CounterPulse

Our Weekly Picks: February 20-26, 2013

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 20

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

Head on down to the waterfront tonight for a hilarious night of bad B-movie fun! Where could be better to watch the schlocky sci-fi flick Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (featuring over-the-top cheesy performances from Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas) than an actual aquarium on the San Francisco Bay? Part of Aquarium of the Bay’s “Octopalooza,” a week-long fete celebrating cephalopods, the price of admission to this “Bad Movie Night” will include two drinks, popcorn, admission to the aquarium, and live satiric commentary about the film from Dark Room Theater. (Sean McCourt)

6pm, $16

Aquarium of the Bay, Bay Theater

Pier 39, SF

(415) 623-5300

www.aquariumofthebay.com

 

Patricia Schultz

Travel writer Patricia Schultz explained how she selected entries for her New York Times-bestseller 1,000 Places to See Before You Die in the book’s introduction: “In the final analysis, the common denominator I chose was a simple one: that each place impress upon the visitor — and, I hope, upon the reader — some sense of the earth’s magic, integrity, wonder, and legacy.” Lately, Schultz seems like she is looking for the next 1,000 places to pass on to readers. She has made stops in Connecticut, Boston, and California this month, and has a 10-day jaunt through Ethiopia in April ($5,400 to join her) followed by a 19-day cruise ship voyage near the Antarctic coast in November ($9,500). Interested (and perhaps more frugal) travelers can listen in tonight on her latest adventures. (Kevin Lee)

7pm, $12–$20

Oshman Family Jewish Community Center

3921 Fabian Way, Palo Alto

(415) 597-6700

www.commonwealthclub.org


THURSDAY 21

“Migration Now!”

The creators of the fabulous People’s History poster series, Justseeds, and Culturestr/ke have assembled a poster show to heal the psychic wounds you’ve done to yourself listening to the Right rage on against immigrants ruining our country. Seriously, this is the antidote: undocumented queer activist Julio Salgado’s peaceful odes to cross-border gay marriage, the flock of monarch butterflies that Portland, Ore.’s Roger Peet has conjured, alighting on a human skull in protest of the War on Drugs. King of the subversive poster Emory Douglas will also show work, along with many others. The opening reception features hip-hop performance, panel discussion, an appearance by the Filipino Caregiver Theater Ensemble, and more. (Caitlin Donohue)

Through Feb. 28

Opening reception: 6-10pm, free

Eric Quesada Center for Culture and Politics

518 Valencia, SF

www.justseeds.org

www.migrationnow.com

 

“Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: the Musical!”

After a sold-out weekend premiere in October, DavEnd’s sharp-witted, madcap, acronym-inviting musical comes back for another raucous binge of self-obsession and doubt before the bedroom mirror. Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes features writer, composer, performer, chanteuse, accordionist, and costume designer extraordinaire DavEnd as, who else, queer artist DavEnd and her active — very active — imagination. Upon reflection (her own that is, courtesy of a full-length looking-glass (Maryam Farnaz Rostami)), solipsism turns to schism as DavEnd confronts a fractured fashion show of ideal or not-so-ideal types, MC’d by her Fairy Drag Mother (luminous burlesque star World Famous *BOB*). Discerning direction by D’Arcy Drollinger and musical director Chris Winslow support a pitch-perfect combo of the effervescent and deadpan, in a comedy that actually asks stark present-day questions about difference, acceptance, and validation of the self. (Robert Avila)

Through Sun/24, 8pm; (also Sun/24, 3pm), $20–$25

Counterpulse

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060

www.counterpulse.org


CHERYL at the Asian Art Museum

In the third century BCE, a Chinese emperor wanted to defeat death by commissioning a life-size terracotta army of over 7,000 warriors. In 2013, New York-based art collective CHERYL wants to defeat convention by throwing a party in honor of 10 of these warriors. At the opening of the Asian Art Museum’s “China’s Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor’s Legacy,” the collective, joined by DJ Hakobo and the Extra Action Marching Band, will set up a video installation, an excellent set of tunes, and a bar, and they invite you to join them (preferably in a costume of your choosing). Probably not what the emperor had in mind, but it just might work. (Laura Kerry)

7pm, $18

Asian Art Museum

200 Larkin, SF

(415) 581-3500

www.asianart.org


FRIDAY 22

“Sexual Politics”

The full title of the Roxie’s first post-SF Indiefest event is “Sexual Politics: The Occasionally Autobiographical and Always Personal Films of Joe Swanberg,” a mouthful befitting a prolific filmmaker who is only 31 and yet has already made nearly 20 films. His debut, 2005’s Kissing on the Mouth, isn’t included here, but his second and third films are — LOL (2006) and Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), both of which rushed him to the forefront of the lo-fi, low-budget, mostly-improv’d genre known (for better and worse) as “mumblecore.” (Both also star Hollywood’s next big thing, Greta Gerwig.) Among the 12 Swanberg selections is IndieFest closer All the Light in the Sky, a 2012 release that isn’t even his most recent (that’s be Drinking Buddies, which just screened at Sundance). Never sleep, Joe. (Cheryl Eddy)

Fri/22-Mon/25, $6.50–$10

Roxie Theater

3117 16th St, SF

www.roxie.com

 

Dave Alvin and Marshall Crenshaw

Fans of Americana, rockabilly, and roots music — or just plain old fashioned rock’n’roll — are in for a special treat tonight as two of the greatest singer-songwriters-guitarists of the past 30 years come to town on tour together — Dave Alvin and Marshall Crenshaw. First displaying his formidable chops as a member of the Blasters, Alvin has gone on to a distinguished solo career, as has Crenshaw, who gained mainstream exposure with his 1981 hit “Someday, Someway,” and portrayed Buddy Holly in the 1987 film La Bamba. Get ready for a night of shredding Stratocasters as these two tunesmith titans, who just keep getting better with age, play live backed by the Guilty Ones. (McCourt)

8pm, $22

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com

 

Chrome Canyon

At this rate, I’ll never make it to the future. But when I do, I know exactly what would make the perfect soundtrack. Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis, Wendy Carlos’s Tron, John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, Michael Jarre’s Dreamscape, and Hirokazu Tanaka’s Metroid. Of course, that’s too much for one Walkman, but since I’ll be going that direction anyway, I’ll make a point to procure a copy of Elemental Themes, the recent analog synth saturated non-soundtrack from Brooklyn’s Chrome Canyon. It captures the mood. First order of business: find a place that sells cassettes. Second: restore causality. (Ryan Prendiville)

Voltaire Records and Stones Throw Present, with Peanut Butter Wolf (DJ set), Jonas Reinhardt, Shock, Chautauqua (DJ set)

9pm, $13-15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com


SATURDAY 23

FaltyDL

Producer Drew Lustman may hail from New York, but his newest release Hardcourage impressively fuses the pace and smoothness of Chicago house with the synths and bleeps found in Detroit techno. The result is a multilayered work that leans more toward spacey introspection than frenetic movement, a somewhat surprising departure from vintage FaltyDL productions of two-step and UK-influenced garage. Consistent throughout Lustman’s discography is an emphasis on melody and texture that is quite fitting, given Lustman played upright bass and piano in jazz groups and counts Miles Davis as a big influence. How Lustman mixes groovier works like the luscious “She Sleeps” with harder-stepping garage in the tighter confines of Public Works’ loft space will bear watching. (Lee)

9:30pm, $10–$20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com


SUNDAY 24

Morrissey

It’s difficult to describe the voice — a tinge of a yowl but always fluid and warm. Then there’s the songwriting — mysteriously transcendent. And the incredible style that is both quirky and catchy. OK, this might be gushing, but come on, it’s Morrissey, and he’s coming to Davies Symphony Hall (and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that he actually makes it to the Bay this time). The influential artist, who established his reputation with the Smiths in the ’80s, will release a “very best of” album in April. Even though he’s looking back on career classics, he wants to show us he can still rock out. Morrissey, we wouldn’t doubt you for a second. (Kerry)

With Kristeen Young

8pm, $50-$90

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.daviessymphonyhall.org

 

Matmos

Relax. Try to concentrate. I’m going to play some sounds. Tell me what you see. A triangle? No. Try again. A velvet blivet? No. Focus, please. What? I assure you, no one has had sex on this table. One more. A damn deacon? Please, there’s no call for that sort of language. Fail, a complete fail. Correct answer was A Marriage of True Minds, an auditory experiment into ESP by former SF — now Baltimore — residing duo Matmos. Yes, extra-sensory perception. Telepathy for the layperson like you. Here, give it a listen the next time you’re in the flotation tank. (Prendiville)

With Horse Lords, C.L.A.W.S. (DJ set), Kit Clayton, and visuals by Golden Suicide

8pm, $10

Public Works

161 Erie St., SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com


MONDAY 25

Surfer Blood

Surfer Blood has discovered a magical formula. When the band came together in ’09, it united with the simple goal to produce an album and go on tour, but with the album and EP it has released since that time, the quartet has earned impressive recognition for its unceasingly gratifying pop-rock. Surfer Blood’s four-year-old goal continues with the launch of another tour leading up to the June release of Pythons. In the single, “Weird Shapes,” the magic continues in a catchy tune that somehow recalls both the Strokes and the Beach Boys. Come see what other tricks it has up its sleeve. (Kerry)

With Grand Rapids, Aaron Axelsen

8pm, $11

Brick and Mortar Music Hall

1710 Mission, SF

(415) 800-8782

www.brickandmortarmusic.com

Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

The Lisbon Traviata New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Terrence McNally’s play, a mix of comedy and tragedy, about the relationship between two opera fanatics.

Steve Seabrook: Better Than You Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Opens Fri/22, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm. Through March 22. Kurt Bodden’s San Francisco Best of Fringe-winning show takes a satirical look at motivational speakers.

BAY AREA

Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $15-28. Previews Thu/21-Fri/22, 8pm. Opens Sat/23, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through March 31. Central Works performs Gary Graves’ adaptation of the story-within-a-story from The Brothers Karamazov.

My Recollect Time South Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview, Berk; (510) 788-6415. $12-25. Opens Fri/22, 9pm. Runs Sat/23-Sun/24, Feb 28, March 2, 7, and 9, 8pm; March 1, 8, 9pm; March 3, 5pm. Through March 9. Inferno Theater performs Jamie Greenblatt’s play about the life of former slave Mary Fields.

ONGOING

Dear Harvey New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 2pm. There’s always room in San Francisco for milk — Harvey Milk, that is, our very own out-and-proud crusader for equal rights for all, whose election as city supervisor in 1977 and assassination in 1978 galvanized the LGBT movement on a national level. Part history lesson, part memorial tribute, the Patricia Loughrey-penned Dear Harvey offers details of the extent of his influence, mostly in the realm of the political, collected from interviews with over 30 of Milk’s associates and friends. Interspersing testimonials with Bay Area Reporter headlines, fan mail, and projections of Daniel Nicoletta’s candid photos of the era, each member of the ensemble cast assumes multiple roles throughout the piece including Harvey’s activist nephew Stuart Milk, the "Queen Mother of the Americas" Nicole Murray-Ramirez, openly-gay politician Tom Ammiano, former youthful aide and prominent AIDS activist Cleve Jones, Milk’s spitfire campaign manager Anne Kronenberg, and even Milk himself. At its core, Dear Harvey plays out mainly like a talking head-style documentary, the disparate strands of monologue woven together providing a composite image of a single character. But as endearing in many ways that character is, it’s not enough to sustain the overall piece, which never develops its other, often fascinating, characters enough for the audience to feel much of a connection to the stage, no matter how much, personally, they might feel a connection to Milk himself. (Gluckstern)

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

God of Carnage Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through March 30. Shelton Theater presents Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about upper-middle-class parents clashing over an act of playground violence between their children.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $25-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 5pm). Through March 2. Hold onto your hairpiece, Boxcar Theatre is reprising their all-too short summer run of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and just in case you think you saw it already, be forewarned — you ain’t seen nothing yet. Recast, redesigned, and re-vamped, this outcast-rock musical familiarly follows the misadventures of one Hedwig Robinson (né Hansel Schmidt) with glam, guts, and glitter. But unlike the movie version penned by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as the titular chanteuse, or other staged versions, director Nick A. Olivero splits the larger-than-life, would-be rock sensation into eight different characters, who are each given a solo turn as well as plenty of ensemble harmonizing during the course of the two hour-plus performance. The effect is often electric, and just as frequently hilarious, as when the four female actors playing the role stomp across the stage swinging imaginary dicks in the air to the lyric "six inches forward and five inches back, I got a, I got an angry inch!" Supported by a tight quartet of rock musicians led by Rachel Robinson, and the phenomenal Amy Lizardo as Hedwig’s beleaguered "man Friday" Yitzhak, Hedwig keeps on extending for what appears to be an indefinite run, employing the time-honored Thrillpeddlers’ tradition of rotating cast members and comeback performances, which means you could theoretically go multiple times and never see quite the same show twice. I certainly plan to. (Gluckstern)

Jurassic Ark Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy, SF; www.theexit.org. $15-25. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through March 16. Writer-performer David Caggiano’s zany, well-executed solo play centers on a Christian televangelist who is unwaveringly bent on making a big-budget movie about a cowboy-like Biblical Noah, his Ark, and the largely lovable dinosaurs callously left out of the story — a project he sees delivering a decisive blow to the Darwinians, while turning cineplexes across the land into celluloid cathedrals. Brother Dallas and his proselytizing pitch eventually find receptive ears in a trinity of movie-industry heavies, whose collective business acumen demands a few changes to the script. Meanwhile, the intoxicating power of it all leads to a lapse in Brother Dallas’s righteousness and a scandal reminiscent of Hugh Grant’s career. Dallas rebounds from this bout with the Devil and sees his movie made — but surely only he is unaware that the Devil keeps a Hollywood address. Smartly directed by Mark Kenward, this low-frills production relies almost exclusively on Caggiano’s sturdy ability with quick-change characterizations (couched in Dylan West’s modest lighting design and a suggestive soundscape by sound editor–musician John Mazzei). The fitful satire trades in pretty orthodox caricature and, in Brother Dallas, lacks a very compelling or sympathetic central figure; but it unfolds with a very cinematic imagination that, while formulaic, is itself one hell of a movie pitch. (Avila)

The Little Foxes Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Wed/20-Sat/23, 8pm. Tides Theatre Company performs a modern take on the Lillian Hellman classic.

The Motherfucker with the Hat San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. $30-70. Tue-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 3pm). Through March 16. A fine cast makes the most of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s deceptively coarse, often amusing little play, The Motherfucker with the Hat, which receives its local premiere in a sure and rowdy production from SF Playhouse. Director and designer Bill English’s striking two-tier set almost belies the intimate nature of the quirky story, which concerns a hapless parolee and recovering alcoholic named Jackie (a winningly frazzled, bumptious Gabriel Marin) who retreats to his AA sponsor’s apartment to pine and plot revenge after he discovers a stranger’s hat in the bedroom of his longtime Puerto Rican girlfriend, Veronica (played vividly by an at once edgy and vulnerable Isabelle Ortega). But Ralph, his suave and persuasive sponsor (played with unctuous charm gilded by just a hint of ineptitude by an excellent Carl Lumbly), may not be the guy he wants in his corner. Not that Jackie can see that — he’s got a man-crush on Ralph that dwarfs his already ambivalent affection for much put-upon but stalwart cousin Julio (a sharply funny Rudy Guerrero) and blinds him to the warning signals from Ralph’s own disgruntled wife (a coolly disgusted Margo Hall). Throughout, these working-class New York borough dwellers display their wit and shield their soft underbellies with a rapid-fire barrage of creative swearing. English and cast display a real comfort with this kind of material (this is SF Playhouse’s fourth Girguis play), which drapes its soft heart in the intimations of violence more than the real thing. If the heat and imaginative cursing also seem to cover up for a play with little dramatic purpose beyond a gentle and somewhat pat exploration of loyalty, maturity, and trust, there’s pleasure to be had in the unfolding. (Avila)

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Fri/22, 8pm; Sat/23, 5pm. What, the unapologetically middle-class Brian Copeland asks, is the real meaning behind the phrase "a genuine black man"? By way of an answer, the stand-up comic and KGO radio host offers up a simultaneously funny and disarmingly frank story about growing up African American in the racist suburb that was San Leandro in the early 1970s. Letting his narrative bounce back and forth between his boyhood memories and a period of depression that overtook him as a parent in 1999 — and interlacing the autobiography with verbatim utterances from both sides of the fight his family joined to desegregate the city — Copeland brings admirable chops as a comedian to bear on some difficult and disturbing, if ultimately hopeful, material. Note: review from an earlier run of the same show. (Avila)

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. Lady Bear, Trixie Carr, Heklina, and D’Arcy Drollinger star in this drag tribute to the long-running HBO show.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Extended through March 17. The Amazing Bubble Man (a.k.a. Louis Pearl) continues his family-friendly bubble extravaganza.

You Know When the Men Are Gone Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $30-55. Wed/20-Thu/21, 7pm; Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 3pm. Word for Word mounts two related short stories from the titular collection by Siobhan Fallon about the home-front impact of warfare on the families of an American army base. In The Last Stand, an injured soldier (Chad Deverman) returns home to his young wife (Roselyn Hallett) to find she has decided to leave him. In Gold Star, a wife (Arwen Anderson) learns of her soldier husband’s (Ryan Tasker) death — the officer who died saving the life of the young soldier in the first story. Reeling from grief, she innocently hangs on the words of the young soldier (Deverman) as he comes to visit her. Beautifully designed — with shrewd use of Z Space’s large, potentially engulfing stage by Jacqueline Scott (set), Drew Yerys (lighting, sound), Delia McDougall (costume, props), and Andrea Weber (choreography) — directors Joel Mullennix (Last Stand) and Amy Kossow (Gold Star) show an imaginative command of the material that has made the company’s trademark verbatim staging of literature a viable theatrical undertaking in its own right, with much to admire and ponder in the juxtaposition of words, blocking, characterization, and imagery. Moreover, the ensemble (rounded out by Marilet Martinez and Armando McClain) is very strong, with standout turns from the mutually sympathetic but achingly at-odds characters played by Deverman and Hallett in the first half, and by Anderson’s shattered, erratic, yet highly attuned new widow in the second. As for the stories themselves, certain details of base life (such as the prime parking spaces eerily and crassly allotted widows of soldiers killed in combat) reveal the author’s firsthand knowledge as the wife of an active-duty soldier, adding a sense of authenticity to these intimate, heartfelt, and movingly told stories. Their essentially everyday tragedies, however, remain tightly focused on the subtleties of grief rather than any larger contextualizing of the immediate political and moral dimensions of the American imperial machine in which all characters ultimately serve. That leaves largely intact and unexamined the usual allusions to sacrifice, service, nationhood, duty, and traditional modes of male and female heroism in war, which is perhaps the most distressing thing about these otherwise quietly troubled stories. (Avila)

BAY AREA

The Fourth Messenger Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.thefourthmessenger.com. $23-40. Wed-Thu, 7pm (no show Wed/20); Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through March 10. It’s been some time since a work by local playwright Tanya Shaffer last graced our stages, not since 2005 to be precise, and in keeping with her penchant for multicultural themes, her latest piece, The Fourth Messenger, is a reimagining of the Siddhartha story, written as a musical in collaboration with composer Vienna Teng. Raina (Anna Ishida), a "hungry" journalism intern with a secret agenda, pitches her first scoop — the debunking of a beatific guru named Mama Sid (Annemaria Rajala) — and embeds herself in a meditation retreat where she can get close to the famously private teacher and uncover her past. Neither as humorous or as merciless as Jesus Christ Superstar or as exuberant as Godspell (though the excellent song "Monkey Mind" crackles with wit and trenchant observation, and the tender "Human Experience" genuinely uplifts), Messenger does offer a fairly solid primer to the path of spiritual enlightenment including its all-too-human fallout and sacrifices. The white-on-wood set design by Joe Ragey frames the action in a deceptively delicate layer of gauze and mystery, and the capable ensemble inhabit their multiple roles with ease — from jaded newsies to loyal disciples. Which makes it doubly unfortunate that the jazzy, piano-driven score seems pitched just outside of most of the actor’s ranges, even those of the notably skilled Ishida and Rajala, an admitted distraction for the monkey-minded, which is to say most of us. (Gluckstern)

Our Practical Heaven Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Anthony Clarvoe’s new play receives its world premiere as a 2011 prizewinner in Aurora’s Global Age Project (GAP), which cultivates new work addressing life in the 21st century. In the case of this labored and dull effort, the young century and its anxious outlook come refracted through three generations of women who gather for holidays at a seaside home whose own future is threatened by, first, financial and, ultimately, climatic conditions. Neurotic, self-absorbed Sasha (Anne Darragh) and capable businesswoman Willa (Julia Brothers) are middle-aged best friends forever who grew up in the home of Sasha’s mother (Joy Carlin) and late father. Joining Sasha’s two daughters by separate husbands, Suze (Blythe Foster) and Leez (Adrienne Walters), is Willa’s daughter, Magz (Lauren Spencer), who suffers from a debilitating disease. Despite many personal and generational differences — and a rising conflict over the house — all six women share in a traditional bout of bird watching in this fragile nature "refuge" for bird and human alike. While bird watching supplies the play’s operative metaphors, however, it does little to actually bring these characters together in any compelling or convincing way. In fact, respective backstories are pretty sketchy in general, dialogue strained and broadcasting, and performances correspondingly patchy. The three stage veterans in director Allen McKelvey’s cast — Brothers, Carlin, and Darragh — go furthest toward making Clarvoe’s leaden exposition somewhat buoyant, but the momentary pleasure they provide can’t stem the overall tide. (Avila)

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Analog: New Work by Katharine Hawthorne" Joe Goode Annex, 401 Alabama, SF; analogdance.eventbrite.com. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $15-25. A full evening of choreography inspired by the intersection of art and science.

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Sat/23, 8pm. $20. The company performs "Warp Speed: An Improvised Trek!"

"Comedy Night at the Presidio" Presidio Café and Golf Course, 300 Finley, SF; www.presidiocafe.com. Thu/21, 8pm. $10. With Will Durst, Andrew Holmgren, and host Justin Gomes.

"Dance and Diaspora" ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Fri/22-Sat/23, 8pm. $25-30. Featuring the work of belly dance artist Jill Parker and Afro-Brazilian choreographer Tania Santiago.

"Fabulous Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu/21-Sun/24, 8pm. $20-25. DavEnd’s performance extravaganza promises "singing pink cakes, dancing mirrors, and couture genitalia."

"Killing Me Softly With Jazz Hands" Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; (415) 517-3581. Wed/20, 8pm. $10. Comedian Becky Pedigo performs.

"Megillah 3.0" Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. Sat/23, 7pm, $20. Killing My Lobster launches its online collection of original videos, music, and performance with a Purim carnival, featuring live sketch shows, KML comedy videos, and more.

"Our Voices, Our Stories Play Reading Festival" San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post, SF; www.sfplayhouse.org. Mon/25, 7:30pm. Free. Readings of in-development works Without and Opportunity for Defense and Obeah.

"San Francisco Magic Parlor" Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

"Smack Dab" Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; www.magnetsf.org. Wed/20, 8pm. Free. Open mic featuring Randy Alford.

"Solo Sundays: Family Blend, the Sweet and the Bitter" Stage Werx Theatre, 433 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun/24, 7pm. $12. With Susan Ito, Lisa Marie Rollins, and Zahra Noorbakhsh.

Tanya Bello’s Project. B. and Karen Reedy Dance ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF; www.odcdance.org. Sat/23, 8pm; Sun/24, 7pm. $22. Featuring the world premiere of Bello’s Games We Play(ed).

BAY AREA

"One-Off Wednesdays (or sometimes Two-Off)" Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. Wed/20, 8pm. $15-50. This week: Wayne Harris in The Letter: Martin Luther King at the Crossroads.

Our Weekly Picks: February 13-19, 2013

Andrew Lam
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0

WEDNESDAY 13

Dirty Looks Road Show

How Do I Look? asks a seminal weighty tome addressing queer film and video theory from 1991. “Dirty!” I always wanted to shout back to my dusty bookshelf when it caught my eye. Well, hey — 22 years later along comes NYC’s Dirty Looks collective, which showcases queer experimental film and video with startling freshness. The edgy gems on offer in its two-night visit to SF may have slipped through your Youtube crack. Thu/14’s “Yesterday Once More” at SFMOMA, www.sfmoma.org, gives you contemporary coolness from Matt Wolf, Zachary Drucker, Mariah Garnett, and Chris E. Vargas. Then check out Fri/15’s “Pickle Surprise! The Eyes of Tom Rubnitz” at Artists Television Access, www.atasite.org, which has me jumping for joy — this ’80s underground clubkid, filmmaker, and musician caught the spirit of one of our civilizations most vividly glorious times before he died of AIDS. Legendary drag queens and trashy foodstuffs galore! (Marke B.)

“Yesterday Once More”: Thu/14, 7-9pm, $10

Phyllis Watts Theater, SF MOMA

151 Third St., SF

“Pickle Surprise”: Fri/15, 8pm, $6

992 Valencia, SF

www.dirtylooksnyc.org

 

Comedy! Comedy!

As the name subtlety implies, this event will showcase humor. Hosted by the sardonic upstart comic Cameron Vannini, this event, billed as a standup show for comics and by comics, will be the first ever comedic event at the nascent Chapel, signaling more standup shows in its future. Going up to bat tonight will be an all-local slate featuring Kevin O’Shea, Clare O’Kane, Jules Posner, Sean Keane, Brendan Lynch, and Kevin Camia. O’Shea, O’Kane, Posner, Keane, and Vannini will all be coming fresh off recent gigs at Sketchfest. The blunt and jabbing Camia, whose record Kindness was voted among the top 10 best comedy albums on iTunes in 2010, is a stalwart of the local scene and recently has been rumored to be making “the move” down to LA. A night like this should be the perfect respite for those still pining for Sketchfest. (George McIntire)

9pm, $15

Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com

 

Stone Foxes

Remember rock’n’roll? You know, that dynamic and gritty music before the age of synthesizers? The Stone Foxes show at the New Parish might jog your memory. Launching into experimentation from strong roots in blues, the band plays a range from the catchy interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe’s gothic, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” (“Everybody Knows”) to the elegy in minor, “Battles, Blades and Bones,” which repeats, “We need someone to sing/’Cause we’ve turned everything/To battles, blades, and bones.” In their third album, Little Fires (which came out Feb. 12), collaboration with Girls’ producer Doug Boehm proves that polish doesn’t mean sterility, that good production doesn’t mean overproduction, and that good old rock’n’roll lives on. (Laura Kerry)

With Mahgeetah, Black Cobra Vipers

9pm, free

New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

(510) 444-7474

www.thenewparish.com


THURSDAY 14

“The Algorithm of Love”

Sam Yagan might be as qualified as anyone to decipher the formula for love. Yagan and his three Harvard classmates founded the online dating site OKCupid as a spin off from the Spark Notes study guides they created at the turn of the millennium. Since then, Internet matchmaking has become a booming business, and Yagan and Co. capitalized in 2011 by selling OKCupid to rival Match.com. Yagan, now Match.com’s CEO, uses data from 8 million users to quantify the unquantifiable, to dissect what exactly goes into fuzzy feelings and unexplainable attractions. Bay Area matchmaker Joy Nordenstrom and SFGate blogger Beth Spotswood will be on hand to help translate the love equation. (Kevin Lee)

6:30pm, $7–$20

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

www.commonwealthclub.org

 

The Wooster Group/New York City Players: Early Plays

However it pans out as a performance, this has to be one of the theatrical events of the year: A rare Bay Area appearance by the famed Wooster Group in collaboration with another NY-based contemporary experimental theater company of renown, Richard Maxwell’s New York City Players. Maxwell directs members of both companies in a trio of “Early Plays” by Eugene O’Neill —three one-acts also known as the Glencairn plays, after the ship on which work the men of Moon of the Caribbees, Bound East for Cardiff, and The Long Voyage Home. Each unfolds in the director’s emblematic affectless style, which seeks out the unfamiliar beneath layers of received theatricality and, in the case of these young yet also experimental plays, lingering melodrama. (Robert Avila)

Through Sat/16, 8pm, $20–$30 ($10 Thu/14)

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

750 Folsom, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

Feed Me with Teeth

Britain’s Jon Gooch has many alter egos. He’s a producer and a DJ, he’s Spor and he’s Feed Me. No matter what the role or the moniker, however, Gooch remains constant and consistent in his creation of unrelentingly catchy electro and yes, dubstep. Teeth, Gooch’s newest creation, is the element that pushes Feed Me’s act over the line from just another EDM act and into the realm of a truly spectacular performance that’s going to keep you talking about it for quite a while. The Teeth are comprised of 20 jagged LED screens that create a huge, crooked grin that flashes and pulses in sync with Feed Me’s expert mixing. Dancing shoes required, party provided. (Haley Zaremba)

With Mord Fustang

9pm, $38

Regency Ballroom

1300 Van Ness, SF

www.theregencyballroom.com

 

Body Cartography: Symptom

Last time Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad’s Body Cartography Project performed locally downtown, it was difficult to tell the dancers apart from the mingling pedestrians. Shortly after that the company left its home turf of SF for greener pastures, Minneapolis, as it turned out. From there Body Cartography has taken its expanded investigations of physicality — both geographically and the mediums within which it works — around the globe. For its return engagement as part of CounterPULSE’s Queer Series (running through March), Body Cartography is bringing a relatively small group, Ramstad with sibling Emmett. One is a dancer, the other a visual artist. They look very much alike; they are even dressed alike. They have called what they do Symptom, a work they say is “sculpture, drawing, movement and text.” (Rita Felciano)

8pm, $20-30

Also Feb. 15-17

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(877) 297-6805

www.counterpulse.org


FRIDAY 15

“Engulfing the Elusory”

Here are some of the themes that the sculptures of Rachel Mica Weiss undertake: human vulnerability, large-scale disasters, self-inflicted limitations. Does an image come to mind? I’m guessing that it does not resemble Weiss’s black net installations. But when you see the twisted rope, the rough stones, and the tarnished wood that comprise Weiss’s previous work, idea and object click. The artist condenses so much conceptual work into physical pieces of inexplicable poignancy. Let’s throw a few more themes in: boundaries, environmental change, cultural constructs. All of it will be on view in the windows of the Arts Commission Gallery. (Kerry)

Through April 27

6pm, free

SF Arts Commission Gallery

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 554-6080

sfartscommission.org/gallery

 

 

Every Time I Die

The metal life isn’t for everyone. Constant touring, an over-crowded industry, and headbang whiplash causes many bands to give up their brutal dream early into their career. Buffalo, NY’s Every Time I Die isn’t one of those bands. ETID has been churning out its distinctive Southern-tinged hardcore since 1998. Six studio albums, a billion bassists, and a tour with Steve-O later, the Buckley brothers are still going strong. Incredibly, their high-energy live show has shown no signs of fatigue in well over a decade, and their reputation for intensity continues to be well-earned. Come for the snarky lyrics and clever songwriting, stay for the circle pit. (Zaremba)

With the Acacia Strain, Vanna, Hundreth, No Bragging Rights

8pm, $17

Oakland Metro Operahouse

630 Third St, Oakl.

(510) 763-1146

www.oaklandmetro.org


“Hip-Hop Beyond Gender”

My first compact disc was Salt ‘N Pepa’s masterful ode to minding one’s business, safe sex, and superlative/godawful male companions, 1993’s Very Necessary. Imagine my confusion, then, upon my discovery that the rest of the hip-hop world was hardly as empowering for females as that power-sass had led me to believe. But hip-hop has always been a site of subversion, where societal rules are flipped, and so it makes perfect since that some day, its lovers would take back the form from the silly misogynists on the Billboard charts. So, yay: tonight, nu-world griots Aya De Leon, Raquel Gutierrez, Chinaka Hodge, Carrie Leilam Love, Dawn Robinson, and Kity Yan examine hip-hop’s queer-feminist revolutionary potential through spoken word. It’s the first of five La Peña events in 2013 focused on breaking down hip-hop’s gender barriers. (Caitlin Donohue)

8pm, $15–$18

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

www.lapena.org

 

Ott and the All-Seeing I

If you’re into dub, electronic, Middle Eastern, and psychedelic sounds, you must meet Ott. Ott — a veteran electronic British musician-producer who has worked with big names like Sinéad O’Connor, Brian Eno, and Simon Posford (Shpongle) — makes rich, ambient, trancey electronic dub jams under the moniker Ott and the All-Seeing I. “Owl Stretching Time,” one of the band’s signature tracks, could just as easily be the anthem to a Jamaican surf trip as the soundtrack to a night out in Berlin. Ott handles electronics alongside Naked Nick (guitars, synths, percussion), bassist Chris Barker, and drummer Matt White. (Mia Sullivan)

With KiloWatts, Desert Dwellers, Outersect

10pm, $15

1015 Folsom, SF

(415) 264-1015

www.1015folsom.com


MONDAY 18

Buke and Gase

Before we begin, let’s establish a few definitions. Buke: an altered six-string baritone banjo. Gase: a blend of a guitar and bass. Surely, a band that carries its own invented glossary approaches music differently. Arone Dyer and Aron Sanchez, the duo that with its homemade instruments manages to sound more like an offbeat orchestra, alters language, genre, and the overall assumptions of the listener. The driving cacophony in the recently released General Dome shouldn’t make sense. Somehow, though, with Dyer’s expressive singing, the building repetition of sounds, and the band’s confidence in its own inventiveness, it all comes together. See Dyer and Sanchez create their own rules at Café Du Nord. (Kerry)

With Aleuchatistas, Yassou Benedict

9pm, $10

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016 

www.cafedunord.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Festival of festivals

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Festival of festivals

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER The chill air had no snow in it. Instead, a particularly nasty outbreak of influenza whipped through the city, leaving a fine coating of mucus on the ground. Still, New York City looked beautiful as the various performing arts festivals that cluster around the annual meeting of APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Presenters) all revved up for a fat two weeks of shows this January.

These festivals, pitched to out-of-town-presenters and general audiences alike, include Under the Radar (an international but New York– and American-heavy program at the Public Theater), PS122’s Coil festival (specializing in theater but including some contemporary dance and performance), American Realness (a concentrated dose of leading contemporary dance/performance on the Lower East Side), Other Forces (a program of new independent theater presented by Incubator Arts Project, itself originally a program of Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theater), and the brand new Prototype festival (whose niche is new, chamber-sized opera-theater).

Under the Radar is the daddy of them all. Founded by longtime new-work maven Mark Russell (formerly of PS122) and now in its ninth year, Under the Radar has become more concentrated of late, partly in reaction to the other specialized festivals that have cropped up alongside it.

Festival director Russell described the trajectory in a recent phone conversation. “It’s a very interesting time, because by the ninth year you’re a fact on the landscape. People are beginning to take you for granted,” he said with a laugh. “Yes, there are a lot of other festivals now; it’s sort of become festival central in these two weeks in January, which is a little crazy, and I don’t recommend it. But it has created its own scene, in a way. I think that’s great. We started out trying to be big and trying to encircle a lot of the work that was going on downtown and around the world. Now, I’ve actually shrunk the festival to be more surgical and specific. Two years ago we were doing 21 things, and this year we’re doing 12, which feels more comfortable and better. We’re trying to go deeper in each of these performances and support them better, and let other people curate their way with the other festivals as well.”

UTR’s program this year included premieres by some leading American new-work companies, including Philadelphia-based Pig Iron (whose Chekhov Lizardbrain came to San Francisco as part of the 2011 FURY Factory Theater Festival). Pig Iron’s Zero Cost House is a simply but shrewdly staged, intriguingly unexpected collaboration with Japanese novelist-playwright Toshiki Okada (founder of theater company Chelfitsch). It unfolds an autobiographical dialogue between the younger and the present-day Okada over Thoreau’s Walden across a shifting set of actors and related characters (including a downbeat and down-at-the-heel Thoreau). Its po-faced humor belies an ultimately serious exploration of enduring ideas about our relation to society, political commitment, and art’s function amid the insanity of a status quo represented by the overwhelming indifference to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. This was a stimulating call to thought and imagination as nothing less than action toward survival.

Questions about art’s social role and power, as well as the lines joining the mundane to the great political and narrative arcs of the age, ran through much more work besides. One of the fresher, quietly unsettling surprises in this respect was Australian company Back to Back’s brilliantly staged Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, a deceptively low-key exploration of power and marginality by a five-member ensemble that includes actors with varying mental and physical disabilities. On a largely bare stage repeatedly transformed by large transparent curtains into a gorgeous shadowbox landscape of mythological proportions, the riveting cast plays out its own inner turmoil along an extremely subtle line separating the ridiculous and the profound, meanwhile complicating our perception of what is in fact real.

In a highly anticipated offering, New York’s Nature Theater of Oklahoma premiered eight hours worth of its Soho Rep–produced opus Life and Times (Episodes 1-4) — more episodes are apparently forthcoming — which channels the verbatim childhood reminiscences (replete with uhs, ums, likes, whatevers, and oh-my-gods) of a middle-class American 30-something (company member Kristen Worrall) through an evolving set of choreographed, highly stylized, mostly-musical ensemble performances. Again, as directed by founders Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska, the banal is elevated to the level of the epic, but in a precious and ironic way that, for all its precision and the seriousness of its core idea, leaves one feeling mostly empty, bored, and frayed by the text’s endless assault of half-articulate and overly familiar riffs on family, friends, awkwardness, first kisses, religion, and so on. With the dialogue divvied up among an entire ensemble in coordinated outfits, vocal harmonies, and group dance steps, we’re being made to hear again what we hear all the time, which invites certain revelations, but they seemed precious little compensation for the tedium of it all.

Further downtown at American Realness, where founder Ben Pryor’s astute gathering of contemporary dance-performance is now in its fourth year, there was much greater and subtler impact to be had from a slim hour spent in a largely unadorned room with performance maker Jeanine Durning. She also set forth a barrage of speech, a continuous stream of consciousness that touched on many subjects and her own self-consciousness, but in that simple score came a powerful emotional encounter and myriad questions about language, communication, reason, madness, art, and subversion that left the audience slightly stunned and reeling in their chairs.

American Realness had its much-hyped disappointments as well, in particular Trajal Harrell’s Antigone Sr., a self-conscious and dull three-hour riff on fashion and voguing that is part of his seven-part opus, Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church, which sets out to explore a dialogue between the post-modern dance movement of 1960s Greenwich Village and the voguing scene taking place uptown in the same era. A provocative enough project, but this piece had little to recommend in terms of ideas or movement.

There were more modestly-scaled but far more engaging works to be found at American Realness this year, including Miguel Gutierrez’s collaboration with Mind Over Mirrors (musician Jaime Fennelly), Storing the Winter, a supple, sinewy and raucous solo dance-for-keeps; and Faye Driscoll’s dynamic, ecstatically unhinged duet, You’re Me, which comes to SF’s CounterPULSE in March. While BodyCartography Project’s Super Nature (co-presented with the Coil festival) was a mixed success, it nevertheless made me want to see them again when they bring Symptom (also to CounterPULSE) in February. Another AR offering not to be missed is Frankfurt-based American and former Forsythe dancer Anthony Rizzi’s hilarious, ridiculously reasonable, and super-shrewd An Attempt to Fail at Groundbreaking Theater with Pina Arcade Smith, which plays locally at Kunst-Stoff Arts Feb. 7–9. *

 

Our Weekly Picks: January 30-February 5

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 30

Testament

Bay Area thrash metal legend Testament has been unleashing its sonic assault, and inspiring untold legions of fans, for nearly 30 years now. Propelled by the powerful lead single “Native Blood,” which draws from singer Chuck Billy’s Native American roots and experiences, the band’s newest album, Dark Roots of Earth (Nuclear Blast) was released last summer, and features the band’s signature frenzied formula for pit-inducing anthems. With longtime members Eric Peterson, Greg Christian, and Alex Skolnick joined by former Death drummer Gene Hoglan, don’t miss the band as it kicks off a new titanic tour right here in the city. (Sean McCourt)

With Overkill, 4Arm, the Butlers

6:45pm, $32.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com

 

Local Natives

Local Natives stole our collective hearts in 2009 with their self-funded debut Gorilla Manor, an irresistible slice of unearthly folk rock, before cruelly fading into the background. Finally, four years later, they’ve resurfaced with a sophomore effort, Hummingbird. Though the Orange Country-bred group recorded the album in Brooklyn, the California sunshine still shines through its meandering, ethereal soundscapes. The band’s songs draw heavily from indie peers Grizzly Bear and Fleet Foxes, but manage to add a refreshing, summery glow to the reverb-heavy pop murk. The album, which was produced by Aaron Dessner of the National, promises to translate well to a live format, keeping the band’s trademarked harmonies in place while also allowing vocalist Kelcey Ayer’s dreamy falsetto to soar. (Haley Zaremba)

With Superhumanoids

8pm, $25

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakland

(510) 302-2250

www.thefoxoakland.com


THURSDAY 31

“The Eyes: San Francisco Beat Film” If you’ve already read Dharma Bums, had a drink at Vesuvio’s, or paid homage to Beat culture in the number of other ways available in San Francisco, here’s something different. Beat artists such as Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman, and ruth weiss made movies that captured the living, breathing world of their generation. Complementing the Jay DeFeo retrospective (on view until February 2), the five short films that SFMOMA will screen tonight are intriguing not only as historical documents, but also as an expansion of the artistic vocabulary of dislocation and spontaneity that contribute to the Beat Generation’s continuing allure. (Laura Kerry)

7pm, $10

SFMOMA, Phyllis Wattis Theater

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

 

Geographer

As a fiercely dedicated San Franciscan, I often feel obligated to rep local acts and tout their worth over artists from, say, Los Angeles. Out of all our hometown heroes, however, few deserve my praise as much as the wonderfully spaced-out indie outfit Geographer. The trio combines digital, analog, and a bit of experimentation to create gorgeous, lush pop songs that break the mold while still managing to stick in your head. Though Geographer has racked up a fair amount of buzz both locally and nationally over five years, it somehow continues to be one of the Bay Area’s best-kept secrets. So throw on your Niners jersey, pedal your fixie to the Fillmore, and show your SF pride by shoegazing your heart out. (Zaremba)

With Midi Matilda, ON AN ON

8pm, $20

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-6000

www.thefillmore.com


FRIDAY 1

“Ice Cream Girl”

It’ll be like a Lisa Frank trapper-keeper, come to life. Paint Pens in Purses, an all-female urban art collective, will present its newest collection this weekend: “Ice Cream Girl” — a blend of “urban, contemporary, and low-brow artwork” created by lady-artists from across the country. There will be Lauren Max’s photography, works by Tofusquirrel, who brings vibrant, cartoonish ice cream critters (with cheeky names like Mr. Pattymint Cone, and Sherby Sprinkles); and colorful drawings by curator Shayna Yasuhara, among works by other artists. Oh, and Paint Pens in Purses will raffle off four of Dayna Gilbert and Yasuhara’s two-foot-tall ice cream buddies. Plush! Plus, this thing has free drinks. (Emily Savage)

8pm, free

D-Structure

520 Haight, SF

www.paintpensinpurses.com

 

Killers

Don’t go to see Killers if you want a smoothly polished performance. Do go to observe two deeply-thinking artists, Jesse Hewit and Laura Arrington, work on finding a vehicle to tackle questions as fundamental as living and dying. The performance is likely to be rough, messy, and fierce. Don’t be surprised if some of it also looks fragile, that’s the nature of living — and performing. Hewit and Arrington —calling themselves Jarry for this project — have worked alongside one another, but separately for several years. Now their energies are flowing together for what at this point is a two-act creation: first a funeral, than a killing. Originally, they had called the project Adult — perhaps not very sexy, but accurately describing the two of them and what they do. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sun/3, 8pm

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission St., SF

$10-30

www.counterpulse.org

 

Life and Death Label Showcase

I spent a couple weeks of the new year coveting Mexico’s BPM festival; not just the beaches of Playa del Carmen, but some talent-packed, label-centric showcases. Particularly the one from Italy’s Life and Death, an upstart label that’s forging a deep-dug sound somewhere between the soulful, well-paced grooves of NYC’s Wolf+Lamb collective, and the smart, deep tech of Germany’s Kompakt. Luckily, label founder DJ Tennis is taking a scenic trip back to Rome, stopping in town for a stacked lineup that includes ever-playful Thugfucker, Berlin’s rising duo Tale of Us, and SF’s own PillowTalk. With each act individually known for putting its own spin on the party, expectations here are high. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Jimmy Edgar, Adnan Sharif

9pm, $15

Mezzanine

444 Jessie, SF

(415) 625-8880

www.mezzaninesf.com

 

w00tstock

Geeks were picked on for generations. With the advent of the 21st century computer age and mainstream successes of all manner of tech-related products, and even the acceptance of watching sci-fi and reading comic books, we can now proudly come together for a celebration of our collective nerdiness! Join Adam Savage from Mythbusters, Wil Wheaton from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and singers Paul and Storm for a night of comedy, music, readings, and much more — all embracing geek pride. Be sure to think of clever cover band names and prepare for double-entendre sing-alongs about sailors, because when it comes to being one of the funniest groups of geeks around, they sure ARRGHH! (McCourt)

7pm, $35.

Marines Memorial Theatre

609 Sutter, Second Floor, SF

www.sfsketchfest.com


SATURDAY 2

Driss Ouadah

In Fences IV, Algerian artist Driss Ouadahi depicts a hazy sky with pink-tinted clouds behind the delicate geometry of a fence. Sounds picturesque, right? But the chain-links expand to the borders of the canvas, trapping and disorienting the viewer. In “Trans-Location,” the artist’s latest show largely comprised of cityscape paintings, Ouadahi builds on this tension between promise and enclosure. The gridded and abstracted architectural spaces invite the viewer in but ultimately fail to allow them passage or clarity. Viewable from the comparatively accessible architectural space of Hosfelt Gallery, the works enacts an elegant commentary on modernity’s failure to deliver its political and social promises. And the paintings look cool too. (Kerry)

Through Mar. 23

Reception 4-6pm, free

Hosfelt Gallery

260 Utah, SF

(415) 495-5454

www.hosfeltgallery.com

 

Adam Green and Binki Shapiro

Opposites do attract. Adam Green is a so-called “anti-folk” Manhattanite with an extensive catalog of foul-mouthed, tongue-in-cheek ballads and admirably humble beginnings as Kimya Dawson’s counterpart in the Moldy Peaches. Binki Shapiro hails from LA, is a retro fashion icon and former member of Brazilian-American supergroup Little Joy, along with her ex-boyfriend and Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti. The duo’s vastly different backgrounds and musical leanings don’t seem compatible at first glance, but in practice they blend beautifully. During the writing of the record, both Green and Shapiro were going through romantic rough patches, which ultimately pushed the musicians to help write each other’s breakup albums, creating a finished product rife with earnestness and vulnerability. (Zaremba)

With the Range of Light Wilderness

9pm, $18

The Chapel

777 Valencia, SF

(415) 551-5157

www.thechapelsf.com


SUNDAY 3

Vieux Farka Toure

It should be enough to say that Vieux Farka Touré follows the footsteps of his father, the late, Grammy-winning Ali, or that he’s known as “the Hendrix of the Sahara.” But not quite. In “Gido (featuring John Scofield)” — yes, of jazz-rock fame — an acoustic guitar expertly noodles in a Malian scale, a bend on an electric cues bass and drums, then the two guitars continue to converse. It’s tempting to fashion this into some metaphor about the melding of African music and Western rock, and though this wouldn’t be misplaced, the main takeaway from “Gido” and the whole album, The Secret (2011), is that it sounds great. As Yoshi’s will prove, Touré creates his own breed of music, and he does it well. (Kerry)

With Markus James

7pm, $25

Yoshi’s

1330 Fillmore, SF

(415) 655-5600

www.yoshis.com

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Stage Listings

Andrew Lam
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0

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

THEATER

OPENING

Not a Genuine Black Man Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $25-50. Opens Fri/1, 8pm. Runs Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm (Sat/2, show at 8pm). Through Feb 23. What, the unapologetically middle-class Brian Copeland asks, is the real meaning behind the phrase “a genuine black man”? By way of an answer, the stand-up comic and KGO radio host offers up a simultaneously funny and disarmingly frank story about growing up African American in the racist suburb that was San Leandro in the early 1970s. Letting his narrative bounce back and forth between his boyhood memories and a period of depression that overtook him as a parent in 1999 — and interlacing the autobiography with verbatim utterances from both sides of the fight his family joined to desegregate the city — Copeland brings admirable chops as a comedian to bear on some difficult and disturbing, if ultimately hopeful, material. Note: review from an earlier run of the same show. (Avila)

You Know When the Men Are Gone Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.zspace.org. $30-55. Previews Wed/30-Thu/31, 7pm; Fri/1, 8pm. Opens Sat/2, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Feb 24. Word for Word performs two short stories by Siobhan Fallon (the author, not the film actor): “The Last Stand” and “Gold Star.”

ONGOING

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Buriel Clay Theater at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-15. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Feb 17. African-American Shakespeare Company performs Tennessee Williams’ Pulitzer-winning classic.

Dear Harvey New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 24. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Patricia Loughrey’s play about Harvey Milk, drawn from over 30 interviews.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

4000 Miles Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-150. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 8pm; Tue, 7pm. Through Feb 10. ACT performs Amy Herzog’s comedy about growing up and growing old, and the moments in between.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma, SF; www.boxcartheatre.org. $25-40. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 5pm). Through March 2. Hold onto your hairpiece, Boxcar Theatre is reprising their all-too short summer run of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and just in case you think you saw it already, be forewarned — you ain’t seen nothing yet. Recast, redesigned, and re-vamped, this outcast-rock musical familiarly follows the misadventures of one Hedwig Robinson (né Hansel Schmidt) with glam, guts, and glitter. But unlike the movie version penned by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as the titular chanteuse, or other staged versions, director Nick A. Olivero splits the larger-than-life, would-be rock sensation into eight different characters, who are each given a solo turn as well as plenty of ensemble harmonizing during the course of the two hour-plus performance. The effect is often electric, and just as frequently hilarious, as when the four female actors playing the role stomp across the stage swinging imaginary dicks in the air to the lyric “six inches forward and five inches back, I got a, I got an angry inch!” Supported by a tight quartet of rock musicians led by Rachel Robinson, and the phenomenal Amy Lizardo as Hedwig’s beleaguered “man Friday” Yitzhak, Hedwig keeps on extending for what appears to be an indefinite run, employing the time-honored Thrillpeddlers’ tradition of rotating cast members and comeback performances, which means you could theoretically go multiple times and never see quite the same show twice. I certainly plan to. (Gluckstern)

The Little Foxes Tides Theatre, 533 Sutter, SF; www.tidestheatre.org. $20-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 23. Tides Theatre Company performs a modern take on the Lillian Hellman classic.

Se Llama Cristina Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.magictheatre.org. $22-60. Opens Wed/30, 8pm. Runs Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/2 and Feb 13, 2:30pm); Sun, 2:30pm. Magic Theatre performs the world premiere of Octavio Solis’ multi-layered drama.

Manic Pixie Dream Girl ACT Costume Shop Theater, 1117 Market, SF; www.manicpixiedreamgirl.org. $25-35. Thu-Sun, 8pm. Through Feb 10. Billed as a “graphic-novel” play, first-time playwright Katie May’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl reaches out to a demographic frequently left out of the theatrical conversation — the geek chic, 20-something set. Marrying projected panels of black-and-white graphic novel-style drawings with dialogue and action provided by the actors onstage, this PlayGround co-production attempts to combine two very different mediums into a smooth narrative, a rocky but valiant effort. Much of the live action appears cartoonish rather than nuanced, and the two central protagonists — struggling painter and wannabe graphic novel artist Tallman (Joshua Roberts) and his new muse Lilly (Lyndsy Kail), a waifish mute with pockets full of candy wrappers chance-met in his neighborhood dive bar — are awkwardly incomplete ciphers. If you’re looking for the depth of detail and the visual impact of a Transmetropolitan or a Berlin, you won’t find it in MPDG, but what you will get is a glad eyeful of Rob Dario’s striking graphics, and some impeccable support acting courtesy of Lucas Hatton (who plays several welcome roles including a buttinsky, bro of a bartender and a “evil” real estate agent with all the charm and smarm of an overgrown frat boy), Liz Anderson’s bitch-queen supernova ex-girlfriend, and Michal Barrett Austin’s winsome cynicism as Tallman’s best buddy. (Gluckstern)

Princess Ivona Performance Art Institute, 75 Boardman, SF; www.thecollectedworks.org. $20-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Feb 9. The first play by the great Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz (1904-1969) receives its first professional Northern California production in this admittedly uneven, sometimes sluggish but always intelligent and frequently inspired staging by newcomers the Collected Works. Set in the foyer and back room of co-presenter Performing Art Institute’s spacious SOMA warehouse, the action — peppered throughout by old-time American ballads enchantingly rendered by musician-singer Meredith Axelrod — initially unfolds amid an audience milling around a pond. There a haughty prince (the sharp, charismatic Ryan Tacata) and his aristo pals make sport of the plebs until the Prince takes things too far by impetuously proposing marriage to a slow, anemic, deeply dull and disheveled young woman, the anti-heroine of the title (played with a moody lethargy and savage intelligence by Tonyanna Borkovi). As the audience and the characters, including the worried King (Barry Kendall) and Queen (Florentina Mocanu-Schendel), all retire to the court, the presence of Ivona becomes a catalyst for the unsettling of ill-feelings, bad memories, and ugly impulses formerly buried beneath a surface of the luxury, grandeur, and privilege of the beautiful people. The absurdity of their lives revealed, how will harmony be restored? Astutely staged by director and company-cofounder Michael Hunter, with excellent design support — including from costumer Latifa Medjdoub — this captivating play makes for a worthwhile outing and a very promising company debut. (Avila)

“Risk Is This…The Cutting Ball New Experimental Plays Festival” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. Free ($20 for reserved seating; $50 for five-play reserved seating festival pass). Through Feb 9. Three new works (by Sean San José, Dipika Guha, and Basil Kreimendahl) and two new “Risk Translations.”

Sex and the City: LIVE! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; trannyshack.com/sexandthecity. $25. Wed, 7 and 9pm. Open-ended. Lady Bear, Trixie Carr, Heklina, and D’Arcy Drollinger star in this drag tribute to the long-running HBO show.

SF Sketchfest: The San Francisco Comedy Festival Various venues, SF; www.sfsketchfest.com. Ticket prices vary according to event. Through Feb 10. The popular fest returns for its 12th year, featuring an array of comedy programs including tributes to Portlandia, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, and Bruce Campbell; a series of Reggie Watts performances; film screenings; sketch and improv shows; and more.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am. Extended through March 17. The Amazing Bubble Man (a.k.a. Louis Pearl) continues his family-friendly bubble extravaganza.

BAY AREA

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Extended through Feb 17. Lynne Kaufman’s new play stars Warren David Keith as the noted spiritual figure.

Hippy Icon, Flower Geezer and Temple of Accumulated Error Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Feb 10. Wavy Gravy holds forth on his legendary life and times.

Our Practical Heaven Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Previews Wed/30, 8pm. Opens Thu/31, 8pm. Runs Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through March 3. Aurora Theatre Company presents the world premiere of Anthony Clarvoe’s play about a family that gathers in a home they’ll soon lose due to a rising sea.

Somewhere Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 10. TheatreWorks performs Matthew Lopez’s play about a 1960s Puerto Rican family caught up in the filming of West Side Story.

Troublemaker, or the Freakin Kick-A Adventures of Bradley Boatwright Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-77. Wed/30 and Sun/3, 7pm (also Sun/3, 2pm); Thu/31-Sat/2, 8pm (also Sat/2, 2pm). Berkeley Rep presents the world premiere of a play — about a 12-year-old wannabe superhero — it commissioned from writer Dan LeFranc.

Waiting for Godot Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-52. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/2 and Feb 16, 2pm; Feb 7, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Feb 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Samuel Beckett’s modern classic.

The Wild Bride Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $35-89. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm). Through Feb 17. Berkeley Rep performs a return engagement of Emma Rice’s grown-up fairy tale.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Adult” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/1-Sun/3, 8pm. $10-30. Performance duo Jarry (Jesse Hewit and Laura Arrington) present a new, two-act work.

“Cabaret Showcase Showdown, Year #4: Contest for Best Comedic Cabaret Act” Martuni’s, 4 Valencia, SF; (415) 241-0205. Sun/3, 7pm. With up-and-coming acts judged by Lisa Geduldig, Trauma Flintstone, and Katya Smirnoff-Skye, plus guest performer Darlene Popovic.

“David Mills is Smart Casual” Stage Werx, 446 Valencia, SF; www.thevisibletheater.org. Sun/3, 8pm. $12. the comedian performs.

“In a Room Full of Strangers” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/30-Thu/31, 8pm. $10-20. Erik Wagner presents a new dance-theater work.

“In and Out of Shadow” Marsh, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. Sat/2, 5pm; Sun/3, 3pm; Feb 8-9, 8pm (also Feb 9, 2pm); Feb 10 and 17, 3pm; Feb 16, 2pm. $12-35. Marsh Youth Theater’s teen troupe performs Gary Soto’s musical play, based on oral histories gathered by the young actors themselves.

“The One Year Anniversary and Sweetheart Edition of The News” SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; somarts.org/thenews. Tue/5, 7:30pm. $5. The new and experimental performance works series celebrates its first anniversary with hosts WithLove and Peter Max Lawrence, plus performers Peter Griggs with Aurora Switchblade, Lambert, Erin Malley, and more.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

“San Francisco Symphony Lunar New Year Concert and Celebration” Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness, SF; www.sfsymphony.org. Sat/2, 4pm. $25-72. Celebrate the Lunar New Year and Year of the Snake with pre-concert festivities (3pm) including lion dancing and children’s arts and crafts, followed by a performance of traditional Asian music and orchestral works composed by Asian and Asian American artists.

“[title of show]” Band Candy Theatre Company, 125A Hyde, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 2pm. $18. Band Candy performs a musical about … two guys writing a musical.

New steps

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New steps

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER/DANCE Choreographer Mary Armentrout’s itinerant, site-specific performance installation, reveries and elegies, passed through CounterPULSE last weekend. A post-solstice meditation on dislocation and flux, it was also the harbinger of a striking new season at the SOMA performance incubator. In fact, reveries and elegies, true to its theme of displacement, can be considered the odd one out among programming whose defining structure is the duet.

A broad range of interpretation and subversion of that basic form comprises CounterPULSE’s Queer Series, running January through March and showcasing new work from artists as diverse and far-flung as New York’s Faye Driscoll, the Minneapolis-based BodyCartography Project, San Francisco’s Annie Danger, Berlin-based American Jeremy Wade, and conjoined local choreographic dynamo Jarry (aka Jesse Hewit and Laura Arrington).

If you’ve followed the vicissitudes of programming at CounterPULSE even intermittently, a glance at this year’s calendar prompts a double take for the careful concentration of work and the thematic consistency it evinces, in addition to its impressive international lineup. The rigorous queering of the duet structure underlined by the series, for instance, comes further elaborated through complimentary work like DavEnd’s well-received 2012 debut, F.A.G.G.O.T.S.: the Musical! (which turns on a duet of sorts with a wall mirror) as well as some rich auxiliary events.

The latter include a talk on gender by Judith Butler (on February 16) and, on February 28 (the eve of Danger’s genuflection to sexual healing and empowerment, The Great Church of the Holy Fuck), a screening of Community Action Center (2010), the aesthetically and politically astute, 69-minute, queer, trans, women-centered celebration/subversion of 1970s porn by A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner. (That program includes a post-screening Q&A with Steiner, whose film was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art).

The duet form (and the act of reimagining it) is an apt metaphor for the programming model behind the season too, which represents something of a departure from business as usual.

CounterPULSE’s Julie Phelps, central in the development of the season and currently serving as interim artistic and executive director for Jessica Robinson Love (who is on sabbatical), explained that the Queer Series and the season as a whole had emerged from some serious rethinking at the organizational level.

“We were sort of primed to embark on this new season, which [comes directly] after our strategic planning process, where we really identified who we are, how we do what we do, and what limits we still have on our impact.”

Phelps says one limit they identified was a single-minded commitment to the bottom line that was keeping certain kinds of work almost permanently out of reach — for example, much work by touring artists from out of the state or country, for which there is relatively little foundational money available for tapping.

“We’re actually, financially, a very conservative organization,” says Phelps, “which has brought with it a lot of stability — very important especially in the young years of an organization, but ultimately stopping us from taking risk on vision. We were always on a break-even model. Either it needs to be some mix of foundation support or some other kind of funding with some tickets sales. The bottom line always has to equal zero. So we’ve been pushing ourselves to think bigger about the types of risks that we can take.”

That’s far from inviting recklessness, Phelps stresses, but it does mean modifying notions of financial success and failure, bringing them in line with an artistic spirit of experimentation and what might be thought of as the useful flop.

“Actually, failure is just as valid a result as success,” says Phelps. “When we had been building failure out of every income model we had, we’d also been building out risk from some of the artistic selections, and from the way we were making artistic selections. We’ve really only just recently moved into curating in the first place. Before we were like, we have a space, if you want to do a show, come ask us and we’ll work it out. [In this] season, every artist was someone we approached and worked with, found out ways that they could intersect with CounterPULSE, what was financially viable for us and for them, what was artistically interesting for us and for them — actually build something from the inside out, instead of the outside in.”

Despite the considerate design in the program, Phelps calls it more art than science and insists it’s all “still a very organic process,” noting that the queer label is at least partly one of sheer convenience.

“I mean, ‘queer’ is basically the only banner that you could fly over that season, and only because it is so indistinct — because actually each of these works is hugely different. So there’s still a patchwork element to it, but it’s a little bit more deliberate [than usual],” she explains, laughing at the metaphor carrying her away. “At least the patches were picked out, and the fabric was cut to shape before they were added to the quilt this time.” *

www.counterpulse.org

 

Our Weekly Picks: January 9-15

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 9

RADAR Reading Series

Like a literary-focused Parisian salon, but with vibrant SF genderfucking and homemade desserts, this monthly showcase of emerging, underground writers and artists is routinely the most enticing potpourri of need-to-know talent. The RADAR Reading Series is part of local treasure/Sister Spit(ter) Michelle Tea’s nonprofit, RADAR Productions. This time, there’s visual artist D-L Alvarez, Gaga Feminism author Jack Halberstam (who writes often of gender queerness, pop culture, and bad TV), transnational interdisciplinary artist and cultural organizer Favianna Rodriguez, and author Grace Krilanovich — whose 2010 debut novel, The Orange Eats Creep,was named one of Amazon’s top science fiction/fantasy books that year. With Tea hosting the follow-up Q&A, you know there will be cookies on hand. (Emily Savage)

6pm, free

San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch

Latino Reading Room

100 Larkin, SF

www.radarproductions.org


THURSDAY 10

“Unknown but Knowable States”

Dorothea Tanning’s surreal paintings provide a window into the female subconscious with as much style and punch as her male contemporaries. There will be a few of these crisp, symbolic painting in the upcoming exhibit, Known but Unknowable States, but it will also show a different side of her work — one that could easily fit in with ethereal figure painting seen in contemporary art. The most striking works are what she called “prism” paintings, which twist the female form into abstract visions with soft brushwork and unique color combinations. To go along with these will be some of her soft sculptures of strange creatures made of fabric, fur, and a sewing machine. (Molly Champlin)

Through March 2

Opening reception, 5pm, free

Gallery Wendi Norris

161 Jessie, SF

(415) 346-7812

www.gallerywendinorris.com

 

The Art and Legacy of Crime Photographer Weegee

It should come as no surprise that Eddie Muller took a shining to the work of 1930s and ’40s press photographer Arthur Fellig, a.k.a. Weegee. Muller’s the founder of the SF Noir Film Festival, whose hardboiled flicks go perfectly with Weegee’s steely-gazed shots of crime scenes. The photographer is widely credited with bringing aesthetic concern to crime scene photography. Today, Muller explains why the man’s work still matters now, in the era of Instagram and meme mania, with this talk, punctuated by video interludes. (Caitlin Donohue)

6:30-8pm, $5

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

(415) 655-7800

www.thecjm.org


FRIDAY 11

“Risk is This…”

If you want to see what Cutting Ball Theatre’s next season might look like, you’d do well to check out this season’s new experimental plays festival, “Risk is This….” Past festivals have foreshadowed full productions of some of Cutting Ball’s most memorable pieces including Marcus Gardley’s “…and Jesus Moonwalks the Mississippi” and Eugenie Chan’s “Tontlawald”, and this year’s lineup looks to be just as full of future potential, with new plays written by Sean San José, Dipika Guha, and Basil Kreimendahl, plus exciting new translations of Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Roi” and the Capek brothers’ “Insect Play.” Presented over five weekends of staged readings, the five plays range topically from transgenderism to crack-cocaine to the corrupting influence of power — which certainly sounds like the very definition of risk to us. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 9

8pm, free–$20 donation

EXIT on Taylor

177 Taylor, SF

(415) 525-1205

www.cuttingball.com

 

“Alfred Hitchcock: The Shape of Suspense”

Alfred Hitchcock is just coming off his best year in decades, with a biopic starring Anthony Hopkins and the news that his 1958 psychological drama Vertigo leapfrogged past the almighty Citizen Kane (1941) in at least one “best films of all time…ever…full stop” poll of influential film critics. Not bad for a guy who died in 1980. The Pacific Film Archive shines a well-timed spotlight on the prolific Master of Suspense with an extensive retrospective of works well-known (1954’s Rear Window, 1959’s North by Northwest, 1960’s Psycho, and — of course — Vertigo) and more obscure (1931’s Rich and Strange, 1937’s Young and Innocent, 1947’s The Paradine Case) — not to mention often-overshadowed underdogs like the series kick-off film, made by Hitch in his pre-Hollywood days: 1935’s The 39 Steps. (Cheryl Eddy)

Through April 24, 7pm, $5.50–$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk.

bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

Mister Lies

Nick Zanca played in several punk bands in high school until he was introduced to electronic music and production in college. This happened about a year ago. Since then he’s caused quite the stir, catching a record deal and tour as Mister Lies. The deep, almost spiritual electronica, or “experimental avant-garde pop” as he prefers, draws inspiration from diverse artists — spanning Steve Reich to Missy Elliot. His generally downtempo vibe might be better scheduled at four in the morning. But hey, there’s no right time to unwind your mind a bit, particularly when it’s Mister Lies’ gospel-infused sound paired with the smooth dream pop of San Francisco local, Giraffage. (Champlin)

With Some Ember

9:30pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com


SATURDAY 12

“Rituals of Water”

The most recent work of local artist, Rodney Ewing, manages to distil a lot of history and ideas into a coherent show about water. This theme is embedded even in the creation of the art: the large scale paintings are made of ink, salt, and mostly, water. Through figures and words that seem to be dissolving on paper, he looks at four moments in the history of African American people, the transatlantic slave trade, baptism, civil rights, and Hurricane Katrina. Though his works are heavily political, they don’t seek to make a statement. Instead they perform a sort of ritual in which the viewer and artist strengthen African history by reclaiming memories and stories once lost through diaspora. (Champlin)

Through March 1

Opening reception, 6pm, free

IcTus Gallery

1769 15th St., SF

(510) 912-0792

www.ictusgallery.com

 

Mary Armentrout

Old Will wasn’t exactly thinking about installation pieces when he proclaimed, “all the world’s a stage.” Still there is something about the connection between “living” and “performing” that today many dance artists explore by stretching that fragile tie between the two. One way is by abandoning the proscenium theater for more flexible environments. Few, however, go as far as the ever adventuresome Mary Armentrout who is traveling her “reveries and elegies,” essentially a solo piece for herself, from two Oakland locations first to CounterPULSE this weekend, then (Feb. 23-24) to Bakers’ Beach. Each time she shows these “reveries,” she will do the same, of course, not at all. Ideally one would see the whole cycle but since Armentrout has assembled the piece from fragments, fragments is what we’ll get. And that’s OK. (Rita Felciano)

Also Sun/13, 4:15pm, $20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(510) 845-8604

www.eventbrite.com

 

Kicker

Newish Bay Area band Kicker features members of Neurosis, Filth, and Dystopia, and sounds like late ’70s anarcho-punk à la Subhumans. Which makes perfect sense, really, as lead vocalist Pete the Roadie grew up in England, went to the same school as Subhumans and Organized Chaos, and has been a part of the worldwide punk scene since that formative year of ’77. Really need another reason to go to this $5 Bender’s show? OK: Bad Cop/Bad Cop — the LA rock’n’roll band with members of Cocksparrer tribute act Cunt Sparrer — opens the whole thing up. (Savage)

With Pang!

10pm, $5

Bender’s

800 S. Van Ness, SF

(415) 824-1800

www.bendersbar.com


MONDAY 14

The Great American Pop-Up

The Great American Pop-Up is back. Because who wants to make dinner on a Monday night? At the first installment, patrons scarfed chocolate raspberry cookies, sustainable sushi, and salty spiced sausages. At this second round — again inside the iconic Tenderloin site, recently named one California’s most beautiful music venues — a few of those patron-pleasing vendors will return: sustainable sushi via Rice Cracker Sushi, Asian fusion dishes via Harro-Arigato and Ronin, along with Dora’s Donuts and Donna’s Tamales. The house Chef James Whitmore will be whipping up dishes, and there will be some crafty vendors including a Yes & Yes Designs booth, should you be in the market for one-of-a-kind jewelry made from recycled books as a delicious side dish to your sushi. DJs Children of the Funk will provide the background beats to your fine (club) dining experience. (Savage)

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF (415) 885-0750

www.slimspresents.com


TUESDAY 15

Shabazz Palaces

The retro-future of space hip-hop is here, in disparate senses among headliner Shabazz Palaces and opener Ensemble Mik Nawooj. Led by Palaceer Lazaro — formerly of jazz-rap group Digable Planets — and multi-instrumentalist Tendai “Baba” Maraire, Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces are part of a cosmic collective of forward-thinking artists, including Sub Pop labelmates, THEESatisfaction. Their latest release, 2011’s Black Up, was a vortex of jazz, soul, and rap with African percussion keeping the beat. And then there’s Ensemble Mik Nawooj, the East Bay crew behind that alternate universe chamber hip-hop opera, Great Integration, a similarly genre-busting production that follows five malevolent lords who control the physical world, and the assassin who slays them. Prepare to elevate your mind. Countdown to launch. (Savage)

With Ensemble Mik Nawooj, Duckwrth, DJ Orfeu

9pm, $15

New Parish

579 18th St., Oakl.

(415) 371-1631

www.thenewparish.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Learned

Andrew Lam
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Learned

ONGOING

Rockin’ Kids Singalong

Licensed clinical social worker and former punk rock singer-guitarist Stephanie Pepitone leads this musical play group for kids of all ages. Stephanie “leads families in about an hour’s worth of singing, dancing, music-making, and fun/chaos” with original tunes and familiar favorites.

Fridays, 10:30-11:30am, $10 per family. La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk. www.lapena.org

JAN 12

Haitian Folkloric Dance

Live drumming accompanies instructor Portsha Jefferson’s class for all levels, which promises that “you will experience the meditative Yanvalou, the fiery rhythms of Petwo, the playful and celebratory dances of Banda and Rara. Expect a high energy class in celebration of a rich, spiritual tradition. Bring a long, flowy skirt if you have one.”

1:30-3pm, $13. Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St., SF. www.dancemission.com

JAN 16

Feeding Your Soul: Mindful Cooking and Eating in the New Year

Let the onslaught of New Year’s resolution-keeping commence. Kick off the year with an intro to mindful eating, and get away from psychologically compulsive, physically harming habits when it comes to nourishing yourself. Life coach Carley Hauck and chef Greg Lutes (known for his uni crème brulee!) team up deliver a lecture and cooking demo — aimed at helping you recognize wasteful food behaviors and reinvigorate your love for creating and enjoying healthful dishes.

$25 18 Reasons members, $35 others. 18 Reasons, 3674 18th St., SF. www.18reasons.org

JAN 17

Understanding Chinese Medicine

A six-week course at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine that will introduce you to the basic life force concept of Qi, and then broaden your knowledge into acupuncture, Chinese herbs, tongue and pulse diagnostics, yin and yang, five elements, and the Chinese concept of internal organs.

Thursdays, 6pm-8pm, $120. Pioneer Square and Shuji Goto Library, 555 De Haro, SF. www.actcm.edu

JAN 19

New Year, New Poems: Celebrate Your Muse!

“In our day together we’ll read and talk about an array of accessible, provocative poems by fine writers including current poet laureates Kathleen Flenniken, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Natasha Trethewey, and we’ll do some whimsical, illuminating writing exercises to bypass our inner critics and experiment with themes and tones, phrases and rhythms. We’ll listen closely and encouragingly to each other’s voices. By the end of the day we’ll have shaped a handful of budding poems and sharpened our vision for future writing projects,” says Writing Salon teacher Kathleen McClung.

10am-4pm, $95 Writing Salon members, $110 others. Writing Salon, 720 York, SF. www.writingsalons.com

JAN 19

Kongolese Contemporary Dance

Extremely charismatic instructor Byb Chanel Bibene revisits his Congolese roots, in which contemporary and traditional movements intertwined to produce a unique, exhilarating style. No experience in dance is necessary for this warm, fun, and inviting workshop.

10am-noon, $12-15 sliding scale. Also Jan. 20. Counterpulse, 1310 Mission, SF. www.counterpulse.org

 

JAN 25

 

Exploring San Francisco District Six

Sometimes education begins with looking more closely at your community. Supervisor Jane Kim leads a tour of her district — including South of Market, Mid-Market and Tenderloin neighborhoods — highlighting some of the recent successes and challenges affecting its residents’ quality of life.

3:30pm, $10. See www.spur.org/events for more info.

JAN 27

Bagel Making Workshop

Hole yes! You’ll never need complain about the state of West Coast bagelry again when the good folks of Sour Flour workshops lead you through the basics. You’ll begin by mixing flour, starter, salt, and water and then learning to develop the glutens through various techniques. Finally you’ll find out about boiling and baking techniques. Bring a plate to roll your creation home.

12:30-2:30pm, $80. La Victoria Bakery, 2937 24th St., SF. www.sourflour.org/workshops

FEB 2

Introduction to Coptic Bookbinding

The Coptic style of bookbinding allows a book to be laid open flat, making it ideal for sketchbooks and journals. Offered at Techshop, the epicenter of hands-on DIY yumminess, this seminar allows you to take home your own handmade journal! (To blog about?)

10am-4pm, $95 TechShop members, $110 others. TechShop, 926 Howard, SF. www.techshop.ws

FEB 5

Basic Mysteries

Revered Beat poet, former New College professor, and Guardian GOLDIE Lifetime Achievement Award-winner David Meltzer takes us on a uniquely persona tour of poetry and poetics, exploring “the roots of poetry, the invention and mythology of writing systems, divination, Kabbalah, and the page.” The four-week course (Tuesdays through February) will cover a lot of transcendent ground.

7:00-9:30pm, $200. Mythos, 930 Dwight Way #10, Berk. Contact julmind@mtashland.net for more info.

FEB 8

Career Toolbox with Suzanne Vega

The acclaimed neo-folk singer introduces us to her concept of the “career toolbox,” which “contains a unique mix of creative, strategic and marketing skills that helped her in the early stages of her career.” Honest self-reflection and an understanding of necessary skills to survive a competitive marketplace are key. Plus, hello, Suzanne Vega.

11am-2pm, $52 CIIS members, $65 others. California Institute of Integral Studies, 1453 Mission, SF. www.ciis.edu

FEB 19

Wild Oakland: Nature Photography Basics at Lake Merritt

Amid its passel of no-cost classes, including weekly courses on Eskrima, the Filipino combat system and herbal medicine, the East Bay Free Skool offers great one-off tutorials. Nature group Wild Oakland hosts a few of these that entail happy tromps about Lake Merritt. Today’s is a wildlife photography class taught by Damon Tighe, whose freelance shots appear in Bay Nature and other publications.

Noon, free. Meet in front of Rotary Nature Center, 600 Bellevue, Oakl. eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com

MARCH 17

Introduction to Neon

Surely there are few among us who could not use a custom-made neon sign. Perhaps you would like it to be clear that you are open for business. Maybe your roommate could use a permanent reminder that please Buddha Christ our savior we don’t leave our coffee mugs on the dining room table (ahem.) At any rate, this is one of this West Oakland metal mecca’s entry-level courses — check its online course schedule for more offerings in blacksmithing, welding, jewelry, glass, and more.

Sundays through 10am-6pm, $400. The Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. www.thecrucible.org

 

Stage might

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Stage might

arts@sfbg.com

YEAR IN THEATER In addition to Christmas lights, the seasonal landscape would not be the same without a thick, shiny coating of awards. We reflect on some highs (and a few lows) from the year in theater with a nod of appreciation here, a nod of respect there, or just a nod, short and involuntary, before the house lights jolt us awake again.

Best theme, or, the year of living nervously Every year it seems like an unplanned, unintentional theme emerges from the collective theatrical hive mind, and this year it was definitely our ever-uneasy relationship with technology. From Mugwumpin’s Future Motive Power, an electric ode to the oft-overlooked genius of inventor Nikola Tesla; to Josh Costello’s dynamic adaptation of Cory Doctorow’s tech-age YA novel Little Brother at Custom Made Theatre Co.; to a stunning revival of Philip Glass’ 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach — technology’s omnipresence seeped onto the stage.

An incomplete list of other plays that variously explored this theme in 2012: Machine at the Crucible, FWD: Life Gone Viral at the Marsh, The Hundred Flowers Project at Crowded Fire, Status Update at Center REP, She Was a Computer by Cara Rose DeFabio, Zombie Vixens From Hell by Virago Theatre Company, and a quintet of newly-translated August Strindberg chamber plays at Cutting Ball Theater. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Best ensemble Choreographer-performer Keith Hennessy’s experimental project Turbulence (a dance about the economy) was the most unusual and fascinating piece to appear this year, hands down, and it featured a deceptively chaotic eruption of performances by a highly skilled ensemble of artist-generators whose sheer present-mindedness made me toss out my zafu in frustration. (Robert Avila)

Best “The Peasants are Revolting!” Just like a case of herpes, you just can’t keep a good revolution down, and who better to tackle the over-the-top outrageousness and poke-to-the-establishment’s-eye of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade than the wild and wily Thrillpeddlers? Set in a dilapidated insane asylum spray-painted with “Occupy” slogans and bathroom humor, starring the Marquis de Sade (Jeff Garrett) and a fully engaged complement of rabble and aristocracy, and stuffed with show tunes and moments of questionable taste, Marat/Sade played out like it was written expressly for the notoriously ribald and exhibitionistic Thrillpeddlers, right down to the “copulation pantomime.” (Gluckstern)

Pithiest acronym for a musical: Actor-musician-playwright DavEnd’s rowdy and saucy and smart new musical F.A.G.G.O.T.S. the Musical, directed by D’Arcy Drollinger, had a very long title (Fabulously Artistic Guys Get Overtly Traumatized Sometimes: The Musical!) but all too short a run when it premiered this year at CounterPULSE — so it was great to learn it’s coming back in February 2013. (Avila)

Best armchair cultural revolution The experience of watching The Hundred Flowers Project at Crowded Fire was like being trapped in a distilled version of Mao’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and all its ostentatious unpredictability. An unstable yet mesmerizing territory of shifting alliances and heightened paranoia, implicating even the colluding silent majority of the audience, Christopher Chen’s epic sprawl created a landscape of Big Brother totalitarianism with the deceptively innocuous building blocks of social media technology and theatricality. A recurring theme in the piece is that of zeitgeist, and Chen admirably captured the nervous implications of our own. (Gluckstern)

Best couple to give George and Martha a run for their money Megan Trout and Joe Estlack as Beth and Jake in Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind at Boxcar Theatre. Trout and Estlack were powerhouses, terrifying and devastating by turns, but director Susannah Martin’s production was a winner all around, fitting nicely into Boxcar’s generally outstanding four-play Sam Shepard festival. (Avila)

Most glam-infused baker’s dozen Another from Boxcar: its summertime take on beloved rock musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch was certainly the most vibrant live production of it I’ve ever seen. Filling the stage with 12 Hedwigs and one very kickass Yitzhak (Anna Ishida), director Nick A. Olivero enhanced the rock club vibe with his unique line-up of “fractured” Hedwigs in skintight gear dripping with sweat and glitter, a guest DJ, and plenty of interaction with the rowdy Hed-heads who packed the house. (Gluckstern)

Best supporting cast Rami Margron in Precious Little at Shotgun. A fine three-member ensemble (also featuring Zehra Berkman and Nancy Carlin) was made to seem much larger thanks especially to Margron’s nimble work as, alternately, a streetwise graduate student, the nebbishy daughter of an aging research subject, a chirpy medical counselor, a relentlessly talkative little girl, and an entire crowd of visitors to the zoo. (Avila)

Most pleasurable peeks behind the mask Although the subject matter of each play were completely different, what The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity (at Aurora Theatre) and Truffaldino Says No (at Shotgun Players) had in common was their unmasking of traditionally disguised figures whose role in life is to entertain: professional wrestlers and commedia dell’arte stock characters. Masks off, a pair of truly memorable characters emerged — fall guy in the ring Macedonio “Mace” Guerra (Tony Sancho), and Truffaldino (William Thomas Hodgson), set to follow in the pratfalling footsteps of his father, the famous Arlecchino (Stephen Buescher). While neither play was entirely without flaw, these winsome protagonists bore their respective identity crises with wit, bravery, and heart. (Gluckstern)

Most prescient debut Mojo Theatre. It was in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, many miles away from the storm’s path, in an obscure upstairs theater of the old Redstone Building on 16th Street, that Lost Love, a little jewel of an existentialist comedy from director-playwright Peter Papadopoulos, marked the San Francisco debut of impressive newcomers Mojo Theatre — and prefigured the day’s events with humane intelligence and uncanny meteorological instincts. (Avila)

Best example of “I might as well have slept in and just read the press release” The art of the interview is a delicate balance of research and serendipity, and just as important as knowing what questions to ask is knowing when to let the subject take the lead — which made interviewing the truly legendary playwright Eve Ensler on her newest piece, Emotional Creature (performed at Berkeley Rep), so frustrating. She never deviated from her well-worn script with any fresh insights, to the point where it didn’t seem to matter what my questions were. My only consolation is the fact that every other interview I’ve read with Ensler on the topic has unfolded almost word-for-word the same as my own — so at least I know I’m not alone. (Gluckstern)

Sexiest scene in which the actors don’t move (but the stage does) Alex Moggridge and Marilee Talkington at a slowly rotating pub table in Mark Jackson’s Salomania at Aurora. Eros and Thanatos seemed in a slow dance with each other in this striking flirtation between a jaded frontline soldier and a war widow recently liberated from stultifying domesticity. (Avila)

Most graceful bow Becoming Grace at the Jewish Theatre. Naomi Newman’s potent solo play, built from the words and writing of author Grace Paley, closed the 34th and final season of San Francisco’s esteemed Jewish Theatre (formerly Traveling Jewish Theatre). (Avila)

Best musical theater collaboration The Ratcatcher at the Imaginists. This Santa Rosa company is a must see for lovers of smart, intimate, community-based theater, and their latest, a re-telling of the Pied Piper of Hamelin legend, is a pitch-perfect dystopian fairytale featuring a memorable cast and an irresistible musical score by full-partners in the production, the Crux. It’s worth the drive, but here’s hoping they bring it down to SF sometime. (Avila)

Best death scene Michael Zavala in Phaedra’s Love at Bindlestiff Studio. Do It Live!’s worthy production of Sarah Kane’s reworking of the Hippolytus myth climaxes with Hippolytus (a hipster hedonist in Zavala’s capable rendering), castrated and disemboweled, but finally interested in life. (Avila) *

 

Short takes by Robert Avila:

Best impersonation of a pervy authority figure Sara Moore as Mr. Roper in Three’s Company at Finn’s Funhouse

Best argument for going color blind Red at Berkeley Rep

Best approximation of a teenager Ann Lawler as Theresa in 100 Saints You Should Know, at Theater Rhino

Worst approximation of teenagers Jesus in India, at the Magic Theatre

Best actual teenagers Director Nick A. Olivero’s excellent, age-appropriate cast in Dog Sees God at Boxcar

Most existentially satisfying use of a digital delay Sara Kraft’s TRUTH++ at the This Is What I Want festival at SOMArts

Best lounge act without a lounge Anne McGuire (and Anne McGuire) and Wobbly in Music Again at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Discovery channels

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Discovery channels

arts@sfbg.com

YEAR IN DANCE Looking back on 2012’s over 500 performances — as calculated by Dancers’ Group — the game of “best” and “worst” makes less sense than ever. What makes the Bay Area a place worth living in is the vitality of its arts, and dance in particular. We only have one superstar company, San Francisco Ballet, but we’ve got a number of excellent mid-size ensembles and just enough of a competitive environment to discourage rank amateurism.

Whether for financial reasons or a desire to forego the demands of conventional stage presentations, dancers have continued their exodus to galleries and museums, like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Asian Art Museum, the California Academy of Sciences, and the de Young Museum. But they have also presented work in public spaces: City Hall, Market Street, Union Square, and Golden Gate Park. These performances necessitate the rethinking of formal parameters, but also reach out to new audiences.

Here are ten companies and artists who challenged expectations or unveiled surprises (at least to me) in 2012. Surprises from young artists are the norm, but experienced choreographers have a far more difficult task when it comes to catching viewers off-guard.

In the middle of March (and after 40 years of rethinking time, space, and motion), Eiko and Koma presented their most radical performance yet. With the breathtaking Fragile, a four-hour meditation in which they moved perhaps two feet, they stretched every conceivable theatrical concept beyond where it could reasonably be expected to go. It was mesmerizing, though I kept wondering where Fragile would be without the wondrous collage of music that David Harrington had assembled for his Kronos Quartet.

Keith Hennessy’s Turbulence (a dance about the economy), a many-tentacled creature that sprawled and oozed its way through Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, was one of the year’s most controversial premieres. No easy viewing, it showed that, for all his passion to redesign the social order, Hennessy is still working on creating new vehicles into which to pour his content. Gratifyingly, Hennessy just received a USA Fellows Award, one of only five Bay Area choreographers to have been so honored.

Monique Jenkinson’s splendid solo Instrument just finished its run at CounterPULSE. It needs to come back. She’s known as Fauxnique in her drag alter ego, but there is nothing faux about this dancer-performance artist. In Instrument, perhaps Jenkinson’s finest work yet, she asks questions about the body as a tool and the nature of being on stage. The figure of Rudolf Nureyev gave her the entrance into a witty but also heartbreaking portrayal of what it means to be a performer.

Even if you watch dance a lot, once in a while it happens that somebody pops up that you have never seen — and yet what they show is already excellent. Such was the case with Nicole Klaymoon’s Embodiment and her joyously rocking House Matter. Working with very good modern and hip-hop dancers, plus jazz singer Valerie Troutt and her vocal ensemble, the women created an evening-long piece about how a house can become a home.

Jenny McAllister’s two-year old 13th Floor Dance Theater is the newest incarnation of McAllister’s dance making endeavors. She has been choreographing genuinely funny dance, often sending up popular culture, for a long time. Bloomsbury/It’s Not Real was her first evening-length work. Using reality TV as a format, she came up with a lovingly loony but smart portrait of the lives and loves of that motley crew known as the Bloomsbury Group.

At the end of September, Birju Maharaj, the 74-year-old Kathak virtuoso, packed the Palace of Fine Arts with a primarily Indian audience who sat through a four-plus hour performance of superb dance. Maharaj performs here every couple of years, often with a similar repertoire. And still you sit there and can’t believe your eyes and ear at this gentle, witty, and generous artist playing “games” with someone like Zakir Hussein.

During its 41st home season, ODC/Dance premiered KT Nelson’s Transit. Taking one look at Max Chen’s whimsical bike concoctions, I just knew that they would steal the show — but they didn’t. Nelson used these metamorphosing velocipedes to call to the stage an image of urban life as fast-paced, fluid, and unstable. Yet for all its fractured continuity, Nelson and ODC’s superb dancers seemed to say, it’s a wonderful life.

San Francisco Ballet’s Beau raised more eyebrows than any of its other commissions, as far as I can remember. Longtime guest artist Mark Morris has built up expectations, so people were furious, feeling let down by what they considered thin, slipshod, easy-way-out choreography. My opinion was in the minority — so I’m looking forward to the piece’s return to find out whether what I thought was there, really is.

In the fall, my first encounter with Einstein at the Beach opened my ears and eyes to what I had known as “an opera” by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass. Surprising to see was how its exquisite details and extraordinary stylization owed more to kabuki than opera, and how Lucinda Childs’ choreography fit into it like a jewel set into a frame. For once the hype surrounding a piece did not even approach the reality of the experience.

Dancers around the world know the Venezuelan-born David Zambrano as a superb, idiosyncratic teacher. So his Soul Project, set to a rich selection of blues and soul music, raised questions about his approach to choreography. Using the YBCA’s Forum as a unified space for dancers and audience, Soul’s meandering trajectory — you never knew who would perform what where — made this one of the year’s most intimate experiences. To be a couple of inches away from such different, yet such superb performers doing what they do best was a treat.

 

Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

A Christmas Carol Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-95. Opens Fri/30, 7pm. Runs Tue-Sat, 7pm (no evening performance Dec 6, 11, or 18; also 2pm matinees Sat/1, Dec 8, 12, 15, 21, and 22; Sun, 5:30pm (also 1pm matinees Dec 9, 16, 23); Dec 24, 1pm. Through Dec 24. American Conservatory Theater’s annual holiday performance features James Carpenter as Scrooge.

The Marvelous Wonderettes New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $27-46. Previews Fri/30-Sat/1 and Dec 5-7, 8pm; Sun/2, 2pm. Opens Dec 8, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm (no show Dec 23). Through Jan 13. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Roger Bean’s 1950s pop-hit musical.

The New California Traveling Jewish Theater, 470 Florida, SF; www.pianofight.com. $20-25. Opens Wed/28, 8pm. Runs Wed, 8pm. Through Dec 19. PianoFight Productions’ female-centric sketch comedy group ForePlays presents an all-new variety show.

Pal Joey Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.42ndstreetmoon.org. $25-75. Previews Wed/28, 7pm; Thu/29-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/1, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Dec 16. 42nd Street Moon performs the Rodgers and Hart classic.

BAY AREA

Big River TheatreWorks, 1305 Middlefield, Palo Alto; www.theatreworks.org. $23-73. Previews Wed/28, 7:30pm; Thu/29-Fri/30, 8pm. Opens Sat/1, 2 and 8pm. Runs Tue-Wed, 7:30pm; Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 30. TheatreWorks performs the Tony-winning musical based on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn stories.

Dracula Berkeley Community Church, 1802 Fairview, Berk; www.infernotheatre.org. $12-25. Opens Thu/29, 8pm. Runs Thu and Sat-Sun, 8pm; Fri, 9pm. Though Dec 16. Inferno Theatre Company performs Giulio Cesare Perrone’s adaptation of the Bram Stoker classic.

Woyzeck Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $23-35. Previews Thu/29 and Dec 5-6, 7pm; Fri/30-Sat/1, 8pm; Sun/2, 5pm. Opens Dec 7, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through Jan 27. Shotgun Players presents Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan, and Robert Wilson’s tragic musical, based on an unfinished 1837 play by Georg Büchner.

ONGOING

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

History: The Musical Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 22. The Un-Scripted Theater Company performs “an unscripted romp through Western history.”

Hysterical, Historical San Francisco: Holiday Edition Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; www.thealcovetheater.com. $25-40. Fri-Sat and Dec 26-31, 9pm. Through Dec 31. Comedian Kurt Weitzmann takes on San Francisco history, adding some holiday flair along the way.

The Rainmaker Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 22. Shelton Theatre preforms N. Richard Nash’s classic drama.

Slugs and Kicks Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $15-30. Previews Wed/28, 8pm. Opens Thu/29, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through Dec 9. Theatre Rhinoceros performs John Fisher’s play about the offstage drama at a college theater company.

Speed-the-Plow Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Dec 21. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet drama.

The Submission New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jeff Talbott’s drama about a playwright who falsifies his identity when he enters his latest work into a prestigious theater festival.

Superior Donuts Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 2. Consider the doughnut: an infinite ring of fried dough and glaze, simple, unassuming, ubiquitous. Once a staple of on-the-go breakfasts and on-the-road snacking, the doughnut has gone into decline, assaulted on all sides by nutritionists, tastier pastries, and luxury branding. Arthur (Don Wood), the aging protagonist of Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, has failed to see the writing on the wall, perhaps for decades, as his family doughnut shop, whose regulars include a feisty bag lady (Vicki Siegel) and a pair of beat cops (Ariane Owens, Emmanuel Lee), struggles to compete with the Starbucks across the street and the changing mores and values of the neighborhood demographic. Enter Franco (Chris Marsol), a likable youthful hustler in desperate need of a job, who sees potential in Arthur’s decrepit shop: poetry readings! Bran muffins! A liquor license! Drawn to each other by mutual loneliness the two warily navigate the waters of friendship, despite their obvious gaps in age, ambition, and fashion sense (Franco to Arthur: “the Grateful Dead aren’t hiring anymore”). Custom Made’s production, directed by Marilyn Langbehn, breathes vibrancy into a gentrifying corner of Chicago, thanks especially to Chris Marsol, whose Franco is bold, intelligent and thwarted, and Don Wood, who plays Arthur like a man frozen in ice, whose eventual thaw speaks to the restorative powers of possibility. (Gluckstern)

The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Dec 8. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events in Copeland’s life. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Jan 5. Lynne Kaufman’s new play stars Warren David Keith as the noted spiritual figure.

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $36-57. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/1 and Dec 15, 2pm; Dec 6, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 16. Marin Theatre Company performs Joe Landry’s live radio play adaptation of the classic Capra film.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 16. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability. Even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

The Sound of Music Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 2. Berkeley Playhouse opens its fifth season with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Toil and Trouble La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm (no show Thu/22). Through Dec 8. For a theater company known for its radical interpretations of the Shakespearean canon, a play such as Lauren Gunderson’s Toil and Trouble, a goofy Generation Why retelling of Macbeth, is a particularly good fit for Impact Theatre. Whittled down to a dynamic three-character chamber play featuring delusionary slackers plotting to turn their MBAs and nebulous SF Giants connections into a bloodless takeover of a remote island nation rather than get crappy café jobs to pay the rent, Toil throws baseball, investors, Wikipedia, fortune cookies, hypothetical sex, and real violence into one cauldron, letting them bubble and froth throughout the piece. The so-crazy-it-might-just-work plan hatched by Adam (Michael Delaney), a relentlessly cheerful narcissist, quickly leads to tension between the three, especially once the potential payout is estimated at 30 million dollars, and before their plot is even finalized, a tenuous, murderous alliance forms between the insufferably wimpy Matt (Will Hand) and the rage-aholic Beth (Jeanette Penley). All three actors play their all-too-familiar characters to the hilt, and Josh Costello’s direction is deft and assured. A surprise twist subverts the expected lull of tragedy, and all is resolved, more or less, in a manner more appropriate to this time and place than Shakespeare’s, though not without some grand sound and fury beforehand, signifying both. (Gluckstern)

The White Snake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-99. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Nov 29, Dec 13, and Sat, 2pm; no matinee Dec 1; no show Thu/22); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 23. In Mary Zimmerman’s The White Snake, nothing is quite as it seems. A mysterious stranger and her faithful servant are, in reality, a pair of shape-shifting serpents, the humble village pharmacy they build (with stolen money) is a front for their magical healing powers, a venerated Buddhist Abbott is actually a small-minded tyrant with a remarkably unholy obsession. Based on a Chinese myth dating to the 10th century, elements of “The White Snake” can be found in other mythologies around the world — from the biblical tempter in the Garden of Eden, to the healer snakes of Asclepius. However, in accordance with the tale’s historical evolution, from horror story to romance, Zimmerman’s treatment focuses mainly on the unusual love affair between Madame White (Amy Kim Waschke) and her karma-selected husband Xu Xian (Christopher Livingston). Weaving together fanciful design (a rainfall of ribbons, parasol puppetry, elegant period costuming and evocative video), elements of Chinese drama (amusingly described by narrators as they take place on stage), and a stirring reflection on the transformative power of love, complete with themes of self-sacrifice and endless fidelity, The White Snake, is a delicately-rendered fairytale which may not offer a way to enlightenment, but certainly clears a path to the heart. (Gluckstern)

Wilder Times Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 9. Aurora Theatre performs a collection of one-acts by Thornton Wilder.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Fri/23-Sun/25, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl brings his lighter-than-air show back to the Marsh.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. $20. “Theatresports,” Fri, 8pm, through Dec 21.

“The Buddy Club Children’s Shows” Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/2, 11am-noon. $8. Juggling and acrobatics with the Keith Show.

“Clas/sick Hip-Hop” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Fri/30-Sat/1, 8pm. $15-20. Violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain accompanies hip-hop dancers Rennie Harris, Rokafella, and others.

“Instrument” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu-Sun, 8pm. Through Dec 9. $15-20. Monique Jenkinson, a.k.a. Fauxnique, performs her new solo show.

“Life with Laughter” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.975howard.com. Tue/4, 8:30pm. $10-20. comedy, storytelling, spoken word, and music.

“Murderous Little World” ODC Theater, 3153 17th St, SF; www.odctheater.org. Mon/3, 8pm. $15-30. NEXMAP and ODC present the US premiere of Linda Bouchard’s experimental musical theater work, based on poems by Anne Carson and performed by Canadian trio Bellows and Brass.

“The Romane Event” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; www.pacoromane.com. Wed/28, 8pm. $7-10. Comedy with Alex Koll, Johnny Taylor, Leslie Small, Andrew Holgren, Lynn Ruth Miller, and Paco Romane.

San Francisco Comedy College Purple Onion at Kells, 530 Jackson, SF; www.sfcomedycollege.com. $5-15; all shows ongoing. “Laughter Hour,” Thu-Fri, 7pm. “Destini and Yonatan’s Stand-Up Rebellion,” Thu, 8:30. “Comedy Bottle,” Fri-Sat, 8:30pm. “Kells Comedy Saturday,” Sat, 7pm. “New Talent Shows,” Tue-Wed, 7. Also Larkspur Hotel, 524 Sutter, SF. “Rocket Salad,” Sun, 7.

“San Francisco Magic Parlor” Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

BAY AREA

“Hear Me Now” Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. Mon/3, 8pm. $15. Shotgun Cabaret presents cell phone monologues as part of its First Person Singular reading series.

“A Memory from the Future/Un Recuerdo del Futuro” Studio 8, 2525 Eighth St, SF; www.theteadancers.org. Sat/1 and Dec 8, 8pm; Dec 9, 2pm. $20. The Tea Dancers/Ballet de la Compasion perform a bilingual multimedia show.

“Risk for Deep Love” Temescal Art Center, 511 48th St, Oakl; www.eroplay.com. Sat/1, 8pm. Free. “Improvised passions” with performance artist Frank Moore. *

 

Our Weekly Picks: November 28-December 4

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 28

World Party

While The Cure and R.E.M. were soaking up all the mainstream recognition, British singer-songwriter Karl Wallinger quietly churned out some of the most infectiously jangly pop of the 1980s and ’90s under the World Party moniker. Since the release of his magnum opus, Goodbye Jumbo (1990), Wallinger has gone on hiatus numerous times, coming out of the woodwork with a new set of songs, and a fresh cast of supporting musicians, whenever inspiration strikes. It’s been 12 years since his last LP, but with a new career-spanning box set on the way, and a rare US tour to support it, we’ll take whatever we can get. (Taylor Kaplan)

With Martin Harley 8pm, $26 Great American Music Hall 859 O’Farrell, SF (415) 885-0750 www.slimspresents.com


GOLDIES after-party

You read all about the 24th annual Goldie winners — that’s Guardian Outstanding Local Discovery awards! — in the Nov. 14 issue of the paper. Now’s your chance to come celebrate with us and the winners (musicians the Mallard, 5kinandbone5, and WATERS; theater company PianoFight; performers Mica Sigourney and Anna Ishida; filmmaker Jamie Meltzer; visual artist Brett Amory; dance winners Joe Landini and the Garage; and lifetime achievement winners Frank Shawl and Victor Anderson of Berkeley’s veteran Shawl-Anderson Dance Studio. The free party features performers Mad Noise, Kat Marie Yoas, and Dr. Zebrovski, plus tunes by Goldie alumni DJ Bus Station John. Gold attire encouraged! (Cheryl Eddy)

9pm, free

111 Minna Gallery

111 Minna, SF

www.111minnagallery.com

 

THURSDAY 29

Houses

If the 2010 album All Night from Chicago’s Houses seems sunnier and warmer than what you’d expect, given a cliched notion of the windy city, it may be because the album originated while the band was on a sort of idyllic, post-layoff stay in Hawaii. Seemingly lost in a year that was flooded with too many DOA “chillwave” bands, the album — with an air of IDM and standout track “Reds” — deserves a second listen, mainly for the vocal intimacy engendered by Dexter Tortoriello and Megan Messina, partners on and off record who have an immediately apparent rapport that suggests a hybrid sound of Mazzy Star and the xx, with feet on the dancefloor. (Ryan Prendiville)

With D33J, Yalls, Elephant and Castle

8pm, $8–$12

Public Works

161 Erie St., SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

Instrument

It’s one of those contradictions that I guess those of us who love live performances are also aware that the minute it happens, it dies. Gone, finished, never to return. It’s what Monique Jenkinson is exploring in her new Instrument, a solo performance piece to which she invited choreographers Miguel Gutierrez, Chris Black and Amy Seiwert — talk about diversity! — to set movement on her, which she then adapted to her own purposes. Somewhere, the late Rudolph Nureyev also entered into the equation. Jenkinson, who lives and breathes live performance, has made the slithery ground of identity a major theme of her dance/theater-making. She is a superb artist and entertainer, with immaculate craft and a fabulous perspective on what it means to be alive today whether as drag queen, fashion maven, opera diva or, perhaps, ballet super star. (Rita Felciano)

Also Nov. 30, Dec. 1-2, Dec. 6-9, 8pm, $20–$30

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission St. SF

$20-30.

www.counterpulse.org

 

FRIDAY 30

 

Rah Rah

“Rah Rah,” is accurately named — even its slower songs have a go-get-em, anthemic feel. At times this comes off as mildly ironic with some nonplussed singing paired with invigorating chord progressions. Our generation does love its irony. Mostly though, Rah Rah is full of wonder and cheer. The Canadian sextet makes good on the team spirit promise with a collaborative effort in which all the band members chip in for songwriting. With everybody switching instruments, singing, and maybe even tossing around balloons (or confetti), the band members bring the mirth wherever they go. (Molly Champlin)

With Travis Hayes

9pm, $10

Thee Parkside

1600 17th, SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

Moodymann

Hailed for his massive influence on the Detroit techno scene he’s contributed to ever since the early ’90s, enigmatic producer Moodymann is that rare EDM artist who milks the album format for all it’s worth. Unlike the majority of his peers, content to churn out standalone tracks for the dancefloor, Moodymann stuffs his propulsive beats with funk and soul flourishes, samples from blaxploitation films, and impossibly lush, glossy synth tones, assembling cohesive LPs that conjure up a seductive, luminous sound-world all their own. Finding common ground between ravers and headphone geeks can be a challenge, but this master makes it look easy. (Kaplan)

With Galen, J-Bird, Solar, Deron

9:30pm, $20

Public Works

161 Erie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

SATURDAY 1

Come Out and Play Festival Weekend

The SOMArts gallery and grounds will transform into a playground with games that are as fun as they are artistic in the finale to its month-long “Come Out and Play” exhibit. There will be plenty for the kids, such as the parkour-inspired Sloth Chase, which will force the young ones to get creative in navigating everyday spaces. This is all-ages, so keep an eye out for adult games too, including the mind-bending experiment, Out of Body Labyrinth. It includes video goggles that give the player a third person perspective on his or her movements as they navigate a labyrinth. And then there’s Propinquity, which uses neon lights to measure scores in an experience that is equal parts club and Capoeira. Be sure to register in advance to skip the lines. (Champlin)

Also Dec. 2, 11am–5pm, free

SOMArts

934 Brannan, SF

(415) 863-1414

somarts.org/playsf

 

Bay Brewed Rock and Roll Beer Festival

What pairs better with rock and roll bands than beer? And I’m not talking about half-watching the (admittedly, enticing) dad rock band in the back corner of a pub while nursing a warm Pabst. This second annual Bay Brewed event, again hosted by the Bay Bridged blog, will feature performances by bands you actually want to see live: Bear in Haven, Sonny and the Sunsets, Born Gold, Blasted Canyons, James and Evander, and Trails and Ways. Plus, tickets include endless tasting of the frosty, locally-brewed stuff by 13 SF Brewers Guild breweries, including 21st Amendment and Social Kitchen and Brewery. Added bonus: Seoul on Wheels and Adam’s Grub Truck will be standing by to help you soak up your indulgences. (Emily Savage)

12:30-6pm, $60

Public Works

161 Eerie, SF

(415) 932-0955

www.publicsf.com

 

Opal Dust Opening

Casey Watson works graphite and colored pencil like paint to create rich, intricate floral patterns. This isn’t your typical flower power art though, her pieces combine to create abstract forms evocative of microscopic organic life or macrocosmic activity. The process is poetically described as the “sharp-edged task of portraying a soft exterior.” The exhibit will be on display at Johansson Projects, the fine art gallery with the DIY spirit people always remember from Oakland’s Art Murmur. Also showing will be Rachel Kaye, whose abstract work explores the relationship between fashion and fine art through geometric color fields. If you can’t make it to the reception on Saturday, you can always check out the exhibit at the First Fridays event, Dec. 7 this month. (Champlin)

3pm, free

Johansson Projects

2300 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 444-9140

www.johanssonprojects.com

 

Wovenhand  (canceled)

Wovenhand might be one of the only folk-rock bands around whose songs can evoke both the cool grandeur of a cathedral arch and the sweaty tent of a traveling preacher man set up beneath a wide-open prairie sky. Even if the band’s lyrics weren’t deeply rooted in the Christian faith of frontperson David Eugene Edwards, its intense, pounding rhythms, tightly-knit instrumentation and otherworldly vocals would be enough to drive even the most committed atheist to their knees. With The Laughing Stalk, Edwards eschews the occasional diversions of earthly delights and goes straight for the marrow, a nine-song cycle of tormented devotion using the Old Testament (and bone-shaking guitar riffs) as points of departure. Known particularly for the ferocity of their live shows, you will not want to miss these passionate Denverites at Bottom of the Hill — or anywhere else, really. (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Yassou Benedict and Yir

10pm, $12–$14

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

MONDAY 3

Death Grips

The easiest explanation for the attention and acclaim this band has garnered — including a hot-off-the-presses of SPIN award for Artist of the Year — would be controversy. We are talking about a group that canceled a tour, leaked its second album of the year onto the Internet (complete with the title, No Love Deep Web, scrawled across one member’s turgid member on the cover) and subsequently got dropped from Epic Records. (Epic Records still exists?) But to get past the ceaseless debate surrounding Death Grips and its currently incomparable hybrid of growling, punk infused rap, just see the band live, like some did last year at 103 Harriet, when barking singer Stefan Burnett and frenetic drummer Zach Hill delivered a memorable, aggressive, and beyond sweaty performance. (Prendiville)

With Cities Aviv

8pm, $20

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slimspresents.com

 

TUESDAY 4

“The News”

Have you heard the good “News”? Freshly minted Goldie winner Mica Sigourney (as his unforgettable alter ego, VivvyAnne ForeverMORE!) is guest-curating SOMArts’ popular monthly showcase of queer, experimental debut and in-progress works. With Ms. ForeverMORE! at the helm, the event will be a blend of performance art and nightlight, featuring costume designer, accordionist, and queer-identity explorer DavEnd; interdisciplinary performer Cara Rode DeFabio; drag performers Elliot “Christina Christopher Damnit” Orona and Nathan “Nikki Sixx Mile” Rapport; and more. Space is limited, so get your tickets (a steal at just $5!) in advance. (Eddy)

7:30pm, $5

SOMArts Cultural Center

934 Brannan, SF

thenewsperformance.eventbrite.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian, 225 Bush, 17th Flr., SF, CA 94105; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Instrument

Maria Poblet
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Instrument

Presented by CounterPULSE, de Young Museum, and Dancers’ Group:

Instrument, the new solo work by Monique Jenkinson (AKA Fauxnique) exploits the vibrancy of the body in the ever-dying moment of live performance. Created in an experimental collaboration with three choreographers – Miguel Gutierrez, Chris Black, and Amy Seiwert – Instrument enacts, exposes and undermines the roles of dancer as workhorse and choreographer as auteur. The artist’s slippery relationship to authority and authorship is a major theme, as is the dancing body as translator, container of knowledge and preserver of culture. In her unique voice, dancer/performance artist Fauxnique, calls upon ballet star Rudolph Nureyev, performance art heroes of the 60s and 70s, and current discussions about the body as archive to create a collage of iconic movement, historical anecdote, and personal narrative.

For more info and tickets, follow this link.

Thursday, November 29 thru Sunday, December 9 at 8pm @ CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF | $20

GOLDIES 2012: Mica Sigourney

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2012: Mica Sigourney

GOLDIES Regular appearances are not Mica Sigourney’s thing. True, most Friday nights you’ll find alt-persona VivvyAnne ForeverMORE! at the Stud hosting Some Thing, the boisterously resourceful drag cavalcade (formerly Tiara Sensation) started two years ago with drag mother Glamamore and dj down-E. Even there, though, you couldn’t call VivvyAnne’s appearance regular: one night it’s ersatz Dior, another it’s lipstick, hobo beard, and a jock strap.

Beyond that, you never know where or how you’ll see either VivvyAnne or Sigourney. This is an artist drawn not only to the spotlight (what drag queen isn’t?) but to the genuinely experimental and demanding, whose work runs the gamut from go-go to performance art to contemporary dance (the latter most notably as an all-out ensemble member of Laura Arrington’s Wag in 2011) and in the process bridges the nightlife and performance scenes with untiring ingenuity.

This crossover élan was on display at the 2009 National Queer Arts Festival with the unveiling of Martha Martha Martha, a drag piece co-created with Eli Magid (a.k.a. Elijah Minnelli) in which some maniacally looped dialogue from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? gets refracted through a stage-full of renegade Liz Taylors. A year later, at the debut of Keith Hennessy and Julie Phelps’ “Too Much!” marathon of queer performance, VivvyAnne ForeverMORE! led an impressive roster of SF drag superstars into the proceedings (including Glamamore and Fauxnique, a.k.a. past Goldie winner Monique Jenkinson, another major influence).

That showcase brought the nightlife scene squarely into the realm of contemporary queer performance, and evolved into the sporadic Work MORE! series, based on crossover collaboration between highly distinct artists. Sigourney, who just produced its fourth installment in August, plans to tour it next year. Meanwhile, a 2012 CounterPULSE residency produced the winking hubris of MASTERWORK, marshaling a cast of po-mo drag queens under Sigourney’s control to question the egotism of the artist and the role of the audience. And in a highlight of 2012’s This Is What I Want festival, Sigourney re-purposed his performance fee to negotiate his sexual currency in real-time with his audience, while a chorus beside him voiced the testimonials of ex-lovers.

The brio and subtle play in these and other works keep Sigourney a vital presence on multiple stages, as well as an important catalyst for new work. But the more makeshift outings, without any stage at all, can be just as memorable: Sigourney in a crowded men’s room at SOMArts, for instance, seated at a table in a wife-beater beside a stack of his own poems, some pages from David Wojnarowicz, a fifth of bourbon, and a lot of shot glasses.

“It was the first time I’d brought my writing into a performance,” says Sigourney of the inebriated presentation in the john (mounted as part of SOMArts’ monthly new queer performance showcase, “The News”). “It was my writing and Wojnarowicz’s from two of his books, and the audience picked what I read.” Sigourney offered bourbon to anyone who wanted a shot with their request, and he committed himself to always drinking one with them. “I was trying to layer people on top of people. It was good for that,” recalls the artist, a little hazily. “Someone actually used the bathroom.”

Another sighting: a makeshift biergarten in Portland last September, during one of the nightly after-parties for that city’s Time-Based Art festival. Out of a small huddle by the fence rises VivvyAnne like a gibbous moon, flashlight held firmly to her face and balancing her leggy fishnets on a combination of high heels and patio furniture. After instructing the crowd in a few dance steps, she leads an impromptu off-program all her own, lip-syncing to a boom box that blasted Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA.”

Surprisingly, the Long Island native, a longtime theater (and later, club) kid who moved to San Francisco in 2004 and birthed VivvyAnne ForeverMORE! in 2008, says drag was something he grew up admiring but never thought he could do. Maybe that’s why he can do so much with it.

“I’ll never be a ‘lady lady’ drag queen,” he says. “It just won’t happen for me. So I started out saying fuck the illusion, what illusion? I’d wear things where my chest was exposed or a see-through dress or just underwear. There’s no illusion here to ruin in the first place. Once we agree that it is an illusion [we’re after], then we can make it together.”

Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

History: The Musical Un-Scripted Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Opens Thu/15, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 22). Through Dec 22. The Un-Scripted Theater Company performs "an unscripted romp through Western history."

ONGOING

Carmelina Eureka Theatre, 215 Geary, SF; www.42ndstmoon.org. $25-75. Wed/14, 7pm; Thu/15-Fri/16, 8pm; Sat/17, 6pm; Sun/18, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs the "forgotten musical" that inspired the Broadway hit Mamma Mia!

Elektra Geary Theater, 415 Geary, SF; www.act-sf.org. $20-110. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm (also Sat/17, 2pm); Sun/18, 2pm. Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis stars in Sophocles’ Greek tragedy.

Foodies! The Musical Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.foodiesthemusical.com. $30-34. Fri-Sat, 8pm (no show Sat/17). Open-ended. AWAT Productions presents Morris Bobrow’s musical comedy revue all about food.

The Foreigner Mission Dolores Academy Auditorium, 3371 16th St, SF; (650) 952-3021. Free (donations requested). Fri/16, 7:30pm; Sat/17-Sun/18, 3pm. 16th Street Players perform Larry Shue’s comedy about an Englishman in the American South.

Geezer Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $30-100. Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, 7pm. Geoff Hoyle’s popular solo show about aging returns.

The Hundred Flowers Project Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.crowdedfire.org. $10-35. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm. Reinvention is as American as apple pie — allowing every individual to shed the limitations of the past and move constantly forward. Of course it’s not an exclusively American concept, a point Christopher Chen makes early on in his latest play, The Hundred Flowers Project. A group of Asian American actors gather to collaborate on a play about the Maoist Cultural Revolution, focusing first on the idea of China as a "country of only beginnings … built on the idea of no past," while wrestling with the implications of creating and recreating history as you go along, including, eventually, their own. Ultimately the ideal overtakes their earnest intentions and hijacks the play to serve its own dictatorial end, each actor reduced to an insubstantial shadow of their former "selves," from the over-eager Sam (Ogie Zulueta) to the penitent philanderer Mike (Wiley Naman Strasser) to his somewhat wary ex, Lily (Anna Ishida). Their identities gobbled up by the restless juggernaut the play has morphed into after a triumphal five-year world-tour they hover constantly just on the edges of a dangerous discovery, their once lively sense of purpose replaced by an almost willful inability to question their roles or their fate. Chen’s sprawling, Orwellian tour de force is further bolstered by an army of adroit designers and the competent hand of director Desdemona Chiang, who one hopes is a slightly more benign force than the director of the play-within-the-play, Mel (Charisse Loriaux). (Gluckstern)

Lost Love Mojo Theatre, 2940 16th St, Ste 217, SF; www.mojotheatre.com. $28. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm. Modern love and modern life: it’s all a wash in this very funny and smart play from playwright-director Peter Papadopoulos about two pairs of lost souls thrown together in the shoals of a soggy apocalypse. Mitzy (a sure Elena Spittler) is a stunned bride whose just lost her wedding party and everyone she knew — except the valet, Tito (a perfectly deadpan Carlos Flores, Jr.), a loose canon if ultimately goodhearted, who finds himself clinging to the same rock after some unmentioned catastrophe. Meanwhile, Jan (a brilliantly, manically articulate Kimberly Lester) has gone from just sexy crazy to all-out nuts for her girlfriend Barb (a sharp, sympathetic Jessica Risco), whose recent infidelity has apparently triggered Jan’s meltdown, key symptoms of which include an obsession with a certain downbeat French existentialist on the Discovery Channel (a spritely Roy Eikleberry in an outrageous French accent so mal it’s bon), and shedding all material possessions in their mutually decorated apartment. What happens when they all end up together? The possibilities, if not endless, spell end times for the old world. The welcome inaugural production by newcomers Mojo Theatre turns out to have preempted Hurricane Sandy with its own storm of the century, proving rather timely as well as dramatically very worthwhile. Director Papadopoulos makes excellent use of modest resources in staging the action with dynamic contrasts and choice detailing, across a set of finely tuned ensemble performances, as the eccentricities and common sense at war within and between his characters begin slowly and surely to unravel a life out of balance, merrily and mercifully making way for who knows what. (Avila)

Phaedra’s Love Bindlestiff Studios, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.doitliveproductions.com. $15. Wed/14-Sat/17, 8pm. Although she didn’t make it into the 21st century herself, British playwright Sarah Kane (1971-1999) left behind a small group of plays that continue to test the complacency of an age lulled into thinking itself ultimately rational and civilized. In Kane’s cutting, brutally funny reworking of Seneca’s play (itself an adaptation of Euripides’ Hippolytus), the titular lovelorn queen (an amiably tormented Whitney Thomas) throws herself shamelessly at her stepson, royal slob Hippolytus (a sharp yet low-key Michael Zavala, channeling mumblecore nihilism) despite, or because of, his pungent contempt for everyone around him. The play’s main action, however, takes place after Phaedra has killed herself, leaving a note accusing Hippolytus of rape and setting in motion a downfall that is his own perverse salvation. Despite occasionally flagging momentum, director Ben Landmesser and newcomers Do It Live! (in their second outing since last season’s debut, an agile staging of Sam Shepard’s Suicide in B Flat) deliver a worthy production of this clever gem. While a sporadic, low-murmuring sound design (by Hannah Birch Carl) infuses the atmosphere with a muffled libidinal menace, the thrust stage brings us close to the action, rubbing our noses in the fetid whisperings and fumblings of royal parasites and their dialectical kin, the infantilized, desensitized masses. Kane’s Hippolytus, meanwhile, turns from a sort of repellent Hamlet without motive to a Genet-like criminal-saint whose martyrdom is a solitary ecstasy of stark perception. (Avila)

The Rainmaker Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.sheltontheater.org. $38. Fri-Sat, 8pm. Through Dec 22. Shelton Theatre preforms N. Richard Nash’s classic drama.

"ReOrient 2012 Festival and Forum" Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.goldenthread.org. $20. Series A runs Thu/15-Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, 7pm. Series B runs Sat/17-Sun/18, 8pm. After a three-year hiatus, Golden Thread Productions’ ReOrient Festival of short plays from and about the Middle East is back (coupled with an impressive two-day forum of talks, panels, workshops, and performance around art and politics in the wake of the Arab Spring and other momentous developments across the region). The first of two series of plays, Series A, includes War & Peace, a short symbolical comedy by 20th-century Egyptian literary giant Tawfiq Al-Hakim (handily translated by May Jayyusi and David Wright) that distills imposing social forces into a three-way ménage between a smart, free-spirited woman (a vibrant Lena Hart), her secret suitor in a showman’s coattails and cane (a comically fervent Jesse Horne), and her jealous husband, a violent-tempered military officer (a suave yet stentorian Garth Petal). Sharply directed by Hafiz Karmali, it’s an effervescent little farce that in its power dynamics, and the elusive happiness of the characters, neatly limns bigger themes never timelier in Egypt (or here). It’s followed by Farzam Farrokhi’s 2012, directed by Sara Razavi, a low-key second-coming cum coffee klatch among three laid-back, cell phone-obsessed messiahs (Cory Censoprano, Horne, Roneet Aliza Rahamim) from the three Abrahamic religions that sets an unexpected tone but never really amounts to much. Far more dramatic is Birds Flew In by Yussef El Guindi (of Golden Thread hit Language Rooms, among others), a monologue by a single Arab American mother mourning her deceased soldier-son and wondering where she might have gone wrong. Delivered with unsentimental grit by Nora El Samahy, it’s a strongly voiced if familiar story that registers ambivalence with facile patriotism and violent nationalism, yet unconvincingly retreats at the last moment into a familiar red-white-and-blue corner. Silva Semericiyan’s Stalemate, directed by Desdemona Chiang, is a triptych of scenes between changing pairs of men (played by Censoprano and Horne) that aims at a transnational snapshot of ingrained patterns of male aggression (from Fleet Street to Red Light Amsterdam to war-torn Baghdad) but comes across too weakly and a little confusingly. Durected by Christine Young, Jen Silverman’s In the Days That Follow — set in Boston amid clichés of American openness, innocence and possibility (albeit charmingly personified by Censoprano) — is the longest piece and the most dramatically interesting, if also somewhat strained, positing a 22-year-old Jewish Israeli translator and IDF veteran (Rahamim) as the instigator of peaceful dialogue and mutual affection with an older and politically hardened Palestinian Lebanese poet (El Samahy). Finally, in Mona Mansour and Tala Manassah’s sweet but drifting meta-theatrical, The Letter, directed by Razavi, a Palestinian American physicist (Petal) and his philosopher daughter (Hart) mount an amateur theater piece to respond to the 2011 controversy over CUNY’s blocking of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner based on an attack by a CUNY board member on Kushner’s opposition to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. (Avila)

Roseanne: Live! Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $25. Wed/14, 7 and 9pm. Lady Bear, Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, and more star in this tribute to the long-running sitcom.

Shocktoberfest 13: The Bride of Death Hypnodrome, 575 10th St, SF; www.thrillpeddlers.com. $25-35. Thu/15-Sat/17, 8pm. Thrillpeddlers’ seasonal assortment of yeasty Grand Guignol playlets is a mixed bag of treats, but it all goes so nicely with the autumnal slink into early nights and dark cravings. Fredrick Whitney’s Coals of Fire is lightly amusing, if far from smoking, as a two-hander about a blind older matron (Leigh Crow) who discovers her young companion (Zelda Koznofski, alternating nights with Nancy French) has been secretly schtupping her husband. I’m a Mummy is a short, not very effective musical interlude by Douglas Byng, featuring the bright pair of Jim Jeske and Annie Larson as Mr. and Mrs., respectively. The titular feature, The Bride of Death, written by Michael Phillis and directed by Russell Blackwood, proves a worthy centerpiece, unfolding an intriguing, well-acted tale about a reporter (Phillis) and his photographer (Flynn DeMarco) arriving at a stormy castle to interview a strangely youthful Grand Guignol stage star (Bonni Suval) making her film debut. After another, this time more rousing musical number, Those Beautiful Ghouls (with music and lyrics by Scrumbly Koldewyn; directed and choreographed by D’Arcy Drollinger), comes the evening’s real high point, The Twisted Pair by Rob Keefe, acted to the bloody hilt by leads Blackwood and DeMarco as the titular duo of scientists driven mad by an experimental batch of ‘crazy’ glue. All of it comes capped, of course, by the company’s signature lights-out spook show. (Avila)

Speed-the-Plow Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; www.actorstheatresf.org. $26-38. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Extended through Dec 21. Actors Theatre of San Francisco performs the David Mamet drama.

"Strindberg Cycle: The Chamber Plays in Rep" Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. $10-50 (festival pass, $75). Thu/15, 7:30pm; Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm (also Sat/17, 2pm); Sun/18, 5pm. The first pair in the Cutting Ball Theater’s cycle of five newly-translated August Strindberg chamber plays, Storm and Burned House share much in common. Written in 1907, five years before Strindberg’s death, they are the most straightforward, least supernaturally-charged of the five, whose characters are haunted by memories rather than actual ghosts, and whose cloak and dagger domestic intrigues foreshadow Alfred Hitchcock as much as they do Harold Pinter. Both star a commanding pair of veteran Bay Area actors James Carpenter and Robert Parsons as elderly brothers, whose ability to move forward in the present is impeded by memories of past mistakes. In Storm, Carpenter plays the role of an elderly cuckold, whose wife left him five years previous and who, in the words of Parsons, "murdered" his reputation. In Burned House, Carpenter returns to his childhood home from America, a long-lost prodigal son, only to find it has burned to the ground, and with it, any hope of reconciling an unpleasant past. In both, an atmosphere of muted mendacity and stifling unease crowds the stage like an unnamed character whose presence is little acknowledged but felt acutely by all the principles. Gloomy and hostile, bereft of even the slightest glimmer of hopefulness, Storm and Burned House will appeal most to Strindberg completists, post-naturalists, and admirers of new translations (of which Paul Walsh has done a stellar job). (Gluckstern)

The Submission New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm (no shows Nov 21-22); Sun, 2pm. Through Dec 16. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Jeff Talbott’s drama about a playwright who falsifies his identity when he enters his latest work into a prestigious theater festival.

Superior Donuts Gough Street Playhouse, 1622 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $25-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through Dec 2. Custom Made Theatre performs Tracy Letts’ poignant, Chicago-set comedy.

Twelfth Night, or What You Will Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, Sixth Flr., SF; www.ninjazofdrama.com. $10. Thu/15-Sat/17, 8pm (also Sat/17, 3pm). Ninjaz of Drama perform the Shakespeare classic.

The Waiting Period Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through Dec 8. Brian Copeland (comedian, TV and radio personality, and creator-performer of the long-running solo play Not a Genuine Black Man) returns to the Marsh with a new solo, this one based on more recent and messier events` in Copeland’s life. The play concerns an episode of severe depression in which he considered suicide, going so far as to purchase a handgun — the title coming from the legally mandatory 10-day period between purchasing and picking up the weapon, which leaves time for reflections and circumstances that ultimately prevent Copeland from pulling the trigger. A grim subject, but Copeland (with co-developer and director David Ford) ensures there’s plenty of humor as well as frank sentiment along the way. The actor peoples the opening scene in the gun store with a comically if somewhat stereotypically rugged representative of the Second Amendment, for instance, as well as an equally familiar "doood" dude at the service counter. Afterward, we follow Copeland, a just barely coping dad, home to the house recently abandoned by his wife, and through the ordinary routines that become unbearable to the clinically depressed. Copeland also recreates interviews he’s made with other survivors of suicidal depression. Telling someone about such things is vital to preventing their worst outcomes, says Copeland, and telling his own story is meant to encourage others. It’s a worthy aim but only a fitfully engaging piece, since as drama it remains thin, standing at perhaps too respectful a distance from the convoluted torment and alienation at its center. (Avila)

BAY AREA

Acid Test: The Many Incarnations of Ram Dass Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through Nov 24. Lynne Kaufman’s new play stars Warren David Keith as the noted spiritual figure.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through Dec 16. This new autobiographical solo show by Don Reed, writer-performer of the fine and long-running East 14th, is another slice of the artist’s journey from 1970s Oakland ghetto to comedy-circuit respectability — here via a partial debate-scholarship to UCLA. The titular Los Angeles residency hotel was where Reed lived and worked for a time in the 1980s while attending university. It’s also a rich mine of memory and material for this physically protean and charismatic comic actor, who sails through two acts of often hilarious, sometimes touching vignettes loosely structured around his time on the hotel’s young wait staff, which catered to the needs of elderly patrons who might need conversation as much as breakfast. On opening night, the episodic narrative seemed to pass through several endings before settling on one whose tidy moral was delivered with too heavy a hand, but if the piece runs a little long, it’s only the last 20 minutes that noticeably meanders. And even with some awkward bumps along the way, it’s never a dull thing watching Reed work. (Avila)

Richard the First: Part One, Part Two, Part Three Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thu/15-Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, three-part marathon, 2, 5, 8pm. This Central Works Method Trilogy presents a rotating schedule of three plays by Gary Graves about the king known as "the Lionheart."

Richard III Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; www.aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley performs the Shakespeare classic.

Sex, Slugs and Accordion Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $10. Wed/14, 8pm. Jetty Swart, a.k.a. Jet Black Pearl, stars in this "wild and exotic evening of song."

The Sound of Music Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $15-35. Thu-Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm. Through Dec 2. Berkeley Playhouse opens its fifth season with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Toil and Trouble La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm (no show Nov 22). Through Dec 8. Impact Theatre presents Lauren Gunderson’s world premiere comedy inspired by Macbeth.

The White Snake Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $29-99. Opens Wed/14, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Nov 29, Dec 13, and Sat, 2pm; no matinee Dec 1; no show Nov 22); Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 23. Mary Zimmerman (Metamorphoses) returns to Berkeley Rep with this classic romance adapted from a Chinese legend.

Wilder Times Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $32-60. Tue, 7pm; Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Dec 9. Aurora Theatre performs a collection of one-acts by Thornton Wilder.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun, 11am; Nov 23-25, 11am. Through Nov 25. Louis "The Amazing Bubble Man" Pearl brings his lighter-than-air show back to the Marsh.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, B350 Fort Mason Center, SF; www.improv.org. $20. "Theatresports," Fri, 8pm, through Dec 21. "Family Drama," Sat, 8pm, through Nov 24.

"The Buddy Club Children’s Shows" Randall Museum Theater, 199 Museum Wy, SF; www.thebuddyclub.com. Sun/18, 11am. $8. Magician Timothy James performs.

"Clone Zone" Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; clonezone.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm; Sun/18, 7pm. $20. Anna and the Annadroids perform a multi-media dance theater piece inspired by video games and Carl Jung.

"Comedy Bodega" Esta Noche Nightclub, 3079 16th St, SF; www.comedybodega.com. Thu, 8pm. Ongoing. No cover (one drink minumum). This week: Caitlin Gill, Wonder Dave, and friends.

"The Comikaze Lounge: A Showcase of Smart Comedy" Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.comikazelounge.com. Wed/14, 8pm. Free. Comedy with Brendan Lynch, Griffin Daley, Drew Harmon, and more.

"Fauxgirls!" Infusion Lounge, 124 Ellis, SF; www.fauxgirls.com. Thu/15, 8pm. Free. Drag revue with Victoria Secret, Alexandria, Chanel, Maria Garza, and more.

"Illuminique Under the Dome" Westfield SF Centre, 865 Market, SF; westfield.com/sanfrancisco. Thu/15, 4:30pm. Free. Dancers from the San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker perform a demonstration for children at this launch event for the shopping center’s new 3D holiday light display.

International Taiko Festival Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater, 700 Howard, SF; www.ybca.org. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm (also Sat/17, 2pm). $32-38. With Grand Master Seiichi Tanaka and San Francisco Taiko Dojo, and more.

"Life with Laughter" Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/16, 8:30pm. $10-20. Variety show featuring comedy, storytelling, spoken word, and music.

"New Frequencies Fest 2012" Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm. $20-25. Fri/16: "Women, Strings, and Song" with women songwriters and composers performing live; Sat/17: Dafnis Prieto Proverb Trio and a lively celebration of the African Diaspora.

"Our Daily Bread" CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thu/15-Sun/18, 8pm. $20-30. Amara Tabor-Smith’s Deep Waters Dance Theater performs a work inspired by food traditions.

"Round One Cabaret" Alcove Theater, 414 Mason, Ste 502, SF; roundonecabaret.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm. $30. Not Quite Opera presents this showcase of new songs by Bay Area composers.

San Francisco International Hip Hop Festival Palace of Fine Arts Theater, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.cityboxoffice.com. Program A: Fri/16, 8pm and Sun/18, 2pm. Program B: Sat/17, 8pm and Sun/18, 7pm. $39.99 (combo tickets, $75). Sixteen hip-hop dance companies from the Bay Area, the East Coast, Europe, and more perform at this 14th annual event.

"San Francisco Magic Parlor" Chancellor Hotel Union Square, 433 Powell, SF; www.sfmagicparlor.com. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Ongoing. $40. Magic vignettes with conjurer and storyteller Walt Anthony.

"The Way Tomorrow Was: A Retro-Future Burlesque and Bellydance Revue" 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.lightreclaimed.com. Sat/17, 10pm. $12-20. Retro space-age performances.

BAY AREA

Mills Repertory Dance Company Lisser Theatre, Mills College, 5000 Macarthur, Oakl; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/16-Sat/17, 8pm (also Fri/16, 1pm). Also Sun/18, 3pm at Dance Mission Theatre, 336 24th St., SF. $12-15. Fall concert with works by Sonya Delwaide, Shinichi Iova-Koga, Katie Faulkner, and others.

"Yes, Bay Area: The Selected Tweets of Lyrics Born: A Reading with Beats" Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-1320. Sun/18, 7:30pm. Free. The musican shares his first book at this "musically enhanced literary reading" presented by First Person Singular’s On Book series.

Rep Clock

Andrew Lam
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0

Schedules are for Wed/7-Tue/13 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. $6-10. “Bruised Jewels: Films and Slide Works by Luther Price,” Thu, 7:30. With Price in person; presented by SF Cinematheque. “Bright Mirror: An Evening of Sound and Image,” with Jeff Surak, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, and Paul Clipson, Fri, 8. “Other Cinema:” “Live A/V” with works by Lori Varga, Kerry Laitala, Anne McGuire, and more, Sat, 8:30. “Small Press Traffic: A Reading and Conversation with kathryn l. pringle, Erin Moure, and Andrea Rexilius,” Sun, 5. “Alain LeTourneau and Pam Minty: Empty Quarter,” Sun, 7:30. With LeTourneau and Minty in person; presented by SF Cinematheque.

BALBOA 3630 Balboa, SF; www.cinemasf.com. $10. The Doors: Live at the Bowl ’68, Thu, 8.

CASTRO 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. $8.50-11. •The Game (Fincher, 1997), Wed, 1:30, 7, and Zodiac (Fincher, 2007), Wed, 4, 9:25. “An Evening with Ken Burns:” The Dust Bowl (2012), Thu, 7:30. Advance tickets ($12-18) at www.cityboxoffice.com. “Forever Natalie Wood:” •Rebel Without a Cause (Ray, 1955), Fri, 2:30, 7, and This Property is Condemned (Pollack, 1966), Fri, 4:45, 9:15; •Gypsy (LeRoy, 1962), Sat, noon, and Love With the Proper Stranger (Mulligan, 1963), Sat, 3; Splendor in the Grass (Kazan, 1961), centerpiece event with Natalie Wood’s sister, Lana Wood, in person, Sat, 7:30; West Side Story (Robbins and Wise, 1961), presented sing-along style (this event, $10-15), Sun, 2; •Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Mazursky, 1969), Sun, 7, and Inside Daisy Clover (Mulligan, 1965), Sun, 9:05. •Lawless (Hillcoat, 2012), Tue, 7, and Killer Joe (Friedkin, 2011), Tue, 9:10.

CHRISTOPHER B. SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER 1118 Fourth St, San Rafael; (415) 454-1222, www.cafilm.org. $6.75-$10.25. All Together (Robelin, 2011), Wed-Thu, call for times. A Liar’s Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman (Jones, Simpson, and Timlett, 2012), call for dates and times. The Other Son (Lévy, 2012), call for dates and times. “Johnny Legend’s TV in Acidland, Thu, 7 and Sun, 2. A Late Quartet (Zilberman, 2012), Nov 9-15, call for times. Sister (Meier, 2012), Nov 9-15, call for times. The Welcome (McMillan, 2011), Sun, 7. With Bill McMillan in person.

COUNTERPULSE 1310 Mission, SF; www.sftff.org. $12-15. San Francisco Transgender Film Festival: “Performance Extravaganza,” Thu, 8; films, Fri-Sat, 8; Sun, 7.

EMBARCADERO One Embarcadero Center, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-25. “New Italian Cinema:” “An Evening with Valeria Golino,” Sun, 5:30; Texas (Paravidino, 2005), Sun, 9; A Tale of Love (Maselli, 1986), Mon, 6:15; Respiro (Crialese, 2002); The Greatest of Them All (Virzi, 2011), Tue, 6:15; Kryptonite! (Cotroneo, 2011), Tue, 9. Series continues through Nov. 18.

FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF SAN FRANCISCO 1187 Franklin, SF; www.billviola.com. $50-125. “Transformation from Within,” with video art pioneer Bill Viola and curator John Walsh, Fri, 7:30.

“NAPA VALLEY FILM FESTIVAL” Various North Bay venues; www.napavalleyfilmfest.org. First-run films and documentaries, plus tributes to Alan Cumming, James Marsden, and more, Wed-Sun.

NEW PEOPLE CINEMA 1746 Post, SF; www.sffs.org. $12-25. “Cinema By the Bay:” Trattoria (Wolos, 2012), Fri, 7 and 9:30; Casablanca mon amour (Slattery, 2012), Sat, 2:30; “Essential SF,” Sat, 5 (free admission); Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet (Vile, 2012), Sat, 7; Amity (Adams, 2012), Sat, 9:30; “Moving Image at the End of the World: Shorts from Headlands Center for the Arts,” Sun, 2; “A Conversation with Lucy Gray,” Sun, 4:15; The Revolutionary Optimists (Grainger-Monsen and Newnham, work in progress), Sun, 6; CXL (Gillane, 2011), Sun, 8:30.

PACIFIC FILM ARCHIVE 2575 Bancroft, Berk; (510) 642-5249, bampfa.berkeley.edu. $5.50-9.50. “Alternative Visions:” “The Films of John Smith,” Wed, 7. “Afterimage: The Films of Kidlat Tahimik, Indigenous:” Who Invented the Yoyo? Who Invented the Moon Buggy? (1979), Thu, 7; Perfumed Nightmare (1977), Tue, 7. “Grand Illusions: French Cinema Classics, 1928-1960:” Children of Paradise (Carné, 1945), Fri, 7; Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937), Sat, 6:30; The Story of a Cheat (Guitry, 1936), Sat, 8:45; Toni (Renoir, 1934), Sun, 2. “Art for Human Rights: Ai Weiwei:” Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry (Klayman, 2012), Sun, 4:30.

ROXIE 3117 and 3125 16th St, SF; (415) 863-1087, www.roxie.com. $6.50-11. Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (Grant, 2012), Wed, 9:30; Thu, 9. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Black, 2005), Wed, 7:15. The Magnificent Pigtail Shadow (Cerio, 2012), Wed, 7:15. Miami Connection (Kim, 1986), Wed, 6:45. The Waiting Room (Nicks, 2012), Thu, 7. “City College’s Second Annual Festival of the Moving Image,” Thu, 7 and 9. San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, Nov 9-21. Visit www.sfindie.com for complete schedule.

VICTORIA 2961 16th St, SF; www.sfcult.org. $10. •Slaughter in San Francisco (Wei, 1974), Fri, 7, and The Warriors (Hill, 1979), Fri, 9.

YERBA BUENA CENTER FOR THE ARTS 701 Mission, SF; www.ybca.org. $10. “Animating Dark Dreams: The Films of Jan Svankmajer:” Alice (1989), Thu, 7:30; Lunacy (2006), Sun, 2; Little Otik (2000), Sun, 4:30. “Constancy of Change: Films of John Smith,” Fri, 7:30.

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