism, a sustainable business model, and technological innovation. After raising about $17 million in three years, ranging from small donations to the $6 million Hellman contributed, “we’re in a very healthy state from a financial standpoint.”

But sources say the operation has had some tough internal divisions, some of it propagated by an out-of-touch board and an overpaid CEO, Lisa Frazier, who took a reported $457,000 salary to run an operation that she had served as Hellman’s consultant in launching. They say Frazier clashed with Weber and the reporting staff, particularly after it voted to unionize last year, and then with Weber’s successor, Steve Fainaru. Both Weber and Fainaru resigned in the last month, creating a leadership vacuum that was one of the factors that triggered the merger talks.

Meanwhile, CIR has experienced the most dynamic growth period in its 30-year history since 2008, when veteran editor Robert Rosenthal took over as executive director after leaving the Chronicle, where he served directly under Bronstein, who also later left the Chronicle and now serves as president of CIR’s board.

CIR has traditionally had a small staff working on a shoestring budget to produce a handful of big investigative journalism projects per year, including award-winning broadcast segments for “Frontline” and “60 Minutes.” But Rosenthal focused on securing millions of dollars in foundation funding and creating collaborations with media outlets around the state (such as KQED), launching California Watch to beef up coverage of statewide issues, as he describes in his 24-page essay “Reinventing Journalism: An unexpected journey from journalist to publisher” (www.californiawatch.org/project/reinventing-journalism).

“I was deeply frustrated by a lack of vision, ambition, and passion on the business side that was throttling creativity and undermining the crucial role that journalism, and especially investigative reporting, play in our democracy,” Rosenthal wrote in the report that was requested by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, one of three foundations that provided more than $1.2 million each to launch California Watch (the others are Irvine and Hewlett foundations).

The Guardian has long raised questions about the trend of foundations increasingly stepping in to fill journalism’s funding voids, arguing that it can compromise journalistic independence and allow wealthy interests to determine what issues get investigative scrutiny (see “Buying the news: How private foundations are quietly underwriting — and shaping — local news coverage of major issues,” 10/8/97).

But in an era when most California newspapers are clinging to life, Rosenthal had used the funding to augment CIR’s investigative reporting staff and get impactful, award-winning stories to run simultaneously in outlets around the state, challenging old journalistic norms about competition and exclusivity.

Rosenthal admits the model has its shortcomings, including the unreliability and often-narrow focus of foundation funding and how CIR’s successes have done little to backfill the loss of local beat reporting (such as covering City Hall or keeping the cops and local power brokers in check), but he thinks the merger might help in those areas.

“It’s exciting for us to be able to address what has been a vacuum in San Francisco for a long time,” Rosenthal told us about reviving local coverage. And on the funding model, he said, “If we can do this right, it’s about creating a local base of people who believe in accountability journalism to give small donations.”

Bronstein told us that many of the shortcomings at his old newspapers were the result of business decisions Hearst made and general trends in the industry. But he acknowledged people’s concerns about whether someone with such a long local history is the best person to turn things around: “I don’t know that I’m the best person to take it over. That’s something other people should determine, not me.”

Both admit that the Chronicle under their tenure could have better covered the consolidation of wealth and power and other economic justice issues, long a Guardian focus and one that the Occupy movement helped highlight. “The Bay Area media could have been a lot more effective on those issues,” Rosenthal said.

But Bronstein said he’s committed to supporting more accountability journalism in the Bay Area, supporting the work of the Bay Citizen, and supplementing work done at papers like the Guardian: “The weeklies do a fine job of writing some in-depth stories and we need more of that, providing context.”

Both said that even if the merger takes place, Bay Citizen would continue to provide local coverage under the brand and model it’s developed, although the New York Times has not yet determined whether it would continue to run its content if it’s not exclusive. The two newsrooms wouldn’t initially be merged, although Bronstein has said that achieving savings of up to $1.9 million is one of his goals, something he’d try to accomplish without reducing journalistic content or quality.

The two entities have slightly different cultures and areas of focus, so the question now is whether they’re compatible. Bay Citizen’s Kelley said he thinks they are: “I personally feel they are very complimentary.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rep Clock

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Schedules are for Wed/22-Tues/28 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. “Mad Dance,” films by Nina Fonoroff, Ken Paul Rosenthal, and Lewis Klahr, Sat, 8. “Short Sharp Shock: 3rd I International Shorts,” Sun, 1:30.

BAY THEATER Aquarium of the Bay, Embarcadero at Beach, SF; www.aquariumofthebay.org. $10-20. “An Evening of Sailing Films,” Fri, 6.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. “Two Sides of a Coin: Kirk Douglas:” •Paths of Glory (Kubrick, 1957), Wed, 3, 7; Ace in the Hole (Wilder, 1951), Wed, 4:45, 8:45. Melancholia (von Trier, 2011), Thurs, 2:30, 5:15, 8. Fantasia (Walt Disney Productions, 1940), Fri-Sun, 2, 5, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. “Rafael Film Club” with guest Ruthe Stein, Thurs, 1. Chico and Rita (Trueba, 2010), call for dates and times. “2012 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” narrative and documentary (separate admission), call for dates and times.

HERBST THEATRE 301 Van Ness, SF; www.sfopera.com. Free (advance registration requested at www.sfopera.com/girlmovie). The Girl of the Golden West — The Movie!, performed by the San Francisco Opera (2010), Sat-Sun, 1:30, 3:30.

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF THE EAST BAY 1414 Walnut, Berk; (510) 848-0237. $6-8. Joanna (Falk, 2010), Thurs, 7:30.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Hollywood Dames: Beauty and Brains:” The Barefoot Contessa (Mankiewicz, 1954), Fri, 6.

“NOISE POP FILM SERIES” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; 2012.noisepop.com/film. $8-10. Bob and the Monster (Bahruth, 2011), Wed, 7; Hit So Hard (Ebersole, 2011), Wed, 9; Blank City (Danhier, 2010), Thurs, 7; N.A.S.A.: The Spirit of Apollo (Garon and Spiegel, 2009), Thurs, 9. Also AMC Loews Metreon 16, Fourth St at Mission, SF. $11.50. Re: Generation Music Project (Bar-Lev, 2011), Thurs, 8. Also Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF. $10. Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story (Bralver and Ferino, 2011), Fri, 7; Andrew Bird: Fever Year (Aranda, 2011), Fri, 9; Upside Down: The Creation Records Story (O’Connor, 2010), Sat, 7; Dragonslayer (Petterson, 2011), Sat, 9:15.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Documentary Voices:” “”Making It (Un)Real: Animated Documentary Shorts,” Wed, 7. “Dizzy Heights: Silent Cinema and Life in the Air:” A Trip to Mars (Holger-Madsen, 1918), Thurs, 7; High Treason (Elvey, 1929), Fri, 7; The Mystery of the Eiffel Tower (Duvivier, 1927), Sat, 6; “Fantasies of Flight: Animation and Comedy Shorts,” Sun, 2. “Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man:” Barbary Coast (1935), Fri, 8:45; His Girl Friday (1940), Tues, 7. “Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson:” L’argent (1983), Sat, 8:35.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. SF IndieFest, Wed-Thurs. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule. Straight Outta Hunters Point 2 (Epps, 2012), Feb 24-March 1, 7, 8:45 (also Sat-Sun, 3:15, 5). “Up the Oscars!”, Academy Awards viewing party, Sun, 3:45. This event, $15.

SF FILM SOCIETY CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $10-11. Margaret (Lonergan, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 2, 5:30, 8:30. Roadie (Cuesta, 2011), Feb 24-March 1, 2:30, 5, 7, 9:15.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $7 donation. “The Second Coming of the Vortex Room:” Privilege (Watkins, 1967), and The Devils (Russell, 1971), Thurs, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Bros Before Hos: Sex in the Shadows,” presented by Albert Steg, Thurs, 7:30.

Our Weekly Picks: February 22-27

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WEDNESDAY 22

Way Behind the Music

Famous rockers may have a way with riffs, but their grammar and syntax can often prove cringe-worthy. And yet, their inflated egos and turmoil-filled musings within literary efforts provide insight into worlds otherwise unknown. This, my friends, is the perfect set-up for an evening of music obsessed over-sharing. At the return of Litquake and Noise Pop’s collaborative event, Way Behind the Music, a collection of esteemed local musicians and writers will read from the autobiographies of Ozzy Osbourne, Sammy Hagar, Jewel, Slash, Ted Nugent, Marianne Faithfull, Angela Bowie, Jim Hutton (boyfriend of Freddie Mercury), and Christopher Ciccone (brother of Madonna). The group on stage — which includes Penelope Houston, Carletta Sue Kay, Jennifer Maerz, and more — will extract tales of Olympic-level drug use, epic bands fights, and rock star trials and tribulations, giving the audience just a taste of that wild ride to infamy. (Emily Savage)

7 p.m., $15

Make-Out Room

3225 22nd St., SF

(415) 647-2888

www.makeoutroom.com

 

THURSDAY 23

Big Black Delta

Big Black Delta is the solo project of Los Angeles maestro Jonathan Bates, lead singer of lo-fi rock band Mellowdrone. Legend has it Bates launched BBD after buying a used laptop off frequent Nine Inch Nails collaborator Alessandro Cortini and using it to create electronic soundscapes. Good thing too, because BBDLP1 is a crafty compilation made up of equal parts power and panache. “Huggin & Kissin” sounds so aggressive, it’s as if Depeche Mode’s synths decided to take steroids and beat up little kids. On the flip side, “Dreary Moon” with Morgan Kibby (the Romanovs, M83) has all the ethereal, vocal playfulness of an Air track. Bates brings in dueling drummers Mahsa Zargaran and Amy Wood for the live show. (Kevin Lee)

With New Diplomat, Aaron Axelsen & Nako 9 p.m., $10–<\d>$12 Rickshaw Stop 155 Fell, SF (415) 861-2011 www.rickshawstop.com

 

FRIDAY 24

“More Light”

If you’re up for a dose of reifying pessimism, check out “More Light” —a joint exhibition featuring new works by Francesco Deiana and Lafe Harley Eaves. In an effort to explore how society diverts humans from primordial joys, Deiana creates ballpoint pen drawings and images on photographic paper that juxtapose society’s adulterating tendencies with natural beauty (e.g. a drawing of an impenetrable brick wall flushed with a photograph of the ocean). Eaves, who’s said he views the world as “one dark joke after another,” makes line and pattern narratives that delve into the occult, religion, and the psychedelic. He also focuses on illustrating human duality and the uncertainty of relationships. (Mia Sullivan)

7 p.m. opening reception, free

Park Life

220 Clement, SF

(415) 386-7275

www.parklifestore.com

 

Image Comic Expo

With San Francisco’s WonderCon moving to Anaheim while Moscone Center South undergoes renovation, Image Comic Expo in Oakland is the primary destination for Bay Area comic book nerdery this season. Instead of focusing on Marvel and DC — the comics industry’s “Big Two” — the Expo bills itself as a “celebration of creator-owned comics.” Exhibitors include a number of independent publishers besides Berkeley-based Image Comics. Guests include Image luminaries Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, and Robert Kirkman (The Walking Dead), plus fan favorites Jonathan Hickman (FF, Pax Romana), Joe Casey (Gødland), Brian K. Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, ABC’s Lost) and Blair Butler. (Sam Stander)

Fri/24, 3-8 p.m.; Sat/25, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sun/26, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., $20–$150

Oakland Convention Center 550 10th St., Oakl.

www.imagecomicexpo.com

 

Dave Holland Overtone Quartet

English bassist Dave Holland came to the United States at the request of the legendary Miles Davis and became part of music lore as part of the quartet that birthed jazz fusion and its opus, Bitches Brew (Columbia). Holland has since worked with a number of jazz masters including Herbie Hancock, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk and Chick Corea. When Holland was coming into his own as a musician in the 1970s, the rest of the Overtone Quartet were just entering into the world. But saxophonist Chris Potter (a frequent Holland collaborator), drummer Eric Harland (a SFJazz Collective performer) and pianist Jason Moran (a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius”) have established themselves as potent forces in their own right. (Lee)

8 p.m., $25–$65

Palace of Fine Arts

3301 Lyon, SF

(415) 567-6642

www.sfjazz.org

 

“Oracle and Enigma”

For a while, thanks to a series of festivals organized by producer Brechin Flournoy, San Francisco was the place in the country to see Butoh. The excitement and puzzlement surrounding the art has died down as it has simply become another form of international dance. So it should be good to again see one of its original practitioners, the Kyoto-born Katsura Kan who in 1997 moved to Thailand and has since become one of those peripatetic choreographer-dancers who takes inspiration from wherever he alights. As part of his winter residency at CounterPULSE, Kan and Shoshana Green will present “Oracle and Enigma” which they describe as “a journey towards the celestial horizon”. Sounds like Butoh . (Rita Felciano)

Fri/24-Sat/25, 8 p.m., $18–<\d>$20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(800) 350-8850

www.counterpulse.org

 

SATURDAY 25

Monster Jam

A stampede of horsepower comes thundering into the Bay Area today with the Monster Jam series of monster truck races and events, featuring 16 ground-shaking custom creations such as the long-running fan favorite “Grave Digger,” which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Fans can get up close and personal with the burly behemoths during the afternoon “Party In The Pits” before the night’s main events, where the 10,000 pound muscle machines will fly through the air at distances up to 130 feet, reach heights up to 35 feet in the air, and of course, gloriously smash a series a puny regular cars. (Sean McCourt)

3-6 p.m. pit party, 7 p.m. main event; $12.50–<\d>$32, $125 for total access pass

O.co Coliseum

7000 Coliseum Way, Oakl.

(800) 745-3000

www.monsterjam.com

 

“Cum and Glitter: A Live Sex Show”

Perhaps you’re one of those people — that yes, do exist — left nonplussed by your standard strip club experience. Let’s face it, fried chicken buffets and atrocious choreography amplified by glitter platform heels don’t do it for us all. For you, then, queer pornographer Maxine Holloway’s new monthly sex show. Holloway, a vintage-loving local coquette, has bolstered her sex industry chops heading Madison Young’s women’s only POV website and used her connections to line up a crack cast for Cum and Glitter’s opening night: Kitty Stryker, Courtney Trouble, and Annika Amour among other superlative sex workers. Live cello music. Specialty cocktails named after the performers. Class. (Caitlin Donohue)

9 p.m., $30–$55 individuals, $50 couples

RSVP for location

www.cumandglitter.com

 

SUNDAY 26

“Up the Oscars!”

For a particular breed of movie fiend, the Academy Awards are more like a sporting event than a glamorous celebration of Hollywood. You know the type: catcalling the screen like they’re giving a blind ref the business (2006 flashback: “Crash? Are you fucking kidding me? Brokeback Mountain forever!”) This year’s ceremony will no doubt evoke its own array of passionate responses to awkward presenters and awkward gowns, omissions from the Tribute to the Dead, faux-surprised winners who unfurl pre-scripted lists of people to thank (“My agent! My masseuse!”), etc. The Roxie’s annual “Up the Oscars!” bash is aimed squarely at those who enjoy cheering and jeering the gold man in equal measure. D.I.Y. drinking games optional. (Cheryl Eddy)

3:45 p.m., $15

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St., SF

www.roxie.com

 

Stardust Sunday

Cover band? Try cover cult. The First Church of the Sacred Silversexual takes all the Christ allusions David Bowie made with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and The Man Who Fell to Earth, exorcising one little bit — Jesus. The resulting mass is a blasphemous celebration of the 65-year-young rock God’s music. With as many members as Bowie has personas, all fully embracing their deity’s love of costume, the Church’s service has the campy theatricality of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and all the sparkle of a Ken Russell movie. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Space Cowboys DJs Mancub and 8Ball

8 p.m., $5

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

The Dodos

Listening to the Dodos kind of makes you feel like you’re part of a drum march that’s heading down a sunny country road via Brooklyn. Logan Kroeber, who’s been known to play a drum kit sans bass and to tape a tambourine to his foot, creates catchy rhythms that compel you to dance frenetically (really, it’s unavoidable), while lead vocalist Meric Long finger-picks an acoustic guitar and traverses the octaves with deep, introspective lyrics you can’t help Googling. This San Francisco-based indie folk duo most recently released fourth album, No Color (Frenchkiss) last year, and is closing out Noise Pop this year with what will likely be a memorable performance. (Sullivan)

With Au, Cannons and Clouds, Here Here

7 p.m., $20

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

MONDAY 27

Leslie and the LY’s

Long known for her 1980s-esque minimal dance-pop numbers encased in stretchy gold lame (referred to in “Gold Pants”), and even longer for her extensive bejeweled sweater collection (ahem, “Gem Sweater”), Leslie of Leslie and the LY’s boasts a newish additional talent to add to the mix: wedding officiant. The Ames, IA-based confetti-puke performance artist began officiating weddings when Iowa voted yes on gay marriage in 2009. The weddings she oversees are said to twinkle with her typical megawatt star quality — there’s even a documentary about one affair called Married in Spandex — and Mother Gem performs a personalized dance number for each lucky couple. While she may not be hosting any impromptu weddings during her appearance at Rickshaw this week, the world just feels more glamorous knowing that she could (for this, we listen to “Power Cuddle”). (Savage)

With Pennyhawk, Ramona & the Swimsuits

8 p.m., $13

Rickshaw Stop

(415) 861-2011

155 Fell, SF

www.rickshawstop.com

 

TUESDAY 28

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

Following 2010’s high profile Pavement reunion tour — which gave fans of the ’90s alternative rockers a chance to see the group live for the first or last time (as well as reportedly giving some of the members funds to pay off some financial debts) — leader Stephen Malkmus returned to the studio with his band the Jicks to record an album with Beck on board as producer. The result, Mirror Traffic, carries over the tour’s energy, and is the closest thing to a Terror Twilight follow-up to date. And as showcased by the Jicks’s all-too-short performance at the last Treasure Island Music Festival, Malkmus remains the slacker king of the nonchalant guitar solo. (Prendiville)

With Nurses

8 p.m., $20

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

On the Cheap

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On the Cheap listings are compiled by Soojin Chang. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 22

“An Edward Gorey Birthday Party” Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; (415) 227-8666, www.cartoonart.org. 6 p.m.-8 p.m., free. Edward Gorey: a cool guy who not only made pop-up matchbox-sized books by hand, but also redefined the macabre nonsense that makes up children’s literature. Come celebrate the world-renowned author’s birthday with an evening of readings, interpretations, and cake.

BAY AREA

“Path to Prison Reform: Freeing Jails from Racism Berkeley-East Baby Gray Panthers” North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst, Berk; (510) 548-9696, berkeleygraypathers.mysite.com. 1:30 p.m., free. Plenty of things go down in jails that are neither documented nor resolved. Join ACLU members and former prisoners in a discussion of how racism may be the culprit behind prison brutality.

THURSDAY 23

“A Mnemosyne Slumber Party” Mechanic’s Institute, 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0101, www.mililibrary.org. 6 p.m., $12. Mnemosyne is a free online journal that features art, fiction, and nonfiction work dedicated to the science of memory and the mind. Come to the premiere of their newest “Sleep and Dreams” issue, stay for a night of live readings and artist appearances.

FRIDAY 24

“Diversity and Evolution of Hummingbirds” City College of San Francisco Ocean Campus, 50 Phelan, SF; (415) 239-3475, ccsf.edu/upcomingevents. Noon-1 p.m., free. Hitchcock ruined birds for some of us, but for those who still find these flying feathered creatures non-terrifying, this is a chance to join ornithology instructor Joe Morlan as he discusses the many birds he saw in his adventures in California, Arizona, Belize, Costa Rica, Trinidad, and Ecuador.

BAY AREA

Oakland Food Not Bombs benefit show Revolution Cafe, 1612 Seventh St., Oakl; (510) 625-0149, www.revcafeoak.com. 7 p.m., $4-$13. Food Not Bombs is all about non-violence, consensus decision-making, and tasty vegetarian meals, distributed for free to the community. What’s not to love? Support the group’s efforts this weekend in a benefit show featuring local bands Nate Porter and Wagon Boat.

SATURDAY 25

“Noise Pop Culture Club” Public Works, 161 Erie, SF; (415) 932-0955, www.publicsf.com. 11:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m., $10. Noise Pop would not be possible without the visionary artists in the music, film, art, design, technology, and food communities. This event features a discussion by Johnny Jewel of Glass Candy, artwork by Grimes, an Ableton Live workshop with Thavius Beck, a talk on animation by Aaron Rose and Syd Garon – plus a bounce lesson taught by New Orleans bounce belle, Big Freedia.

Punk Swap Meet Speakeasy Ales and Lagers, 1195 Evans, SF; (415) 642-3371, www.goodbeer.com. 1

p.m.-6 p.m., free. If you thought flea markets were just for old knitting ladies, you have never been more wrong. Punk Swap Meet has tables selling records, zines, tapes, DIY crafts, clothing, and is open to all ages. There will be food by Eagle Dog, with vegetarian and vegan options available, and brew on tap for $3.

San Francisco Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center Building A, 99 Marina, SF; (415) 383-7837, www.crystalfair.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (also Sun/26, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.), $6 for two-day admission. Is your chakra out of sync? Not to worry. Pacific Crystal Guild is coming with over 40 exhibitors carrying crystals from Nepal, Bali, Afghanistan, and China.

SF Flea Herbst Pavilion at Fort Mason Center, One Buchanan, SF; (415) 990-0600, www.sf-flea.com. Sat., 11 am.1-6 p.m. (also Sun/26, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.), $5. SF Flea is a modern public market that brings together local design, style, food, art, and entertainment.

BAY AREA

Miss and Mister Oakland Punk Rock Pageant East Bay Rats Club House, 3025 San Pablo, Oakl; (510) 830-6466, www.eastbayrats.com. 8:30 p.m., $5 (free for contestants). Who says you have to be a six-year-old from Georgia or proclaim world peace in a bikini to be in a pageant? Have your long-awaited tiara moment by showcasing how swiftly you can open a beer bottle with your teeth at Oakland’s very own punk rock pageant.

Stories of Old San Francisco Chinatown reading Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University, Berk; (510) 548-2350, www.asiabookcenter.com. 3 p.m., free. A long walk through Chinatown conjures ghosts – one can’t help cogitating on these streets’ secrets and history. Join Lyle Jan, a San Francisco native, for a journey through his youth spent growing up in Chinatown.

SUNDAY 26

San Francisco Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl Meet at Green Apple Books, 506 Clement, SF. (415) 387-2272, www.greenapplebooks.com. Noon-6 p.m., free. Go on a walking tour of some of San Francisco’s finest bookstores, buy some books, and eat a lot of chocolate.

The Fairy Dogfather signing Books Inc., 3515 California, SF; (415) 221-3666, booksinc.net/SFLaurel. 3 p.m., free. In Alexandra Day’s new book, a dyslexic boy asks for a fairy dogfather instead of a fairy godfather. And we’re so glad he did, because the combination of a fedora-wearing dog-friend and a confused child makes for one adorable picture book.

MONDAY 27

Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning reading Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; (415) 863-8688, www.booksmith.com. 7:30 p.m., free. Is it really true that an old dog can never learn a new trick? In his book Guitar Zero, NYU professor Gary Marcus chronicles his own experience learning to play the guitar at age 38, and finds that there isn’t necessarily a cut-off age for mastering a new skill.

TUESDAY 28

“Pritzker Family Lecture” with Claude Lanzmann and Regina Longo Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF. (415) 292-1200, www.jccsf.org. 7 p.m., free with reservation. Lanzmann not only lived through the German occupation of France and fought with the French Resistance, but helped document the whole thing as the editor of Les Temps Modernes, Jean Paul Sartre’s political-literary journal. Come pick his brain as he discusses his new memoir, The Patagonian Hare, and his film, Shoah.

Stage Listings

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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

The Pirates of Penzance Julia Morgan Center for the Arts, 2640 College, Berk; (510) 845-8542, www.juliamorgan.org. $17-35. Opens Sat/25, 2 and 7pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm. Through April 1. Berkeley Playhouse performs the Gilbert and Sullivan classic, with the setting shifted to a futuristic city.

Titus Andronicus La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/23-Fri/24, 8pm. Opens Sat/25, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through March 31. Impact Theatre takes on the Bard’s bloodiest tragedy.

ONGOING

*Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theater offers an uneven but worthwhile production of British playwright Joe Penhall’s sardonic comedy of ideas and institutional racism, an intriguingly frustrating three-hander about a young doctor (a bright Dan Clegg) at a psychiatric teaching hospital who begins a battle royal with his suave and pompous supervising physician (a comically nimble Julian Lopez-Morillas) over the release of a questionably-sane black patient. Originally brought in by police for creating a disturbance, Christopher (the excellent Carl Lumbly) still exhibits signs of psychosis and his ability to care for himself seems doubtful to the young doctor treating him. The older physician appeals to the patient’s general competence, hospital procedures, the shortage of beds, and the exigencies of career advancement in countering the younger doctor’s insistence on keeping the patient beyond the mandatory 28-day period required by law. For his part, Christopher, nervous and rather manic, is at first desperately eager to be released back to his poor London neighborhood. Competing interviews with the two doctors complicate his perspective and ours repeatedly, however, as a heated debate about medicine, institutionalization, cultural antecedents to mental “illness,” career arcs, and a “cure for black psychosis,” leave everyone’s sanity in doubt. Although our attention can be distracted by a too-pervading sound design and less than perfect British accents, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe directs a strong and engaging cast in a politically resonant not to say increasingly maddening play. (Avila)

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs-Sat and Mon/27, 8pm. Through March 3. Desiree Butch performs her solo show about a deck of cards’ worth of sexual encounters.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, MainStage, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 24. David Mamet’s cutthroat comedy, courtesy of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco.

Higher Theater at Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Howard, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-65. Extended run: Wed/22, 2pm; Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm). American Conservatory Theater premieres artistic director Carey Perloff’s ambitious but choppy play about renowned architect Michael Friedman (an affably egotistical Andrew Polk) and brilliant but still up-and-coming Elena Constantine (a restlessly clever yet vulnerable René Augesen), lovers who find themselves competing for the same commission to design a memorial at the site of a bus bombing on the Sea of Galilee. The spunky widow (Concetta Tomei) of a wealthy American Jewish businessman is funding the memorial, and supervising the competition with the help of a handsome young Israeli, Jacob (Alexander Crowther), grieving for his father. The jet-set lovers only gradually realize they’re competitors (Michael very late in the game, which seems a bit too clueless). Meanwhile, Michael attends to the strained relationship with his grown-up but too-long-neglected gay son (Ben Kahre), a convert to “born-again Judaism” in contrast to his father’s attenuated affiliations; and shiksa Elena finds inspiration for a radical design in the grief-stricken (but soon smitten) Jacob, kneading the burnt sand at the shore of a lake “filled with Jewish tears.” In a play dealing with land and memory, reconciliation, chauvinism, and short-sightedness, the absence of any mention of Palestinian “tears” in the same water (or Palestinians at all) seems a conspicuous absence. The dialogue, meanwhile, while often witty, can be labored in its mingling of airy architectural notions with earthier matters. Mark Rucker’s direction gives scope to an admirably tailored performance from Augesen (the small stage offers a rewarding chance to watch the ACT veteran work up close) but not enough attention goes to the supposed sexual tension between Elena and Michael, which, despite sporadically randy dialogue and some awkward blocking on a mattress, is effectively nil. (Avila)

*Little Brother Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Josh Costello’s adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s San Francisco-set thriller.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Extended run: Fri/24, 8pm; Sat/25, 5 and 8:30pm. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

Private Parts SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Thurs, 7pm; Fri/24-Sat/25, 8pm. Graham Gremore performs his autobiographical solo comedy.

The Real Americans Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 18. Dan Hoyle revives his hit solo show about small-town America.

Scorched American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Opens Wed/22, 7pm. Runs Tues-Sat, 8pm (Tues/28, show at 7pm); Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm (no matinee Wed/22). Through March 11. Oscar nominee David Strathairn stars in ACT’s performance of Wajdi Mouawad’s haunting drama.

Three’s Company Live! Finn’s Funhouse, 814 Grove, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Fri-Sat, 7 and 9pm. Through March 3. Cat Fights and Shoulder Pads Productions (best production company name ever?) brings the classic sitcom to the stage.

Tontlawald Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 11. Cutting Ball Theater presents this world premiere ensemble piece, using text by resident playwright Eugenie Chan, a capella harmonies, and movement to re-tell an ancient Estonian tale.

*True West Boxcar Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; (415) 967-2227, www.boxcartheatre.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 7. The first installment of Boxcar Theatre’s four-play Sam Shepard repertory project, True West ushers in the ambitious run with a bang. This tale of two brothers who gradually assume the role of the other is one of Shepard’s most enduring plays, rich with humorous interludes, veering sharply into dangerous terrain at the drop of a toaster. In time-honored, True West tradition, the lead roles of Austin, the unassuming younger brother, and Lee, his violent older sibling, are being alternated between Nick A. Olivero and Brian Trybom, and in a new twist, the role of the mother is being played by two different actresses as well (Adrienne Krug and Katya Rivera). The evening I saw it, Olivero was playing Austin, a writer banging away at his first screenplay, and Trybom was Lee, a troubled, alcoholic drifter who usurps his brother’s Hollywood shot, and trashes their mother’s home while trying to honor his as yet unwritten “contract”. The chemistry between the two actors was a perfect blend of menace and fraternity, and the extreme wreckage they make of both the set (designed by both actors), and their ever-tenuous relationship, was truly inspired. (Gluckstern)

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

*Vigilance Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; (415) 335-6087, secondwind.8m.com. $20-25. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm. Ian Walker (The Tender King) directs a sharp revival of his own lucid, involving 2000 domestic drama about three households brought to the brink by the arrival of a menacing working-class loner. Seamlessly staged in a single pair of rooms (designed by Fred Sharkey) representing all three suburban middle-class homes — as well as downstage on the street where dream-home lottery winner Duncan (an imposing Steven Westdahl) throws his beer cans and leers at the wives and children — Vigilance begins with three friends meeting under the pretext of a poker game. Host Virgil (played with gruff charm by a commanding Mike Newman) is a 30-something husband, father, and guy’s guy whose Montana-grown libertarian machismo compensates for the agro of a stormy marriage and rocky finances. He talks the suggestible, nebbishy Bert (a slyly humorous Ben Ortega) and the equally nerdy but independent-minded Dick (a nicely layered Stephen Muterspaugh) into forming a “committee” to deal with the troublesome Duncan. Walker’s well-honed dialogue brings out the false notes in the supposed pre-Duncan harmony right away, and the play strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship. (Avila)

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 24. Brian Copeland returns with a new solo show about his struggles with depression.

BAY AREA

Arms and the Man Lesher Center for the Arts, Margaret Lesher Theater, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-7469, www.centerrep.org. $38-43. Wed/22, 7:30pm; Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm. Center REPertory Company presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic romantic comedy.

*Body Awareness Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $30-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 11. In Annie Baker’s new comedy, receiving a top-notch Bay Area premiere at Aurora Theatre, peppy psychology prof Phyllis (Amy Resnick) hosts “Body Awareness Week” at her small Vermont college, while back home partner Joyce (Jeri Lynn Cohen) talks to her 21-year-old son Jared (Patrick Russell) about the porn pay-per-view bill he’s racked up. Phyllis contends that Joyce’s introverted, somewhat explosive virgin son (who in addition to bouts of violent anger soothes himself compulsively with an electric security toothbrush) has Asperger’s Syndrome — a diagnosis that Jared, a budding not too say obsessive lexicographer, hotly contests. That same week, the couple hosts a guest artist, Frank (Howard Swain), a breezy man’s man whose career stands squarely on a series of photographs of nude women and girls. The young man seeks sexual advice from the older one, much to Phyllis’s disgust and Joyce’s relief, while also tempting Joyce with the notion of posing for a nude portrait and “reclaiming her body image,” in a well-used phrase. An already delicate balance thus goes right off kilter as, between the poles of Phyllis and Frank, Joyce and Jared chase competing notions and definitions of themselves and the world. In the volatile tension between perspectives, power trips, and extreme personalities, playwright Baker initially pushes a comic form toward an unsettling edge, only to retreat in the end for safer ground and a family-friendly resolution. While that feels like a lost opportunity, Body Awareness is still a stimulating and solidly entertaining evening, brought to life by a warm and dexterous ensemble under fine, lively direction by Joy Carlin. (Avila)

Counter Attack! Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 444-4755, ext. 114, www.stagebridge.org. $18-25. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 4. Stagebridge presents the world premiere of Joan Holden’s waitress-centric play.

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Sat/25, March 1, 8, and 15; no show March 23); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through March 25. Berkeley Rep performs a contemporary update of the Molière comedy.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through March 25. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Mesmeric Revelation Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Central Works opens its season of world premieres with Aaron Henne’s Edgar Allen Poe-inspired drama.

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Wed/22, 7:30pm; Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm (also Sat/25, 2pm); Sun/26, 2 and 7pm. Marin Theatre Company performs Keith Huff’s neo-noir drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: Sun/26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Accentuate the PAWSitive!” DNA Lounge, 365 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. Tues/28, 7pm. $20. Cabaret star Carly Ozard and friends perform to raise money for Pets Are Wonderful Support.

“The Auction” Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California, SF; (415) 292-1233, www.jccsf.org. Sat/25, 8pm. $10-40. Miranda July performs a piece based on her book It Chooses You.

Batsheva Dance Company Novellus Theater, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 398-6449, www.sfperformances.org. Thurs/23-Sat/25, 8pm. $35-60. The Tel Aviv-based company performs Max.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/24-Sat/25, 8pm; Sun/26, 7pm. $10-25. Celebrate African and African American dance and culture at this multi-part festival, with works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, and more.

“Club Chuckles” Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com. Thurs/23, 9pm. $8. Comedians Rob Cantrell, W. Kamau Bell, John Hoogasian, and Caitlin Gill perform.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tues, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“The Eric Show” Milk Bar, 1840 Haight, SF; www.milksf.com. Tues, 8pm (ongoing). $5. Local comedians perform with host Eric Barry.

“No Exit” and “Dead/Alive” Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/24-Sat/25, 8 p.m., $15. Christine Bonansea and Minna Harri Experience Set perform new works.

“Oracle and Enigma” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; 1-800-838-3006, www.counterpulse.org. Fri/24-Sat/25, 8pm. $20. Master Katsura Kan directs this Butoh dance theater work.

Heated debate

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Heated debate

emily@sfbg.com

YOGA Open source is all the rage these days, from platforms to beverages to biotech. And when it comes to yoga, the East’s oldest standby for health and well-being, open source has been the way for thousands of years. But all changed when yoga won over the capitalistic West, and the West Coast became a hotbed for many of today’s popular yoga trends.

But for Bay Area yogis who can’t afford $92 pants to enhance their assets or $18 drop-in classes, there’s Yoga to the People (www.yogatothepeople.com): the East Coast invention of Greg Gumucio, which operates on a donation-based model.

Besides studios in New York and Seattle, YTTP has spaces on both sides of the Bay — in Berkeley and the Mission — and it has plans to open a hot studio in Berkeley as well. There, 90-minute classes will feature a familiar series of 26 poses in a sweltering 105-degree room.

But it’s not Bikram Yoga, the “hot yoga” that’s won its Indian founder a worldwide following.

Instead, it’s what YTTP calls “traditional hot yoga.” It’s already on the docket at four of the group’s five New York studios, and late last year, it landed them in hot water with Bikram Choudhury, who sued YTTP for infringing on his intellectual property.

While the class is similar to what Bikram-ites have come to expect when they walk into any one of the modern guru’s more than 900 studios worldwide, “traditional hot yoga” doesn’t rely on Bikram certified teachers or Bikram’s copyrighted class dialogue, and Bikram receives no money.

Which makes the whole issue a little sticky: if YTTP were billing the classes as Bikram Yoga, they’d have to play by Bikram’s rules: from teacher trainings and re-certifications to registering and paying studio dues — in fact, right down to the Bikram-required carpet on the floor.

But as Gumucio and his lawyers pointed out in an answer to Bikram’s suit, they’re not.

Furthermore, the response argues, copyright protection is limited to original works of authorship, from which the copyright statute expressly excludes “procedures, systems and methods of operation” — such as exercise systems.

In a December letter to YTTP’s lawyers, the copyright office concurred, writing that the selection and ordering of exercises in the public domain (which Bikram’s poses, having been taught by his teacher’s teachers for generations, clearly are) “do not constitute the subject matter that Congress intended to protect.”

Of course, there remains the slight problem of the office already having issued the copyright, a fact that Bikram’s lawers have not failed to notice.

After a slew of articles hit New York presses, Yoga to the People has decided that they will no longer comment on the case, but Gumucio is taking the letter as the decisive answer to the question he posed on his website, Yogatruth.org: “Can yoga be owned?”

“Copyright office makes it official,” he wrote in exuberant red print. “Yoga belongs to all people!”

It’s easy to see the saga as a David and Goliath story — Yoga to the People, proclaiming,” There will be no proper payment; there will be no right answers; no glorified teachers; no ego no script no pedestals,” versus the Rolls Royce-collecting, sequined Speedo-wearing, wealthy, and self-promoting Beverly Hills-based Choudhury, purveyor of what many call “McYoga.”

But Juicy Sanchez, who owns and teaches at the Bikram-certified studio Mission Yoga (www.missionyoga.com) with her husband Steve, points out that some of the hype surrounding Bikram’s larger-than-life personality and shady business practices are overblown.

For instance: claims that studios are required to pay monthly dues and franchising fees of more than $10,000, in addition to the cost of teacher trainings, which are required every three years.

“First, we’re not a franchise,” she says. “We’re a loose affiliation.”

“And it’s just like any profession — doctor, lawyer, massage therapist — you’re required to get re-certified periodically,” she says. As for as the franchising fee, she says that because she and her husband bought an existing studio, they were not required to pay anything beyond their teacher training to open their business.

Though that may soon change. In April, Bikram will require studios to pay $300 a monthy for the right to use his name, which has people “freaking out.”

“I suppose some people are always going to feel exploited,” she says, “But personally, I think it’s a bargain. How else do you buy into a brand?”

Of course, Bikram wasn’t always considered a brand. Sanchez explains that when he arrived in the U.S. in the 1970s, he slept on the floor of his studio. He taught for free until the actress Shirley MacLaine, a student of his, took him aside and told him that if he didn’t charge money, no one would value what he did.

But if yoga is truly about a practice, not a product, why continue to replicate this one man’s 26 poses?

Brian Monnier, of the California Yoga Company (www.calyogacompany.com), says of Gumucio, “I support his right to fight for this, but if your teacher doesn’t want you teaching what he taught, why not grow and change the practice?”

Monnier points to his teacher Tony Sanchez, who learned directly from Bikram, but wasn’t certified by Bikram’s Yoga College of India. Instead, Sanchez returned to Bikram’s own guru, Bishnu Gosh, in Calcutta. It was from him that Sanchez drew his practice, creating a new style of hot yoga altogether.

Even Bikram has said that the power should lie with the practitioner — not the teacher. The very idea for Yoga to the People came when Bikram asked Gumucio, then a student of his, to review another teacher. Gumucio gave a negative review, and Bikram chastised him, saying “You are your own teacher. You are responsible for your own experience.”

How that plays out in the Bay Area remains to be seen. Katite Gumucio, Greg’s sister and owner of Hot Yoga Ocean Ave., (www.hotyogaoceanave.com) believes that yoga isn’t so different from many other types of big business with the opportunity to change paths. “Yoga can segue into a new way of doing business. YTTP is clear that you’re the center of it all; you don’t need to realize through anyone else. People can lead us, they can grow and do great work, but when they reach the point where they can only lead by force, it’s time to redistribute the power instead of trying to hold on.”

Down Dog break down

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culture@sfbg.com

YOGA For a sizeable sector of our population, yoga is as much a part of the culture as burritos and biking to work. With more than 50 studios in San Francisco’s 49 square miles alone — and even a brand-new yoga room in SFO, which claims to be an airport first — the Bay Area isn’t short on options for a Saturday morning sweat sesh or Sunday night candlelight.

But which teacher is best for you? For three exhaustive weeks I pretzeled it up from Berkeley to Bernal, sampling classes with some of our most famous and intriguing yogis. Below are my experiences with each, along with a one-to-five “sweat factor” intensity rating . Hopefully, this will help you choose the right teacher to help you lighten up, ground down, or just plain bliss out. (Perhaps you might be inspired to follow one of our dozens of other local yogis’ paths.)

Me? I’ll be soaking in a hot bath. Can you hand me that ice pack?

 

PETE GUINOSSO: GOOFY AND LOOSE

If you’re the kind of person who thinks the Black Eyed Peas and Beyoncé — let alone House of Pain — don’t belong in the yoga studio, then Pete’s Friday night Happy Hour Yoga at Yoga Tree on Valencia (www.yogatreesf.com) isn’t for you.

Guinosso breaks it down, both musically and with frequent stops to explain a new inversion or variation on an arm balance. With plenty of “play time” to work at your own pace, plus friendly gossip and occasionally flirty energy in the female-heavy room, the class can sometimes feel more like a very sweaty cocktail party. But it’s a great way to stay loose, learn new tricks, and cultivate what Pete calls the “inner teacher.” The smiley, Forrest-trained yogi also guides more traditional vinyasa and candlelight flow classes — no Top 40 here — but his liberating sense of humor remains.

Sweat Factor: 3 

The Takeaway: Fun and funky, but probably not best if verses from “Afternoon Delight” aren’t among your favored mantras.

www.petegyoga.com

 

LES LEVENTHAL: FRESH AND AFFIRMING

Imagine taking a rubber band ball and chucking it down some hard wooden stairs: that’s what Les was like, bouncing around during Saturday morning vinyasa while his students were still waking up.

But that’s all right. As my neighbor one mat over put it, Les is “really good at letting you know that where you are is fine, while at the same time pushing you to move forward.”

Leventhal’s quirky style, coupled with live beats by Sac-town sacred sound messenger Nate Spross (Les has also brought the likes of Buddha Bar’s Daniel Masson from Paris to spin), kept class sparkling; even when he got down among the mats to demonstrate a Foot-Behind-Head pose which morphed into a series of arm balances that had students’ eyes bulging, his sense of humor soothed the spirits of those of us who were in pain just watching — let alone trying to replicate the seamless flow.

“Why do we let our heads tell us what’s good enough?” he asked, putting a hand at neck level to show a separation between head and body. “Even if you’re in the simplest expression of this pose, it feels good from here down!”

Sweat Factor: 4 

The Takeaway: Down-to-earth, despite chanting in a reverberating baritone that brings me shuddering back to the rabbis of my Sunday school days.

www.yogawithles.com

 

JANET STONE: FAST AND UNFETTERED

With barely two inches between mats on a Saturday morning, it’s easy to see that Janet is a Bay Area favorite. She’s no slave to typical maneuvers like the Sun Salutation, though, and while her fast flows kept class interesting, all the unfamiliar iterations seemed a bit frantic — and made the class more about momentum (and not getting lost) than about muscle and alignment.

But of course, that’s the yoga. And though her students may love her because they come to learn her style, she might say the real work is in getting better at not knowing what’s next. Or, in Janet’s wording: “In this practice we pause and disarm our myriad of defenses, and experience the pure luminous light that is there.”

Sweat Factor: 3

The Takeaway: Good if you like spontaneous Hare Krishna-themed dance fevers and Lulu-clad students eager to show off their handstands — even when that means toppling onto others’ mats.

www.janetstoneyoga.com

 

RUSTY WELLS: DEVOTED AND UNDONE

Only a few years after beginning his journey as a yogi in early 1990s Atlanta, Rusty started to sense something missing.

“A teacher of mine told me after class one day, ‘it looks like you’re praying when you practice,'” Rusty says, “and my reply was, ‘What, am I not supposed to be?'”

Now he knows that something is bhakti, Sanskrit for “devotion to the wonder of life,” and it’s for sale (well, actually, for donation) at Rusty’s vinyasa-inspired studio near the Mission, Urban Flow (www.urbanflowyoga.com).

Taking class with Rusty is a bit like having your own personal cheerleader, albeit an extremely calm one, urging you to “undo a lifetime of doing.” His classes reflect the intention to be a beginner each time you return to the mat. But despite a slightly slower pace and emphasis on fundamentals, Bhakti Flow is by no means a soft option. In fact, everyone I saw there (including a smattering of other Bay Area teachers) was pretty much a hardbody.

Not that I should have noticed, my teacher told me.

“When I first started practicing,” Rusty said, “I used to look around and admire the people who were really strong, really stretchy.”

“After a while, I learned to look around and admire the people who were finding great joy in their practice. And a while after that,” the yogi concluded “I learned to just stop looking.”

Sweat Factor: 3

The Takeaway: Like Chicken Soup for the Ass(ana). Part workout, part therapy.

www.rustywells.com

 

STEPH SNYDER: COMFY AND UNASSUMING

I was a little intimidated, walking into the crowd assembled for Steph’s class on Super Bowl Sunday — my first with her, and her first upon returning to teaching after having a healthy baby boy. Excitement was as thick as the steam wafting through the air, streaking the windows with condensation. Friends squealed and greeted each other, mats moved over and over again to make more space, and shouts that had nothing to do with pigskin could be heard all around.

But once we started, it was like slipping into a favorite pair of old jeans. Her flows have great rhythm and plenty of variety. Plus something intuitive, as though my body knew what to do even before her cue. She’s humble, and you can tell that she honestly loves what she’s doing.

Part of her appeal is her belief in the practice, one she says has gotten her through dark times, and her commitment to making the same hold true for others.

“Whatever you need, the practice is there for you. If you need to be saved, it will literally save you,” she promises. Add to that a great workout, beautiful chanting, and some awesome harmonium playing (Steph says she accompanies herself every day) and you can’t go wrong.

Sweat Factor: 4

The Takeaway: Delicious in every way.

www.stephaniesnyder.com

 

PRADEEP TEOTI: SONGFUL AND BOLD

Born in a small village outside of New Delhi, Pradeep brings with him an international yoga certification in the Sivananda tradition, a deep personal practice that stretches way beyond asana, and an amazing unique voice that pitches and rolls all throughout class with nary an audible breath, making him sound something like a spiritual auctioneer trying to sell peace of mind and six-pack abs; the only pause in singsong accompaniment raising warrior ones to warrior twos is his distinctive intonation of exhaaayle, inhaaayle.

Pradeep’s classes, including this one at Oakland’s Flying Yoga Shala (www.flyingyogashala.com) are fast and packed with plenty of push-ups and core work, definitely best when you’re feeling bold. But his compassion is also undeniable.

“Yoga is not saying you put your leg behind your head,” he told me when I was feeling sick in class. “Yoga is just putting yourself in the moment, paying attention to right now. Maybe someone wants to come to my class and just do child pose for one whole hour. Then my job is to create that space for them.”

Sweat Factor: 5

The Takeaway:Though he said I taught him yoga that day, it’s better to leave the instruction up to Pradeep: he’s one of the best.

www.pradeepyoga.com

 

DARREN MAIN: SPIRITUAL AND SINCERE

Though he’s definitely made a student or two sweat, Darren truly shines when teaching restorative sessions — especially his donation-based Tuesday night practices in the cavernous Grace Cathedral, coupled with live music like Sam Jackson’s exquisite chorus of a dozen Tibetan singing bowls.

The temptation may be not to take Darren seriously: sometimes he slips into that same ethereal quality of voice he uses to introduce his “Inquire Within” podcasts, and the flowing blond hair and bright blue eyes staring out from the back of his most popular book, Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic, are a bit Cherub-cum-movie-star, come to that.

But his teachings — in the studio and as an author, essayist, and international speaker on spirituality — come from a sincere place: a struggle with issues of sexuality, religion, and identity. Who couldn’t use a teacher with that kind of experience on their quest for personal growth? Plus, his hair’s short now.

Sweat Factor: 1 

The Takeaway: Unique restorative classes with a dose of mysticism — and sometimes hot stones.

www.darrenmain.com

 

MARK MORFORD: CALM AND FOCUSED

Straight up: I have to respect a guy who starts class, no apologies, with core work. Mark is that guy. His classes are serious and to-the-point, but without the rush and ego I sometimes associate with other hardcore workout-focused yogis. Of course, he does teach, rather noticeably, with his shirt off. But we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and chalk that up to inspiration. Perhaps because his classes don’t tend toward the super-crowded, they feel both peaceful and purposeful.

And — unlike his columns for the Chronicle, which are all over the place and over-the-top funny — his yoga, both the asana and the anecdotes, have a simple, quiet intensity and calm focus that make them rewarding and accessible for all levels.

Sweat Factor: 4 stars

The Takeaway: Strong, steady yoga with the occasional conversational foray.

www.markmorford.com

 

JANE AUSTIN: CANDID AND EARTHY

In classes filled with as much laughter and candid advice as yoga, Jane prepares new moms and moms-to-be for the best and worst of mothering. And she does it as much through understanding and open conversation as through asana (poses to strengthen the arms for holding a newborn, to rotate wee ones while they’re still inside, and to stretch, err, whatever might need stretching in preparation for delivery).

A midwife, doula, and mother of two, Jane is funny and warm, and able to come up with plenty for pregnant or healing women to do other than “go sit against the wall and squat.”

Plus, for ladies looking to speed things up, her classes have a history of hastening delivery — as in, right then and there. Pssst, the “water breaking spot” is just one mat to the right of the door at Yoga Tree on Valencia.

Sweat Factor: 2 

The Takeaway: Be prepared to discuss everything from the nipples on down. And imagine your cervix melting like butter.

www.janeaustinyoga.com

6 places to take a nude figure drawing class

Andrew Lam
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6 places to take a nude figure drawing class

Clothes are nothing but hindrances when it comes to drawing the human body. Strip down to the barest essentials in these nude figure drawing classes offered around the Bay Area. Most of these classes are uninstructed, so you will be on your own to explore the aesthetic beauty of the human form.

“Figure Drawing Without Instruction”

9:30-12:30 p.m. and 6:30-9:30 p.m.; Wednesdays 6:30-9:30 p.m., $16/class. 23rd Street Studio, 3747 23rd St., SF. (415) 824-3408, www.23rdstreetstudio.com 

“Uninstructed gesture poses with nude art model”

Tuesdays 6:30-9:30 p.m., $15/class. Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru, Alameda. (510) 523-6957, www.frankbettecenter.org

“Drawing from the Nude Model”

Tuesdays 7-10 p.m., $12/class. Lightning Coyote Studio, 2914 Linden, Oakl. (510) 836-0363, www.lightningcoyote.com

“Berkeley Nude Life Drawing Group”

Wednesdays 7 p.m., $13/class. Firehouse North Gallery, 1790 Shattuck, Berk. www.firehouseartcollective.blogspot.com

“Gay Men’s Sketch”

Tuesday 6:30 p.m., call for reservations. Mark I. Chester Studio, 1229 Folsom, SF. (415) 621-6294, www.markichester.com

“Figure Drawing: Gestural Poses”

Wednesdays 9:30-12:30 p.m, $55/four sessions. The Emerald Tablet, 80 Fresno, SF. (415) 500-2323, www.emtab.org

 

San Francisco honors the memory of Warren Hellman with a free daytime concert

Tony Robles
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San Francisco will honor the memory of philanthropist Warren Hellman this weekend with a fittingly free, live bluegrass showcase. The event includes performances by: Poor Man’s Whiskey, John Doe, Kevin Welch, Kieran Kane & Fats Kaplin, Dry Branch Fire Squad, Steve Earle, Buddy Miller, The Wronglers (Hellman’s old band) with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Gillian Welch, Boz Scaggs, Old Crow Medicine Show, Robert Earl Keen, Emmylou Harris with special guest The Go to Hell Man Clan.    

The Warren Hellman Public Celebration takes place Sun/19 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. down by Ocean Beach,  in the Great Highway (Hwy 1) parking lot between JFK Drive and  Lincoln Avenue. The event also will be streaming live at www.strictlybluegrass.com. 

As Guardian city editor Steven T. Jones expressed the week following Hellman’s death late last year, “Warren Hellman left a hole in the heart of San Francisco when he died.” As most San Franciscans know by now, Hellman, a venture capitalist, was a music lover at heart – he bankrolled the city’s prized fall festival, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YDTx_yXfeI

When culture writer Caitlin Donohue visited Hellman in his office two years before his passing she noted, , “I realize that central to [Hellman] is bluegrass music. His corner office is comfortably packed with stacks of banjos and guitars, a signed CD from Emmylou Harris that wishes him a happy birthday, a metal sculpture that wears aviator sunglasses and a white cowboy hat, thank you plaques from the Berkeley music venue Freight and Salvage, where Hellman is a keystone donor and acted as chairman for the club’s fundraising campaign in years past. It’s impossible to avoid the music in the room, indeed the music is the room.”

Warren Hellman Public Celebration
Sun/19, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., free
Great Highway (Hwy 1) parking lot
Between JFK Drive and  Lincoln Avenue, SF
www.strictlybluegrass.com

NATHANIEL BLUMBERG, 1922-2012

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NATHANIEL BLUMBERG, 1922-2012

Nathan Blumberg, a great journalist who insisted on meeting deadlines, wrote his own obituary so that he would not miss his final deadline,  on Valentine’s Day, in 2012, when he died of complications from a stroke in Kalispell, Montana. Below is his obit,and his final byline, updated and corrected by Wilbur Wood, his former student and former city editor of the Guardian in the late 1960s.  Wood said that  Nathaniel wrote his own obit to insure that it would be complete and accurate. Nathaniel’s critique of mainstream journalism, and his  vision of independent journalism, were a major influence in the founding of the Guardian and the alternative press.

Nathaniel Blumberg was a World War II combat veteran, Rhodes Scholar, investigative reporter, national press critic, novelist, visiting professor and lecturer at major universities, dean and professor during his 35-year tenure at the University of Montana, and a man devoted to Montana for the last 55 years of his life.

He died February 14, 2012, at the age of 89 in Kalispell, Montana, where he had been hospitalized since a stroke February 8 in his home near Big Fork.     

Born April 8, 1922, in Denver, Colorado, Nathaniel Bernard Blumberg was the eighth and last child of Dr. Abraham Moses and Jeanette Blumberg. His father was a country doctor in Siebert, Colorado, for many years and had moved to Denver with his family to serve as superintendent of a tuberculosis sanitarium.

Nathaniel grew up in the west side of Denver with his four brothers and three sisters in a vibrant home filled with newspapers, magazines, books, music and long discussions of current events at the dinner table. He was graduated from East Denver High School after covering the city’s high school sports for the Rocky Mountain News while a senior.

His education at the University of Colorado was interrupted by the attack on Pearl Harbor and in August, 1942, he enlisted in the Army. After basic training, he was sent to the Army Specialized Training Program in Logan, Utah, and then to Camp Bowie in Texas. He was assigned to the forward observation team of Battery C of the newly formed 666th Field Artillery Battalion, a 155mm howitzer non-divisional unit trained to change mission on short notice. The Triple Sixes entered the war during one of the coldest winters of the century in Belgium against elite German SS troops in the Battle of the Bulge, the largest land battle in the history of the United States Army. The battalion then drove across the Roer river and the Rhine, through the heart of Germany and into occupation in Austria. He earned three battle stars and a Bronze Star in combat. 

Shortly after VE Day in 1945, he published the first history of a unit in World War II, “Charlie of 666,” which he had begun writing when the battalion was formed in 1944. With his poker winnings and combat pay, he published the 32-page booklet in a German print shop and distributed it to members of his battery to send home.

After the war he returned to the University of Colorado, was named editor of the student newspaper and received a bachelor of arts in journalism and a master of arts in history. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for two years of study at Oxford University, where he earned a doctorate in modern history under the tutelage of the internationally known and controversial historian, A.J.P. Taylor. He was a starting guard for Oxford in the first Oxford-Cambridge basketball game ever played in 1949.

Nathaniel was an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska from 1950 to 1955, when in 1954 the University of Nebraska Press published his “One-Party Press?,” the first significant study of press performance in a presidential election. He went to Michigan State University for a year as an associate professor and in 1956 at the age of 34 he was brought to the Universty of Montana by President Carl McFarland to become dean and professor of the School of Journalism. He served under four presidents and two interim presidents during his 12 years as dean.

He established the annual Dean Stone Night in 1957 to honor the founder and first dean of the School of Journalism, to present awards to outstanding students and to bring a prominent journalist to lecture on the campus, a tradition still followed.

He formed the Department of Radio-Television in 1957 and brought in Phil Hess to put KUFM on air Jan. 31, 1965, six years before National Public Radio was begun in 1971. He has been called on air “the grandfather of Montana Public Radio, a public service of the University of Montana.”

With Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News, president of the Montana Newspaper Association, Nathaniel installed the Montana Newspaper Hall of Fame in the School of Journalism in 1958.

Also in 1958, he founded the Montana Journalism Review, the first journalism review in the United States, three years before the Columbia Journalism Review. It is still going.

Shortly after the inauguration of President Kennedy in 1961, the U.S. State Department asked him to serve as an “American Specialist” in Thailand for the summer. Three years later, under President Johnson, he again served in the same capacity for the summer in Trinidad, Guyana, Surinam and Jamaica.

He was elected vice president of the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism in 1962, declining to run for president because it meant he would be sponsoring a national journalism competition he and his faculty regarded as unethical. He was elected national chairman of the accreditation committee of the American Council on Education for Journalism in 1967 and national president of Kappa Tau Alpha, the society honoring scholarship in journalism, in 1969.

He was a member of the Rhodes Scholarship state selection committee from 1956 to 1987, including seven years as state secretary. He served six times on the western seven-state Rhodes regional selection committee.

Nathaniel was a staff writer for the Denver Post, associate editor of the Lincoln (Neb.) Star and assistant city editor of the Washington Post. He accepted invitations to serve as a visiting professor at Pennsylvania State University for fall quarter of 1964, Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism for the 1966-67 year and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in 1970.

He married Lynne Stout in 1946 and they had three daughters, Janet Leslie, Jenifer Lyn and Josephine Laura. They divorced in 1970 but remained a close family. Their children and grandchildren gathered in Missoula on many occasions and spent long summers on the east shore of Flathead Lake.

Starting a new life in 1970, Nathan took the full name of Nathaniel on his birth certificate. In 1973, he married Barbara Farquhar, a college English professor and a widely published poet, who came to Missoula with her daughter, Nina. Barbara introduced him to Newfoundland dogs and they shared their 34 years together with seven Newfies (and a wolf with a touch of dog in her from the Helena hills). They enjoyed traveling together to beaches and fishing villages in the Canary Islands, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Nova Scotia, and frequently to Florida, Mexico, Costa Rica, Orcas Island and the central Oregon coast. They balanced these adventures with quiet periods of writing in the cabin they designed and helped build near Big Fork.

In 1980 he established WoodFIREAshes Press to publish books which he hoped to write, edit and design without commercial publishers, editors or agents. He crafted “The Afternoon of March 30, A Contemporary Historical Novel” in l984, which centered on facts never reported by mainstream newspapers or on television about the attempted assassination of President Reagan by John W. Hinckley Jr. It received many warm reviews except for the Missoulian reviewer who didn’t care for the book although he termed the chapter on Hinckley’s trial “riveting.” Bud Guthrie wrote that he had “written a pretty bad novel but a forceful and persuasive book.” Doris Lessing, years before she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote Nathaniel, “I have read ‘The Afternoon of March 30’ with fascination. I really could not put it down, once I had started. If you ever come to London – and why should you, if you live in Montana, which I understand from friends of mine is one of the special places – then do let me know.”    
 
Nathaniel rarely spoke of his part in World War II until 19 survivors of his artillery battery gathered for a reunion in 1992 and urged him to write the uncensored story of their time at war. He returned to Belgium and Germany three times, including a three-day meeting with 32 German veterans of the Ardennes battle. In 2000 he published “Charlie of 666, a Memoir of World War II,” which included his 1945 history and his recollections on the war 55 years later. It was nominated for the 2002 Distinguished Book Award of the Society of Military History.

From 1991 to 1999 he published 20 issues of the “Treasure State Review, A Montana Periodical of Journalism and Justice.” Many of his graduates contributed to the 12-page newsletter. It served as his commentary on that decade of Montana history.

He wrote many articles for magazines, but he was most proud of his coverage of the “March on the Pentagon” in 1967 and his long essay, “Chicago and the Press,” based on his time on the streets and in the parks covering the protesters during the chaotic week of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He was co-editor with Warren Brier of “A Century of Montana Journalism” and editor of the two-volume “Mansfield Lectures in International Relations.”

He was a demanding teacher with high standards who encouraged his students to live up to the highest principles of the journalism profession, to treat their native language with accuracy and affection, to always be skeptical but never cynical, and to remember that “sacred cows make the best hamburgers.” He was teacher, friend and counselor to hundreds of his students and took great pride in their professional success, their contributions to journalism in Montana and the nation, and their strong sense of public service in their chosen careers. They have written an extraordinary number of books. Scores of his graduates became lifelong friends.

Nathaniel was outspoken and had strong opinions. When he was honored by the Montana Newspaper Association along with Mel Ruder of the Hungry Horse News and Hal Stearns of the Harlowtown Times as the first three Master Editor/Publishers in 1991, he told a cheering audience of weekly journalists that “I am just as proud of the kind of people who don’t like me as I am of the kind of people who love me.” At the 25th anniversary of the Montana Constitutional Convention in Helena in 1997, his critique of the Montana daily press drew the longest standing ovation of the meeting.

His beloved Barbara Ann died of a stroke on the Autumnal Equinox, Sept. 21, 2007, a few days before her 73rd birthday. He also lost his youngest daughter, Josephine Loewen, in a tragic accident on Jan. 7, 2001, at the age of 46.

Survivors include his daughters, Janet Leslie Blumberg of Bothell, Wash., Jenifer Blumberg of Charlo, and stepdaughter Nina Gutierrez and husband Miguel of Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica; grandchildren Caleb Knedlik and wife Janine of Philadelphia, Pa., Asher Loeb of San Francisco, Ariel Diaz and husband Victor of Phoenix, Aram Loeb of Dayton, Ohio, Laramie and Kiam Loewen of Missoula, Adam Loewen of Portland, and Helen, Valerie and Sofia Gutierrez of Ciudad Colon, Costa Rica; numerous nieces and nephews and his first wife, Lynne Blumberg in Missoula.

He spent his last years in his cabin working on a book, including a chapter on “My 30 Years With John W. Hinckley, Jr.” in which he named Neil and Sharon Bush as co-conspirators in the attempt to assassinate President Reagan.

He requested no formal services and that his ashes be scattered with those of Barbara among the trees around their home near Big Fork.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/15-Tues/21 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6. “Miss Shannon// Underground (A) (T) (A) Laserbeam Premiere [Q] [A] [Z],” Wed, 8.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.balboamovies.com. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (Yates, 2011), Thurs, 7:15.

BAY THEATER Pier 39, SF; sfoffspecialscreening.eventbrite.com. $10-20. “San Francisco Ocean Film Festival Special Screening:” •One Beach (Baffa, 2011) and Thirty Thousand: A Surfing Odyssey from Casablanca to Cape Town (James and James, 2011) Thurs, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. The Skin I Live In (Almodóvar, 2011), Wed, 2:30, 5:15, 8. •Certified Copy (Kiarostami, 2010), Thurs, 2:45, 7, and Circumstance (Keshavarz, 2011), Thurs, 4:50, 9. •Thunder Soul (Landsman, 2010), Fri, 3:30, 7, and Black Dynamite (Sanders, 2009), Fri, 5:10, 8:40. Sutro’s: The Palace at Lands End (Wyrsch, 2011), Sat, 1, 3. •The Lineup (Siegel, 1958), Sat, 7:30, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), Sat, 5:45, 9:10. “Scary Cow Prime Cuts: Fifth Anniversary Film Festival Extravaganza,” Sun, 4. More info at scarycow.com/primecuts. Hugo 3D (Scorsese, 2011), Mon, 2:30, 5:15, 8.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. “Rafael Film Club” with guest David Templeton, Thurs, 1. Chico and Rita (Trueba, 2010), Feb 17-23, call for times. “2012 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” narrative and documentary (separate admission), call for dates and times.

DE YOUNG MUSEUM Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, SF; deyoung.famsf.org. Free. What’s Going On: The Life and Death of Marvin Gaye (Marre, 2006), Sun, 2. With host Kevin Epps and music historian Rickey Vincent.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Hollywood Dames: Beauty and Brains:” Leave Her to Heaven (Stahl, 1945), Fri, 6.

“NOISE POP FILM SERIES” AMC Loews Metreon 16, Fourth St at Mission, SF; 2012.noisepop.com/film. $11.50. Re: Generation Music Project (Bar-Lev, 2011), Thurs/16 and Feb 23, 8.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “African Film Festival 2012:” Kongo: 50 Years of Independence in Congo (Various directors, 2010), Wed, 7. “Seconds of Eternity: The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos:” The Illiac Passion (1966-67), Thurs, 7. “Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson:” A Man Escaped (1956), Fri, 7; Une femme douce (1969), Sat, 6:30; Four Nights of a Dreamer (1971), Sat, 8:20. “Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man:” The Dawn Patrol (1930), Fri, 8:55; Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Tues, 7.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. SF IndieFest, through Feb 23. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, SF; www.sfpl.org. Free. “Bay Area Community Cinema Series:” More Than a Month: One Man’s Journey to End Black History Month (Tilghman, 2012), Tues, 5:45.

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $10-11. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011), Wed-Thurs, 2, 5:30, 8:30. Margaret (Lonergan, 2011), Feb 17-23, 2, 5:30, 8:30.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $7 donation. “The Second Coming of the Vortex Room:” Zardoz (Boorman, 1974), and The Night God Screamed (Madden, 1971), Thurs, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Bros Before Hos:” Meat Rack (Thomas, 1968), Thurs, 7:30; Steam of Life (Berghall and Hotakainen, 2010), Sun, 2.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

The Real Americans Marsh Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Opens Fri/17, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 18. Dan Hoyle revives his hit solo show about small-town America.

Scorched American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-85. Previews Thurs/16-Sat/18 and Tues/21, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm). Opens Feb 22, 7pm. Runs Tues-Sat, 8pm (Feb 28, show at 7pm); Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm (no matinee Feb 22). Through March 11. Oscar nominee David Strathairn stars in ACT’s performance of Wajdi Mouawad’s haunting drama.

Three’s Company Live! Finn’s Funhouse, 814 Grove, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Fri/17, 7 and 9pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 7 and 9pm. Through March 3. Cat Fights and Shoulder Pads Productions (best production company name ever?) brings the classic sitcom to the stage.

Tontlawald Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Previews Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 5pm. Opens Feb 23, 7:30pm. Runs Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through March 11. Cutting Ball Theater presents this world premiere ensemble piece, using text by resident playwright Eugenie Chan, a capella harmonies, and movement to re-tell an ancient Estonian tale.

BAY AREA

Mesmeric Revelation Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. Previews Thurs/16-Fri/17, 8pm. Opens Sat/18, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Central Works opens its season of world premieres with Aaron Henne’s Edgar Allen Poe-inspired drama.

ONGOING

*Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theater offers an uneven but worthwhile production of British playwright Joe Penhall’s sardonic comedy of ideas and institutional racism, an intriguingly frustrating three-hander about a young doctor (a bright Dan Clegg) at a psychiatric teaching hospital who begins a battle royal with his suave and pompous supervising physician (a comically nimble Julian Lopez-Morillas) over the release of a questionably-sane black patient. Originally brought in by police for creating a disturbance, Christopher (the excellent Carl Lumbly) still exhibits signs of psychosis and his ability to care for himself seems doubtful to the young doctor treating him. The older physician appeals to the patient’s general competence, hospital procedures, the shortage of beds, and the exigencies of career advancement in countering the younger doctor’s insistence on keeping the patient beyond the mandatory 28-day period required by law. For his part, Christopher, nervous and rather manic, is at first desperately eager to be released back to his poor London neighborhood. Competing interviews with the two doctors complicate his perspective and ours repeatedly, however, as a heated debate about medicine, institutionalization, cultural antecedents to mental “illness,” career arcs, and a “cure for black psychosis,” leave everyone’s sanity in doubt. Although our attention can be distracted by a too-pervading sound design and less than perfect British accents, Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe directs a strong and engaging cast in a politically resonant not to say increasingly maddening play. (Avila)

Cabaret Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldc C, Room 300, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 381-1638, cabaretsf.wordpress.com. $25-45. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. Shakespeare at Stinson and Independent Cabaret Productions perform the Kander and Ebb classic in an intimate setting.

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Thurs-Sat, Wed/15, and Feb 27, 8pm. Through March 3. Desiree Butch performs her solo show about a deck of cards’ worth of sexual encounters.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, MainStage, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 24. David Mamet’s cutthroat comedy, courtesy of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco.

Higher Theater at Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Howard, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-65. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Wed/15 and Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, 2pm. American Conservatory Theater premieres artistic director Carey Perloff’s ambitious but choppy play about renowned architect Michael Friedman (an affably egotistical Andrew Polk) and brilliant but still up-and-coming Elena Constantine (a restlessly clever yet vulnerable René Augesen), lovers who find themselves competing for the same commission to design a memorial at the site of a bus bombing on the Sea of Galilee. The spunky widow (Concetta Tomei) of a wealthy American Jewish businessman is funding the memorial, and supervising the competition with the help of a handsome young Israeli, Jacob (Alexander Crowther), grieving for his father. The jet-set lovers only gradually realize they’re competitors (Michael very late in the game, which seems a bit too clueless). Meanwhile, Michael attends to the strained relationship with his grown-up but too-long-neglected gay son (Ben Kahre), a convert to “born-again Judaism” in contrast to his father’s attenuated affiliations; and shiksa Elena finds inspiration for a radical design in the grief-stricken (but soon smitten) Jacob, kneading the burnt sand at the shore of a lake “filled with Jewish tears.” In a play dealing with land and memory, reconciliation, chauvinism, and short-sightedness, the absence of any mention of Palestinian “tears” in the same water (or Palestinians at all) seems a conspicuous absence. The dialogue, meanwhile, while often witty, can be labored in its mingling of airy architectural notions with earthier matters. Mark Rucker’s direction gives scope to an admirably tailored performance from Augesen (the small stage offers a rewarding chance to watch the ACT veteran work up close) but not enough attention goes to the supposed sexual tension between Elena and Michael, which, despite sporadically randy dialogue and some awkward blocking on a mattress, is effectively nil. (Avila)

Jesus in India Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-55. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2:30pm); Sun/19, 2:30pm. Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap is still one of Magic’s strongest premieres in recent years; his latest makes a disappointing contrast. There’s again an absent father (or two) and a sense of dislocation, but Suh’s “Jesus in India” does little or nothing with them. Director Daniella Topol assembles a bright cast headed by musically adept charmer Damon Daunno — on Michael Locher’s colorful, all-encompassing street mosaic set (comprised of floor-to-wall stickers, spray-paint, and mandalas around a central thicket of abandoned bicycle wheels) — but it all serves an insipid chronicle of the deity’s wayward teen years. (Avila)

*Little Brother Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 25. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Josh Costello’s adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s San Francisco-set thriller.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 8:30pm. Extended through Feb 25. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

Olivia’s Kitchen Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.generationtheatre.com. $20-40. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 3pm. GenerationTheatre offers this “remix” of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Private Parts SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 25. Graham Gremore performs his autobiographical solo comedy.

*True West Boxcar Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; (415) 967-2227, www.boxcartheatre.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 7. The first installment of Boxcar Theatre’s four-play Sam Shepard repertory project, True West ushers in the ambitious run with a bang. This tale of two brothers who gradually assume the role of the other is one of Shepard’s most enduring plays, rich with humorous interludes, veering sharply into dangerous terrain at the drop of a toaster. In time-honored, True West tradition, the lead roles of Austin, the unassuming younger brother, and Lee, his violent older sibling, are being alternated between Nick A. Olivero and Brian Trybom, and in a new twist, the role of the mother is being played by two different actresses as well (Adrienne Krug and Katya Rivera). The evening I saw it, Olivero was playing Austin, a writer banging away at his first screenplay, and Trybom was Lee, a troubled, alcoholic drifter who usurps his brother’s Hollywood shot, and trashes their mother’s home while trying to honor his as yet unwritten “contract”. The chemistry between the two actors was a perfect blend of menace and fraternity, and the extreme wreckage they make of both the set (designed by both actors), and their ever-tenuous relationship, was truly inspired. (Gluckstern)

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

*Vigilance Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; (415) 335-6087, secondwind.8m.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 25. Ian Walker (The Tender King) directs a sharp revival of his own lucid, involving 2000 domestic drama about three households brought to the brink by the arrival of a menacing working-class loner. Seamlessly staged in a single pair of rooms (designed by Fred Sharkey) representing all three suburban middle-class homes — as well as downstage on the street where dream-home lottery winner Duncan (an imposing Steven Westdahl) throws his beer cans and leers at the wives and children — Vigilance begins with three friends meeting under the pretext of a poker game. Host Virgil (played with gruff charm by a commanding Mike Newman) is a 30-something husband, father, and guy’s guy whose Montana-grown libertarian machismo compensates for the agro of a stormy marriage and rocky finances. He talks the suggestible, nebbishy Bert (a slyly humorous Ben Ortega) and the equally nerdy but independent-minded Dick (a nicely layered Stephen Muterspaugh) into forming a “committee” to deal with the troublesome Duncan. Walker’s well-honed dialogue brings out the false notes in the supposed pre-Duncan harmony right away, and the play strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship. (Avila)

Waiting for Godot Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; (415) 336-3522, www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm. The fuchsia papier-mâché tree and swirling grey-on-white floor pattern (courtesy of scenic designer Richard Colman) lend a psychedelic accent to the famously barren landscape inhabited by Vladimir (Keith Burkland) and Estragon (Jack Halton) in this production of the Samuel Beckett play by newcomers Tides Theatre. The best moments here broadcast the brooding beauty of the avant-garde classic, with its purposely vague but readily familiar world of viciousness, servility, trauma, want, fear, grudging compassion, and the daring, fragile humor that can look it all squarely in the eye. (Avila)

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 24. Brian Copeland returns with a new solo show about his struggles with depression.

BAY AREA

Arms and the Man Lesher Center for the Arts, Margaret Lesher Theater, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-7469, www.centerrep.org. $38-43. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 25. Center REPertory Company presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic romantic comedy.

*Body Awareness Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $30-48. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 11. In Annie Baker’s new comedy, receiving a top-notch Bay Area premiere at Aurora Theatre, peppy psychology prof Phyllis (Amy Resnick) hosts “Body Awareness Week” at her small Vermont college, while back home partner Joyce (Jeri Lynn Cohen) talks to her 21-year-old son Jared (Patrick Russell) about the porn pay-per-view bill he’s racked up. Phyllis contends that Joyce’s introverted, somewhat explosive virgin son (who in addition to bouts of violent anger soothes himself compulsively with an electric security toothbrush) has Asperger’s Syndrome — a diagnosis that Jared, a budding not too say obsessive lexicographer, hotly contests. That same week, the couple hosts a guest artist, Frank (Howard Swain), a breezy man’s man whose career stands squarely on a series of photographs of nude women and girls. The young man seeks sexual advice from the older one, much to Phyllis’s disgust and Joyce’s relief, while also tempting Joyce with the notion of posing for a nude portrait and “reclaiming her body image,” in a well-used phrase. An already delicate balance thus goes right off kilter as, between the poles of Phyllis and Frank, Joyce and Jared chase competing notions and definitions of themselves and the world. In the volatile tension between perspectives, power trips, and extreme personalities, playwright Baker initially pushes a comic form toward an unsettling edge, only to retreat in the end for safer ground and a family-friendly resolution. While that feels like a lost opportunity, Body Awareness is still a stimulating and solidly entertaining evening, brought to life by a warm and dexterous ensemble under fine, lively direction by Joy Carlin. (Avila)

Counter Attack! Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 444-4755, ext. 114, www.stagebridge.org. $18-25. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 4. Stagebridge presents the world premiere of Joan Holden’s waitress-centric play.

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Opens Wed/15, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Thurs/16, Feb 25, March 1, 8, and 15; no show March 23); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through March 25. Berkeley Rep performs a contemporary update of the Molière comedy.

Ghost Light Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Wed/15 and Sun/19, 7pm (also Sun/19, 2pm); Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm (also Thurs/16 and Sat/18, 2pm). Berkeley Rep performs Tony Taccone’s world-premiere play about George Moscone’s assassination, directed by the late San Francisco mayor’s son, Jonathan Moscone.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through March 25. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs/16, 1pm; Feb 25, 2pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Keith Huff’s neo-noir drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: Sun/19, Feb 26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Tanya Bello’s Project. B. and Alyce Finwall Dance Theater Garage, 975 Howard, SF; www.975howard.com. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm. $15. New work by choregraphers Bello and Finwall.

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/17-Sat/18 and Feb 24-25, 8pm; Sun/19, 4pm; Feb 26, 7pm. $10-25. Celebrate African and African American dance and culture at this multi-part festival, with works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, and more.

Company C Contemporary Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787. Fri/17, 8pm; Sat/18, 6:30pm (gala benefit); and Sun/19, 3pm. $23-175. The company opens its 10th anniversary season.

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tues, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“The Eric Show” Milk Bar, 1840 Haight, SF; www.milksf.com. Tues, 8pm (ongoing). $5. Local comedians perform with host Eric Barry.

“Forever Tango” Marines Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Wed/15-Sat/18, 8pm (also Sat/18, 2pm); Sun/19, 2pm. $45-75. Dancing With the Stars’ Anna Trebunskaya stars in this tango extravaganza.

“Hold Me Closer, Tiny Dionysus: A Greek Comedy Rock Epic” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/17-Sun/19, 8pm. $20. Trixxie Carr and Ben Randle’s San Francisco-set multimedia performance returns.

Holly Johnston/Ledges and Bones ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org. Fri/17-Sat/18, 8pm; Sun/19, 7pm. $17-37. The contemporary dance company world-premieres Want.

“The Past is a Grotesque Animal” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Thurs/16-Sat/18, 8pm. $5-25. Argentine writer-director Mariano Pensotti presents the Bay Area premiere of his acclaimed drama.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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yael@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY 15

Which way forward?

Four panelists will speak on their approach to creating progressive change in the United States. Speakers include Rocky Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City and presidential candidate with the Justice Party; Margaret Flowers of Physicians for National Health Program and organizer with Occupy DC; Tom Gallagher, former state legislator in Massachusetts; and Dave Welsh of the San Francisco Labor Council. With moderator Rose Aguilar of KALW’s Your Call radio. A forum organized by the 99% Coalition, a group focused on anti-war and non-violence activism working alongside Occupy San Francisco.

7 p.m., $10 suggested donation

Unitarian Universalist Church

1187 Franklin, SF

(415) 710-7464

www.sf99percent.org

 

Black history film and discussion

A screening of Freedom Riders, the film detailing the story of 400 groundbreaking Civil Rights Movement activists that rode on integrated buses throughout the South despite violent resistance everywhere they turned.

7pm, $5 suggested donation

2969 Mission, SF

415-821-6545

answer@answersf.org


FRIDAY 17

Join the Un-Conference

Reverend Billy Talen, the performance artist pastor of the anti-consumerist Church of Life After Shopping, will give a sermon Friday evening. That part is $10, and all proceeds go to whistleblower Bradley Manning’s defense. But that’s just the first night of a free, three-day “un-conference.” Participants will set their own agenda, and range from experts and stars like Daniel Ellsberg, Annie Sprinkle, and Colonel Ann Wright to your run-of-the-mill folks interested in justice for whistleblowers.

6 p.m., $10

UC Berkeley International House

2299 Piedmont, Berk

www.freshjuiceparty.com


MONDAY 20

Stand with prisoners

A demonstration to protest racism and economic injustice perpetuated by mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex and to stand in solidarity with prisoners and their families. This event is called by prisoners and sponsored by Occupy Oakland, reminding us that “there are more African Americans under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than there were enslaved in 1850.” It will feature speakers and musical performances.

10 a.m., free

1540 Market, SF for bus and carpool

www.occupuy4prisoners.org

 

Occupying elders

The Gray Panthers present a discussion with participants in Occupy Bernal and the Wild Old Women, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy San Francisco. How can elders contribute to Occupy? Come find out from the people on the ground, including Ginny Jordan of the Wild Old Women, who have shut down more banks than any other Bay Area Occupy group, and Tova Fry of Occupy Oakland.

1 p.m., free

Unitarian Universalist Center

1187 Franklin, SF

graypanther-sf@sbcglobal.net

Unintelligible genius: looking back at all four shows of the Reggidency

Tony Robles
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Unintelligible genius: looking back at all four shows of the Reggidency

When Reggie Watts first came to my attention, through a series of appearances on Conan O’Brien’s show a few years back, I didn’t know where to place him. My first instinct was to lump him in with the trend in music – particularly indie rock –  around the looping pedal where solo artists including Owen Pallett and tUnE-YaRds could layer mic samples atop one another during a live performance to get a larger, simulated band sound.

In Watts’s case he seemed to be to be combining musical styles including beat boxing to a comedic effect that picked up a tradition that was part Michael Winslow’s SFX, and part Andy Kaufman and Steve Martin’s anti-humor. Still, Watts resists categorization and besides the opportunity for a good pun, SF Sketchfest’s Reggidency, a four night series of shows, was an excellent chance for Bay Area audiences to try and figure out what the hell the performer does.

To get a sense of just how different Watts is from everyone else in comedy, you don’t have to look much further than Garfunkel and Oates, the opening act at his Mezzanine show on Wednesday. Garfunkel and Oates’ Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci – two banjo and guitar strumming women with an appealing cuteness that screams sitcom – specialize in musical comedy. And they do it well, in songs about bad handjobs, smug pregnant women, and bad/bold booty calls. Each bit from the riotously funny duo had a clear comedic concept and tight musical package.

That same night Reggie Watts played a lot of songs, I’d say a larger proportion even than the first night at Yoshi’s, the “Just the Music” night where – ironically – he got involved in more characters and monologues. But if you asked me what the songs performed at Mezzanine (a Massive Attack themed venue according to Reggie) were about, I honestly couldn’t tell you. Not because I wasn’t paying attention, but because his songs generally aren’t about anything. Sure they involve ideas, concepts, and word play, but it comes in a stream of conscious manner; the songs are less neat little objects as much as platforms for Reggie to riff on whatever he wanted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es3H0_IMLvo

A night later, following a deadpan comedic introduction by Reggie that seemingly went over most of the Yoshi’s Oakland crowd Thursday night, jazz pianist Robert Glasper took the stage to open that show alone. Playing a large Steinway piano that dwarfed Watts’s Roland Fantom X7 keyboard, the music initially sounded completely different from what I’d heard from Watts the last two evenings, but as I listened I started to pick up what was going on, Glasper playing a foundation of deep bass notes, a gentle um-un-ah, while going to work over the top of it with playful flourishes. The effect was unique (when Glasper reached a certain intensity someone in the otherwise silent crowd ejaculated “Yes!” rather than exploded in laughter) but the method of improvisation, music or comedic, was the same.

Earlier that day, before the performance, while he was getting ready to drive around Berkeley to find a “Michelin joint” for lunch, Watts told me that he had never worked with Glasper before, and little preparation had been involved for the show. It was of little concern. “I’m not really too worried,“ Watts said. “He’s a jazz guy and has to mix improvisation anyways. He has a totally great ear. I think we’ll come up with something great, it should be fun.” That night Watts emerged on stage dressed in the same red striped sweater from two night before, but with a new gruff voice that was pure jazz man. “I have an original piece I’d like to perform for you tonight. I wrote it in ‘Nawlins in 2004. It’s called ‘Non-Equilibrium’ and it’s about the situation going on…in Kansas.”

During one of their early songs together, Glasper took a break from playing to lean back, place a on hand on the floor and a foot on the rim of the grand, posing for a photographer with an annoying flash. Watts on his own has no problem creating dialogues with alternating voices, but with Glasper he found a willing partner to joke with, whether a fake studio control room exchange, or hollowed between-song banter.

Their first song together, which started out as a gentle “Wind Beneath My Wings”-esque ballad and transformed into some gospel soul, had Watts busting out some of his singing chops. As he held one big cry while modulating the sound by shaking the microphone back and forth, it was clear how talented as a singer he is. (On top of previously being a member of numerous musical projects including the Wayne Horvitz 4 + 1 Ensemble and Maktub, Watts also released a fairly straight forward, funky electronic soul solo album, Simplified, in 2003, entirely distinct from his later comedic album Why Shit So Crazy? in 2010.) No joke, dude has pipes. The actual lyrics, when they are more than just sounds, are essentially cliches – maybe you’ll come back, the things we said – just allusions to a situation and no details. But the song itself sounds full.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK2De2eCebg&feature=related

“What do you want to do next?” Reggie asked after the song concluded. A dead-pan Glasper responded, “Something that has to do with…there’s a lot of stuff going on all over the world.” “Got it,” Reggie said quickly, starting up a steady bass beat. The track was mellow, but soon Watts was busting out every cheesy, cheap, and tinny pre-programmed effect on his comparatively tiny keyboard. Soon the two got into a karaoke jam session, covering Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” and Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Watts doesn’t necessarily need accompaniment. This was clear on the last night of the Reggidency, when he was scheduled to improvise an original score for a silent film. In a characteristic screwball move, though, Watts selected not a pre-sound, Silent Era title, but a more modern film with the sound on mute, in this case Ridley Scott’s visually decadent, otherwise vacuous 1985 fantasy film Legend. With an actual silent film there are title cards for the story and the band just has to play the score, with this choice, Reggie was tasked with filling in all of the missing audio, including the introductory narration for the overly long post-Star Wars opening text (which he breathlessly sped up, deflating the gravitas), the original Tangerine Dream score, forest animal sounds, and the actors’ dialogue.

Watts replaced the husky voice of Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, Sloane – I don’t know why she wasn’t in that Super Bowl commercial either) with a ditzy whine and dubbed Tom Cruise as an appropriately doltish bumpkin, all while juggling original songs with descriptive lyrics like “the engine of reality is based out of conflict.” The whole thing was a technological and musical feat as much as a comedic one, although at times in part because of the venue’s sound system but also the number of layered elements, the audio was a bit muddled and Reggie’s voice hard to make out.

Even when he’s on a comedic roll, or when the sound is perfect, Watts can be hard to follow. Dana Carvey did a song once called “Chopping Broccoli,” a parody of pretentious musicians and their tendency to sound like they are just making up words to the songs as they go along. Whether he’s building a song atop a beat or doing a character, Watts seems to chop a lot of broccoli on stage, although the content frequently goes in less mundane, more psychedelic directions.

Watts introduced a song at the Mezzanine as “The Hall of Kings” and explicitly said it was about Egyptians taking credit for structures built before them (a topic of interest that he referenced previously as well – a rare instance in which he repeated something during the Reggidency.) When he started singing, however, it’s in a drawl, and the topic is roosters and TV. TV gets transformed into TB, tuberculosis, and soon, in his farmer voice, Reggie was singing about wanting to be next to potatoes.

By the time I figured out what the hell he was going on about, Watts went onto the next thing, musically shifted the quaint shuffle beat into slowed down hip-hop, added some wobble and made it dubstep. In the back of the room, where I seemed to be surrounded by increasingly distracted drunks and some rote club goers not interested in keeping up with the act, I started to feel strained, confused, wondering if I’m still tuned to the right reality. Almost on cue, Watts simplified things, as he hooked up an mp3 player, turned on Phoenix’s “If I Feel Ever Feel Better” and began dancing; it was a hilarious bit of purely physical comedy that was the exact opposite of the heady bit he was doing moments before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wAQKyahAb4

I’d been wondering about the line between the inane and the insightful, and when I spoke to Watts between shows I ask if he’d consider being described as “unintelligible” as a compliment or an insult. “It’s totally complimentary,” Watts responds. “I like to mess around with the ideas, there are certain things you don’t have to hear clearly and sometimes a little concept here or there is nice for suggestion and then you can go on the nonsense trail again.”

It feels like Watts – who seems to have found a perfect niche in performing – is capable of doing anything on stage. For all the characters he does, and the range of subjects and styles he covers, Watts never appears mean, cynical, or harsh. (Someone before the last show on Friday even described him as lovable, a word not typically reserved for comedians.) Sometimes it’s a trick – a sort of cognitive short-circuit – as when he started the Mezzanine show by mouthing words but only audibly saying every third or fourth – but never a joke played at anyone else’s expense. Asked if there was any appeal to simply messing with people, Watts refused: “I don’t like to fuck around with people where I’m taking advantage of them. I want them to join in and try to provide opportunities for them to join in on the conceptualization.”

Local control of cops

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Local control of cops

news@sfbg.com

Sup. Jane Kim has introduced legislation to the Board of Supervisors calling for a re-examination of the San Francisco Police Department’s participation in some aspects of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was created by the Federal Bureau of Investigations to do domestic surveillance.

The proposed ordinance would prohibit the SFPD from working with the JTTF to collect intelligence on individuals in the absence of criminal wrongdoing, which has been a concern of civil libertarians since last year when a secret memo revealed that local officers were under FBI command and not bound by local and state restrictions on such surveillance (see “Spies in blue,” 4/26/11).

Kim said the ordinance was necessary to ensure the “requirement of reasonable suspicion before we do any type of investigation of criminal activity. And we don’t base it on ethnic identification or religious practice as some of the members of the community have been experiencing the last couple of years.

“Our office is sponsoring this because many members of the Arab, Asian and the Muslim community worship in the district and own many small businesses,” she said.

Critics of the relationship between local and federal law enforcement agencies, facilitated through participation in the JTTF, have long raised concerns about racial profiling and unnecessary spying ordered at the federal level, and carried out by SFPD inspectors assigned full time to the task force.

Federal regulations governing FBI intelligence gathering are weaker than standards set by San Francisco and California’s Constitution. In 1990, the San Francisco Police Commission established rules requiring that intelligence-gathering involving any First Amendment activity be based on reasonable suspicion of significant criminal activity. Those rules reflect the California Constitutional requirement of an “articulable criminal predicate” before law enforcement agencies engage in intelligence-gathering activity.

However, because the SFPD inspectors assigned to the JTTF work under the direction of the FBI, the local regulation and control of law enforcement is effectively limited in JTTF investigations.

“It’s important that a clear prohibition against policing based on race, ethnicity, national origin, or religion applies to all of our officers, all of the time,” said John Crew, police practices expert for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is one of more than 30 civil rights and community organizations participating in the Coalition for Safe SF, which helped develop the proposed ordinance.

According to the coalition, current rules prevent the SFPD from barring its inspectors assigned to the JTTF from joining FBI agents in collecting intelligence on San Franciscans without any “particular factual predication.”

“The purpose of this legislation is to restore local control, civilian oversight, and transparency over the SFPD’s participation in FBI intelligence-gathering,” stated attorney Nasrina Bargzie of the Asian Law Caucus, which is part of the coalition.

The coalition was a major participant in the San Francisco Human Rights Commission hearing in 2010 on the issue of baseless spying and racial profiling in JTTF investigations. The result was a comprehensive report, endorsed by the Board of Supervisors last spring.

But in 2011, the ACLU and Asian Law Caucus learned that key protections for civil liberties — including civilian oversight of intelligence activity and safeguards to limit intrusive tactics — were thrown out the window and replaced by a secret Memorandum of Understanding with federal law enforcement in 2007.

Under the MOU, SFPD paid officers work out of the local FBI office. The secure nature of their work means they must seek federal permission to even talk to their superiors in the SFPD about their work, effectively removing them from the local chain of command. Despite mandated requirements on local law enforcement, the MOU does not allow for any civilian oversight of the work of officers assigned to the JTTF.

San Francisco Chief of Police Greg Suhr said he believes that the concerns have already been addressed. In his first days in office, Chief Suhr issued a binding Bureau Order #2011-07 setting forth the requirement that officers comply with local standards.

An excerpt of the order reads, “SFPD officers shall work with the JTTF only on investigations of suspected terrorism that have a criminal nexus. In situations where the statutory law of California is more restrictive of law enforcement than comparable federal law, the investigative methods employed by SFPD officers working on JTTF investigations shall conform to the requirements of such California statutes.”

“With this Bureau Order, the language of the 2007 Memorandum of Understanding no longer applies and SFPD personnel are bound by the provisions of the 2011 Order,” SFPD Public Information Officer Albie Esparza told the Guardian.

But Crew said that as long as the MOU between the SFPD and federal law enforcement remains in place, Suhr’s order at best creates contradictory policy. “The Memorandum of Understanding is a binding legal contact with the federal government. Which do you think will take legal precedence when it comes up against a local police chief’s departmental order?” said Crew, who urged the department to clarify the matter by withdrawing from the MOU, a step the SFPD has thus far been unwilling to take.

A letter from Sept. 28 of last year to Coalition for Safe SF from FBI Special Agent Stephanie Douglas regarding the contradiction clarifies the matter. “I do retain the right to assign FBI JTTF cases,” states Douglas, who goes on to assert it is she who makes the confidential judgment of which cases fall afoul of the state and city rules and which do not.

After years of intelligence-gathering authorized under a secret memorandum, public mistrust in the SFPD’s relationship to federal law enforcement persists. Kim says she believes the proposed ordinance will still help make San Francisco safer. “It increases the trust of the community members that are working with public safety in reporting, and in cooperating around many of the actual criminal activities that might be going on in the city,” she said.

The proposed legislative approach of regulating the scope of local participation in federal JTTF work is not unprecedented. The city has the option of terminating the MOU with 30 days notice, a step that the city of Portland, Oregon has taken to prevent its police force from spying on citizens in violation of local and state law.

In December, the city of Berkeley suspended its agreement with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (an arm of the Joint Terrorism Task Force) as part of a broad review of that city’s relationship to other local and federal law enforcement agencies (see “Policing the police,” 12/13/11).

“What this is about is maintaining local control of law enforcement and ensuring the civil liberties of the people of San Francisco,” Crew said. “Don’t San Franciscans deserve the same protection of their civil liberties as the people of Portland?”

Kim was joined by Sups. David Compos and John Avalos in sponsoring the ordinance. Supervisors are expected to vote on the whether to adopt the ordinance this spring after the measure is heard by the city’s Public Safety Committee following the normal 30-day hold. The measure seems to have the support it needs to pass the Board of Supervisors, but it remains unclear whether Mayor Ed Lee, who did not answer our inquiries, will sign it.

The cat and the hedgehog

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le.chicken.farmer@gmail.com

CHEAP EATS You know who I love? Hedgehog. One year ago today we had our first date, and now we are domestical partners. She calls me root beer eyes. I know it’s a compliment because her favorite drink is Abita root beer with bourbon in it, and sometimes she looks at me like that.

One year ago today, I was a tagalong nanny for a Tulane-S.F. State couple, and Hedgehog was supervising sound editor for an HBO show set in New Orleans. This year, she is also a writer for that show, and I am a tagalong housewife. Count em: two dreams come true!

For our anniversary, she’s on set all day, and I’m writing this then going to play flag football. Maybe we will see each other in bed.

What a difference a year makes! One year ago today, for example, it was Monday. I had the day off. She did too. For our first date we were going to go to the cemetery, but then we found out it was closed. In New Orleans, the dead do not receive visitors on Mondays. They have been partying too hard all weekend. They have hangovers, and couldn’t get out of bed, let alone a grave.

So we went to the French Canadian Quarter instead, ate lunch, walked along the river, looked at the water, drank at a gay bar, walked some more, and did not kiss.

OK.

Now, the big loser in all of this, of course, is Stoplight. The cat. Not only because I’ve been home a lot less, but — even sadlier than that — my domestical partner is allergic to my domesticated partner. So before we left for the Big Greasy this time, I had to have a little talk with my furry friend.

Well, but first I had to have a little talk with some cheese farmers from Petaluma. Which brings us (very very naturally) to the downtown Berkeley farmer’s market one Saturday.

As it happened — and we’ll never know why — Hedgehog was stricken on that particular day with a very bad stomachache, so all she could do while I sought out and talked with my cheese farmers was sit on a bench and watch some hippies play their guitars. Maybe she was moaning and groaning, too. I know I would have been, if I had to sit on a bench and watch hippies play their guitars.

In fact, I was sure she was going to puke. (The kids had it. It was going around.)

Now: my cheese farmers, on whose cheese farm Stoplight was born, had told me way back when that if things didn’t work out for him in the big city, they would take him back. This, they unflinchingly, un-guilt-trippingly agreed to do. So I bought some cheese.

The drop would be made the following Saturday. Meanwhile, I was surprised to learn upon fetching my li’l sicky, Hedgehog was hungry. So here’s to the curative powers of hippies! I take back everything I said about them.

The Berkeley farmer’s market has a lot of greasy looking and happy smelling food stands, but Hedgehog understandably wanted something healthy. Which to her means pho. Pho ga. (That’s chicken.)

We have a running argument about pho. Beef is best, I say. Whatever, says she. For sure, downtown Berkeley is not the best place to be when dying for Vietnamese food in a hurry.

But we saw Saigon Express there on the corner of Addison and Shattuck, went in, sat right next to the bathrooms (just in case), and ordered our pho.

And of course Hedgehog was yelping the place while we waited for it. Two people mentioned food poisoning.

Food poisoning doesn’t scare me. Stomach bugs do. But according to Hedgehog, it’s impossible to tell the difference. “Food poisoning takes three days to hit you, usually,” she said.

“Really?”

“Could be,” she said. Then she started Googling that. But the pho came and was surprisingly fantastically delicious. At least mine was. The beef broth, heavy on the star anise, was really very wonderful. And the rare beef was still pink.

The noodles had a good texture. A little bit of pull to them, not mushy. Basil, cilantro, jalapenos, sprouts. And nobody threw up. Not even Hedgehog. New favorite restaurant:

SAIGON EXPRESS

Mon.-Sat. 10:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m.

2045 Shattuck Ave., Berk.

(510) 486-1778

MC/V

Beer & wine

Eternal return

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Eternal return

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Gregory Markopoulos was born in Toledo, Ohio, but his Greek heritage lights the way in critical appraisals of his refined and elusive body of work. Many of the films featured in the Pacific Film Archive’s “Seconds of Eternity” series are imagined on the stage of Greek myth. After leaving New York in 1967 with his partner Robert Beavers, an outstanding filmmaker in his own right, Markopoulos drew still closer to his ancestral home. He died in 1992, but Beavers, who will be on hand at the PFA to shepherd the films, has preserved the work for the Temenos, a unique archive and biennial outdoor screening cycle located near Lyssaraia, Markopoulos’s father’s home. This June brings another such event.

Markopoulos’s films have themselves long achieved mythic stature. He was a colossal figure during the heroic phase of the American avant-garde and then left it behind. Dissatisfied with exhibition standards, he withdrew his prints from circulation (the Temenos screenings represents the idealistic rejoinder). Remarkably, he requested that critic P. Adams Sitney excise a full chapter on his works from Visionary Film, generally considered the central critical survey of the American avant-garde. So Markopoulos went to almost unthinkable lengths to maintain the primacy of his early films (he continued making new ones, as well). Any opportunity to watch these ravishing films close to home is unusual.

Markopoulos once remarked that “locations and beautiful faces have been the backbone of my work,” and one sees that to an archetypal degree in Psyche (1947), the first film of his Du Sang, de la volupté et de la mort trilogy, made when he was still a teenage student at USC living across the hall from Curtis Harrington. Inspired by a Pierre Louÿs novella, the film replaces spoken language with dynamic color and framing. We begin with a man and woman crossing each other on a leafy Angeleno street: a few steps further and they turn back to consider what they’ve just passed. All that follows might be transpire within this instant: a languid fantasia hatched within a fugitive moment of lost time. Markopoulos frames the couple in deep focus two-shots, grazing shoulders and lips and tumbling toward dreams.

An evident poverty of means only concentrates the film’s withdrawal into a private world of frustrated beauty (across town Kenneth Anger was fashioning his more explicitly Dionysian Fireworks). The dive into inexpressible desire reaches a peak when Ralph Vaughn Williams’ “Serenade” suddenly drops out and the image snaps to a silent interlude of natural splendor bordering on abstraction — sea grass gorgeously superimposed upon the sea. This image gives magnificent form to the phrase “out of the blue” and overflows the frame in such a way as to shake loose the film’s more studied visual effects.

Markopoulos would later articulate in written form (“Towards a New Narrative Form in Motion Pictures”) what he set out to accomplish beginning with Psyche: “The film maker gradually convinces the spectator not only to see and to hear, but to participate in what is being created on the screen, on both the narrative and introspective levels. The magnificent landscapes of emotions, with colors brighter than the film viewer has ever been concerned with, begin to exist. The transient impact of meetings, handshakes, kisses, and the hours apart from these contacts becomes revealed in all its astounding simplicity.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59mrfKQRdQ

That “astounding simplicity” is readily apparent in A Christmas Carol (1940), a compressed bildungsroman evoking a richly embroidered fabric of memory with only a few spare images (mother setting the table, father looking up over his newspaper, figures dancing on a nearby rooftop). Twice a Man (1963) reveals the full extent of Markopoulos’ dream of a new narrative language. A psychologically fraught interpolation of the myth of Hippolytus and Phaedra (son seduced by mother and liberated from suicidal thoughts by a healer-artist), the film surfaces an internal state of emergency in a persistently emergent form.

Most remarkable is the densely interleaved editing by which Markopoulos folds multiple registers of time, color, and theme. Though often likened to other seminal works of the American avant-garde (especially Stan Brakhage’s Dog Star Man, 1961-64), Twice a Man‘s fractal form also recalls contemporaneous French films like Alain Resnais’s Muriel (1963) — though if anything Markopoulos’s cutting seems more evolved for its thoroughgoing commitment to simultaneity. Beginning with a ferry ride into blue New York, suggestive of any number of mythic crossings, there is an ever-sharpening concordance of different blocks of imagery. The protagonist’s central struggle to get out from under his mother and be reborn as his own person takes root in these syntactical somersaults. Indeed, this is where the modernist character of Markopoulos’s work shines through: a classical story embodied in the radical address of the senses. (You don’t need a neurologist to know that your brain gets a tune-up watching this film). Less successful is the cut-up spoken address that Phaedra delivers to her son, with which Markopoulos seems a little too assured of his genius. The haranguing pure speech dampens an otherwise brilliant film with a faintly misogynistic mist.

Though Markopoulos delved still deeper into myth with his Illiac Passion (1964-1967), he also gravitated towards more focused portraits of people and places in these years. San Francisco Cinematheque will screen Galaxie (1966), his anthology of New York people, in May. Meanwhile, the PFA sneaks in Ming Green (1966) before the epic Illiac Passion. The silent film gathers up images of the New York home Markopoulos was soon to leave as if for a bouquet. Edited in camera with great fluency, Ming Green revises the still life for cinema: the apartment’s objects sit in repose, vibrating with the articulation of color and residue of memory. Flourishing superimpositions put on a terrific show without abandoning the refined air of quietude. It’s unlikely that you’ll see a more exquisite short roll of film this year.

SECONDS OF ETERNITY: THE FILMS OF GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS

Feb. 9-16, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

bampfa.berkeley.edu

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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Schedules are for Wed/8-Tues/14 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features are marked with a •. All times p.m. unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $6-10. Dirty Looks presents: City of Lost Souls, Fri, 8. “Mindscapes,” short films, Sat, 8.

CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF THE ARTS 1118 Eighth St, SF; www.dirtylooksnyc.org. Free. Dirty Looks presents: “Queer Conversations on Culture in the Arts,” with selections from the “Female Trouble” experimental shorts program and a conversation with Margaret Tedesco, Thurs, 7.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $7.50-10. •Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959), Wed, 3:30, 7:15, and American Gigolo (Schrader, 1979), Wed, 4:55, 8:45. •Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau, 1946), Thurs, 3:05, 7, and No Such Thing (Hartley, 2001), Thurs, 4:55, 8:50. “Midnites for Maniacs: I’m Black and I’m Proud:” •I’m Gonna Git You Sucka (Wayans, 1988), Fri, 7:30; Pootie Tang (Louis CK, 2001), Fri, 9:30; CB4 (Davis, 1993), Fri, 11:30. French American International School presents: “I-Speak: Celebrating 50 Years of International Education,” Sat, 6:30. This event, $5-10; tickets at www.internationalsf.org. •Do The Right Thing (Lee, 1989), Sun, 2, 8, and Malcolm X (Lee, 1992), Sun, 4:15. “Love: Ali MacGraw:” Love Story (Hiller, 1970), Tues, 8. With pre-show gala performance and MacGraw in person; for tickets ($25-45), visit www.ticketfly.com.

ELMWOOD 10070 San Pablo, El Cerrito; www.rialtocinemas.com. Free. “Community Cinema:” More Than a Month: One Man’s Journey to End Black History Month (Tilghman, 2012), Wed, 7.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-10.25. “Rafael Film Club:” “Jan Wahl,” Thurs, 1. Pina (Wenders, 2011), call for dates and times. “Mostly British Film Festival:” Route Irish (Loach, 2010), Wed, 7; Albatross (MacCormick, 2011), Thurs, 7. “2012 Oscar Nominated Short Films,” narrative and documentary (separate admission), Feb 3-9, call for times.

LAMORINDA THEATRES Four Orinda Theatre Square, Orinda; www.caiff.org. $12-15. “California Independent Film Festival,” 11 features, plus docs, shorts, and educational seminars, Feb 10-16.

MECHANICS’ INSTITUTE 57 Post, SF; (415) 393-0100, rsvp@milibrary.org. $10. “CinemaLit Film Series: Hollywood Dames: Beauty and Brains:” Intermezzo (Ratoff, 1939), Fri, 6.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Documentary Voices:” The Green Wave (Ahadi, 2010), Wed, 7. “Seconds of Eternity: The Films of Gregory J. Markopoulos:” “Markopoulos: The Early Films (1940-49)” Thurs, 7; “Eros and Myth (1950-63),” Sat, 6:30. “Austere Perfectionism: The Films of Robert Bresson:” The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962), Fri, 7; Les dames du Bois du Boulogne (1945), Fri, 8:25; Lancelot of the Lake (1974), Sat, 8:30. “Screenagers: 14th Annual Bay Area High School Film and Video Festival,” Sat, 3. “Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man:” The Criminal Code (1931), Sun, 4:30; Bringing Up Baby (1938), Tues, 7. “African Film Festival 2012:” Viva Riva! (Munga, 2010), Sun, 6:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-10. Come Back, Africa (Rogosin, 1959/2012), Wed-Thurs, 6:45, 8:30. Drive (Winding Refn, 2011), Wed, 8:45. Into the Abyss (Herzog, 2011), Wed, 6:45. SF IndieFest, Feb 9-23. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

SFFS | NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $10-11. Domain (Chiha, 2010), Wed-Thurs, 2, 4:30, 7, 9:30. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Ceylan, 2011), Feb 10-16, 2, 5:30, 8:30.

TWINSPACE CONTINUUM 2111 Mission, Third Flr, Ste 3, SF; www.blockreportradio.com. $15. “Human Rights and Hip-Hop Film Festival,” documentaries and shorts, Fri, 5; Sat, 6:30.

VOGUE 3290 Sacramento, SF; www.mostlybritish.org. $12.50. “Mostly British Film Festival:” Black Butterflies (van der Oest, 2011), Wed, 5; London Boulevard (Monahan, 2010), Wed, 7:15; The Great White Silence (Ponting, 1924), Wed, 9:30; A Passionate Woman (2010), Thurs, 5; Route Irish (Loach, 2010), Thurs, 7:30.

VORTEX ROOM 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. $7 donation. “The Second Coming of the Vortex Room:” The Second Coming of Suzanne (Barry, 1974), and Marjoe (Kernochan and Smith, 1972), Thurs, 8.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. $6-8. “Bros Before Hos:” The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (Cassavetes, 1976), Thurs, 7:30; “Female Trouble,” experimental shorts program presented by Dirty Looks curator Bradford Nordeen, Sun, 2.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

THEATER

OPENING

Blue/Orange Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, 450 Post, SF; (415) 474-8800, www.lhtsf.org. $43-53. Previews Wed/8-Fri/10, 8pm. Opens Sat/11, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm). Through March 18. Lorraine Hansberry Theatre performs Joe Penhall’s comedic drama about a hospital patient who claims to be the son of an African dictator.

52 Man Pick Up Brava Theater, 2781 24th St, SF; (415) 647-2822, www.brava.org. $10-25. Opens Tues/14, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, Feb 15, and Feb 27, 8pm. Through March 3. Desiree Butch performs her solo show about a deck of cards’ worth of sexual encounters.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, MainStage, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Opens Thurs/9, 8pm. Runs Thurs and Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 18. Geoff Hoyle’s hit solo show returns.

BAY AREA

A Doctor in Spire of Himself Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Previews Fri/10-Sat/11 and Tues/14, 8pm; Sun/12, 7pm. Opens Feb 15, 8pm. Runs Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Thurs and Sat, 2pm; no matinees Feb 16, Feb 25, March 1, 8, and 15; no show March 23); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through March 25. Berkeley Rep performs a contemporary update of the Molière comedy.

ONGOING

Cabaret Young Performers Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldc C, Room 300, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 381-1638, cabaretsf.wordpress.com. $25-45. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 19. Shakespeare at Stinson and Independent Cabaret Productions perform the Kander and Ebb classic in an intimate setting.

Glengarry Glen Ross Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.brownpapertickets.com. $26-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 24. David Mamet’s cutthroat comedy, courtesy of the Actors Theatre of San Francisco.

Higher Theater at Children’s Creativity Museum, 221 Howard, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-65. Tues-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinee Wed/8). Through Feb 19. American Conservatory Theatre presents Carey Perloff’s smart and sexy world premiere.

Jesus in India Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $20-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Feb 18, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 19. Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap is still one of Magic’s strongest premieres in recent years, an intriguingly funny and affecting cross-cultural tale of an absent Korean father’s return to the family he abandoned in West Texas 15 years earlier. Suh’s latest makes a disappointing contrast. There’s again an absent father (or two) and a sense of dislocation, but Suh’s “Jesus in India” does little or nothing with them. Director Daniella Topol assembles a bright cast headed by musically adept charmer Damon Daunno — on Michael Locher’s colorful, all-encompassing street mosaic set (comprised of floor-to-wall stickers, spray-paint, and mandalas around a central thicket of abandoned bicycle wheels) — but it all serves an insipid chronicle of the deity’s wayward teen years, which are spent getting high and playing in a punk band in India. Pure irreverence might have been worthwhile, but the “dude, fuckin’ &ldots; dude” humor here — one-note and rarely that funny — comes yoked to a fourth-quarter theme (basically a Henry IV thing, the sowing of wild oats ahead of the taking on of a “king’s” responsibilities) that proves even sketchier, not to mention out-of-step with these deliberately leaderless times. (Avila)

*Little Brother Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-32. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Feb 25. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Josh Costello’s adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s San Francisco-set thriller.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5 and 8:30pm. Extended through Feb 25. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. (Avila)

Olivia’s Kitchen Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.generationtheatre.com. $20-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Feb 19. GenerationTheatre offers this “remix” of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.

Private Parts SF Playhouse, Stage 2, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20. Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 25. Graham Gremore performs his autobiographical solo comedy.

*True West Boxcar Studios, 125A Hyde, SF; (415) 967-2227, www.boxcartheatre.org. $25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through April 7. The first installment of Boxcar Theatre’s four-play Sam Shepard repertory project, True West ushers in the ambitious run with a bang. This tale of two brothers who gradually assume the role of the other is one of Shepard’s most enduring plays, rich with humorous interludes, veering sharply into dangerous terrain at the drop of a toaster. In time-honored, True West tradition, the lead roles of Austin, the unassuming younger brother, and Lee, his violent older sibling, are being alternated between Nick A. Olivero and Brian Trybom, and in a new twist, the role of the mother is being played by two different actresses as well (Adrienne Krug and Katya Rivera). The evening I saw it, Olivero was playing Austin, a writer banging away at his first screenplay, and Trybom was Lee, a troubled, alcoholic drifter who usurps his brother’s Hollywood shot, and trashes their mother’s home while trying to honor his as yet unwritten “contract”. The chemistry between the two actors was a perfect blend of menace and fraternity, and the extreme wreckage they make of both the set (designed by both actors), and their ever-tenuous relationship, was truly inspired. (Gluckstern)

*Vice Palace: The Last Cockettes Musical Thrillpeddlers’ Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; (415) 377-4202, www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Hot on the high heels of a 22-month run of Pearls Over Shanghai, the Thrillpeddlers are continuing their Theatre of the Ridiculous revival with a tits-up, balls-out production of the Cockettes’ last musical, Vice Palace. Loosely based on the terrifyingly grim “Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe, part of the thrill of Palace is the way that it weds the campy drag-glamour of Pearls Over Shanghai with the Thrillpeddlers’ signature Grand Guignol aesthetic. From an opening number set on a plague-stricken street (“There’s Blood on Your Face”) to a charming little cabaret about Caligula, staged with live assassinations, an undercurrent of darkness runs like blood beneath the shameless slapstick of the thinly-plotted revue. As plague-obsessed hostess Divina (Leigh Crow) and her right-hand “gal” Bella (Eric Tyson Wertz) try to distract a group of stir-crazy socialites from the dangers outside the villa walls, the entertainments range from silly to salacious: a suggestively-sung song about camel’s humps, the wistful ballad “Just a Lonely Little Turd,” a truly unexpected Rite of Spring-style dance number entitled “Flesh Ballet.” Sumptuously costumed by Kara Emry, cleverly lit by Nicholas Torre, accompanied by songwriter/lyricist (and original Cockette) Scrumbly Koldewyn, and anchored by a core of Thrillpeddler regulars, Palace is one nice vice. (Gluckstern)

*Vigilance Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; (415) 335-6087, secondwind.8m.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 25. Ian Walker (The Tender King) directs a sharp revival of his own lucid, involving 2000 domestic drama about three households brought to the brink by the arrival of a menacing working-class loner. Seamlessly staged in a single pair of rooms (designed by Fred Sharkey) representing all three suburban middle-class homes — as well as downstage on the street where dream-home lottery winner Duncan (an imposing Steven Westdahl) throws his beer cans and leers at the wives and children — Vigilance begins with three friends meeting under the pretext of a poker game. Host Virgil (played with gruff charm by a commanding Mike Newman) is a 30-something husband, father, and guy’s guy whose Montana-grown libertarian machismo compensates for the agro of a stormy marriage and rocky finances. He talks the suggestible, nebbishy Bert (a slyly humorous Ben Ortega) and the equally nerdy but independent-minded Dick (a nicely layered Stephen Muterspaugh) into forming a “committee” to deal with the troublesome Duncan. Walker’s well-honed dialogue brings out the false notes in the supposed pre-Duncan harmony right away, especially in the volatile arguments between Virgil and wife Marla (a sure Natalie Palan Walker) and the passive but more troubled confrontations between Dick and his distant, frustrated wife Cathy (a subtly fraught Kim Stephenson). While the insular, repressed lives of the moderately well off come across well, Duncan’s final monologue is a compressed, if dramatically necessary, attempt at voicing the other side. Vigilance strikes best at the buried politics of marriage and friendship, the latter further invoked in the concerned intervention of cop and childhood friend Frank (a sympathetic Leon Goertzen). (Avila)

Waiting for Godot Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; (415) 336-3522, www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 18. The fuchsia papier-mâché tree and swirling grey-on-white floor pattern (courtesy of scenic designer Richard Colman) lend a psychedelic accent to the famously barren landscape inhabited by Vladimir (Keith Burkland) and Estragon (Jack Halton) in this production of the Samuel Beckett play by newcomers Tides Theatre. Director (and Tides’ producing artistic director) Jennifer Welch layers the avant-garde classic with some audio accents as well (although Jon Bernson’s minimalist industrial soundscape is a bit low in the mix to be very effective). More compelling is the gentle, sad humor and couched intelligence captured expertly by Halton in the circular but deliberate rhythms of his hapless tramp. Burkland as pal Vladimir exudes a palpable presence as well, though lacks the same focus. Timing is all in vaudeville — the parallel universe from whence these tangible modernist archetypes hail — as well as in a play whose plot goes intentionally nowhere, or rather loops back on itself in an implied dance with eternity. The halting aspect to Tides’ staging gets compounded with the arrival of brash whip-cracker Pozzo (a suitably stentorian but inconsistent Duane Lawrence) and his pitiful slave Lucky (a haunted, generally sharp Renzo Ampuero, made up to look like a goth doll à la some Tim Burton movie). That said, the best moments here broadcast the brooding beauty of the play, with its purposely vague but readily familiar world of viciousness, servility, trauma, want, fear, grudging compassion, and the daring, fragile humor that can look it all squarely in the eye. (Avila)

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through March 24. Brian Copeland returns with a new solo show about his struggles with depression.

BAY AREA

Arms and the Man Lesher Center for the Arts, Margaret Lesher Theater, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; (925) 943-7469, www.centerrep.org. $38-43. Wed, 7:30pm; Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through Feb 25. Center REPertory Company presents George Bernard Shaw’s classic romantic comedy.

Body Awareness Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $34-55. Tues, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through March 4. Aurora Theatre performs Annie Baker’s comedy.

Counter Attack! Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 444-4755, ext. 114, www.stagebridge.org. $18-25. Wed-Thurs, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through March 4. Stagebridge presents the world premiere of Joan Holden’s waitress-centric play.

Ghost Light Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Tues, Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat and Feb 16, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Feb 19. Berkeley Rep performs Tony Taccone’s world-premiere play about George Moscone’s assassination, directed by the late San Francisco mayor’s son, Jonathan Moscone.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through March 25. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

The Pitman Painters TheatreWorks at Mountain View Center for the Arts, 500 Castro, SF; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-69. Wed/8, 7:30pm; Thurs/9-Sat/11, 8pm (also Sat/11, 2pm); Sun/12, 2 and 7pm. TheatreWorks performs a new comedy from the author of Billy Elliot about a group of British miners who become art world sensations.

A Steady Rain Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, SF; (415) 388-5208, www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tues and Thurs-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/11 and Feb 25, 2pm; Feb 16, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 26. Marin Theatre Company performs Keith Huff’s neo-noir drama.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: Sun/12, Feb 19, 26, March 11, and 18, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Elect to Laugh” Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Tues, 8pm. Ongoing through Nov 6. $15-50. Will Durst and friends perform in this weekly political humor show that focuses on the upcoming presidential election.

“Epic Romance” Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 474-6776, www.improv.org. Tues/14, 8pm. $25. BATS Improv taps its collective quick-wit talents to conjure a romantic play on the spot.

“The Eric Show” Milk Bar, 1840 Haight, SF; www.milksf.com. Tues, 8pm (ongoing). $5. Local comedians perform with host Eric Barry.

“How We First Met” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, SF; www.howwefirstmet.com. Tues/14, 8pm. $40-75. Jill Bourque’s long-running holiday tradition is inspired by audience members’ real-life tales of romance.

“The I Hate Valentine’s Day Show” Dark Room, 2263 Mission, SF; www.crackpotcrones.com. Tues/14, 8pm; Feb 19, 5pm. $20. “Sketch comedy and improv as a public service for the romantically challenged” with Crackpot Crones Terry Baum and Carolyn Myers.

“It’s Got to Be Love” Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. Mon/13-Tues/14, 8pm. $20. Craig Jessup sings Rodgers, Hart, Gershwin, and Sondheim to benefit the San Francisco Arts Education Project.

“Love Bites — and So Did the ’80s” Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission, SF; www.lgcsf.org. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm. $15-30. The Lesbian/Gay Chorus of San Francisco celebrates the neon decade with this cabaret and musical extravaganza.

“Mortified! Doomed Valentine’s Show” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.getmortified.com. Fri/10, 7:30pm. $21. Also Sat/11, 8pm, $20, Shattuck Down Low, 2184 Shattuck, Berk. The awkward storytelling series returns with a romance-gone-awry theme.

“Our Feet Speak the Rhythms of Our Hearts” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.fortmason.org. Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 3pm. $15-25. Tango and More Argentine Dance and World Arts West present this event featuring six ethnic dance companies, including La Tania, Ensembles Ballet Folklórico de San Francisco, Valverde Dance, Barbary Coast Cloggers, and Ballet Pampa Argentina.

“Through the Night” Brava Theatre, 2781 24th St, SF; www.communityworkswest.org. Sat/11, 7pm. $40-100. Daniel Beaty performs at this evening honoring author Nell Bernstein and activist Sujatha Baliga; proceeds benefit Community Works’ programs for Bay Area children, families, and communities impacted by incarceration.

“The Weight Game” NOHspace Theater, 2840 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/10-Sat/11 and Feb 17-18, 8pm. $15. Sarah Abbey performs her semi-autobiographical solo show about diets and self-esteem.

BAY AREA

“Black Choreographers Festival: Here and Now 2012” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bcfhereandnow.com. Fri/10-Sat/11, 8pm; Sun/12, 4pm. Also Feb 17-18 and Feb 24-25, 8pm; Feb 19, 4pm; Feb 26, 7pm, Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF. $10-25. Celebrate African and African American dance and culture at this multi-part festival, with works by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Kendra Kimbrough Barnes, and more.

Alerts

Andrew Lam
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0

yael@sfbg.com

THURSDAY 9

Occupy Oakland Forum on Police Actions

Oakland’s Citizen Police Review Board had been planning a forum on the Oakland Police and Occupy Oakland for months — until they announced at the last minute that it was canceled. In response, the Occupy Oakland Forum Committee is hosting essentially the same forum, and inviting the same speakers, including Jim Chanin, civil rights lawyer from the Oakland Riders case, and Police Chief Howard Jordan. They hope to give the community a chance to respond to the recent controversy surrounding treatment of Occupy Oakland by police.

6:15 p.m., free

Grand Lake Theater

3200 Grand, Oakl.

oakland@occupyreport.org

 

Reelect David Campos

District 9 Sup. David Campos and his re-election campaign are throwing their first fundraiser event in the Mission. It will include drinks, appetizers, and a chance to talk with the man himself.

6 p.m., free

Blue Macaw

2565 Mission, SF

(415) 920-0577

 

FRIDAY 10

Kenneth Harding benefit

A star-studded night of music to benefit the Kenneth Harding Jr. Foundation. Support the foundation created after Harding, an unarmed black 19-year-old, was killed by SFPD officers in an incident spurred by an unpaid $2 train fare. The night’s line-up includes Fly Benzo, BVHP neighborhood resistance leader, emcee and City College student, who faces four years in prison on multiple counts including “videotaping the police” for his responses to the shooting.

9 p.m., $12

330 Ritch, SF

www.330ritch.com/calendar

 

SUNDAY 12

Move to Amend

David Cobb, spokesperson for the Move to Amend campaign, will speak about corporate personhood. Move to Amend is an effort to amend the constitution to abolish corporate personhood, which saw a large turnout on its national day of action on Jan. 20. Cobb is also a former Green Party presidential candidate.

7 p.m., $5-10

Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalist’s Hall

1924 Cedar, Berk.

(510) 841-4824

www.movetoamend.org

 

Harlem is Nowhere

Hear author Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts and organizer Alicia Garza talk about the history and meaning of Harlem as a center for black politics and culture, the effects of gentrification, and the geography of building power for people of color. This event is part of an ongoing “authors in conversation” series at the Museum of the African Diaspora. Rhodes-Pitts is the author of Harlem is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, and Garza is the co-executive director of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) in San Francsico.

2 p.m., free

Museum of the African Diaspora

685 Mission, SF

www.moadsf.org/visit/calendar.html

San Francisco celebrates same-sex marriage ruling

Sasha Cuttler
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30
San Francisco celebrates same-sex marriage ruling

While the usual procession of heterosexual couples beamed as they said their wedding vows on City Hall’s Grand Staircase this morning, a historic celebration took place in the South Light Court: hundreds applauded the announcement that same-sex couples are a big step closer to achieving equality in the basic right to marry.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held today that Proposition 8, which eliminated same sex marriage rights for couples in California, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

The court ruled that Prop. 8 served no purpose but to discriminate against one class of people, and the Constitution does not allow for “laws of this sort.”

The ruling specifically addressed the arguments advanced by proponents of Prop 8 that gay marriage would interfere with childrearing and religious freedom in the state.

“All parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only. It stripped same-sex couples…of the right to obtain and use the designation ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less,” the judges wrote.

The ruling does not mean that marriage licenses will immediately be issued to same sex couples. A stay on the ruling has not been lifted. But the stay could be lifted in as early as 21 days from now. But more probably, it will take months or even years; the case is likely to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart – the lead attorney that defended San Francisco’s 2004 decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, which later triggered the Prop. 8 campaign – said the city is eager to see marriage equality, and that “city mechanisms and machinery stand ready to do whatever we can to expedite the process.”

The decision was based partly on logic that, since LGBTQ Californians already have parental rights and the right to domestic partnerships, denying them the right to marry could not be rationalized. City Attorney Dennis Herrera said that this is a “narrow decision,” meaning that if the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, it would apply only to California.

There remains a possibility that the Supreme Court will reject the case, and in that situation the Ninth Circuit decision striking down Prop. 8 would take immediate affect.

Members of the Bay Area coalition of Welcoming Congregations were present at the announcement.

“I’m jubilant,” said Rev. Roland Stringfellow of the Pacific School of Theology in Berkeley. “When it comes to equality, this is something we preach.”

He adding that his church had been performing same-sex marriages since the 1970s, and that he eagerly awaits legal recognition of his own union with his partner.

Sup. Scott Wiener acknowledged, “the fight is not over yet.”

But he said, “Every so often we get a court ruling that reaffirms our faith in the judicial system…this is a time for us to come together and celebrate.”

California political leaders issued several statements praised the court’s decision.

“The court has rendered a powerful affirmation of the right of same-sex couples to marry. I applaud the wisdom and courage of this decision,” said Gov. Jerry Brown.

Mayor Ed Lee issued a statement saying:
“I celebrate the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court today. This is a great day for marriage equality and a great day for California families. The Court affirmed today that there is nothing in the Constitution that allows discrimination and we are on our way to protecting the fundamental rights of everyone in our State. And, we will continue the fight until everyone is treated equally.  

“San Francisco stands ready to begin marrying same sex couples, and we remain as deeply committed to the fight for marriage equality today as we did nearly eight years ago when then Mayor Gavin Newsom started one of the most important civil rights issues of our generation to ensure equality for all.

“I would also like to acknowledge the tireless work of our City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his team in defense of marriage equality and the California Constitution these last eight years. Together, we will take this fight all the way to the nation’s highest court, if necessary.”

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