Berkeley

Frameline is underway! Plus: crooners, ping-pong champs, and more, in new movies

Sue Vaughan
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Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, kicked off last night and runs through June 29; check out our big list o’ blurbs right here. Elsewhere, Clint Eastwood directs a musical, Guy Pearce prowls the outback, a very good suburban noir emerges from the Netherlands, a documentary takes on the cost of higher education, and more! Read on for the goods (and bads). 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-VBgShBKlY

 Borgman Popping out from his underground hidey hole, narrowly escaping organized armed vigilantes — indicating an ongoing, possibly global secret battle this movie is content to leave entirely unexplained — the titular figure (Jan Bijvoet) shambles to a nearby home and demands comfort. Refused, he persists, and housewife Marina (Hadewych Minis) acquiesces — at first on the sly, as husband Richard (Jeroen Perceval) has already beaten their paunchy, disheveled, weird would-be guest. But soon Borgman is insinuating himself with the well-off suburban couple’s three children, gradually warping the family dynamic until he has everyone under his power. You’ve seen this kind of “Enigmatic stranger invades complacent bourgeoisie home, wreaks liberating and/or terrifying havoc” thing before, both in thrillers and in artier parables from Teorema (1968) to The King (2005). There is nothing wildly original about Dutch filmmaker Alex van Warmerdam’s seductive, macabre black comedy in outline, not its satire of oblivious upper-middle-class entitlement or even (perhaps especially) when the too-generous hosts and any unlucky interlopers start getting killed off one by one. You can debate Borgman’s precise point, or whether it has one at all. But there’s a tart, bracing quality to this cruel absurdist joke that is as perversely delightful as the film is utterly misanthropic. (1:53) (Dennis Harvey)

A Coffee in Berlin How do you say “mumblecore” in German? Jan Ole Gerster’s debut feature has certain arty pretensions — it’s shot in black-and-white, and scored with peppy jazz — but it’s more or less a rambling day in the life of law school dropout Niko (Tom Schilling). It happens to be the very day Niko’s golf-loving father decides to stop funding his shiftless son’s slacker lifestyle, though that crisis (which, you know, Lena Dunham built an entire HBO comedy around) receives nearly equal heft as a cutesy ongoing gimmick that sees Niko incapable of getting a cup of coffee anywhere in Berlin. Hipster ennui can be compelling if it has some underlying energy and purpose (see: 2013’s Frances Ha, to which this film has been compared), but A Coffee in Berlin comes up short on both. That said, it does offer an intriguing portrayal of Berlin — a city whose modern-chic façade barely contains the history that haunts it — and some of its supporting characters, particularly Friederike Kempter as a former schoolmate of Niko’s who has outgrown him emotionally by about one thousand percent, provide pleasant enough distractions. (1:28) (Cheryl Eddy)

Fateful Findings Oh my. With the technical sophistication of Birdemic (2008), Doris Wishman-worthy attention to superfluous detail, and the obliviousness of The Room (2008) toward any semblance of narrative or character continuity, this supernatural drama — or, uh, something like that — is making a bid to be the latest so-bad-it’s-surreal midnight movie hit. Writer-director-producer-editor-star Neil Breen, a man of many hats if no apparent talents, plays Dylan, a writer. As a child, he and friend Leah had found a mushroom that turned into a jewelry box (““Look what I found! A treasure! It’s a magical day!”), and which will come to effect their lives in ways that never make any sense whatsoever. They reunite as re-infatuated adults (Jennifer Autry now playing Leah), which is bad news for the pill-popping wife (Klara Landrat) Dylan is kinda over anyway. Meanwhile, their friends Jim (David Silva) and Amy (Victoria Valene) fight a lot, because he drinks to compensate for their nonexistent sex life, and she’s just incredibly bitchy. Eventually we realize that Dylan is working on a new book that will shockingly expose the rampant global corporate and political corruption that apparently no one has ever noticed before. The climax, which must be seen to be believed, has him triumphantly announcing these (extremely vague) revelations to the cheers of invisible thousands, while disgraced officials are seen committing suicide en masse rather than, you know, retiring to the Canary Islands. There’s a fine line between the hilarious and tortuous that is exactly where Fateful Findings lives. With its flatlined pacing, not-from-this-planet dialogue (Dylan straight facedly tells a dead body “I can’t help you outta this one”), gratuitous nudity, and curious insistence that its characters express emotions by throwing things (laptops, pieces of meat, etc.), this inscrutable vanity project is indeed unique. What it lacks to get you through the (many) boring parts is the compelling personality of a Tommy Wiseau — Breen is (like everyone here) awful, but he’s just a zero onscreen, not a fascinating weirdo. You will want to be drunk for this movie. (1:40) Clay. (Dennis Harvey)

Ivory Tower The latest “issue doc” to come down the pipeline is this very timely and incisive look at the cost of higher education from director Andrew Rossi (2011’s Page One: Inside the New York Times). Rossi is a Yale and Harvard Law grad, and he begins his film in the hallowed halls of the latter to frame the question: In the era of skyrocketing tuition, and with the student loan debt hovering at a trillion bucks, is college still worth it? The answer is left open-ended, though with the very strong suggestion that nontraditional education (including community colleges, online learning, and the Silicon Valley-spawned “uncollege” movement) is certainly something worth exploring, particularly for the non-wealthy. Along the way, we do see some positive tales (a kid from the mean streets of Cleveland gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard; students at rural Deep Springs College follow philosophy discussions with farm work; African American women at Spelman College thrive in an empowering environment), but there’s a fair amount of cynicism here, too, with a hard look at how certain state schools are wooing deep-pocketed out-of-staters with fancy athletic stadiums, luxurious amenities, and a willingness to embrace, however unofficially, their hard-partying reputations. Segments following a student protest at New York’s Cooper Union, a formerly free school forced to consider collecting tuition after a string of financial troubles, echo Frederick Wiseman’s epic At Berkeley (2013), a thematically similar if stylistically very different work. (1:37) (Cheryl Eddy)

Jersey Boys The musical that turned the back story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons — the 1960s hit making machines behind upbeat doo-wop ditties like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and a zillion more; you will recognize all of them — into Broadway gold ascends to the big screen thanks to director Clint Eastwood, a seemingly odd choice until you consider Eastwood’s own well-documented love of music. Jersey Boys weaves a predictable tale of show biz dreams realized and then nearly dashed, with a gangster element that allows for some Goodfellas-lite action (a pre-fame Joe Pesci is a character here; he was actually from the same ‘hood, and was instrumental in the group’s formation). With songs recorded live on-set, à la 2012’s Les Misérables, there’s some spark to the musical numbers, but Eastwood’s direction is more solid than spontaneous, with zero surprises (even the big finale, clearly an attempt at a fizzy, feel-good farewell, seems familiar). Still, the cast — including Tony winner John Lloyd Young as Valli, and Christopher Walken as a sympathetic mobster — is likable, with Young in particular turning in a textured performance that speaks to his years of experience with the role. Interview with cast members Young, Michael Lomenda (who plays original Four Season Nick Massi), and Erich Bergen (as Bob Gaudio, the member who wrote most of the group’s hits), right here. (2:14) (Cheryl Eddy)

Ping Pong Summer Eighties teen flicks of the My Bodyguard (1980), smart-dweebs-beat-the-bullies ilk are paid homage in Michael Tully’s deadpan satire, which is closer in spirit to the Comedy of Lameness school whose patron saint is Napoleon Dynamite. Radley (Marcello Conte) is an average teen so excited to be spending the summer of 1985 in Ocean City, Md. with his family that he renames himself “Rad Miracle.” He acquires a new best friend in Teddy (Myles Massey), who as the whitest black kid imaginable might make even Rad look cool by comparison. However, they are both dismayed to discover the local center for video gaming and everything else they like is ruled by bigger, older, cuter, and snottier douchebag Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) and his sidekick. Only kicking Lyle’s ass at ping pong — with some help from a local weirdo (a miscast Susan Sarandon, apparently here because she’s an off screen ping pong enthusiast) — can save Rad’s wounded dignity, and the summer in general. A big step up from Tully’s odd but pointless prior Septien (2011), this has all the right stuff (including a soundtrack packed with the likes of the Fat Boys, Mary Jane Girls, New Edition, Whodini, and Night Ranger) to hilariously parody the era’s inanities. But it’s just mildly amusing — a droll attitude with lots of period detail but not much bite. (1:32) Roxie. (Dennis Harvey)

The Rover Future days have never seemed quite so bleak as they are depicted in the wild, wild Aussie west of The Rover — rendered by Animal Kingdom (2010) director David Michod, who co-wrote The Rover with Joel Edgerton. Let’s just say we’re probably not going to see any primo Burner ensembles inspired by this post-apocalyptic yarn: Michod ventures to a plausible future only a decade out, after a global economic collapse, and breaks down the brooding road trip to its hard-boiled bones, setting it in a beauteous, lawless, and unceasingly violent outback. A heist gone wrong leads a small gang of robbers to steal the car belonging to monosyllabic, ruthless mystery man Eric (Guy Pearce). The latter wants his boxy little sedan back, badly, and, in the cat and mouse game that ensues, seems willing to die for the trouble. Meanwhile, one of the gang of thieves — the slow, dreamy Rey (Robert Pattinson), who has been left to die of a gunshot wound in the dirt — turns out to be more of a survivor than anyone imagined when he tracks down the tracker hunting for his brother and cohorts. Michod seems most interested in examining and turning over the ties that bind, in a mean time, an eminently absurdist moment, when everything else has fallen away in the face of sheer survival. Cineastes, however, will appreciate the elemental, existential pleasures of this dog-eat-dog Down Under out-Western, not the least of which include the performances. Pearce’s rework of the Man With No Name exudes intention in the very forward thrust of his stance, and Pattinson breaks his cool — and the confines of typecasting — as a blubbering, babbling, thin-skinned man-child. Clad in the mystic expanses of the South Australia desert, which tip a hat to John Ford Westerns as well as scorched-earth-of-the-mind movies such as El Topo (1970) and Paris, Texas (1984), The Rover is taken to the level of tone poem by the shuddering, moaning cellos of Antony Partos’s impressive, atonal electroacoustic score. (1:42) (Kimberly Chun)

Think Like a Man Too Kevin Hart and company head to Vegas in this sequel to the 2012 hit comedy based on Steve Harvey’s best-selling relationship tome. (2:02)

Reel pride

Michael Redmond
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Reel pride

The Case Against 8 (Ben Cotner and Ryan White, US) This documentary follows the successful fight to have Proposition 8 overturned as unconstitutional and restore legality to gay marriage in California. There’s way too much time spent on the couples chosen as plaintiffs, a Berkeley lesbian pair and two Los Angeles male partners — we get it, they’re nice people — and the decisions to disallow broadcast of the eventual court proceedings means we get laborious recitations of what people have already said on record. Frameline has shown so many documentaries about gay marriage already that festival regulars may find this one covers too much familiar ground at excessive length. (It also doesn’t bother giving much screentime to the anti-gay forces, which might have livened things up a bit.) Still, it’s a duly inspirational tale, with real entertainment value whenever the focus turns to the case’s very unlikely chief lawyers: mild-mannered Ted Olson and boisterous David Boies, the latter a longtime leading conservative attorney who’d argued the other side against Olson in the Bush v. Gore presidential election decision. Nonetheless, he’s all for marriage equality, and these otherwise widely separated figures are great fun to watch as they work, taking considerable pleasure in each other’s company. Thu/19, 7pm, Castro. (Dennis Harvey)

Bad Hair (Mariana Rondón, Venezuela, US) Living in a Caracas tenement, Marta (Samantha Castillo) has no husband, no romance in her life, and now no job after she’s fired from a security company. She turns her frustrations on the older of her two fatherless children, 10-year-old Junior (Samuel Lange Zambrano), whose insistence on straightening his hair like the people he sees on TV strikes her as incipiently gay — and that is something she is not willing to tolerate. Mariana Rondón’s prize-winning feature is a small, subtle drama about the poisoning effects of economic pressure and homophobia within the family unit. It’s also quietly devastating about something you don’t often see in movies: The real-world truth that, sometimes, deep down, parents really don’t love their children. Sat/21, 1:30pm, Roxie. (Harvey)

Floating Skyscrapers (Tomasz Wasilewski, Poland, 2013) Competitive swimmer Kuba (Mateusz Banasiuk) has moved girlfriend Sylwia (Marta Nieradkiewicz) into the Warsaw apartment he shares with his possessive divorced mother (Katarzyna Herman), but the two women don’t get along and Kuba doesn’t seem very committed to the relationship anyway. So Sylwia immediately worries her days are numbered when Kuba — who already indulges in the occasional furtive public gay sex — shows unusual interest in out Michal (Bartosz Gelner). As the two young men grow closer, it becomes clear that this is something neither of the women in Kuba’s life will stand for. Tomasz Wasilewski’s Polish drama has a crisp widescreen look and a minimalist air, with little dialogue articulating emotions the characters are wrestling with. Though its protagonist isn’t particularly likable, the film’s simultaneous confidence and ambivalence lends its eventually depressing progress real punch. Sat/21, 9:30pm, Victoria; June 26, 9:30pm, Roxie. (Harvey)

I Am Happiness On Earth (Julián Hernández, Mexico, 2013) When young dancer Octavio is picked up by well-known filmmaker Emiliano, he’s instantly smitten — not realizing yet that the latter is the kind of serial seducer allergic to fidelity. Rich, famous, and gorgeous, he can have anyone he wants, and he does. That’s about it for story in Julián Hernández’s latest, which features some of his characteristically lush camerawork and poetical romanticism. But it’s one of his weaker efforts, basically turning into one sex scene after another with even less attention to character and plot development than usual. This sexy, aesthetically sensual eye candy sports the odd enchanting moment, as when two men after a quickie are suddenly transfixed by the TV and begin singing a pop ballad along with it, to each other. But Hernández (2006’s Broken Sky, 2003’s A Thousand Peace Clouds Encircle the Sky) is a highly talented filmmaker who here seems to be running out of ideas. Sat/21, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

The Foxy Merkins (Madeleine Olnek, US, 2013) Writer-director Madeleine Olnek of Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same (2011) hits a bit of a sophomore slump with this similarly loopy but less inspired absurdist comedy. Lisa Haas returns as Margaret, a sad-sack new arrival to Manhattan who — apparently like most holders of Women’s Studies degrees — ends up homeless and prostituting herself to a large available client base of better bankrolled lesbians. She gets schooled in the ways of the street and kink-for-pay by veteran Jo (Jackie Monahan), who’s a good business partner if also a somewhat unreliable ally. After a hilarious first half hour or so, the movie runs out of steam but keeps plodding on to diminishing returns, despite scattered moments when Olnek and cast hit the comedic bull’s-eye. She’s got a unique sensibility, at once deadpan and utterly nonsensical, but it’s fragile enough to need a stronger narrative structure to sustain than it gets here to sustain feature length. Sun/22, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Winter Journey (Sergei Taramaev and Luba Lvova, Russia, 2013) This stylish Russian drama depicts the paths-crossing and eventual unlikely friendship of two extremely different young men in Moscow. Keanu-looking Eric (Aleksey Frandetti) is a bratty, lieder-singing voice student who escapes pressures at home and school by getting drunk and hanging out with a circle of older gay artistic types. Lyokha (Evgeniy Tkachuk) is homeless and unstable, inclined toward picking fights and stealing stuff. Their not-quite-romance — a bit like a below-zero My Own Private Idaho (1991) with lots of Schubert — isn’t particularly credible, but it’s directed with confident panache by Sergei Taramaev and Luba Lvova, to ultimately quite poignant effect. Mon/23, 9:15pm, Victoria. (Harvey)

Violette (Martin Provost, France, 2013) Taking on another “difficult” woman artist after the excellent 2008 Séraphine (about the folk-art painter), Martin Provost here portrays the unhappy life of Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose fiction and autobiographical writings eventually made her a significant figure in postwar French literature. We first meet her waiting out the war with gay author Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), one of many unrequited loves, then surviving via the black market trade before she’s “discovered” by such groundbreaking, already-established talents as Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé) and Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain). It is the latter, a loyal supporter who nonetheless retains a chilly emotional distance, who becomes bisexual Violette’s principal obsession over the coming 20 years or so. Devos does her best to portray “a neurotic crazy washed-up old bag” with an “ugly mug” — hardly! — who is perpetually broke, depressed, and awkward, thanks no doubt in part to her mean witch of a mother (Catherine Hiegel). “Screaming and sobbing won’t get you anywhere,” Simone at one point tells her, and indeed Leduc is a bit of a pill. For the most part lacking the visual splendors of Séraphine (this character’s environs weren’t so pastoral), Violette is finely acted and crafted but, like its heroine, hard to love. Note: Frameline is also showing Violette Leduc: In Pursuit of Love, a documentary on the same subject. Mon/23, 9:15pm, Castro. (Harvey)

To Be Takei (Jennifer Kroot, US) The erstwhile and forever Mr. Sulu’s surprisingly high public profile these days no doubt sparked this documentary portrait by SF’s own Jennifer Kroot (2009’s It Came From Kuchar). But she gives it dramatic heft by highlighting the subject’s formative years in World War II Japanese-American internment camps, and finds plenty of verite humor in the everyday byplay between fairly recently “out” gay celebrity George and his longtime life and business partner Brad Altman — the detail-oriented, pessimistic worrywart to his eternally upbeat (if sometimes tactlessly critical) star personality. We get glimpses of them in the fan nerdsphere, on The Howard Stern Show, at Takei’s frequent speaking engagements (on internment and gay rights), and in his latter-day acting career both as perpetual TV guest and a performer in a hopefully Broadway-bound new musical (about internment). Then of course there’s the Star Trek universe, with all surviving major participants heard from, including ebullient Nichelle Nichols, sad-sack Walter Koenig, thoughtfully distanced Leonard Nimoy, and natch, the Shat (who acts like a total asshat, dismissing Takei as somebody he sorta kinda knew professionally 50 years ago.) We also hear from younger Asian American actors who view the subject as a role model, even if some of his actual roles weren’t so trailblazing (like a couple “funny Chinaman” parts in Jerry Lewis movies, and in John Wayne’s 1968 pro-Vietnam War film The Green Berets). Even if you’ve tired of Takei’s ubiquity online and onscreen, this campy but fond tribute is great fun. Tue/24, 6:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Back on Board: Greg Louganis (Cheryl Furjanic, US) For most Americans, the words “famous diver” conjure up only one name: Greg Louganis, the charismatic, record-breaking Olympian who dominated the sport in the 1980s. But as Cheryl Furjanic’s doc reveals, athletic perfection did not spell easy livin’ for Louganis. Though he hid the fact that he was gay (and HIV positive) from the public for years, his sexuality was an open secret in the diving world, and likely cost him lucrative endorsement deals. Louganis’ tale is not being shared for the first time (see also: the best-selling autobiography, which became a made-for-TV biopic), but Furjanic goes in deep, revealing Louganis’ considerable financial woes even as he finally finds personal happiness — and recharges his sports career when he’s asked to mentor 2012 Olympians. He’s clearly a good-hearted guy, and it’s hard not to root for him, particularly when we’re treated to so much footage of “the consummate diver” in his prime. He made it look easy, when clearly (in so many ways) it was not. June 25, 4pm, Castro. (Cheryl Eddy)

Regarding Susan Sontag (Nancy Kates, US) This excellent documentary by Nancy D. Kates (2003’s Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin) places more emphasis on the subject’s life — particularly her lesbian relationships — than on the ideas expressed in her work as a novelist, essayist, filmmaker, and cultural theorist. But it’s still a fine overview of a fascinating, often divisive figure. Extremely precocious (she began college at 15), she abandoned an early marriage for freedom in late 1950s Paris, then became a charismatic cultural theorist at the center of all 60s avant-gardisms. Her lovers included playwright Maria Irene Fornes, painter Jasper Johns, choreographer Lucinda Childs, and finally photographer Annie Liebovitz. A terrific diversity of archival footage and contemporary interviewees contribute to this portrait of a very complicated, difficult (both personally and as an artist/intellect) woman perpetually “interested in everything.” June 25, 7pm, Victoria; June 26, 7pm, Elmwood. (Harvey)

Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story (Sandrine Orabona and Mark Herzog, US) “I don’t do anything halfway,” admits Kristin Beck, a 20-year, highly-decorated veteran of the Navy SEALs. During her time in the military, she was known as Christopher — and she admits now, as a trans woman “trying to be the real person that I always knew I was, and always wished I could be,” that her willingness to embrace danger was a coping mechanism as she struggled to realize her true identity. In this moving, well-crafted doc, we follow along as Kristin travels to visit with family (some more accepting than others, and some, like her aging dad, making a heartfelt effort even as they stumble over pronouns and still call her “Chris”) and former Navy colleagues and fellow veterans, many of whom have put aside their initial confusion and embrace Kristin as she is. And who is she? A badass who survived multiple tours of Iraq and Afghanistan, with a wry sense of humor and an easygoing, thoughtful personality, Beck is also an inspiration — an American hero on multiple levels. June 27, 1:30pm, Castro. (Eddy)

Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan, US) First seen packing her belongings under the malevolent eye of her newly ex–girlfriend, then walking unabashedly down the street with a harness and dildo in hand, Brooklyn-dwelling twentysomething Shirin (played by writer-director Desiree Akhavan) doesn’t seem like a person who has trouble owning her sexuality. And indeed, in the parts of her life that don’t require interacting with her close-knit Iranian American family, Shirin is an out, and outspoken, bisexual. Brash, witty, self-involved, and professionally unmoored, she has a streak of poor impulse control that leads her into situations variously hilarious, awkward, painful, and disastrous. Through a series of flashbacks, Akhavan walks us back through the medium highs and major lows of Shirin’s defunct relationship, while tracking her floundering present-day attempts to wobble back to standing. Akhavan’s first feature, Appropriate Behavior has a comic looseness that occasionally verges on shapelessness, but the stray bits are entertaining too. June 27, 7pm, Castro. (Lynn Rapoport)

Of Girls and Horses (Monika Treut, Germany) A semi-delinquent teenager named Alex (Ceci Chuh) is sent away to work on a horse farm as a sort of last-ditch effort to shift her onto a more salutary path. Under the care of thirtysomething Nina (Vanida Karun), who is taking time apart from urban life in Hamburg, where her girlfriend lives, Alex comes to fall under the quiet spell of the horses, and when another young girl, Kathy (Alissa Wilms), shows up to vacation at the farm with her horse, Alex falls for her as well. Director Monika Treut (1999’s Gendernauts) favors long, lyrical shots of horses grazing or gazing soulfully into the lens, of Nina and Kathy cantering over flat green expanses of countryside, and of Alex forking hay into the stalls. A few small dramas take place, but Of Girls and Horses is more of a sketch than a story, and whether it holds your interest may depend on how many Marguerite Henry horse stories you consumed in your youth. June 27, 9:15pm, Roxie. (Rapoport)

Futuro Beach (Karim Ainouz, Brazil) When two German men globe-trotting on their motorcycles go for a dip off the Brazilian coast, they’re pulled under by the current — only Konrad (Clemens Schick) is saved by local lifeguard Donato (Wagner Moura), his companion lost. The two men console one another with sex. Then in the first of several disorienting jumps forward in time here, suddenly Donato has moved to Europe in order to continue their relationship, leaving his old life (including a dependent mother and younger brother) behind. There are further narrative leaps ahead — director Karim Ainouz (2002’s Madame Satã) is all about bold gestures here, but his visual and sonic assertiveness don’t necessarily fill the blanks in narrative and character development. The resulting exercise in style will leave you either dazzled or emotionally untouched. June 27, 9:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

Cupcakes (Eytan Fox, Israel, 2013) After a run of politically tinged features, Eytan Fox (2002’s Yossi & Jagger, 2004’s Walk on Water) goes the Almodóvar-lite route with this flyweight comedy about a Eurovision-style song contest. Gay Ofer (Ofer Shechter) and various girlfriends who all live in the same Tel Aviv apartment building decide to enter the Universong competition, becoming Israel’s official entry with improbable ease despite never having performed publicly before. Their mild travails (fighting the creative inference of professional handlers, Ofer’s attempts to drag his boyfriend out of the closet) fill time pleasantly enough before the inevitable triumphant telecast climax. This candy-colored fluff, its mainstreamed camp sensibility predictably reflected in corny vintage hits (“Love Will Keep Us Together,” “You Light Up My Life”), is aptly named — it’s as colorful, easily digested, and about as nutritious as a tray of cupcakes. June 28, 8:30pm, Castro. (Harvey)

I Feel Like Disco (Axel Ranisch, Germany, 2013) When housewife Monika (Christina Grobe) suffers a stroke and falls into a coma she may never come out of, her chubby teenage son Flori (Frithjof Gawenda) and junior high swim coach husband Hanno (Heiko Pinkowski) are forced to depend on each other without mom as a buffer. Things tentatively look up when Flori develops an unlikely friendship — and possibly something more — with dad’s star diver, Romanian émigré Radu (Robert Alexander Baer). Axel Ranisch’s gentle seriocomedy doesn’t make much of an impression for a while, springing few surprises (despite occasional deadpan fantasy sequences) along its moderately amusing path. But as father and son struggle to rise to the occasion of their shared crisis, we grow to like them more — and likewise this ultimately quite disarming feature. June 29, 7pm, Castro. (Harvey) *

Frameline 38, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, runs June 19-29 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St, SF; and Rialto Cinemas Elmwood, 2966 College, Berk. For tickets (most shows $10-15) and schedule, visit www.frameline.org. For even more Frameline 38 short takes, visit www.sfbg.com.

Extra! Extra! Sunshine advocates beat the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall

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 By Bruce B. Brugmann

And so the  Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall, which for two years has been conducting a nasty vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,  capitulated quietly at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting without a fight or even a whimper.

The capitulation came in a two line phrase  buried in item 28 in the middle of the board’s agenda.  It was a report from the rules committee recommending  the Board of Supervisors approve a motion for  unnamed nominees to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. “Question:  Shall this Motion be approved.”

Board Chair David Chiu asked for approval in his usual board meeting monotone. And the approval came unanimously, with no dissent and no roll call vote and not a word spoken by anybody.  He banged the gavel and that was that. And only a few veteran board watchers knew that this was the astonishing  end to a crucial battle that pitted the powerfuf Anti-Sunshine Gangs against the sunshine forces and the citizens of San Francisco. It was a battle that would decide whether the task force would remain an independent people’s court that would hear and rule on public access complaints.  Sunshine won.

It was ironic and fitting that Chiu presided over the capitulation. For it was Chiu as board president who orchestrated  the deal to demolish Park Merced and then orchestrated the  infamous 6-5 board vote  in September 2010 approving  a monstrous redevelopment  project that would evict lots of tenants, and destroy most of the affordable housing. This was a big deal because the housing crisis was heating up and Park Merced was the largest affordable community in the city and one of the largest In the nation. This is where tens of thousands of young people, young married couples, students and faculty at nearby San Francisco State, older people, and middle class people had come for generations with their families to live in affordable housing in an  “urban park,” as Park Merced promo once put it.

And it was Chiu as board president who was charged by the Sunshine Task Force, along with Supervisors Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, and Eric Mar with violating the Sunshine Ordinance and the state’s open meeting law (Brown Act) when they approved the project with blazing speed.. 

Wiener, Cohen, and Mar were on the board’s Land Use and Economic Development Committee when they voted on the contract. Literally minutes before the committee vote, Chiu introduced 14 pages of amendments to the contract. The deputy city attorney at the meeting blessed the amendments by saying, gosh, golly, gee, no problem, the amendments do  not substantially alter the contract and therefore the description of the item on the agenda was still apt and the committee could act on it. Bombs away! The full board approved the contract the same day by one vote.

This sleight of hand and pellmell approval process meant that Park Merced was going,going, gone and in its place would be a project that “has no hindsight, no insight, or foresight,” as Planning Commissioner Kathryn Moore was quoted as saying in a scathing Westside Observer column by landscape architect Glenn Rogers. “It is not a project of the 21st century.  It is the agenda of a self-serving developer.”

 The Observer, to its immense credit, was the only media in town to blast away at the project. (Read its coverage and weep, starting with a June piece by Pastor Lynn Gavin who wrote that the Park Merced owners did not disclose to her or her family that they “were going to demolish the garden apartment that was our home.”)  Gavin and her neighbors took the formal complaint to the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and got a unanimous 8-0  ruling condemning Chiu, Wiener, Cohen, and Mar for open government violations.

It was a historic ruling by the task force and demonstrated once again in 96 point tempo bold the irreplaceable value of the people’s court.  The ruling also had impact because it amounted to a stinging  expose of how government often works in San Francisco with big money and big development and how one vote can add gallons of high octane petrol to the housing crisis. It angered the hell out of the six supervisors who voted for the project.

 And in effect, it gave rise to what I call the Anti-Sunshine Gang in City Hall whose response to the ruling was, not to apologize and change their illegal ways, but to start a vicious vendetta against the task force for doing the right thing at the right time.  The six votes were David Chiu, Scott Wiener, Malia Cohen, Mark Farrell, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu. Elsbernd has gone on to Sen. Diane Feinstein’s office in San Francisco and Chu to becoming assessor. But the gang picked up other allies along the way, notably the city attorney’s office.

Two years ago, when the task force members came to the board for reappointment, the Anti-Sunshine Gang retaliated and swung into action by “launching a smear campaign aimed at purging the eight task force members who had unanimously voted to find the violations,” according to Richard Knee, a 12 year veteran of the task force, in a June column in the Observer.  Knee, who represents the local chapter of the Society of Professonal Journalists, also wrote that “the mayor and the Board of Supervisors…made sure that the panel gets minimal funding, staffing and resources, and the board has refused to fill two long standing vacancies, making It difficult at times to muster a quorum since task force members are volunteers with outside responsibilities such as family and work.

“Two year ago, the board’s failure to appoint a physically disabled member forced the task force to take a five month hiatus, exacerbating a backlog of complaints filed by members of the public.This year, Knee wrote,  the start of the appointment process was “farcical and ominous.”  He explained that, at the May 15 meeting of the board’s rules committee, which vets applicants for city bodies, the two supervisors present chair Norman Yee and Katy Tang (David Campos had an excused absence) “complained that there weren’t enough racial/ethnic diversity among the 13 candidates. “That didn’t deter them from recommending the reappointments of Todd David, Louise Fischer, and David Pilpel, all Anglos.”

Before the full board five days later, Yee complained again, “this time that lack of a regular schedule and frequent switching of meeting dates were making attendance difficult for task force members. Either Yee had no clue of the facts or he was lying.” Knee explained that the task force normally meets the first Wednesday of each month and its subcommittees usually meet during the third week of the month.

“Meeting postponements and cancellations are the result, not the cause, of difficulties in mustering a quorum, due to the vacancies—which now number three.

“In gushing over David, Fischer, and Pilpel, at the board’s May 20 meeting, Wiener offered no evidence or detail of their alleged accomplishments and ignored the fact that David has missed six task force meetings since March 2013, including those of last February and April. Until the board fills the other seats, the five remaining incumbents—Chris Hyland, Bruce Oka, David Sims, Allyson Washburn, and yours truly—stay on as ‘holdover’ members.”

Meanwhile, by the next session of the Rules Committee on June 5, the sunshine advocates had rallied and put together an impressive mass of sunshine power. Testifying at the hearing were representatives from SPJ and the journalism community, the League of Women Voters, the ACLU, the sunshine posse, the Library Users Association, the Bay Area News Group, the Inter-American Press Asociation, the Center for Investigative Reporting, the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the First Amendment Coalition, the  Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Observer and neighborhood activists, and other sunshine allies and FOI groupies. It was quite a show of force. 

SPJ placed a pointed, timely op ed in the Chronicle (“SF Supervisors block Sunshine Ordinance Task Force,” good of the Chron/Hearst to run it but better if the paper didn’t black out local sunshine issues.) Members of the posse peppered the gang with public record requests aimed at tracking skullduggery and they found it. Reps from the groups lobbied the supervisors by email, phone, and personal office visits. And the word that the Anti-Sunshine Gang was back and on the gallop shot through the neighborhoods and around town and into election campaigns and among constituents of the gang.

SPJ and its vigorous Freedom of Information Committee under co-chairs Journalist Thomas Peele, of Chauncey Bailey fame, and Attorney Geoff King  were particularly effective. Peele is an investigative reporter with the Bay Area Newspaper Group, a lecturer on public records at the UC-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and author of a respected book on Chauncey Bailey, a black journalist murdered on his way to work.

The word got around that the supervisors were blocking strong pro-sunshine candidates for the task force and that their first three nominees were the weakest of the lot. Campos, a stellar sunshine advocate, was back at the committee meeting, making the right calls and shepherding the strong nominees along through the committee and the Board of Supervisors.  Great job.

The cumulative weight and force  of the presentations of the nominees and the sunshine advocates made the proper political point:  any supervisor who voted with the Anti-Sunshine Gang was going to face their constituents and voters with the brand of being anti-sunshine and anti- government accountability.  More: they would have to answer some embarrassing questions: Who lost Park Merced? Who voted to turbo charge evictions and middle class flight from the city for years to come? Who tried to cover up the outrage and who did it? And who led the retaliatory vendetta against the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force for doing the right thing on behalf of sunshine in San Francisco?

And so the Board of Supervisors was dragged kicking and screaming into the sunshine of June 2014 and beyond. The supervisors ended up nominating what looks to be one of the strongest pro-sunshine task forces: Attorney  Mark Rumold and journalist Ali Winston from SPJ, Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters, Attorney Lee Hepner, Journalist Josh Wolf, and holdover Chris Hyland. Plus Bruce Oka who looks to be a late holdover in the disabled seat. Congratulations for hanging in and winning, hurray for the power of sunshine, on guard,  B3

P.S. l: PG&E institutionalizes City Hall secrecy and corruption:  The pernicious influence of the Anti-Sunshine gang hung heavy over the rules committee.  Tang tried to force every candidate to take a pledge of allegiance to the city attorney. Tang is the kind of neighborhood supervisor (Sunset) who has a 100 per cent Chamber of Commerce voting record. Her city attorney pledge demand was laughable on its face, given the fact that the city attorney refuses to move on the PG&E/Raker Act scandal and thus has helped institutionalize secrecy and corruption in City Hall on a multi-million dollar scale for decades. Which is reason enough for the city to always maintain a strong, enduring Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, to help keep tabs on how PG&E keeps City Hall safe for PG&E and its allies. (See Guardian stories and editorials since 1969.)  

Tang and Yee continued the gang’s hammering on Bruce Wolfe, a worthy candidate for the disabled seat whose main sin was that he was one of the Honorable Eight who voted condemnation.  The gang knocked out Wolfe as a holdover candidate the first time around and they were at it again at the committee meeting. Oka says he wants to resign from the task force but only when the board finds a good replacement. Wolfe, who was an effective and knowledgeable sunshine task force member, is the obvious replacement but he is still on the purge list.  Stay tuned on this one. . 

There are three things that no one can do to the entire satisfaction of anyone else: make love, poke the fire, and run a newspaper. William Allen White, 1917, line atop the editorial page of the Durango Herald, Durango, Colorado. 

Anxious art

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Anxious art

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Poland had not been a major hub of film production in the early decades of the medium, and its industry stabilized without getting very interesting in the years after World War II, when a Soviet-backed Stalinist regime founded state-controlled Film Polski. This shotgun wedding of art and bureaucracy wasn’t ideally conducive to creative expression, however. By the mid-1950s younger filmmakers, many graduates from the recently founded National Film School in Lodz, agitated for more independence — which, surprisingly, they won.

The resulting United Groups of Film Production almost immediately began producing work that won international attention and came to be known as the “Polish Film School” of cinema. Then in the 1970s a second wave of distinctive talents arrived, their troubled and ambivalent movies coming to be known as the Cinema of Moral Anxiety movement. Presented by Martin Scorsese, the touring “Masterpieces of Polish Cinema” retrospective playing Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive offers 13 features spanning three decades.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-CQj8n3Rek&feature=kp

The series kicks off this weekend with perhaps the most famous films by two polar (ahem) opposites of the school’s first wave: fantasist Wojciech Has and sober, socially conscious realist Andrzej Wajda. The latter sounded a new Polish cinema’s opening salvo with 1955’s A Generation, and is still at it 60 years later. Last year he continued his never-ending project of dramatizing 20th century Polish history with the biographical Walesa: Man of Hope (as yet unreleased in the US), and might yet be active when he hits 90 in 2016.

An honorary Oscar winner, Wajda has been the most imposing presence in Polish cinema for nearly his entire career, even if he’s not the nation’s most fabled cinematic son — that would be Roman Polanski, a sensibility as slippery as Wajda is solid (and sometimes stolid), as well as a director who fled to the West at his first opportunity. (Polanski made a rare return after the fall of Communism, acting the lead in Wajda’s atypical period comedy Zemsta in 2002.) The four features representing Wajda in the PFA series see his development from an edgy young voice to the master artisan of large-canvas, often polemical works on subjects of official import.

Ashes and Diamonds (1958) introduced the striking screen presence of Zbigniew Cybulski — one consciously modeled on the magnetic malcontents of James Dean, and Marlon Brando in 1953’s The Wild One — as one of two resistance fighters tasked with assassinating a Communist official just days after the end of World War II. While his partner copes with this now-pointless mission by going on an epic drunk, Cybulski’s Maciek expresses his ambivalence in distracted pursuit of a barmaid (Ewa Krzyzewska). His iconic death scene would influence many others, notably those in Godard’s Breathless and Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player (both 1960). The actor coped with his subsequent international stardom by doing everything to excess; there was grief but not much surprise among those who knew him when he died in a drunken fall at a train station in 1967, not yet 40 but looking much older.

He also has supporting roles in Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s 1959 slice-of-life demi-thriller Night Train, and in Wajda’s Innocent Sorcerers from the next year — both long journeys toward dawn, the second set in a jazz-soaked, raffishly disillusioned Warsaw where it’s “harder to catch a taxi than a girl.” The two other Wajda titles here are later epics: 1975’s The Promised Land, a long, lavish and shrill indictment of worker-exploitative Industrial Revolution capitalism; and 1981’s Man of Iron, dramatizing the rise of the Solidarity movement. Man won the Golden Palm at Cannes, but also angered Polish officials sufficiently to drive its director abroad for some years, making films in Germany and France.

By contrast, political — or any — reality is infrequently found in the works of the late Has, whose best films are hothouse phantasmagorias rich in surreal imagery and dreamlike illogic. The PFA series kicks off with his 1964 The Saragossa Manuscript, perhaps that decade’s first “head” film, and duly named by Jerry Garcia as his favorite film. (The musician was involved in the PFA acquiring a print before his death.) Its picaresque maze of tall stories, with beautiful available women ornamenting most of them, remains a stoner’s delight. In a similar vein, Has’ The Hour-Glass Sanatorium a decade later is a triumph of Gothic jumble-sale production design, its own hapless hero pulled down a richly colored rabbit’s hole of dress-up role playing and various perversities at the titular institution.

A much more straightforward costume extravaganza is 1960’s Black Cross, aka Knights of the Teutonic Order, about the 15th century struggle between Poles and Christian invaders that led to the Battle of Grunwald. Its director Aleksander Ford was a major figure in establishing the post-war state film industry, yet not long after this expensive epic he was purged in a late-decade anti-Semitic campaign, and his unsuccessful attempts at a career overseas ended with suicide in 1980 Florida. A very different historical piece is Kawalerowicz’s 1961 Mother Joan of the Angels, a treatment of the same 17th century alleged convent demon infestation that inspired Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils, and one that’s as quiet and stark as the latter film is hysterical.

The leading lights of the later Cinema of Moral Anxiety movement—which mostly eschewed such grand gestures and bizarre subjects for small, disquieting modern narratives — are represented in three films toward the series’ end. Krzysztof Zanussi’s 1976 Camouflage and 1980 The Constant Factor are terse, bitter portraits of institutional corruption. The late Krzysztof Kieslowski’s pre-Three Colors series breakout A Short Film About Killing (1987) is, if anything, bleaker: Drawn together by chance and then by tragedy, its protagonists live in a Warsaw where injustice is practically in the air — thanks to the oppressively tinted cinematography — and the climactic events of a murder and an execution have their existential pointlessness underlined by each being excruciatingly prolonged. *

MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS MASTERPIECES OF POLISH CINEMA

June 14-Aug 21, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Event Listings: June 18-24, 2014

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Listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Selector.

WEDNESDAY 18

“Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the End of the Universe” Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Way, SF; www.randallmuseum.org. 7:30pm, free (donations encouraged). UC Berkeley astrophysicist and cosmologist Brad Tucker leads this lecture presented by the San Francisco Amateur Astronomers.

Susan Jane Gilman Book Passage, 1 Ferry Bldg, SF; www.bookpassage.com. 6pm, free. The author reads from her debut novel, The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street.

“Peter Orlovsky, A Life in Words” City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The late poet is remembered with Peter Orlovsky, a Life in Words: Intimate Chronicles of a Beat Writer, read by Bill Morgan, Joanne Kluger, and Michael McClure.

Tom Spanbauer Books Inc., 2275 Market, SF; www.booksinc.net. 7:30pm, free. The author reads from his first novel in seven years, I Loved You More.

THURSDAY 19

“Ink: The Enduring Art of Tattoos” Creativity Explored Gallery, 3245 16th St, SF; www.creativityexplored.org. Opening reception tonight, 7-9pm. Free. Exhibit through Aug 6 (Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm; Thu, 10am-7pm; Sat-Sun, noon-5pm). Creativity Explored artists present works inspired by tattoo art in this group exhibition.

FRIDAY 20

Community of Writers at Squaw Valley benefit reading Starr King Room, First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin, SF; www.squawvalleywriters.org. 7pm, $12-24. Readings by poets Don Mee Choi, Robert Hass, Harryette Mullen, C.D. Wright, and Matthew Zapruder.

SATURDAY 21

“Action and Adventure: The Beginning of Modern Comics” Escapist Comic Bookstore, 3090 Claremont, Berk; www.escapistcomics.com. 3-5pm, free. Gerard Jones (Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book) and Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson (granddaughter of the founder of DC Comics) discuss the early days of comics.

“Step Back” Meet in front of City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.radarproductions.org. 4pm, free. Radar presents this walking tour (with performances!) through the queer origins of North Beach with author and historian Nan Alamilla Boyd (Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965).

San Mateo SummerFest B Street between Tilton and Sixth Aves, San Mateo; www.sresproductions.com. 10am-6pm, free. Also Sun/22. Historic downtown San Mateo hosts this summer fair, with arts and crafts, cooking demos, live entertainment, and more.

“Sexy Summer Dance Party” One Grove Street, SF; www.ftloose.org. 7-11pm, $20-50 donation. Raise money for nonprofit art group Footloose at this event, featuring live music by Stephanie Teel Band and Rasa Vitalia, plus raffles, a silent auction, and more.

“What the Truck?” Jack London Square, Broadway at Embarcadero, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. 11am-5pm, free. Not just food trucks, though there’ll be plenty of those; this event also boasts art trucks, toy trucks, a mobile photo bus, and fashion boutiques on wheels.

SUNDAY 22

“Sunday Storytime Hour” Cartoon Art Museum, 655 Mission, SF; www.cartoonart.org. 11am-noon, included with museum admission ($4-8). Reading for kids spotlighting the John Klassen books This is Not My Hat and I Want My Hat Back, plus treats from Arizmendi Bakery. Wear your favorite hat!

“We Shape Our City” Old Mint, 88 Fifth St, SF; www.sfhistory.org. 1-4pm, $5-10. Ongoing every Sunday. The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society hosts docent-led tours of the historic landmark, as well as showcasing a number of exhibits, including photographic explorations of various SF neighborhoods and the new “We Shape Our City,” dedicated to local innovators.

MONDAY 23

Kenneth Turan Book Passage, 1 Ferry Bldg, SF; www.bookpassage.com. 6pm, free. The veteran film critic reads from Not to Be Missed.

TUESDAY 24

Jeffrey Renard Allen Booksmith, 1644 Haight, SF; www.booksmith.com. 7:30pm, free. The author reads from Song of the Shank.

Joanna Smith Rakoff Book Passage, 1 Ferry Bldg, SF; www.bookpassage.com. 6pm, free. The author shares her memoir, My Salinger Year.

Adam Wilson and Lucy Corin City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus, SF; www.citylights.com. 7pm, free. The authors share What’s Important Is Feeling and One Hundred Apocalypses. *

 

Stage Listings: June 11-17, 2014

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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.

THEATER

OPENING

“The Bakla Show 3” Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; http://baklashow3.bpt.me. $10-20. Opens Thu/12, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 28. Three short works focusing on the struggles of Pinoy LGBT youth.

Body of Water Southside Theater, Fort Mason Center, Bldg D, Third Flr, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-35. Opens Fri/13, 7:30pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 7:30pm; Sun, 2:30pm. Through June 28. A Theatre Near U presents an original indie-rock teen musical, with songs by Jim Walker.

The Weir Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Opens Thu/12, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through July 12. Shelton Theater performs Conor McPherson’s acclaimed tale about a spooky night in an Irish pub.

BAY AREA

American Buffalo Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Fri/13-Sat14 and June 18, 8pm; Sun/15, 2pm; Tue/17, 7pm. Opens June 19, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. through July 13. Aurora Theatre closes its 22nd season with David Mamet’s powerful drama.

ONGOING

Brahmin/I: A One-Hijra Stand-Up Comedy Show Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $15-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 28. Crowded Fire Theater presents Aditi Brennan Kapil’s “outrageous play masquerading as a stand-up comedy routine.”

The Crucible Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-35. Thu/12-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 7pm. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Arthur Miller’s drama.

Devil Boys From Beyond New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliot’s campy sci-fi saga.

Each and Every Thing Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thu/12-Fri/13, 8pm. Opens Sat/14, 8:30pm. Runs Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through July 12. Dan Hoyle presents his latest solo show, about the search for real-world connections in a tech-crazed world.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat-Sun, 5pm. Extended through July 13. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

God Fights the Plague Marsh San Francisco Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-100. Previews Sat/14, 8:30pm; Sun/15, 7pm. Opens June 21, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 10. The Marsh presents a solo show written by and starring 18-year-old theater phenom Dezi Gallegos.

Homo File CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. $20-35. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 7pm. Writer-designer-director Seth Eisen’s homage to queer rebel Samuel Stewart (1909–1993), whose polymorphous career spanned the better part of the 20th century, was last seen at CounterPULSE in a trim and appealing 40-minute version that capped his artistic residence there in 2012. Since then the work has ballooned across two acts and, unfortunately, lost its focus. What was a compact but meaningful exploration of a polymath and sexual rebel, boldly negotiating the social hierarchies of a deeply repressive and homophobic culture, has become a vague, sometimes difficult to follow story with little more to recommend it than a hedonistic joie de vivre (though even the raunch feels listless and somewhat perfunctory). The expanded production still sports the playful puppetry (shadow and otherwise), overhead and video projections, and aerial choreography of the original — and these do produce some interesting or enjoyable moments — but the show’s polyphonic elements get drastically watered down in a sprawling, lumbering, and unevenly performed dramatic narrative. This is marked by a lot of leaden dialogue and underwhelming songs in scenes that feel either unnecessary or under-explored. The subject (played dutifully but without much illumination by Brian Livingston), along with a seven-actor ensemble of supporting characters, traverses the mutually exclusive worlds of academia and the literary avant-garde (where Michael Soldier as both sexologist Alfred Kinsey and Gertrude Stein is a notable treat); the working-class homosexual underworld of sailors and tattoo parlors; and even the conventionality of a part-time heterosexual romance (where a nicely understated Katharine Otis as Emmy Curtis begins to cast an intriguing angle on Stewart’s complex makeup). But the import of Stewart’s unique vantage and influence on it all as well as his peculiar aloofness in the midst of everything are fuzzily evoked at best. For all the media employed to depict him and his world, we come away with little sense of either. (Avila)

The Homosexuals New Conservatory Theatre Center, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. This mildly intriguing and fitfully engaging drama from rising Chicago playwright Philip Dawkins (whose Failure: A Love Story is currently having its Bay Area debut at Marin Theater Company) explores the tensions — sexual, generational, and otherwise — among a small circle of mostly gay friends via a central figure, Evan (a sharp Robert Rushin), who ends up in relationships with almost everyone. Beginning in 2010, as 29-year-old Evan breaks up with older histrionic theater director Peter (a drolly world-weary Matt Weimer), each successive scene jumps back two years and one relationship, until the final scene unites the entire circle as they welcome naïve Iowa teen Evan out of the closest and to the big city. It’s also a new millennium, of course, some distance now from Stonewall and the first wave of the AIDS crisis, and one of the more interesting aspects of the drama (which benefits from an overall strong cast under the direction of Arturo Catricala) is the generational divide between Evan and his circle. This divide feels downright political in the aggressive showdown between Evan and the apathetic art teacher and predatory libertine Mark (a persuasive Keith Marshall), but there’s a political edge at the outset, in Evan’s pointed refusal to join Peter in referring to himself as a “homosexual,” insisting instead on the word “gay” tout court. Despite this underlying issue and some witty dialogue, however, there’s little of interest in most of the dynamics between Evan and his circle. The play’s structure accordingly becomes a slightly tedious countdown, at least until the final scene, which cashes in on the power of hindsight to produce a limited, wistful tremor of reflection. (Avila)

In the Tree of Smoke Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 28. Circus Automatic performs an new evening of immersive, experimental circus.

Macbeth Fort Point (beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-75. Thu-Sun, 7pm. Through June 29. We Players’ latest site-specific undertaking is nothing less than the Scottish play at San Francisco’s historic Civil War-era Fort Point, under the southern base of the Golden Gate Bridge. And a better location for Shakespeare’s brooding, bloody, and spooky civil war drama is hard to imagine. The grandeur of the multi-story red-brick edifice with its mammoth steel doors, magnificent inner courtyard, graceful arches, spiral stairwells, mysterious passageways, canon casemates looking onto the Pacific — as well as old canons and cannonballs — add up to a deeply atmospheric setting. Moreover, directors Ava Roy and John Hadden and their production team make good use of it, moving the audience around the grounds for the better part of three hours amid picturesque staging of scenes, a wonderfully powerful quartet of musicians (made up of percussionist Brent Elberg, trumpeter Aaron Priskorn, saxophonist Charlie Gurke, and trombonist Mara Fox alternating with Rick Brown), and reverberant cries from the weyard sisters (Julie Douglas, Maria Leigh, Caroline Parsons), the enraged MacDuff (Dixon Phillips), or usurper Macbeth’s hapless victims. As the titular hero-villain, John Hadden is generally imposing if not always convincing, while Ava Roy’s forceful Lady M cuts an elegant, at times ethereal figure in her magnificent black gown (the admirable costumes throughout are by Julia Rose Meeks and Master Seamstress Dana Taylor). In general, the acting proves the weakest link, but the overall spectacle makes this a unique and rather compelling outing. (Avila)

The Orphan of Zhao ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-120. Opens Wed/11, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat and June 24, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); Tue/17, 7pm. Through June 29. Tony winner BD Wong stars in James Fenton’s acclaimed Chinese-legend adaptation at American Conservatory Theater.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through June 28. Five years ago, Thrillpeddlers breathed new life into a glitter-dusted piece of Sixties flotsam, beautifully reimagining the Cockettes’ raunchy mock-operetta Pearls Over Shanghai (in collaboration with several surviving members of San Francisco’s storied acid-drag troupe) and running it for a whopping 22 months. Written by Cockette Link Martin as a carefree interpretation of a 1926 Broadway play, the baldly stereotyped Shanghai Gesture, it was the perfectly lurid vehicle for irreverence in all directions. It’s back in this revival, once again helmed by artistic director Russell Blackwood with musical direction by Cockette and local favorite Scrumbly Koldewyn. But despite the frisson of featuring some original-original cast members — including “Sweet Pam” Tent (who with Koldewyn also contributes some new dialogue) and Rumi Missabu (regally reprising the role of Madam Gin Sling) — there’s less fire the second time around as the production straddles the line between carefully slick and appropriately sloppy. Nevertheless, there are some fine musical numbers and moments throughout. Among these, Zelda Koznofsky, Birdie-Bob Watt, and Jesse Cortez consistently hit high notes as the singing Andrews Sisters-like trio of Americans thrown into white slavery; Bonni Suval’s Lottie Wu is a fierce vixen; and Noah Haydon (as the sultry Petrushka) is a class act. Koldewyn’s musical direction and piano accompaniment, meanwhile, provide strong and sure momentum as well as exquisite atmosphere. (Avila)

Seminar San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Wed/11-Thu/12, 7pm; Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm (also Sat/14, 3pm). San Francisco Playhouse performs Theresa Rebeck’s biting comedy.

“Sheherezade 14” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.playwrightscentersf.org. $25. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 21. The Playwrights’ Center of SF and Wily West Productions host this annual festival of fully-produced short plays.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blond innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: The energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $65-100 (gambling chips, $7-10 extra; after-hours admission, $10). Wed-Sat, 7:30, 7:40, 7:50, 8pm, and 9pm admittance times. Extended through June 21. Boxcar Theater’s most ambitious project to date is also one of the more involved and impressively orchestrated theatrical experiences on any Bay Area stage just now. An immersive time-tripping environmental work, The Speakeasy takes place in an “undisclosed location” (in fact, a wonderfully redesigned version of the company’s Hyde Street theater complex) amid a period-specific cocktail lounge, cabaret, and gambling den inhabited by dozens of Prohibition-era characters and scenarios that unfold around an audience ultimately invited to wander around at will. At one level, this is an invitation to pure dress-up social entertainment. But there are artistic aims here too. Intentionally designed (by co-director and creator Nick A. Olivero with co-director Peter Ruocco) as a fractured super-narrative — in which audiences perceive snatches of overheard stories rather than complete arcs, and can follow those of their own choosing — there’s a way the piece becomes specifically and ever more subtly about time itself. This is most pointedly demonstrated in the opening vignettes in the cocktail lounge, where even the ticking of Joe’s Clock Shop (the “cover” storefront for the illicit 1920s den inside) can be heard underscoring conversations (deeply ironic in historical hindsight) about war, loss, and regained hope for the future. For a San Francisco currently gripped by a kind of historical double-recurrence of the roaring Twenties and dire Thirties at once, The Speakeasy is not a bad place to sit and ponder the simulacra of our elusive moment. (Avila)

36 Stories by Sam Shepard Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.36stories.org. $35-55. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 22. Word for Word has been at the business of putting literature on the stage, verbatim, for some time, and far from slowing down, this new production shows the company operating at the height of its powers. Among the best manifestations of the company’s particular concerns and talents, 36 Stories by Sam Shepard not only shows off the considerable virtues of Shepard’s short-story writing (usually overshadowed by his justly acclaimed plays) but unfolds as a stellar piece of theater in its own right. Shrewdly adapted and directed by company charter member Amy Kossow, the production repeatedly finds opportunities in the writing for dramatic transmission and exchange among the performers — a kick-ass ensemble composed of Patrick Alparone, Carl Lumbly, Delia MacDougall, JoAnne Winter, and Rod Gnapp as “The Writer” — the latter a sleepless wanderer crisscrossing the country by car, from whose head and manual typewriter the low characters, tall tales, and electrical encounters issue forth with sharp, sometimes zany humor; smoldering sexual heat; and a shapeless foreboding. Word for Word’s loyal fans need little encouragement, but all interested in a gratifying night in the theater will want to catch this one before it goes. (Avila)

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.sfneofuturists.com. $11-16. Fri-Sat, 9pm. Ongoing. The Neo-Futurists perform Greg Allen’s spontaneous, ever-changing show that crams 30 plays into 60 minutes.

Triassic Parq Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also June 21 and 28, 2pm). Through June 28. Ray of Light Theatre presents the Bay Area premiere of Marshall Pailet’s musical involving “dinosaurs, show tunes, and sex changes.”

Walk Like A Man Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-35. Wed/11-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 3pm. Falling in love with your boss, surviving child abuse, losing a loved one in war, dealing with your straight daughter’s shame around her mom’s butch wardrobe — these are only a few of the circumstances encountered in a raucous and affecting evening of celebrating desire and being true to yourself, as Theatre Rhinoceros presents 10 stories of love and sex among a diverse set of African American women. Culled from the titular collection of erotic fiction by Atlanta-based author Laurinda D. Brown, the evening unfolds with a pert and playful finesse thanks to director John Fisher and a strong, charismatic five-women ensemble (made up of Alexaendrai Bond, Kelli Crump, Nkechi Emeruwa, Daile Mitchum, and Desiree Rogers). Sexy and brazen, raunchy and wrenching, this series of vignettes, spread out over two acts, comes with nary a dull moment and plenty of climaxes. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Candida Town Hall Theatre, 3535 School, Lafayette; www.townhalltheatre.com. $20-32. Thu/12-Sat/14, 8pm. Town Hall Theatre performs the Shaw classic.

The Crazed Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. Central Works performs Sally Dawidoff’s play, based on Ha Jin’s novel about coming of age in Communist China.

Daylighting: The Berkeley Stories Project Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (June 22, show at 2pm). Through June 22. Shotgun Players present Dan Wolf’s new play inspired by real-life tales from Berkeley residents past and present.

Dead Man’s Cell Phone Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. Masquers Playhouse performs Sarah Ruhl’s imaginative comedy.

Failure: A Love Story Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/14 and June 28, 2pm; June 19, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 29. Marin Theatre Company performs Philip Dawkins’ play about love and loss, with puppets and live music.

Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-87. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 22. Juno-winning actor and musician Hershey Felder (George Gershwin Alone) performs his latest solo show.

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat and June 26, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 29. Berkeley Rep’s Tony Taccone, a comrade of Tony Kushner’s from way back in the Angels in America days, directs this revised version of the playwright’s 2009 play, whose long title is a riff on an earlier one by George Bernard Shaw. It concerns the fractured Italian American family of a diehard Communist longshoreman named Gus (Mark Margolis in an impressive, anchoring performance), now retired, who has announced his intention to kill himself and leave his Brooklyn brownstone to the grown children to sell and divide among themselves. In today’s inflated real estate market, that’s not chump change either. His announcement plunges the family into chaos, though truth be told they were all kind of a mess already. Son Pill (Lou Liberatore) is a married gay high school history teacher having a torrid affair with a young hustler (Jordan Geiger), which has already cost him $30,000 of his sister’s hard-earned money. His sister, Empty (Deidre Lovejoy), meanwhile couldn’t care less about the baby to whom her partner (Liz Wisan) is about to give birth, courtesy of the donated sperm from her kid brother Vito (Joseph J. Parks) — who comes across as the contrarian of the family: he’s neither gay nor a Communist. Other significant others are on hand, as well as Gus’s sister Clio (an effective, comically deadpan Randy Danson), a onetime nun who later became a Maoist in Peru and now seems some sloshy mix of the two. And for that reason she, along with Gus, symbolizes more than most the real dilemma here: a lack of something to believe in, of a structure for explaining and shaping experience and modeling action toward a better (post-capitalist) world. At nearly four hours, the play is Kushner’s version of the great American three-act family drama — those personal yet prophetic portraits by your O’Neills, your Millers, your Shepards. Tracy Letts made a similar bid with 2007’s August: Osage County. I don’t think either play really makes it into the pantheon, but while Letts’ play was ultimately slicker, more entertaining, Kushner’s has more in it, more to talk about of real relevance. Not that the production isn’t also entertaining — stage business with pregnant lesbians and mysterious briefcases buried in the wall are deployed to elating effect. But the play’s various subplots and characters are not equally interesting and the machinations of the plot and the sometimes-overlapping dialogue can be overwrought. But despite the tedium this produces, the political questions opened up here are liable to continue rattling around the brain after the curtain comes down, leaving one with a small but worthwhile buzz. (Avila)

Marry Me A Little Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $19-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 8pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 29. TheatreWorks performs Stephen Sondheim’s intimate musical.

Nantucket Marsh Berkeley MainStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-100 (all tickets include a picnic dinner). Thu and Sat, 7pm. Extended through July 19. Nantucket Island, a wisp of shifting sand 30 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., is the evocative setting for this autobiographical story from writer-performer Mark Kenward — less the tourists’ Nantucket of summer holidays, mind you, than the inhabitants’ gray and isolated winter. And just as its bleak weather stood for the tempestuous mood of Herman Melville’s Ishmael before he sets sail again in Moby Dick, so the environment for Kenward’s coming-of-age darkly foreshadows a terrible downward spiral. The only son and oldest child of two in a nuclear family from Normal, Ill., that really seemed to fit the bill — complete with a dad who, “in his entire life, only missed four days of shaving” — Mark becomes the odd-boy out upon the Kenwards’ relocation to the remote island. An affable, poised, physically demonstrative performer with a residual Midwestern charm, Kenward describes an upbringing in a household overshadowed by a high-strung, controlling, deeply unhappy mother who, as luck would have it, also becomes his high school English teacher. This relationship is the ground for much of the play’s humor, but also a trauma that blows in like a winter squall. Directed keenly, if perhaps a little too stiffly, by Rebecca Fisher, and accompanied at points by a watery island backdrop (courtesy of video designer Alfonso Alvarez), Nantucket discharges some of its messy human themes a bit too neatly but maintains an inescapable pull. (Avila)

Other Desert Cities Barn Theatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.rossvalleyplayers.com. $10-26. Thu/12, 7:30pm; Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 2pm. Ross Valley Players perform Jon Robin Baitz’s Pultizer-nominated drama about a tense family holiday.

South Pacific Cushing Memorial Amphitheater, 801 Panoramic Hwy, Mill Valley; www.mountainplay.org. $20-60. Sun/15, 2pm (arrive one hour prior to show time). Mountain Play Association performs the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; www.centerrep.org. $37-65. Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Saturdays in June, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through June 21. Center REP performs the Tony-winning musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Bitch and Tell: A Real Funny Variety Show” Kunst-Stoff Arts, One Grove, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. $8-10. Footloose presents this variety show with Bob McIntyre, Nick Stargu, Carolina “CoiCoi” Duncan, and others.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. June 22, 29, July 12, 19, and 27, 6:30pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Dash: Improv in a Flash” Un-Scripted Theater Company, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. Sat, 10pm. $15. Ongoing through Aug 30. A late-night, free-form improv show with Un-Scripted Theater Company.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/11, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: “Judy Kaye Sings Bernstein and Sondheim,” Thu/12-Fri/13, 8pm, $35-50; Christine Ebersole in “Strings Attached,” Sat/14-Sun/15, 7pm, $60-85.

“Global Dance Passport Showcase” ODC Dance Commons Studio B, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odctheater.org. Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 4 and 7pm. $10. ODC presents a sampler of world dance.

“Hubba Hubba Revue’s Burlesque Nation” DNA Lounge, 375 11th St, SF; www.dnalounge.com. Fri/13, 9:30pm. $15-30. Burlesque performers from NY, Miami, LA, Germany, Australia, and more.

“Imaginary Activism: The Role of the Artist Beyond the Art World” Modern Times Bookstore Collective, 2919 24th St, SF; (415) 282-9246. Sat/14, 8pm. Free. A new monologue by acclaimed performance artist Guillermo Gomez Peña.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

Natasha Carlitz Dance Ensemble Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.carlitzdance.org. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. $15-18. Performing Momentum, dance works exploring the magic of mathematics.

“Out of Line Improv” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; outoflineimprov.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 10:30pm. $12. Ongoing. A new, completely improvised show every week.

“Rites and Passages” Nourse Theatre, 275 Hayes, SF; www.cityboxoffice.com. Sat/14, 8pm. $18-36. The San Francisco Girls Chorus closes its season with a concert of music by Eastern European composers (Bartók, Stravinsky), plus performances by the Joe Goode Performance Group and pianists Kanoko Nishi and Sarah Cahill.

“San Francisco Comedy College” Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. $5-10. “New Talent Show,” Wed-Thu, 7. Ongoing. “The Cellar Dwellers,” stand-up comedy, Wed-Thu, 8:15pm and Fri-Sat, 7:30pm. Ongoing.

“Sojourners” Commonwealth Club of California, 595 Market, SF; www.magictheatre.org. Mon/16, 6pm. Free. Staged reading of Nigerian storyteller Mfoniso Udofia’s new work. Presented as part of the Magic Theatre’s Martha Heasly Cox Virgin Play Series.

“This Lingering Life” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.theatreofyugen.org. Previews Thu/5, 7pm. Opens Fri/6, 8pm. Wed/11-Thu/12, 7pm; Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. $15-50. Theatre of Yugen performs the world premiere of Chiori Miyagawa’s drama, inspired by nine Japanese Noh plays from the 14th century.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, 760 Howard, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Free. Through Oct 26. This week: Destani Wolf, Thu/12, 12:30-1pm; Venezuelan Music Project, Fri/13, 11-11:30am; “The Art of the Descarga” with the John Santos Sextet, Sat/14, 1-2:30pm; Native Contemporary Arts Festival, Sun/15, noon-3pm; “Poetic Tuesday,” Tue/17, 12:30-1:30pm.

BAY AREA

“Immigrant Stories: Personal Stories Honoring the Immigrant Experience” La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; www.livingartsplayback.com. Sat/14, 8pm. $18-20. Playback Theater presents an evening dedicated to honoring the experiences of immigrants, with audience input guiding the performance.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“The Next Big Thing” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.bigmoves.org. Sat/14, 8pm; Sun/15, 2pm. $18. Big Moves presents its all-new dance and music spectacular, featuring residence dance company emFATic DANCE.

“Precious Drop: Our Relationship to Water” Malonga Casquelourd Theater, 1428 Alice, Oakl; www.afriquesogue.com. Sat/14, 7pm; Sun/15, 2pm. $10-15. Live music, dance, and multimedia elements contribute to this contemplation of water and culture, inspired by African folklore.

“Virago Theatre Company New Play Reading Series” Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakl; www.theflightdeck.org. Wed/11, 5:30pm; June 18, 25, and July 2, 7pm. Wed/11, $10-25; other dates free. This week: Danii Kharms: A Life in One Act and Several Dozen Eggs by Nancy Cooper Frank. *

 

Rep Clock June 11-17, 2014

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Schedules are for Wed/11-Tue/17 except where noted. Director and year are given when available. Double and triple features marked with a •. All times pm unless otherwise specified.

ARTISTS’ TELEVISION ACCESS 992 Valencia, SF; www.atasite.org. $10-12. “Cine Mas:” Delusions of Grandeur (Almaraz and Ramos), Thu, 7:30.

BERKELEY FELLOWSHIP OF UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS 1924 Cedar, Berk; www.bfuu.org. $5-10. State of Siege (Costa-Gavras, 1972), Thu, 7.

BRAVA THEATER 2789 24th St, SF; www.qwocmap.org. Free ($5-10 suggested donation). Queer Women of Color Film Festival, four programs of short films (all screening with captions) under the theme “Re-Generation,” Fri-Sun.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. The Wind Rises (Miyazaki, 2013), Wed, 7 (subtitled), 9:30 (dubbed). •Joe (Green, 2013), Thu, 7, and Red Rock West (Dahl, 1993), Thu, 9:15. “Midnites for Maniacs: Bloody Fangs Double Bill:” •Interview with the Vampire (Jordan, 1994), Fri, 7:20, and Vampire’s Kiss (Bierman, 1988), Fri, 9:45. This double bill, $12. Frozen (Buck and Lee, 2013), Sat-Sun, 1. Presented sing-along style; advance tickets ($10-16) at www.ticketweb.com. •Lost in America (Brooks, 1985), Sat, 7:15, and Something Wild (Demme, 1986), Sat, 5, 9. Othello (Welles, 1952), Sun, 5, 7, 9. •Under the Skin (Glazer, 2013), Tue, 7, and Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001), Tue, 9:05.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.50-$10.75. We Are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013), Wed-Thu, call for times.

CLAY 2261 Fillmore, SF; www.landmarktheatres.com. $10. “Midnight Movies:” The Room (Wiseau, 2003), Sat, midnight.

COURTHOUSE SQUARE 2200 Broadway, Redwood City; www.redwoodcity.org. Free. Lee Daniels’ The Butler (Daniels, 2013), Thu, 8:45.

JACK LONDON FERRY LAWN Clay and Water, Oakl; www.jacklondonsquare.com. Free. “Waterfront Flicks:” Gravity (Cuaron, 2013), Thu, sundown.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “A Theater Near You:” L’avventura (Antonioni, 1960), Fri, 7:30. “Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema:” Saragossa Manuscript (Has, 1964), Sat, 7; Ashes and Diamonds (Wajda, 1958), Sun, 6:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, through June 19. Complete program details, including additional venues, and tickets (most shows $12) at www.sfindie.com.

“SAN FRANCISCO BLACK FILM FESTIVAL” Yoshi’s, 1330 Fillmore, SF; and Buriel Clay Theater, 762 Fulton, SF; www.sfbff.org. Check website for individual ticket prices; festival pass, $50. A celebration of African American cinema and the African cultural Diaspora, with a focus on both local and global filmmakers, Thu-Sat.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $8-10. “New Filipino Cinema 2014:” How to Disappear Completely (Martin, 2013), Wed, 7:30 (reception, 6:30); Jungle Love (Sanchez, 2012), Thu, 4; Debosyon (Yapan, 2013), Thu, 6; Sana Dati (Tarog, 2013), Thu, 8; Iskalawags (Deligero, 2013), Fri, 2: Woman of the Ruins (Sicat, 2013), Fri, 2; The Bit Player (Jaturian, 2013), Fri, 7; Metro Manila (Ellis, 2013), Fri, 9:15; Oro, Plata, Mata: The Restored Version (Gallaga, 1982/2012), Sat, noon; “Basket Case: Short Films Over the Edge,” Sat, 4; Transit (Espia, 2013), Sat, 7; Anita’s Last Cha-Cha (Bernardo, 2013), Sat, 9:15; No End in Sight (Tabay, 2012), Sun, noon; Pascalina (Miras, 2012), Sun, 2; Rigodon (Matti, 2012), Sun, 4:30; Thy Womb (Mendoza, 2012), Sun, 7 (reception, 6). *

 

Invisible no more

Sasha Cuttler
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Invisible no more

We all want to be responsible for our environment. We sort our trash. We put the right things into the right containers, and feel good when we see them at the curb on trash pickup day.

Then the trash disappears. End of story.

But really, it’s not the end. Not only does the trash go somewhere, but people still have to sort through what we’ve thrown away. In a society full of people doing work that’s unacknowledged, and often out of sight, those who deal with our recycled trash are some of the most invisible of all.

Sorting trash is dangerous and dirty work. In 2012 two East Bay workers were killed in recycling facilities. With some notable exceptions, putting your hands into fast moving conveyor belts filled with cardboard and cans does not pay well — much less, for instance, than the jobs of the drivers who pick up the containers at the curb. And the sorting is done almost entirely by women of color; in the Bay Area, they are mostly immigrants from Mexico and Central America, as well as some African Americans.

This spring, one group of recycling workers, probably those with the worst conditions of all, finally had enough. Their effort to attain higher wages, particularly after many were fired for their immigration status, began to pull back recycling’s cloak of invisibility. Not only did they become visible activists in a growing movement of East Bay recycling workers, but their protests galvanized public action to stop the firings of undocumented workers.

 

ILLEGAL WAGES FOR “TEMPORARY” WORKERS

Alameda County Industries occupies two big, nondescript buildings at the end of a cul-de-sac in a San Leandro industrial park. Garbage trucks with recycled trash pull in every minute, dumping their fragrant loads gathered on routes in Livermore, Alameda, and San Leandro. These cities contract with ACI to process the trash. In the Bay Area, only one city, Berkeley, picks up its own garbage. All the rest sign contracts with private companies. Even Berkeley contracts recycling to an independent sorter.

At ACI, the company contracts out its own sorting work. A temp agency, Select Staffing, hires and employs the workers on the lines. As at most temp agencies, this means sorters have no health insurance, no vacations, and no holidays. It also means wages are very low, even for recycling. After a small raise two years ago, sorters began earning $8.30 per hour during the day shift, and $8.50 at night.

Last winter, workers discovered this was an illegal wage.

Because ACI has a contract with the city of San Leandro to process its recycling, it is covered by the city’s Living Wage Ordinance, passed in 2007. Under that law, as of July 2013: “Covered businesses are required to pay no less than $14.17 per hour or $12.67 with health benefits valued at least $1.50 per hour, subject to annual CPI [consumer price index] adjustment.”

There is no union for recycling workers at ACI, but last fall some of the women on the lines got a leaflet advertising a health and safety training workshop for recycling workers, put on by Local 6 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. There, they met the union’s organizing director, Agustin Ramirez. “Sorting trash is not a clean or easy job anywhere,” he recalls, “but what they described was shocking. And when they told me what they were paid, I knew something was very wrong.”

Ramirez put them in touch with a lawyer. In January, the lawyer sent ACI and Select a letter stating workers’ intention to file suit to reclaim the unpaid wages. ACI has about 70 sorters. At 2,000 work hours per year each, and a potential discrepancy of almost $6 per hour, that adds up to a lot of money in back wages.

The response by ACI and Select was quick. In early February, 18 workers — including all but one who’d signed onto the initial suit — were called into the Select office. They were told the company had been audited by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the Department of Homeland Security a year before, and that ICE had questioned their immigration status. Unless they could provide a good Social Security number and valid work authorization within a few days, they’d be terminated.

Instead of quietly disappearing, though, about half the sorters walked off the lines on Feb. 27, protesting the impending firings and asking for more time from the company and ICE. Faith leaders and members of Alameda County United for Immigrant Rights joined them in front of the ACI office. Workers came from other recycling facilities. Jack in the Box workers, some of whom were fired after last fall’s fast-food strikes, marched down the cul-de-sac carrying their banner of the East Bay Organizing Committee. Even San Leandro City Councilman Jim Prola showed up.

“The company told us they’d fire anyone who walked out,” said sorter Ignacia Garcia. But after a confrontation at the gate, with trucks full of recycled trash backed up for a block, Select and ACI managers agreed the strikers could return to work the following day. The next week, however, all 18 accused of being undocumented were fired. “Some of us have been there 14 years, so why now?” wondered Garcia.

In the weeks that followed, East Bay churches, which earlier called ICE to try to stop the firings, collected more than $6,500 to pay rent for nine families. According to Rev. Deborah Lee, director of the Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights, “after they had a chance to meet the fired workers and hear their stories, their hearts went out to these hardworking workers and parents, who had no warning, and no safety net.” Money is still coming in, she says.

 

ONE OF MANY BATTLES

Because cities give contracts for recycling services, they indirectly control how much money is available for workers’ wages. But a lot depends on the contractor. San Francisco workers have the gold standard. Recology, whose garbage contract is written into the city charter, has a labor contract with the Teamsters Union. Under it, workers on its recycle lines are guaranteed to earn $21 an hour.

Across the bay, wages are much lower.

ACI is one battle among many taking place among recycling workers concerning low wages. In 1998, Ramirez and the ILWU began organizing sorters. That year 70 workers struck California Waste Solutions, which received a contract for half of Oakland’s recycling in 1992. As at ACI, workers were motivated by a living wage ordinance. At the time, Oakland mandated $8 an hour plus $2.40 for health insurance. Workers were only paid $6, and the city had failed to monitor the company for seven years, until the strike.

Finally, the walkout was settled for increases that eventually brought CWS into compliance. During the conflict, however, it became public (through the Bay Guardian in particular) that Councilman Larry Reid had a financial interest in the business, and that CWS owner David Duong was contributing thousands of dollars in city election races.

Waste Management, Inc., holds the Oakland city garbage contract. While garbage haulers have been Teamster members for decades, when Waste Management took over Oakland’s recycling contract in 1991 it signed an agreement with ILWU Local 6. Here too workers faced immigration raids. In 1998, sorters at Waste Management’s San Leandro facility staged a wildcat work stoppage over safety issues, occupying the company’s lunchroom. Three weeks later immigration agents showed up, audited company records, and eventually deported eight of them. And last year another three workers were fired from Waste Management, accused of not having legal immigration status.

Today Waste Management sorters are paid $12.50 under the ILWU contract — more than ACI, but a long way from the hourly wage Recology pays in San Francisco. Furthermore, the union contracts with both CWS and Waste Management expired almost two years ago. The union hasn’t signed new ones, because workers are tired of the second-class wage standard.

To increase wages, union recycling workers in the East Bay organized a coalition to establish a new standard — not just for wages, but safety and working conditions — called the Campaign for Sustainable Recycling. Two dozen organizations belong to it in addition to the union, including the Sierra Club, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Movement Generation, the Justice and Ecology Project, the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and the Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy.

ILWU researcher Amy Willis points out, “San Francisco, with a $21 wage, charges garbage rates to customers of $34 a month. East Bay recyclers pay half that wage, but East Bay ratepayers still pay $28-30 for garbage, recycling included. So where’s the money going? Not to the workers, clearly.”

Fremont became the test for the campaign’s strategy of forcing cities to mandate wage increases. Last December the Fremont City Council passed a 32-cent rate increase with the condition that its recycler, BLT, agree to provide raises. The union contract there now mandates $14.59 per hour for sorters in 2014, finally reaching $20.94 in 2019. Oakland has followed, requiring wage increases for sorters as part of the new recycling contract that’s currently up for bid.

Good news for those still working. But even for people currently on the job, and certainly for the 18 workers fired at ACI, raising wages only addresses part of the problem. Even more important is the ability to keep working and earn that paycheck.

 

CRIMINALIZING IMMIGRANT WORKERS

When ACI and Select told workers they’d be fired if they couldn’t produce good Social Security numbers and proof of legal immigration status, they were only “obeying the law.” Since 1986, U.S. immigration law has prohibited employers from hiring undocumented workers. Yet according to the Pew Hispanic Trust, 11-12 million people without papers live in the U.S. — and not only do the vast majority of them work, they have to work as a matter of survival. Without papers people can’t collect unemployment benefits, family assistance or almost any other public benefit.

To enforce the law, all job applicants must fill out an I-9 form, provide a Social Security number and show the employer two pieces of ID. Since 1986 immigration authorities have audited the I-9 forms in company personnel records to find workers with bad Social Security numbers or other ID problems. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) then sends the employer a letter, demanding that it fire those workers.

According to ICE, last year the agency audited over 2,000 employers, and similar numbers in previous years. One of the biggest mass firings took place in San Francisco in 2010, when 475 janitors cleaning office buildings for ABM Industries lost their jobs. Olga Miranda, president of Service Employees Local 87, the city’s janitors union, charges: “You cannot kill a family quicker than by taking away their right to find employment. The I-9 audits, the workplace raids, E-Verify, make workers fear to speak out against injustices, that because of their immigration status they have no standing in this country. They have criminalized immigrants. They have dehumanized them.”

One fired janitor, Teresa Mina, said at the time, “This law is very unjust. We’re doing jobs that are heavy and dirty, to help our children have a better life, or just to eat. Now my children won’t have what they need.”

Similar I-9 audits have taken place in the past two years at the Pacific Steel foundry in Berkeley, at Silicon Valley cafeterias run by Bon Appetit, at South Bay building contractor Albanese Construction, and at the Dobake bakery, where workers prepare food for many Bay Area schools. All are union employers.

Sometimes the audits take place where workers have no union, but are protesting wages and conditions. Like the ACI workers, in 2006 employees at the Woodfin Suites hotel in Emeryville asked their employer to raise their wages to comply with the city’s living wage ordinance. Twenty-one housekeepers were then fired for not having papers. Emeryville finally collected over $100,000 in back pay on their behalf, but the workers were never able to return to their jobs.

Last fall, as fast-food workers around the country were demanding $15 an hour, several were fired at an Oakland Jack in the Box for being undocumented. “They knew that when they hired us,” said Diana Rivera. “I don’t believe working is a crime. What we’re doing is something normal — we’re not hurting anyone.” The Mi Pueblo Mexican market chain also fired many workers in an immigration audit, during a union organizing drive.

Because the audits are not public, no exact total of the number of workers fired is available. ICE spokesperson Virginia Kice would not comment on the audit at ACI. In response to an information request, she stated: “To avoid negatively impacting the reputation of law-abiding businesses, we do not release information or confirm an audit unless the investigation results in a fine or the filing of criminal charges.” Neither ACI nor Select Staffing responded to requests for comment.

San Francisco became a leader in opposing the firings in January, when the Board of Supervisors passed unanimously a resolution calling on the Obama administration to implement a moratorium on the audits and on deportations. Other cities, like Los Angeles, have also opposed deportations, but San Francisco added: “End the firings of undocumented workers by ending the I-9 audits and the use of the E-Verify system.”

Gordon Mar, of Jobs with Justice, urged the board to act at a rally in front of City Hall. “When hundreds of workers are fired from their jobs,” he declared, “the damage is felt far beyond the workers themselves. Many communities have voiced their opposition to these ‘silent raids’ because they hurt everyone. Making it a crime to work drives people into poverty, and drives down workplace standards for all people.” Like many Bay Area progressive immigrant rights activists, Mar calls for repealing the section of immigration law that prohibits the undocumented from working.

The Board of Supervisors urged President Obama to change the way immigration law is enforced, in part because Congress has failed to pass immigration reform that would protect immigrants’ rights. The Senate did pass a bill a year ago, but although it might eventually bring legal status to some of the undocumented, other provisions would increase firings and deportations.

Like the Board of Supervisors, therefore, the California Legislature has also passed measures that took effect Jan. 1, to ameliorate the consequences of workplace immigration enforcement: AB 263, AB 524, and SB 666. Retaliation is now illegal against workers who complain they are owed unpaid wages, or who testify about an employer’s violation of a statute or regulation. Employers can have their business licenses suspended if they threaten to report the immigration status of workers who exercise their rights. Lawyers who do so can be disbarred. And threats to report immigration status can be considered extortion.

It’s too early to know how effective these new measures will be in protecting workers like the 18 who were fired at ACI. While a memorandum of understanding between ICE and the Department of Labor bars audits or other enforcement actions in retaliation for enforcing wage and hour laws, ICE routinely denies it engages in such retaliation.

Yet, as difficult as their situation is, the fired recyclers don’t seem to regret having filed the suit and standing up for their rights. Meanwhile, the actions by the cities of Oakland and Fremont hold out the promise of a better standard of living for those still laboring on the lines.

 

Theater Listings: June 4 – 10, 2014

Michael Redmond
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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 complete stage listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Brahmin/I: A One-Hijra Stand-Up Comedy Show Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $15-35. Previews Thu/5-Sat/7, 8pm. Opens Mon/9, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through June 28. Crowded Fire Theater presents Aditi Brennan Kapil’s “outrageous play masquerading as a stand-up comedy routine.”

God Fights the Plague Marsh San Francisco Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-100. Previews Sat/7 and June 14, 8:30pm; Sun/8 and June 15, 7pm. Opens June 21, 8:30pm. Runs Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Aug 10. The Marsh presents a solo show written by and starring 18-year-old theater phenom Dezi Gallegos.

In the Tree of Smoke Great Star Theater, 636 Jackson, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Opens Thu/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 28. Circus Automatic performs an new evening of immersive, experimental circus.

The Orphan of Zhao ACT’s Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-120. Previews Wed/4-Sat/7 and Tue/10, 8pm (also Sat/7, 2pm); Sun/8, 2pm. Opens June 11, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat and June 24, 8pm (also Wed and Sat, 2pm); June 17, 7pm. Through June 29. Tony winner BD Wong stars in James Fenton’s acclaimed Chinese-legend adaptation at American Conservatory Theater.

“Sheherezade 14” Exit Theater, 156 Eddy, SF; www.playwrightscentersf.org. $25. Opens Fri/6, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 21. The Playwrights’ Center of SF and Wily West Productions host this annual festival of fully-produced short plays.

BAY AREA

Dead Man’s Cell Phone Masquers Playhouse, 105 Park Place, Point Richmond; www.masquers.org. $22. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun/8, 15, and 22, 2pm. Through June 28. Masquers Playhouse performs Sarah Ruhl’s imaginative comedy.

Failure: A Love Story Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $37-58. Previews Thu/5-Sat/7, 8pm; Sun/8, 7pm. Opens Tue/10, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also June 14 and 28, 2pm; June 19, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 29. Marin Theatre Company performs Philip Dawkins’ play about love and loss, with puppets and live music.

Hershey Felder as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-87. Previews Thu/5, 8pm. Opens Fri/6, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 22. Juno-winning actor and musician Hershey Felder (George Gershwin Alone) performs his latest solo show.

Marry Me A Little Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $19-73. Previews Wed/4-Fri/6, 8pm. Opens Sat/7, 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 8pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 29. TheatreWorks performs Stephen Sondheim’s intimate musical.

ONGOING

The Crucible Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Arthur Miller’s drama.

Devil Boys From Beyond New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliot’s campy sci-fi saga.

Each and Every Thing Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thu/5-Fri/6 and June 12-13, 8pm; Sat/7, 8:30pm. Opens June 14, 8:30pm. Runs Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through July 12. Dan Hoyle presents his latest solo show, about the search for real-world connections in a tech-crazed world.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat-Sun, 5pm. Extended through July 13. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Homo File CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. $20-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Eye Zen and CounterPULSE present Seth Eisen’s interdisciplinary performance about queer author and tattoo artist Sam Steward.

The Homosexuals New Conservatory Theatre Center, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Philip Dawkins’ play about a young man struggling with his identity amid a new group of friends.

Macbeth Fort Point (beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-75. Thu-Sun, 7pm. Through June 29. We Players performs the Shakespeare classic at the historic fortress at Fort Point.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through June 28. Five years ago, Thrillpeddlers breathed new life into a glitter-dusted piece of Sixties flotsam, beautifully reimagining the Cockettes’ raunchy mock-operetta Pearls Over Shanghai (in collaboration with several surviving members of San Francisco’s storied acid-drag troupe) and running it for a whopping 22 months. Written by Cockette Link Martin as a carefree interpretation of a 1926 Broadway play, the baldly stereotyped Shanghai Gesture, it was the perfectly lurid vehicle for irreverence in all directions. It’s back in this revival, once again helmed by artistic director Russell Blackwood with musical direction by Cockette and local favorite Scrumbly Koldewyn. But despite the frisson of featuring some original-original cast members — including “Sweet Pam” Tent (who with Koldewyn also contributes some new dialogue) and Rumi Missabu (regally reprising the role of Madam Gin Sling) — there’s less fire the second time around as the production straddles the line between carefully slick and appropriately sloppy. Nevertheless, there are some fine musical numbers and moments throughout. Among these, Zelda Koznofsky, Birdie-Bob Watt, and Jesse Cortez consistently hit high notes as the singing Andrews Sisters-like trio of Americans thrown into white slavery; Bonni Suval’s Lottie Wu is a fierce vixen; and Noah Haydon (as the sultry Petrushka) is a class act. Koldewyn’s musical direction and piano accompaniment, meanwhile, provide strong and sure momentum as well as exquisite atmosphere. (Avila)

Savage in Limbo Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Wed/4-Fri/6, 8pm; Sun/7, 2pm. Rabbit Hole Theater Company performs John Patrick Shanley’s Bronx-set drama.

Seminar San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/8, 2pm. Through June 14. San Francisco Playhouse performs Theresa Rebeck’s biting comedy.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blond innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman, this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $65-100 (gambling chips, $7-10 extra; after-hours admission, $10). Wed-Sat, 7:30, 7:40, 7:50, 8pm, and 9pm admittance times. Extended through June 21. Boxcar Theater’s most ambitious project to date is also one of the more involved and impressively orchestrated theatrical experiences on any Bay Area stage just now. An immersive time-tripping environmental work, The Speakeasy takes place amid a period-specific cocktail lounge, cabaret, and gambling den inhabited by dozens of Prohibition-era characters and scenarios that unfold around an audience ultimately invited to wander around at will. At one level, this is an invitation to pure dress-up social entertainment. But there are artistic aims here too. Intentionally designed as a fractured super-narrative, there’s a way the piece becomes specifically and ever more subtly about time itself. (Avila)

36 Stories by Sam Shepard Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.36stories.org. $35-55. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 22. Word for Word performs director Amy Kossow’s original adaptation of Shepard’s poetry and fiction.

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.sfneofuturists.com. $11-16. Fri-Sat, 9pm. Ongoing. The Neo-Futurists perform Greg Allen’s spontaneous, ever-changing show that crams 30 plays into 60 minutes.

Triassic Parq Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also June 21 and 28, 2pm). Through June 28. Ray of Light Theatre presents the Bay Area premiere of Marshall Pailet’s musical involving “dinosaurs, show tunes, and sex changes.”

Walk Like A Man Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-35. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 15. Falling in love with your boss, surviving child abuse, losing a loved one in war, dealing with your straight daughter’s shame around her mom’s butch wardrobe — these are only a few of the circumstances encountered in a raucous and affecting evening of celebrating desire and being true to yourself, as Theatre Rhinoceros presents ten stories of love and sex among a diverse set of African American women. Culled from the titular collection of erotic fiction by Atlanta-based author Laurinda D. Brown, the evening unfolds with a pert and playful finesse thanks to director John Fisher and a strong, charismatic five-women ensemble (made up of Alexaendrai Bond, Kelli Crump, Nkechi Emeruwa, Daile Mitchum, and Desiree Rogers). Sexy and brazen, raunchy and wrenching, this series of vignettes, spread out over two acts, comes with nary a dull moment and plenty of climaxes. (Avila)

BAY AREA

The Crazed Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. Central Works performs Sally Dawidoff’s play, based on Ha Jin’s novel about coming of age in Communist China.

Daylighting: The Berkeley Stories Project Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (June 22, show at 2pm). Through June 22. Shotgun Players present Dan Wolf’s new play inspired by real-life tales from Berkeley residents past and present.

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat and June 26, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 29. Berkeley Rep performs the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play.

The Letters Harry’s UpStage, Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $28-32. Wed/4-Sat/7, 8pm; Sun/8, 2pm. American playwright John W. Lowell’s The Letters harkens back to Stalinist days and some unspecified ministry, where a dutiful staff goes about censoring the personal and openly homoerotic correspondence of an iconic Russian composer (Tchaikovsky). Directed by Mark Jackson for Aurora Theater’s new upstairs black box, the two-hander is cleverly crafted for the most part. Unfortunately, as a cat and mouse game the stakes, and the arc of the story, feel more fantastical then pressingly contemporary. (Avila)

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu/5-Sat/7, 8pm; Sun/8, 7pm. Impact Theatre and Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company present the world premiere of Christopher Chen’s political satire.

Nantucket Marsh Berkeley MainStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-100 (all tickets include a picnic dinner). Thu and Sat, 7pm. Through June 14. Acclaimed solo performer Mark Kenward presents his “haunting yet hilarious” autobiographical show about growing up on Nantucket. *

 

The 8 things that made BottleRock, well, BottleRock

Steven T. Jones
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I am surrounded by people with purple teeth, stained from too much red wine. These people are twisted beyond belief, screaming obscenities about forgotten 90s bands, while wine sloshes around in glasses suspended by those stupid-looking lanyard wine glass holders. I want to say to them, “Literally, handle your shit. Like, physically hold your glass of wine. You’re a grown up.” It’s like a bad summer picnic for rich winos…

Or at least that’s how I imagined BottleRock to be as we drove up from San Francisco blaring the Gin Blossoms. It was my first time at this particular festival and like everything, I imagined the weirdest possible outcome. While I was dead wrong about the particulars, it was right about something: this festival was strange as shit. Here are a few things that made Bottle Rock, well, Bottle Rock. 

1. Cargo shorts – There were A LOT of cargo shorts. Especially the first day. My friend Lauryn was right, the time machine had worked. But instead of a My So-Called Life fashion parade, it was more like all the style trends of the past 40 years muddled together with large dollop of not really trying. Cargo shorts are the vanguard of not really trying. While I appreciate their utilitarianism, how many things do you really need to hold? I know I sound like a San Francisco snob, but really…cargo shorts.  

cs

2. Middling bands – There were some really stellar, world-class acts at BottleRock. Outkast, The Cure, Weezer, TV on the Radio; these are the groups whose music helps not only define the moments of your lifetime but also whose existence has influenced the way music is created. That said, a lot of the bands who played over the weekend were probably as surprised as you were that they were booked. I wonder how many of them first said to their booking agent, “Are you fucking with me?” While groups like Smash Mouth, Third Eye Blind, The Spin Doctors, and Cracker all have one or two solid hits, festival-goers spent most of their sets fidgeting anxiously while muttering, “Dude, play the one song already.” We didn’t even get to stay long enough to find out if the Gin Blossoms played “Hey Jealousy” because well, The Cure was about to start. BottleRock was held where the Napa Town and Country Fair is held, which makes sense considering how many of the bands now play the fair circuit.

weezer
Weezer

3. The crowd was really well-behaved – Honestly, what a nice group of 40,000 people. I remember saying at one point, “Nobody gets arrested at this festival.” Anyone who’s spent time in large groups of drunk people knows that feeling of menace being in the air. Like when you walk out of a sports game at the opponents home field after your team just won. It’s that feeling of, “things could get ugly real fast”. Well there was none of that at BottleRock. You could’ve headbutted somebody’s child and they would probably have apologized to you. Well done, Napa. You sure bring out nice folks. Case in point: At one point my lady friend Ashley lost her phone and some well-meaning person found it and brought it to a security guard. Ashley had it back in less than an hour.      

cure
The Cure. Photo by Lauryn McCarthy.

4. The crowd was also kinda weak – At two different times during their incredible set, Andre 3000 and Big Boi, the principle members of Outkast, asked the crowed “Are you still with us?” [Ed note: this is embarrassing.] Outkast didn’t even come out for an encore. Maybe it’s because after two days of watching bands like Third Eye Blind, where the festival goers only knew one out of every six songs, they just weren’t emotionally equipped to handle a set this good. At this point they so yearned for something familiar that anytime Outkast strayed from their megahits, the crowd lost interest. I’m sorry, Andre and Big Boi. I was there with you the whole time. 

5. Matt and Kim make the world a better place – Seriously who knew that two people, a drum kit, and a synth could be so enthralling? Matt and Kim are the most fun band ever! I was never that into their recorded music, but after seeing them live, I want to start saving up now so I can afford to hire them to play my as-yet unborn child’s bar or bat mitzvah.

matt and kim
Matt and Kim

6. $20 glasses of wine – Yes, really. Glasses of wine were $20. Maybe that’s why everyone was so nice to each other, nobody could afford to get drunk.  

7. No place to stay and terrible traffic – One of the things that makes Napa so nice to visit, besides the whole being buzzed on wine samples thing, is that it’s a quaint and lovely little town. The problem with that is that when you have 40,000 people come in for the weekend it makes it really had for people to find a place to stay. This makes people stay in the Bay Area and commute each night, which in turn potentially puts a lot more intoxicated people on the road. There isn’t even shuttle service offered from San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley etc. Even though we stayed with friends for the weekend, everything was so impacted that it took an hour an a half to get an Uber. These are all things that the organizers should take into account for next year.   

8. The strict 10pm curfew – Napa’s lovely quaintness also means that BottleRock has neighbors who hate everything about the festival. Somebody told me they saw a sign on a nearby house that basically said, “Hey Bottle Rock: Get the fuck out of here”. Thus there was a strict 10pm curfew that lead to both The Cure and Heart getting the plug pulled on them. I’m not saying anything instructive here about it, I’m just saying “bummer.”

If my snarkiness makes it seem like I hated the festival, I apologize. Overall BottleRock was a good time and has a lot of potential to get even better as the years progress. Until then, let’s all make an effort to rid the world of cargo shorts.  

Stage Listings: May 28-June 3, 2014

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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.

THEATER

OPENING

Devil Boys From Beyond New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/28-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/31, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Buddy Thomas and Kenneth Elliot’s campy sci-fi saga.

Each and Every Thing Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Previews Thu/29-Fri/30, June 5-6, and 12-13, 8pm; Sat/31 and June 7, 8:30pm. Opens June 14, 8:30pm. Runs Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through July 12. Dan Hoyle presents his latest solo show, about the search for real-world connections in a tech-crazed world.

Homo File CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. $20-35. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Eye Zen and CounterPULSE present Seth Eisen’s interdisciplinary performance about queer author and tattoo artist Sam Steward.

Macbeth Fort Point (beneath the Golden Gate Bridge), SF; www.weplayers.org. $30-75. Previews Fri/30-Sun/1, 7pm. Opens Thu/5, 7pm. Runs Thu-Sun, 7pm. Through June 29. We Players performs the Shakespeare classic at the historic fortress at Fort Point.

“Savage in Limbo” Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Previews Thu/29, 8pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Sat/31, Sun/1, June 3-6, 8pm (also Sun/1, 2pm); June 7, 2pm. Through June 7. Rabbit Hole Theater Company performs John Patrick Shanley’s Bronx-set drama.

Triassic Parq Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; www.rayoflighttheatre.com. $25-36. Previews Thu/29, 8pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also June 21 and 28, 2pm). Through June 28. Ray of Light Theatre presents the Bay Area premiere of Marshall Pailet’s musical involving “dinosaurs, show tunes, and sex changes.”

Walk Like A Man Costume Shop, 1117 Market, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-35. Previews Wed/28-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/31, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 15. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Laurinda D. Brown’s dramedy centered around issues in the African American lesbian community.

ONGOING

Chasing Mehserle Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; theintersection.org/chasing-mehserle. $15-25. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Intersection for the Arts, Campo Santo, and the Living Word Project present Chinaka Hodge’s performance piece about Oakland in the aftermath of the Oscar Grant killing.

The Crucible Gough Street Playhouse, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $10-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 15. Custom Made Theatre Co. performs Arthur Miller’s drama.

Dracula Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; sfdracula.blogspot.com. $35. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Kellerson Productions presents a new adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic.

Feisty Old Jew Marsh San Francisco Main Stage, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-100. Sat-Sun, 5pm. Extended through July 13. Charlie Varon performs his latest solo show, a fictional comedy about “a 20th century man living in a 21st century city.”

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $32-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Homosexuals New Conservatory Theatre Center, Decker Theatre, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 28. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Philip Dawkins’ play about a young man struggling with his identity amid a new group of friends.

Lovebirds Marsh San Francisco Studio, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $20-100. Fri/30, 8pm; Sat/31, 8:30pm. Award-winning solo theater artist Marga Gomez brings her hit comedy back for a limited run before taking it to New York in June.

Pearls Over Shanghai Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through June 28. Five years ago, Thrillpeddlers breathed new life into a glitter-dusted piece of Sixties flotsam, beautifully reimagining the Cockettes’ raunchy mock-operetta Pearls Over Shanghai (in collaboration with several surviving members of San Francisco’s storied acid-drag troupe) and running it for a whopping 22 months. Written by Cockette Link Martin as a carefree interpretation of a 1926 Broadway play, the baldly stereotyped Shanghai Gesture, it was the perfectly lurid vehicle for irreverence in all directions. It’s back in this revival, once again helmed by artistic director Russell Blackwood with musical direction by Cockette and local favorite Scrumbly Koldewyn. But despite the frisson of featuring some original-original cast members — including “Sweet Pam” Tent (who with Koldewyn also contributes some new dialogue) and Rumi Missabu (regally reprising the role of Madam Gin Sling) — there’s less fire the second time around as the production straddles the line between carefully slick and appropriately sloppy. Nevertheless, there are some fine musical numbers and moments throughout. Among these, Zelda Koznofsky, Birdie-Bob Watt, and Jesse Cortez consistently hit high notes as the singing Andrews Sisters-like trio of Americans thrown into white slavery; Bonni Suval’s Lottie Wu is a fierce vixen; and Noah Haydon (as the sultry Petrushka) is a class act. Koldewyn’s musical direction and piano accompaniment, meanwhile, provide strong and sure momentum as well as exquisite atmosphere. (Avila)

Seminar San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, Second Flr, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-100. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm); Sun/1 and June 8, 2pm. Through June 14. San Francisco Playhouse performs Theresa Rebeck’s biting comedy.

Shit & Champagne Rebel, 1772 Market, SF; shitandchampagne.eventbrite.com. $25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. D’Arcy Drollinger is Champagne White, bodacious blond innocent with a wicked left hook in this cross-dressing ’70s-style white-sploitation flick, played out live on Rebel’s intimate but action-packed barroom stage. Written by Drollinger and co-directed with Laurie Bushman (with high-flying choreography by John Paolillo, Drollinger, and Matthew Martin), this high-octane camp send-up of a favored formula comes dependably stocked with stock characters and delightfully protracted by a convoluted plot (involving, among other things, a certain street drug that’s triggered an epidemic of poopy pants) — all of it played to the hilt by an excellent cast that includes Martin as Dixie Stampede, an evil corporate dominatrix at the head of some sinister front for world domination called Mal*Wart; Alex Brown as Detective Jack Hammer, rough-hewn cop on the case and ambivalent love interest; Rotimi Agbabiaka as Sergio, gay Puerto Rican impresario and confidante; Steven Lemay as Brandy, high-end calf model and Champagne’s (much) beloved roommate; and Nancy French as Rod, Champagne’s doomed fiancé. Sprawling often literally across two buxom acts, the show maintains admirable consistency: The energy never flags and the brow stays decidedly low. (Avila)

The Speakeasy Undisclosed location (ticket buyers receive a text with directions), SF; www.thespeakeasysf.com. $65-100 (gambling chips, $7-10 extra; after-hours admission, $10). Wed-Sat, 7:30, 7:40, 7:50, 8pm, and 9pm admittance times. Extended through June 21. Boxcar Theater’s most ambitious project to date is also one of the more involved and impressively orchestrated theatrical experiences on any Bay Area stage just now. An immersive time-tripping environmental work, The Speakeasy takes place in an “undisclosed location” (in fact, a wonderfully redesigned version of the company’s Hyde Street theater complex) amid a period-specific cocktail lounge, cabaret, and gambling den inhabited by dozens of Prohibition-era characters and scenarios that unfold around an audience ultimately invited to wander around at will. At one level, this is an invitation to pure dress-up social entertainment. But there are artistic aims here too. Intentionally designed (by co-director and creator Nick A. Olivero with co-director Peter Ruocco) as a fractured super-narrative — in which audiences perceive snatches of overheard stories rather than complete arcs, and can follow those of their own choosing — there’s a way the piece becomes specifically and ever more subtly about time itself. This is most pointedly demonstrated in the opening vignettes in the cocktail lounge, where even the ticking of Joe’s Clock Shop (the “cover” storefront for the illicit 1920s den inside) can be heard underscoring conversations (deeply ironic in historical hindsight) about war, loss, and regained hope for the future. For a San Francisco currently gripped by a kind of historical double-recurrence of the roaring Twenties and dire Thirties at once, The Speakeasy is not a bad place to sit and ponder the simulacra of our elusive moment. (Avila)

36 Stories by Sam Shepard Z Below, 470 Florida, SF; www.36stories.org. $35-55. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 22. Word for Word performs director Amy Kossow’s original adaptation of Shepard’s poetry and fiction.

BAY AREA

Candida Town Hall Theatre, 3535 School, Lafayette; www.townhalltheatre.com. $20-32. Fri-Sat and June 12, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 14. Town Hall Theatre performs the Shaw classic.

The Color Purple Hillbarn Theatre, 1285 East Hillsdale, Foster City; www.hillbarntheatre.org. $23-38. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 2pm. Hillbarn Theatre closes its 73rd season with the musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s classic novel.

The Crazed Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 23. Central Works performs Sally Dawidoff’s play, based on Ha Jin’s novel about coming of age in Communist China.

Daylighting: The Berkeley Stories Project Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-35. Previews Wed/28-Thu/29, 7pm. Opens Fri/30, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm (June 22, show at 2pm). Through June 22. Shotgun Players present Dan Wolf’s new play inspired by real-life tales from Berkeley residents past and present.

“Fringe of Marin” Angelico Concert Hall, Dominican University, 20 Olive, San Rafael; www.fringeofmarin.com. $10-20. Schedule varies. Through Sun/1. Fringe of Marin celebrates its 33rd season with 11 original one-act plays presented in two programs.

The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-89. Tue, Thu-Sat, 7:30pm (also Thu/29, June 26, and all Saturdays in June, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through June 29. Berkeley Rep performs the West Coast premiere of Tony Kushner’s latest play.

The Letters Harry’s UpStage, Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $28-32. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Extended through June 8. American playwright John W. Lowell’s The Letters harkens back to Stalinist days and some unspecified ministry, where a dutiful staff goes about censoring the personal and openly homoerotic correspondence of an iconic Russian composer (Tchaikovsky). Directed by Mark Jackson for Aurora Theater’s new upstairs black box, the two-hander unfolds in the small but tidy and dignified office belonging to the ministry’s director (an imposing Michael Ray Wisely). He has summoned one of his employees, a widow named Anna (a taut Beth Wilmurt), for reasons not immediately clear to her or us. A careful dance around a minefield of protocol, sexual innuendo, and hidden agendas ensues, as a dangerous and deadly scandal surrounding the aforementioned letters makes itself felt. Given the Ukraine crisis, the ramping up of Cold War II, and Russia’s increasing authoritarianism — including its new law against homosexual “propagandizing” in the cultural realm, and a Ministry of Culture vowing to withhold funding from art lacking in “spiritual or moral content” — it’s all a remarkably timely little time warp. And Lowell’s story is cleverly crafted for the most part. Unfortunately, the production’s two capable actors have a hard time conveying a lifelike (if however strained) relationship or the perspiration-inducing tension the drama purports to carry. At the same time, the drama’s dialogue, at least as played here, can stretch the bounds of verisimilitude by veering from flinty, cagey ducks and jabs to outright insubordination, sarcasm, and ineffectual blustering — the latter outbursts seeming to leave the pressure pot of the Great Terror far behind. It’s still a long way from Tom and Jerry, but as a cat and mouse game the stakes, and the arc of the story, feel more fantastical then pressingly contemporary. (Avila)

Mutt: Let’s All Talk About Race La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 8. Impact Theatre and Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company present the world premiere of Christopher Chen’s political satire.

Nantucket Marsh Berkeley MainStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $25-100 (all tickets include a picnic dinner). Thu and Sat, 7pm. Through June 14. Acclaimed solo performer Mark Kenward presents his “haunting yet hilarious” autobiographical show about growing up on Nantucket.

Not a Genuine Black Man Osher Studio, 2055 Center, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $30-45. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm. Brian Copeland brings his acclaimed, long-running solo show to Berkeley Rep for a 10th anniversary limited run.

Other Desert Cities Barn Theatre, 30 Sir Francis Drake, Ross; www.rossvalleyplayers.com. $10-26. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through June 15. Ross Valley Players perform Jon Robin Baitz’s Pultizer-nominated drama about a tense family holiday.

South Pacific Cushing Memorial Amphitheater, 801 Panoramic Hwy, Mill Valley; www.mountainplay.org. $20-60. Sun and June 7, 2pm (arrive one hour prior to showtime). Through June 15. Mountain Play Association performs the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic, Walnut Creek; www.centerrep.org. $37-65. Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Saturdays in June, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Through June 21. Center REP performs the Tony-winning musical by William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Alaska is a Drag” Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.theintersection.org. Wed/28, 7pm. $5-15. The Big Table Read hosts this staged reading of Shaz Bennett’s screenplay.

“The Amazing Acro-Cats” Fort Mason Center, Southside Theater, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.circuscats.com. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8:30pm; Sun/1, 2 and 5pm. $24. Samantha Martin and her performing cat troupe, including “the only cat band in existence” (with a chicken on tambourine), take the stage. As its press release insists, “Yes, this is real!”

“Auto(SOMA)tic: Creative Responses to the SOMA” Arc Studio and Gallery, 1246 Folsom, SF; www.kearnystreet.org. Sat/31, 10am and 2pm. $30. Kearny Street Workshop and Shaping San Francisco present Allan S. Manalo’s interactive performance bus tour.

Caroline Lugo and Carolé Acuña’s Ballet Flamenco Peña Pachamama, 1630 Powell, SF; www.carolinalugo.com. June 17, 22, 29, July 12, 19, and 27, 6:15pm. $15-19. Flamenco performance by the mother-daughter dance company, featuring live musicians.

“Dash: Improv in a Flash” Un-Scripted Theater Company, 533 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.un-scripted.com. Sat, 10pm. $15. Ongoing through Aug 30. A late-night, free-form improv show with Un-Scripted Theater Company.

“Dogeaters” ACT’s Costume Shop, 1119 Market, SF; www.magictheatre.org. Mon/2, 7pm. Free. Magic Theatre’s 2014 Martha Heasley Cox Virgin Play Series presents this staged reading of Jessica Hagedorn’s satirical soap opera.

“Dream Queens Revue” Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, 133 Turk, SF; www.dreamqueensrevue.com. Wed/28, 9:30pm. Free. Drag with Collette LeGrande, Ruby Slippers, Sophilya Leggz, Bobby Ashton, and more.

Feinstein’s at the Nikko 222 Mason, SF; www.feinsteinssf.com. This week: “Michael Feinstein with Paula West, in Celebration of Feinstein’s at the Nikko’s One-Year Anniversary,” Sun/1, 7pm, $80.

“Gender Assimilation: A Rebuttal” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.theygobythey.com. Thu/29, 7:30pm. $10. Jaq Victor performs a cheeky coming-out tale as part of the United States of Asian America Festival.

“Hysteria” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancemission.org. Fri/30-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 7pm. $20. BodiGram takes on Dissociative Identity Disorder in this satirical performance work.

“Magic at the Rex” Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.magicattherex.com. Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $25. Magic and mystery with Adam Sachs and mentalist Sebastian Boswell III.

“Mais Oui” 2946 Third St, SF; www.sanfranciscobicycleballet.org. Sat/41, 6:45-10m. $8. The San Francisco Bicycle Ballet performs.

“Out of Line Improv” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; outoflineimprov.brownpapertickets.com. Sat, 10:30pm. $12. Ongoing. A new, completely improvised show every week.

“San Francisco Comedy College” Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.purpleonionatkells.com. $5-10. “New Talent Show,” Wed-Thu, 7. Ongoing. “The Cellar Dwellers,” stand-up comedy, Wed-Thu, 8:15pm and Fri-Sat, 7:30pm. Ongoing.

“Spring: Water Ritual” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Grand Lobby, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Sat/31, 1-2:30pm. Free. Artist Dohee Lee performs a celebration of “the regenerative power of the ocean.”

“Threepenny Opera” Phoenix Annex Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 406, SF; www.waffleopera.com. Sat/31, 7:30pm; Sun/1, 2pm. $15-25. Waffle Opera performs the Weill and Brecht classic.

“Walking Distance Dance Festival — SF” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odcdance.org. Fri/30-Sat/31, 7:30pm (also Sat/31, 3, 4, 6, and 9:30pm). $25 (festival pass, $65). ODC Theater’s fringe-style fest presents samplings of contemporary dance from around the world.

“Yerba Buena Gardens Festival” Yerba Buena Gardens, 760 Howard, SF; www.ybgfestival.org. Free. Through Oct 26. This week: Will Magid Trio, Wed/29, 12:30-1:30pm; Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Sat/31, 1-2:30pm.

BAY AREA

“After Juliet” Flight Deck, 1540 Broadway, Oakl; www.grittycityrep.org. Thu/29-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 2pm; June 8, 2 and 8pm. $5-25. Gritty City Repertory Youth Theatre performs Sharman Macdonald’s drama.

“MarshJam Improv Comedy Show” Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Fri, 8pm. Ongoing. $10. Improv comedy with local legends and drop-in guests.

“The Expulsion of Malcolm X” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/29-Sat/31, 7:30pm (also Sat/31, 2:30pm). $30-40. A play exploring the rocky relationship between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad.

Risa Jaroslow and Dancers, Peiling Kao Shawl-Anderson Dance Center, 2704 Alcatraz, Berk; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/30-Sat/31, 8pm; Sun/1, 4pm. $15-18. The choreographers present What’s the Upshot and Ludic Numerologies.

“34th Annual Planetary Dance” Santos Meadow, Mt. Tamalpais State Park, Mill Valley; www.planetarydance.org. Sun/1, 11am. Free. This year’s theme of Anna Halprin’s annual participatory performance is “Remember the Children.” *

 

Panda Bear brings the Grim Reaper to The Fillmore

Steven T. Jones
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By Ryland Walker Knight

The last time Panda Bear/Noah Lennox toured through the Bay as a solo act, he played The Fox in Oakland, offering the crowd a swamp of bass in waves of noise that probably wasn’t what most of those in attendance wanted to see and hear that night. Nobody complained, of course, and did their best to dance, but it was more an evening of sounds than songs.

Last night, at the Fillmore, Lennox played songs. He also layered sample on sample of himself, of synths, of squibs, of bass, of beats, but he seemed determined to work through the very real structures of all new songs (until the encore), getting bodies moving and people smiling. Perched behind a table of electronics and a blue-foamed mic, Lennox started slow, drawing in the ears with a simple organ progression and tremolo-effected vocal swoops of unrecognizable words. Not that the words matter, per se. The first “single” off this new record was first called, simply, “Marijuana,” and the refrain, such as it was, went something like “Marijuana makes my day.” Not very deep, though kinda funny; the thing that made the track was the vibe, the feeling. That sounds just as goofy as the lyrics, but psychedelia is, in one way, about getting beyond language.

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Furthermore, these new songs seem designed to look beyond the stage, beyond the instruments and private practices of making the music that typified Tomboy and its tour. The repetition remains, the loops and strategies aren’t terribly different, but the tone is brighter, with more snare drums in the mix, and Lennox’s voice, sometimes just making vowel sounds up and down scales, seems pointed backwards to the Brian Wilson styles found on Person Pitch and his guest spot on Daft Punk’s “Doin It Right” from last year. In fact, it seems like this batch of concoctions has been designed to pick apart harmony, to sort of suspend its pieces in a kind of constellation that brightens here, dims there, and pulses forward always.

A lot of that is simple arpeggios, and I’m not going to argue that Lennox is some Bach-level genius writing symphonic fugues for a digital age or some mumbo jumbo, but there is a certain kind of genius to syncopating things just right — letting silence space out a jam, even on an eighth note, or knowing when to push your voice beyond its range is okay, when it’s okay to break down your own capabilities, only to let a breakbeat bounce in underneath that cloud of yearning and get your betters lifted once again.

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There’s a new song he’s playing about midway through his set that begins with a harp melody lilting up, bellow to bright, and builds variations of Lennox caroling “in the family” on that towards a hook (of sorts) wherein he chant-cries “You won’t come back, you can’t come back” that brought the house so quiet in awe it felt like we were all holding our breath. I don’t think it’s an accident that those words stood out, or that he made them the most accessible. One of the more ingratiating aspects of all the Animal Collective music, across their varied catalogs, is how naked they are about pain. It was around this time that I remembered the working title for the new album: Panda Bear Meets The Grim Reaper.

That’s when the visuals started to make sense, too. The projections were great from the start, a series of shifting fields as ever, this time marked by cherries and waves of cranberries (in my eyes), changing to skin, and then a kaleidoscope of one nude, blue dancer, arranged Busby Berkeley-style into a wave of flesh from one point of perspective, like a shell’s curves, which rhymed with the strings of light roping across the screen at other times, and her face reappearing, quite large, painted like death. Later in the show she emerged from behind Lennox in a red cowl, carrying a sickle, coming for all of us, as she will, only to be multiplied and fed ice cream (?), which she then regurgitated. It was beautiful, hilarious, stupid, hard not to love.

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After roughly 10 songs, there was a break, of course, and when he came back out, Panda Noah Bear Lennox gave the goons what they wanted: something to sing along to! And it made me think about necessity. My favorite art is made, rather simply, out of the artist’s innate drive, some might say compulsion, that makes it a necessary outpouring. It doesn’t need an audience, though art without an audience is a fool’s errand, and if music only exists to trigger familiarity, what’s the reason you’re paying your money to experience this arrangement? Is it vanity? Simple distraction? I know I revel in the new, no matter how much a return may appeal, especially if it’s pleasure circling back, as a gift, to swim through me. But pleasure isn’t necessarily necessary; or, it’s only necessary to alleviate pain.

I suppose this is the old catharsis idea, and that may be the basic desire for live music, to transport, which this show certainly did. But what truly great art, and truly great experiences might offer is a picture of those poles suspended as if in either hand, both present at once. So a Grim Reaper makes sense, again: If you want sky, like Lennox once sang, your only route to the clouds is down, into the dirt.

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Summer fairs and festivals

Michael Redmond
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MAY 24-25

Carnaval San Francisco Festival: Sat/24-Sun/25, entertainment begins at 11am, free, Harrison between 16th and 24th Sts, SF. Parade: Sun/25, 9:30am, free, starts at 24th and Bryant Sts, SF; www.carnavalsf.com. The theme of the 36th annual event is “La Rumba de la Copa Mundial,” so prepare to catch World Cup fever as part of this spangly, sparkly celebration of international music, dance, cuisine, crafts, and more.

San Francisco International Beer Festival Festival Pavilion, Fort Mason Center, SF; www.sfbeerfest.com. 7-10pm, $75 (“Brewmaster” early entry ticket, 5pm, $175). More than 100 international and local craft brewers showcase their wares at this 31st annual event. Plus: pizza, sausages, beer-infused gelato, and other treats to soak up the suds. All proceeds benefit the Telegraph Hill Cooperative Nursery School.

MAY 31

Chocolate and Chalk Art Festival Shattuck between Rose and Vine, Berk. www.anotherbullwinkelshow.com/chocolate-chalk-art. 10am-5pm, free. Chalk artists compete for prizes while turning the sidewalks into eye candy — and speaking of candy, sweet tooth-ers can pick up ticket packs ($20 for 20) to sample chocolate items galore, including exotic treats like picante habañero chocolate gelato.

MAY 31-JUNE 1

Castroville Artichoke Food and Wine Festival Monterey County Fair and Events Center, 2004 Fairground, Monterey; www.artichokefestival.org. May 31, 10am-9pm; June 1, 10am-7pm. $5-10. See why Castroville is “the Artichoke Capital of the World” at this fest, which has grown so big it shifts locations this year to the fairgrounds in nearby Monterey. Try the fan favorite, artichoke cupcakes.

JUNE 7

Philippine Independence Day Celebration: Lumago Lampas (Grow Beyond) Rhythmix Cultural Works, 2513 Blanding, Alameda; www.rhythmix.org. 7pm, $15-25. Celebrate with performances by Parangal Dance Company, musician Ron Quesada, artist Kristian Kabuay, and more. Presented by the American Center of Philippine Arts.

Yerba Buena Art Walk Between Market and Folsom and Second and Fifth Sts, SF; yerbabuena.org/artwalk. 12:30-6pm, free. Yerba Buena Alliance presents this neighborhood showcase, highlighting galleries, exhibitions, and institutions throughout the downtown cultural center.

JUNE 7-8

Union Street Festival Union between Gough and Steiner, SF; www.unionstreetfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free (tasting tickets, $30-35). This 38-year-old festival features tasting pavilions highlighting Bay Area craft beers and wines. Each block of the fest will also have a themed “world,” centered around fashion, culinary arts, tech, locals, crafts, and fitness.

JUNE 7-15

San Mateo County Fair San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga, San Mateo; www.sanmateocountyfair.com. June 7-8, 10, and 14-15, 11am-10pm; June 9 and 11-13, noon-10pm, $8-10. All the classics (horse show, the Zipper, funnel cakes), plus modern touches like hip-hop dance performances, poetry readings, pig races, and concessions geared toward health-conscious fairgoers. Evening concerts include Air Supply, Brian McKnight, and War, plus tributes to Neil Diamond, Journey, and the Beatles.

JUNE 8

Haight Ashbury Street Fair Haight between Stanyan and Masonic, SF. www.haightashburystreetfair.org. 11am-8:30pm, free. Live music on two stages, plus over 200 vendor booths, highlight this groovy tradition.

JUNE 14-15

Crystal Fair Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina, Bldg A, SF; www.crystalfair.com. June 14, 10am-6pm; June 15, 10am-4pm. $8. The one-stop shop for all your crystal needs, for both jewelry and healing-arts purposes.

Live Oak Park Fair Live Oak Park, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.liveoakparkfair.com. 10am-6pm, free. The 44th annual fest hosts over 100 artists and craftspeople selling jewelry, clothing, contemporary art, quilts, pottery, and more, plus tastings of food by local artisans.

North Beach Festival North Beach neighborhood, SF. www.sresproductions.com/north_beach_festival.html. 10am-6pm, free. Historic North Beach hosts its 60th annual festival, with 125 arts and crafts booths, 20 gourmet food booths, live entertainment, and more, plus the ever-popular blessing of the animals (2-3pm both days at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi, 610 Vallejo).

JUNE 20-AUG 9

Stanford Jazz Festival Venues and prices vary; www.stanfordjazz.org. Both legends (Chick Corea, Arturo Sandoval, Joe Louis Walker) and up-and-comers (Taylor Eigsti, Meklit, Pacific Mambo Orchestra) fill the schedule at this annual fest.

JUNE 28-29

San Francisco Pride Venues and prices vary; www.sfpride.org. Amid the zillion parties, performances, and events that’ll go down this week, the biggest are the celebration (June 28, noon-6pm; June 29, 11am-6:30pm, $5, Civic Center), and the parade (June 29, 10:30am, starts at Market and Beale). This year’s theme is “Color Our World with Pride.”

JUNE 28-SEPT 21

Free Shakespeare in the Park Venues and times vary; www.sfshakes.org. Free. Get thee to a park (including the Presidio, Aug 30-Sept 14) for a free, professional production of The Taming of the Shrew.

JULY 4

Fourth of July at the Berkeley Marina Berkeley Marina, 201 University, Berk; www.anotherbullwinkelshow.com. Noon-10pm, $15. Family-friendly fun with live entertainment, pony rides, arts and crafts, and fireworks (9:30pm).

JULY 4-5

“The Ripple Effect” Opening weekend: Dolores Park, 19th St at Dolores, SF; www.sfmt.org July 4-5, 2pm, free (donations accepted). Continues through Sept 1 at various NorCal venues. The veteran San Francisco Mime Troupe stays current by skewering San Francisco’s ever-dividing economy; think rising rents, tech-bus protests, and (natch) Glassholes.

JULY 5-6

Fillmore Jazz Festival Fillmore between Jackson and Eddy, SF. www.fillmorejazzfestival.com. 10am-6pm, free. The largest free jazz fest on the West Coast fills 12 blocks with music, arts and crafts, gourmet food, and more.

JULY 17-27

Midsummer Mozart Festival Venues, times, and prices vary; www.midsummermozart.org. Two weeks paying tribute to Wolfgang Amadeus, with highlights like a San Francisco Boys Chorus guest appearance, and (in honor of the fest’s 40th season), a performance of Symphony No. 40 in G minor.

JULY 19-20

Renegade Craft Fair Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion, 2 Marina, SF; www.renegadecraft.com. 11am-6pm, free. DIY crafters unite at this celebration of indie design. Hey, it’s never too early to get a jump on your holiday shopping.

JULY 25-27

Gilroy Garlic Festival Christmas Park, Gilroy; www.gilroygarlicfestival.com. 10am-7pm, $10-20. Garlic is the pungent star of this annual food fair. Garlic ice cream gets all the press, but don’t sleep on the garlic fries, 2012’s most popular purchase (13,401 servings!)

JULY 26-27

Berkeley Kite Festival Cesar E. Chavez Park, Berkeley Marina. www.highlinekites.com. 10am-6pm, free. Because where else are you gonna see the world’s largest octopus kite?

Vintage Paper Fair SF County Fair Building, Ninth Ave. and Lincoln, SF; www.vintagepaperfair.com. July 26, 10am-6pm; July 27, 11am-5pm. Free. Relive the days before digital ruined everything with this showcase of vintage postcards, photographs, labels, sports memorabilia, and “all manner of curious, beautiful, and interesting old paper.”

JULY 27

Up Your Alley Fair Dore between Howard and Folsom, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.com/alley. 11am-6pm, $7 suggested donation. Folsom Street Fair’s naughty little brother fills Dore Alley with leather-clad shenanigans.

AUG 1-3

Eat Drink SF Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina, SF; www.eatdrink-sf.com. Times and prices TBD. Formerly known as SF Chefs, this Golden Gate Restaurant Association-hosted event brings together food, wine, and spirits. Foodies, start your engines.

AUG 2-3

Art + Soul Oakland Downtown Oakland (adjacent to the 12th St/City Center BART station); www.artandsouloakland.com. Noon-6pm, free. Live music is Art + Soul’s main draw, but a new event — the Oaktown Throwdown BBQ competition — will surely be a popular addition.

Bay Area Aloha Festival San Mateo County Event Center, 1346 Saratoga, San Mateo; www.pica-org.org. 10am-5pm, free. The Pacific Islanders’ Cultural Association showcases Polynesian dance and island cuisine at its annual event.

Nihonmachi Street Fair Post between Laguna and Fillmore, SF; www.nihonmachistreetfair.org. Times TBD. This long-running community event celebrates Asian-Pacific American life with performances, food, activities for kids, and more. Plus: the crowd-pleasing dog pageant and accompanying parade.

AUG 3

Jerry Day Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, McLaren Park, 45 John F. Shelley, SF; www.jerryday.org. 11:30am, free (donate for reserved seating). Live music (lineup TBD) honors the legacy of the Grateful Dead legend, who grew up on nearby Harrington Street in the Excelsior.

AUG 16

Stumptown Brewery Beer Revival and BBQ Cook-off Stumptown Brewery, 15045 River, Guerneville; www.stumptown.com. 1-6pm, $75-100. Over 30 breweries and 30 BBQ teams await at this event, which makes the following claim: “If you can’t have fun at this one … you can’t have fun.” ‘Nuff said. AUG 23-24 Bodega Seafood, Art, and Wine 16885 Bodega Highway, Bodega; www.winecountryfestivals.com. Aug 23, 10am-6pm; Aug 24, 10am-5pm, $8-15. It’s there in the name, folks: tasty seafood, a juried art marketplace, and wine (and beer) tastings. Plus: three stages of live entertainment. Golden Gateway to Gems SF County Fair Building, Ninth Ave. and Lincoln, SF; www.sfgemshow.org. 10am-6pm, check website for price. It’s the diamond jubilee (60th anniversary) of this San Francisco Gem and Mineral Society event, and the 2014 theme is “Heavy Metal” — so prepare for face-melting encounters with rock, gem, and jewelry dealers; educational lectures and demos; and a “stump the expert” mineral ID station. Rock on! *

It’s all reel

Michael Redmond
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0
It’s all reel

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM As far as Hollywood is concerned, it’s already been summer for weeks, with superheroes (Captain America and Spider-Man have had their turns; X-Men: Days of Future Past opens Fri/23) and monsters (Godzilla) looking mighty comfortable atop the box office. But the season is just getting started, screen fiends, and there’s plenty more — maybe too many more, if you’re operating on a limited popcorn budget — ahead. Read on for a highly opinionated, by-no-means-comprehensive guide; as always, dates are subject to change. (And keep reading for a list of local film festivals, too, since the healthiest diet is always a balanced one.)

The first post-Memorial Day weekend unveils Angelina Jolie (dem cheekbones!) as Sleeping Beauty’s worst nightmare in Maleficent, probably the biggest Disney casting coup since Johnny Depp sailed to the Caribbean. First-time helmer Robert Stromberg has a pair of Oscars for his art-direction work on Avatar (2009) and Alice in Wonderland (2010); if this dark fantasy clicks with audiences, expect a raft of live-action films starring Disney’s ever-growing stable of villains (fingers crossed for Ursula the Sea Witch next).

If fairy tales aren’t your thing, add thriller Cold in July to your calendar (like Maleficent, it’s out May 30). It’s the latest from genre man Jim Mickle (2013’s We Are What We Are), with his highest-profile cast to date. Dexter‘s Michael C. Hall, rocking a mullet, plays a small-town Texan whose unremarkable life goes into pulpy overdrive after he kills a burglar, angering the man’s ex-con father (Sam Shepard). But nothing is what it seems in this twisty tale, which also features Don Johnson and a synth score — both stellar enhancements to the film’s late-1980s aesthetic.

Moving into June, sci-fi thriller Edge of Tomorrow  has Tom Cruise saving the world — just another day on the job for the suspiciously ageless star, though he apparently lives the same day over and over here. Look for director Doug Liman (multiple Bourne movies) and co-stars like Emily Blunt and Game of Thrones‘ Noah Taylor to add some depth — though, OK, this’ll probably still be a one-man show. Never change, Tom. Elsewhere June 6, erstwhile Divergent ass-kicker Shailene Woodley aims to prove she’s not just the poor man’s Jennifer Lawrence with young-adult weepie The Fault in Our Stars.

June 13, undercover cops Schmidt and Jenko — played by the likable team of Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum — return for more jokes (and winks, because they’re in on the joke too, you guys!) in 22 Jump Street. Far less comedic, and far more brain-melting, is sci-fi drama The Signal, which starts off like a typical road-trip movie, then switches gears a few times before slam-banging into weirdness so out-there it’s almost (almost) a spoiler to note that Laurence “Morpheus” Fishburne plays a key role.

The following week (June 20), Aussie filmmaker David Michôd — whose gritty 2010 Animal Kingdom became an insta-classic of the crime genre, and launched the stateside careers of Jackie Weaver and Joel Edgerton — reunites with Kingdom star Guy Pearce for The Rover, the outback-set tale of a man seeking revenge on a gang of car thieves. In an intriguing casting choice, former vampire Robert Pattinson co-stars as a wounded baddie forced along for the ride.

Next up, June 27 unleashes Transformers: Age of Extinction. Memo to the world: Until we all agree to stop seeing these movies, Michael Bay and company will keep grinding ’em out. At least this one is LaBeouf-less.

Ahead of the long Fourth of July weekend, July 2 unleashes saucy comedy Tammy, which stars Melissa McCarthy (she also co-wrote the script) and Susan Sarandon as a road-tripping granddaughter and grandmother. Or, you could check out Eric Bana as an NYPD detective who teams up with a priest (Edgar “Carlos the Jackal” Ramírez, recently cast in the Swayze role in the highly unnecessary Point Break remake) in Deliver Us From Evil; despite sharing a title with Amy Berg’s harrowing 2006 doc about pedophiles in the Catholic Church, it’s about demonic possession — but is still probably less frightening than the Berg film, to be honest.

July 11, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood has a gimmicky premise — filmed over 12 years, it charts the coming-of-age of a child, and his relationship with his parents (played by Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) — but also glowing reviews from its film festival stints. And, just when you thought it was safe to go back to the banana aisle, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes arrives, laying further waste to a San Francisco that already took a beating in the first film, not to mention losing most of its downtown to Godzilla and friends just a week ago. Andy Serkis returns as chimp king Caesar. Also: Roman Polanski’s latest, Venus in Fur — based on the David Ives play, and starring Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner — arrives on our shores after picking up a César award for the director in France.

Andy and Lana Wachowski’s latest eye candy-laden epic action fantasy, Jupiter Ascending, is about an ordinary human (Mila Kunis) who turns out to be Neo the One, er, royalty from another planet. Based on production stills, this film also features Channing Tatum flying through the air shooting guns and stuff. July 18 also brings The Purge: Anarchy, sequel to last year’s sleeper hit about a near-future America that allows a crime spree free-for-all one night per year. The follow-up lacks Lena Heady — but it does have Michael K. “Omar” Williams, and the characters actually leave the house this time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w0KAHhKECg

Then, on July 25, choose your hero: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sporting a hat made out of a lion’s head (and, apparently, beard made out of yak hair) in Hercules, or those dancin’ kids of Las Vegas-set Step Up All In. (For those keeping score, this is the fifth Step Up film.) Plus, there’s Woody Allen’s 1920s-set Magic in the Moonlight, starring Emma Stone as a psychic and Colin Firth as the skeptic who falls for her. Sounds kinda twee, and Allen’s private life remains controversial, but that cast, which also includes Marcia Gay Harden and Jackie Weaver, is all kinds of dynamite.

August begins with a bang — Marvel’s hotly-anticipated Guardians of the Galaxy, which just about broke the Internet when its first trailer rolled out in February, is out on the first — before meandering a bit. Taking a break from her own Marvel duties, Scarlett Johansson (so great in Under the Skin) plays a different kind of superhuman in Luc Besson’s Lucy, while the live action-CG mash-up I’m not sure anyone was really begging for, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, also takes a bow (both Aug. 8).

As the summer winds down, Phillip Noyce (2002’s The Quiet American) strays onto YA turf with an adaptation of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, with Jeff “The Dude” Bridges playing the title role, and Brenton Thwaits (who also stars in The Signal, above) as his protégé. Also out Aug. 15, The Expendables 3 adds Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas, and Wesley Snipes (!!) to its cast o’ aging action hunks. Don’t you worry, Nic Cage — there’s still room for you in the inevitable part four. And don’t miss The Trip to Italy, which re-teams British comedians Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for a foodie road trip that will make you guffaw (at the impressions) and drool (over the plates of pasta).

Labor Day looms as Robert Rodriguez brings Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which looks to be as visually stunning as its 2005 predecessor, if not much friendlier to the female perspective; a sports drama inspired by Concord’s own De La Salle High School football team, When the Game Stands Tall; and yet another YA adaptation, If I Stay, starring Chloë Grace Moretz, who is one of the more dynamic teen actors of late, and may make this girlfriend-in-a-coma tale livelier than it sounds. *

ESCAPE THE MULTIPLEX: SUMMER FESTIVALS

San Francisco Green Film Festival (May 29-June 4; www.sfgreenfilmfest.org) Doc-heavy fest of films from 21 countries that explore environmental issues and themes.

San Francisco Silent Film Festival (May 29-June 1; www.silentfilm.org) Exquisitely curated and rock-concert-popular showcase of films from cinema’s earliest days, plus live accompaniment and special guests.

SF DocFest (June 5-19; www.sfindie.com) The San Francisco Independent Film Festival’s doc-tastic offshoot consistently offers a strong slate of true-life tales.

New Filipino Cinema (June 11-15; www.ybca.org) Documentaries, narratives, shorts, and experimental films direct from the Philippines’ burgeoning film scene.

Queer Women of Color Film Festival (June 14-16; www.qwocmap.org) Five shorts programs highlight 55 works, with a focus this year on queer culture in Southeast Asian, North African, Middle Eastern, and other Muslim communities.

Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema (June 14-Aug 23, bampfa.berkeley.edu) Rare and important works by Andrzej Wajda, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Wojciech Has, and others — and since Uncle Marty’s in charge, expect glorious digital restorations across the board.

Frameline (June 19-29; www.frameline.org) The oldest and largest fest of its kind, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival has been programming the best in queer cinema for 38 years.

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (July 24-Aug 10; www.sfjff.org) Also the oldest and largest fest of its kind, the SFJFF presents year-round programming, though this fest, now in its 34th year, is its centerpiece event.

Bernal blows up

Michael Redmond
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21
Bernal blows up

rebecca@sfbg.com

When Herb Felsenfeld and his wife, Gail Newman, look out the window of the Bernal Heights home they’ve lived in for more than 30 years, they see a vacant hilly lot grown in with tall grass, stretching up in the direction of nearby Bernal Heights Park.

The surrounding area has become quite popular. Earlier this year, real estate firm Redfin crowned Bernal Heights the nation’s No. 1 “hottest neighborhood,” its desirability ranked using “a combination of big-data analysis and real-life human experience,” according to the company blog.

There are plans to build two new single-family homes on the slope directly above them, causing a bit of a neighborhood stir. But one detail about this particular site — perched high atop Folsom Street on the eastern slope of Bernal Hill — has neighbors on edge.

Below the surface, extending up a 35 percent grade, is a natural gas pipeline owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Property records designate it as Line 109, and it traverses the Bernal Heights neighborhood from farther south, running up Folsom Street. Two orange-and-white striped markers stake out its trajectory uphill, with an orange sticker on the back proclaiming, “Warning: Gas Pipeline.”

It’s serviced the area for at least 30 years, perhaps much longer, qualifying it as an aging piece of infrastructure. Felsenfeld, Newman, and neighbor Deborah Gerson say they’re worried that performing excavation on the slope for a road and new home foundations poses a safety threat.

Newman said she was especially perplexed by the San Francisco Planning Department’s issuance of a waiver of an environmental impact review, which is routine for a project of this size, citing no unusual circumstances. “I’m like, wait a minute,” she said. “There’s a pipeline here.”

One would think that any sort of risk would be eliminated by routine safety protocols. But it gets complicated when one considers that PG&E is under federal indictment for criminal negligence for its alleged failure to keep up with pipeline maintenance, due in part to sloppy recordkeeping. There may indeed be little risk involved with the new construction at this site — but then again, the neighbors’ concerns raise questions about whether adequate measures are in place to guarantee safety in this and other situations.

The criminal charges facing PG&E that were filed March 31 stem from an investigation launched in the wake of a fatal 2010 explosion in San Bruno caused by a pipeline rupture, which killed eight people and destroyed an entire neighborhood. The utility is fighting the charges in court and has reportedly invested $2.7 billion in shareholder dollars toward safety improvements since.

But according to the results of a regulatory audit on PG&E’s assessment of its own pipeline records that was undertaken to set things straight after the tragic explosion, crucial pipeline information is still missing or flawed, as the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported.

“Given the San Bruno disaster and the recent media revelations about PG&E’s pipes, we are wondering what information you have gathered on this subject,” Felsenfeld wrote in a letter to one of the housing developers, Fabien Lannoye. “Where exactly is Pipeline No. 109? How deeply is No. 109 buried? What is Pipeline No. 109 composed of? How big in diameter is Pipeline 109? How/with what are the pipe seams welded?”

He sent the same set of questions to PG&E. So far, Felsenfeld hasn’t received any answers. PG&E has also been stonewalling the developer’s information requests.

Lannoye, who is building one of the two new houses, described the project as a two-story, single-family home where he hopes to live with his wife and two children. He said he understands the neighbors’ concerns about safety, but also believes they are organizing in an effort to prevent him from moving forward.

When it comes to his communications with the utility company, however, Lannoye is a bit more baffled. “It’s kind of a little bizarre that we’re not getting clear information,” he said. “I’ve contacted like 15 different people from PG&E, and every time, they send me to someone else. Either they don’t want to give me the information, or they don’t know what it is.”

PG&E did not respond to the Bay Guardian‘s request for comment.

In general, the only parties who seem to be directly involved when there is construction near natural gas pipelines are the utility company and the project developer. An association called the Common Ground Alliance maintains the 811 phone line — a service known as Call Before You Dig — to ensure the location of underground lines are marked prior to any excavation.

When the Guardian phoned San Francisco’s Department of Public Works to ask if the agency has a pipeline risk assessment procedure in place when new construction is planned, we were told that such a thing might fall under the scope of the Department of Building Inspection.

But in a voicemail, DBI spokesperson Bill Strawn responded that such a thing might be up to the Department of Public Works, adding, “There’s no restriction about somebody building a project or a house somewhere in the vicinity of a natural gas pipeline.”

All of which means it falls to PG&E to ensure that high-pressure underground lines are safe, with no chance of rupture when new foundations are being installed close by. But PG&E doesn’t always know what it’s got. According to charges in the federal indictment, the utility created a GIS database in the late 1990s based on pipeline survey sheets that contained erroneous or incomplete information. PG&E then relied on that database to make integrity management decisions.

The indictment noted that prior to the San Bruno disaster, PG&E had been intentionally elevating pressure levels on Line 132, the one that ruptured, as well as Line 109, to maintain peak pressure levels in accordance with federal regulations. But experts have noted that this spiking practice could erode the integrity of a line if there are vulnerable welds.

“Our plan,” Lannoye explained, “is not to dig where the gas line is.” Line 109 would run beneath a sidewalk, he added.

Marilyn Waterman, another neighbor, outlined the situation in an email to University of California Berkeley professor Robert Bea, a nationally renowned civil engineer. She asked Bea if concern is warranted.

“Given the background you provided in your email, yes — you should be concerned,” he responded. It’s an old line, Bea pointed out, in an area with highly variable topography, with no available records detailing its operation and maintenance.

“This list is identical to the list of concerns that summarized causation of the San Bruno Line 132 gas pipeline disaster,” Bea wrote. “The fundamental ‘challenge’ associated with your concern is tied to the word ‘safe.'”

His rule of thumb? “If the potential consequences associated with a failure are low, then the likelihood of the failure can be high. If the potential consequences are very high, then the probability of failure must be very low.”

An evening with Herbie Hancock and Nancy Pelosi at the SFJAZZ Gala

Steven T. Jones
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2

By Micah Dubreuil

If you were driving down Fell street last Friday, you might have come upon an unexpected detour. This would have been the block cordoned off for the first annual SFJAZZ Gala in their new facilities at 201 Franklin St. The building opened in January 2013, and in addition to featuring near-perfect acoustics in the main auditorium — arguably the best on the West Coast for jazz — it provides a sophisticated space for a social and fundraising event such as this one.

The Gala was officially honoring pianist and composer Herbie Hancock, and featured performances by Hancock himself in addition to the SFJAZZ Collective, Booker T., Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaires, Terrance Brewer, the SFJAZZ High School All-Stars, and a number of special guests. Standout performances were delivered by Avishai Cohen and Warren Wolf of the SFJAZZ Collective, in particular. And then of course there was Charles Bradley, whose emotional commitment is so thorough that he seems always to be on the verge of tears. Seeing Hammond Organ master Booker T. in a room as small as the Joe Henderson Lab was also a rare and unique experience.

cb
Charles Bradley. All photos by Scott Chernis, courtesy of SFJAZZ.

The High School All-Stars played exceptionally well, highlighted by an inspired arrangement of Hancock’s “Eye of the Hurricane.” It must have been no simple feat for the teenagers (particularly the pianists) to perform mere feet from the legendary Hancock, but they acquitted themselves with distinction. It’d be easy to take the profoundly high level of youth musical achievement in the Bay Area for granted, if not for events like these reminding us that, you know, actual programs drive these accomplishments — programs like the SFJAZZ ensemble, the Berkeley High jazz program, the California Jazz Conservatory (formerly known as the Jazz School) and a number of others — and those programs take passion, effort, and funding. All told, their sweeping institutional support of this music is a remarkable achievement in its own right.

high school
The SFJAZZ High School All Stars, with Paula West

Presenting the SFJAZZ Lifetime Achievement award to Hancock was saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter, who was himself honored in 2008. After receiving the award, Hancock performed a solo interpretation of Shorter’s classic “Footprints,” which was followed by a SFJAZZ arrangement of the same tune. If I had one criticism, the night’s overall programming was extremely safe, featuring nearly all well-traveled (but beautiful) standards by Hancock (and one by Shorter), including Maiden Voyage, Watermelon Man, and Actual Proof. The only deep cut, as it were, was “And What If I Don’t” from Hancock’s 1963 release, My Point of View, performed by the SFJAZZ Collective. However, the programming reflected the nature of the event: A fundraiser aimed at gaining financial support from perhaps a broader audience than merely hardcore jazz fans — though, to be sure, plenty of those were also in attendance.

When the tally was in, SFJAZZ raised over $1.4 million for its educational and artistic programs, which is roughly in line with previous fundraisers. The event reflected this level of ambition, with a red carpet entrance and deliciously decadent food from local and national culinary artisans: Oysters from Tomales Bay, bacon-wrapped mochi, heirloom tomatoes topped with white chocolate. The statuesque models flanking the front doors with platters of champagne might have been a bit much, but otherwise the event was classy and dignified, with a crowd (which included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) dressed to impress; the invitation has read “black tie optional.” Master of ceremonies Robert Townsend, who directed Eddie Murphy’s stand-up film Raw (among other achievements) was jocular, jovial, and energetic. Even his (undeniably offensive) parody of sign-language interpreters received hearty laughter from the mostly-full auditorium.

booker
Booker T. Jones

Watching Shorter and Hancock sit by the side of the stage, it was hard not to reflect on their 50-year history of close collaboration and friendship. Jazz is obviously a major cultural institution, now propelled by organizations such as SFJAZZ, but for decades it was driven primarily by the passion and fearlessness of musicians like Hancock and Shorter. Their personal achievements are nothing short of colossal, and jazz itself would not be what it is today without them. In his acceptance speech, though, Hancock intoned that the jazz spirit “was all about we,” not the individual. He complimented hishosts for continuing those values: “SFJAZZ is all about sharing.” Here’s hoping the coming years keep allowing them to do just that.

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