Theater

The Chamber of Commerce is clueless

Zelda Bronstein
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The Chamber of Commerce is clueless

Check out the Chamber of Commerce and its vice president for public policy, Jim Lazarus, commenting on the state of the city’s finances in the Chron:


The Chamber opposes forcing the mayor to appear at “question time,” — “pure political theater,” — and an increase in property transfer tax — “Why do we need it? The budget is balanced.”


Yes, Jim — the budget is balanced. That’s a legal requirement. And it’s balanced by cutting all sorts of essential services. You like what’ s happening to Muni, and to public health? You like having mentally ill homeless people on the streets because there’s nowhere for them to get treatment?


But don’t worry — the budget is balanced.


 


 

Endorsement interviews: Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde

Zelda Bronstein
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Endorsement interviews: Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde

Editors note: The Guardian is interviewing candidates for the fall elections, and to give everyone the broadest possible understanding of the issues and our endorsement process, we’re posting the sound files of all the interviews on the politics blog. Our endorsements will be coming out Oct. 6th.

District 6 candidate Glendon “Anna Conda” Hyde is full of intriguing ideas for how San Francisco can bring greater dignity into people’s lives.

These include a five-year moratorium on condominiums, the establishment of safe injection sites, building a grocery store in the Tenderloin, continuum housing for youth that age out of foster care, the charging of weight-based fees on vehicles that enter the city, and the creation of a theater and cultural district on the mid-Market Street corridor.

“We have been inspiring a whole lot of people that didn’t have a voice,” Hyde, who performs as the drag queen Anna Conda, told us in a conversation that touched on hot-button topics like decriminalizing homelessness, expanding rent control, creating safe and affordable housing, and providing better and basic services for folks in low-income areas,

“I was more into the idea of rent control but people are far more willing to talk about harm reduction and safe injection sites,” Hyde said of life on the campaign trail.

“San Francisco is a magical place that draws people to it, but it’s become the place that forces people out.”

Folks often talk about the divisive rise of NIMBYism in the South of Market, but Hyde thinks there is a way to create a more unified front in the district. “People don’t understand the ramifications of not taking care of the homelessness,” Hyde said. “Your tax is putting people in jail or on the streets, where it will cost twice as much. Three nights in jail equals the cost of an entire month of housing.”

To learn more about how Hyde intends to offer permanent solutions to these challengers, instead of simply sweeping folks from a doorstep to a jail cell, listen to the interview here:

 

glendon by janwend

The final act

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The final act

arts@sfbg.com

FALL ARTS The Brother/Sister Plays The most anticipated event of a rather sparkling fall theater lineup is surely this triptych of plays penned by a 20-something playwright being hailed as a vital new voice in American theater. Tarell Alvin McCraney’s celebrated trilogy, which premiered at New York’s Public Theater, delves with potent language and exceptional theatrical imagination into the lives of ordinary people in the bayous of Louisiana, its setting and themes made more urgent than ever in the wake of manmade catastrophe in the gulf. To make room for this epic work, three of San Francisco’s leading theaters are collaborating in the presentation of all three plays, with mid-September seeing the unveiling of In the Red and Brown Water at Marin Theatre Company and The Brothers Size at the Magic, and October following with Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet at ACT. Sept.–Oct., various venues; www.brothersisterplays.org.

How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Ralph Lemon began as a dancer/choreographer but has evolved into an interdisciplinary artist of broad scope and rigorous invention. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts presents his latest multimedia piece, which unfurls in four separate events or chapters, together combining live performance, visual art and film in various spaces. Oct. 7-9, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

Etiquette This half-hour, site-specific, audience-as-actor piece from lauded London-based experimental theater company Rotozaza plants two willing participants at a time in a San Francisco eatery (The Grove on Mission Street), wearing headphones that feed them their lines and actions. First launched in London in 2007, the globetrotting piece arrives in SF. Sept. 16-Oct. 3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, www.ybca.org.

The Companion Piece A vaudeville duo struggle to cobble together their floundering opening act alongside the aesthetic perfection of the Headliner, as Z Space at Theater Artaud presents a new devised work conceived by actor Beth Wilmurt and directed by Mark Jackson. But this opportunity is more than the finished piece, which is still evolving ahead of its premiere in early 2011. This fall, audiences are invited into the process — by walking into the theater or watching streaming video online. Check the Z Space website for details. Jan. 16- Feb. 26, 2011, Z Space; www.zspace.org

Coraline It started as a book; it was made into a stop-motion animated feature; now it’s a musical brought to life by composer Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields) and playwright David Greenspan (She Stoops to Comedy; Dead Mother). Together they compliment the decidedly weird imagination of author Neil Gaiman, a latter-day Lewis Carroll of the children’s fiction genre who penned this creepy-funny story of a little girl’s battle against chaos and evil in a bizarre world just on the other side of the drawing room door. This West Coast premiere by astute presenter SF Playhouse will mark only the second production of Coraline after its initial off-Broadway run in 2009. Nov. 16–Jan. 15, SF Playhouse; www.sfplayhouse.org.

Compulsion Berkeley Rep, New York’s Public Theater. and Yale Repertory Theatre present Rinne Groff’s play based on the life of writer Meyer Levin and his complex obsession with producing his own version of a play based on the diary of Anne Frank. The Public’s Oscar Eustis, who cut his teeth at San Francisco’s storied Eureka Theater in the 1980s setting, among other things, Angels in America aloft, returns to the Bay Area to direct lead Mandy Patinkin amid a cast augmented by marionettes. Sept. 13-Oct. 31, Berkeley Rep; www.berkeleyrep.org.

San Francisco Fringe Festival A perennial, a pearl, a Road Trip to Pluto (judging by one title), the Exit Theatre–sponsored San Francisco Fringe Festival is always a trip. Sept. 8–19, various venues; www.sffringe.org.

Port Out, Starboard Home I recently saw a staged reading of this new work from New York playwright Sheila Callaghan at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. While Callaghan is still developing the piece with producing company foolsFURY, it seems clear the finished product — set aboard a mysteriously intense cruise liner among a group of vacationing seekers in the material world — should be well worth a look. But this production has yet to find a safe harbor. It will apparently be docking at a theater near you this fall. Date and venue TBD; www.foolsfury.org.

Failure to Communicate Performers Under Stress (PUS) opens its season with a new work of physical theater channeling the perspectives and inner visions of students and teachers at an inner-city high school for severely behavior disordered, emotionally disturbed, learning disabled children, based on the teaching experiences of the company’s managing director, Valerie Fachman. Oct. 29-Nov. 14, The Garage; www.pustheatre.com

Anton in Show Business (Sept. 2–Sept. 26) Three nightmare actresses come together in San Antonio, Texas, for a dismaying production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters in Jane Martin’s 2001 award-winning send-up of the theater world. Oakland’s ever able TheatreFIRST leads off its new season with this swift and ruthless backstage comedy, helmed by artistic director Michael Storm and featuring a strong all-female cast meting out satirical justice to the men and women (and critics) of the art form and the dubious cultural landscape at large. Sept. 2-26, Marion E. Greene Black Box Theater; www.theatrefirst.com.

Herrera’s gang injunction becomes part of D. 10 dialogue

Mary Magee
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As stated in this week’s article about City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Viz Valley gang injunction, Herrera’s move gives D. 10 candidates an opportunity to show they are tracking all the issues in a district that is home to the city’s largest public housing site.

As C.L.A.E.R. Project director Sharen Hewitt put it at a debriefing session about the injunction, “D. 10 has been reduced to the Lennar issue, and that’s what’s criminal.”

And the injunction is becoming part of the dialogue in the D. 10 race, with eleven candidates in that race sounding off on the injunction, many of them critiquing Dennis Herrera’s approach and/or advocating for legal representation for those named in the suit, and more services in this historically neglected district.

Candidates Isaac Bowers, Kristine Enea, Chris Jackson, Nyese Joshua, Steve Moss and Marlene Tran attended Hewitt’s August 12 gang injunction debriefing.

And by meeting’s end, Bowers and Enea said they would help community members get legal representation.
“A lot of people being served, don’t know what an injunction is, or don’t show up at the hearing and then they become subject to the injunction,”  Bowers said.

Enea said she was glad that City Attorney Yvonne Mere clarified at the debriefing that the 41 young men named in Herrera’s filing could not be included in the actual injunction until they have been served.

“It was important to clarify the notice process,” Enea said.

Jackson said he’s committed to helping these men access job and education opportunities.
“If you i.d. folks as low-income gang members, there is a lot more you can do than simply hand over their names to law enforcement,” Jackson said.
“Before the City Attorney puts in a gang injunction, that office should talk about it with the community.” Jackson continued. “Ultimately this is about land use.”

“For the City Attorney to have a top down approach to gang injunctions is unfortunate,” Jackson said, noting that Herrera’s injunctions have been in predominantly
African American and Latino neighborhoods.

“And in terms of taking away people’s civil rights, it’s unacceptable, “ Jackson added, noting that the City Attorney’s list of targeted individuals is public information.

Reached by phone, Moss says he’d like to see a time limit imposed on gang injunctions. Currently, injunctions are indefinite, once they have been granted.

“I haven’t studied the precise details,” Moss said, noting that he went to Hewitt’s debriefing and has leaved through materials the City Attorney’s Office provided.
“Generally, no one likes gang injunctions because they potentially threaten civil liberties and sometimes the city gets it wrong,” Moss said, referring to cases where folks have been wrongly named in previous injunctions. “But in places where injunctions have been brought, they do seem to have reduced the violence and calmed down the district. I’d like there to be a time limit, a sunset clause.”

D. 10 candidate Marlene Tran said she thinks the injunction could help reduce violence in the neighborhood.
“I was trying to listen to the different input at the debriefing session,” Tran said. “But on TV, I heard that when Herrera talked to the Chinese press, he cited some 200 incidents in the proposed safety zone. About 100 of those incidents involved guns, and there have been ten homicides in three years. Those are really glaring statistics. And this morning I read that there is another injunction in Oakland, and they talked about success with gang injunctions in Salinas, where the homicide rate dropped from 50 to 5, compared to 2008/2009.”

Tran, who sits on the Community Advisory Board for the Police Department’s Ingleside Station, said she heard from Ingleside Captain Louis Cassenego that he wants to serve all 41 respondents named in the injunction peacefully.
“If this is done without any casualties to the district and the community, and if it prevents any further violence, then this is the way to go,” Tran said.

Tran expressed some due process concerns.
“If they spend that much personnel and time [on putting the injunction together], it should be done with due process,” Tran said.

But she feels the current level of violence in Viz Valley is unacceptable.
“I’ve lived here for twenty something years, and if you talk to residents and children, who wants to hear gun fire,” Tran said. “So I think we have to work for a peaceful community to prevent these problems. That’s why we call ourselves the emergent district.”

D. 10 candidate Ed Donaldson believes the injunctions are a product of neglect.
“It comes back to a question of overall neglect in the district,” Donaldson explained.  When you have that level of social and economic neglect, gang injunctions become “necessary’. But when you look at the resources coming into the district through local non-profits, which comes, I believe to $110 million a year, 80 percent of which is city money, paid mostly to non-profits that may not be based in the district, you have to ask, Are we getting what we paid for? And do these non-profits have enough integrity to make sure there is a level of impact to transform people’s lives? “

Donaldson says that, given the overall level of neglect in public housing, it’s not surprising the district has challenges.

“So, are we willing to invest in the neighborhood in a very transformative way, or are we going to continue to give money to police and prisons?” Donaldson asked.
He notes that every year, 1,600 men and women return to the southeast side of San Francisco, and there is a 71 percent recidivism rate among these folks.

“Why is this rate so high in a progressive city like San Francisco?” Donaldson said. “Part of the answer lies with our public housing policy: if you can’t get public housing, you can’t apply for a job, you can’t go to school to better yourself.”

Donaldson says there is a direct connection between the district’s homicide rate and the people getting out of prison, returning to the district and re-offending.
“So, what’s so hard about getting our arms around 1,600 people a year and stabilizing them? Because then a lot of stuff about public safety will go away.”

D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly believes that if there were gangs in Viz Valley, then Herrera’s injunction would be valid.
 “There is gang-like activity, but it’s small scale turf wars, shootings and retaliations, and it’s not organized,” Kelly said. “ Instead, you’ve got unorganized young black men with no other options, doing whatever it takes to get ahead. But instead of doing something constructive, the City Attorney calls them gangs.”

Kelly notes that the City Attorney claims that most of the individuals named in the Viz Valley injunction don’t live in the proposed safety zone.
“But according to what I’m hearing on the ground, a bunch of them do live here and/or grew up here,” Kelly said. “So, we want their families to get involved. They need safe havens. But combined with last year’s budget cuts, all this does is criminalize young people and pushes the problem around. As long as we have 40-50 percent unemployment, we are not going to solve our crime problem.”

DeWitt Lacy, also a D. 10 candidate, said he is concerned that gang injunctions are circumventing people’s due process rights.
“In a criminal case, you have the right to an attorney, but that’s not so in a civil action,” Lacy said.

Lacy worries that gang injunctions lend themselves to racial profiling.
“Folks have to stay in their house or quickly go to and fro because they can’t hang out in the neighborhood,” Lacy said. “A smarter approach would be to do community policy that Sup. Ross Mirkarimi introduced in the Western Addition. It’s been shown to have a positive impact on criminal activity. We should have officers walking around in troubled areas. The more we change a foot patrol pilot into citywide policy, the more we actually address serious issues and problems. Everyone understands the value that police bring and everyone wants to be able to rely on them. When we only use police to bring a punitive action it reinforces the notion that they are evil enforcers.”

D. 10 candidate Malia Cohen said she was concerned by Herrera’s approach.
“I think we need a more comprehensive approach, otherwise, we’ll simply be moving crime two blocks over,” Cohen said. “We need long-term, not short-term solutions.”

Cohen noted that there are Chinese and Russian gangs in town, as well as African American ones, and Latino gangs like the Nortenos and Sudenos.
“But the style of how each gang manifests is different, which makes African Americans an easy target. We need to have a uniform approach to how we deal with this.”

The 41 men identified in Herrera’s latest injunction all appear to be African American, and many have family ties and roots in Sunnydale, meaning the injunction impacts a much larger circle of folks than those simply named in Herrera’s filings.
“The impact on families caught up in this can’t be overstated,” Cohen said.  “Either they’ll have to take bus down to court, or drag down and pay hella money for parking, and for food, and even take a day off from work if they are employed. And then there’s the emotional effect. We could be using our resources in a more productive way. I understand that Dennis Herrera is ambitious, but this is playing on people’s racism. It’s tantamount to ethnic cleansing. Maybe Herrera wants to be seen as tough on crime, but ut how about being seen as big on compassion? Or big on fair? This is not going to help people get jobs and housing. And it prevents American citizens from being able to travel.”

Eric Smith, also a D. 10 candidate, says it’s right to question the injunctions.
“David Campos and Eric Quezada both expressed concerns about Herrera’s injunction against the Nortenos, when they were running in the 2008 race for D. 9,” Smith observed.
“They talked about the unintended consequences of that injunction in terms of deporting folks who then train the next generation in the ways of gangs.”

Smith questions how effective gang injunctions are in the long-term.
“They are a band-aid,” Smith said. “This is like putting a finger in the dike, or using a hammer to kill a flea. Because the root causes are not addressed. If you don’t deal with young people’s lack of education and joblessness, their hopelessness, their choicelessness, the gang becomes their family. So, if the city did community policing and had great youth programs, it would help.”

Smith, who is a professional jazz musician, wants to see more music, poetry and spoken word programs and activities in the neighborhood.
“There’s a lot of untapped talent,” he said. “When you have arts, music and theater, those are life-saving opportunities.”

Also a bio-diesel advocate, Smith wants to see people who are returning to the community after a stint inside, being able to access green jobs, instead of doing more of the same stuff, only better, than the activities that landed them inside in the first place.

“I care about everyone in the district, but most of all about those who have been kicked to the curb and end up in gangs, on drugs, or dead.”

And D. 10 candidate Diane Wesley Smith believes there are better solutions than gang injunctions

“African American culture is almost opposite in terms of physical mannerisms and gestures and tone of voice, and that can be scary to someone who is used to being conservative,” Wesley Smith said, speaking to the rising tensions between some black and Asian residents in the district.

“I believe these things could be solved with town hall meetings, where there is food and translators so folks could talk things out, “ she said. “It’s never going to be worked out through the police. Only law enforcement benefits from these kinds of proceedings. We need to reach out and touch each other, so that the Chinese community knows that the black community has the same goals as they do, which are employment, housing and safety.”

“When we talk about violating people’s civil rights, posting people’s pictures on websites, preying on people’s fears, well, that’s how we got into the war,” Wesley-Smith said. “Unemployment. Lack of access to opportunity. Lack of education. No money for our schools, but an increase in spending on our jails. These all send the same message: You are not wanted.”

Wesley Smith is concerned that the gang injunctions will accelerate the mass exodus of blacks and people of color from San Francisco.
“We all want a safe San Francisco,” she observed. “The solution is more jobs, not war. People are just going to go more underground in face of these injunctions. Meanwhile, the kids in my district don’t have toilet paper or computer paper in their schools.”

“I understand that Dennis Herrera is a career politician, and time will tell what his true aspirations are, but this is not legislation we propose in a caring society,” Wesley-Smith concluded. “We’re not showing any of these kids any love. All we need to do is partner with business and government and work this out. Te thought that four men standing on a corner drinking an energy drink could be considered gang members is shocking. That’s how they perpetuated slavery, and that’s why blacks have problems today. All my nephews dress similarly. So, are we going to consider them gang members? The good and the bad kids dress the same. We need people and parents to understand that none of us can be safe, until we take care of those who have the least in our community. I’d venture that everyone who is a safety concern has not pursued their education, has not been assisted in pursuing education, and has not been assisted in pursuing employment.”

D. 10 candidate Lynette Sweet promised to call me back to talk about the gang injunction, and if and when she does, I’ll be sure to include her comments here. The same goes for Nyese Joshua, Geoffrea Morris and Steve Weber  who had not returned my calls as of blog time, and for any other D. 10 candidates that I was unable to reach for this article. So, stay tuned…

Representing the reps

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Representing the reps

FALL ARTS Here’s a list to get your started; visit the venue or organization website for even more events than could possibly fit here.

Artists’ Television Access (www.atasite.org): “Other Cinema,” the Saturday-night showcase of creatively programmed films and videos, returns Sept. 11 (www.othercinema.com); the “Electronic Cinema” series brings sound artists together with experimental filmmakers Sept. 14.

Castro (www.castrotheatre.com): “Blonde Bombshells” series (lot o’ Marilyn) Aug. 27–Sept. 5; a digital restoration of 1957 classic Bridge on the River Kwai Sept 10–16; and a Chaplin series Sept. 18–21. Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ always-fun “Midnites for Maniacs” (www.midnitesformaniacs.com) rolls out a “Reinventing Prom” triple feature Sept. 17 (at midnight: 1982’s Zapped!).

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Festival (www.cafilm.org): The biggest event up north is the 33rd Mill Valley Film Festival (www.mvff.org), Oct 7-17. Other special events: the “Films of My Life” series, with Talking Head Jerry Harrison discussing Jim Jarmusch’s 1984 Stranger Than Paradise.

Clay (www.landmarktheatres.com): The Clay closes Aug. 29. Head out for Aug. 28’s midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), with the Bawdy Caste on hand for a live performance and Clay “funeral.”

Film Night in the Park (www.filmnight.org): Dude! Season-capper The Big Lebowski (1998) invades Dolores Park Sept. 25.

Forbidden Island (www.forbiddenislandalameda.com): Shout out to Will “The Thrill” Viharo, whose “Forbidden Thrills” double-feature-and-signature-drink series packs in some true oddities. Nov. 15’s entry is an Ed Wood tribute, with “The Angora Sweater” cocktail.

Pacific Film Archive (www.bampfa.berkeley.edu): Highlights of the fall program include “Drawn from Life: The Graphic Novel on Film” (Sept. 10–Oct. 31); and the San Francisco Cinematheque co-sponsored “Radical Light: Alternative Film and Video in the San Francisco Bay Area” (Sept. 17–March 31).

Red Vic (www.redvicmoviehouse.com): Oh, hi. Good luck trying to get a ticket for The Room (2003) with THE Tommy Wiseau in person Sept. 17–18. Other fall delights: the local theatrical premiere of Cropsey, a doc that investigates the intersection of true crime and urban legend, Oct 15–19.

Roxie (www.roxie.com): It’s a festival-a-thon, with the SF Latino Film Festival (www.sflatinofilmfestival.com) Sept 16-19 and the SF Irish Film Festival (www.sfirishfilm.com) Sept. 23–25. Don’t miss the Robert Altman miniseries, with 1977 personality-swapping epic 3 Women Sept 21.

San Francisco Cinematheque (www.sfcinematheque.org): Complete program information was unavailable at press time, but SF Cinematheque heads to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (www.sfmoma.org) for a screening of films by avant-gardist Alexander Hammid, plus live music by the Beth Custer Ensemble, Oct 21.

San Francisco Film Society (www.sffs.org): A few highlights: the NY/SF International Children’s Film Festival (Sept. 24–26); programs of films from Taiwan (Oct. 22–24), France (Oct. 23–Nov. 3), and Italy (Nov. 14–21); the San Francisco International Animation Film Festival (Nov. 11–14); and a screening of 1919 silent Sir Arne’s Treasure with accompaniment by the Mountain Goats (Dec. 14).

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (www.sfmoma.org): Picks include “The Elements” sound and film performance Sept. 30, with experimental filmmaker Paul Clipson; and the “Witches” double feature Oct. 28 with George Romero’s Season of the Witch (1973) and Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).

Victoria (www.victoriatheatre.org): Joshua Grannell’s horror comedy All About Evil screens at the very theater where it was filmed, Oct 21–24 — with Grannell’s alter ego, Midnight Mass hostess Peaches Christ in person (www.peacheschrist.com).

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (www.ybca.org): The maker of 1965’s Dead Birds gets his due at “Others/Ourselves: The Cinema of Robert Gardner” (Sept. 23–30); plus, check out “Totally Ridiculous: The Lost Films of Charles Ludlum” (Sept. 24–26) and “Sesame Street: A Celebration” (Oct. 1–30).

And more: Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema (Sept. 2–5) blankets the ‘hood with free screenings (www.bhoutdoorcine.org). Good Vibrations Fifth Annual Indie Erotic Film Festival (Sept. 18–23) aims to tickles your fancy (www.goodvibes.com). The 14th Arab Film Festival (Oct. 14–24) screens films from and about the Arab world (www.arabfilmfestival.org).

Leap into fall

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Leap into fall

Looking over the fall dance schedule, two ingredients jump out: celebration and experimentation. Given the depressed economy and vacuous political conversations, this optimism comes as a welcome surprise. But then dancers are a resilient lot; they are used to rock bottom or nonexistent budgets and functioning below the radar screen of the pundits who try to tell us which way the culture is tilting. They simply go about doing what they sense needs to be done and put their own stamp on the social ecology. Here is a glimpse at what you can expect until Nutcracker time. 

Flyaway Productions Jo Kreiter’s troupe of strong female warriors — one of our more innovative equipment-based ensembles — is taking to the air to celebrate the Women’s Building’s centennial. They have an open rehearsal Aug. 26 at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 10–18, Women’s Building; www.flyawayproductions.com.

Central Market Arts This is a truly exciting initiative by four Mid-Market Street arts organizations: Alonzo King’s LINES Dance Center, The Garage, Kunst-Stoff Arts and Project Bandaloop. Billed as “24 Days of Art, Music, Dance & Theater,” it presents art in the places where it is made. One idea is to show that the “theater district” exists on the streets. It kicks off with free performances by a who’s who of talents at the Mint Plaza by Fifth and Martet. Kunst-Stoff, LEVYdance, and Robert Moses Kin are the among those doing the honors. Sept. 24–Oct. 17, Market St. corridor; www.jonsimsctr.org.

San Francisco Hip-Hop Dancefest Taking its cue from the jam-packed auditions for the San Francisco Ethnic Festival, the San Francisco Hip-Hop Dance Fest is opening its local company auditions to the public. There are so many applicants, it had to create two separate Sept. 12 sessions at Cowell Theater: one from 11 a.m–2: 30 p.m. and another from 3:30 p.m. –7 p.m. (Out-of-town groups undergo separate evaluations.) This all-day event offers a fabulous opportunity to sample Bay Area hip-hop dance and should whet the appetite for the big event in November. Nov. 19–21, Palace of Fine Arts; www.sfhiphopdancefest.com.

West Wave Dance West Wave is back for its 19th season, this time structured as a monthly series falling on usually dance-free Sunday and Monday nights. Each program features five choreographers. Including a night devoted to dance on film, this is a must for anyone wanting a perspective on Bay Area dance. Sept.20–Dec. 13, Cowell Theater; www.westwavedancefestival.org.

Mark Morris Dance Company The much-welcome perennial returns with three West Coast premieres: this year’s Socrates, about dying; 2007’s Looky, about gallery-hopping; and 1990’s Behemoth, which has been described as “cold, abstract, and silent.” Doesn’t sound much like MM, does it? Sept. 30–Oct. 2, Zellerbach Hall, Berk; www.calperformances.org.

“Traditions Engaged: Dance, Drama, Rhythm” To celebrate its 30th anniversary, Chitresh Das Dance Company follows its 2006 “Kathak at the Crossroads” — which brought together an amazing assembly of dancers, teachers, scholars, and aficionados — with a performance that expands to other classical Indian dance forms: bharata natyam, kathakali, kuchipudi. and odissi. Oct. 1–3, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.kathak.org.

Smuin Ballet Try McIntyre has made himself a reputation for skillful, congenial, and exuberantly danceable choreography. So his Smuin Ballet world premiere — set to indie rock by the Shins — is a good match for the company’s fine crop of dancers. It joins Michael Smuin’s Blue Grass/Slide (which involves pole dancing), and Brahms/Haydn Variation, one of Smuin’s more refined essays on a gorgeous piece of music. Oct. 1–19, Palace of Fine Arts; www.smuinballet.org.

ODC Theater (Oct. 1–3, ODC Theater, SF) is opening its new facilities with a firework of performances. First in line is the world premiere of Brenda Way’s “Architecture of Light”, then comes “JumpstART” (Oct. 16), a daylong celebration of dance, music, and theater, to be followed throughout the fall by a series of commissions, the first one for Kunst-Stoff and LEVYdance (Oct.21–28).

Na Lei Hulu I Ka Wekiu Happy 25th birthday to Patrick Makuakane’s company. If you have seen these remarkable hula dancers, you know that every concert by them is a celebration of contemporary and old-style Hawaiian culture. You can expect a cross-section of their repertoire as well as a special one-hour family matinee on closing day. Oct. 16–24, Palace of Fine Arts; www.naleihulu.org.

Scheherazade Today the Orientalism and racism of Mikhael Fokine’s 1910 extravaganza Scheherazade make the work just about unperformable. Not so, says Alonzo King of LINES Ballet Company, who accepted a commission from the Monaco Dance Forum to rethink the tale. Zakir Hussein does the honors for the Rimsky-Korsakov score. This is the U.S. premiere. Oct. 14–24, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

“Harvest: The Fall 2010 Choreographers Showcase” Dance Mission Theater’s fall showcase rides in on an unlikely premise. Unjuried and programmed on a first-come, first-serve basis, it includes beginners and experienced artists. The results should be surprising, and are frequently satisfying. Oct. 22–23, Dance Mission Theater; www.dancemission.com.

Sankai Juku For sheer elegance of presentation of a very demanding dance style, the 35-year-old Sankai Juku has few equals. It is bringing 2002’s mesmerizing Hibiki: Resonance from Far Away to San Francisco. If you want to see a newer work, head for Stanford, where it presents Tobari (As If In an Inexhaustible Flux), from 2008. Nov. 9, Memorial Auditorium, Stanford; www.livelyarts.stanford.edu. Nov. 11–13, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; www.ybca.org.

The “Roman Wild West”: chatting with “Centurion” director Neil Marshall

Sue Vaughan
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The “Roman Wild West”: chatting with “Centurion” director Neil Marshall

Genre junkies, rejoice! Neil Marshall — 2002 werewolf thriller Dog Soldiers, 2005 cave-monster chiller The Descent, and 2008 post-apocalyptic actioner Doomsday — has a brand-new film: Centurion. The latest from the man some call “the new John Carpenter” is getting a release with actual fanfare (however humble in comparision to, say, The Expendables or whatever), though you’d best hustle to the theater if you care to see Centurion, about a Roman soldier doing battle with tribal Picts in what’s now Scotland, on the big screen. (It’s also now available On Demand, but c’mon: the big screen is always better.) Evident in Marshall’s films is the fact that he himself is a movie fan, which makes him all the more pleasurable to talk to. [Spoiler warning: there are some. Just so you know.]

San Francisco Bay Guardian: Centurion takes a documented event, the building of Hadrian’s Wall, and creatively fills in some of the history surrounding it. Why did you write the story this way?

Neil Marshall: It was kind of a case of compacting a couple of dates, which weren’t that far apart anyway. The myth of the Ninth Legion is based around 117 AD, which is when the film is set. That was when the entire Ninth Legion marched into Scotland and supposedly vanished without a trace. Historians have since been spoilsports and disproved that, and proved that they were attacked but they didn’t get massacred, they were dispersed, and such like. But then, in 122 AD, Hadrian’s Wall started being built. And I just thought, “Well, couldn’t I tie the two in together somehow, that logically, what happened to the Ninth Legion could have been part of the reason for Hadrian to build the wall in the first place?” So, yeah, it was a question of kind of condensing that slightly.

In terms of the Ninth Legion legend, I kind of went with that old adage: when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Because it’s far more interesting! But the story was kind of book ended: yes, my Ninth Legion goes into Scotland, and at the end of it, it becomes a cover-up by the Romans. Which is kind of what happened in truth, that they disbanded the legion to avoid the embarrassment of having lost so many people to the Picts. So I was playing around to a degree, and I know that to a large extent the story is a fiction, a hypothesis of what might have happened to them based on the legend, but I tried to make that within the most authentic world I could create.

SFBG: The historical setting is new for you. Had you been wanting to do a period film?

NM: I’d been itching to do a historical movie. I love those kind of movies. I love watching those kind of movies. What guy wouldn’t want to make a movie about Romans and Picts, and ancient history, and battles, and stuff like that? It’s great fun! I’d grown up with all that history as well. In Newcastle, it’s one end of Hadrian’s Wall. So I was surrounded by Roman history — ruins of forts, Roman roads, and all sorts of stuff. You can’t avoid it if you grow up in that part of the world. We used to go on school trips to these places, and my dad’s a big history buff, and all that kind of stuff. I think it was kind of in my blood that I would want to make a movie about this stuff, one day or another.

SFBG: Unlike your previous films, Centurion doesn’t have a supernatural element. Did you decide that ahead of time, on purpose?

NM: It was very tempting. When I first came up with the story, I’d just made Dog Soldiers. And when I heard about the entire legion vanishing without a trace, initially I went down a supernatural path. I was thinking, was it gonna be some monsters? An alien abduction? Were they eaten by the Loch Ness Monster or something? And then I quickly thought, “I don’t want to immediately repeat myself. What might have actually happened to them? Who are these Picts?” I mean, these Picts sound pretty scary, because the Romans built this 60-mile wall to keep them out. So I figured maybe I didn’t need to go down a supernatural path to find a terrifying opponent or enemy. And that’s when I kind of based it more in reality, I guess.

SFBG: Something else that’s new is Centurion‘s romantic subplot. It softens the tone of the film somewhat. Why did you decide to include that?

NM: Yes, it’s new for me. Um, I don’t know. It just felt right. I thought, maybe it’s time I do have a bit of a romance in one of my films. It’s a long way from suddenly going down the route of turning to romantic comedies, but a little bit of a love story going on seemed like, I don’t know, a step for me. Getting older, maybe maturing as a writer. I didn’t really think about it that much. It just naturally fell into place.

The other thing is that, in the original draft of the script, there was more to [Imogen Poots’] character [Arianne] than just being a love interest. In the original ending of the film, it’s revealed that she’s half-sister to [Olga Kurylenko’s character] Etain, and it was Etain who in fact gave her the cut on the face, and there’s this really kind of issue between the two of them. Originally, Etain survived until the end of the film, when it was Arianne who killed her and not Quintus. When I was writing the film, it seemed like less of just a love story and more of an integral part of the plot.

SFBG: Why did you change it?

NM: It was under producer pressure. I don’t know why they wanted to change it, but they kind of pressured me into changing it. Those are the perils. Even in a low-budget film like this, the idea that I have absolute control is a myth. [Laughs.]

SFBG: Even with a low budget, it seems like you got a good cast together.

NM: We were incredibly lucky with timing. When we cast Michael [Fassbender, who plays Quintus], I hadn’t seen Hunger (2008), and Inglourious Basterds (2009) hadn’t been released yet. But we knew that he’d done this stuff. I’d actually auditioned both him and Dominic [West, who plays Virilus] for Doomsday. Due to scheduling difficulties I wasn’t able to get either of them in that movie but I still wanted to work with them. So when the opportunities came to have them in this movie, I just jumped at the chance. So that just fell into place perfectly. The rest of was just getting the best caliber of actors that we could in those roles. We were very lucky. Somebody like David Morrissey — I never figured he would take what is essentially a supporting role, but he was just really itching to do an action movie, and, you know, play a Roman soldier and hack people to bits with swords. So, he jumped at the chance. Same with everybody else, really.

SFBG: Were you a fan of [Dominic West’s TV show] The Wire?

NM: Oh yeah. I’m a huge fan of Dominic. Amazing work in The Wire. Really phenomenal stuff. So phenomenal, I think, that many people forget that he’s an English guy. [Laughs] He’s such a larger-than-life presence as well, and it was perfect for the role of Virilus.

SFBG: When I talked to you about The Descent, we discussed how the movie was incredibly physical though it was shot mostly on sets. With Centurion, it seems like you actually went out and shot it in the elements. Did that present any particular challenges?

NM: The first day of filming, we were 3,000 feet up a mountain in a blizzard, and it was minus 18 degrees. That set the standard for the rest of the shoot. I deliberately went out to get the most miserable, hard conditions that we could find. My ethos in this film was to kind of do the anti-300. It was never gonna be on a soundstage. It was never gonna be green-screen, and all kind of in slo-mo. This was gonna be in the rain, in the mud, in the snow, and it was gonna be tough, very very tough for everyone involved. And everybody embraced that. The crew, the cast. I warned everybody beforehand: “You know, this isn’t going to be easy. This is gonna be tough.” And everybody signed up for it, and nobody ever complained because they were just 100 percent for it.

SFBG: You said that there were four films that influenced you when making The Descent: Deliverance (1972), The Shining (1980), Alien (1979), and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Did you have any touchstones like that when making Centurion? Braveheart (1995) or Gladiator (2000) …

NM: Actually, I tried to put Braveheart and Gladiator to the back of my mind as much as possible. With this one, it was like The Warriors (1979), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Fort Apache (1948), Last of the Mohicans (1992). Stuff like that. I actually saw a lot of Westerns, and not many Roman movies at all. Chase movies, things like Figures in a Landscape (1970) which is a kind of obscure movie about people running across mountaintops.

SFBG: What elements of the Western do you think you brought to Centurion?

NM: I see this as a Western in two ways. Historically, it’s a Western, because this frontier, ancient Britain, was the equivalent of the Roman’s Wild West. It was their furthest Western frontier. It was lawless, it was violent. They were battling the natives. So it was their Wild West. As a film, I consider it to be akin to John Ford’s cavalry movies. The Romans are the cavalry, the Picts are the Comanches, and the landscape is absolutely integral to everything. I kind of had that in the back of my mind all the time. And also from the point of view that, if Ford was trying to make those movies today, they’d be seen as incredibly un-PC, because you’re telling them from the point of view of the invading army. Which is exactly what I’m doing here, telling it from the Roman point of view. I was never saying the Roman point of view was right. I was just saying, that’s what it was.

SFBG: The main Roman character has a change of heart from beginning to end.

NM: Absolutely. It’s primarily about the individuals. I’m not asking the audience to sympathize with the Romans. I am asking the audience to sympathize with Quintus and his band of brothers as it were, because they kind of get left in the lurch and are disillusioned by the whole system. They basically just want to get home.

SFBG: There’s also a more contemporary subtext within the film, since the invading-army story mirrors the current Iraq war in some ways. Did you set out to make that parallel?

NM: I didn’t write it with that in mind, but it became really obvious when I was writing it that there is a subtext there. Things are happening today that were happening 2,000 years ago. This is about a superpower marching into a country and being held back by a guerrilla fighting style. The comparisons are screamingly obvious. But, once I recognized that fact, I made a conscious decision not to turn it into a political allegory, to ram it down the audience’s throat, or make that kind of movie. It had to be seen first and foremost as a historical action-adventure movie. And if people read that into it, if people see that, that’s fantastic. It’s certainly there. But it shouldn’t distract from the story.

SFBG: What’s next for you?

NM: I’m producing a film called The Ghost of Slaughterford, that’s being directed by my wife, Axelle Carolyn [who plays a supporting role in Centurion]. For myself, I’m attached to a project that Sam Raimi’s producing, called Burst. It’s gonna be a horror movie, it’s in 3D, and it’s all about people exploding.

SFBG: Ah, I was going to ask you what you thought of the 3D trend. Obviously you’re in favor!

NM: I’m gonna give it a go. I’m dubious about the 3D trend. I’m worried that it’s going to be applied to anything and everything, when it should be very specialized. But it’s a great tool, and I want to have a go at seeing what I can do with it.

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

Centurion opens Fri/27 in Bay Area theaters.

Stage listings

David Talbot
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

How Lucky Can You Get? New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $20-28. Previews Thurs/26, 8pm. Opens Fri/27, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 11. Darlene Popovic sings Kander and Ebb under the direction of F. Allen Sawyer.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray Eureka Theatre, 215 Howard; 552-4100, www.TheRhino.org. $10-25. Previews Thurs/26-Sat/28, 8pm; Sun/29, 3pm. Opens Sept 1, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm (also Sept 5, Sept 12, and Sept 19, 3pm). Through Sept 19. John Fisher adapts the Oscar Wilde novel for the stage and directs the production.

BAY AREA

Into the Woods 142 Throckmorton Theatre, 142 Throckmorton, Mill Valley; 383-9600, www.142throckmortontheatre.org. $14-30. Opens Fri/27, 7:30pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 7:30pm, Sun, 2pm. Through Sept. 4. Marin Youth Performers present James Lapine’s and Stephen Sondheim’s fractured fairy tale.

The Light in the Piazza TheatreWorks at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mtn View; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. $19-67. Previews Wed/25-Fri/27, 8pm. Opens Sat/28, 8pm. Runs Tues-Wed, 7:30pm, Thurs-Fri, 8pm; Sat, 2 and 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm. Through Sept 19. TheatreWorks presents Craig Lucas’s tale of love under the Tuscan sun.

MilkMilkLemonade La Val’s Subterranean, 1834 Euclid, Berk; www.impacttheatre.com. $10-20. Previews Thurs/26-Fri/27, 8pm. Opens Sat/28, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Oct 2. Impact Theatre presents Joshua Conkel’s off off Broadway about a lonely gay man trapped in a chicken farm.


ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. Fri/ 26, 9pm. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

Don’t Ask New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972; www.nctcsf.org. $24-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the West Coast premiere of Bill Quigley’s play about the affair between a Private and his superior.

The Glass Menagerie Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-25. Fri/27 (also Sept. 2 and Sept. 3), 8pm. Through Sept 3. The third production in Boxcar Theatre’s trio of Tennessee Williams plays in repertory is the biggest disappointment, not only because director Jessica Holt’s production comes bloated distractingly by "shadow" versions of the principals and other random characters, but because it’s the play that otherwise feels most apt and urgent. The "social background of the play," as narrator Tom (a generally credible Brian Trybom) describes it, is a landscape characterized by depression at home and revolution abroad, as pent-up American energies shuffle along through hangdog subsistence, shallow hedonism and occasional "labor unrest." This is the social projection of Tom’s private quandary, but that’s just how this partly autobiographical play speaks so eloquently and subtly to larger themes. When the unhelpful, enervating pantomiming and other stage business dies down a bit, you can see the principal roles—rounded out by Hannah Knapp as Tom’s too fragile sister, Laura, and Suzan A. Kendall as his indomitable mother, Amanda—breath more genuinely and the play actually take shape on the stage. The arrival of the Gentleman Caller (played with winning solidity by Boxcar’s Nick A. Olivero) marks the best part of the evening, even if the gentleman arrives too late to fully redeem the proceeding hour’s misconceived shenanigans. (Avila)

Gilligan’s Island: Live on Stage! The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sun/29, 8pm. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts brings the TV show to the stage, lovey.

Party of 2 Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $25-29. Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 12. A new show written by Morris Bobrow.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through Sept 5. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

*Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park and other sites; 285-1717, www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm; also Sept 6, 2pm; Sept 17, 8pm. Through Sept 17. It may have been just a coincidence, but it certainly seems auspicious that the San Francisco Mime Troupe, itself collectively run since the 1970’s, would preview their latest show Posibilidad on the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives. The show, which centers around the struggles of the last remaining workers in a hemp clothing factory ("Peaceweavers"), hones in on the ideological divide between business conducted as usual, and the impulse to create a different system. Taking a clip from the Ari Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary The Take, half of the play is set in Argentina, where textile-worker Sophia (Lisa Hori-Garcia) becomes involved in a factory takeover for the first time. Her past experiences help inform her new co-workers’ sitdown strike and takeover of their own factory after they are told it will close by their impossibly fey, new age boss Ernesto (Rotimi Agbabiaka). You don’t need professional co-op experience to find humor in the nascent collective’s endless rounds of meetings, wince at their struggles against capitalistic indoctrination, or cheer the rousing message of "Esta es Nuestra Lucha" passionately sung by Velina Brown, though in another welcome coincidence, the run of Posibilidad also coincides with the National Worker Cooperative conference being held in August, so if you get extra inspired, you can always try to join forces there. (Gluckstern)

Skin Tight CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $20 ($35 for gala opening). Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 28. Rapid Descent Physical Performance Company takes its debut bow with Gary Henderson’s oblique portrait of a lifelong love affair, directed and choreographed by Megan Finlay. The couple, the vivacious Elizabeth (Beth Deitchman) and her gentle but quick-witted childhood sweetheart (and later war veteran) Tom (Nathaniel Justiniano) tumble, wrestle and entwine in playful lovemaking and painful heartache across a stage largely bare but for a bathtub set prominently upstage and center, and a white-clad trumpet player (composer-performer Aaron William Priskorn) who observes and accompanies them at close quarters throughout as an invisible muse or piece of mobile furniture. The acting is strong and committed—Deitchman’s sharp and vibrant Elizabeth balances well with the brawny Justiniano’s slyly self-effacing Tom, and both are lithesome in the physically demanding staging—but the dramatic content is thin and hampered by a sentimental storyline that feels precious rather than genuinely romantic or truthful. Moreover, the movement, central to the piece, remains fitfully effective and repetitious. But there’s a promising intelligence at work throughout the production that makes Rapid Descent a welcome arrival. (Avila)

*Streetcar Named Desire Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 4. It’s no small feat, creating a sultry southern summer circa 1940’s smack-dab in the middle of a typically frosty San Francisco summer circa right here right now, but Boxcar Theatre rises admirably to the challenge. Rebecca Longworth’s creative staging of Tennessee Williams’ "A Streetcar Named Desire" includes musical interludes, ghostly apparitions, and the clattering of a cleverly impersonated streetcar that shakes the walls of Matt McAdon’s simply-detailed tenement flat and the spirits of one Blanche DuBois (Juliet Tanner), while the deliberately-muted lighting (Stephanie Buchner) and period-appropriate sound (Ted Crimy), add the appropriate layers of southern discomfort to the unfolding action. Especially captivating to watch are the performances of supporting characters Stella (Casi Maggio) and Mitch (Brian Jansen), who seem to almost helplessly orbit the hot flame of Stanley Kowalski’s sun (Nick A. Olivero) and the grimly flickering satellite of Blanche’s waning moon. As he does in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," Seth Thygesen stands in for one dearly-departed, in this case Blanche’s old beau, Allan Gray, whose abrupt suicide de-magnetized her moral compass. And in addition to a saucy turn as next-door neighbor Eunice, Linnea George tracks the fractured emotions of the main characters on her mournful violin. (Nicole Gluckstern)

*This Is All I Need NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa; www.mugwumpin.org. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Sept 4. $15-20. In our obsession with possessions, just who possesses who? Mugwumpin’s inventive, hilarious and repeatedly surprising new work—captivated and captivating—reminds us that a possession isn’t just a thing but also a (colonized) state of being. But there’s no manifesto here, so much as a multifaceted, deftly staged exploration of a theme so central to this bare and incredibly cluttered existence that we hardly even notice it. The four person ensemble (Madeline H.D. Brown, Joe Estlack, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, and Christopher W. White), sharply co-directed by Liz Lisle and Jonathan Spector, brings various states of being and relation to life with aplomb—amid swift transformations of time and place, provocative contrasts and parallels, dexterous vocalizations, and supple and satisfyingly offbeat choreography. I’m purposely leaving out the details of the vignettes and the sometimes-startling mise en scène because it’s better that way. All you really need now is the price of a ticket. (Avila)

This World Is Good Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 913-7272, www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/28. $18-24. The 1990s are giving way to a millennial moment of anti-climax known as Y2K, but the anxiety and dread are real, and the bloodiest century in human history looks poised to be outdone by the doom-drones of the next. Making at least academic sense of all that angst is Ally (Dina Percia), a brilliant young Latina writing her doctoral dissertation on Grunge and its landscape of youth alienation. Her best friend and occasional lover is a smitten young English prof (Damian Lanahan-Kalish), a dork with a degree and the pet name Scrotum Face. But as she delves into the world of ideas, Ally loses track of her family: single mother Emmy (Tessa Koning-Martinez) and, more tragically, talented but emotionally tortured younger brother Sam (Shoresh Alaudini), whose battered mind and compassionate heart craft a graphic story around a new "super hero" with no costume, no parallel identity, and indeed no special powers. When her family collapses, Ally reassembles the pieces from a new vantage, outside the ivory tower, where she makes art from a sort of crystalline "ordinariness" that complements her brother’s all-too-ordinary super hero. This World Is Good is the opening gambit in a new trilogy by local playwright J.C. Lee called This World and After, all being presented by Sleepwalkers Theatre this season. Artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp helms a competently acted production, which helps lend Lee’s ambitious scope its tangible human proportions, though in truth the characters do not always feel fully drawn. There’s a fine monologue from Sam, both chilling and exhilarating, but also a proclivity throughout for awkwardly poetical speeches over dialogue. Still, there’s subtlety and real humor in the best parts, and enough here to want to see more. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through August 28. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

Antony & Cleopatra Forest Meadows Ampitheatre, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 4pm. Through Sept 25. Marin Shakespeare Company’s summer season continues with the tale of the Egyptian queen.

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Sept 12. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

In the Wound John Hinkel Park, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (no one turned away). Sat-Sun, 3pm (also Sept 5, 3pm). Through Oct 3. Shotgun Players present a unique take on the Iliad, written and directed by Ian Tracy.

Macbeth Bruns Ampitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Way, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $34-70. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 4pm (also Sept 11, 2pm). Through Sept 12. Minneapolis’s Joel Sass returns to Cal Shakes to direct Macbeth with a pared down cast of 12, lead by Jud Williford in the title role of the prophesy-driven regicidal social climber and Stacy Ross as his ambitious and then guilt-crazed Lady M. The towering, two-tiered set (by Daniel Ostling) is a suitably eerie, decrepit-looking place, a "murky hell" with a sort of Old World clinical sleaze about it. The three witches come gowned (by costumer Christal Weatherly) in dingy white nurses habits and sickly green surgical gloves with black voids where their faces should be (their spectral speech projected over the audio system). But Cal Shakes’s production doesn’t really measure up to the atmospheric mise-en-scene, being more dutiful than heat-generating. A wily cut-and-paste job with one of the more famous lines doesn’t quite come off either, since it jars by its initial absence and then rings a bit self-consciously when it does surface as a downbeat coda. (Avila)

The Norman Conquests The Ashby Stage, 901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.com. $20-25. Dates and times vary. Through Sept 5. Shotgun Players presents Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy.

The Taming of the Shrew Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-25. Fri-Sun, 8pm; also Sun, 4pm and 5pm. Through Sept 26. Marin Theatre Company presents a swashbuckling version of the classic.

Trouble in Mind Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sept 26. Aurora Theatre presents Alice Childress’ look at racism through the lens of theater.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

"Buddy Club Children’s Shows" Botanical Garden, 9th Ave and Lincoln; (510) 236-7649, www.TheBuddyClub.com. Sun/29, 11am-noon, $5-10. Robert Strong performs magic.

"New Choreography" The Garage, 975 Howard; 518-1517, www.975howard.com Fri/27-Sat/28, 8pm. SPF5 presents two nights of dance.

Penny Dreadful Project Studio Theatre, Creative Arts Bldg, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway; 338-2467, www.creativearts.sfsu.edu. Wed/25-Sat/28, 8:30pm; free. A dark tale about an unnamed woman and three versions of her son, directed and co-written (with Alex peri) by Mario El Caponi Mendoza.

"San Francisco Circus Center Showcase" San Francisco Circus Center, 755 Frederick; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/27, 7pm; Sat/28 2 and 7pm; Sun/29, 2pm; $10-20. The Circus Center presents its annual showcase.

Sci-Fi Burlesque DNA Lounge, 375 11th; www.superhappyfuntimeburlesque.com. Thurs/26, 9pm; $10-15. Six-person Michigan burlesque group puts on a show.

BAY AREA

Brilliant essay on the state of California

Zelda Bronstein
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Brilliant essay on the state of California

Vast treatises have been written about the California mess and how we got where we are today. But a professor at UC Berkeley’s school of public policy sums the whole thing up in one brilliant, short letter to his students. You can read the whole thing here (thanks, Calitics), but the gist is that today’s generation of California kids is the collective victim of a massive swindle:


Swindle–what happened? Well, before you were born, Californians now dead or in nursing homes made a remarkable deal with the future.  (Not from California? Keep reading, lots of this applies to you, with variations.) They agreed to invest money they could have spent on bigger houses, vacations, clothes, and cars into the world’s greatest educational system, and into building and operating water systems, roads, parks, and other public facilities, an infrastructure that was the envy of the world. They didn’t get everything right: too much highway and not enough public transportation. But they did a pretty good job.


Young people who enjoyed these ‘loans’ grew up smarter, healthier, and richer than they otherwise would have, and understood that they were supposed to “pay it forward” to future generations, for example by keeping the educational system staffed with lots of dedicated, well-trained teachers, in good buildings and in small classes, with college counselors and up-to-date books.  California schools had physical education, art for everyone, music and theater, buildings that looked as though people cared about them, modern languages and ancient languages, advanced science courses with labs where the equipment worked, and more. They were the envy of the world, and they paid off better than Microsoft stock. Same with our parks, coastal zone protection, and social services.


This deal held until about thirty years ago, when for a variety of reasons, California voters realized that while they had done very well from the existing contract, they could do even better by walking away from their obligations and spending what they had inherited on themselves.  “My kids are finished with school; why should I pay taxes for someone else’s?  Posterity never did anything for me!”  An army of fake ‘leaders’ sprang up to pull the moral and fiscal wool over their eyes, and again and again, your parents and their parents lashed out at government (as though there were something else that could replace it) with tax limits, term limits, safe districts, throw-away-the-key imprisonment no matter the cost, smoke-and-mirrors budgeting, and a rule never to use the words taxes and services in the same paragraph.


That about sums it up, and I hate to say it, but my generation — the baby boomers who were supposed to change the world in such a wonderful way — is guilty of just the opposite. If the WWII folks were the Greatest Generation, then the boomers are the Selfish Generation.

Our Weekly Picks: August 18-24, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 18

THEATER

Macbeth

Cal Shakes follows its recent production of MacHomer with the original Macbeth — and proof that pop culture is but a palimpsest. This company always manages to inject new life into any well-known or overdone Shakespeare play and here, the troupe remains loyal to the dark side of everyone’s favorite regicidal maniac. The website boasts that this version doesn’t “shy away from the brutal, violent nature of the work,” so it would be imprudent of you to bring your children. Macbeth, with all its insoluble blood stains, C-sections, and beheadings will remind you of how fucked up the theater really could be back in the 1600s. (Ryan Lattanzio)

Through Sept. 12

Tues-Sun, performance times vary, $20–$65

California Shakespeare Theater

100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda

(510) 548-9666

www.calshakes.org

 

EVENT

“Tick-Tock: Linear and Visceral Expressions of Time”

In conjunction with its Now and When exhibition (on view through Sept. 4), the San Francisco Arts Commission is hosting a discussion on time between Jeannene Przyblysk, executive director of the San Francisco Bureau of Urban Secrets, and Alexander Rose, executive director of the Long Now Foundation. Time, they will argue, doesn’t just operate on a linear schedule: the past and future can be bent, juxtaposed, and collaged into other events and moments that allow the malleability of memory and untethering of tomorrow. The effects of this loosening carry a visceral register. Baby, this is moving too fast, can we slow it down a bit to figure things out? (Spencer Young)

6:30-8 p.m., free (reservations required)

SFAC Main Gallery

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 554-6080

www.sfartscommission.org

 

MUSIC

WAVVES

Twentysomething Nathan Williams has had a pretty unbelievable couple of years, teeter-tottering between indie blog success and proud poster child for a recent glut of lazy-sounding DIY bands. Williams does little to sway critics from seeing him only as the latter — most of his lyrics glorify either weed or “being bored” — but there has always been a charming immediacy to his lackadaisical approach. Having stumbled on a winning blueprint like that, it comes as a surprise to listen to Williams’ latest album, King of the Beach, and find that the musician appears to have grown weary of making that same record over and over again. In dropping a lot of the scuzz and picking up the late Jay Reatard’s solid backing band, Beach primes Williams as the poster child for something completely different: the party record of the summer. (Peter Galvin)

With Young Prisms

7:30 p.m., $14

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

THURSDAY 19

THEATER

“Solo Performance Workshop Festival”

From under the radar comes this showcase of new and recently acclaimed solo performance, as the Solo Performance Workshop celebrates five years developing original work in StageWerx’s sub–Sutter Street lair. The venue may be underground, but shows spawned under direction of founders Bruce Pachtman (Don’t Make Me Look Too Psychotic) and performer-director W. Kamau Bell (The W. Kamau Bell Curve) have gone on to far-flung success. Some of these — including Jennifer Jajeh’s I Heart Hamas and Enzo Lombard’s Love, Humiliation, and Karaoke — return for the two-week fest, which also launches Bell’s latest venture: AAAAAAAAAARGH!: A Solo Comedy About How Frustrating Frustration Can Be. All of which stands to be pretty satisfying, actually. (Robert Avila)

Through Aug. 29

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7 p.m., $20–$30

StageWerx Theatre

533 Sutter, SF

www.stagewerx.org

 

VISUAL ART

“Photographer: unknown“

Photography has served a casual or practical purpose in countless lives ever since cameras were widely available to the public. Still, most amateur photographers in years past probably never expected their work to be up on a gallery wall. Taking the opposite approach, Robert Tat Gallery seeks out vernacular photographs (photos not intended as art) worthy of appreciation in a new context. Their “accidental art” photos are “generally acquired at flea markets, antique stores, estate sales, or literally just ‘found.'” The gallery’s press release traces the appreciation of such found photos back to the Dada movement. But since we still haven’t fully realized the wealth of art around us, it’s exciting to see a gallery celebrating the supposedly mundane. (Sam Stander)

Through Nov. 27

Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–5:30 p.m. and by appointment, free

Robert Tat Gallery

49 Geary, Suite 211, SF

(415) 781-1122

www.roberttat.com

 

FRIDAY 20

DANCE

Stepology’s 2010 Bay Area Rhythm Exchange

It’s time to tap into the spirit of Gregory Hines and Fred Astaire. Stepology (the nonprofit tap organization founded by renowned tap dancer John Kloss) makes it easy to channel the tap masters with the annual Bay Area Tap Festival. Inspiring dancers and nondancers alike, Stepology’s week-long tap extravaganza brings some of the nation’s most talented tappers together to lead classes, workshops, and demonstrations. The festival culminates with the Bay Area Rhythm Exchange, an annual concert performance. Acclaimed musicians and tap artists Channing Cook Holmes, John Kloss, Mark Mendonca, Jason Rogers, Dormeshia Sumbry-Edwards, Sam Weber, and Lukas Weiss (to name a few) grace the stage at this year’s Rhythm Exchange. (Katie Gaydos)

Through Aug. 21

8 p.m., $25

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.stepology.com

 

SATURDAY 21

FILM

Bassem Yousri

Catch two experimental documentaries by Bassem Yousri, a recipient of a 2009-10 Kala Fellowship, as part of the ongoing series “Residency Projects,” featuring works by all the fellowship artists. Yousri’s films, Keep Recording (2009) and Still Recording, are set in Cairo and Philadelphia, respectively. His premise is the same for each: use a low-budget video camera and record footage of the city and its people. In Godfrey Reggio fashion, Yousri navigates unfamiliar urban contexts, and the films’ meanings arise through this kind of episodic assembling where artist is at the mercy of environment. (Lattanzio)

2 p.m., free

Kala Gallery

2990 San Pablo, Berk

(510) 841-7000

www.kala.org

 

MUSIC

“Joe Strummer Tribute”

A tribute show can be a dicey prospect, especially if the artist being honored isn’t alive to comment. Sometimes it’s better to leave a dead legend’s legacy well enough alone instead of trying to embroider it posthumously. Still, when it comes to someone like Joe Strummer, different rules apply. Annual tributes to the punk pioneer have been held in SF for the past seven years, and something tells me that their focus on local bands would have gibed well with Strummer’s music-to-the-people ethos. This year’s show features the Armagideons, the Hooks, Monkey, Sistas in the Pit, Stigma 13, and Interecords, and its proceeds benefit Strummerville, a charity that provides funds and support to struggling musical talents the world over. (Zach Ritter)

9 p.m., $10

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

DANCE

“House Special 2010”

ODC Theater’s “House Special” gives selected choreographers two weeks to create new dance works before premiering them in the intimate ODC Dance Commons. Now the two weeks are up and the show is ready. Although vastly different in terms of choreographic styles and interests, the three artists in residence all share a common passion for social activism. Brazilian native Tania Santiago and her dance company Aguas Da Bahia explore the deep roots of Afro-Brazilian traditions; Jesselito Bie’s Steamroller Dance Company’s newest work Big Homo Love Explosion explores sexuality, gender, and race; while Pearl Ubungen’s SF Bardo Project investigates the cultural landscape of the city while contemplating death and dying from a Tibetan Buddhist perspective. (Gaydos)

8 p.m., $15

ODC Dance Commons

351 Shotwell, SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

 

EVENT

Art and Soul Festival

No “adjectives on the typewriter” can quite sum up why Cake was a perfect soundtrack for the 1990s, and an even better one for the shift into the aughts and beyond. This year, for the 10th anniversary of Oakland’s Art and Soul Festival, John McCrea and his fellow fellas bring rockable irony to the Main Stage. Don’t remember “Shadow Stabbing” or “Never There”? Fear not. Cake hasn’t released a studio album since 2004, so this show will definitely jog your memory with the hits — and very few of the songs in their canon aren’t hits. Hailing from Sacramento, this band seems to understand West Coast sensibilities of spliffs, catchy riffs, and kicking it with friends to some music under a Saturday sunset. (Lattanzio)

Sat/21, 12:30 p.m. (Cake plays at 4:30 p.m.);

Sun/22, 12:45 p.m., $8–$15

12th and Broadway, Oakl

www.artandsouloakland.com

 

SUNDAY 22

FILM

Endless Love

Critically mauled at the time, this 1981 adaptation of Scott Spencer’s acclaimed novel is being offered up for “rediscovery and reevaluation” by the ever-idiosyncratic local Film on Film Foundation. Martin Hewitt plays David, a high school senior who finds the warm family vibe he lacks at home at the Butterfields, where 15-year-old daughter Jade (Brooke Shields, still wet from 1980’s The Blue Lagoon) is his girlfriend. But his passion for her runs a little too hot, even for this very free-thinking clan, and when he’s banned from future contact, he concocts a scheme to restore his status that turns disastrous. An amour fou melodrama further inflamed by director Franco Zeffirelli’s customary gauzy romanticism — and providing him with opportunity for more exposed boy butt than 1968’s Romeo and Juliet — Endless Love likewise swoons over roiling teenage libidos with a near-gaga intensity. There is a certain amount of adult actor hysteria and overripe sweetness, as well as only semi-convincing eroticism. But Shields is perfectly adequate in her last adolescent part, and Hewitt, whose career didn’t last, is excellent as the obsessed BF whose love is maybe a little too endless. Other attractions include a very young James Spader as Jade’s snarky older brother and Tom Cruise (his first role) as one of their friends. Yes, the book was better (if also a little overripe). But belying its camp reputation, this movie is actually pretty good. (Dennis Harvey)

4 p.m., $8

Pacific Film Archive

2757 Bancroft, Berk.

www.filmonfilm.org

 

TUESDAY 24

MUSIC

Bad Brains

Ever since their seminal 7-inch debut, 1980’s Pay to Cum, the Bad Brains have hewed a truly bizarre path through the musical landscape, perfecting punk rock and reggae on the strength of jazz fusion-honed technical ability and a commitment to speed. Their career (and that of unpredictable singer H.R.) has been peripatetic for many years now, but despite the profusion of Jah-loving jam-outs at recent shows, there’s only one Bad Brains, and they’re not getting any younger. Go to see — without hyperbole — one of the most unique bands to ever play rock ‘n’ roll. (Ben Richardson)

With Broun Fellinis

9 p.m., $26

Slim’s

333 11th St, SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com 

 

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Stage Listings

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

THEATER

OPENING

BAY AREA

Antony & Cleopatra Forest Meadows Ampitheatre, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-35. Previews Fri/20-Sun/22, 8pm. Opens August 28, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 4pm. Through Sept 25. Marin Shakespeare Company’s summer season continues with the tale of the Egyptian queen.

In the Wound John Hinkel Park, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.org. $10 (no one turned away). Opens Sat/21, 3pm. Runs Sat-Sun, 3pm (also Sept 5, 3pm). Through Oct 3. Shotgun Players present a unique take on the Iliad, written and directed by ian tracy.

Macbeth Bruns Ampitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Way, Orinda; (510) 548-9666, www.calshakes.org. $34-70. Previews Wed/18-Fri/20, 8pm. Opens Sat/21, 8pm. Runs Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 4pm (also Sept 11, 2pm). California Shakespeare Theater presents the tale of unbridled ambition and its consequences, directed by Joel Sass.

Trouble in Mind Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, Berk; (510) 843-4822, www.auroratheatre.org. $10-55. Previews Fri/20-Sat/21 and Tues/24, 8pm; Sun/22, 2pm. Opens August 26, 8pm. Run Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2 and 7pm; Tues, 7pm. Through Sept 26. Aurora Theatre presents Alice Childress’ look at racism through the lens of theater.

 

ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. Thurs/19, August 26, 9pm. Through August 26. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

Divalicious New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-28. Wed-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/22. Leanne Borghesi takes on the music of legends ranging from Garland to Midler.

Don’t Ask New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972; www.nctcsf.org. $24-36. Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the West Coast premiere of Bill Quigley’s play about the affair between a Private and his superior.

Gilligan’s Island: Live on Stage! The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sun, 8pm. Through August 29. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts brings the TV show to the stage, lovey.

Party of 2 Shelton Theater, 533 Sutter; (800) 838-3006, www.partyof2themusical.com. $25-29. Sun, 3pm. Through Sept 12. A new show written by Morris Bobrow.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

*Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park and other sites; 285-1717, www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm; also Sept 6, 2pm; Sept 17, 8pm. Through Sept 17. It may have been just a coincidence, but it certainly seems auspicious that the San Francisco Mime Troupe, itself collectively run since the 1970’s, would preview their latest show Posibilidad on the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives. The show, which centers around the struggles of the last remaining workers in a hemp clothing factory (“Peaceweavers”), hones in on the ideological divide between business conducted as usual, and the impulse to create a different system. Taking a clip from the Ari Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary The Take, half of the play is set in Argentina, where textile-worker Sophia (Lisa Hori-Garcia) becomes involved in a factory takeover for the first time. Her past experiences help inform her new co-workers’ sitdown strike and takeover of their own factory after they are told it will close by their impossibly fey, new age boss Ernesto (Rotimi Agbabiaka). You don’t need professional co-op experience to find humor in the nascent collective’s endless rounds of meetings, wince at their struggles against capitalistic indoctrination, or cheer the rousing message of “Esta es Nuestra Lucha” passionately sung by Velina Brown, though in another welcome coincidence, the run of Posibilidad also coincides with the National Worker Cooperative conference being held in August, so if you get extra inspired, you can always try to join forces there. (Gluckstern)

Sex Tapes for Seniors Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; (800) 838-3006. $20-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sun/22. Older people have sex. It’s a revelation, incredibly, for the new, blandly do-goody yoga instructor (Erin Reis) at a retirement village called Shambhala Springs in the premiere of Mario Cossa’s sweet, sassy, but somewhat sterile and long-winded new musical. It’s maybe an eye-opener too for anyone in the audience too young to remember doing it in the Sixties—let alone in your sixties—and by eye-opener we mainly mean the ability to keep at least one eye open the entire show. Older audiences may find more to appreciate here. The odd cast of characters includes three couples—one straight (Charmaine Hitchcox and Terry Stokes), two gay (Phillipe Coquet and John Hutchinson; Rebecca Mills and Carolyn Zaremba), and a single widow (Nancy Helman Shneiderman) who dates but keeps another marriage at bay. (I promised myself I wouldn’t use the word feisty, but she is, as are several of the others.) They come up with a plan to make and sell the titular product, much to the horror of relatives and some other residents. But the storyline has more do to with individual relationships and the challenges of aging gracefully and living well. Performances are uneven, entrances routinely late, but there’s a built-in charm to that. Tyler Flanders’ music, however, generally limps along (despite dutiful treatment by a three-piece band) and Cossa’s lyrics only rarely stir. Although at least once all hell breaks loose: in the rousing, if not exactly arousing, number devoted to the fellatic benefits of dentures. Indeed, this play should probably have an NC-71 rating. (Avila)

*Show and Tell Thick House, 1695 18th St; (800) 838-3006, www.symmetrytheatre.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5:30 pm. Through Sun/22. $25. Symmetry Theatre Company, an impressive new group dedicated to addressing gender disparity in the casting of professional actors, makes a memorable debut with this expertly crafted, sinuous drama about the psychological aftermath—and tangled social roots—of a bombing in a small-town schoolroom from playwright (and former SF rez) Anthony Clarvoe (Control+Alt+Delete). The sole survivor of the horrific and mysterious attack is the stunned, deeply perplexed teacher (an affecting, quietly intense Chloe Bronzan), soon surrounded by grief-stricken parents demanding their childrens’ remains and a tight-knit, jaded forensics team led by a gradually smitten FBI agent (a suavely imposing Robert Parsons). Julia Brothers, Wylie Herman, Jessica Powell, and Erika Salazar round out a strong ensemble under the assured direction of Laura Hope, whose engaging production leaves much to think about in the realm of private turmoil and public chaos—including the nature of grief, modernity’s systemic violence, and the disorder generated and managed by the self-same state. Kate Boyd’s lush, strikingly ambiguous video design (featuring a set of evocative childrens’ drawings) and Cliff Caruthers’ beautifully spare and haunted sound (featuring a delicate stream of child voices) add measurably to the expanse of the play’s existential and political universe. (Avila)

Skin Tight CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $20 ($35 for gala opening). Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 28. Rapid Descent Physical Performance Company presents the SF premiere of Gary Henderson’s play.

*Streetcar Named Desire Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept 4. It’s no small feat, creating a sultry southern summer circa 1940’s smack-dab in the middle of a typically frosty San Francisco summer circa right here right now, but Boxcar Theatre rises admirably to the challenge. Rebecca Longworth’s creative staging of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” includes musical interludes, ghostly apparitions, and the clattering of a cleverly impersonated streetcar that shakes the walls of Matt McAdon’s simply-detailed tenement flat and the spirits of one Blanche DuBois (Juliet Tanner), while the deliberately-muted lighting (Stephanie Buchner) and period-appropriate sound (Ted Crimy), add the appropriate layers of southern discomfort to the unfolding action. Especially captivating to watch are the performances of supporting characters Stella (Casi Maggio) and Mitch (Brian Jansen), who seem to almost helplessly orbit the hot flame of Stanley Kowalski’s sun (Nick A. Olivero) and the grimly flickering satellite of Blanche’s waning moon. As he does in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Seth Thygesen stands in for one dearly-departed, in this case Blanche’s old beau, Allan Gray, whose abrupt suicide de-magnetized her moral compass. And in addition to a saucy turn as next-door neighbor Eunice, Linnea George tracks the fractured emotions of the main characters on her mournful violin. (Nicole Gluckstern)

*This Is All I Need NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa; www.mugwumpin.org. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Sept 4. $15-20. In our obsession with possessions, just who possesses who? Mugwumpin’s inventive, hilarious and repeatedly surprising new work—captivated and captivating—reminds us that a possession isn’t just a thing but also a (colonized) state of being. But there’s no manifesto here, so much as a multifaceted, deftly staged exploration of a theme so central to this bare and incredibly cluttered existence that we hardly even notice it. The four person ensemble (Madeline H.D. Brown, Joe Estlack, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, and Christopher W. White), sharply co-directed by Liz Lisle and Jonathan Spector, brings various states of being and relation to life with aplomb—amid swift transformations of time and place, provocative contrasts and parallels, dexterous vocalizations, and supple and satisfyingly offbeat choreography. I’m purposely leaving out the details of the vignettes and the sometimes-startling mise en scène because it’s better that way. All you really need now is the price of a ticket. (Avila)

This World Is Good Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 913-7272, www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 28. $18-24. The 1990s are giving way to a millennial moment of anti-climax known as Y2K, but the anxiety and dread are real, and the bloodiest century in human history looks poised to be outdone by the doom-drones of the next. Making at least academic sense of all that angst is Ally (Dina Percia), a brilliant young Latina writing her doctoral dissertation on Grunge and its landscape of youth alienation. Her best friend and occasional lover is a smitten young English prof (Damian Lanahan-Kalish), a dork with a degree and the pet name Scrotum Face. But as she delves into the world of ideas, Ally loses track of her family: single mother Emmy (Tessa Koning-Martinez) and, more tragically, talented but emotionally tortured younger brother Sam (Shoresh Alaudini), whose battered mind and compassionate heart craft a graphic story around a new “super hero” with no costume, no parallel identity, and indeed no special powers. When her family collapses, Ally reassembles the pieces from a new vantage, outside the ivory tower, where she makes art from a sort of crystalline “ordinariness” that complements her brother’s all-too-ordinary super hero. This World Is Good is the opening gambit in a new trilogy by local playwright J.C. Lee called This World and After, all being presented by Sleepwalkers Theatre this season. Artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp helms a competently acted production, which helps lend Lee’s ambitious scope its tangible human proportions, though in truth the characters do not always feel fully drawn. There’s a fine monologue from Sam, both chilling and exhilarating, but also a proclivity throughout for awkwardly poetical speeches over dialogue. Still, there’s subtlety and real humor in the best parts, and enough here to want to see more. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through August 28. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

Blithe Spirit Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkely.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; also Thurs/19, 8pm. Through Sat/21. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley essays the eternal Noel Coward comedy, about a (naturally) Coward-esque writer (Stanley Spenger) who for the purposes of research and any passing amusement it may provide invites over a celebrated medium (an amusingly puffed-up Chris Macomber), only to have her inadvertently summon the ghost of his ex-wife (Erin J. Hoffman), who mischievously begins to drive a wedge between him and his new wife (Shannon Veon Kase). Director Hector Correa’s not-always-fitting casting choices contribute to a drearily perfunctory tone at the outset, which makes the first scenes somewhat painful going. However, Spenger proves admirably dry and restrained in the lead, and things pick up measurably with the arrival of the titular ghost, played with playful, bounding energy and notable grace by Hoffman. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Sept 12. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Machiavelli’s The Prince Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 5pm. Through Sun/22. Set in an intimate salon-space in the Berkeley City Club, this stage adaptation of one of the most famous documents on political power ever written gains a certain conversational quality. In fact, the script, penned by Gary Graves, is really just one long conversation—an imagined encounter between Nicolo Machiavelli and the man he dedicated his treatise to, Lorenzo de Medici II. Machiavelli (Mark Farrell) has been called by de Medici (Cole Alexander Smith) to possibly regain favor in his court after a long banishment. With him he brings a notebook of his musings on gaining and retaining political power, which he bestows on Lorenzo for him to read. As the Duke of Florence, Smith plays his character with the measured dignity and watchful countenance of a career mobster. He protests the extremism of his former teacher’s philosophy of rule even as he is casually seduced by its implications. Farrell’s Machiavelli tries to play his position with calculated Mephistopheles cool. However, he cannot escape the obvious taint of his own failures, and eventually, for all his talk of power, he is revealed to be ultimately powerless, though his ideas remain with de Medici, long after he himself is let go. (Gluckstern)

The Norman Conquests The Ashby Stage, 901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.com. $20-25. Dates and times vary. Through Sept 5. Shotgun Players presents Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy.

The Taming of the Shrew Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-25. Fri-Sun, 8pm; also Sun, 4pm and 5pm. Through Sept 26. Marin Theatre Company presents a swashbuckling version of the classic.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Bay Area Rhythm Exchange War Memorial and Performing Arts Center, Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness; 392-4400, www.stepology.com. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm. $17-25. Bay Area Tap Festival artists perform.

“Disoriented” Stage Werx Theater, 533, Sutter; www.brownpapertickets.com. Thurs/19, 8pm, $20. A trio of solo performances by Zahra Noorbakhsh, Colleen “Coke” Nakamoto, and Thao P. Nguyen.

“House Special” ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell; www.odctheater.com. Sat/21, 8pm, $15. New work by Pearl Ubungun, Jesseilto Bie, and others.

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus Climate Theater, 470 Florida; www.brownpapertickets.com. Fri/20-Sat/21, 8pm, $15. Samauel Topiary presents an evening-length performance work.

“Sinners and Salivation-Themed Drag King Contest” DNA Lounge, 375 11th; www.sfdragkingcontest.com. Fri/20, 8pm (band) and 10pm (show), $20-35. The 15th annual contest, with special guest Jane Wiedlin, benefiting PAWS.

BAY AREA

“New Works Festival” Lucie Stern Theatre, 1355 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. Dates and times vary. Through August 22. $15-25 ($75 for festival pass). TheatreWorks presents its ninth annual festival.

Veterans of discrimination

Andrew Lam
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So you’re a gung-ho Hawaiian high schooler who wants to protect your country back in the early ’40s. You join the ROTC, which leads to a spin through the Territorial Guard. You’re then kicked out of service, because of where your family’s from. In fact, you’re now considered an enemy alien! Fancy. Such was the plight of the protagonists of Junichi Suzuki’s 442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity (which starts Fri/13 at Viz Cinema), Japanese-Americans who went on to become one of the most decorated squadrons in U.S. military history.

How would you react in a similar situation? In anger, disgust, maybe by sewing a maple leaf on your rucksack and thumbing for passage to points north on passing ocean liners? Oddly, the young men from the film did the opposite. They reinvested in their home, forming a club that reflected the closest thing to service in the military they could still rope down and jumping in flat bed trucks to help their peers still in the armed forces out with construction projects around Honolulu (in Hawaii, it was deemed “not practicable” to export the vast Japanese immigrant to internment camps and instead strict curfew laws and energy blackouts were enacted). The Varsity Victory Volunteers, they called themselves. 

Junichi Suzuki’s 442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity

Eventually, the army realized the guys weren’t terrorists and put them to work, stationing them on the front lines of WWII’s most dangerous conflicts. They done real good in battles – but paid for it, suffering 93% casulty rates by the military’s conservative counts (9,486 Purple Hearts were awarded and the company started out with only 3,000 soldiers!), all while many of their family members on the mainland were imprisoned in massive U.S. detention centers. 

It’s a compelling story about racism in our country, and I’m glad Suzuki tracked it down. But at its heart, 442 is still a war movie: grainy original footage and those slow zoom-ins on photos that the History Channel so dearly wishes was an appropriate stand-in for action. The most vivid scenes are those of the surviving members of the company that the filmmaker tracked down for an interview. They’re men who move slow, play golf, farm plots of land with their families. Veterans, dig? Doing what they wanted to do all along: be a legitimate, unconditional citizen of our country. 

The film is being shown as part of Viz Cinema’s multi-movie look at the work of Junichi Suzuki, whose been kicking around in director’s chairs forI over 27 years. Previously, the theater showed Suziki’s Toyo’s Camera, which includes footage from a camera that Toyo Miyatake snuck into the internment camp where he was sent during the war. From whence does Suzuki’s motivation spring to make such exhaustively well-researched looks at our country’s past and the history of his people? You can as him yourself — he’ll be at every screening of 442 on Fri/13 and Sat/14 at Viz.

 

442: Live With Honor, Die With Dignity

opens Fri/13 (through Thurs/19) 2:50, 7 p.m., $10

Viz Cinema

New People

1746 Post, SF

(415) 525-8600

www.newpeopleworld.com

 

The Performant: A mutable feast — or, theater, buffet-style

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If the venerable San Francisco Fringe Festival is a full-on Circus Circus-style, all-you-can-eat-buffet, I like to think of its kid cousin the San Francisco Theatre Festival  — which took place Sunday, August 8 — as more of a pu-pu platter. Tasty little morsels of performance presented in manageable, bite-sized chunks designed to whet the appetite for the main courses (the full productions) to come. I don’t know about you, but when I’m confronted with the choice between dainty nibbling, or cleaning each plate as it comes, I tend to adapt the life-is-uncertain principle and gorge myself on all the available goodies in sight.


Gorging comes more easily than restraint at all-day festivals, and it’s hard to determine before you bite whether your picks will be sweet or savory. A delectable treat, first of the day, was an excerpt from a brand new company: The 11th Hour Ensemble. The 11th Hour members’ 20-minute preview of their movement-based, Lewis Carroll-inspired “Alice” was fresh, exciting, hilarious, and completely unexpected. If their full-length production (opening September 8th) is half as charming as their highlights reel, it’ll be a don’t-miss. A quick dash across the park and into the Metreon brought me to Mugwumpin’s excerpt of their current show “This is all I Need” (playing at NOHspace through September 4). Thematically-connected to their last, site-specific “Occurrence” which took place in a semi-residential motel in June, “Need” explores the relationships between ourselves and our possessions. A particularly funny bit involved a convoluted daydream of property ownership and a barricade of berry boxes, but over too soon, it was back outside for a glimpse of No Nude Men (ha! there weren’t any! But there were zombies!). On my way to see San Francisco Recovery Theatre’s modernized take on the Amiri Baraka classic “Dutchman” (opening in October, I believe) I slipped into Ray of Light’s “Jerry Springer, the Opera” (opens September 10). Classically-trained singers reveling in lyrics about adult diaper-play, stripping, and self-abuse? Someone ought to write a show about that.

*******
A one-man smorgasbord of theatrical tropes and truisms, Will Franken played the Clubhouse this past weekend,serving up a bubbling stew of new material mixed in with a few old favorites. As physical as he is cerebral, commedian Franken’s act conforms far less to the traditional stand-up routine but rather to that of the highly-refined, abstracted-reality sketch comedy of Monty Python, The Kids in the Hall, and The Cody Rivers Show. Jim Carrey might be the man with the rubber face, but Franken’s whole persona is as elastic as a rubber band, and in a whirlwind 20-minute set, Franken portrayed a panoply of distinct characters from cross-dressing panhandler to schizophrenic marriage counselor, Al Gore to General Petraeus, an outsourced solar panel salesman in China to a well-meaning yet ultimately self-deluding “condom lady” in Whitechapel circa 1888. No passively-progressive sacred cow ever emerges from Franken’s contrarian logic unscathed—he’s out there gleefully hacking off the hindquarters and serving them up on a slightly tarnished platter before you can say “yoga mat.” But even late on a Friday night with no BYOB, just a taste of Franken’s mad creations left us salivating for more.

New and improv-ed

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New and improv-ed

The launching of the San Francisco Improv Festival, back in 2004, signaled a major resurgence for improvisational theater in the Bay Area, long dominated by the exceptional BATS (Bay Area Theatre Sports) and related groups, but recently joined by a host of newer outfits as well. The rollicking festival attracted eager audiences, while bringing together a somewhat disparate local and intergenerational community of improvisers with national and even international acts. There was cross-pollination everywhere, in meetings on and offstage between players and groups, in workshops and master classes, and of course in many a bar. It all contributed to the latest wave in a tradition of Bay Area improv that reaches back to the storied days of the Committee in the 1960s.

Then things got rocky as well as rollicking as SFIF organizers shifted around and founding members headed to other projects and/or climes, culminating in last year’s hiatus. The cancellation of SFIF 2009 might have been more discouraging had not the members of Crisis Hopkins, the San Francisco–based improv and sketch comedy troupe, thought fast and leaped into the breach, organizing a last-minute smorgasbord they called the Temporary Improv Festival. Still, while TIF proved a modest success, the name alone inadvertently contributed to an impression that the peak might have already occurred.

Nothing could be further from the truth. As if to prove the point, SFIF has risen once more, like a soggy phoenix from a still-cresting wave. The revival of SFIF, which comes under new Crisis-led management, frankly looks more ambitious than ever. It even comes with an iPhone app.

“Which is ridiculous,” says Sam Shaw, Crisis Hopkins member and a cofounder of SFIF in 2004. “The people I’m working with — including Anthony Veneziale from The Freeze, and Jamie Wright, Cassidy Brown, Chris Hayes, and Chris Libby — we’ve come up with these little touches that I never would have thought of. We’re going to have a food truck for primetime shows hanging out in front of the [Eureka] theater. We’ve got Solstice, this bar in Pacific Heights, [to] help us serve alcohol, so we’ll have a full bar. There’s a lot going on.”

Of course, the real meat is in the shrewd and eclectic programming. In addition to a generous number of local, national, and international troupes, SFIF 2010 is hosting workshops (including an already sold-out improv “boot camp” with Armando Diaz) and inaugurating the SFIF Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Improv Community, which this year goes to beloved veteran performer Barbara Scott of BATS, True Fiction Magazine, Tonal Chaos, and other groups.

Also among the special events is an intriguing “Look Back at The Committee,” featuring a panel discussion with founding director Alan Myerson and other unannounced guests in conversation with improv historian and Monty Python pal Kim “Howard” Johnson. Shaw says this last event, connecting the improv scene with some of its heftier roots, realizes a long-held dream.

“I cofounded the fest with Shaun Landry in 2004, and ever since then I’ve wanted to do a program on The Committee. It was San Francisco’s Second City from 1963 to 1973,” he explains. “They did topical political satire; they did sketch comedy and improvisation.” Led for a time by the wildly influential improv director-performer Del Close, The Committee also spearheaded major developments in the form, in particular an exciting long-form structure called the Harold (a name coined by Committee musical director Allaudin Mathieu). “It’s like a 30-minute riff on a topic where the audience goes along for the ride,” says Shaw. “And it was born in San Francisco.”

Half-way out in the year from SF Sketchfest, the popular comedy showcase held each January, and centered in the same 200-seat venue downtown, SFIF looks more than ever like a natural compliment to its unaffiliated cousin. “We love Sketchfest, and we love doing it every year,” says Shaw, who notes the complimentary aspects to their programming as well. As for the Festival’s performance roster, the names alone tantalize. OJ in a Sippy Cup, for instance, just sounds refreshing.

“OJ in a Sippy Cup is a pretty awesome name,” admits Shaw. “They’re a duo from New York City, and they’re very fun. I have to say that I love the name Slave Leia. That’s an all-woman improv team from L.A.” Among other highlights, Shaw points to Men: A User’s Guide, “a really exciting duo from the Netherlands. They’re very highly trained long-form performers doing a show on men and men’s issues, and it’s just hilarious.” He sheds light on an enigmatic title, The Super-Dupers: Doo-Wop-Ner. “That is going to be doo-wop small claims court improvising,” he says, clearly impressed. “Their submission just said ‘doo-wop small claims court.’ And we let them in.”

Clearly, one take-home lesson is the sheer variety of improv out there. The common denominator remains the all-inclusive collaboration in the moment, in which audiences participate to varying degrees. “The fourth wall is very porous,” agrees SFIF’s executive producer Jamie Wright, a Bay Area native who came to improv from afar while bartending at Amsterdam’s famous Boom Chicago comedy club. But he stresses that interaction shouldn’t sound intimidating. “I’m an improviser and even I don’t like getting singled out by a comedian. Improv is really inviting, a very joyful thing to go to and watch. It’s also impressive. You are going to see something completely unique, and you’re going to be part of it — one way or another.”

SAN FRANCISCO IMPROV FEST

Aug. 12–21, $15–$50

Eureka Theater

215 Jackson, SF

(800) 838-3006

www.sfimprovfestival.com

Queen Carol

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Queen Carol

Let me tell you what I think about when I think about Carol Channing: “Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never, ever, ever jam today.” And then she turns herself into a sheep.

That’s not a fever dream: it’s one of the more absurd scenes from the 1985 TV movie Through the Looking Glass, featuring Channing as the batty White Queen. Channing’s 60-year career spans film, television, and theater — she’s probably best known for her iconic roles in Broadway shows Hello, Dolly! and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And yet, in my mind, she’s waving her arms wildly and ranting nonsense at poor Alice.

In a way, that’s fair. It’s difficult to get a handle on Channing. I don’t think she could do it herself.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said when I asked about the longevity and diversity of her career. “We’re all surprised at everything that happens to us.”

At nearly 90, Channing continues to perform. She’ll be in San Francisco for the Richmond/Ermet AIDS Foundation’s 16th annual Help is On the Way benefit concert. AIDS relief is one of Channing’s longest-running causes, inspired by a longtime friendship with the queer community.

“Way back in 1950, I don’t know what, we opened in San Francisco with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” she recalled. “They tell me there wasn’t a blonde wig left in San Francisco. They all came dressed as me.”

And because of her pioneering work, the gay community has continued to support her. Well, that and her status as Broadway legend: it kind of goes with the territory. Until talking to her, however, I had no idea about the politics of being a gay icon.

“They made me their queen, for life,” Channing explained. “The empress is only for three years — but they made me their queen.”

I didn’t have the nerve to ask where Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand fit into this hierarchy for fear I’d stir up tension and incite a coup. But Channing is more concerned with her current cause, the Carol Channing and Harry Kullijian Foundation for the Arts, which seeks to preserve arts education to keep kids in school.

“This is a crisis now in our country,” Channing lamented. “Not everybody gets it.”

Luckily, she laid it out for me: “Each of us sees the world differently. All the artist does is recreate what was already created, but as they see it. And once you start expressing how you see the world, it opens up the brain.”

And you were expecting “Raspberries!”  

HELP IS ON THE WAY XVI: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

Sun/15, 7:30 p.m., $75

Herbst Theatre

401 Van Ness, SF

(415) 392-4400

www.cityboxoffice.com

 

Our Weekly Picks: August 11-17, 2010

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WEDNESDAY 11

MUSIC

Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista

Anyone who’s witnessed Carla Bozulich live knows the former Geraldine Fibbers frontperson is a true force of nature, bravely following her muse into the flatlands of Texas, onto arena-sized stages, or to the ear-scorching reaches of experimental music. For the past month, the Bay Area has been home to the artistically restless Bozulich, who says she never stays anywhere for very long. Still, this is her refuge as she writes her fourth album with Evangelista for the respected Constellation imprint — recording once again with players in Godspeed You! Black Emperor — before she heads out again. This fall, she’ll be directing and performing at a massive multiday installation-performance in Krems, Austria. Godspeed you, Ms. Bozulich, who hopes to “shake things up a bit” at her favorite old haunt, Cafe Du Nord, with guests Ava Mendoza on guitar and John Eichenseer on viola. (Kimberly Chun)

With Common Eider, King Eider

9:30 p.m., $14

Café Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

EVENT

Henry Lee

Once a prolific Chronicler of one of the biggest media snafus in recent Bay Area memory, Henry Lee adapted and expanded his coverage of the Hans Reiser murder case for his true crime book Presumed Dead. What elevates it beyond a sensationalist paperback is Lee’s cogent reportage and willingness to think more about the unthinkable (spousicide, for one) than most would ever dare. He starts with the life of murder victim Nina Sharanova and weaves his way into the nitty-gritty of the case. Even before this summer’s publication, Lee proved himself a stalwart for local journalism — and for all the other strong stomachs out there delivering cold, hard truths. (Ryan Lattanzio)

7 p.m., free

Books, Inc.

1760 Fourth St., Berk.

(510) 525-7777

www.booksinc.net

 

THURSDAY 12

EVENT

 

“Infinite City: Right Wing of the Dove”

The release of Rebecca Solnit’s Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas — a book that digs through the dense and dirty histories, cultures, and sites of the Bay Area with help from cartographers, artists, and writers — is preceded by a series of cartographic “live art” events at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and in the Bay Area at large. Part two of this series is a screening of In Smog and Thunder: The Great War of the Californias (2003), written and art-directed by Sandow Birk. Drawing from his own experience amid the antagonisms of these two cities, Birk satirically envisions a civil war between Los Angeles and SF, and his 100-plus artworks comically probe the ongoing geo-ideo-cultural tension. Afterward, Solnit leads a post-screening discussion on the contradictory relationship between our liberal values and local economy. That SF and LA are cultural foils is well-known. But Solnit points out, friction is being made closer to home. (Spencer Young)

7 p.m., free with museum admission ($9–$18)

SFMOMA

Phyllis Wattis Theater

151 Third St, SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

 

THEATER/DANCE

Rapid Descent Physical Performance Company

Love ain’t easy. Relationships are intense, emotionally draining, and take up too much time. What then (besides cuddling) keeps us coupling up? New Zealand playwright Gary Henderson might have the answer. And thanks to choreographer Megan Finlay and her physical performance company Rapid Descent, you won’t have to go all the way to New Zealand to find out. Finlay brings Henderson’s Skin Tight to San Francisco and reworks the original script to incorporate dance as well as live music by trumpeter Aaron Priskorn. Centering around the enduring love of one couple (played by Beth Deitchman and Nathaniel Justiniano), Skin Tight exposes the visceral complexity of hostility and attachment. (Katie Gaydos)

Through Aug. 28

Thurs.–Sat., 8 p.m., $20–$35

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

www.counterpulse.org

 

ROCK

Dawes

The California Academy of Sciences, a place that puts nature on its proper pedestal, is a great venue for Dawes. The band has appreciation not just for its own musical genealogy, but also for the mysteries of the American landscape. This folk rock quartet, helmed by the Goldsmith brothers, saw Americana anew on the debut album North Hills, undoubtedly a nod to that small-town Louisiana region. The songcraft recalls the harmonic pastures of Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Like a pair of Levis, Dawes’ faded wear-and-tear is contrived — yet it feels genuine, and that’s what counts. A song like “Take Me Out Of The City” gives a microcosmic view of the band’s guitar-plucking, straw-gnawing aesthetic. (Lattanzio)

6 p.m., $12

California Academy of Sciences

55 Music Concourse Dr., SF

(415) 379-8000

www.calacademy.org

 

MUSIC

Reverend Horton Heat

It may be hard to believe, but the rockabilly juggernaut that is the Reverend Horton Heat will be hitting the 25 year mark soon — and as fans of the Texas trio know, the band’s strong suit is its live show. So in fitting fashion, it has decided to celebrate its upcoming milestone by filming a live set in our fair city’s legendary music venue, the Fillmore, for a special release next year. Although the band will be sure to touch on material from its latest album, Laughin’ and Cryin’ With The Reverend Horton Heat, expect Jim Heath, Jimbo Wallace, and Paul Simmons to dig into their back catalog for some oldies and goodies as well. (Sean McCourt)

With Split Lip Rayfield, Hillstomp

9 p.m., $25

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.thefillmore.com

 

FRIDAY 13

EVENT

Terry Zwigoff

On Aug. 10, there were two things of utmost importance you should’ve celebrated: National S’mores Day and the arrival of Terry Zwigoff’s 1995 documentary Crumb on Criterion Collection DVD. Zwigoff, personal hero of many (including myself), will be at Amoeba to sign copies of that new release plus his 1985 film Louie Blue, also slated for Criterion treatment. Blues musicians Frank Fairfield and Blind Boy Paxton will accompany, which fits the bill since Zwigoff has made the blues and its many subgenres a focus of his films. He probably saw some of himself in Seymour, the LP-loving and lovable schlub in Ghost World (2001), just as he understood artist R. Crumb’s grotesque genius. (Lattanzio)

6 p.m., free

Amoeba Music

1855 Haight, SF

(415) 831-1200

www.amoeba.com

 

COMEDY

Bobcat Goldthwait

Although he is perhaps most initially recognizable for his high-pitched, scratchy voice and wacky mannerisms from his appearances in 1980s movies and comedy specials, Bobcat Goldthwait is a man of many talents. From his breakout acting roles in flicks, including the Police Academy series, to his live album Meat Bob, to directing his first film Shakes The Clown in 1991, the versatile performer has had an ever-expanding resume. He even opened for Nirvana on its 1993 U.S. tour. Last year saw the release of his critically acclaimed film World’s Greatest Dad, and his newest project is directing a U.K. musical production based on the Kinks’ Schoolboys in Disgrace album. Be sure to catch the hilarious — and busy — man live on stage while you can. (McCourt)

Through Sat/14

8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m., $20.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

SATURDAY 14

MUSIC

Stone River Boys

Although their recent debut album Love On The Dial was born in the midst of enduring personal tragedies, the Stone River Boys created a collection of inspiring tunes that meld country with a host of other roots rock influences. Featuring guitarist Dave Gonzalez (the Paladins and the Hacienda Brothers) and singer Mike Barfield (the Hollisters), the group came together a couple of years ago while the two were trying to help raise money for friend and fellow musician Chris Gaffney’s cancer treatments. “Gaff” passed away before the benefit tour could begin, but the resulting music is a fitting tribute, carrying the torch and keeping the infectious spirit of their friendship alive. (McCourt)

With Carolyn Wonderland, Mother Truckers

9 p.m., $15

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

SUNDAY 15

MUSIC

Dan Sartain

How did a lip-stachioed rocker from Birmingham, Ala., become the poster child for the garage roots revival? Well, he didn’t really; Jack White already had that crown. But years of paying tribute to the gods of garage and blues eventually landed Sartain on a tour with the White Stripes in 2007 — the subsequent 7-inch release for White’s Third Man label now seems like your textbook well, of course! facepalm moment. The pair’s aesthetics of “garage-a-billy” with a Morricone spaghetti western tinge are invariably complementary. And although it may seem a disservice to all the time Sartain put into his sound before this epic meeting of minds, you have to admit there are worse career maneuvers than being linked to Jack White. (Peter Galvin)

With Leopold and His Fiction, Twinks

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

MUSIC

Rasputina

Fourteen years on from the advent of Rasputina’s cello-goth-lite musical stylings on Thanks for the Ether, the trio is touring behind its latest record Sister Kinderhook. Vocalist-songwriter-cellist Melora Creager is the only remaining original member (in fact, the band’s lineup has even changed since recording the album, with percussionist Catie D’Amica stepping down). Rasputina seems to be maintaining its historical fascination here — the album’s embroidered cover anachronistically purports that it was “wrought by Rasputina circa 1809.” They’re well-matched with supporting act Larkin Grimm, a skilled practitioner of weird folk and one-time member of Dirty Projectors whose riveting life story incorporates being born into a cult, studying at Yale, and spending time in Thailand and Guatemala. (Sam Stander)

With Larkin Grimm

8 p.m., $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

MONDAY 16

EVENT

Alison Gopnik

UC Berkeley psychology and philosophy professor Alison Gopnik is responsible for groundbreaking work exploring the ways young children think and learn. She’ll be reading from her latest book, The Philosophical Baby, just a few blocks from Berkeley campus. A Chronicle bestseller, the book continues to delve into developmental psychology for new insight into some momentous topics (it is, after all, subtitled What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life). Heavy subject matter, to be sure. But since it’s also about babies, you can temper those overwhelmingly deep thoughts with cuteness and chortling. Oh, and an inborn template for the scientific method, apparently. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., free

Pegasus Books Downtown

2349 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 649-1320

www.pegasusbookstore.com

 

TUESDAY 17

EVENT

“Idiolexicon”

It’s changed over the years, for better and for worse, but the Bay Area is still a hospitable place for poets. Just look at the newly opened café-performance space Rancho Parnassus. According to its website, RP’s goal is “to get the abundant untapped talent around Sixth Street working together.” Toward this end, the venue is hosting an installment of the “Idiolexicon” series, with readings from local poets Carrie Hunter, Della Watson, and Jessica Wickens. All three are billed as experimental, but their work also bears more than a hint of high-modernist influence. Watson’s unconventional syntax is reminiscent of Gertrude Stein, while Hunter’s “Kine(sta)sis” evokes Poundian Imagism. On the page, it’s all pretty effective stuff. Come to the reading, and you can decide how it plays live. (Zach Ritter)

7 p.m., free

Rancho Parnassus

132 Sixth St, SF

(415) 503-0700

www.idiolexicon.com 


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Bay Area assemblage

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Bay Area assemblage

arts@sfbg.com

FILM/MUSIC/VISUAL ART Since July 9, local artist David Wilson has programmed the Friday night L@TE shows at the Berkeley Art Museum, in conjunction with “Gatherings,” his installment in the site’s MATRIX series. On Friday the 13th, Wilson concludes his summer contributions to L@TE with presentations by Jamie Stewart, the veritable prince of darkness for Oakland-based indie band Xiu Xiu, and Bay Area film critic Max Goldberg. The program is not only about gatherings in nature but also the assemblage of disparate art forms. Wilson has traversed between media to suss out the kind of aesthetics you can see, and invisible aesthetics that can only be heard. Or as he puts it in an e-mail: “I have been organizing a seasonal series of performances that foster collaborations with different artists and performers and bring people together in unique circumstances.”

Adjacent to Thom Faulder’s BAMscape — a massive orange installation that doubles as sculpture and furniture, beckoning spectators to “sit on it” but also turning them off with its uncomfortable wood seating — Wilson has placed what he calls “a large cove structure of found wood.” It works like an indoor amphitheater. This summer it has become the playing space of musicians such as Grouper and Gamelan Sekar Jaya. Wilson also has framed some works in conjunction with the interactive architecture installed in the gallery. “I’ve been making art about place and experience in place,” he writes. “Often this takes shape as a series of drawings made during explorations through the hills, or as a single drawing of a place.”

When he’s not brooding onstage or exploring childhood trauma in Xiu Xiu, Oakland native Stewart has cultivated a rather self-effacing hobby: bird-watching. “I find myself inexplicably in North Carolina,” he tells me in a phone interview. He’s been living there for about two years. “There are a lot of hunting stores … [with] rows and rows of different animal calls. A lot of these are really horrifying. The hunting bird calls sound like the environment completely exploding.”

I ask Stewart not to be totally forthcoming about his performance, as the element of mystery and the unexpected will be crucial to this event. “It’s an ambient piece,” he says. “I have a really extensive collection of gongs and animal calls and I will be using these together, but with long periods of silence. It’s an attempt to incorporate ideas of 1950s minimalist composition insofar as focusing on the pauses in sound, animal sounds, and a certain amount of physicality.”

In trying to realize the chasm between din and utter silence, Stewart cites composer Rhys Chatham’s Two Gongs (1971) as an inspiration. Of ambient music, Stewart explains, “It ends up being less of a musical experience and more of a psychological and physical experience.”

The aural and physical aspects of Stewart’s contribution — since he will be running from gong to gong — collide with the almost exclusive visual focus of Goldberg’s carefully curated selection of short films, all culled from Canyon Cinema. In the same way that the aural, physical, and visual get cozy and find a crossroads at BAM, the trio of Wilson, Stewart, and Goldberg will gather and treat BAM like a bazaar for the exchange of artistic interests.

Goldberg, a friend of Wilson’s and an admirer of Xiu Xiu (and Guardian contributer), says in an interview that the films he curated are “tuned into different ideas about recording nature. It’s not just observing. You’re in the midst and you encounter it.” For the exhibit, he sought “aesthetically amazing works” because he is “eager to capture the eyes of people who might not know about experimental cinema.”

The six shorts include films by Jeanne Liotta, Len Lye, and avant-garde household name (because there are so many of those!) Stan Brakhage. One of the most stunning works is Ben Russell’s 2007 Black and White Trypps Number Three, which turns a mosh pit into a fugue state with epileptic, chiaroscuro-heavy visuals. “They’re all films with no spoken language, and that was unintended,” Goldberg tells me. He’s curious about BAM-as-theater since it is “not a controlled environment for viewing films.” The projector will be placed right in the audience, in BAMscape’s center.

While Stewart’s performance and Goldberg’s handpicked film selection will not occur at the same time, they will operate in tandem, addressing the aesthetic concerns of place — and its, well, place in nature — while creating a multisensory experience: a disquieting yet provocative full-course feast for the open eyes, ears, and mind.

L@TE: JAMIE STEWART AND FILM PROGRAM BY MAX GOLDBERG

7:30 p.m., $5

Berkeley Art Museum

2625 Durant, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

 

West Coast represents

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West Coast represents

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Dance is inherently sexy. The millions of devoted fans obsessed with shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars certainly think so. But why, when so many people love watching dance, does the general public still place modern dance on an out-of-reach pedestal? Maybe the overly general words “modern dance” scare people away. Whatever the aversion, the question still remains: why is it so difficult to get people to go see something they’ll ultimately love?

ODC’s fourth annual “Summer Sampler,” held July 30-31, proved that ODC/Dance artistic directors and choreographers Brenda Way and KT Nelson not only know how to get people to see dance, they know how to create works that keep people coming back for more. “Summer Sampler” offered pre-performance wine and snacks, an early enough showtime (6:30 p.m.) to allow a Friday and Saturday night out, and most important, an hour of breathtaking dance.

The show opened with the epitome of dance-y dance, Nelson’s Stomp a Waltz (2006). Continually in motion, the dancers ran across the stage, threw each other into the air, and incorporated their entire bodies in fast-paced, rhythmically complex gestures. The ODC dancers possess great athleticism. and Friday night was no exception. Eating up the space around them, they took Nelson’s already daring choreography to the edge. I’ve seen these dancers command the large stage at Yerba Buena’s Novellus Theater, but watching them perform in the ODC Dance Commons — a space so intimate I could hear their breath and see their sweat — was an entirely new and exciting experience.

While Nelson’s very technical Stomp a Waltz was visually exhilarating, there was more to the piece than pretty tricks and leaps. A sense of raw emotion underlies Nelson’s abstract choreography. With the eye of an architect and spirit of a musician, she layered movement phrases that paired perfectly with Marcelo Zarvo’s rhythmically driving, highly emotional music.

Following Nelson’s piece, Way’s newest work Waving Not Drowning: (A Guide to Elegance) demonstrated that dance can be as tongue-in-check and cerebral as it is aesthetic. Inspired by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux’s 1963 A Guide to Elegance, the piece used playful humor and inventive movement to articulate the absurdity of gender norms. A commissioned score by Pamela Z looped text from Dariaux’s original guide, snippets of fashion advice, and a list of “important” feminine concerns like “adaptability, age, weddings, and Xmas” to confront everything from femininity and grace to sex and submission. The dancers — moving through doll-like movements, a sexy hip-swaying waltz, sexually-charged duets, and silly facial expressions — owned Way’s playful yet profound choreography with sassy elegance and bold maturity.

Though ODC is known as one of the nation’s top contemporary dance companies, it hasn’t lost sight of the importance of a local dance community. As a state of the art dance facility — housing a dance company, a pre-professional training school, recreational dance classes, a dancers’ clinic open to the public, and a performance space upstairs — the ODC Dance Commons is making dance accessible for Bay Area residents and visitors. A new ODC Theater is set to open at the end of September, making ODC’s 36,000-square-foot, two building campus the largest, most comprehensive dance facility on the West Coast.

Stage listings

David Talbot
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

Don’t Ask New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972; www.nctcsf.org. $24-36. Opens Fri/13, 8pm. Runs Wed-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through Sept. 19. New Conservatory Theatre Center presents the West Coast premiere of Bill Quigley’s play about the affair between a Private and his superior.

Skin Tight CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission; www.counterpulse.org. $20 ($35 for gala opening). Opens Thurs/12, 8pm. Runs Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 28. Rapid Descent Physical Performance Company presents the SF premiere of Gary Henderson’s play.

BAY AREA


ONGOING

Abigail: The Salem Witch Trials Temple SF, 540 Howard; www.templesf.com. $10. Thurs/12, August 19, 26, 9pm. Through August 26. Buzz Productions, with Skycastle Music and Lunar Eclipse Records, presents an original rock opera based on the Salem witch trials.

Agnes the Barbarian EXIT Theatre, 156 Eddy; 289-6766, www.thunderbirdtheatre.com. $20-25. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/14. Most parents get annoyed when their offspring show signs of coarsening, particularly during those awkward teenage years, but not Conan the Barbarian (Jason Harding), oh no. Quite to the contrary, Conan despairs over his teenage daughter’s bookish ways and socialist inclinations, and determined to set her on the path to barbarism—partly out of fatherly pique and partly because his mind is being controlled by his evilly bureaucratic Grand Vizier (Dana Goldberg)—he sends her on a hero’s quest to kill the monstrous Gargranox (Cary Klataske). Clad in the requisite fur-and-chainmail bikini ensemble, young Agnes (Jaime Lee Currier) is aided on her journey by a pair of "Holy Grail"-styled peasants The Bastards (Jason Pienkowski and Mary Bishop), and the banished court magician Shitake (Tavis Kammet) plagued by the dread "curse of exposition". During her unwilling pursuit of her barbarian birthright—Agnes faces off with a 5,000 year-old sorceress, acquires an "enchanted sword", confronts a monster, avoids assassination, and rescues her father’s kingdom from the dread influence of Gygax’ 15-point takeover plan. Penned by Jason Harding, a core-member of the Thunderbirds for 10 years, and author of the ribald pirate farce "Lusty Booty," and directed by 6-year T-bird veteran Shay Casey. (Gluckstern)

*Streetcar Named Desire Boxcar Playhouse, 505 Natoma; 776-1747, www.boxcartheatre.org. $15-25. Wed-Sat, 8pm. Through Sept. 4. It’s no small feat, creating a sultry southern summer circa 1940’s smack-dab in the middle of a typically frosty San Francisco summer circa right here right now, but Boxcar Theatre rises admirably to the challenge. Rebecca Longworth’s creative staging of Tennessee Williams’ "A Streetcar Named Desire" includes musical interludes, ghostly apparitions, and the clattering of a cleverly impersonated streetcar that shakes the walls of Matt McAdon’s simply-detailed tenement flat and the spirits of one Blanche DuBois (Juliet Tanner), while the deliberately-muted lighting (Stephanie Buchner) and period-appropriate sound (Ted Crimy), add the appropriate layers of southern discomfort to the unfolding action. Especially captivating to watch are the performances of supporting characters Stella (Casi Maggio) and Mitch (Brian Jansen), who seem to almost helplessly orbit the hot flame of Stanley Kowalski’s sun (Nick A. Olivero) and the grimly flickering satellite of Blanche’s waning moon. As he does in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," Seth Thygesen stands in for one dearly-departed, in this case Blanche’s old beau, Allan Gray, whose abrupt suicide de-magnetized her moral compass. And in addition to a saucy turn as next-door neighbor Eunice, Linnea George tracks the fractured emotions of the main characters on her mournful violin. (Nicole Gluckstern)

Dead Certain Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa; (866) 811-4111. $12-28. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through Sat/14. Expression Productions presents a psychological thriller by Marcus Lloyd..

Divalicious New Conservatory Theatre Center, 25 Van Ness; 861-8972, www.nctcsf.org. $22-28. Wed-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 2pm. Through August 22. Leanne Borghesi takes on the music of legends ranging from Garland to Midler.

Gilligan’s Island: Live on Stage! The Garage, 975 Howard; (800) 838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com. $15-20. Sun, 8pm. Through August 29. Moore Theatre and SAFEhouse for the Performing Arts brings the TV show to the stage, lovey.

Peter Pan Threesixty Theater, Ferry Park (on Embarcadero across from the Ferry Bldg); www.peterpantheshow.com. $30-125. Tues and Thurs, 7pm; Fri-Sat, 7:30pm (also Sat, 2pm); Wed, 2pm; Sun, 1 and 5pm. Through August 29. JM Barrie’s tale is performed in a specially-built 360-degree CGI theater.

*Posibilidad, or Death of the Worker Dolores Park and other sites; 285-1717, www.sfmt.org. Free. Sat-Sun, 2pm; also Sept 6, 2pm; Sept 17, 8pm. Through Sept 17. It may have been just a coincidence, but it certainly seems auspicious that the San Francisco Mime Troupe, itself collectively run since the 1970’s, would preview their latest show Posibilidad on the United Nations International Day of Cooperatives. The show, which centers around the struggles of the last remaining workers in a hemp clothing factory ("Peaceweavers"), hones in on the ideological divide between business conducted as usual, and the impulse to create a different system. Taking a clip from the Ari Lewis/Naomi Klein documentary The Take, half of the play is set in Argentina, where textile-worker Sophia (Lisa Hori-Garcia) becomes involved in a factory takeover for the first time. Her past experiences help inform her new co-workers’ sitdown strike and takeover of their own factory after they are told it will close by their impossibly fey, new age boss Ernesto (Rotimi Agbabiaka). You don’t need professional co-op experience to find humor in the nascent collective’s endless rounds of meetings, wince at their struggles against capitalistic indoctrination, or cheer the rousing message of "Esta es Nuestra Lucha" passionately sung by Velina Brown, though in another welcome coincidence, the run of Posibilidad also coincides with the National Worker Cooperative conference being held in August, so if you get extra inspired, you can always try to join forces there. (Gluckstern)

Sex Tapes for Seniors Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th; (800) 838-3006. $20-40. Fri-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 2pm. Through August 22. An original musical by Mario Cossa, with a cast of characters between the ages of 52 and 75.

Show and Tell Thick House, 1695 18th St; (800) 838-3006, www.symmetrytheatre.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm; Sun, 5:30 pm. Through August 22. $25. Symmetry Theatre Company presents a play by Anthony Clarvoe.

This Is All I Need NOHspace, 2840 Mariposa; www.mugwumpin.org. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through Sept. 4. $15-20. The kinetic company Mugwumpin presents a new show.

This World Is Good Phoenix Theater, 414 Mason; 913-7272, www.sleepwalkerstheatre.com. Thurs-Sat, 8pm. Through August 28. $18-24. The 1990s are giving way to a millennial moment of anti-climax known as Y2K, but the anxiety and dread are real, and the bloodiest century in human history looks poised to be outdone by the doom-drones of the next. Making at least academic sense of all that angst is Ally (Dina Percia), a brilliant young Latina writing her doctoral dissertation on Grunge and its landscape of youth alienation. Her best friend and occasional lover is a smitten young English prof (Damian Lanahan-Kalish), a dork with a degree and the pet name Scrotum Face. But as she delves into the world of ideas, Ally loses track of her family: single mother Emmy (Tessa Koning-Martinez) and, more tragically, talented but emotionally tortured younger brother Sam (Shoresh Alaudini), whose battered mind and compassionate heart craft a graphic story around a new "super hero" with no costume, no parallel identity, and indeed no special powers. When her family collapses, Ally reassembles the pieces from a new vantage, outside the ivory tower, where she makes art from a sort of crystalline "ordinariness" that complements her brother’s all-too-ordinary super hero. This World Is Good is the opening gambit in a new trilogy by local playwright J.C. Lee called This World and After, all being presented by Sleepwalkers Theatre this season. Artistic director Tore Ingersoll-Thorp helms a competently acted production, which helps lend Lee’s ambitious scope its tangible human proportions, though in truth the characters do not always feel fully drawn. There’s a fine monologue from Sam, both chilling and exhilarating, but also a proclivity throughout for awkwardly poetical speeches over dialogue. Still, there’s subtlety and real humor in the best parts, and enough here to want to see more. (Avila)

What Mama Said About Down There Our Little Theater, 287 Ellis; 820-3250, www.theatrebayarea.org. $15-25. Thurs-Sun, 8pm. Through August 28. Writer-performer-activist Sia Amma presents this largely political, a bit clinical, inherently sexual, and utterly unforgettable performance piece.

BAY AREA

Blithe Spirit Live Oak Theatre, 1301 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 649-5999, www.aeofberkely.org. $12-15. Fri-Sat, 8pm; also August 19, 8pm. Through August 21. Actors Ensemble of Berkeley essays the eternal Noel Coward comedy, about a (naturally) Coward-esque writer (Stanley Spenger) who for the purposes of research and any passing amusement it may provide invites over a celebrated medium (an amusingly puffed-up Chris Macomber), only to have her inadvertently summon the ghost of his ex-wife (Erin J. Hoffman), who mischievously begins to drive a wedge between him and his new wife (Shannon Veon Kase). Director Hector Correa’s not-always-fitting casting choices contribute to a drearily perfunctory tone at the outset, which makes the first scenes somewhat painful going. However, Spenger proves admirably dry and restrained in the lead, and things pick up measurably with the arrival of the titular ghost, played with playful, bounding energy and notable grace by Hoffman. (Avila)

*East 14th: True Tales of a Reluctant Player Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston, Berk; www.themarsh.org. $20-50. Dates and times vary. Through Sept 12. Don Reed’s solo play, making its Oakland debut after an acclaimed New York run, is truly a welcome homecoming twice over. (Avila)

*Machiavelli’s The Prince Berkeley City Club, 2315 Durant, Berk; (510) 558-1381, www.centralworks.org. $14-25. Thurs-Sat, 8 p.m.; Sun, 5pm. Through August 22. Set in an intimate salon-space in the Berkeley City Club, this stage adaptation of one of the most famous documents on political power ever written gains a certain conversational quality. In fact, the script, penned by Gary Graves, is really just one long conversation—an imagined encounter between Nicolo Machiavelli and the man he dedicated his treatise to, Lorenzo de Medici II. Machiavelli (Mark Farrell) has been called by de Medici (Cole Alexander Smith) to possibly regain favor in his court after a long banishment. With him he brings a notebook of his musings on gaining and retaining political power, which he bestows on Lorenzo for him to read. As the Duke of Florence, Smith plays his character with the measured dignity and watchful countenance of a career mobster. He protests the extremism of his former teacher’s philosophy of rule even as he is casually seduced by its implications. Farrell’s Machiavelli tries to play his position with calculated Mephistopheles cool. However, he cannot escape the obvious taint of his own failures, and eventually, for all his talk of power, he is revealed to be ultimately powerless, though his ideas remain with de Medici, long after he himself is let go. (Gluckstern)

The Norman Conquests The Ashby Stage, 901 Ashby, Berk; (510) 841-6500, www.shotgunplayers.com. $20-25. Dates and times vary. Through Sept. 5. Shotgun Players presents Alan Ayckbourn’s comic trilogy.

The Pirates of Penzance Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, 500 Castro, Mountain View; 227-4797, www.lamplighters.org. $17-50. Sat/14, 8pm, Sun/15, 2pm. Lamplighters presents Gilbert and Sullivan’s swashbuckling classic.

The Taming of the Shrew Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, 1475 Grand, San Rafael; (415) 499-4488, www.marinshakespeare.org. $20-25. Fri-Sun, 8pm; also Sun, 4pm and 5pm. Through Sept. 26. Marin Theatre Company presents a swashbuckling version of the classic.

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

Charlie Ballard Purple Onion, 140 Columbus; www.brownpapertickets.com. Wed/11, 8:30pm. $10. The gay comedian records a show for DVD at Phyllis Diller’s old stomping grounds.

"Bare Bones Butoh Presents: Showcase 18" Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez; 821-7124. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8pm. A pair of benefit performances for members of the butoh and performance art communities.

"City Solo" Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission; www.cafearts.com. Sun/15, 7pm. $15-20. Solo performances by Coke Nakamoto, Jawad Ali, Enzo Lombard, and Martha Rynberg.

Bobcat Goldthwait Cobb’s Comedy Club, 915 Columbus; 928-4320; www.cobbscomedyclub.com. Fri/13-Sat/14, 8 and 10pm. $20.50. The comedian and director hits town.

BAY AREA
"New Works Festival" Lucie Stern Theatre, 1355 Middlefield, Palo Alto; (650) 463-1960, www.theatreworks.org. Dates and times vary. Through August 22. $15-25 ($75 for festival pass). TheatreWorks presents its ninth annual festival, with Kevin Merritt and Kevin So’s Great Wall, Jeff Hughes’ Red Clay, and readings.

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 11

Anarchists Salon


Join this monthly discussion, sponsored by Bay Area anarchists, aimed at encouraging constructive dialogue and debate about strategies for social transformation. People from diverse anarchist perspectives are welcome to help brainstorm projects and organizing efforts. Proceeds benefit the Oakland 100.

7 p.m., $3–$5 suggested

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

www.myspace.com/station40

Bay Area Timebank

Learn how you can exchange services, save money, and build a stronger community using this new timebank website that allows you to earn one "time dollar" for every hour you spend doing something for another member. Time dollars can then be traded for something you need, like goods and services. Half the bar tips from this informal luncheon will be donated to the project.

9 p.m., free

Elixir

3200 16th St., SF

www.timebank.sfbace.org

THURSDAY, AUG. 12

"Problema 1070"


Poet and MC Yoshimar Reyes leads a night of creative expression by Bay Area performers, spoken word artists, poets, and artists "reflecting on an Arizona state of mind." The event is intended to heighten awareness and broaden perspective on recently enacted xenophobic laws as well as ongoing attacks on the Latino immigrant communities in Arizona, Utah, and California.

7 p.m., $7 suggested donation

Mission Cultural Center Theater

2868 Mission, SF

(415) 821-1155

Women of Color Theory


Join radical feminists for a discussion from the feminist anthology, This Bridge Called My Back. The event features excerpts from Racism in the Women’s Movement, including writers Judit Moschkovich, Rosario Morales, Audre Lorde, and Doris Davenport. A summer buffet will be available beforehand for $7.50.

7 p.m., free

New Valencia Hall

625 Larkin, SF

(415) 864-1278

SATURDAY, AUG. 14

Conspiracy Tour 2010


This nationwide tour aims to raise awareness for the political activists from Minneapolis who are facing felony charges under the Patriot Act for conspiracy to commit riot and criminal damage during the 2008 Republican National Convention. Featuring performances and presentations. Proceeds benefit the RNC 8 legal defense fund.

7 p.m., donations encouraged

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

www. conspiracytour.wordpress.com

Defend Social Security


Join the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) and the San Francisco Central Labor Council to celebrate and defend Social Security, on it’s 75th anniversary. The protest aims to raise awareness for the negative impacts that cuts to Social Security programs will have on seniors, people with disabilities, kids, and low-income families.

11 a.m., free

New Federal Building Plaza

Mission at Seventh, SF

(415) 215-7575

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Viva La Vanguardia!

Sue Vaughan
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Viva La Vanguardia!

The folks behind San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater have a lot to celebrate after ten years, so they are. The tenth anniversary of the company recently voted Best Theater in SFBG’s Best of the Bay readers poll is being marked by a year’s worth of special programs, all culminating in a season-opening party they’re calling “10-10-10 Tempest!” on October 10. But first, this Sat/7, the theater founded by Rob Melrose and Paige Rogers continues to advance its experimental mission with a rare (and free!) program of staged excerpts from new work by Latino and Latina playwrights called “Vanguardia.”

This is the first time Cutting Ball has featured the work of living Latino playwrights (they promise it won’t be the last either) and the evening will feature some of the country’s most vital voices — meaning both alive and ass-kicking: Kristoffer Diaz (author of Pulitzer-finalist The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity), Marisela Treviño Orta, Octavio Solis, Caridad Svich, Enrique Urueta (of the recent Impact Theatre hit Learn to Be Latina), and Karen Zacarías.
Cutting Ball is matching the lineup with top-notch directing and acting talent too. Take, for example, fucking vigwan by Kristoffer Diaz, which will be helmed by Campo Santo cofounder Sean San José. The snarky warning on the company’s website only whets the appetite:

“There are a lot of horrible people in the world. fucking vigwan is a horrible play about some of those horrible people. Warning: play contains sex, drugs, police brutality, horrendously (and stupidly) foul language, necrophilia, neo-colonialism, and some approximation of true love. This play should probably not be seen by anyone.”

Capped by an after-party featuring a DJ and (por supuesto) tequila shots, Vanguardia promises to be a high-spirited celebration all around. You can read more about the lineup and other important details at http://cuttingball.com/10th-anniversary.

Sat/7, 8 p.m. (pre-show soiree at 6 p.m.), free (donations accepted)

Cutting Ball Theater

In residence at the Exit on Taylor, 277 Taylor, SF

http://cuttingball. com

Two views:Joanna Newsom at the Fox, 8/2/10

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By Amber Schadewald and Sam Stander

TAKE ONE “Have you seen her before?” a spirited woman asked a random couple in the front row at Oakland’s Fox theater Monday night, just before the lights began to dim. “She’s a fucking angel.” And it’s hard to disagree. California’s own folk-harp-composing-wonder Joanna Newsom is a beautiful, beautiful being who produced a perfectly impressive evening with song after long song of feather-light melodies. 

The show was lined with songs new and old, but consisted primarily of those from her February release, Have One On Me [Drag City, 2010]. Her fingers danced like tiny forest fairies across the towering collection of strings, creating surreal melodies that otherwise only exist in dream sequences and lands of happily ever after. Newsom’s whole face smiled as she played and I especially enjoyed watching her bright red lips as they took on various shapes; from large o’s that created airy open vowels to horizontal concoctions that produced Newsom’s classic, fluttering sounds. Her “new” voice, or what has developed after nodules were removed from her vocal chords last year, is gorgeous and full, yet hasn’t lost all the unique characteristics fans adore and non-fans despise. 

The evening’s mini-orchestra was comprised of local musicians, hailing from Oakland and Alameda. Together they delivered flute melodies, trombone solos, tender violins, banjo, electric guitar and all kinds of funky lil’ sounds to fulfill Newsom’s intricate compositions. Closing my eyes, I saw all kinds of stereotypical soothing images: dolphins clearing the surf, dew drops on roses, whiskers on kittens….well, to say the least, I left the Fox feeling so content, you could’ve wrapped me up with a bow.

Angel? I’d say Ms. Newsom is more of a real-life Cinderella, hypnotizing all the forest critters with her organic harp and piano sounds, calling them to her like a pied-piper, but instead of making them clean her room, she puts them all into a deep, satisfying slumber. Ahhhhh. (Schadewald)

TAKE TWO Remember when Joanna Newsom was this weird dark-horse harp wunderkind with a challenging (some would say grating, others might say revelatory) singing style? That was eight years ago, believe it or not, and by most accounts the 28-year-old singer songwriter has since outrun the shadow of her perceived fey persona to establish herself as a formidable force in modern popular music. Her prodigious skill (which opener Robin Pecknold compared, oddly, to Einstein) was on display Monday 8/2 at Oakland’s Fox Theater, where she took the stage with a five-piece backing band and played a set featuring material from all three of her LPs.

The band set-up is necessary to convey the complexity of her more recent compositions, including bangers like “Emily,” the epic opening track from 2006’s Ys [Drag City], originally arranged by Van Dyke Parks but reduced for this group by multi-instrumentalist Ryan Francesconi. Not so surprisingly, however, the most powerful sonic moments emanated from Newsom’s harp and voicebox. Sometimes, she reaches a kind of ecstatic energy where she is shout-singing some of her lyrics, hitting the odd notes that were more characteristic of her singing voice prior to her development of vocal cord nodules in 2009.

The other musicians provided texture throughout, but on certain numbers, the talented players especially stood out. Andrew Strain’s mournful trombone on “You and Me, Bess” complemented Newsom’s playing beautifully, while the Celtic-y fiddle from Mirabai Peart and Emily Packard added lushness to “Kingfisher.” Have One on Me highlight “Good Intentions Paving Company” was accompanied by “some Pecknolds and some Newsoms” who came out on stage and appeared to be tapping rhythm sticks or drum sticks together.

Newsom is a virtuoso harp player, but in keeping with the general diversification of her music on Ys and this year’s Have One on Me, she spent a lot of the show at the piano, switching off instruments roughly every other song. Her performance of “Inflammatory Writ,” which already features piano in its recorded form on The Milk-eyed Mender [Drag City, 2004], featured a country-inflected arrangement that may very well improve upon the classic album version. Other songs that benefited from live performance were Have One on Me opener “Easy,” on which the whole band just sounded smashingly good, and older track “Peach Plum Pear,” which closed the set before the encore. It’s a testament to Newsom’s development that her wailing intensity at the end of that song now far outstrips the force of the overdubbed choruses on the recording. Still one of her most strikingly beautiful compositions, both musically and lyrically, the track as performed Monday sounded like the closing song to a melancholy romantic film.

In contrast to the quasi-refined aesthetic of much of her music, Newsom brought Pecknold onstage for an encore of “Picture,” the boozy Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow (or Allison Moorer) duet. Perhaps those anticipating a collaboration on “On a Good Day,” a Newsom track that Pecknold covers, might have been disappointed, but the change in tone was both hilarious and well-executed. The auxiliary Pecknolds and Newsoms returned to the stage to snap in time and dance across the stage, before the close of the show was met with a second standing ovation.

Newsom’s novel-length songs might seem a tight fit for a riveting live show, but especially when juxtaposed with Pecknold’s lovely-sounding but formless songs in the opening act, the brilliant structure of her pieces kept the concert hurtling forward. If you’re the sort to dismiss Newsom’s harp-driven stylings as something quaint or merely trendy, seeing her live might persuade you otherwise, since this harpist is as exhilarating as any more conventional rocker or folkie you’ll encounter onstage anytime soon. (Stander)

 

Our Weekly Picks: August 4-10, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 4

MUSIC

Blondie

Emerging from the early punk and new wave scenes of New York City in the mid-1970s, Blondie incorporated a variety of musical styles into its overall sound, helping to set itself apart from its contemporaries and creating a following that perseveres today. It’s hard to believe that firebrand singer Deborah Harry is now 65, but she, along with founding members Chris Stein and Clem Burke, continues to powerfully rollick through the band’s impressive back catalog of favorites such as “Call Me,” “Heart of Glass,” “Atomic,” and its cover of The Paragons’ “The Tide Is High.” With Gorvette (featuring Nikki Corvette alongside Amy Gore of the Gore Gore Girls). (Sean McCourt)

With Gorvette

8 p.m., $55

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.thefillmore.com

 

COMEDY

Tim Lee

There are many career paths available to someone with an advanced degree in biology, but standup comedy usually isn’t one of them. That explains the immediate appeal of Tim Lee, a PhD from UC Davis who’s made his name mining the rich comedic veins of fossil records and molecular geometry. This is actually way better than it sounds — think of the guy as your witty high school science teacher writ large. His use of PowerPoint slides makes him a kind of Demetri Martin for the un-stoned. But what ultimately sets Lee apart is his undeniably charming wonkiness. Sure, you’ve heard a million Larry King jokes, but have you heard one that manages to work in the Cambrian explosion? (Zach Ritter)

8 p.m., $20

Punch Line Comedy Club

444 Battery, SF

(415) 397-7573

www.punchlinecomedyclub.com

 

THURSDAY 5


DANCE/THEATER

CounterPULSE artists-in-residence

What is feminine? Answering such a broad and loaded question undoubtedly generates some anxiety. Not so for CounterPULSE’s summer artists-in-residence, Laura Arrington and Jesse Hewit. Merging dance and theater, these two emerging choreographers aren’t afraid to dive head-first into notions of sex, gender, and authenticity. Their shared showcase at CounterPULSE (a nonprofit community performance space) features Arrington’s latest piece, Hot Wings — which centers around four women in a cardboard castle — and Hewit’s newest creation, Tell Them That You Saw Me, a work with everything from lipstick and large tanks of water to sacred hymns and sex stories. (Katie Gaydos)

Thurs/5-Sat/7, 8 p.m.; Sun/8, 3 p.m., $15–$20

CounterPULSE

1310 Mission, SF

(415) 626-2060

http://counterpulse.org

 

THEATER

Sex Tapes for Seniors

If you have a comfortable relationship founded on bridging the generational gap, Sex Tapes For Seniors is a show you can see with your grandparents. They can relate to, or at least chuckle at, the plight of old folks clinging to their libidos before slipping into senility, and you can appreciate it because this is your future. Yet as Mario Cossa –– playwright, director, and choreographer –– fills your imagination, you might realize you don’t want to be sitting with grandma and grandpa after all. Upon retiring, a group of seniors starts making their own instructional sex tapes and thus, the locals get all verklempt. In the words of the late TV series Party Down, this musical is “seniorlicious!” (Lattanzio)

Through Aug. 22

Previews tonight, 8 p.m.

Runs Fri.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun, 2 p.m., $20–$40

Victoria Theater

2961 16th St, SF

(415) 863-7576

www.stfsproductions.com

 

EVENT

“Exploratorium After Dark: Nomadic Communities”

As thousands of Bay Area residents prepare for their annual pilgrimage to the Black Rock Desert for Burning Man, the monthly Exploratorium After Dark series takes on the topic of nomadic communities. “While true nomads are rare in industrialized countries, hybrids of whimsical and economically inventive itinerancies are evolving here in the Bay Area,” notes the program. Burning Man board member and chief city builder Harley Dubois will discuss the evolution of Black Rock City while attendees have the chance to nosh on one of the blue plate specials at the mobile Dust City Diner, a project developed by Burning Man artists that brings the ’40s-style diner experience to the most random spots. Exploratorium biologist Karen Kalumuck will also talk about nomads from the animal world and how they’ve come to live and thrive in the Bay Area, with interactive exhibits. (Steven T. Jones)

6–10 p.m., $15

Exploratorium

3601 Lyon, SF

(415) 561-0360

www.exploratorium.edu

 

FRIDAY 6

 

THEATER

The Norman Conquests

The Shotgun Players invade the Ashby Stage with British playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests, a triptych of farce, lunacy, and suburban malaise. The Conquests feature three freestanding yet complementary plays set in separate rooms of a house revolving around the same characters: Table Manners happens in the dining room, Living Together in the living room, and finally Round and Round the Garden in the … well, you get it. In 2009, a revival garnered one Tony and five nominations. A three-play package affords you many chances to catch each, but on Aug. 29 and Sept. 5, you can see them all in one marathon. (Lattanzio)

Through Sept. 5

Performance times vary, $20–$25 (three-play package, $50)

Ashby Stage

1901 Ashby, Berk.

(510) 841-6500

www.shotgunplayers.org

 

VISUAL ART

“Gangsters, Guns, and Floozies”

The cinematic microverse populated by shamuses and femmes fatales is fodder for plenty of critical writing as well as contemporary neo-noir film, but a gallery of visual art inspired by the form stands to capture the shadows from a different angle. Nicole Ferrara’s works depict harsh gray moments in time, with the titular floozies, guns, and gangsters as primary subjects. The immediacy of the faces on Ferrara’s characters is enough to convey the continued relevance of this decades-old aesthetic. Whether painted or caught on film, the desperate acts of desperate people are riveting and revealing. Ferrara also paints B-movie inspired art, apparently drawing inspiration from the alternate visual reality presented in such films. (Sam Stander)

Through Aug. 31

Reception 6 p.m., free

Hive Gallery

301 Jefferson, Oakl.

www.hivestudios.org/hive_gallery.html

 

VISUAL ART

“Por Skunkey”

Big Umbrella Studios is a cooperative gallery and a community of artists, and with them comes DIY-chic culture to the Divisadero Corridor. “Por Skunkey” brings together the artists-in-residence –– including the abstract, gestural paintings of Umbrella co-owner Chad Kipfer –– along with a few guests to pay tribute to Skunkey, also known as canine-in-residence, also known as Mama Skunk. And if you’d like some oil spill on the side of your oil painting, then under the Umbrella you’ll find artist responses to this summer’s BP disaster. Here’s hoping Skunkey herself shows up, so be nice and pet the pooch. When you’re good to Mama, Mama’s good to you. (Lattanzio)

Through Aug. 31

7 p.m., free

Big Umbrella Gallery

906 1/2 Divisadero, SF

(415) 359-9211

www.bigumbrellastudios.com

 

SATURDAY 7

 

MUSIC/PERFORMANCE

Slammin’ All-Body Band

Clap, snap, stomp, slap, step, tap. Try it and you’ll see it’s easy to make sound with your body. Making music though, proves far more difficult. Keith Terry — a trained percussionist and drummer for the original Jazz Tap Ensemble — has mastered what he terms body music. He’s been clapping and stomping his way through awe-inspiring kinetic soundtracks for more than 30 years. In 2008 he founded the International Body Music Festival out of his nonprofit Oakland arts organization, Crosspulse. This benefit show with Slammin’ All-Body Band — plus guest dancers and renowned hambone artist Derique McGee — highlights the artists before they head off to the Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors Festival. Proceeds help fund the group’s NYC debut. (Gaydos)

8 p.m., $25–$100

La Peña Cultural Center

3105 Shattuck, Berk.

(510) 849-2568

www.crosspulse.com

 

FILM/PERFORMANCE

“Night of 1,000 Showgirls“

Can you believe it’s been 15 years since Showgirls was first released? The crowning achievement in a directing career that also included 1997’s Starship Troopers, 1992’s Basic Instinct, 1990’s Total Recall, and 1987’s RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s trashiest, most glorious film is, by extension, probably the trashiest, most glorious film of all time. Peaches Christ (now a filmmaker in her own right, thanks to alter ego Joshua Grannell’s All About Evil) hosts “Night of 1,000 Showgirls,” maybe the biggest tribute the tit-tastic classic has ever enjoyed. In addition to a Goddess–themed preshow, there’ll be a contest for Nomi Malone look-alikes — don’t forget the nails! And don’t eat all the chips … or the doggie chow. (Cheryl Eddy)

8 p.m., $18

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.peacheschrist.com

 

SUNDAY 8

DANCE

San Francisco Ballet

An afternoon at the ballet doesn’t come cheap. Rarely ever, free. But thanks to the annual performing series Stern Grove Festival, park-goers can see one of the nation’s top ballet companies, San Francisco Ballet, for a grand total of zero dollars. In its one and only Bay Area summer appearance, SFB performs Christopher Wheeldon’s romantic pas de deux, After the Rain; Mark Morris’ playful ensemble piece, Sandpaper Ballet; the classic pas de deux from act three of Petipa’s Don Quixote; and the neoclassical work Prism by SFB artistic director Helgi Tomasson. So skip out on Dolores Park for one Sunday this summer, trade in your tall can for a bottle of wine, and head to Stern Grove for a tutu-filled midsummer afternoon. (Gaydos)

2 p.m., free

Sigmund Stern Grove

19th Ave. and Sloat, SF

www.sterngrove.org

 

MONDAY 9

 

EVENT

“The Evolving Landscape of Local Journalism”

In the face of the ever more hectic state of print journalism, as exemplified by the recent strife at the San Francisco Chronicle and the disappearance of other local publications, new modes of reporting are cropping up to fill the need for engaged investigative coverage. Tonight at the Booksmith, Lisa Frazier from the recently opened Bay Citizen, SF Public Press’s Michael Stoll, and Mission Local’s Lydia Chavez discuss the future of local journalism as a significant alternative to our standard methods of news delivery and consumption. If these three aren’t enough San Francisco journalistic players for you, the panel discussion will be moderated by Christin Evans, co-owner of the Booksmith and a contributor to the Huffington Post. (Stander)

7:30 p.m., free

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

 

TUESDAY 10

MUSIC

Weird Al Yankovic

Must we seek to encapsulate Weird Al Yankovic in 130 words or less? Some would call this treason against the United States of Awesome. Yankovic has been marshaling the ludricrousness of pop culture music into parodies no less farcical since 1979 — and his campaign (surprise!) continues to this day. Certainly, “Eat It,” “I Love Rocky Road,” and “Amish Paradise” — the track that incurred the wrath of Coolio at the height of his celebrity powers — were classics seared into our souls like the brand on a cow’s behind. But rest assured of the future’s brightness by his recent offerings, like an ode to that modern day zeitgeist, “Craigslist.” (Caitlin Donohue)

8 p.m., $36-50

Warfield

982 Market, SF

1-800-745-3000

www.thewarfieldtheatre.com 

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