War

Reel pride

Michael Redmond
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Reel pride

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supervisors consider affordable housing half-step

Sasha Cuttler
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Supervisors consider affordable housing half-step

While the Board of Supervisors today considers placing a measure on the fall ballot that would slow market rate housing projects when affordable housing development drops below 30 percent of total production, it is also slated to quietly approve another item showing San Franciscans actually need more than double that amount of housing.

The 30 percent ballot measure by Sup. Jane Kim is covered by the San Francisco Chronicle this morning, an article that includes Chicken Little quotes from developers and their biggest cheerleaders, who fear the sky will fall if the current flood of luxury housing development is slowed even a little bit.

But those fears are unlikely to materialize given that Kim seems to have steadily weakened her measure since its introduction last month, responding to allies who deceptively warn of a “housing civil war.” The measure doesn’t create the moratorium that many affordable housing advocates have called for, simply a bit more paperwork for developers, and even then it exempts projects with less than 25 units and those bigger developers who file applications by the end of this year.

That sort of tepid approach to building the housing that current San Franciscans actually need belies the official city policy of seeking to build more than 60 percent of new housing for those earning 120 percent of the area median income or below, as spelled out in the Housing Element of the city’s General Plan.

Ironically, the board is scheduled to re-adopt the 2009 version of that plan today. Its approval of that plan in June 2011 was challenged in court by neighborhood groups, and in December the court ruled that the city needed to shore up its analysis of alternatives to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act. That work is now done, so the board today will repeal its 2011 action and re-approve the 2009 Housing Element.

The changes weren’t terribly significant — and besides, the city seems to essentially ignore its Housing Element anyway, even though cities and counties are required by state law to complete them and build their fair share of the affordable housing needed in their region. In rare cases, cities and counties can be fined by the state for not doing so, as was the case with Folsom many years ago when it built only market rate housing.

“Plan for the full range of housing needs in the City and County of San Francisco, especially affordable housing,” reads Policy 1.1 of the Housing Element.

Later in the plan, it spells out just how much housing that should be in San Francisco, based on the Regional Housing Needs Assessment done by the Association of Bay Area Governments: “A total of about 18,880 units, or 61 percent of the RHNA target, must be affordable to households making 120 percent of the area media income (AMI) of less.”

So the supervisors probably shouldn’t stretch too far in patting themselves on the back for a loophole-ridden half-step toward meeting its affordable housing obligations, although we’re happy to see at least some progress in the right direction. 

Shaw’s “housing civil war” is really about influence peddling

Sasha Cuttler
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Shaw’s “housing civil war” is really about influence peddling

I’m always wary of the BeyondChron stories by Tenderloin power broker Randy Shaw, who uses the website as a propaganda tool for his interests and those of the politicians who he helped get into office, including Mayor Ed Lee and Sup. Jane Kim, as I wrote in last week’s paper.

Sure, they can be a great way to understand what the Mayor Lee and his business community allies are up to, as Shaw floats his little trial balloons that try to frame the city’s political dynamics in the interests of his allies. And now, he’s got San Francisco (aka Modern Luxury) Magazine amplifying those efforts.

For example, did you know that we’re in the midst of a “housing civil war” in San Francisco? No, me neither. But that’s what Shaw declared this week, a declaration that the folks at downtown-friendly Modern Luxury amplified today by reprinting that story.

The tone of the story is a little more even-handed than usual, given that Shaw is being careful not to hurt his close relationship with Kim. But it’s also clearly a shot across her bow on behalf of Lee and the pro-development crowd that Shaw has cozied up to in recent years.

Kim already engages in a delicate balancing act between the progressive community that helped her get elected (which is increasingly restive about the gentrification and displacement that have been fed by economic policies she supported after winning the race in 2010) and the political establishment surrounding Mayor Lee, whom she regularly lavishes praises upon.

Apparently, it’s a dance that she’s performed pretty well, given her lack of serious challengers as she runs for reelection this year. But Shaw’s piece seems to be a subtle public warning to remember where her political bread is buttered, and to not go too far with her proposal to limit luxury condo development when it exceeds 70 percent of the total housing construction.

As with any legislation, the devil is in the details on this one, and Shaw seems to be trying to have a big say in influencing those details by declaring a “war” without identifying any of its combatants or battlefields. Then again, this piece doesn’t seem intended for a general audience, but for those in the back rooms where Shaw truly exercises his power.   

Anxious art

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Anxious art

arts@sfbg.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MARTIN SCORSESE PRESENTS MASTERPIECES OF POLISH CINEMA

June 14-Aug 21, $5.50-$9.50

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft, Berk

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Stage Listings: June 11-17, 2014

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

THEATER

OPENING

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

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

 

Norman Solomon: Obama escalates his war on journalism

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By Norman Solomon

 (Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based on the book is at www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.)

In a memoir published this year, the CIA’s former top legal officer John Rizzo says that on the last day of 2005 a panicky White House tried to figure out how to prevent the distribution of a book by New York Times reporter James Risen. Officials were upset because Risen’s book, State of War, exposed what — in his words — “may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA.”

The book told of a bungled CIA attempt to set back Iran’s nuclear program in 2000 by supplying the Iranian government with flawed blueprints for nuclear-bomb design. The CIA’s tactic might have actually aided Iranian nuclear development.

When a bootlegged copy of State of War reached the National Security Council, a frantic meeting convened in the Situation Room, according to Rizzo. “As best anyone could tell, the books were printed in bulk and stacked somewhere in warehouses.” The aspiring censors hit a wall. “We arrived at a rueful consensus: game over as far as any realistic possibility to keep the book, and the classified information in it, from getting out.”

But more than eight years later, the Obama White House is seeking a different form of retribution. The people running the current administration don’t want to pulp the book — they want to put its author in jail.

The Obama administration is insisting that Risen name his confidential source — or face imprisonment. Risen says he won’t capitulate.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation calls the government’s effort to force Risen to reveal a source “one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.”

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg says: “The pursuit of Risen is a warning to potential sources that journalists cannot promise them confidentiality for disclosing Executive Branch criminality, recklessness, deception, unconstitutional policies or lying us into war. Without protecting confidentiality, investigative journalism required for accountability and democracy will wither and disappear.”

A recent brief from the Obama administration to the nation’s top court “is unflinchingly hostile to the idea of the Supreme Court creating or finding protections for journalists,” Politico reported. The newspaper added that Risen “might be sent to jail or fined if he refuses to identify his sources or testify about other details of his reporting.”

This threat is truly ominous. As Ellsberg puts it, “We would know less than we do now about government abuses, less than we need to know to hold officials accountable and to influence policy democratically.”

So much is at stake: for whistleblowers, freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. For democracy.

That’s why five organizations — RootsAction.org, The Nation, the Center for Media and Democracy / The Progressive, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and the Freedom of the Press Foundation — have joined together to start a campaign for protecting the confidentiality of journalists’ sources. So far, in May, about 50,000 people have signed a petition telling President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to end legal moves against Risen.

Charging that the administration has launched “an assault on freedom of the press,” the petition tells Obama and Holder: “We urge you in the strongest terms to halt all legal action against Mr. Risen and to safeguard the freedom of journalists to maintain the confidentiality of their sources.”

The online petition — “We Support James Risen Because We Support a Free Press” — includes thousands of personal comments from signers. Here’s a sampling of what they had to say:

“Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are the cornerstones of our democracy. Stop trying to restrict them.”  Jim T., Colorado Springs, Colorado

“Protected sources are essential to a real democracy. Without whistleblowers, there is no truth.”  Jo Ellen K., San Francisco, California

“Enough of the government assault on freedom of the press! Whistleblowers are heroes to the American people.”  Paul D., Keaau, Hawaii

“It seems our government is out of control. The premise of deriving power from the people would appear to be a quaint notion to most within the three branches. Instead they now view us as subjects that must bend to their will rather than the other way around.”  Gary J., Liberty Township, Ohio

“‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.’ — George Orwell”  Todd J., Oxford, Michigan

“As a writer, I support freedom of the press around the world as a vital first step toward regaining control of our compromised democracies.”  Patricia R., Whitehorse, YT, Canada

“You promised an open and transparent administration. Please keep that promise.”  Willard S., Cary, North Carolina

“Without a free press, we really have nothing.”  Robin H., Weehawken, New Jersey

“The Obama administration’s attack on press freedom is an issue of grave concern. Why are we spending billions of dollars going after supposed ‘terrorists’ when the greatest threat to democracy resides right here in Washington, DC.”  Karen D., Detroit, Michigan

“Damn you, Obama! You become more like Nixon daily!”  Leonard H., Manchester, Michigan

“Congratulations, Mr. Risen!”  Marian C., Hollister, California

“The U.S. is becoming an increasingly frightening place to live, more than a little like a police state. President Obama, you have been a huge disappointment. I expected better from you.”  Barbara R., Newport, Rhode Island

“Come on, President Obama… you’re a Constitutional scholar. You know better than this. Knock it off.”  James S., Burbank, California

“There can be no true freedom of the press unless the confidentiality of sources is protected. Without this, no leads, informants or whistleblowers will be motivated to come forward. Reporters should not be imprisoned for doing their job.”  Chris R., North Canton, Ohio

“You took an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,’ freedom of the press!”  Diane S., San Jose, California

“Whatever became of the progressive Obama and the change you promised? Evidently it was a load of campaign bull puckey, making you just another politician who says whatever it takes to get elected. In other words, you and your administration are a complete sham. As for your constitutional scholarship, it would appear to be in the service of undermining the Constitution a la Bush and Cheney.”  Barry E., Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvani

“Without a free press, our republic is paper-mache. Remember John Peter Zenger! We must not shoot the messenger — we must raise the bar for conduct and probity!”  Lance K., Chelsea, Massachusetts

“A free press is the only counterbalance to crony capitalism, corrupt legislators, and a pitifully partisan Supreme Court, that continues to destroy our Constitutional protections.”  Dion B., Cathedral City, California

“I implore you to RESPECT THE FIRST AMENDMENT.”  Glen A., Lacey, Washington

“Did you not learn in grade school that freedom of the press is essential to a free country?”  Joanne D., Colorado Springs, Colorado

“We’ve been down this road before. What amazes me is that we condemn other countries for stifling freedom of the press, then turn around and do the same thing to advance our own purposes. Are we proponents of democracy and a free press or not?”  William M., Whittier, California

“Journalism is a vital component of a democracy, and it is a core function protected by the freedom of expression enshrined in both international and domestic law. You must stop harassing and persecuting journalists and their sources who are providing a vital public service in prying open the activities of governments that are illegitimately concealed from the public. If the public is not informed of state actions executed in their name, they cannot evaluate and render consent to those actions through the vote. This secrecy therefore subverts democracy, and you must stop using police powers to destroy the whistleblowers who enable government accountability to the public.”  Jim S., Gatlinburg, Tennessee

“I support freedom of the press, not the attorney general’s vicious abuse of his position!”  Bettemae J., Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Compelling reporters to reveal their sources just means that sources will stop talking to reporters. That will cripple the free press. If you think that’s not important, please resign immediately.”  Stephen P., Gresham, Oregon

“As an old woman who remembers the lies of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (especially) and the current administration, I do not trust my own government to tell me the truth anymore.  Freedom of the press is my only chance [to] find out what the truth is. Protect reporters’ sources!”  Monica O., Lomita, California

“Without freedom of the press, we might as well kiss democracy goodbye!”  Melvin M., Vashon, Washington

“I am ashamed of this administration, its policies and its Department of Justice — what a travesty of criminal turpitude and mass media complicity. ‘Transparency’ — hah! Cheap campaign rhetoric.”  Mitch L., Los Altos Hills, California

“Walk the walk or stop talking about democracy. Free press is the basis of our constitution.”  Carl D., Manassas, Virginia

“No free press, no democracy!”  James F., Moab, Utah

“If you force the media to reveal its sources, no one will ever come forth with a news story or lead again. I’m sure this is precisely what the politicians and big business want. Then there’d be absolutely no accountability. We need an effective shield law rather than persecuting journalists and news organizations for reporting the news.”  Jim S., Ladera Ranch, California

“Freedom of the Press is the hallmark of a free society. Your administration has done everything in its power to subvert Freedom of the Press by jailing whistleblowers and reporters who uncover wrong doing. This must stop!”  Ed A., Queens, New York

“We have very few real journalists left. Let’s not jail them!”  Karen H., West Grove, Pennsylvania

“As the press goes, so goes citizens’ rights.”  Kathy F., West Bend, Wisconsin

“I have been shocked at how this administration has treated the American people’s right to know, prosecuting reporters, whistleblowers, and others who have had the temerity to cast light into the dark corners of our government. You bring the whole concept of democracy into disrepute and set a bad example for the rest of the world.”  Marjorie P., Montpelier, Vermont

“We need our investigative reporters more now than ever in history. Keep our press free.”  Joan R., Novato, California

“Investigative reporting is becoming too rare in the U.S., and compelling J. Risen to reveal his sources will only make such reporting even rarer. Is this your deliberate intent?”  Elaine L., Elk Grove, California

“I am responding in support of James Risen. Freedom of the press is one of the cornerstones of our democracy and should never be trampled on by government.”  Lois D., San Jacinto, California

“Freedom of the press is more important than some stinking government attempt to find out how bad shenanigans made it into the press. Quit this crap about trying to make a reporter reveal his or her sources. We need good reporting a lot more than lousy stinking politicians trying to shut up the truth.”  Ralph M., Bakerstown, Pennsylvania

“Without a free press tyranny will ensue.”  Bob P., Holland, Pennsylvania

“I thought Mr. Obama was supposed to be a Constitutional lawyer and swore to uphold it. I thought the Attorney General was supposed to also protect the Constitution. It seems you both have abandoned those duties. Prove you hold the Constitution as the authority from which you derive your own and cease this persecution of a reporter who epitomizes one of the crucial things the Constitution stands for — a truly free press.”  Michael S., Tukwila, Washington

“I’ve seen mud more transparent than the Obama admin.”  Paul H., Carlton, Oregon

“Wow, this coming from the Obama administration who supposedly is for open govt. Isn’t it a police state when the govt cracks down on reporters for telling the truth? James Risen is a hero who will go to jail before revealing his source and the fact that you want to throw him in jail is the real crime here.”  Gayle J., Seattle, Washington

“Shocking.”  Peggy K., Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin

“You have way overstepped your authority. I consider myself a moderate, but your aggressive pursuit of journalists and whistleblowers strikes fear in my heart. Your use of intimidation to weaken the press is contributing to the dismantling of our democracy.”  Marcia B., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“Quit trying to silence journalists! This is a Vladimir Putin approach to government. Hope and Change? Get Real!”  Rich W., Grass Valley, California

“Stop destroying our heroes, the courageous whistleblowers and journalists, including Risen and others who should be thanked, not prosecuted! You know damn well that the People want these people honored!”  Nancy G., Palm Desert, California

“Please recognize the need for a journalist to be free of coercion to reveal confidential sources. Bravo to James Risen for having the courage to resist this onerous government intimidation.”  Thomas S., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

“We are already seeing freedom of the press undermined by consolidation of media ownership. The founding fathers believed that we could only keep this republic if we have free press and an informed public. Stop the suppression of information. Free access to information is not an optional ingredient.”  Janelle J., Buffalo, Missouri

“Stop persecuting journalists and whistleblowers. Information is the lifeblood of a democracy.”  William C., Sherman Oaks, California

“Our government has become big brother. Journalists must not be forced to name their sources if we are to know the truth.”  Carolyn S., Los Angeles, California

“A free press is gone if confidential sources are revealed.”  Vincent H., Rutledge, Tennessee

“Frankly, Mr. President, I’m surprised at you, and I have to say, disappointed. This seems like something that happens in totalitarian countries.”  Karen B., Felton, California

“Freedom of the press is already under siege because big business controls so much of the message. The Obama administration must respect James Risen’s right to withhold his source.”  Patricia B., Marco Island, Florida

“Whistleblowers are vital to keeping our democracy from turning into a police state. And a free press is vital to keeping us informed. Drop this case, and uphold the principles of our Constitution.”  Cynthia D., E. Boston, MA

“The press should be free to do its job! How about some of that ‘most transparent administration’ stuff. If an administration has nothing to hide it has nothing to fear.”  Mike H., Terre Haute, Indiana

“James Risen is an investigative reporter of high repute who should not be subjected to state harassment and punishment for upholding his pledge of confidentiality to his sources. These encroachments on our Fourth Estate’s watchdog function as a check on the abuse of power must not stand.”  Barbara K., Santa Fe, New Mexico

“You both have to stop talking out of both sides of your mouth, i.e. lying. We are fighting for freedom of the press. Stop being enemies to us people.”  Judith N., North Bonneville, Washington

“Please don’t trash the Bill of Rights. Protect the freedom and independence of the press. Drop the case against James Risen.”  Andrew M., Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania

“Daniel Ellsberg was right. James Risen is right.”  Leonore J., Toledo, Ohio

“When the light of free press is no more, darkness prevails and evildoers flourish. I know this is what this corrupt government wants but over our dead bodies.”  Felix C., San Antonio, Texas

“What Mr. Risen did in this instance, was not criminal. Rather it was EXACTLY what a free press should do, without fear of reprisal. Stop the strong arm tactics.”  John S., Trumbull, Connecticut

“The investigative work of journalists sheds light on the world and what is happening. The increasing punishment of journalists is pushing our world and news into a scary age of non-information. Safeguard the confidentiality of journalists and their sources.”  Christin B., Barnegat Light, New Jersey

“Stop persecuting journalists and truth tellers.”  Phyllis B., Desert Hot Springs, California

Norman Solomon is executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and co-founder of RootsAction.org. His books include “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.” Information about the documentary based on the book is at www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org.

(The Bruce blog is written and edited by Bruce B. Brugmann, editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the former co-founder and co-publisher with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012.)

James Risen is printing the news and raising hell for a damn good cause in the best jounalistic tradition. He needs our support. B3

Cruise into the weekend (oh yes we did) with new flicks!

Sue Vaughan
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Cruise into the weekend (oh yes we did) with new flicks!

Dudes! The (lucky) 13th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival, aka DocFest to those in the know, is underway now, running through June 19 with all kinds of weird and wonderful docs. Check out Dennis Harvey’s recommendations here. 

From the spangly tentacles of Hollywood, we’ve got Shailene “I Am Not the Poor Man’s Jennifer Lawrence” Woodley in a certified tearjerker, and Tom “Still a Big Enough Star to Avoid Being Cast in an Expendables Flick Just Yet” Cruise fighting aliens (and, surprisingly, his own ego). Plus: indie picks, including the latest from Kelly Reichardt and Lukas Moodysson. Read on for more.

 

Edge of Tomorrow Is it OK to root for Tom Cruise again? (The Oprah thing was almost a decade ago, after all.) The entertaining Edge of Tomorrow, crisply directed by Bourne series vet Doug Liman, takes what’s most irritating about Cruise’s persona (he’s so goddamn earnest) and uses it to great advantage, casting him as military PR guru Cage — repping our armed forces on talk shows amid battles with alien invaders dubbed “Mimics” — whose oiliness masks the fact that he’s terrified of actual combat. When he’s forced to fight by a no-nonsense superior (Brendan Gleeson), he’s gruesomely killed, along with nearly every other human soldier. But wait! Thanks to a particularly close encounter with outer-space pixie dust, he awakens, unharmed, to re-live the day, over and over again (yep, shades of a certain Bill Murray comedy classic). Each “reset” offers Cage a chance to work his way closer to changing the course of the war in humanity’s favor, with key help from a badass (Emily Blunt) whose heroics on the battlefield have earned her the nickname “Full Metal Bitch.” Nothing groundbreaking here — but Edge of Tomorrow manages to make its satisfying plot as important as its 3D explosions, which means it automatically rises above what passes for popcorn fun these days. (1:53) (Cheryl Eddy)

The Fault in Our Stars Shailene Woodley stars in this based-on-a-best-seller romance about two teens who meet at a cancer support group. (2:05)

Night Moves Not to be confused with Arthur Penn’s same-named 1975 Gene Hackman thriller, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film nonetheless is also a memorably quiet, unsettling tale of conspiracy and paranoia. It takes us some time to understand what makes temporary allies of jittery Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Portland, Ore.-style alterna-chick Dena (Dakota Fanning) and genial rural recluse Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), beyond it being a mission of considerable danger and secrecy. When things don’t go exactly as planned, however, the three react very differently to the resulting fallout, becoming possibly greater threats to one another than the police or FBI personnel pursuing them. While still spare by mainstream standard, this is easily Reichardt’s most accessible work, carrying the observational strengths of 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, and 2006’s Old Joy over to a genuinely tense story that actually goes somewhere. (1:52) (Dennis Harvey)

Rigor Mortis Spooky Chinese folklore (hopping vampires) meets J-horror (female ghouls with long black hair) in this film — directed by Juno Mak, and produced by Grudge series helmer Takashi Shimizu — inspired by Hong Kong’s long-running Mr. Vampire comedy-horror movie series. Homage takes the form of casting, with several of Vampire’s key players in attendance, rather than tone, since the supernatural goings-on in Rigor Mortis are more somber than slapstick. Washed-up film star Chin Siu-ho (playing an exaggerated version of himself) moves into a gloomy apartment building stuffed with both living and undead tenants; his own living room was the scene of a horrific crime, and anguished spirits still linger. Neighbors include a frustrated former vampire hunter; a traumatized woman and her white-haired imp of a son; a kindly seamstress who goes full-tilt ruthless in her quest to bring her deceased husband back to life; and an ailing shaman whose spell-casting causes more harm than good. Shot in tones so monochromatic the film sometimes appears black-and-white (with splashes of blood red, natch), Rigor Mortis unfortunately favors CG theatrics over genuine scares. That said, its deadpan, world-weary tone can be amusing, as when one old ghost-chaser exclaims to another, “You’re still messing around with that black magic shit?” (1:45) (Cheryl Eddy)

Test Writer-director Chris Mason Johnson sets his film at a particular moment in the early years of the AIDS epidemic — when the first HIV blood test became publicly available, in 1985 — within a milieu, the world of professional modern dance, that rarely makes an appearance in narrative films. Test’s protagonist, Frankie (Scott Marlowe), is a young understudy in a prestigious San Francisco company, and the camera follows him on daily rounds from a rodent-infested Castro apartment, where he lives with his closeted roommate, to the dance studio, where he marks the steps of the other performers and waits anxiously for an opportunity to get onstage. Larger anxieties are hovering, moving in. We get a rehearsal scene in which a female dancer recoils from her male partner’s embrace, lest his sweat contaminate her; conversations about the virus in changing rooms and at parties; a sexual encounter between Frankie and a stranger, after which he stares at the man as if he might be a mortal enemy; a later, aborted encounter in which the man sits up in bed, appalled and depressed, after Frankie hesitantly proffers a condom, remarking, “They say we should use these…” A neighbor watches Frankie examine himself for skin lesions. Rock Hudson dies. Frankie warily embarks on a friendship with a brash, handsome fellow dancer (Matthew Risch) who offers a counterpoint to his cerebral, watchful reserve. And throughout, the company rehearses and performs, in scenes that beautifully evoke the themes of the film, a quiet, thoughtful study of a person, and a community, trying to reorient and find footing amid a cataclysm. (1:29) Elmwood (director in person Sat/7, 7:15pm show), Presidio (director in person Fri/6, 8:30pm; Sat/7, 3:50pm; and Sun/8, 6:15pm shows). (Lynn Rapoport)

We Are the Best! Fifteen years after Show Me Love, Lukas Moodysson’s sweet tale of two girls in love in small-town Sweden, the writer-director returns to the subject of adorably poignant teen angst. Set in Stockholm in 1982, and adapted from a graphic novel by Moodysson’s wife, Coco Moodysson, We Are the Best! focuses on an even younger cohort: a trio of 13-year-old girls who form a punk band in the interest of fighting the power and irritating the crap out of their enemies. Best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) spend their time enduring the agonies of parental embarrassment and battling with schoolmates over personal aesthetics (blond and perky versus chopped and spiked), nukes, and whether punk’s dead or not. Wreaking vengeance on a group of churlish older boys by snaking their time slot in the local rec center’s practice space, they find themselves equipped with a wealth of fan enthusiasm, but no instruments of their own and scant functional knowledge of the ones available at the rec center. Undaunted, they recruit a reserved Christian classmate named Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), whose objectionable belief system — which they vow to subvert for her own good — is offset by her prodigious musical talents. Anyone who was tormented by the indignities of high school PE class will appreciate the subject matter of the group’s first number (“Hate the Sport”). And while the film has a slightness to it and an unfinished quality, Moodysson’s heartfelt interest in the three girls’ triumphs and trials as both a band and a posse of friends suffuses the story with warmth and humor. (1:42) (Lynn Rapoport)

Rolling along

Michael Redmond
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Rolling along

arts@sfbg.com

THEATER Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s groundbreaking 1927 musical, Show Boat, transformed one of Broadway’s major theatrical forms from a light and episodic operetta-style divertissement into a red-blooded American art form. Wedding spectacular entertainment (its producer was none other than super-showman Florenz Ziegfeld) with a full-fledged drama, Show Boat‘s expanded canvas came nearer the realm of classical opera, as all elements of the production, beginning with the music, orbited tightly around the story — which in addition to humor and hijinx sported complex characters and serious social content.

Since 1927, opera and musical theater have continued to grow closer at various points — most famously in the work of crossover composers like George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein. San Francisco Opera’s co-production of Show Boat, the first time the company has essayed the legendary musical, turns out to be a wonderfully successful case in point: a crowd-pleasing hybrid of musical-theater style, sharply delineated drama, rousing choreography (from Michele Lynch), and full operatic glory (including an appropriately-sized orchestra and chorus). It’s a muscular production with a light step and buoyant spirit that shows off the best in a story that not only affirmed a common humanity among those up and down the ladder of social status, but also registered the injustice and violence of the American racial caste system in tones boldly progressive for the time.

Of course Show Boat, for all its socially and artistically progressive aspects, was still a product of the 1920s. And while it has been revived many times, the dialogue and other details have also undergone revisions to keep pace with social attitudes, conventions, and sensitivities, especially with regard to race. The SF Opera production under Maestro John DeMain follows DeMain and General Director David Gockley’s former collaboration on the historic 1982 revival for the Houston Grand Opera, which restored for the first time since 1927 significant sections of the original dialogue and score. The opera opens on a beautiful riverside quay awash with Technicolor hues (in perhaps indirect homage to the 1951 MGM film version), while the backside of the ship rises from the stage at the War Memorial Opera House like a delicate three-layer cake in the first of set designer Peter J. Davison and lighting designer Mark McCullough’s consistently atmospheric scenic environments.

Based on the 1926 novel by celebrated author and Algonquin wit Edna Ferber (who with frequent collaborator George S. Kaufman brought The Royal Family to Broadway the same week that the musical version of Show Boat set sail), the story spans the 1880s to the 1920s and revolves around the crew and passengers of the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi show boat plying the river’s shoreline inhabitants with melodrama and comic fare. The boat’s operator is the warm-hearted Cap’n Andy Hawks (played by Broadway and local legend Bill Irwin in a memorable SF Opera debut) and his wife, the pants-wearing disciplinarian Parthy Ann (a comically fierce and ultimately redeeming Harriet Harris). Their innocent daughter and the story’s heroine, Magnolia (played with affecting pluck by a radiant Heidi Stober, the fine American soprano), falls for a rakish riverboat gambler named Gaylord Ravenal (baritone Michael Todd Simpson in a suave and graceful performance), whom she weds and follows to Chicago.

Magnolia and Gaylord’s doomed marriage, but enduring romance, makes up the central storyline, while a significant secondary plot involves the downward career of the talented actress and singer Julie La Verne (given a sultry and wrenching interpretation by soprano, and esteemed SF Opera regular, Patricia Racette). In an early scene, Julie’s husband, Steve (Patrick Cummings), fights with his wife’s spurned suitor (James Asher) and the latter takes revenge by tipping off the local sheriff (Kevin Blackton) to the illegality of their marriage under the state’s anti-miscegenation law. In this way we learn that Julie is of mixed-race ancestry. A bickering but loving African American couple among the Cotton Blossom‘s crewmembers, Queenie (the regal soprano Angela Renée Simpson) and Joe (bass Morris Robinson in a robust, beautifully measured performance), are also significant supporting characters. Indeed, the most of the show’s great songs are associated with these secondary characters, not least “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.”

The show itself strikes a knowing stance with respect to narrative, making good fun of the stilted melodramas put on by Cap’n Andy while reveling in the backstage intrigue and the characters’ own double-playing onstage (a situation that nicely serves the woo-pitching in the number “Make Believe”). Even the fight that breaks out on the dock between Steve and Pete at the outset of the play gets co-opted by Cap’n Andy, who in a hasty bit of diplomacy tells the crowd it was just a preview of the night’s entertainment onboard. This covering is also an uncovering, however, since it hints at the complex relationship between the stories onstage and real life in all its messiness.

Of course, what “real life” the musical expresses is still very much idealized as well as stylized. But the SF Opera production proves there’s still a pulse to the 1927 narrative, and it’s as vital as the enduring score with which it’s intimately bound. With panache but also keen sensitivity, the show conveys Ferber’s original emphasis on the shared humanity of rich and poor, white and black, and the compassion a bird’s eye perspective on it all can breed. In Show Boat, absurd melodramas and life’s everyday triumphs and failures play out alongside each other as so many ripples on the surface of a deep and indifferent river — a dark and mysterious universe that, in the image of the show’s great recurring theme, just keeps rollin’ along. *

SHOW BOAT

Through July 2, $24-$379

War Memorial Opera House

301 Van Ness, SF

www.sfopera.com

 

Theater Listings: June 4 – 10, 2014

Michael Redmond
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Stage listings are compiled by Guardian staff. Performance times may change; call venues to confirm. Reviewers are Robert Avila, Rita Felciano, and Nicole Gluckstern. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For complete stage listings, see www.sfbg.com.

THEATER

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Film Listings: June 4 – 10, 2014

Michael Redmond
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Dennis Harvey, Lynn Rapoport, and Sara Maria Vizcarrondo. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock.

DOCFEST

The 13th San Francisco Documentary Film Festival runs June 5-19 at the Brava Theater, 2781 York, SF; Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St, SF; and Oakland School of the Arts Theater, 530 19th St, Oakl. For tickets (most shows $12) and complete schedule, visit www.sfindie.com. For commentary, see “Peculiar Thrills.”

OPENING

Edge of Tomorrow Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in this sci-fi thriller about an alien war being fought by soldiers caught in a seemingly endless time loop. (1:53) Four Star, Presidio.

The Fault in Our Stars Shailene Woodley stars in this based-on-a-best-seller romance about two teens who meet at a cancer support group. (2:05) Marina.

Night Moves Not to be confused with Arthur Penn’s same-named 1975 Gene Hackman thriller, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film nonetheless is also a memorably quiet, unsettling tale of conspiracy and paranoia. It takes us some time to understand what makes temporary allies of jittery Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), Portland, Ore.-style alterna-chick Dena (Dakota Fanning) and genial rural recluse Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), beyond it being a mission of considerable danger and secrecy. When things don’t go exactly as planned, however, the three react very differently to the resulting fallout, becoming possibly greater threats to one another than the police or FBI personnel pursuing them. While still spare by mainstream standard, this is easily Reichardt’s most accessible work, carrying the observational strengths of 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff, 2008’s Wendy and Lucy, and 2006’s Old Joy over to a genuinely tense story that actually goes somewhere. (1:52) Metreon. (Harvey)

Rigor Mortis Spooky Chinese folklore (hopping vampires) meets J-horror (female ghouls with long black hair) in this film — directed by Juno Mak, and produced by Grudge series helmer Takashi Shimizu — inspired by Hong Kong’s long-running Mr. Vampire comedy-horror movie series. Homage takes the form of casting, with several of Vampire‘s key players in attendance, rather than tone, since the supernatural goings-on in Rigor Mortis are more somber than slapstick. Washed-up film star Chin Siu-ho (playing an exaggerated version of himself) moves into a gloomy apartment building stuffed with both living and undead tenants; his own living room was the scene of a horrific crime, and anguished spirits still linger. Neighbors include a frustrated former vampire hunter; a traumatized woman and her white-haired imp of a son; a kindly seamstress who goes full-tilt ruthless in her quest to bring her deceased husband back to life; and an ailing shaman whose spell-casting causes more harm than good. Shot in tones so monochromatic the film sometimes appears black-and-white (with splashes of blood red, natch), Rigor Mortis unfortunately favors CG theatrics over genuine scares. That said, its deadpan, world-weary tone can be amusing, as when one old ghost-chaser exclaims to another, “You’re still messing around with that black magic shit?” (1:45) Metreon. (Eddy)

Test Writer-director Chris Mason Johnson sets his film at a particular moment in the early years of the AIDS epidemic — when the first HIV blood test became publicly available, in 1985 — within a milieu, the world of professional modern dance, that rarely makes an appearance in narrative films. Test‘s protagonist, Frankie (Scott Marlowe), is a young understudy in a prestigious San Francisco company, and the camera follows him on daily rounds from a rodent-infested Castro apartment, where he lives with his closeted roommate, to the dance studio, where he marks the steps of the other performers and waits anxiously for an opportunity to get onstage. Larger anxieties are hovering, moving in. We get a rehearsal scene in which a female dancer recoils from her male partner’s embrace, lest his sweat contaminate her; conversations about the virus in changing rooms and at parties; a sexual encounter between Frankie and a stranger, after which he stares at the man as if he might be a mortal enemy; a later, aborted encounter in which the man sits up in bed, appalled and depressed, after Frankie hesitantly proffers a condom, remarking, “They say we should use these&ldots;” A neighbor watches Frankie examine himself for skin lesions. Rock Hudson dies. Frankie warily embarks on a friendship with a brash, handsome fellow dancer (Matthew Risch) who offers a counterpoint to his cerebral, watchful reserve. And throughout, the company rehearses and performs, in scenes that beautifully evoke the themes of the film, a quiet, thoughtful study of a person, and a community, trying to reorient and find footing amid a cataclysm. (1:29) Elmwood (director in person Sat/7, 7:15pm show), Presidio (director in person Fri/6, 8:30pm; Sat/7, 3:50pm; and Sun/8, 6:15pm shows). (Rapoport)

We Are the Best! Fifteen years after Show Me Love, Lukas Moodysson’s sweet tale of two girls in love in small-town Sweden, the writer-director returns to the subject of adorably poignant teen angst. Set in Stockholm in 1982, and adapted from a graphic novel by Moodysson’s wife, Coco Moodysson, We Are the Best! focuses on an even younger cohort: a trio of 13-year-old girls who form a punk band in the interest of fighting the power and irritating the crap out of their enemies. Best friends Bobo (Mira Barkhammar) and Klara (Mira Grosin) spend their time enduring the agonies of parental embarrassment and battling with schoolmates over personal aesthetics (blond and perky versus chopped and spiked), nukes, and whether punk’s dead or not. Wreaking vengeance on a group of churlish older boys by snaking their time slot in the local rec center’s practice space, they find themselves equipped with a wealth of fan enthusiasm, but no instruments of their own and scant functional knowledge of the ones available at the rec center. Undaunted, they recruit a reserved Christian classmate named Hedvig (Liv LeMoyne), whose objectionable belief system — which they vow to subvert for her own good — is offset by her prodigious musical talents. Anyone who was tormented by the indignities of high school PE class will appreciate the subject matter of the group’s first number (“Hate the Sport”). And while the film has a slightness to it and an unfinished quality, Moodysson’s heartfelt interest in the three girls’ triumphs and trials as both a band and a posse of friends suffuses the story with warmth and humor. (1:42) Embarcadero, Shattuck, Smith Rafael. (Rapoport)

ONGOING

Cold in July Though he’s best-known for his cut-above indie horror flicks (2010’s Stake Land; 2013’s We Are What We Are), Jim Mickle’s most accomplished film to date explores new turf for the writer-director: small-town noir. Cold in July, a thriller ranging across East Texas, circa 1989, is adapted from the novel by Joe R. Lansdale, who — buckle up, cultists — also penned the short story which spawned 2002’s Bubba Ho-Tep. That said, there are no supernatural elements afoot here; all darkness springs entirely from the coal-black hearts beating in its characters. Well, some of its characters, anyway; though Cold in July begins with a killing, the trigger hand is attached to mild-mannered Richard Dane (Dexter‘s Michael C. Hall, rocking a splendid mullet). The masked man he shot was breaking into his home; Richard was just protecting his family, and the crime is breezed over by the police. Unlike Viggo Mortensen’s secret gangster in 2005’s A History of Violence, a film which begins with a similar premise, Richard has zero past aggression to draw on; dude’s got a history of mildness — with a heretoforth untapped curiosity about the wilder side of life awakened by a sudden bloody act. The good guy/bad guy dynamic is twisted, tested, and taken to extremes as the story progresses; it’s the sort of film best viewed without much knowledge of its plot twists, which are numerous and cleverly plotted. Throughout, the film expertly works its 1980s setting as both homage to and embodiment of the era’s gritty thrillers; its synth-heavy score and the casting of Wyatt Russell (son of Kurt) add to the feeling that Cold in July was crafted after much time spent in the church of St. John Carpenter. Amen to that. (1:49) Opera Plaza. (Eddy)

The Dance of Reality His unique vision recently re-introduced to audiences by unmaking-of documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune, cinematic fabulist Alejandro Jodorowsky is back with his first film in a quarter-century. This autobiographical fantasia shows all initial signs of being a welcome yet somewhat redundant retread of his cult-famed early work (1970’s El Topo, 1973’s The Holy Mountain), as Santa Sangre was in 1989. It starts with the filmmaker himself fulminating wisdoms about the spiritual emptiness of a money-centric world, then appearing as guardian angel to his child self (Jeremias Herskovits). Little Alejandro is raised by a bullying, hyper macho father (Brontis Jodorowsky) and warm, indulgent mother (soprano Pamela Flores, singing every line of dialogue) who naturally clash at every turn. Jodorowsky’s stunning eye for bizarre imagery (abetted by DP Jean-Marie Dreujou’s handsome compositions) hasn’t faded, so there are delights to be had even in what fans might consider an over-familiar parade of dwarfs, amputees, anti clerical burlesques (like a dress-up dog beauty contest at church), Chaplinesque circus sentimentality, and other simple if surreal illustrations of society’s eternal victims and overlords. At a certain point, however, the misdeeds of father Jaime force his self-exile. The film’s consequent picaresque allegory of epic suffering toward redemption becomes cheerfully goofy, its symbol-strewn path increasingly funny and sweet rather than burdened by import. A large part of that appeal is due to junior Jodorowsky Brontis, who demonstrates considerable farcical esprit while flashing more full-frontal nudity than Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor combined ever dreamed of obliging. Shot in the family’s native Chile on a purported crowd funded budget of $3 million — could Hollywood provide so much original spectacle for 30 times that amount?—The Dance of Reality finds its 84-year-old maker as frisky as a pony, one that provides an endearingly unpredictable ride. (2:10) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Harvey)

The Grand Seduction Canadian actor-director Don McKellar (1998’s Last Night) remakes 2003 Quebecois comedy Seducing Doctor Lewis, about a depressed community searching for the town doctor they’ll need before a factory will agree to set up shop and bring much-needed jobs to the area. Canada is still the setting here, with the harbor’s name — Tickle Head — telegraphing with zero subtlety that whimsy lies ahead. A series of events involving a Tickle Head-based TSA agent, a bag of cocaine, and a harried young doctor (Taylor Kitsch) trying to avoid jail time signals hope for the hamlet, and de facto town leader Murray (Brendan Gleeson) snaps into action. The seduction of “Dr. Paul,” who agrees to one month of service not knowing the town is desperate to keep him, is part Northern Exposure culture clash, part Jenga-like stack of lies, as the townspeople pretend to love cricket (Paul’s a fanatic) and act like his favorite lamb dish is the specialty at the local café. The wonderfully wry Gleeson is the best thing about this deeply predictable tale, which errs too often on the side of cute (little old ladies at the switchboard listening in on Paul’s phone-sex with his girlfriend!) rather than clever, as when an unsightly structure in the center of town is explained away with a fake “World Heritage House” plaque. Still, the scenery is lovely, and “cute” doesn’t necessarily mean “not entertaining.” (1:52) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

Ida The bomb drops within the first ten minutes: after being gently forced to reconnect with her only living relative before taking her vows, novice nun Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) learns that her name is actually Ida, and that she’s Jewish. Her mother’s sister, Wanda (Agneta Kulesza) — a Communist Party judge haunted by a turbulent past she copes with via heavy drinking, among other vices — also crisply relays that Ida’s parents were killed during the Nazi occupation, and after some hesitation agrees to accompany the sheltered young woman to find out how they died, and where their bodies were buried. Drawing great depth from understated storytelling and gorgeous, black-and-white cinematography, Pawel Pawilowski’s well-crafted drama offers a bleak if realistic (and never melodramatic) look at 1960s Poland, with two polar-opposite characters coming to form a bond as their layers of painful loss rise to the surface. (1:20) Clay. (Eddy)

The Immigrant Ewa (Marion Cotilliard) is an orphaned Polish émigré who’s separated from her sickly sister at Ellis Island in 1921, and scheduled for deportation as an alleged “woman of low morals.” She’s rescued from that by Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix), though he’s not quite the agent of charity he seems — in fact, Ewa doesn’t realize she’s actually been recruited for a prostitution racket he thinly veils as a theatrical troupe. Still, she stays, believing she has no other viable path to freeing her sister from quarantine, she allows her own degradation for money’s sake. This latest collaboration between Phoenix and director-coscenarist James Gray is a handsome period piece that’s done skillfully and tastefully enough to downplay — but not quite hide — the fact that its moral melodrama might as well have been written (as well as set) nearly a century ago. Cotilliard is fine in her best English-language role to date, and Phoenix is compelling as usual; Jeremy Renner is somewhat miscast as a distant-third lead. But whether you find The Immigrant poignant or forced will depend on your tolerance for a script whose every turn is all too predictable. (2:00) Metreon. (Harvey)

Maleficent Fairytale revisionism is all the rage these days, what with the unending power of Disney princesses to latch into little girls everywhere and bring parental units (and their wallets) to their knees. Yet princesses almost seem beside the point in this villain’s-side-of-the-story tale — Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), the queen of the fairies in the magical moors, wronged by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), who saws off her wings in order to win a crown. Accompanied by her shape-shifting minion, crow Diaval (Sam Riley), Maleficent attends the christening of King Stefan’s first-born daughter, Aurora, hot on the heels of three clownish good fairies (Lesley Manville, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple), and delivers a curse that will have this future Sleeping Beauty (Elle Fanning) prick her finger on a spindle and sink into a deathlike coma until her true love’s kiss. Will that critical smooch be delivered  by Prince Bieber, er, Phillip (Brenton Thwaites)? Considering the potential for Disney’s trademark, heart-tugging enchantment to get magically tangled up in girl power, it’s tough to suck up the disappointment in the ooey-gooey, gummy-faced troll-doll aesthetics of the art direction and animation, as well as first-time director Robert Stromberg’s choppy, dashed-through storytelling. Part of the problem is that there’s almost zero threat here, despite its antihero’s devilish presence — is there ever any doubt that a healthy resolution will win out, even at the expense of blood ties? Best to find dangerous pleasures where one can — namely in the vivid Jolie, cheekbones honed to a razor edge, who spits biting remarks at her accursed charge, beneath Joan Crawford-esque eyebrows and horns crying out for club-kid Halloween treatments. (1:37) Marina, Metreon, 1000 Van Ness, Shattuck, Sundance Kabuki, Vogue. (Chun) *

 

Hold ‘Steady’

Leo Herrera
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Hold ‘Steady’

arts@sfbg.com

DANCE Alonzo King’s The Steady Heart (which opened his spring season at YBCA May 21) is among his most dramatic and, thematically, most explicit works. It also just may be one of the finest he has yet created for his 11 Lines Ballet dancers, three of whom — David Harvey, Caroline Rocher, and Meredith Webster — will retire at the end of this season.

In many of King’s pieces, small, individualized sections accumulate into collage-like structures. There is always flow but not necessarily direction. Steady however, has a trajectory. It starts with a duet for Kara Wilkes and Robb Beresford; King closes the work with the whole ensemble evoking a timeless, pulsating, yet ever-changing cosmos. Lama Gyurme’s “The Lama’s Chant: Songs of Awakening” sets the tone for a huge finale with waves of dancers stumbling, falling, rolling, and rising. Webster streaked through them but was eventually absorbed into something larger than herself. With Axel Morgenthaler’s fluidly shifting light design, the dancers moved in and out of our vision with a screen descending on them right before the final curtain. The falling snow in the background, however, was something of a cliché.

Trying to find balance within the body and outside it is a theme that is fundamental to King’s thinking. In Steady it takes the concrete shape of a small, destructive figure (Anthony S. Finley) in a World War I uniform. We only see him twice but his existence, and what he represents, permeates all of Steady.

The sculpturally elaborate opening duet begins with simple touches by two young people, she in a pretty frock, he bare-chested and in jeans. Handholding evolves into an increasingly intricate and unrelenting struggle. Every body part from necks to limbs (Wilkes hangs off his and dips between Beresford’s legs) is brought into action. They reach, grab and shove; she sinks into his arms, he flips her overhead. Yet there is no sense of violence just a feeling of inevitability and, perhaps, a need to reach out as a process of self-definition. They communicated an Edenic innocence until the soldier figure pointed his gun at them.

Steady‘s middle section explodes into something dark and chaotic. With John Oswald’s score building into frightening intensity, the magisterial Courtney Henry with Rocher and Yujin Kim takes command of the stage. They stride, turn, and extend limbs; yet they also curl and embrace the ground. In a final image they call up Rodin’s three “Shades.”

An eloquently expressive solo for Babatunji, performed in silence, then cleared the air, with the dancer sinking, turning, and opening himself to space. A unison walking section felt calm until individuals broke out, most prominently the powerful Michael Montgomery’s whose whipping turns and isolations shook his body into spasms. David Harvey, with Webster, Wilkes and Kim, looked like catastrophe survivors. Bent over they dragged their broken bodies across the stage. Again and again, they forced themselves into upright positions to keep on struggling. At one point Harvey looked like a boxer responding to an unseen opponent’s thrusts and punches.

A second trio’s intent eluded me. The soldier from the opening section re-appeared against a white screen. He elicited a duet for Harvey and Kim in which he offered himself and a rolling stage light as support for the panic-stricken Kim, who never raised her gaze. In the follow-up, a darkly lit duet, Webster — she of the steady heart — repeatedly faced the soldier’s gun but, turning its nozzle away, shoved him into the wings.

Steady‘s dancers, including the three departing ones, shone at the top of their expressive abilities. They were well-supported by the beautifully chosen music, and Morgenthaler’s majestic employment of light and space.

The evening opened with excerpts from three earlier King choreographies: Klang (1996), The Radius of Convergence (2008), and Koto (2002). It was good to see the women in point shoes, a practice that King rarely makes use of these days. The first two works also played with the traditional ballet soloist-corps format. The most intriguing standalone came in Klang; it contrasted frozen unison images with high-energy individual dancing. In the male trio, Beresford’s strutting and pugnacious stances had an almost comic flavor to them, while the women’s slinking kicks and hip poses dripped with old-fashioned coyness.

The male quintet in Radius featured solos for each dancer with Montgomery the outside observer until he jumped into the assembled quartet’s arms. They finally left him flat on his back. Radius segued without a break into a section from Koto. An ensemble piece, it showcased Jeffrey Van Sciver, a tall reed-thin dancer in his second year with Lines. His whiplash turns and long leaps felt like a storm invading a placid world. Unfortunately, Miya Masaoka’s koto music on tape jarred. It sounded tinny and sharp. Besides, I missed seeing her perform live in that huge red Colleen Quen gown of hers.

 

Eternal beauty

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Eternal beauty

arts@sfbg.com

FILM Hollywood in the 1920s was shameless about inventing fictitious back stories for its stars, especially those “exotics” exploited for their allegedly foreign-bred mystery and sexual magnetism. The enormous success of Rudolph Valentino — whose 1921 breakthrough feature The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse opens this year’s San Francisco Silent Film Festival — sparked a particular craze for “Latin lover” types whose true ethnicity was often disguised. (One such heartthrob, Ricardo Cortez, was in fact Jewish New Yorker Jacob Krantz — and when word got out that he was no Spaniard, the studio “confessed” that he was “really” Viennese.)

Yet the era’s leading Latina actress required little such invention, because her biography already sounded like a studio press release. Dolores del Rio was born Maria Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete to a wealthy, well-connected Mexico City family of Spanish ancestry. Convent-educated, she married at age 16 a patron of the arts over twice her age, with whom she honeymooned in Europe for two years. Upon returning home, she attended a wedding at which her beauty caught the eye of Edwin Carewe — a Hollywood producer, director, agent, and manager who in all those capacities soon began making her a star. Her first hit was as the main girl fought over by ever-sparring BFF Marines in World War I comedy-adventure What Price Glory?, a 1926 smash.

Her exquisite three-quarter-moon face, framed by long jet-black hair, then graced a series of romances in which she played Russian peasants, tropical maidens, hot-blooded gypsies, Carmen (of operatic fame), and Ramona (1928) — the latter a gorgeous half-caste in old Spanish California. She’s yearned over by the genteel master of the ranchero (Roland Drew), but prefers virile Indian shepherd Alessandro (Ohioan Warner Baxter, shirtless but wearing plenty of shiny bronzer). This third screen version of a hugely popular 1884 novel was boosted at the box office by an original title song recorded by many (including trilling soprano del Rio herself), and featured in the 1928 film’s synchronized-sound version (which offered sound effects and music but no dialogue).

Ramona was assumed lost for decades until a Czech-market print was discovered recently, its restoration premiering in Los Angeles just two months ago. The 2014 SF Silent Film Festival is full of movies that belie their age in one way or another — yet this hunk of overripe hooey feels a thousand years old. It’s surely the worst film in the festival, what with its mean-crone stepmother (“If you marry without my consent, the jewels will go to the church!”), teetering pileup of melodramatic crises, and particularly howl-worthy happy ending. Nor has del Rio’s heavily gestural performance aged well, with nary a genuine note to be found in an emotional gamut that galumphs from cow-eyed innocence to amnesiac shock. Still, she’s gorgeous. Whether cast as prole or grande dame, her looks were so striking it was natural for del Rio to become a beauty icon, promoting cosmetics and fashion as “the perfect feminine figure” — a title she won in leading movie mag Photoplay’s 1933 poll of industry glamour experts.

Del Rio was very conscious of her image — and of her responsibility representing Mexican culture to the world. Unlike rival Lupe Velez, she preferred projecting a more languorous, refined persona than the stereotypically comic, tantrum-throwing “hot mama” Latina. She disliked skimpy costumes and risqué scenes (though one of her biggest hits would be 1932’s Bird of Paradise, a charming bauble of pure eye-candy in which her island princess and Joel McCrea’s sailor pitch woo wearing as little as possible). She turned down the female lead in 1934’s Viva Villa!, suspecting that film’s take on recent Mexican history would be controversial at home. (Indeed, it was banned there.)

Her public character was invariably elegant and dignified — never mind that sometimes her affairs preceded her divorces. One high-profile lover was 10-years-younger Orson Welles. He took her to Citizen Kane‘s 1941 premiere and starred her in 1943’s spy intrigue Journey Into Fear. But when their relationship flamed out, and Hollywood’s affection too had cooled, del Rio at last returned to Mexico. There, she soon established herself as the local film industry’s leading female star — exclusively playing suffering, virtuous heroines — winning a total of four Ariels (Mexico’s Oscar) and very rarely returning to English-language features. When she did, it was no longer as the hothouse object of desire, but as a sacrificing mother, notably to Elvis in Flaming Star (1960) and to Sal Mineo in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), both times playing Native Americans à la the half-Indian Ramona. Such semi-color blind casting and “proud matriarch” roles provided a logical last act to a career that was honorable and iconic — if seldom quite so impressive in, y’know, the acting department.

Ramona may survive primarily as a somewhat campy cultural artifact, but nearly everything else in this year’s Silent Fest remains outstanding artistically, including 1928 German heartbreaker Under the Lantern, and the same year’s fine British working-class drama Underground. There’s also 1923’s The Sign of Four, an excellent Sherlock Holmes adventure, so long as you can overlook some very dated race and class attitudes; atypical early works by Ozu (1933 gangster saga Dragnet Girl) and Dreyer (sprightly 1920 The Parson’s Widow); a goofy Soviet science fiction (1936’s Cosmic Voyage); mountain climbing documentary The Epic of Everest (1924); plus vehicles for Douglas Fairbanks, Buster Keaton, and pioneering French comedian Max Linder (1921’s Seven Years Bad Luck). *

SAN FRANCISCO SILENT FILM FESTIVAL

Thu/29-Sun/1, most shows $15-20

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

www.silentfilm.org

 

Stage Listings: May 28-June 3, 2014

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

THEATER

OPENING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ONGOING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PERFORMANCE/DANCE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BAY AREA

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

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

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

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

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

 

Artists say vote for Campos

Erica Hanna
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By Sara Jean Yaste



OPINION David Campos stands up for the underdogs. And in this current state of capitalism U$A, we the people need to give power only to leaders who won’t abuse it for personal profit. Foucault once said "society must be defended." Campos defends that society, and was granted a valid power from the people of San Francisco, based on actually helping us and being trusted, not just being a political yes person, like so many other modern politicians seem to be. Most politicians are all too eager to grant favors in exchange for shiny objects.

As some of you may or may now know, Campos is running for the 17th State Assembly District seat, which would enable him to create legislation at the state level. Campos shows that he is a man of the people by creating legislation that increases payouts for folks unjustly displaced by Ellis Act evictions, as well as giving displaced residents priority for affordable housing units as they become available. He champions the underdogs of the art scene by supporting legislation that enables emerging promoters to continue operating, without having to purchase $1 million insurance policies that are currently required of larger concert promoters. Basically, Campos is on the side of ensuring good times may still be had in SF, and that we don’t fall into the culturally disadvantaged realms of whitebread blandness that strangled vitality in suburbia for decades.

Campos is running against Divide Chiu for this seat. Seemingly, both candidates uphold progressive ideals, but in today’s tepid political waters, trying to stay informed often feels more like watching a bloated puppet show with talking heads, rather than participating in a genuine process of civic engagement. The solution? In my humble opinion, in order to really separate the fakers from the real, one must follow the money. Case in point, Campos proves his integrity and commitment to everyday people from all walks of life, in his refusal to accept cash from the financial industry (read: banks). He also has accepted only $82,000 from locally based real estate developers, who have committed to building affordable housing as well as market-rate housing (ex: the old Mission Theater project). Chiu, on the other hand, shows his true colors (they always say "money talks" right??) by accepting $34,000 from the finance industry, and $143,000 from out-of-state real estate developers.

Chiu promotes himself as being someone who can "get things done" in office. But that’s a pandering tired cliché at this point and it’s offensive that someone would insult our intelligence by using such tired rhetoric as a means to gain our trust and confidence. Yet Campos’ background alone (he was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala’s civil war, who arrived speaking no English as a child, then later went on to graduate from Stanford University and later Harvard Law), shows that he is a true underdog who overcame adversity and has the capacity, resolve, and integrity to continue fighting on our behalf (yes, this writer identifies as a non-commodified emerging artist, aka underdog).

Campos represents those who actually pulling themselves up by their boot straps, as the saying goes, in reality. He demonstrates strength of character and values in not accepting funds from shady interests (unlike Chiu) and continues to help the people who truly need it, those who are unjustly displaced and in desperate need of housing in the community that is their long-term home. He supports emerging artists by being in touch with our needs, and crafting legislation that enables us to stay in our homes, and helps the current law become more just (because let’s face it, justice is always ahead of the law; for example, see: slavery being sanctioned in colonial U$A and marriage discrimination in California by Proposition 8).

From one concerned and civilly engaged resident of San Francisco to the next, I urge you to vote for David Campos in the upcoming primary on June 3.

Sara Jean Yaste is a writer, musician, and creative social interventionist living and breathing in San Francisco. Her band, Future Twin, performs May 31 from 3-6pm at a Happy Hour for David Campos at DNA Lounge.

Memorial Day: Remembering the good old days in Rock Rapids, Iowa, circa 1940s to 1950s

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 Bruce B. Brugmann

(Reprinted and updated by popular demand)

When I was growing up in my hometown of Rock Rapids, Iowa, a farming community of 2,800 in the northwest corner of the state, Memorial Day was the official start of summer.

We headed off to YMCA camp at Camp Foster on West Okiboji Lake and Boy Scout camp at Lake Shetek in southwestern Minnesota. The less fortunate were trundled off to Bible School at the Methodist Church.

As I remember it, Memorial Day always seemed to be a glorious sunny day and full of action for Rock Rapids. The high school band in black and white uniform would march down Main Street under the baton of the local high school band teacher (in my day, Jim White.) A parade would feature floats carrying our town’s veterans of the First and Second World wars, young men I knew who suddenly were wearing their old uniforms. And there was for many years a veteran of the Spanish American War named Jess Callahan prominently displayed in a convertible. Lots of flags would be flying and the Rex Strait American Legion Post and Veterans of Foreign Wars would be out in force. We never really knew who Rex Strait was, except that he was said to be the first Rock Rapids boy to die in World War I and the post was named after him.

After the parade, we would make our way to our picture post card cemetery, atop a knoll just south of town overlooking the lush green of the trees and the fields along the lazy Rock River.A local dignitary would give a blazing patriotic speech. A color guard of veterans would move the flags into position and then at the command fire their rifles off toward the river. I remember this was the first time I ever saw a color guard in action, with a sergeant who moved his men with rifles into position with strange “hut, hut, hut” commands.

After the ceremony, everyone would go to the graves of their family and friends and people they knew and look at the flowers that would be sitting in bouquets and little pots by the headstones. The cemetery was and is a beautiful spot and many of us who are natives have parents, friends, and relatives buried here. It is one of the wonderful things that connects us to the town, no matter where we end up.

And so this year I got my annual telephone call from Dorothy Bosch, at the Flower Village florist in Rock Rapids, reminding me about the flowers I always place on Memorial Day  on the graves of my relatives in the Brugmann plot. I always get a kick out of doing business with Flower Village because it once was in the Brugmann Drugstore building on Main Street that had housed our family drug store. (“C.C. Brugmann and Son, where drugs and gold are fairly sold, since 1902.”)  Flower Village  later moved across the street to the building that once housed the Bernstein Department store and is now known as Home-ology.  Dorothy always fills me in on the latest Rock Rapids news, which is particularly important this year because I will be back in Rock Rapids in June for Heritage Days, the annual celebraton for the town and county and the alumni for high school reunions Last year was my 60th reunion of the dream class of 1953, a class of 32 with 16 girls and 16 boys. 

I always ask Dorothy to get the most colorful flowers of the season and she then sees that they are displayed near the headstones in the Brugmann plot a couple of days ahead of Memorial Day. This year, I called Pauline Knobloch to pick up the flowers and put them in her garden.  Pauline and I go back to 1947, when she was a young clerk, just in from Lester, in the store.  I started clerking at age 12  that year, selling stamps and peanuts in the front of the store.  Pauline and I worked together all my school years and she continued on until my dad sold the store in the late 1970s. Pauline at 92 is still going strong, as they say in Rock Rapids.

Ours is an unusual plot, because it holds the graves of my four grandparents, my parents, my aunt and uncle and someday my wife and I. My grandfather C.C.Brugmann and my father C.B.Brugmann spent their entire working lives in Brugmann’s drugstore, which my grandfather started in l902. My father (and my mother Bonnie) came into the store shortly after the depression.
My grandfather A. R. Rice (and his wife Allie) was an eloquent Congregational minister who had parishes throughout Iowa in Waverly, Eldora, Parkersburg,  and Rowan. He retired in Clarion. My aunt Mary was my father’s sister and her husband was her Rock Rapids high school classmate, Clarence Schmidt. He was a veterinarian and a reserve army officer who was called up immediately after Pearl Harbor and ordered to report to Camp Dodge in Des Moines within 48 hours. He did and served in Calcutta, India, as an inspector of meat that was flown over the hump to supply the Chinese forces under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek in Kunming. 

Through the years, Elmer “Shinny” Sheneberger, the police chief when I was in school, would say to me, “Well, Bruce, you and I have to get along. We’ll be spending lots of time together someday.” I never knew what he meant until one day, visiting the Brugmann plot, I noticed that the Sheneberger family plot was next to the Brugmann plot. Every Memorial Day, Shinny took pictures in color of the flowers on the Brugmann and Sheneberger family graves and would send them to me in San Francisco.  I would send on them on to my sister Brenda in Sun City, Arizona, and the families of the three Schmidt boys John in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Conrad and Robert in Worthington, Minnesota. Well, Shinny died three years ago and alas I no longer get his annual batch of pictures. But he was right. We will be together for a long, long time.

Every year the rep from our American Legion Post puts a small American flag on the grave of every person buried in the cemetery who served in the Armed Forces. Chip Berg, who was three years ahead of me in school, performed this chore every year. My uncle gets one. And, Chip assured me, I will get one someday. I earned it, I am happy to report, as an unhappy ROTC soldier for two years at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (1953-55), as a cold war veteran (1958-60), as an advanced infantryman at Ft. Carson, Colorado, as a survivor of two weeks of miserable winter bivouac in the foothills of the Rockies, and as bureau chief of the Korea Bureau of Stars and Stripes (carrying my favorite byline: SP5 Bruce B. Brugmann,  S and S Korea bureau, Yongdongpo, Korea.) I am proud of the flag already. B3, who never forgets how lucky he is to come from the best small town in the country.

P.S.1: As the years went by, I became more curious about how my uncle Schmitty, as he was known, could leave his three young boys and his veterinary practice in nearby Worthington, Minnesota,  and get to Camp  Dodge so fast and serve throughout the entire war. I asked him lots of questions. How, for example, did he handle his veterinary practice? Simple, he said, “my partner just said let’s split our salaries. You give me half of what you make in the Army and I’ll give you half of what I make in veterinary practice.” And that’s what they did and that’s how the veterinary practice kept going throughout the war. Schmitty returned to a healthy practice, retired in the 1960s, and turned it over to his second son Conrad.

P.S.2: Confession: I was not drafted. I enlisted in the federal reserve in the summer of 1958, which amounted to the same thing. Two years of active duty, two years of active reserve, and two years of inactive reserve. I did this maneuver so that I could formally say that I beat Elmer Wohlers. Elmer was the local draft board chief who had spent a little time in World War I, “the big one,” as he would say. The word around town was that he never got out of Camp Dodge in Des Moines but you would never know it by his rhetoric. He had a bit of black humor about his job and we had a running skirmish for years.

Whenever he would see me on the street in Rock Rapids, he would say, ” Bruce, I’m going to get you, I’m going to get you.” And I would reply, “No, no, Elmer, you’ll never get me.”  I think he was particularly annoyed when I escaped his grasp and went off for a year to graduate school at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. I would send him cards through the years, from an ATO  fraternity party at the University of Nebraska, or from my hangout bar in New York City (the West End Bar, across from the Columbia Journalism building.) I would write in effect, but with elegant variations, “Elmer, having a wonderful time. Keep up the good work. Wish you were here.” When I was in town and we would spar on the street,  I would invite Elmer over to the Sportsmen’s Club for a martini, but he always refused, most testily. 

And so I joined the federal reserve and ended up with the initials FR instead of  US on my dog tags that hung around my neck for two years. I was officially FR17507818 and rose from lowly  recruit in the 60th infantry at Ft Carson, Colorado, to the lofty position of  E-5 and bureau chief of the Korea edition of Stars and Stripes bureau. But my big accomplishment was that Elmer didn’t get me. I still feel good about beating Elmer at his own game.

P.S. 3 Here’s how things work in Rock Rapids.  One year, in sending my annual Memorial Day drill in an email note to Rock Rapids alumni of my era,  I recounted the Shinny anecdote and placed the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots in the southeastern corner of the cemetery. I promptly got an email note back from Joanne Schubert Vogel (class of ’49). She wrote that she had sent my note to her brother Dale Schubert in Rock Rapids (class of ’55, who was a halfback when I was a quarterback on the celebrated Rock Rapids Lions football team. Dale called her and said that I had made an error and that the Brugmann and Sheneberger plots were in the southwestern corner of the cemetery, not in the southeast corner. Amazing. He was right and I was wrong. Joanne softened the blow by saying she was sure that this was the first error I had ever made.

(Bruce B. Brugmann, or B3 as he signs his emails and blogs, writes and edits the Bruce Blog on the Guardian website at SFBG.com   He is the editor at large of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the editor and co-founder and co-publisher of the Bay Guardian with his wife Jean Dibble, 1966-2012, now retired. He can be contacted atBruce@sfbg.com [1].)

Source URL: http://www.sfbg.com/bruce/2013/05/26/memorial-day-remembering-good-old-days-rock-rapids-iowa-circa-1940s-1950s

Links:
[1] mailto:Bruce@sfbg.com

Summer fairs and festivals

Michael Redmond
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0

MAY 24-25

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

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

MAY 31

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

MAY 31-JUNE 1

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

JUNE 7

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

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

JUNE 7-8

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

JUNE 7-15

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

JUNE 8

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

JUNE 14-15

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

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

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

JUNE 20-AUG 9

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

JUNE 28-29

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

JUNE 28-SEPT 21

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

JULY 4

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

JULY 4-5

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

JULY 5-6

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

JULY 17-27

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

JULY 19-20

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

JULY 25-27

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

JULY 26-27

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

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

JULY 27

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

AUG 1-3

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

AUG 2-3

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

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

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

AUG 3

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

AUG 16

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

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