Election

Tricky sings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Tricky sings

MUSIC Compared with the smooth operator currently installed in the Oval Office, how nervous Richard Nixon looks now as a representative of America abroad, all stiff grins, rumpled shiftiness, outbursts of awkward rhetoric. Reviewing vintage footage of him recently, I half expected a rappin’ granny to suddenly appear, and goofy Uncle Dick to start “breaking it down.” And yet, 40 years after California’s second-most problematic political progeny (pace, zombie Reagan) went to Beijing to “open China” — ending 25 years of separation and going on to win re-election in a landslide, despite the growing Watergate scandal — might it be time to look past the jerky, jowly image of Tricky Dick and reassess the character of the man and the moment, to keep us on our toes?

“Nixon was an incredibly complicated man, whose intellect constantly got in his way,” Canadian opera director Michael Cavanagh told me over the phone during a wide-ranging interview. “And it’s especially relevant to examine him now in that light, with a certain distance of history. We tend to stop at the jowls, the scandal, and the Republicanism. But it’s often been remarked during this election cycle that there’s no way in hell Nixon would ever be considered for the Republican ballot now. He was too small ‘r’ republican, too centrist. So there’s this complexity to him that confronts lefties with their own stereotypes, assuming most patrons of the arts lean left. That’s something I really like.”

Cavanagh’s complexifying occasion will be his production of John Adams’ 1987 Nixon in China, part of the San Francisco Opera’s nifty-looking summer season. The opera, with a luminescent libretto by poet Alice Goodman and an engrossing, fever-dream score by Adams, whose melodies, time signatures, and musical reference points churn and shift like memory itself, takes us from the moment Nixon’s Spirit of ’76 touches down on the tarmac (Kissinger in tow), through his historic meetings with Chou En-Lai and Mao Tse-Tung, along with First Lady Pat on an eventful factory tour, and finally into the major characters’ bedrooms, memories, and fantasies. It’s a sensually intoxicating work, full of barnstorming arias sung by a multi-ethnic cast (you will have “I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung” stuck in your head for days) that examines media spectacle, modern myth-making, and cultural difference on a truly, well, operatic scale.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Nixon was Californian, Adams is a longtime Bay Area resident. It’s the 40th anniversary of the China visit, and also an insanely contentious election year. The Bay Area as a huge Chinese population — many families escaped Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Do you feel any particular pressure bringing this production here, now? 

Michael Cavanagh I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility, but I also feel a lot of freedom. Of course, the events the opera depicts and its roots in the Bay Area will resonate, and that’s hugely exciting. But this isn’t a documentary, it’s a rumination, more of a poem. As Nixon says in the beginning of the opera, “News has a kind of mystery” — and I feel that’s what Adams and Goodman were really expanding upon with this.

I do think that this production, especially, will bring up memories for a lot of people. I myself had an inkling of this whole thing happening when I was really young — it’s something that a lot of the world shares, a memory of this iconic moment, even if that memory is only a glimpse of pavement or a handshake, kind of like my own. The opera works with that abstraction, those fuzzy frames of memory that overlay images of the past, while still sharpening some of the more historically relevant moments. I hope people can relate to it on all of those levels.

SFBG Twenty-five years separate us from the opera’s premiere in Houston in 1987 — and yet China remains, to use a slightly loaded term, as inscrutable as ever to many Americans, yet as enmeshed in their daily lives as ever. What relevance do you think the opera may hold today?

MC I think it has an eerie relevance. Even back when Nixon in China premiered, China was still remote and threatening to many, and this was before the reform machine revved into life, before China’s emerging economic dominance. In one scene, in Mao’s library, Mao goes off quite poetically about the revolution, and how things were changing, and he plays fast and loose with the concepts of capitalism and communism, almost as if he foresees the necessary reforms ahead, that came to pass.

Beyond that, the opera is very prescient about the evolution of the media — this was one of the first major world events to be broadcast on a global scale, to be covered as the kind of spectacle we base much of our opinions and thoughts on today. We think of Nixon as shifty-eyed, but he was really just trying to figure out where the cameras were most of the time, trying to acclimate to this new kind of fishbowl environment in which political figures were treated like movie characters. The opera records the beginnings of all that, and ends with them reviewing their memories of everything that’s occurred as if it was all this footage, which it is quite actually on stage.

Basically, though, the deepest relevance a work can have is by connecting to the audience through its characters. Take Pat Nixon. We hurt for Pat Nixon. She’s been betrayed. Nixon promised her a simple home life, the comforts of family and a man at home, and here she is traveling all the way to China! She’s bewildered, but as First Lady there’s really no place for that, so she forges her own, I think very American kind of resolve that cracks a couple times, but still gets her through.

It’s a very poignant psychological and emotional study, projected on the world stage, and amplified as only opera can. That’s what opera does better than any other art form: it amplifies life.

SFBG You’re a Canadian — have you caught any flack for interpreting these events that are so associated with the US?

MC You know, despite appeals to the contrary, our two countries really share the same history. This version of the opera was premiered in Vancouver during the Olympic Festival — it’s what Canada chose to represent itself will to the entire world. And when it comes down to it, really, everything you do effects us Canadians just as much. We sleep with the elephant. *

NIXON IN CHINA

June 8-July 3, times and prices vary

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF.

(415) 861-4008

www.sfopera.com

 

Stage Listings

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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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

The Full Monty Eureka Theatre, 215 Jackson, SF; www.roltheatre.com. $25-36. Opens Thu/31, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 2pm. Through June 30. Ray of Light Theatre performs the hit musical.

100 Saints You Should Know Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.therhino.org. $10-30. Previews Thu/31, 7:30pm and Fri/1, 8pm. Opens Sat/2, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 3pm. Through June 17. Theatre Rhinoceros performs Kate Fodor’s comedy-drama about family love, homosexuality, and adolescence.

BAY AREA

Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-73. Opens Wed/30, 8pm. Runs Tue, Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 7pm). Through June 24. Berkeley Rep presents a world premiere from writer-performer Dael Orlandersmith (a Pulitzer finalist for 2002’s Yellowman).

The Tempest Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda; (510) 809-3290, www.calshakes.org. $35-71. Previews Wed/30-Fri/1, 8pm. Opens Sat/2, 8pm. Runs Tue-Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also June 23, 2pm); Sun, 4pm. Through June 25. California Shakespeare Theater opens its season with this dance-filled interpretation of the Bard’s classic tale.

ONGOING

Endgame and Play American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Wed/30-Sat/2, 8pm (also Wed/30, Sat/2-Sun/3, 2pm). The stage is bare save for three cocoon-like urns in a row, each containing an emergent head, literally trapped side by side as in an existentialist’s nightmare. In staccato bursts of speech punctuated by the rapid jumping of a follow-spot, the three heads (Anthony Fusco, Annie Purcell, and René Augesen) narrate their respective sides of an adulterous triangle, not once, but twice, incorporating subtle variations on delivery and cadence during the second go-round. The static staging and deconstructed syntax of Samuel Beckett’s seldom-produced short Play is a good introduction to Beckett’s sensibilities, and sets the mood for the main event, the better-known Endgame. This ferocious exploration of habit, habitat, cruelty and fealty has a lot of food for thought to chew on no matter who produces it, but ACT’s version does lack a certain meaty heft. There’s just something a little too smooth in Bill Irwin’s manner as the chairbound, petty tyrant Hamm, and all too often his poisonous ire comes off as merely petulant. Nick Gabriel, as his beleaguered servant Clov, fares somewhat better (or in fact worse), inhabiting his painful mobility with an appropriately long-suffering manner and frustrated despair, and Hamm’s two legless “cursed progenitors” Nell (Barbara Oliver) and Nagg (Giles Havergal) inject some much appreciated warmth into the generally bleak atmosphere. (Gluckstern)

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

My Tia Loca’s Life of Crime Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thu/31-Sat/2, 8pm. “No Human is Illegal,” the immigrant rights activists like to remind, a message adeptly conveyed by Roy Conboy’s My Tia Loca’s Life of Crime, presented by Guerrilla Rep at Bindlestiff Studio. A pointed yet comical commentary on the “crimes” of one Tia Loca (Cat Callejas) which include sneaking back over the border between Mexico and the US after being illegally deported from her actual native country by “La Migra” and impersonating a plainclothes cop in order to find her long-lost daughter, the central message of the play is one of solidarity — familia first. The family bond is most strikingly evident between Callejas’ feisty, independent eccentric and Melvign Badiola as her goofy nephew Memo, who shares her tendency for extralegal action as well as a love for mole. The comedic chemistry between the two is tough and tender, and full of casually hilarious, bickering repartee. The staging is mostly a delight with great jams provided by Brandon Bigelow and Jonah Pavon, strong acting support from Lainey Garrity, Matt Gunnison, and Kirsten Broadbear, and a snappy pace. Regrettably the play’s ending, a dreamlike nod to magical realism and low-riders, feels somewhat tacked on and not fully plotted out, unlike the down-to-earth retelling of events that illustrate Tia’s “criminal” past. But “life aint no pinche bowl of cherries,” and even imperfect, Tia is important. (Gluckstern)

Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.

Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. 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

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)

God of Carnage Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/2 and June 16, 2pm; Tue/7, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about two sets of parents who meet after their children get into a schoolyard fight.

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through June 10. 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)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun and Fri/1, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Fri, 6pm; Sun/3, June 10, 16, 24, and 30, 11am. Through June 30. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“The Bilarious Show” LGBT Center Rainbow Room, 1800 Market, SF; www.qcomedy.com. Sat/2, 7:30pm, $12. The National Queer Arts Festival presents this all-bi line-up of comedy, music, and performance.

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

“Larry Hankin’s Street Stories” Marsh San Francisco, Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. Fri/1-Sat/2, 8pm. $20-35. The San Francisco comedy legend performs his solo show.

“The News” Somarts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; www.somarts.org. Tue/5, 7:30pm. $5. New and experimental queer performance works from Nic Alea, Hallie Dalsimer, and more.

“Parkour Deux” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/1-Sun/3, 8pm (also Sun/3, 2pm). $15-22. Scott Wells and Dancers perform new work.

“The Romane Event Comedy Show” Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, SF; romaneeventcomedyshow.eventbrite.com. Wed/30, 7:30pm. $10. Stand-up with Ms. Pat and the Bay Area Comedy All-Stars.

San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival Fort Mason Center, Cowell Theater, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.worldartswest.org. Sat/2, 4pm; Sun/3, 4pm. $12-20. Weekend one of the 34th annual festival, “The World United Through Dance,” features a world premiere by Bay Area troupe Gamelan Sekar Jaya, in collaboration with Sudanese gamelan Pusaka Sunda.

“Sex and the City: Live!” Rebel, 1760 Market, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Tue, 7 and 9pm. Through June 26. $25. Heklina, D’Arcy Drollinger, Lady Bear, Trixxie Carr play the fab four in this drag-tastic homage to the HBO series.

“Shadow of a Doubt” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.dancecontinuumsf.org. Fri/1-Sun/3, 8pm. $20. Dance Continuum SF performs a dance-theater concert with four premieres and one repertory work.

“Voca People” Marines’ Memorial Theatre, 609 Sutter, Second Flr, SF; www.marinesmemorialtheatre.com. Tue-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6:30 and 9:30pm; Sun, 3 and 6pm. Through June 17. $49-75. A capella from outer space.

“The Water is Clear and Still” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thu/31-Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 2pm. $25. Liss Fain Dance performs a world premiere performance installation inspired by short stories by Jamaica Kincaid.

“X” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. June 5-7, 8pm. $10-20. Australian performer Sunny Drake presents his new show in conjunction with the National Queer Arts Festival.

BAY AREA

“Dances for Oakland” Laney College Theater, 900 Fallon, Oakl; www.savagejazz.org. Thu/31-Sat/2, 8pm; Sun/3, 3pm. $5-20. Savage Jazz Dance Company performs in celebration of its 20th anniversary.

“RoCo Dance Onstage” Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium, Marin Center, 10 Avenue of the Flags, San Rafael; (415) 499-6800. Fri/1, 8pm; Sat/2, 7pm. $19.50-29. RoCo Dance and Fitness presents two nights of performance featuring over 700 dancers of all ages. *

 

Stage Listings May 23-29, 2012

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
-
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

Othello Phoenix Theatre, 414 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-18. Opens Thu/26, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Ninjaz of Drama performs Shakespeare’s classic in a contemporary setting.

Slipping New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness, SF; www.nctcsf.org. $25-45. Previews Wed/23-Fri/25, 8pm. Opens Sat/26, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through July 1. New Conservatory Theatre Center performs Daniel Talbott’s drama about a gay teen who finds new hope after a traumatic breakup.

BAY AREA

God of Carnage Marin Theatre Company, 397 Miller, Mill Valley; www.marintheatre.org. $34-55. Previews Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm; Sun/27, 7pm. Opens Tue/29, 8pm. Runs Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also June 2 and 16, 2pm; June 7, 1pm); Wed, 7:30pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through June 17. Marin Theatre Company performs Yasmina Reza’s Tony-winning comedy about two sets of parents who meet after their children get into a schoolyard fight.

ONGOING

“Best of PlayGround 16: A Festival of New Writers and New Plays” Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playground-sf.org. $10-40. Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm; Sun/27, 7pm. Seven short plays and musicals by Bay Area authors, plus a staged-readings series.

“DIVAfest” Exit Theatreplex, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Through Sun/27. Entering its second decade, the estrogen-centric DIVAfest at the Exit is so jam-packed with activities — workshops, burlesque, symposiums, readings, singer-songwriter nights — you’d be forgiven for not realizing that plays are also on the menu. But in fact, they are the main course. This year’s smorgasbord features three very different solo shows, each encapsulating a wholly unique female voice. Genevieve Jessee’s Girl in, but not of, the ‘Hood, which won a “Best of the Fringe Festival” award in 2011, has since been reworked with a new director, Exit Theatre stalwart Michelle Talgarow, rendering it sharper and more comic without minimizing the inner turmoil experienced by the main character, Jessee herself. Catherine Debon’s Alma Colarada, which also won a “Best of the Fringe” in 2011, is an emotionally-charged, experimental roller-coaster ride that appropriately begins and ends on a train. Detailing a family history fraught with World War II resistance fighting, concentration camps, communist sympathies, and endless trains, Debon nimbly vacillates between the neuroses of the present day and the deep despair of the past, while still finding a way to end to piece on a triumphal note. Last but by no means least, the laugh-out-loud romantic farce Pussy, by Maura Halloran, details the tricky intricacies of a lesbian-feline-nosy neighbor ménage à “cat-re”. Yes, it’s about a cat … hmmm, or is it? You should really take the opportunity to find out. (Gluckstern)

Down to This Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $12-20. Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm. Thirty-something Charlie (Derek Fischer) plays this little game with himself where he tosses a rotten egg at the kitchen trash as if he were making a free-throw in sudden-death overtime. This little moment, innocent and ordinary on the surface, puzzles one-night stand Donna (Tonya Narvaez) after she happens on the scene. That she would be baffled, even momentarily disturbed by so common a flight of sports-dude imagination is our first taste of the strained mechanics of Adam Chanzit’s slight pulp revenge tale: sure enough, this game of chance turns out to be a (pretty ridiculous) psychopathology ruling Charlie’s world. When a moment later his equally imbalanced and estranged wife (Kendra Lee Oberhauser), fresh from prison and packing heat, bursts in on the two lovebirds, Charlie’s fate-game will become the tortured trope in a table-turning showdown between all three — plus Charlie’s hapless roommate (Jomar Tagatac) and his crew-cut–sporting sidekick (Shane Rhoades). Chanzit offers some mild surprises and amusing banter along the way in Sleepwalkers’ world premiere — helmed by artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp — but the plot and characters are stretched thin, and the tension often grows slack despite the able and likable cast. By the time the story climaxes in a coin-toss of an ending (designed to work out one of two ways, depending), it’s too big a muddle to generate more than a momentary quiver of anticipation over anybody’s fate. (Avila)

Endgame and Play American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinee Wed/23). Through June 3. ACT presents two absurd dark comedies by Samuel Beckett.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu/24, 8pm; Sat/26, 8:30pm, Sun/27, 7pm. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

My Tia Loca’s Life of Crime Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 2. Guerrilla Rep performs a new play by Roy Conboy, chair of SF State’s Playwriting Department.

A Raisin in the Sun Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; 1-800-838-2006, www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-35. Sat/26, 8pm; Sun/27, 3pm. African-American Shakespeare Company performs Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu/24, 7:30pm; Fri/25-Sat/26, 8pm (also Sat/26, 2pm); Sun/27, 5pm. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Honoring Lorraine Hansberry In Her Own Words Gough Street Playhouse, Trinity Episcopal Church, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $22-28. Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm; Sun/27, 7pm. Custom Made Theater and Multi Ethnic Theater collaborate on this tribute to the groundbreaking playwright.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. 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)

The Wrong Dick Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu/24-Sat/26, 8pm. Ham Pants Productions presents a noir-inspired comedy set in San Francisco.

BAY AREA

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern)

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Previews Wed/23-Thu/24, 7pm. Opens Fri/25, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through June 10. 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)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, Fri/25, and June 1, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Sun/27, June 3, 10, 16, 24, and 30, 11am. Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri/25, 8pm: “Director’s Cut!,” $20. Sat/26, 8pm: “Improvised Murder Mystery,” $20.

“Bitter Melon” Dewey Monument, Union Square, Stockton at Geary, SF; www.pushdance.org. Fri/27-Mon/28, 8pm (or sundown). Free. Push Dance Company and Union Square Live present a world premiere by Raissa Simpson.

“Des Voix … Found in Translation” Z Space, 450 Florida, SF; www.desvoixfestival.com. Fri/25-Sun/27, times vary. $20-75. Playwrights Foundation and Cultural Services of the Consulate General of France/SF present this first-ever festival of newly translated plays by vanguard French authors.

“Dionysian Festival” Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dancing, 245 Fifth St, Ste 314, SF; (415) 357-1817, www.duncandance.org. Sat/26, 8pm; Sun/27, 6pm. $18. Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers present the 15th annual festival honoring the birthday of modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. Program includes Duncan repertoire as well as new works by Sano.

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

“Litquake’s Epicenter: A Night of Edith Piaf” Tosca Café, 242 Columbus, SF; www.litquake.org. Tue/29, 7pm. Free. Litquake and City Lights Books celebrate the French chanteuse with author Carolyn Burke (No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf) and singer Betty Roi.

“Parkour Deux” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Fri/25-Sun/27 and June 1-3, 8pm (also June 3, 2pm). $15-22. Scott Wells and Dancers perform new work. *

 

To Yelp at City Hall

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By Anne Stuhldreher

OPINION If you attended any of the oodles of mayoral debates during last fall’s election, you surely heard every candidate say two things: One, that they’d make city government more accountable to San Franciscans — and two, that they’d harness technology to make city services better.

Now that Mayor Ed Lee is settled into office, there’s an easy and affordable way he can make good on this promise. It would give a megaphone to San Franciscans fed up (or delighted) with city services, letting them tell City Hall — and each other — what is and isn’t working with their tax dollars. It would amplify consumer power, increasing the responsiveness the public sector the way it has the private one.

San Francisco should be the first city to list all municipal services on one of the existing user-review websites that thousands of San Franciscans already rely on to critique restaurants, drycleaners, and auto repair shops. City Hall leaders would encourage all San Franciscans to get online and post reviews, to tell them what happens when they apply for a business license or send their kids to a city camp. Yelp and Citysearch are two user review sites that San Franciscans use right now.

This wouldn’t have a big price tag. Lee would simply mandate that every city service include a prominent icon on its web site asking users to “rate them” on the site. At every window and desk where public servants serve San Franciscans, there’d be a sign encouraging the public to share their experience on the site. Reviews on user review sites aren’t a feedback form sent to nowhere. People’s comments are seen by everyone.

Such open feedback has spurred thousands of businesses—from restaurants and retailers to doctors and dentists — to be more customer-focused and make better decisions with scarce resources.

Public servants and elected politicians are extremely keyed into public sentiment. They just often lack ways to gauge it. Feedback from public reviews would give them a clear picture of what successes they can tout and what problems they need to fix so they can benefit the most people and voters.

Imagine if you could look at online reviews before you went to apply for this permit or pay that fee. People would have written about good and bad times of day to go. They would have written about how much time it takes. They also would have written about which staff were friendly and which were rude.

I know I’d use it. I’d want to see what parks people think are good for toddlers and which ones are better for bigger kids. And what other parents think of different schools, camps, and pools. I’d also use it let the City know when I’ve called 311 three times to get an obscenity painted over in Dolores Park (that my kids walk by every day) but nothing has happened.

For inspiration, city leaders could look to the Family Independence Initiative, a coalition of working-class families in the Bay Area who grew frustrated after bad experiences with local programs. Nothing changed when the parents approached program leaders. So they set up an online rating system so parents could compare notes on services like childcare, job training, or after school-programs.

As decisions are made to dice up the shrinking budget pie to best serve San Franciscans, City Hall needs to hear from San Franciscans. Most city residents don’t have a lobbyist at city hall, but they have a lot to say.

Anne Stuhldreher is a Senior Policy Fellow at the New America Foundation

The battle of 8 Washington

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The battle of 8 Washington

tredmond@sfbg.com

More than 100 people showed up May 15 to testify on a condominium development that involves only 134 units, but has become a symbol of the failure of San Francisco’s housing policy.

I didn’t count every single speaker, but it’s fair to say sentiment was about 2-1 against the 8 Washington project. Seniors, tenant advocates, and neighbors spoke of the excessive size and bulk of the complex, the precedent of upzoning the waterfront for the first time in half a century, the loss of the Golden Gateway Swim and Tennis Club — and, more important, the principle of using public land to build the most expensive condos in San Francisco history.

Ted Gullicksen, director of the San Francisco Tenants Union, calls it housing for the 1 percent, but it’s worse than that — it’s actually housing for the top half of the top half of the 1 percent, for the ultra-rich.

It is, even supervisors who voted in favor agreed, housing the city doesn’t need, catering to a population that doesn’t lack housing opportunities — and a project that puts the city even further out of compliance with its own affordable-housing goals.

And in the end, after more than seven hours of testimony, the board voted 8-3 in favor of the developer.

It was a defeat for progressive housing advocates and for Board President David Chiu — and it showed a schism on the board’s left flank that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. And it could also have significant implications for the fall supervisorial elections.

Sup. Jane Kim, usually an ally of Chiu, voted in favor of the project. Sup. Eric Mar, who almost always votes with the board’s left flank, supported it, too, as did Sup. Christina Olague, who is running for re-election in one of the city’s most progressive districts.

At the end of the night, only Sups. David Campos and John Avalos joined Chiu in attempting to derail 8 Washington.

The battle of 8 Washington isn’t over — the vote last week was to approve the environmental impact report and the conditional use permit, but the actual development agreement and rezoning of the site still requires board approval next month.

Both Mar and Olague said they were going to work with the developer to try to get the height and bulk of the 134-unit building reduced.

But a vote against the EIR or the CU would have killed the project, and the thumbs-up is a signal that opponents will have an upward struggle to change the minds of Olague, Kim, and Mar.

 

DEFINING VOTES

The 8 Washington project is one of a handful of defining votes that will happen over the next few months. The mayor’s proposal for a business tax reform that raises no new revenue, the budget, and the massive California Pacific Medical Center hospital project will force board members to take sides on controversial issues with heavy lobbying on both sides.

In fact, by some accounts, 8 Washington was a beneficiary of the much larger, more complicated — and frankly, more significant — CPMC development.

The building trades unions pushed furiously for 8 Washington, which isn’t surprising — the building trades tend to support almost anything that means jobs for their members and have often been in conflict with progressives over development. But the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union joined the building trades and lined up the San Francisco Labor Council behind the deal.

And for progressive supervisors who are up for re-election and need union support — Olague and Mar, for example — defying the Labor Council on this one was tough. “Labor came out strong for this, and I respect that,” Olague told me. “That was a huge factor for me.”

She also said she’s not thrilled with the deal — “nobody’s jumping up and down. This was a hard one” — but she thinks she can get the developer to pay more fees, particularly for parking.

Kim isn’t facing re-election for another two years, and she told me her vote was all about the $11 million in affordable housing money that the developer will provide to the city. “I looked at the alternatives and I didn’t see anything that would provide any housing money at all,” she said. The money is enough to build perhaps 25 units of low- and moderate-income housing, and that’s a larger percentage than any other developer has offered, she said.

Which is true — although the available figures suggest that Simon Snellgrove, the lead project sponsor, could pay a lot more and still make a whopping profit. And the Council of Community Housing Organizations, which represents the city’s nonprofit affordable housing developers, didn’t support the deal and expressed serious reservations about it.

Several sources close to the lobbying effort told me that the message for the swing-vote supervisors was that labor wanted them to approve at least one of the two construction-job-creating developments. Opposing both CPMC and 8 Washington would have infuriated the unions, but by signing off on this one, the vulnerable supervisors might get a pass on turning down CMPC.

That’s an odd deal for labor, since CPMC is 10 times the size of 8 Washington and will involve far more jobs. But the nurses and operating engineers have been fighting with the health-care giant and there’s little chance that labor will close ranks behind the current hospital deal.

Labor excepted, the hearing was a classic of grassroots against astroturf. Some of the people who showed up and sat in the front row with pro-8 Washington stickers on later told us they had been paid $100 each to attend. Members of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, to which Snellgrove has donated substantial amounts of money in the past, showed up to promote the project.

 

BEHIND THE SCENES

But the real action was behind the scenes.

Among those pushing hard for the project were Chinese Chamber of Commerce consultant Rose Pak and community organizer David Ho.

Pak’s support comes after Snellgrove spent years courting the increasingly powerful Chinatown activist, who played a leading role in the effort that got Ed Lee into the Mayor’s Office. Snellgrove has traveled to China with her — and will no doubt be coughing up some money for Pak’s efforts to rebuild Chinese Hospital.

Ho was all over City Hall and was taking the point on the lobbying efforts. Right around midnight, when the final vote was approaching, he entered the board chamber and followed one of Kim’s aides, Matthias Mormino, to the rail where Mormino delivered some documents to the supervisor. Several people who observed the incident told us Ho appeared to be talking Kim in an animated fashion.

Kim told me she didn’t actually speak to Ho at that point, although she’d talked to him at other times about the project, and that “nothing he could have said would have changed anything I did at that point anyway.” Matier and Ross in the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Ho was heard outside afterward saying “don’t worry, she’s fine.”

Matier and Ross have twice mentioned that the project will benefit “Chinatown nonprofits,” but there’s nothing in any public development document to support that assertion.

Chiu told me that no Chinese community leaders called him to urge support for 8 Washington. The money that goes into the affordable housing fund could go to the Chinatown Community Development Corp., where Ho works, but it’s hardly automatic — that money will go into a city fund and can’t be earmarked for any neighborhood or organization.

CCDC director Norman Fong confirmed to me that CCDC wasn’t supporting the project. In fact, Cindy Wu, a CCDC staffer who serves on the city Planning Commission, voted against 8 Washington.

I couldn’t reach Ho to ask why he was working so hard on this deal. But one longtime political insider had a suggestion: “Sometimes it’s not about money, it’s about power. And if you want to have power, you need to win and prove you can win.”

Snellgrove will be sitting pretty if 8 Washington breaks ground. Since it’s a private deal (albeit in part on Port of San Francisco land) there’s no public record of how much money the developer stands to make. But Chiu pointed out during the meeting, and confirmed to me later by phone, that “there are only two data points we know.” One is that Snellgrow informed the Port that he expects to gross $470 million in revenue from selling the condos. The other is that construction costs are expected to come in at about $177 million. Even assuming $25 million in legal and other soft costs, that’s a huge profit margin.

And it suggests the he can well afford either to lower the heights — or, more important, to give the city a much sweeter benefits package. The affordable housing component could be tripled or quadrupled and Snellgrove’s development group would still realize far more return that even the most aggressive lenders demand.

Chiu said he’s disappointed but will continue working to improve the project. “While I was disappointed in the votes,” he said, “many of my colleagues expressed concerns about height, parking, and affordable housing fees that they can address in the upcoming project approvals.”

So what does this mean for the fall elections? It may not be a huge deal — the symbolism of 8 Washington is powerful, but if it’s built, it won’t, by itself, directly change the lives of people in Olague’s District 5 or Mar’s District 1. Certainly the vote on CPMC will have a larger, more lasting impact on the city. Labor’s support for Mar could be a huge factor, and his willingness to break with other progressives to give the building trades a favor could help him with money and organizing efforts. On the other hand, some of Olague’s opponents will use this to differentiate themselves from the incumbent. John Rizzo, who has been running in D5 for almost a year now, told me he strongly opposed 8 Washington. “It’s a clear-cut issue for me, the wrong project and a bad deal for the city.” London Breed, a challenger who is more conservative, told us: “I would not have supported this project,” she said, arguing that the zoning changes set a bad precedent for the waterfront. “There are so many reasons why it shouldn’t have happened,” she said. And while Mar is in a more centrist district, support from the left was critical in his last grassroots campaign. This won’t cost him votes against a more conservative opponent — but if it costs him enthusiasm, that could be just as bad.

The return of Willie Brownism to the sunshine task force

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As an advocate for the passage of the  San Francisco sunshine ordinance and task force in the early 1990s, I felt obligated to take my first and only City Hall position and serve as a founding member of the task force. I served for l0 years and helped with many other good members to build the task force into a strong and respected agency  for helping citizens get access to records and meetings and hold city officials accountable for suppressing access.

The task force is the only place where citizens can file an access complaint without an attorney or a fee and force a city official, including the mayor, to come before the task force for questioning and a ruling on whether they had violated  sunshine laws, The task force lacked enforcement power, but it still annoyed of city officials, including Mayor Willie Brown.

In fact, Willie spent a good deal of time trying to kick me off the task force. He used one jolly  maneuver after another, even getting an agent to make a phony complaint against me for violating the ordinance with an email. (The complaint went nowhere.) I refused to budge and decided to stay on the task force until Willie left office—on the principle that that neither the mayor nor anybody else from City Hall could arbitrarily kick members off the task force. When Willie left office after two terms, I resigned with the hope that the Willie principle had been established.

The principle held, until last Thursday (May 17) when the board’s rules committee (Sup. Mark Farrell, Chair Jane Kim, and Sup. David Campos) brought Willie Brownism back to the task force with a vengeance. The committee moved to sabotage the task force by sacking or refusing to appoint four qualified candidates from three organizations who are mandated by the ordinance to choose representatives for the task force because of the organizations’ special open government  credentials. Their representatives served as experienced, knowledgeable members who were independent counters to nominees of supervisors who were often  promoting an anti-sunshine agenda. The committee asked the organizations to come up with more names. There was no explanation nor apology to the candidates nor to their organizations. It was a nasty slap at members and organizations that have served the task force well for years. And this arbitrary demand  will make  it virtually impossible for these organizations to come up with a “list of candidates” to run the supervisorial gauntlet.  Who wants to go before the supervisors on a list for a bout of public character assassination?

 Specifically, the committee:

+unanimously moved to sack the two incumbents (Allyson Washburn from the League of Women Voters) and Suzanne Manneh (California New Media.)  The League was mandated to name a representative because of its tradition and experience with good government and public access issues.  California New Media was mandated to name a member to insure there would always be a journalist of color on the task force.

+unanimously refused to seat two representatives from the Northern
California chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the sponsor of the ordinance with a long tradition in open government and First Amendment issues.  One SPJ  mandated  representative was for a journalist (Doug Comstock, editor of the West of Twin Peaks Observer, one of the best neighborhood papers in town and a former chair of the task force.) The second mandated seat was for an attorney (Ben Rosenfeld.)

+tried to knock out incumbent Bruce Wolfe on motion of Farrell, but Wolfe survived on a 2-l vote.   

+voted unanimously to approve David Pilpel, a former task force member who is known by observers for delaying meetings with is  bursts of lengthy nitpicking on almost every item.   He then usually votes against citizen complaints and for protecting  city officials on the basis of spotting   “onerous” burdens caused by the complaint

+voted unanimously for four new persons to the task force while sacking  and refusing to appoint able members with experience and expertise without a word of thanks. The four new members are “a “a bunch of neophytes,” according Rick Knee, outgoing SPJ member for 10 years.

Knee, a former task force chair surveying the carnage,  said that the committee’s actions stemmed “partly from a desire  by some supervisors to sabotage the task force and the ordinance itself, and partly from a vendetta by certain supervisors after the task force found several months ago that the board violated local and state open meeting laws when it railroaded some last minute changes to a contract on the Park Merced development project without allowing sufficient time for public service review and comment.” He noted that the developer “had slipped in a 14-page package of amendments at the llth hour”  to get board approval.

Knee said  that the rules committee is recommending sacking two incumbents and apparently hopes to sack two more. Farrell wanted to push out a fifth but was outvoted by Kim and Campos.  All five candidates, he said,  “have done excellent work, each brought a unique perspective and, while we had our share of disagreements among ourselves, all shared a passion for open government and for making sure that everyone who came before us got a fair hearing.”

Hanley Chan, an outgoing task force member,  backed up Knee’s point in an email. He  wrote that “I spoke with Sup. David Chiu and he told me that the rest of the supervisors will not appoint any incumbent, because we defied the city attorney’s opinion (the Park Merced  case). “”You should have made a right decision. I was told by the city attorney that it was legal, my aides explained it to the task force and you should have made a better judgment.'”  Chan said that the rules committee ouster move  was “retribution on how we voted that day.”  Chan said that “Bruce Wolfe and all the task force members made a wonderful argument and stuck to their guns.” The task force vote was a  unanimous 8-0 vote.The point: defy the supervisors and city attorney and the boys and girls in the back room and  get blasted off   the task force, bang, bang, bang, bang. 

The committee choreographed the move smoothly.  Farrell as the heavy  would make the move. Kim would agree and facilitate as chair. Campos would go along reluctantly. The deputy city attorney would be supine through the process  even though the supervisors were breaking precedent and misinterpreting the ordinance.  Sunshine candidates and advocates in the audience were furious and emails have been crackling back and forth ever since.

Campos later told me that he went along because he could see he didn’t have the votes. He said the organization’s candidates “were eminently qualified,” that they should have been appointed, and that he would fight for them. He said he would ask Kim’s office to set the issue for hearing at the next rules meeting or call for a special meeting. Kim did not return calls for comment.

I asked Campos what the organizations should do. “They should stand by their candidates,” he said.

I concur. The Society of Professional Journalists,  the League of Women Voters, and California New Media and their open government allies should stand by their candidates, lobby for them with the rules committee and the full board, and get out the word about this attempted coup in the most important court of all, the court of public opinion. Make this an election issue with all incumbents and candidates.  Let public officials know there are serious consequences to supporting Willie Brownism on the sunshine task force, the first and best local task force of its kind in the country if not the world.

The good news is that the rules committee has demonstrated, with its sneak attack,  the value of the task force for citizens and open government and why it is a San Francisco institution that needs to be saved and strengthened.  All of this  illustrates once again my  favorite axiom of mine. In San Francisco, the public is generally safe, except when the mayor is in his office and the supervisors are in session. b3

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meister: Another presidential step against anti-gay bias

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

President Obama’s bold endorsement of same-sex marriage should be only the first of his key acts in behalf of gay Americans. It’s now past time for him to redeem a 2008 campaign promise to issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against gay workers.

Such discrimination is already banned in Washington, D.C., and 21 states, including California. A presidential order would cover the millions of federal contractor employees in the other states. Building roads, bridges and dams are among the many essential tasks they perform throughout the country.

Previous executive orders, first issued seven decades ago, have made it illegal for contractors to discriminate on the basis of race or religion. Recent investigations by the San Francisco Chronicle and the gay publication Metro Weekly noted that Obama made his promise to add a ban on anti-gay discrimination during a meeting with a gay rights group in Houston four years ago.

The Chronicle quoted Heather Cronk, director of the gay rights group Get Equal, as noting that a non-discrimination order “would give concrete, real-life workplace protections to people who work for federal contractors like ExxonMobil that refuse, year after year, to add those protections on their own.”

Cronk recalled that former Bay Area activist Cleve Jones recently presented Obama with a binder containing more than 40 accounts of workplace discrimination in hopes of making a decisive case for a presidential order. The president accepted the binder, Cronk said, without saying a word. But later, Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett said the president had no immediate plans to ban contractor discrimination on his own.

That was confirmed a day later by Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary. Carney claimed the president nevertheless “is committed to securing equal rights” for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. He cited Obama’s long-time support for the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would give federal protection to LGBT workers in government as well as private employment.

Instead of issuing an executive order, Carney added, the president’s plans are to take “a comprehensive approach” by pushing for passage of the non-discrimination act.

But, as the Chronicle noted, “the legislation has no chance of passing in the current Congress,” whereas congressional approval is not needed for an executive order to go into effect. In any case, there seems to be only a slight chance that Obama would suffer serious political harm for issuing an order, since polls show strong public support for him doing so.

The president has in fact been losing support because of his refusal to act. The Chronicle, for instance, noted the anger of Log Cabin Republicans, the gay rights group that led the legal fight against the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that had excluded gays and lesbians from military service. The GOP group complained that Obama has “turned his back on 1.8 million LGBT workers” and failed to deliver on a policy that has broad, bipartisan support among the American peopl

Harsh criticism came, too, from a former congressional staffer, Tico Almeida, who helped draft the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and now heads a group called Freedom to Work. He called Obama’s refusal to act “a political calculation that cannot stand” as he announced that his organization was launching a campaign to increase pressure on Obama to issue an order.

One prominent – and wealthy – activist who’s pledged to contribute $100,000 to the drive to get Obama to change his mind called his refusal to sign an order “craven election-year politics.”

Pretty strong language, but Obama’s inaction on such a vital issue rightly opens him to such harsh judgment. His endorsement of same-sex marriage took genuine political courage. It proved he has the strength, the will and the ability to take the country another step closer to granting true equality to all Americans. Now the president needs to take that next essential step.

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Recology’s slate cards

Zelda Bronstein
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Recology’s slate cards

Wow. Every single slate card I’ve seen so far for this election has been paid for at least in part by Recology, which is fighting a measure that would require competitive bidding on its garbage contract.

The Richmond Democratic Club. The Teacher’s Union. The SF Women’s Political Committee. The SF Democratic Party. The Milk Club. The Alice B. Toklas Club. I’m sure there are a few more out there. And every one has a big “No on A” ad on the back.

The good news is that a lot of these mailers list good candidates for the County Central Commitee, and getting their message out to more people helps. And this is nothing new — everyone looks to the people with money to fund slate cards, and Recology’s spending a lot of money this spring. And I’m confident that every one of these groups took a No on A position before they asked for slate-card money.

Still: You look at the pile and it looks like Recology owns San Francisco politics.

Housing for the super rich approved, 8-3

Zelda Bronstein
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Housing for the super rich approved, 8-3

The progressive movement and the battle for housing balance and economic justice in San Francisco got walloped May 15 when eight supervisors sided with a developer who wants to build condos for the massively rich on the waterfront.

I watched it all, minus a few minutes while I was putting the kids to bed, all seven and a half hours of testimony and discussion, winding up with a series of pro-developer voters a little after midnight. It was stunning: Opponents of the project came out in droves, many of them seniors, others tenant activists and neighbors. Former City Attorney Louise Renne, who is by no means an anti-development type or any sort of economic radical, led off the arguments in favor of scrapping the environmental impact report and denying the conditional use permit that are needed for 8 Washington to move forward. They brought up so many points that by the end there was nothing more to say: This meets no housing need in San Francisco, further screws up the city’s own mandates for a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, caters to the top half of the top half of the 1 percent, is too tall and bulky for the site, offers the city too little in community benefits and is one of the great development scams of our time.

Then the other side spoke — the city planners who defended the EIR and, briefly, developer Simon Snellgrove. His supporters lined up — and almost all of them talked about the same thing: Construction jobs. I get it, we need construction jobs — but is that a justification for such a bad project? As Sup. David Chiu pointed out, “apartment construction is booming.  There are 22,000 units under construction and 50,000 more in the pipeline.”

Both sides were organized, but only one paid people to show up: At least five people seated in the front row, wearing pro-8 Washington stickers, confirmed that they’d been paid $100 each — in cash — to show up. They didn’t even speak, leaving once they realized that they were misled about the project. One source heard a construction worker say he knew nothing about the project and had been bused in from Sacramento.

And after hearing all of that, the supervisors did what they clearly had decided to do long before a word of testimony was uttered.

The vote to overturn the EIR went like this: favoring the developer were Supervisors Mark Farrell, Jane Kim, Eric Mar, Christina Olague, Malia Cohen, Carmen Chu, Sean Elsbernd and Scott Wiener. Opposing the project were Chiu, John Avalos and David Campos.

Approving the conditional use went along the same voting lines. Chiu couldn’t even get a continuance after arguing that there was no report from the budget analyst and no financial information about whether this is a good deal for the city.

That’s the lineup: Eight votes for the 1 percent. Three votes for the rest of us. I haven’t seen anything this bad in years.

Some fascinating information came out of the discussion. Chiu made clear that the developer doesn’t need the height-limit increase to make a profit off the deal. He estimated that the total sales revenue from the project would be around $470 million and construction costs about $177 million. That’s a huge profit margin, even if you add in another $25 million for upfront soft costs.

Snellgrove’s lawyer, Mary Murphy, tried to duck the financial issues, talking around in circles. Evenutally Chiu got Snellgrove to respond, and he said the costs would be higher and his profit would only be about $80 million. “The capital markets require a high return on these projects,” he said.
Still: $80 million is a lot of money. And while Snellgrove and his allies love to talk about the $11 million in affordable housing money for the city, that’s about 2.3 percent of his total revenue. Which doesn’t sound quite as juicy.

Chiu raised another good question: “Should a condo that sells for $5 million pay the same affordable housing fees as one that sells for $500,000?”
Mar, who is usually a strong progressive, was the big surprise of the night, not only voting the wrong way but teeing up softball questions for the city planners to make the project sound better. It was as if he was reading from the developer’s talking points.

In the end, he said he saw “a lot of benefits from this project,” but promised to work with the developer to advocate for “less bulk and less height.” Olague said the same thing.

But even if it’s a little smaller, this will still be a completely misalignment of housing priorities, a project entirely for the very rich. That’s not going to change.

If anything, they should push for more affordable housing money — a whole lot more. Because what we’re getting is enough for maybe 25 or 30 units, which means 80 percent of the new housing related to this project will be for multimillionaires and 20 percent for everyone else. Keep that pattern going — and there are few signs that it’s about to change — and imagine what this city will be like in 20 years.

It’s not over, not yet: The actual development agreement and the height-limit changes still have to come to the board early in June. And if the mayor signs off on it, opponents are talking serious about a ballot referendum that would be before the voters in November — just when Olague, Mar, Avalos, Campos, and Chiu will be up for re-election.

Stage Listings May 16-22, 2012

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

My Tia Loca’s Life of Crime Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20. Opens Thu/17, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 2. Guerrilla Rep performs a new play by Roy Conboy, chair of SF State’s Playwriting Department.

BAY AREA

The Great Divide Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby, Berk; www.shotgunplayers.org. $20-30. Previews Wed/16-Thu/17 and May 23-24, 7pm; Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm; Sun/20, 5pm. Opens May 25, 8pm. Runs Wed-Thu, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through June 24. Shotgun Players performs Adamn Chanzit’s drama about the hot topic of fracking, inspired by Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

ONGOING

“Best of PlayGround 16: A Festival of New Writers and New Plays” Thick House, 1695 18th St, SF; www.playground-sf.org. $10-40. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 27. Seven short plays and musicals by Bay Area authors, plus a staged-readings series.

“DIVAfest” Exit Theatreplex, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. Through May 27. Entering its second decade, the estrogen-centric DIVAfest at the Exit is so jam-packed with activities — workshops, burlesque, symposiums, readings, singer-songwriter nights — you’d be forgiven for not realizing that plays are also on the menu. But in fact, they are the main course. This year’s smorgasbord features three very different solo shows, each encapsulating a wholly unique female voice. Genevieve Jessee’s Girl in, but not of, the ‘Hood, which won a “Best of the Fringe Festival” award in 2011, has since been reworked with a new director, Exit Theatre stalwart Michelle Talgarow, rendering it sharper and more comic without minimizing the inner turmoil experienced by the main character, Jessee herself. Catherine Debon’s Alma Colarada, which also won a “Best of the Fringe” in 2011, is an emotionally-charged, experimental roller-coaster ride that appropriately begins and ends on a train. Detailing a family history fraught with World War II resistance fighting, concentration camps, communist sympathies, and endless trains, Debon nimbly vacillates between the neuroses of the present day and the deep despair of the past, while still finding a way to end to piece on a triumphal note. Last but by no means least, the laugh-out-loud romantic farce Pussy, by Maura Halloran, details the tricky intricacies of a lesbian-feline-nosy neighbor ménage à “cat-re”. Yes, it’s about a cat … hmmm, or is it? You should really take the opportunity to find out. (Gluckstern)

Down to This Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $12-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Thirty-something Charlie (Derek Fischer) plays this little game with himself where he tosses a rotten egg at the kitchen trash as if he were making a free-throw in sudden-death overtime. This little moment, innocent and ordinary on the surface, puzzles one-night stand Donna (Tonya Narvaez) after she happens on the scene. That she would be baffled, even momentarily disturbed by so common a flight of sports-dude imagination is our first taste of the strained mechanics of Adam Chanzit’s slight pulp revenge tale: sure enough, this game of chance turns out to be a (pretty ridiculous) psychopathology ruling Charlie’s world. When a moment later his equally imbalanced and estranged wife (Kendra Lee Oberhauser), fresh from prison and packing heat, bursts in on the two lovebirds, Charlie’s fate-game will become the tortured trope in a table-turning showdown between all three — plus Charlie’s hapless roommate (Jomar Tagatac) and his crew-cut–sporting sidekick (Shane Rhoades). Chanzit offers some mild surprises and amusing banter along the way in Sleepwalkers’ world premiere — helmed by artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp — but the plot and characters are stretched thin, and the tension often grows slack despite the able and likable cast. By the time the story climaxes in a coin-toss of an ending (designed to work out one of two ways, depending), it’s too big a muddle to generate more than a momentary quiver of anticipation over anybody’s fate. (Avila)

Endgame and Play American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Opens Wed/16, 8pm. Runs Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinees Wed/16 or May 23; Tues/22 performance at 7pm). Through June 3. ACT presents two absurd dark comedies by Samuel Beckett.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu/17-Sat/19, 8pm. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of “losing” their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by “playing the other team,” as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with “capital” headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

A Raisin in the Sun Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; 1-800-838-2006, www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm (no show May 25); Sun, 3pm. Through May 27. African-American Shakespeare Company performs Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama.

“San Francisco International Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.sfiaf.org. Free-$70. Through Sun/20. Performance festival featuring theater and dance from Cuba, Iran, Russia, the U.S., China, Japan, Estonia, and more.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 27. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Honoring Lorraine Hansberry In Her Own Words Gough Street Playhouse, Trinity Episcopal Church, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $22-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 27. Custom Made Theater and Multi Ethnic Theater collaborate on this tribute to the groundbreaking playwright.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. 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)

The Wrong Dick Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Ham Pants Productions presents a noir-inspired comedy set in San Francisco.

Zorba Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed/16, 7pm; Thu/17-Fri/18, 8pm; Sat/19, 6pm; Sun/20, 3pm. 42nd Street Moon performs Kander and Ebb’s musical salute to Greece.

BAY AREA

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Just in case you were feeling panicked about the persistently recessed state of the economy and what might be your own less than ideal place in it, the Impact Theatre and Playground co-presentation of Lauren Yee’s Crevice might help to put your woes into perspective. That’s because slacker sibs Liz (Marissa Keltie) and Rob (Timothy Redmond) are only slightly exaggerated representatives of Generation Next whose penchant for making lackluster life choices has sentenced them to an indefinite prison term of couch-surfing and Teen Mom marathons in their childhood home. Naturally, they desire change, but it’s not until their mother (Laura Jane Bailey) starts having a hot fling with a younger man that things do. In an egregious breach of the TMI line, it appears that Mom’s orgasms open a “crevice” into an alternate reality that Rob and Liz subsequently fall into. Thus removed from the entropy of their former reality they begin testing the parameters of their new one, quickly coming to the realization that sometimes the alternatives to what you already have are even worse. Getting home again is a convoluted, not fully mapped-out process, but in the interim, their navigation of their erstwhile wonderland offers most of the play’s best lines as well as the uncomfortably effective transformation of Reggie D. White from Liz’s nerdish best buddy to multi-lingual Mafia killer and casual sadist. (Gluckstern) (Gluckstern)

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through June 10. 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)

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through June 30. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Sat-Sun, May 25, and June 1, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri, 8pm, through May 25: “Director’s Cut!,” $20. Sat, 8pm, through May 26: “Improvised Murder Mystery,” $20.

“A Celebration of Harold Pinter” Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/18-Sat/19, 7:30pm. $30. John Malkovich directs Julian Sands in this tribute to the famed author and playwright.

“Chanticleer and the Fox: Nun’s Priest’s Tale” Seventh Avenue Performances, 1329 Seventh Ave, SF; www.chaucertheater.org. Sat/19, 7:30pm. $20. Also Sun/20, 2pm, Christ Presbyterian Church, 620 del Ganado, San Rafael. Chaucer Theatre performs musical theater inspired by Canturbury Tales.

City Ballet School Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.fortmason.org. Sat/19-Sun/20, 2pm. $28. “Spring Showcase” featuring new choreography by Yuri Zhukov.

“Die Blonde Cabaret” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Mon/21, 6:30pm. $5. Stand-up and burlesque performer Marié Lake presents her comedy cabaret.

“Drinking/Songs: A Night of Beer and the Music That Goes With It” 50 Mason Social House, 50 Mason, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/16, 8pm. $20. Singing, beer-drinking, a drinking-songs competition, and more.

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

“The Heart of Mexico” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Novellus Theater, 700 Howard, SF; (415) 978-2787, www.ybca.org. Sun/20, 3pm. $20-39. Folkloric dance from Mexico performed by the acclaimed Compañia Mazatlán Bellas Artes.

“The Keys to Heaven” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. Sun/20, 1pm. Free. Cutting Ball Theater presents this August Strindberg reading as part of its “Hidden Classics” series.

“Low Down” Z Space, Theater Artaud, 450 Florida, SF; www.levydance.org. Thu/17-Fri/19, 8pm; Sat/20, 2pm. $18-25. LEVYdance and the Foundry present a world premiere collaboration exploring the body’s ability to tell a story.

“Man vs. Wild: Tales of the Great Outdoors!” Intersection for the Arts, 925 Mission, SF; www.litupwriters.com. Wed/16, 7:30pm. $7. Humor reading with the LitUp Writers.

“Martini Cabaret Burlesque” Biscuits and Blues, 401 Mason, SF; www.eventbrite.com. Sun/20, 6pm. $20. Tasteful striptease with costumes and props.

“Porchlight Storytelling Series: I Surrender” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/21, 8pm. $15. True tales with Harold Atkins, Dennis Collinson, Heather Gold, and more.

“Previously Secret Information” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Sun/20, 7pm. $15. Storytelling with Paul Myers, Josh Healey, and Joe Klocek.

“Qcomedy Showcase” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.stagewerx.org. Mon/21, 8pm. $8-20. With Lisa Geduldig, Matina Bevis, and more.

“Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts 30th Year Anniversary Dance Concert” Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon, SF; www.sfsota.org. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. $18-28. Student dancers, guests, and artists in residence perform to celebrate the 30th anniversary of this arts and educational institution.

“Smack Dab” Magnet, 4122 18th St, SF; www.magnetsf.org. Wed/16, 8pm. Free. Open mic with featured reader Jai Arun Ravine.

“Tales of Pangu: Lifting Up the Sky” CounterPulse, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Sat/19, 8pm. $10-20. Eth-Noh-Tec storytelling theater and Gay Asian Pacific Alliance present this multimedia performance collaboration.

“The Vagina Monologues” Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; (415) 621-6120. Thu/17, 7:30pm. $30. A one-night-only performance in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

“Verbatim Verboten” Garage, 715 Bryant, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm. $15. The “invasion-of-privacy revue” created by Michael Martin and hosted by Wonder Dave Crady.

Stage Listings May 9-15, 2012

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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

“DIVAfest” Exit Theatreplex, 156 Eddy, SF; (415) 673-3847, www.theexit.org. $15-25. May 9-27. Three solo shows, plus singer-songwriters, readings, and art displays, highlight this festival honoring female artists.

Endgame and Play American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary, SF; (415) 749-2228, www.act-sf.org. $10-95. Previews Wed/9-Sat/12 and Tue/15, 8pm (also Sat/12, 2pm). Opens May 16, 8pm. Runs Tue-Sat, 8pm (also Wed, Sat-Sun, 2pm; no matinees Wed/9, Sun/13, May 16, or May 23; May 22 performance at 7pm). Through June 3. ACT presents two absurd dark comedies by Samuel Beckett.

A Raisin in the Sun Buriel Clay Theater, African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton, SF; 1-800-838-2006, www.african-americanshakes.org. $10-35. Opens Sat/12, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm (no show May 25); Sun, 3pm. Through May 27. African-American Shakespeare Company performs Lorraine Hansberry’s classic drama.

BAY AREA

The Odyssey Angel Island; (415) 547-0189, www.weplayers.org. $40-76 (some tickets include ferry passage). Opens Sat/12, 10:30am-4pm (does not include travel time to island). Runs Sat-Sun and Fri/18, May 25, and June 1, 10:30am-4pm. Through July 1. We Players present Ava Roy’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem: an all-day adventure set throughout the nature and buildings of Angel Island State Park.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two Phoenix Arts Association Theatre, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu/10-Sat/12, 8pm. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs the beginning of a new, unfinished play by a local author — and creates an ending on the spot once the script runs out.

“Bay One Acts Festival” Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.bayoneacts.org. $25-45. Wed/9-Sat/12, 8pm (also Sat/12, 3pm). Ten bold and adventurous short plays by local playwrights, performed two full programs running in repertory.

Down to This Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $12-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Thirty-something Charlie (Derek Fischer) plays this little game with himself where he tosses a rotten egg at the kitchen trash as if he were making a free-throw in sudden-death overtime. This little moment, innocent and ordinary on the surface, puzzles one-night stand Donna (Tonya Narvaez) after she happens on the scene. That she would be baffled, even momentarily disturbed by so common a flight of sports-dude imagination is our first taste of the strained mechanics of Adam Chanzit’s slight pulp revenge tale: sure enough, this game of chance turns out to be a (pretty ridiculous) psychopathology ruling Charlie’s world. When a moment later his equally imbalanced and estranged wife (Kendra Lee Oberhauser), fresh from prison and packing heat, bursts in on the two lovebirds, Charlie’s fate-game will become the tortured trope in a table-turning showdown between all three — plus Charlie’s hapless roommate (Jomar Tagatac) and his crew-cut–sporting sidekick (Shane Rhoades). Chanzit offers some mild surprises and amusing banter along the way in Sleepwalkers’ world premiere — helmed by artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp — but the plot and characters are stretched thin, and the tension often grows slack despite the able and likable cast. By the time the story climaxes in a coin-toss of an ending (designed to work out one of two ways, depending), it’s too big a muddle to generate more than a momentary quiver of anticipation over anybody’s fate. (Avila)

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through May 19. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of “losing” their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by “playing the other team,” as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with “capital” headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Killing My Lobster Chops Down the Family Tree TJT, 470 Florida, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-22. Thu/10-Fri/11, 8pm; Sat/12, 7 and 10pm; Sun/13, 7pm. The sketch comedy troupe performs a new show inspired by contemporary families.

“San Francisco International Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.sfiaf.org. Free-$70. Through May 20. Performance festival featuring theater and dance from Cuba, Iran, Russia, the U.S., China, Japan, Estonia, and more.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 27. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black: Honoring Lorraine Hansberry In Her Own Words Gough Street Playhouse, Trinity Episcopal Church, 1620 Gough, SF; www.custommade.org. $22-28. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 7pm. Through May 27. Custom Made Theater and Multi Ethnic Theater collaborate on this tribute to the groundbreaking playwright.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through July 7. 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)

The Wrong Dick Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Ham Pants Productions presents a noir-inspired comedy set in San Francisco.

Zorba Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 20. 42nd Street Moon performs Kander and Ebb’s musical salute to Greece.

BAY AREA

Anatol Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $30-55. Wed/9-Sat/12, 8pm; Sun/13, 2 and 7pm. Aurora Theatre Company performs a world premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s drama about the love life of an Viennese philanderer.

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Impact Theatre and PlayGround present Lauren Yee’s world premiere play about 20-something siblings whose couch-potato lives are uprooted when a chasm opens up in their living room.

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun/13, 2pm. Through May 19. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

In Paris Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $22.50-125. Wed/9, 7pm; Thu/10-Sat/12, 8pm (also Sat/12, 2pm); Sun/13, 2pm. Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in Dmitry Krymov’s romantic new play.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm. Extended through June 10. 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)

Lucky Duck Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thu/10-Sat/12, 7pm (also Sat/12, 2pm); Sun/13, noon and 5pm. Berkeley Playhouse performs a musical inspired by the “Ugly Duckling” tale.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through May 19. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Oleanna Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $15-30. Thu/10-Sat/12, 8pm; Sun/13, 5pm. TheatreFIRST performs David Mamet’s tense two-charater drama.

Red Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-83. Wed/9, 7pm; Thu/10-Fri/11, 8pm; Sat/12, 2pm. Mark Rothko (David Chandler) isn’t the only one painting with a broad brush in this labored and ultimately superficial two-hander by John Logan, enjoying a competent but underwhelming production by outgoing Berkeley Rep associate artistic director Les Waters. Set inside the late-1950s New York studio of the legendary abstract expressionist at the height of his fame, the play introduces a blunt and brash young painter named Ken (John Brummer) as Rothko’s new hired hand, less a character than a crude dramatic device, there first as a sounding board for the pompous philosophizing that apparently comprises a good chunk of the artist’s process and finally as a kind of mirror held up to the old iconoclast in challenging proximity to a new generation that must ultimately transcend Rothko’s canvases in turn. The dialogue holds up signs announcing intellectual and aesthetic depths but these remain surface effects, reflecting only platitudes, while the posturing tends to reduce Rothko to caricature. Much of the self-consciously reluctant filial interaction here smacks of biographical sound bites or heavy-handed underscoring of theme, and tends toward the outright hokey when touching on the credulity-bending subject of Ken’s murdered parents — with the attendant shades this adds to Rothko’s and the play’s chosen color palette. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

BATS Improv Bayfront Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; www.improv.org. Fri, 8pm, through May 25: “Director’s Cut!,” $20. Sat, 8pm, through May 26: “Improvised Murder Mystery,” $20.

“Bijoux: Seven-Year Beeyotch!” Martuni’s, Four Valencia, SF; (415) 241-0205. Sun/13, 7pm. $7. Trauma Flintstone hosts an eclectic queer variety show with a Mother’s Day theme.

“Comedy Returns to El Rio” El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; www.elriosf.com. Mon/14, 8pm. $7-20. With comedians Shazia Mirza, Marga Gomez, Jeff Applebaum, Brendan Lynch, and Lisa Geduldig.

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

“Feast of Words: A Literary Potluck” SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; feastofwords.somarts.org. Tue/15, 7pm. $5-12. With author Cassie J. Sneider and culinary guest Kuukua Dzigbordi Yomekpe.

“A Funny Night for Comedy” Actors Theatre of San Francisco, 855 Bush, SF; (415) 345-1287, www.natashamuse.com. Sun/13, 7pm. $10. Mother’s Day is the theme of this comedy showcase.

“Let Me Entertain You” Venetian Room, Fairmont San Francisco, 950 Mason, SF; www.bayareacabaret.org. Sat/12, 8pm. $45. Tony winner Laura Benanti performs her solo cabaret.

“Listen to Your Mother San Francisco” Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, Marina at Laguna, SF; (415) 345-7575, www.listentoyourmothershow.com. Thu/10, 7pm. $25. 826 Valencia benefits from this reading event fearuting 12 local writers sharing stories of motherhood.

“Second Sundays” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Sun/13, 2-4pm. Free. Works-in-progress showings from Deborah Karp Dance Projects, detour dance, and Sarah Keeney/floating rib dance project.

Editorial: The Mirkarimi case is an abomination

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Editor’s note: And so the man who became interim  mayor on a false pretext and then lied his way through an election for a full term amid a sleazy mass of campaign irregularities and violations, has suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi without pay and is now using the full power of the city attorney’s office to continue the Mirkarimi crucifixion. Without pay? The usual City Hall/cop practice is to suspend or put a city official on administrative leave with pay. Even Willie Brown, former mayor, Chronicle columnist and PG@ES lobbyist, says Mirkarimi should not have been suspended without pay. B3

EDITORIAL There’s only one way to say this: The official misconduct case against Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi has become a one-sided star-chamber proceeding that violates all the basic rules of fairness, decency, and due process.

Over the past few weeks, Mayor Ed Lee, acting through the City Attorney’s Office, has been collecting evidence and issuing subpoenas to force witnesses (including some who have only a peripheral involvement in the matter) to give testimony. The mayor is acting as if he’s prosecuting a murder case instead of conducting a hearing on whether an elected official should be thrown out of office for a misdemeanor.

And Mirkarimi and his lawyers have absolutely no ability to respond.

That’s right: The mayor and the city attorney have subpoena power. The defense in this case doesn’t.

If this were a criminal proceeding, in a real court, Mirkarimi would have the same ability to compel testimony as the mayor. And under the rules of discovery, he’d have the right to see all of the evidence compiled against him.

But because this in front of an Ethics Commission that hasn’t even adopted evidentiary rules, one side has all the rights, and the other side has none. That puts Mirkarimi at a terribly unfair disadvantage. You can argue all day about Mirkarimi’s conduct, but people charged with the worst horrific crimes have more legal protections than he does.

The Ethics Commission needs to immediately adopt rules that level the playing field — and the city attorney should insist on it. If there are going to be witnesses — and clearly the mayor is planning to present them — then Mirkarimi’s lawyers must be allowed to review those statements in advance, as they would in any trial. All evidence against the sheriff should be turned over to the defense, well in advance of the hearing. Until that happens, the mayor and the city attorney should put the inquiry on hold.

Because right now, the process is an abomination.

GUEST OPINION: The politics of retribution

Zelda Bronstein
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GUEST OPINION: The politics of retribution

By Debra Walker and Krissy Keefer

We have been shocked and saddened by the perpetual attack on Ross Mikarimi and his family.

To Ross’s credit, he took responsibility in the criminal case he faced, and accepted a plea bargain to a non-domestic-violence misdemeanor that the district attorney concluded served the interests of justice.

He and his wife, Eliana Lopez, had resolved their dispute before the betrayed disclosure to the police and the media by the trained but unlicensed attorney that began the criminal case. The plea bargain was vetted and all legal ethicists consulted concluded that the plea bargain could not be the basis of any action against Ross for the now infamous term “official misconduct.” Ross was ordered into counseling.

Since the criminal case ended we have watched the mayor, domestic-violence advocates, and the majority of the print media, collectively pass judgment without connection to reality, with devastating consequences to Ross Mirkarimi, his family and the people of San Francisco.

Mayor Ed Lee suspended Ross without a hearing and without pay. In other words, the mayor acted against Ross without due process. City Attorney Dennis Herrera has merely repeated all of the unsubstantiated allegations from a newspaper opinion piece in the form of a pleading — and actually submitted this as fact, further embarrassing our city.

Barring further intervention by the courts, the Board of Supervisors and the Ethics Commission will now be forced to publicly weigh in on the concluded criminal case that occurred before Ross was in office.

Was the punishment laid out by the courts not enough? Are we going to all sit back and watch as San Francisco engages in a public political assassination of a progressive elected official? At what point does it stop? 

Clearly it hasn’t stopped with Ross. Now the mayor and the city attorney have begun the attack on his campaign manager and well-known City Hall aide Linette Peralta-Hayes. Who is next? It could be any of us, of you.

As close friends of Ross and Eliana, we can attest to the fact that this family has paid dearly for their now very public fight and we all should hope for a healing. It does not bring justice to any women’s issues to have such a public display of retribution and revenge. Blowing this out of proportion like this has been only sets the stage for the continued backlash against women’s real issues.

If there were not a complete attack on women’s rights at this time in our country, this might be easier to stomach. Not one thing about this has advanced the rights of women or the understanding of domestic violence. Instead, the criminal justice system has been manipulated to further a political agenda of removing an elected official from office.

We all make mistakes in life. There have been several recent occasions involving officials actually in office where their behavior was questioned.  One issues involved sexual contact with a subordinate, another involved domestic violence and others involved substance abuse. In not one of these instances has the person been removed office.

To remove Ross from office is political and nothing else.

People are purportedly so outraged on behalf of abused women everywhere. But where is the outrage about the coordinated attack on choice in our country or about the documented inhumanities perpetrated against women throughout the world, even today?  Or equal pay, or adequate healthcare? What about the families losing their homes to greedy banks? Nothing of substance gets done on these issues. Instead, attention is focused away from the important issues to the personal shortcomings of the politicians seeking to address those issues.

From the impeachment efforts against Clinton to the allegations against the Wikileaks activist, there are over-amped attacks aimed to politically destroy the target in the press.  “Due process” and “innocent until proven guilty” are essentially thrown out the pressroom window. 
In the name of domestic violence, the mayor and the city attorney have removed an elected official from office. Domestic violence advocates are being used to further an agenda that is hypocritical and ultimately will undermine and dis-empower us all.

Ross Mikirimi was the only progressive elected in the last election. Ross has always been an ideological feminist. The established power brokers in City Hall did not want Ross to be sheriff. They do not want someone who advocates for diversity. They do not want someone who supports the rights of the people to implement the Compassionate Use Act and maintain cannabis dispensaries. They do not want a sheriff who will stand up to the federal government.  They do not want a sheriff who will stand with the 99 percent.

San Francisco is a great city not because of intolerance but because of tolerance. The strength of the city came about because of respect for diversity and encouragement of diversity. Ross stands for those principles.

Ross made a mistake in his personal relationship. Eliana Lopez, his wife, has clearly forgiven him. Each of us should do the same. To do otherwise is to disrespect Lopez.

Are we going to trust City Hall to be the arbitrators of conduct?  And are we really going to sit by and watch as they systematically throw untrue, unfounded, unsubstantiated accusations at whomever they want? Really?

To use this incident as the basis for this coup is without precedent. City Hall’s actions are without basis in fact and without foundation in law.

We believe that the mayor, among others, is doing what he wants to under the guise of women’s rights. We do not want to be used in that way.

There is something very wrong with what is happening — and sadly if this public political assassination can happen to Ross and his family, it can and will happen to anyone of us. Ask Linette Peralta Hayes.
 
Krissy Keefer is artist director, Dance Mission Theater. Debra Walker, an artist, is political development chair of the California Democratic Party Women’s Caucus.

A seat in Congress for the 99 percent

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For the first time in two decades, voters north of the Golden Gate will choose a new member of Congress. Given the overwhelming party registration, a Democrat will fill the open seat. But what kind of Democrat?

We need a truly independent, progressive Democrat — determined to support the party leadership when it upholds our principles, and just as willing to challenge when it doesn’t.

We can’t defeat a heartless Republican agenda by being spineless. Rather than letting the reactionary GOP define “national security” or “fiscal responsibility,” we’ve got to stand tall for our core beliefs.

That’s why I’m running for Congress.

The retirement of Lynn Woolsey, a stalwart champion for peace and social justice, means that an open seat is up for grabs — and corporate interests are eager to grab it.

I’m convinced that the only way to beat corporate AstroTurf is genuine grassroots. And that’s the ongoing commitment of the Solomon for Congress campaign in this new North Coast district, which stretches from Marin County to the Oregon border.

Our campaign has become the grassroots leader in the race. While refusing to accept a penny from corporate PACs or lobbyists, we’ve relied on thousands of individuals to build our campaign from the ground up.

That’s why more than 1,000 volunteers are engaged in our campaign, why more than 5,100 individuals have contributed — and why the latest poll shows me on track to advance to the general election under California’s new top-two primary system.

This is a deep-blue, very progressive district. We can — and must — do much better than just sending a check-the-box Democrat to Washington.

Like so many in our district, I’m outraged at perpetual war and misplaced federal priorities that bail out Wall Street banks while pushing millions of homeowners into foreclosure.

I insist that we must fully uphold habeas corpus and other precious civil liberties, not throw them under the bus.

Nuclear power plants, including Diablo Canyon and San Onofre, must be closed. We can’t afford a wait-and-see approach. Nuclear energy isn’t safe or green; it’s not sustainable, and its radioactive waste is not an acceptable legacy for future generations.

We need a serious commitment to conservation and renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

And we must reject the austerity program that has wrecked budgets and ripped vast holes in safety nets from Sacramento to Washington.

We need a Green New Deal that combines job-creating public investment with a deep commitment to sustainability — while defending the ecosystem instead of big corporations.

North of San Francisco, with an open congressional seat at stake, wealthy interests have put big money on my main opponents.

While I’m outpolling her, multimillionaire Stacey Lawson is dumping huge quantities of money into TV and radio commercials touting her “middle class” values — while declining to mention her enormous wealth, much less the fact that she couldn’t be bothered to vote in two-thirds of a dozen elections.

The elections when Lawson failed to vote included the historic November 2008 contest that decided on the presidency and the anti-gay-marriage Prop 8 as well as a state measure seeking to undermine young women’s right to choose — requiring parental consent, waiting periods and penalties for doctors.

Genuine social change requires fighting for our ideals. Please help me occupy a seat in Congress for the 99 percent. Let’s work together to make it happen. *

 

Norman Solomon is a candidate for Congress in the new North Coast district that stretches from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon border. A longtime activist, educator and policy advocate, he’s the author of a dozen books including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” For more information: www.SolomonForCongress.com.

City case speculates about Mirkarimi’s interference with investigation

Sasha Cuttler
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City case speculates about Mirkarimi’s interference with investigation

The City Attorney’s Office laid out much of its case against suspended Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi yesterday when it released a list of witnesses and their expected testimony, as requested by the Ethics Commission, and it offers little support for the city’s accusation that Mirkarimi dissuaded witnesses or sought to destroy evidence of a crime, which are among the most serious allegations in the official misconduct case against him.

The longest and most significant section in the brief was the testimony of Ivory Madison, the neighbor who initiated the police investigation into whether Mirkarimi physically abused his wife, Eliana Lopez, during a Dec. 31 incident that she subsequent reported to Madison, who made a video of her story and a bruise on her arm.

It was the most detailed account yet of what happened from the perspective of Madison, who has refused media interviews, and it differs in some key areas from accounts that Mirkarimi gave to the Guardian and other media outlets.

For example, Mirkarimi said he grabbed his wife’s arm in the car during a heated argument and that tempers had cooled by the time they went inside. But Madison is expected to testify that, “Inside the house, Sheriff Mirkarimi pushed, pulled and grabbed Ms. Lopez, who was crying and screaming, as was their son. Ms. Lopez asked Sheriff Mirkarimi to stop, and said look what you’re doing to our son. Ms. Lopez then ran out of the house. While both inside and outside the house, Lopez was yelling, do you want me to call the police. When Ms. Lopez yelled about calling the police while outside, Sheriff Mirkarimi said no, come inside. Ms Lopez went back inside.”

It is unclear from the memo whether Madison was a direct witness to those events or whether they were relayed to her by Lopez, but it sounds like the latter given that the story is in a paragraph that began with the phrase “According to Ms. Lopez.” Since the incident, Lopez has consistently denied that Mirkarimi abused her and downplayed the conflict. The only other neighbor on the witness list, Callie Williams, wasn’t at home during the conflict, but she’s expected to testify that Lopez told her about that and an earlier instance of abuse and that “Sheriff Mirkarimi was scared that she was going to tell people what happened.”

While Madison’s expected testimony confirms Lopez’s account that the video was made to be used in the event of a child custody battle if the couple divorced, Madison’s account paints Lopez as actively worried about her safety: “Ms. Madison suggested calling the police. Ms. Lopez was afraid that the police would not believe her and would not protect her from Sheriff Mirkarimi, and was concerned about what the police could do to protect her.”

It also confirms what journalist Phil Bronstein, a friend Madison called for advice, told the Guardian about Madison’s initial call to police being a simple inquiry and that she didn’t intend to initiate a police investigation just yet. And it indicates that “Ms. Lopez was unhappy about the investigation. Ms. Lopez called Linnette Peralta Haynes (Sheriff Mirkarimi’s campaign manager in the November 2011 election) on her mobile phone. After speaking with Ms. Haynes, Ms. Lopez handed her phone to Ms. Madison. Ms. Haynes attempted to dissuade Ms. Madison from cooperating with the police and attempted to persuade Ms. Madison to lie to the police.”

Yet there is nothing in Madison’s expected testimony to indicate Mirkarimi was behind any of these efforts, and he denies it and says that he wasn’t even aware that Lopez had talked to Madison or made a video or that police had been called at that point. Peralta Haynes, who sources say is in the late stage of a difficult pregnancy, hasn’t cooperated with the investigation so it’s obviously speculative on the city’s part to indicate that she was acting as Mirkarimi’s “agent” in thwarting the investigation, as the city is claiming.

The only “evidence” that the city seems to offer in support of its accusation that Mirkarimi tried to thwart the criminal investigation comes from Madison’s husband, Abraham Mertens, who is expected to repeat the claim he first made in a controversial March 20 op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle that, “During the time that SFPD inspectors were interviewing Ms. Madison on January 4, Mr. Mertens received a telephone call from Eliana Lopez urging him to make Ms. Madison stop talking to the police. Mr. Mertens heard Sheriff Mirkarimi’s voice in the background,” a more resolute version than Mertens had previously given when he wrote in the op-ed: “I recognized what I thought was Ross’ voice in the background.” Mertens also has not answered Guardian calls.

Mirkarimi categorically denies that he was present during that phone call and says that he was in meetings at City Hall and that he wasn’t aware that any of this was happening at the time. And he has denied urging Peralta Hayes to get involved, but her testimony could evolve into evidence if the city can show they talked before she spoke to Madison, but that’s still speculative. The city is seeking live testimony from Peralta Haynes about her communications with Mirkarimi on Jan. 4 and before.

During the recent Ethics Commission hearing on setting up procedures for the hearing, Mirkarimi attorney Shepherd Kopp noted that the city hadn’t done key interviews or collected physical evidence (such as phone records or the Lopez video) to support its charges against Mirkarimi before making its allegation, something that Deputy City Attorney Peter Keith didn’t dispute, noting that the the city had not yet received much of the evidence that it intends to present, such as the video.

The city appears to be banking on compelling incriminating testimony from Lopez and Mirkarimi, who they plan to treat as hostile witnesses. The other interesting name on the city’s witness list was Mayor Ed Lee, who the city is recommending give live testimony and who could also likely be subjected to a vigorous cross-examination that could have interesting political ramifications.

Stage Listings May 2-8, 2012

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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

Down to This Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy, SF; www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. $12-20. Opens Thu/3, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Sleepwalkers Theatre performs a pulpy thriller with two possible endings.

“San Francisco International Arts Festival” Various venues, SF; www.sfiaf.org. Free-$70. May 2-20. Performance festival featuring theater and dance from Cuba, Iran, Russia, the U.S., China, Japan, Estonia, and more.

The Wrong Dick Dark Room Theater, 2263 Mission, SF; www.darkroomsf.com. $20. Opens Thu/3, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 26. Ham Pants Productions presents a noir-inspired comedy set in San Francisco.

Zorba Eureka Theater, 215 Jackson, SF; (415) 255-8207, www.42ndstmoon.org. $20-50. Previews Wed/2, 8pm; Thu/3-Fri/4, 8pm. Opens Sat/5, 6pm. Runs Wed, 7pm; Thu-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 6pm; Sun, 3pm. Through May 20. 42nd Street Moon performs Kander and Ebb’s musical salute to Greece.

BAY AREA

Crevice La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thu/3-Fri/4, 8pm. Opens Sat/5, 8pm. Runs Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through June 9. Impact Theatre and PlayGround present Lauren Yee’s world premiere play about 20-something siblings whose couch-potato lives are uprooted when a chasm opens up in their living room.

ONGOING

Act One, Scene Two Phoenix Arts Association Theatre, 414 Mason, Ste 601, SF; www.un-scripted.com. $10-20. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Through May 12. Un-Scripted Theater Company performs the beginning of a new, unfinished play by a local author — and creates an ending on the spot once the script runs out.

*The Aliens SF Playhouse, 533 Sutter, SF; (415) 677-9596, www.sfplayhouse.org. $20-70. Wed/2-Thu/3, 7pm; Fri/4-Sat/5, 8pm. On the heels of Aurora Theatre’s production of Body Awareness, SF Playhouse introduces local audiences to another of contemporary American playwright Annie Baker’s acclaimed plays, in a finely tailored West Coast premiere directed by Lila Neugebauer. The Aliens unfolds in the days just around July 4, at slacker pace, in the backyard of a Vermont café (lovingly realized to palpable perfection by scenic designer Bill English), daily haunt of scruffy, post-Beat dropouts and sometime band mates Jasper (a secretly brooding but determined Peter O’Connor) and KJ (a charmingly ingenuous yet mischievous Haynes Thigpen). New employee and high school student Evan (a winningly eager and reticent Brian Miskell) is at first desperate to get the interlopers out of the “staff only” backyard but is just lonely enough to be seduced into friendship and wary idolatry by the older males. What unfolds is a small, sweet and unexpected tale of connection and influence, amid today’s alienated dream-sucking American landscape — same as it ever was, if you ask Charles Bukowski or Henry Miller, both points of reference to Jasper and KJ, who borrow Bukowski’s poem The Aliens for one of their many band names. An appropriate name for the alienated, sure, but part of the charm of these characters is just how easy they are to recognize, or how much we can recognize ourselves in them. Delusions of grandeur reside in every coffee house across this wistful, restless land. It’s not just Jasper and KJ who may be going nowhere. A final gesture to the young and awkward but clearly capable Evan suggests, a little ambiguously to be sure, that there’s promise out there yet for some. But more than that: the transaction makes clear by then that there are no fuck-ups, really; not among people with generous and open hearts — never mind how fucked up the country at large. (Avila)

“Bay One Acts Festival” Boxcar Theatre, 505 Natoma, SF; www.bayoneacts.org. $25-45. Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sat/5 and May 12, 3pm); Sun, 3 and 7pm. Through May 12. Ten bold and adventurous short plays by local playwrights, performed two full programs running in repertory.

Fwd: Life Gone Viral Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm; Sun, 7pm (no show Sun/6). Through June 10. The internet becomes comic fodder for creator-performers Charlie Varon and Jeri Lynn Cohen, and creator-director David Ford.

*Hot Greeks Hypnodrome Theatre, 575 10th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $30-35. Thu-Sat, 8pm. Extended through May 19. Cheap thrills don’t come much cheaper or more thrilling than at a Thrillpeddlers musical extravaganza, and their newly remounted run of Hot Greeks affords all the glitter-dusted eye-candy and labyrinthian plot points we’ve come to expect from their gleefully exhibitionist ranks. Structured as loosely as possible on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Greeks appropriately enough follows the trials and tribulations of a college sorority tired of “losing” their boyfriends to the big football match every year (Athens U vs. Sparta Tech). Pledging to withhold sex from the men unless they call off the game results in frustration for all, only partially alleviated by the discovery that sexual needs can be satisfied by “playing the other team,” as it were. But like other Cockettes’ revivals presented by the Thrillpeddlers, the momentum of the show is carried forward not by the rather thinly-sketched narrative, but by the group song-and-dance numbers, extravagant costuming (and lack thereof), ribald wordplay, and overt gender-fuckery. In addition to many TP regulars, including a hot trio of Greek columns topped with “capital” headdresses who serve as the obligatory chorus (Steven Satyricon, Ste Fishell, Bobby Singer), exciting new additions to the Hypnodrome stage include a bewigged Rik Lopes as stalwart sister Lysistrata, angelically-voiced Maggie Tenenbaum as the not-so-angelic Sodoma, and multi-faceted cabaret talent Tom Orr as heartthrob hunk Pendulum Pulaski. (Gluckstern)

It’s All the Rage Studio Theater, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Thu, 8pm; Sat, 8:30pm, Sun, 7pm. Extended through May 27. Longtime comedian and radio host Marilyn Pittman’s solo play wrestles with the legacy of her parents’ violent deaths in a 1997 murder-suicide initiated by her father. It’s disturbing material that Pittman, a stout middle-aged woman with a gregarious and bounding personality, approaches indirectly via a good deal of humor — including recounting the first time she did her growing-up-lesbian bit before her mother in a DC comedy club. But the pain and confusion trailing her for 13 years is never far behind, whether in accounts of her own battle with anger (and the broken relationships it has left in its wake) or in ominous memories of her too complacent mother or her charming but domineering father, whose controlling behavior extended to casually announcing murderous dreams while policing the boundaries of his marriage against family interference. A fine mimic, Pittman deploys a Southern lilt in playing each parent, on a stage decorated with a hint of their Southwestern furnishings and a framed set of parental photographs. In not exactly knowing where to lay blame for, or find meaning in, such a horrifying act, the play itself mimics in subtler form the emotional tumult left behind. There’s a too brief but eerie scene in which her veteran father makes reference to a murder among fellow soldiers en route to war, but while PTSD is mentioned (including as an unwanted patrimony), the 60-minute narrative crafted by Pittman and director David Ford wisely eschews any pat explanation. If transitions are occasionally awkward and the pace a bit loose, the play leaves one with an uncomfortable sense of the darker aspects of love, mingled with vague concentric histories of trauma and dislocation in a weird, sad tale of destruction and staying power. Note: review from the show’s 2009 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Killing My Lobster Chops Down the Family Tree TJT, 470 Florida, SF; www.killingmylobster.com. $10-22. Thu-Sat, 8pm (May 12, shows at 7 and 10pm); Sun, 7pm. Through May 13. The sketch comedy troupe performs a new show inspired by contemporary families.

Tenderloin Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; (415) 525-1205, www.cuttingball.com. $10-50. Opens Thu/3, 7:30pm. Runs Thu, 7:30pm; Fri-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, 5pm. Through May 27. Annie Elias and Cutting Ball Theater artists present a world premiere “documentary theater” piece looking at the people and places in the Cutting Ball Theater’s own ‘hood.

Thunder Above, Deeps Below Bindlestiff Studio, 185 Sixth St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. $20-25. Thu/3-Sat/5, 8pm. Bindlestiff presents A. Rey Pamatmat’s dramatic comedy about three homeless young adults.

The Waiting Period MainStage, Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia, SF; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Extended through May 26. 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

Anatol Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; www.auroratheatre.org. $30-55. Tue and Sun, 7pm (also Sun, 2pm); Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through May 13. Aurora Theatre Company performs a world premiere translation of Arthur Schnitzler’s drama about the love life of an Viennese philanderer.

A Hot Day in Ephesus Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; info@aeofberkeley.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; May 13, 2pm. Through May 19. Actors Ensemble performs the world premiere of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors.

In Paris Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Roda Theatre, 2015 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $22.50-125. Tue and Thu-Sat, 8pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 7pm; Sun, 2pm. Through May 13. Mikhail Baryshnikov stars in Dmitry Krymov’s romantic new play.

*The Kipling Hotel: True Misadventures of the Electric Pink ’80s New venue: Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Sat/5, 8:30pm; Sun/6, 7pm. 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)

Lucky Duck Julia Morgan Theatre, 2640 College, Berk; www.berkeleyplayhouse.org. $17-35. Thu and Sat, 7pm (also Sat, 2pm); Sun, noon and 5pm (additional performance May 11, 7pm). Through May 13. Berkeley Playhouse performs a musical inspired by the “Ugly Duckling” tale.

Not Getting Any Younger Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 282-3055, www.themarsh.org. $15-50. Fri, 8pm; Sat, 5pm. Through May 19. Marga Gomez is back at the Marsh, a couple of too-brief decades after inaugurating the theater’s new stage with her first solo show — an apt setting, in other words, for the writer-performer’s latest monologue, a reflection on the inevitable process of aging for a Latina lesbian comedian and artist who still hangs at Starbucks and can’t be trusted with the details of her own Wikipedia entry. If the thought of someone as perennially irreverent, insouciant, and appealingly immature as Gomez makes you depressed, the show is, strangely enough, the best antidote. Note: review from the show’s 2011 run at the Marsh San Francisco. (Avila)

Oleanna Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; www.theatrefirst.com. $15-30. Thu-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5pm. Through May 13. TheatreFIRST performs David Mamet’s tense two-charater drama.

Red Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Thrust Stage, 2025 Addison, Berk; (510) 647-2949, www.berkeleyrep.org. $14.50-83. Tue and Thu-Fri, 8pm; Wed, 7pm; Sat-Sun, 2pm (also Sat, 8pm; no 8pm show May 12; Sun, 7pm). Extended through May 12. Mark Rothko (David Chandler) isn’t the only one painting with a broad brush in this labored and ultimately superficial two-hander by John Logan, enjoying a competent but underwhelming production by outgoing Berkeley Rep associate artistic director Les Waters. Set inside the late-1950s New York studio of the legendary abstract expressionist at the height of his fame, the play introduces a blunt and brash young painter named Ken (John Brummer) as Rothko’s new hired hand, less a character than a crude dramatic device, there first as a sounding board for the pompous philosophizing that apparently comprises a good chunk of the artist’s process and finally as a kind of mirror held up to the old iconoclast in challenging proximity to a new generation that must ultimately transcend Rothko’s canvases in turn. The dialogue holds up signs announcing intellectual and aesthetic depths but these remain surface effects, reflecting only platitudes, while the posturing tends to reduce Rothko to caricature. Much of the self-consciously reluctant filial interaction here smacks of biographical sound bites or heavy-handed underscoring of theme, and tends toward the outright hokey when touching on the credulity-bending subject of Ken’s murdered parents — with the attendant shades this adds to Rothko’s and the play’s chosen color palette. (Avila)

The World’s Funniest Bubble Show Marsh Berkeley, TheaterStage, 2120 Allston, Berk; (415) 826-5750, www.themarsh.org. $8-50. Extended run: May 5-27 (Sat-Sun, 11am); June 3-July 15 (Sun, 11am). Louis “The Amazing Bubble Man” Pearl returns with this kid-friendly, bubble-tastic comedy.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

“Comedy SuperPAC: Promoting Good Comedy and Great Causes Since 2012!” Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk, SF; www.hemlocktavern.com. Mon/7, 7pm. $5. Nate Green and W. Kamau Bell present this ongoing comedy showcase; this week’s performers are Chris Garcia, Brendan McGowan, Jeff Kreisler, and Brandie Posey.

“Cutting Ball Theater Hidden Classics Reading Series” Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF; www.cuttingball.com. Sun/6, 1pm. Free. Readings of three one-act August Strindberg plays.

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

“Gaia Grrrls” Dance Mission Theater, 3316 24th St, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/4-Sat/5, 8pm (also Sat/5, 4pm); Sun/6, 4pm. $17. Dance Brigade’s Grrrl Brigade performs a contemporary dance-drama that takes on war and climate change.

“May Day: CounterPULSE’s Performance Festival-Fundraiser” CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission, SF; www.counterpulse.org. Thurs/3-Sat/5, 8pm. $30-150. Local dancers and performers come together to raise funds for the venue, a haven for experimental and risk-taking work.

“Picklewater Clown Cabaret: Cabaret of Sexy Sex!” Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Mon/7, 7 and 9pm. $15. Physical comedy, music, and mayhem.

“Radar Spectacle” Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa, SF; www.radarproductions.org. Fri/4, 8pm. $15. Radar Lab benefits from this performance featuring music from Mirah, a reading by Armistead Maupin, a live art auction, and more.

“See Mom, I Didn’t Forget!” Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter, SF; www.brownpapertickets.com. Sun/6, 2 and 7pm. $30. “Familial craziness” is the theme of this solo performance showcase in honor of Mother’s Day.

Smuin Ballet Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission, SF; www.smuinballet.org. Wed/2-Sat/5, 8pm (also Sat/5, 2pm); Sun/6, 2pm. $25-62. Program includes the West Coast premiere of Val Caniparoli’s Swipe and the world premiere of Ma Cong’s Through. *

 

East Bay Endorsements for the June 5 election

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East Bay Endorsements for the June 5 election

There aren’t a lot of contested races in the Oakland/Berkeley area. Every member of the county Board of Supervisors is running essentially unopposed. When termed-out Assemblymember Sandra Swanson decided not to challenge state Senator Loni Hancock, the East Bay left avoided a bruising primary fight. In essence, voters will be addressing a series of no-contest primaries and two statewide ballot measures. So there’s not a lot to drive the voters to the polls.

But there are two important races — a contest for Swanson’s 18th Assembly seat and a rare election for an open seat on the Alameda County bench. Our recommendations follow.

STATE SENATOR, 9TH DISTRICT

LONI HANCOCK

Always solid on the issues, Hancock has taken a lead role in fighting bogus foreclosures and takes on the often-challenging job of killing bad bills as chair of the Public Safety Committee. She’s been a strong advocate for ending the death penalty.

STATE ASSEMBLY, 15TH DISTRICT

NANCY SKINNER

Another strong progressive, she’s currently pushing to preserve affordable education in the UC system. She’s also a leader in the campaign to tax online sales.

STATE ASSEMBLY, DISTRICT 18

ABEL GUILLEN

Several strong candidates are seeking this seat, which represents one of the most progressive districts in the state. Our choice is Abel Guillen, a member of the Peralta College Board. Guillen has a strong record in the progressive community and the support of the teacher’s and nurse’s unions. He’s a strong advocate for education and speaks about aggressively seeking new revenue (including a split-role modification of Prop. 13). We were a little concerned about his reluctance to support state Sen. Mark Leno’s efforts to allow local government more authority to raise revenue (Guillen’s worried about statewide equity) but on balance, he’s the best candidate.

We were also impressed with Rob Bonta, vice-mayor of Alameda, who is strong on transit issues and understands the needs of local government. But although he told us he would support repeal of the “three-strikes” law, he’s the candidate of law-enforcement and has the support of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, the dangerous statewide cop union that tries to block nearly every piece of progressive criminal-justice reform. He told us that in the past he’s supported the death penalty because “it’s the voters’ choice.” On the relatively simple question of legalizing pot, he said he “probably” would vote for it.

Thanks to the two-two primary system, it’s likely these two will be facing off again in November. Vote for Guillen.

SUPERIOR COURT, OFFICE NUMBER 20

TARA FLANAGAN

Three East Bay lawyers are running for this rare open seat. Our choice is Flanagan, whose progressive credentials and background make her the strongest candidate.

A former prosecutor in Los Angeles who now does civil litigation and family law, Flanagan is a supporter of open courtrooms and told us she would have no objections to cameras and tape recorders. She agreed that the administrative meetings of the county judges should be open to the public. She’s served as a temporary judge, so already has courtroom experience.

The Alameda bench is still mostly a boy’s club — only 30 percent of the judges are women, and a dismal 1.4 percent come from the LGBT community. Flanagan would bring some needed diversity to the court.

COUNTY SUPERVISOR, 5TH DISTRICT

KEITH CARSON

Incumbent Keith Carson has been a stalwart in the Oakland and Berkeley progressive communities for decades. He’s running unopposed.

The two defining votes of 2012

Zelda Bronstein
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The two defining votes of 2012

The Board of Supervisors will be facing two votes in the next couple of months that will define this board, establish the extent of the mayor’s political clout — and potentially play a decisive role in the political futures of several board members.

Oh: They’ll also have a lasting impact on the future of this city.

I’m talking about 8 Washington and CPMC — one of them the most important vote on housing policy to come along in years, the other a profound decision that will change the face of the city and alter the health-care infrastructure for decades to come.

Both projects have cleared the Planning Commission, as expected. Neither can go forward without approval from a majority of the supervisors. And there will be intense downtown lobbying on both of them.

The 8 Washington project would create what developer Simon Snellgrove calls the most expensive condos ever built in San Francisco. A piece of waterfront property would become a gated community for the very, very rich, many of whom won’t even live here most of the time. If it’s approved, the economy won’t collapse, neighborhoods won’t be destroyed — but it will make a powerful statement about the city’s housing policy. The message: We build housing for the 1 percent. We are a city that caters only to one very tiny group of people. We are willing to let the needs of the few drive our policy over the needs of the many.

Face it: There is no shortage of housing for the people who will buy Snellgrove’s condos. There’s a severe shortage of housing for most of the people who actually work in San Francisco. And the city’s housing policy is so scewed up that it’s making things worse. That’s the message of 8 Washington.

Then there’s CPMC. California Pacific Medical Center wants to put a snazzy state-of-the art new medical center on Van Ness, which is all well and good. But the giant nonprofit Sutter Health, which operates CPMC, has been openly hostile to some of the city’s demands (for housing, transit and other environmental mitigiation) and the proposal that Mayor Ed Lee has signed off on is way out of balance. There’s not anything even close to a reasonable link between jobs and housing — which will impact the entire city. You bring in a lot of new workers and don’t help build enough housing for them and everyone’s rent goes up.

CPMC also wants to radically downsize St. Luke’s Hospital, the only full-service facility on the south side of town except for the overcrowded and overloaded SF General. Health care for a sizable part of the city will suffer.

This is a very big deal, and the Chamber of Commerce is pushing hard for the supes to approve it. A lot of labor and the entire affordable housing community is against it.

So put those two votes in front of a board where the progressive majority has been very shaky of late — and where Lee will be working hard to line up six votes — and you’ve got potential political dynamite. Supervisor John Avalos told me he has serious concerns about both projects. Sup. David Campos told me he feels the same way. Sup Eric Mar is unlikely to vote for 8 Washington and unlikely to oppose the health-care workers and the progressive leaders who want to block the CPMC deal and make Sutter come back with a better offer, but some elements of labor are pushing hard for 8 Washington and Mar is up for re-election in one of the city’s swing districts.

Sup. David Chiu is against 8 Washington. I’ve called Sups. Jane Kim and Christina Olague (who was not a fan of the project when she was on the Planning Commission) but they haven’t gotten back to me. Olague is running for re-election this fall in the city’s most progressive district, one that’s right on the edge of the CPMC project site; Kim’s district is on the other edge.

You can’t really count to six on either of these projects without getting Chiu and/or Kim and/or Olague. Chiu has no progressive opposition, but if he supports the CPMC deal, someone may decide to challenge him. If Olague supports either project, it will give her opponents plenty of fodder for the fall campaign (John Rizzo, who is running against her, told me he opposes both). If Olague opposes the two projects, it’s going to be much harder for anyone to run against her from the left since she will have demonstrated that she can stand up the mayor on tough issues.

I’ll let you know if I hear more.

 

 

 

Poll shows tax-the-rich measure hurt by Brown’s merger

Sasha Cuttler
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Poll shows tax-the-rich measure hurt by Brown’s merger

A new poll confirms a fear we’ve raised before – Gov. Jerry Brown’s insistence on coupling the popular tax on millionaires with an unpopular increase in the sales tax could doom the revenue package this November – putting pressure on the governor and his allies to step up their political games and save the schools from disastrous cuts.

The SF Chronicle’s story on the Public Policy Institute of California poll focused on the disconnect voters have between government services they support and their willingness to pay for them, which isn’t exactly news to anyone. A big reason for this state’s dire fiscal situation is that people want something for nothing.

Last year, thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement highlighting how the richest 1 percent have amassed ever-greater wealth at the expense of the rest of us, that dynamic began to change. People started to openly and consistently advocate for increasing taxes on the wealthy, no longer cowed by accusations of “class warfare.”

The PPIC poll found that 65 percent of respondents like the idea of taxing millionaires and putting that money toward education, while 80 percent oppose the $5 billion in trigger cuts to schools that will occur if voters reject the tax measure. But only a slim majority of 54 percent favor the measure that Brown is pushing, mostly because 52 percent say they don’t like the sales tax increase, a regressive tax that will likely be highlighted repeatedly by opponents of the measure.

That’s a big challenge for the broad coalition that supports the measure, but it’s an especially big deal for Brown. He was the one who created this bad combination in the first place, and convinced the California Federation of Teachers to drop its Millionaires Tax – the clean measure that would have 65 percent support right now – in favor of a merged measure that’s a bit more progressive than Brown’s original idea.

Assembly member Tom Ammiano and other progressives we respect have said they like the compromise and worried that competing tax measures could sink them all in this make-or-break election (that’s because under state law, tax measures need a simple majority only during presidential elections, meaning it will be four more years until we have this opportunity again).

Maybe, but the sales tax increase was never a good idea, and these poll numbers show they’ve got a difficult challenge on their hands. In particular, Brown will need to finally prove his repeated campaign statements that he’s the one with the knowledge, skills, and experience to get things done in the dysfunctional, gridlocked state. It’s time to make good on those words, governor.

The (latest) battle of KPFA

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The (latest) battle of KPFA

yael@sfbg.com

If you’re a member of KPFA, the progressive Berkeley radio station, you’ll be receiving a ballot in the mail shortly with one issue at hand: the recall of Tracy Rosenberg. She’s an elected member of the Local Station Board, and her critics want her removed from office.

Rosenberg is also the former chair of the Finance Committee at Pacifica Network, the nonprofit that owns KPFA. And she has become the face of a conflict at KPFA that is about issues much bigger than Rosenberg herself. The petition to recall Rosenberg accuses her of stealing an email list of KPFA supporters, of election fraud in a 2011 Local Station Board election, and of orchestrating the cancellation of the station’s beloved Morning Show. But there’s a deeper issue here: How should the famously fractious KPFA handle a downturn in financial support — and should the station rely more on volunteer programming and less on paid professional staff? How will the station, which is an essential part of the Bay Area left, face a changing media landscape?

As the staff at KPFA—administrative and broadcaster, paid and unpaid, union and non-union—try to answer these questions, most of them with a real commitment to progressive radio, they are also mired in a political dispute that’s been draining for everyone involved.

KPFA has a long history of providing news and critique that supports progressive efforts and questions the status quo. But, like most businesses, it took a hit in the 2008 financial crisis.

That came a decade after some dramatic governance changes. In July 1999, Pacifica put all the local staff on administrative leave and brought in staff from Houston affiliate KPFT to run the station. In response, hundreds protested in the streets, and the establishment of a detailed democratic governing structure came out of the dispute. Soon after, listener donations took off—parties on both sides attribute this to an increased demand for progressive content in the wake of 9/11 and the war on Iraq. But around 2007, KPFA started to use up the last of its reserves.

According to data provided by the station, listener contributions peaked at more than $4 million during fiscal year 2005, and then began to level off. By 2010, donation income was back below $3 million —still more than 2001 levels. As donations dropped significantly during those five years, salaries and related personnel expenses continued a slow and steady increase, and KPFA managed to avoid outright staff and programming cuts.

That is, until September 2008, when the hosts and producers of the Morning Show were laid off and the show cancelled.

According to the recall campaign, the lay offs were retaliatory (the Morning Show staff had criticized Pacifica management on the air). According to defenders, canceling the Morning Show was a necessary budget decision. The recall campaign argues that the dire financial situation has stabilized after the Morning Show was cancelled; the recall people say that the local board had already balanced it through buyouts. The recall crowd says donations have gone down; the other crowd, they’ve shifted, but remain about the same. According to Brian Edwards-Tiekert, one of the forces behind the recall effort, “At the start of the dispute were these retaliatory firings a year and a half ago. It became a recall because of how they dealt with it.”

The Pacifica Foundation has partnered with KPFA since they were both founded out of anti-war movements in the late 1940s, but their relationship has evolved over the years. As it stands, KPFA and Pacifica’s four other member stations pay yearly dues to the foundation; Pacifica, in turn, provides program that is syndicated over many stations such Free Speech Radio News and Democracy Now!

The Save KPFA campaign website makes the case that Pacifica “uses KPFA as a cash cow,” and notes money KPFA loaned to Pacifica around 2000, from which Pacifica apparently still owes KPFA $1.4 million.

As a staff-elected representative on KPFA’s Local Station Board, Edwards-Tiekert pushed back on attempts by Pacifica to seize station funds. The Morning Show invited Pacifica’s executives onto to the airwaves and “challenged them about how much they were taking from KPFA, and about Pacifica’s spending priorities,” the site reads.

“All of those charges are somewhat overstated. There’s a certain percentage of KPFA’s budget that goes to overall expenses,” Rosenberg told us. In fact, according to Rosenberg’s allies, the situation was reversed; KPFA had run out of funds and was threatening to bankrupt Pacifica. In response to budget shortfalls, Pacifica’s executive director Arlene Engleheart “asked all five Pacifica stations to cut down on paid staff 2-3 years ago, as the only way to meet escalating deficits, KPFA’s 4 “sister” Pacifica stations have already done this. Only KPFA continued to employ more paid staff than it can afford.”

According to the website of a campaign against the recall, Support KPFA, in the fall of 2010, KPFA owed Pacifica more than $100,000 in unpaid dues. “At that time I was the representative from KPFA at the national Finance Committee, which does the budget from KPFA after it comes back from the local level,” said Rosenberg. She claims that the budget that the board came up with came short of meeting expenses.

“So as a board member I went to the station and said, where’s the budget? So I pushed for a couple of meetings saying look, a budget has to come up here that makes sense and is balanced. I told the executive director it was her responsively to make sure a plan for a balanced budget went forward. I would say that I put some pressure on the executive director to make some hard decisions.”

Communication Workers of America Local 9415, a union that represents KPFA’s paid workers, brought the issue to the National Labor Relations Board in late 2011, and the federal agency dismissed five charges of retaliation and layoffs out of the seniority order. Edwards-Tiekert, however, was reinstated as the result of a successful union grievance.

The other charges on the recall petition include putting forward two motions to overturn Jan 2011 local station board elections under fraudulent auspices and for specious reasons and misappropriating a list of KPFA members’ personal email addresses.

The election fraud charge refers to a motion Rosenberg brought disqualify Dan Siegel, an attorney who was elected to the Local Station Board, from holding his seat, based on Pacifica policy barring individuals who hold a public office from serving on the board.

“I pointed out that this seemed to be a violation of the bylaws. That’s all I did,” she said.

But the incident turned into a court battle, and a judge eventually issued an injunction reinstating Siegel.

The email theft charge refers to an email blast that Rosenberg sent out concerning the Morning Mix, the Morning Show’s replacement.

The Morning Show provided an in-depth look at stories from around the Bay Area. It had, and still has, a large following. “The corporate media doesn’t cover real issues as they really affect people,” said Sasha Futran, a listener member of the Local Station Board. With its cancellation, she said, “I want to know what’s going on. I want intelligent analysis.”

Democracy Now!—the foremost example of professional progressive journalism in the country—is now KPFA’s highest donation-generating show. And in style and content, the Morning Mix is distinctly not a Bay Area version of Democracy Now!

Instead, it is a show with rotating hosts Dennis Bernstein, Davey D Cook, JR Valrey, Andres Soto, Anita Johnson, Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff. The content and approach varies depending on the host.

Henry Norr, a listener and elected member of the Local Station Board, is pleased with the format, and thinks it might represent a good path for KPFA. “The station should be more community-oriented. We should have a diversity of voices, and lots of people on who aren’t skilled or paid but represent progressive voices and active movements,” said Norr. The new show has increased coverage of Richmond politics and has provided a forum for Valrey and Cook to talk about left-wing politics from an African-American perspective.

But cutting the Morning Show had its financial implications: The old format brought in significantly more donations than the Morning Mix. According to KPFA documents, donations have increased in other time slots that air more traditional-sounding journalism, including during Letters and Politics, Flashpoints, and the Evening News.

So the recall is about the Morning Show, but it’s also about the future: Should KPFA seek to retain a traditional structure, with paid staff who can earn a decent living and focus on making news programs whose quality compares to that of more mainstream outlets? Or should the station solve its budget woes by relying on more community volunteers with more wide-ranging content?

And should the people who work at KPFA have the right to discuss the station’s finances, policies and future openly, on the air, without fear of retaliation?

Rosenberg or not, those issues aren’t going away.

 

For your (even further) consideration: expanded short takes on SFIFF, week two

Sue Vaughan
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For your (even further) consideration: expanded short takes on SFIFF, week two

Ahoy! Yes, there’s still time to gorge on the 55th annual SFIFF; even if you’re just getting into movie-watching mode today, there’s a full week (plus a day) of festival madness left. Right here on Pixel Vision we’ll be posting reports from the fest as it happens (check out Sam Stander’s post here!); read on if you want to plan ahead to catch some of the best of what’s to come. (Most shows are $13 and venues are the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; and Sundance Kabuki Cinema, 1881 Post, SF.)

WED/25
Polisse (Maïwenn, France, 2011) Comparisons to The Wire are not to be tossed around lightly, but when the Hollywood Reporter likened Polisse to an entire season of the masterpiece cop show packed into a single film, it was onto something. Director, co-writer, and star Maïwenn (the object of desire in 2003’s High Tension) hung out with real officers serving in Paris’ Child Protection Unit, drawing inspiration from their dealings with pedophiles, young rape victims, negligent mothers, pint-sized pickpockets, and the like (another TV show worth mentioning in comparison: Law & Order: SVU). But Polisse (the title is deliberately misspelled, as if by a child) is no simple procedural; it plunges the viewer directly into the day-to-day lives of its boisterous characters, who are juggling not just stressful careers but also plenty of after-hours troubles, particularly relationship issues. Between heartwrenching moments on the job (and off), the unit indulges in massive cut-loose episodes of what amounts to group therapy: charades, dance parties, and room-clearing arguments, most of which involve huge quantities of booze. Watching Polisse is a messy, emotional, rewarding experience; no wonder it picked up the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. Wed/25, 6pm; Thu/26, 3pm, FSC. (Cheryl Eddy)

Last Screening (Laurent Achard, France, 2011) A bit of an odd duck, 30-ish, nondescript Sylvain (Pascal Cervo) is in denial over the imminent closure of the small French repertory cinema he’s operated and lived in for years. But that’s hardly his most alarming mental hang-up: in his spare time he frequently goes around stalking and killing random women for a grisly purpose that has to do (of course) with his dear, departed, thoroughly demented mother. The only horror item in this year’s slim SFIFF “Late Show” section, Laurent Achard’s pulseless genre homage tips hat to 1960’s Peeping Tom and other, less obvious cineastic objets d’amour — most conspicuously, Renoir’s 1954 French Can Can, which is playing at Sylvain’s theater — but doesn’t seem interested in suspense, or psychology, or even style. It’s coldly unpleasant yet dull. Wed/25, 9:30pm, FSC. Sat/28, 10pm, Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

 

THU/26
Rebellion (Mathieu Kassovitz, France, 2011) The latest polemical film from the director of La Haine (1995) presents National Gendarmerie Intervention Group Captain Philippe Lejorus’ account of his experiences during the 1988 New Caledonia hostage crisis. It’s an election year in France, so all bets are off as to how the unfortunate fiasco will resolve. Striking camerawork distinguishes this tense, morally complex drama, which features Kassovitz as Lejorus, a humane negotiator in the midst of a politically charged battle for hearts, minds, and civil rights. The film is edited to embody its political context, with distancing effects such as voiceover and suddenly reframed shots that emphasize the two sides of a disagreement. Thu/26, 6pm; Tue/1, 9:45pm; May 3, 4:30pm, Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

Crulic — The Path to Beyond (Anca Damian, Romania/Poland/France, 2011) As the graphic novel has made the comic book into an adult art form, so recently the animated feature has increasingly matured toward diverse, weighty, mature themes. Anca Damian’s film is the autobiography of one Claudiu Crulic (excellently voiced by Vlad Ivanov), a Romanian Everyman who recounts his luckless life from the grave. He grows up motherless, shunted around, drifting through jobs, finally scoring halfway decent employment and a girlfriend as a guest worker in Poland. Then he’s arrested for a crime he didn’t commit. Fed up after being kicked like a dog his whole life, he commences a hunger strike for justice. And at that point the hitherto delightfully droll collage of numerous low-tech animation techniques begins to drag a bit, because Damian’s style is too impish to support tragedy, let alone a dirge-like portrait of physical deterioration á la Hunger (2008). But still, this is an impressive stretch of the medium. Thu/26, 6:30pm, PFA. Sun/29, 12:30pm; May 2, 6:16pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

Unfair World (Filippos Tsitos, Greece/Germany, 2011) Veteran Turkish-Greek actor Antonis Kafetzopoulos stars in this deadpan crime drama about a gullible, alcoholic police officer who falls for a duplicitous cleaning lady after a plan to prove a suspect’s innocence goes horribly awry. While the film quickly establishes a nice black-comic momentum — cop first encounters cleaner while intentionally tripping a security guard chasing her for shoplifting — a muddled storyline and glacial pace soon saps it of any vigor. What could have been a beguiling exercise in absurdity becomes a leaden misfit-character study. Still, the misfits are at least interesting: with his heavy-lidded, hangdog sadness, Kafetzopoulos is a sort of Greek Philip Baker Hall (a good thing), and it’s hard to wholly dislike a movie featuring such bon mots as “I shit on your dreams!” Thu/26, 6:30pm; Sat/28, 6:15pm, Kabuki. Sun/29, 8:15pm, PFA. (Michelle Devereaux)

 

FRI/27
Where Do We Go Now? (Nadine Labaki, France/Lebanon/Egypt/Italy, 2011) With very real, deadly sectarian conflict on their doorstep, a group of Lebanese village women are making it up as they go along in this absurdist, ultimately inspiring dramedy with a dash of musical. Once sheltered by its isolation and the cheek-to-jowl intimacy of its denizens, the uneasy peace between Muslims and Christians in this small town threatens to shatter when the outside world begins to filter in, first through town-square TV broadcasts then tit-for-tat jabs that appear ready to escalate into violence. So the village’s women conspire to preserve harmony any way they can, even if that means importing a motley cadre of Ukrainian “exotic” dancers. What results is a postdebauchery climax that almost one-ups 2009’s The Hangover — and a film that injects ground-level merriment and humanity into the headlines, thanks to director, cowriter, and star Nadine Labaki (2007’s Caramel), who has a gimlet eye and a generous spirit. Fri/27, 6:45pm, Kabuki; Mon/30, 3:15pm, Kabuki. (Kimberly Chun)

Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema (Todd McCarthy, U.S., 2007) Legendary French film publicist, programmer, director, and movie junkie Pierre Rissient gets his own filmic homage in this documentary from Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy (1992’s Visions of Light). Rissient, who will receive the Mel Novikoff Award at this year’s festival, is certainly a character — the round-faced septuagenarian oozes a puppy-dog cuddliness cut with a formidable intellect and a hint of tart, old-man pervy-ness. But this collection of talking heads interspersed with classic film clips is unfortunately a bit of a snooze. Considering said talking heads include cinematic firebrands like Werner Herzog and the late Claude Chabrol, and with a character passionate as Rissient at its center, that’s surprising. “No one in the world of cinema can tell you what he does,” Chabrol remarks. After watching the film you probably won’t be able to figure it out either. Fri/27, 4pm, FSC. Mon/30, 6:30pm, PFA. (Devereaux)

Patience (After Sebald) (Grant Gee, England, 2011) Grant Gee has compiled a meditation on a meditation — subtitled “A walk through The Rings of Saturn,” his documentary is an extension, if not exactly an adaptation, of the genre-defying travel narrative by the late German author W.G. Sebald. Writers and scholars expound on their particular love for the novel and its author, and the imagery featured on screen frequently echoes the startlingly spare photographs that litter its pages. The approach seems to align with the Chris Marker-esque investigative methods of its subject, traversing networks between fact and fiction, memory and the modern world. This book, as with any beloved artwork, means many things to many people, but Gee manages to capture the peculiar appeal of Rings, even if all it really leaves you with is an intense desire to read or reread the book. Fri/27, 6:30pm, PFA. Sat/28, 6:30pm, FSC. Tue/1, 9:30pm, Kabuki. (Stander)

 

SAT/28
Somebody Up There Likes Me (Bob Byington, U.S., 2012) A textbook illustration of what’s so frequently right and wrong with Amerindie comedies today, Bob Byington’s feature starts out near-brilliantly in a familiar, heightened Napoleon Dynamite-type milieu of ostensibly normal people as self-absorbed, socially hapless satellites revolving around an existential hole at the center in the universe. The three main ones meet working at a suburban steakhouse: Emotionally nerve-deadened youth Max (Keith Poulson), the even more crassly insensitive Sal (Nick Offerman), and nice but still weird Lyla (Teeth‘s estimable Jess Weixler). All is well until the film starts skipping ahead five years at a time, growing more smugly misanthropic and pointless as time and some drastic shifts in fortune do nothing to change (or deepen) the characters. Still, the performers are intermittently hilarious throughout. Sat/28, 6:45pm, Kabuki. Sun/29, 9:15pm, FSC. Tue/1, 6:15pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

 

SUN/29
Policeman (Nadav Lapid, Israel, 2011) This diptych-structured provocation explores two subsets of Jewish Israeli society — the macho nationalism of a group of police who are also dedicated family men, and the aspirations of a cadre of privileged young revolutionaries who seek to overthrow the Israeli state they see as oppressive. Neither set is particularly likeable, so the political implications of the film are somewhat ambiguous, though still entirely unsettling; the Israel-Palestine issue is a huge neon elephant in the room, occasionally acknowledged but never looked at directly. Certain moments of sudden symbolically rich violence will (and already have, in Cinema Scope) invite comparisons to Haneke, though the overall tone is something different. This is a character-driven film, and despite the unpleasantness of the personalities, the cast is uniformly stellar. Sun/29, 9pm, Kabuki. May 2, 3:45pm; May 3, 8:15pm, FSC. (Stander)

 

MON/30
Chicken With Plums (Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, France/Germany/Belgium, 2011) Steeped in whimsy — and a longing for love, beauty, and home — this latest effort from brilliant Persian-French cartoonist-filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud flaunts the odd contours of its eccentric narrative, enchants with its imaginative tangents, sprawls like an unincapsulated life, and then takes off on aching, campy romantic reverie—a magical realistic vision of one Iranian artist’s doomed trajectory. Master violinist Nasser Ali Khan (Mathieu Amalric) is seeking the ineffable — a replacement for his destroyed instrument — and otherwise he’s determined to die. We trace the mystery of his passing, backward, with wanders through the life of his family and loved one along the way in this playful, bittersweet feast. Despite Amalric’s glazed-eyed mugging, which almost spoils the dish, Satrapi’s wonderfully arch yet lyrical visual sensibility and resonant characters — embodied by Maria de Medeiros, Jamel Debbouze, Golshifteh Farahani, and Isabella Rossellini, among others — satisfy, serving up so much more than chicken with plums. Mon/30, 6:15pm; May 2, 12:30pm, Kabuki. (Chun)

 

TUE/1
Hysteria (Tanya Wexler, U.S./England, 2011) Tanya Wexler’s period romantic comedy gleefully depicts the genesis of the world’s most popular sex toy out of the inchoate murk of Victorian quackishness. In this dulcet version of events, real-life vibrator inventor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) is a handsome young London doctor with such progressive convictions as a belief in the existence of germs. He is, however, a man of his times and thus swallows unblinking the umbrella diagnosis of women with symptoms like anxiety, frustration, and restlessness as victims of a plague-like uterine disorder known as hysteria. Landing a job in the high-end practice of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose clientele consists entirely of dissatisfied housewives seeking treatments of “medicinal massage” and subsequent “parosysm,” Granville becomes acquainted with Dalrymple’s two daughters, the decorous Emily (Felicity Jones) and the first-wave feminist Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). A subsequent bout of RSI offers empirical evidence for the adage about necessity being the mother of invention, with the ever-underused Rupert Everett playing Edmund St. John-Smythe, Granville’s aristocratic friend and partner in electrical engineering. Tue/1, 9:30pm, Kabuki. May 3, 6pm, FSC. (Rapoport)

 

MAY 3 (Closing Night)

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (Ramona S. Diaz, U.S.) The director of 2003’s Imelda returns with this portrait of a way more sympathetic Filipino celebrity: Arnel Pineda, plucked from obscurity via YouTube after Journey’s Neil Schon spotted him singing with a Manila-based cover band. Don’t Stop Believin’ follows Pineda, who openly admits past struggles with homelessness and addiction, from audition to 20,000-seat arena success as Journey’s charismatic new front man (he faces insta-success with an endearing combination of nervousness and fanboy thrill). He’s also honest about feeling homesick, and the pressures that come with replacing one of the most famous voices in rock (Steve Perry doesn’t appear in the film, other than in vintage footage). Especially fun to see is how Pineda invigorates the rest of Journey; as the tour progresses, all involved — even the band’s veteran members, who’ve no doubt played “Open Arms” ten million times — radiate with excitement. May 3, 7pm, Castro. (Eddy)

For your further consideration

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For your further consideration

More reviews of films playing during the San Francisco Internation Film Festival. For more SFIFF coverage, click here.

WED/25

Last Screening (Laurent Achard, France, 2011) A bit of an odd duck, 30-ish, nondescript Sylvain (Pascal Cervo) is in denial over the imminent closure of the small French repertory cinema he’s operated and lived in for years. But that’s hardly his most alarming mental hang-up: in his spare time he frequently goes around stalking and killing random women for a grisly purpose that has to do (of course) with his dear, departed, thoroughly demented mother. The only horror item in this year’s slim SFIFF “Late Show” section, Laurent Achard’s pulseless genre homage tips hat to 1960’s Peeping Tom and other, less obvious cineastic objets d’amour — most conspicuously, Renoir’s 1954 French Can Can, which is playing at Sylvain’s theater — but doesn’t seem interested in suspense, or psychology, or even style. It’s coldly unpleasant yet dull. Wed/25, 9:30pm, FSC. Sat/28, 10pm, Kabuki. (Dennis Harvey)

 

THU/26

Rebellion (Mathieu Kassovitz, France, 2011) The latest polemical film from the director of La Haine (1995) presents National Gendarmerie Intervention Group Captain Philippe Lejorus’ account of his experiences during the 1988 New Caledonia hostage crisis. It’s an election year in France, so all bets are off as to how the unfortunate fiasco will resolve. Striking camerawork distinguishes this tense, morally complex drama, which features Kassovitz as Lejorus, a humane negotiator in the midst of a politically charged battle for hearts, minds, and civil rights. The film is edited to embody its political context, with distancing effects such as voiceover and suddenly reframed shots that emphasize the two sides of a disagreement. Thu/26, 6pm; Tue/1, 9:45pm; May 3, 4:30pm, Kabuki. (Sam Stander)

 

FRI/27

Pierre Rissient: Man of Cinema (Todd McCarthy, U.S., 2007) Legendary French film publicist, programmer, director, and movie junkie Pierre Rissient gets his own filmic homage in this documentary from Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy (1992’s Visions of Light). Rissient, who will receive the Mel Novikoff Award at this year’s festival, is certainly a character — the round-faced septuagenarian oozes a puppy-dog cuddliness cut with a formidable intellect and a hint of tart, old-man pervy-ness. But this collection of talking heads interspersed with classic film clips is unfortunately a bit of a snooze. Considering said talking heads include cinematic firebrands like Werner Herzog and the late Claude Chabrol, and with a character passionate as Rissient at its center, that’s surprising. “No one in the world of cinema can tell you what he does,” Chabrol remarks. After watching the film you probably won’t be able to figure it out either. Fri/27, 4pm, FSC. Mon/30, 6:30pm, PFA. (Michelle Devereaux)

 

SAT/28

Somebody Up There Likes Me (Bob Byington, U.S., 2012) A textbook illustration of what’s so frequently right and wrong with Amerindie comedies today, Bob Byington’s feature starts out near-brilliantly in a familiar, heightened Napoleon Dynamite-type milieu of ostensibly normal people as self-absorbed, socially hapless satellites revolving around an existential hole at the center in the universe. The three main ones meet working at a suburban steakhouse: Emotionally nerve-deadened youth Max (Keith Poulson), the even more crassly insensitive Sal (Nick Offerman), and nice but still weird Lyla (Teeth‘s estimable Jess Weixler). All is well until the film starts skipping ahead five years at a time, growing more smugly misanthropic and pointless as time and some drastic shifts in fortune do nothing to change (or deepen) the characters. Still, the performers are intermittently hilarious throughout. Sat/28, 6:45pm, Kabuki. Sun/29, 9:15pm, FSC. Tue/1, 6:15pm, Kabuki. (Harvey)

 

TUE/1

Hysteria (Tanya Wexler, U.S./England, 2011) Tanya Wexler’s period romantic comedy gleefully depicts the genesis of the world’s most popular sex toy out of the inchoate murk of Victorian quackishness. In this dulcet version of events, real-life vibrator inventor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) is a handsome young London doctor with such progressive convictions as a belief in the existence of germs. He is, however, a man of his times and thus swallows unblinking the umbrella diagnosis of women with symptoms like anxiety, frustration, and restlessness as victims of a plague-like uterine disorder known as hysteria. Landing a job in the high-end practice of Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Jonathan Pryce), whose clientele consists entirely of dissatisfied housewives seeking treatments of “medicinal massage” and subsequent “parosysm,” Granville becomes acquainted with Dalrymple’s two daughters, the decorous Emily (Felicity Jones) and the first-wave feminist Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). A subsequent bout of RSI offers empirical evidence for the adage about necessity being the mother of invention, with the ever-underused Rupert Everett playing Edmund St. John-Smythe, Granville’s aristocratic friend and partner in electrical engineering. Tue/1, 9:30pm, Kabuki. May 3, 6pm, FSC. (Lynn Rapoport)

 

MAY 3

Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey (Ramona S. Diaz, U.S.) The director of 2003’s Imelda returns with this portrait of a way more sympathetic Filipino celebrity: Arnel Pineda, plucked from obscurity via YouTube after Journey’s Neil Schon spotted him singing with a Manila-based cover band. Don’t Stop Believin‘ follows Pineda, who openly admits past struggles with homelessness and addiction, from audition to 20,000-seat arena success as Journey’s charismatic new front man (he faces insta-success with an endearing combination of nervousness and fanboy thrill). He’s also honest about feeling homesick, and the pressures that come with replacing one of the most famous voices in rock (Steve Perry doesn’t appear in the film, other than in vintage footage). Especially fun to see is how Pineda invigorates the rest of Journey; as the tour progresses, all involved — even the band’s veteran members, who’ve no doubt played “Open Arms” ten million times — radiate with excitement. Thu/3, 7pm, Castro. (Cheryl Eddy)

The San Francisco International Film Festival runs through May 3; most shows $13. Venues: Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Pacific Film Archive, 2575 Bancroft, Berk.; SF Film Society Cinema, 1746 Post, SF; and Sundance Kabuki Cinema, 1881 Post, SF. More info at www.sffs.org.

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