Nicole Gluckstern

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye”

Sue Vaughan
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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge on “The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye”

Read Nicole Gluckstern’s interview with documentary filmmaker Marie Losier about her new film, The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, here. Below, extended thoughts from Losier and film subject and musician-performance artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

On serendipity:
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: It was Lady Jaye, when we started to take the whole idea of pandrogeny more seriously and dedicate our lives to it, she immediately said, “We really need to find somebody to just follow us around and film us.” And within a week we’d met Marie. We call it the “of course” factor. “Of course” we met Marie, because we were supposed to meet Marie, and it’s amazing how often that comes up, the “of course” thing. So from then on it wasn’t conscious anymore, it was just that Marie was around whenever she felt there was something to film, or she would say “I have this idea that I would like you to dress as a mermaid and pretend to swim with a house on your back….”

On influence:
Marie Losier: Mike [Kuchar] is the person who taught me how to make films, just to make them. He’s actually the first person I made a film with, ever … the person who taught me how to load a roll of film in my camera. And he’s so clumsy, and everything always falls apart … so I didn’t think twice, like “Oh, ok, if I can make a film that way I don’t have to think too much [about the process], no worry.” And it works. It’s also a joy. Mike and George [Kuchar] were always like, “filmmaking is a hobby, just enjoy it.”


On DIY filmmaking:
ML: It took a long time, [seven years]. I had no budget and I did everything on my own time and budget. No crew, no producer. [I had] this tiny 16mm Bolex with no sound or anything, so it was a pretty archaic way of entering that world, but for me, it became very very beautiful because I was there and I was a part of it, but also, like a ghost who would just record beautiful moments…but was not intruding.

On pandrogeny:
GPO: In the beginning, as you know, it was basically just driven by [my and Lady Jaye’s] insane love for each other, the sense of wanting to literally consume each other and just find away we could somehow blend our bodies together as well as our minds and become a new-formed being whether it was in this dimension or another. But during that we had a lot of dialogues … about the implications and possibilities, and at some point it came back into my mind [something that William S.] Burroughs said to me in 1971: “How do we short-circuit control, and where is control located?”

It came to us that control is a recording, and DNA is a recording, and it terms of the human body and its potential and its ability to mutate and evolve, then where you have to look is DNA. And if you want to change the recording, you cut it up, you deny it its natural flow. And that’s what we realized we were doing, that we were quietly saying we will not let our bodies grow and look the way that DNA expects us to. We will say “we refuse,” and that became a really powerful thought for us … it loosened up our way of seeing things. We both thought, if we can break the pattern of DNA, even in simple ways, perhaps that will give people the breathing space to think about the future. If you can imagine that the body can become basically anything once you remove DNA as a monopoly … or suppressive doctrine … once you take away this idea that the body is sacred and a finished item, which it’s not, in our opinion, far from it, then everything becomes possible.

On the sweet hereafter:
GPO: Myself and [the late] Lady Jaye [are still] involved in pandrogeny, [just] she is now working in the immaterial dimension. The ultimate point for us personally was that when my body is dropped for her to maintain a sense of individual spirit through it so that when it’s my turn to leave this body we can literally find each other and literally become one. There’s lots of things that she noted that are still being manifested. She’s absolutely always around.

On love:
SFBG: One thing I really like about the film are all the domestic scenes, people running around the kitchen and throwing barbecues. Do you have a sense of relief that that side of you is now in the public view, that people can associate you with domestic tranquility?

GPO: Definitely, thank goodness. The only thing that Jaye wanted to achieve was to be remembered as a great love affair, so for all of us involved, the band, our friends, are really thrilled that that’s what happened.

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye opens Fri/9 in Bay Area theaters.

Together forever

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Together forever

arts@sfbg.com

FILM It’s hard to imagine taking on the controversial subject of genre-defying performance artist and musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and finding a hitherto-unexploited angle of approach — but Marie Losier’s delicate filmic collage of an artist as an elder pandrogene is full of whimsy and surprise. Losier’s portraits in film of other counter-culture figures, most notably both Mike and George Kuchar, helped shape her into the ideal candidate to tackle filming P-Orridge and her late, great life partner, Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, over the course of several years, documenting their partnership and their pandrogeny project for posterity.

SFBG There’s a whole backstory about how you two met, that you stepped on Gen’s foot at a party, but how did the relationship develop from there?

Marie Losier It was immediate in the sense that I had seen Genesis reading poetry and songs with Thee Majesty [the night before]. I was kind of shy, and I said, “I really loved what you did,” and she looked at me with her big smile and her gold teeth appeared — and I was like, “Wow, that’s beautiful!” And we just spoke shortly but it was very tender and I felt it was very unusual because of the coincidence of timing, and she said, “You can write to me,” and gave me her card, and I emailed her. That was the beginning, for me, of a great adventure. I had no idea about the pandrogeny project except that I was discovering [Genesis and Jaye’s] resemblance and their love, and that’s when I started filming, without knowing that this would become the main subject.

SFBG How much of the film is your footage?

Losier The only archival footage was this tiny minute of William Burroughs, one minute of Gen in Throbbing Gristle, and this really great footage of Coum Transmission where Gen is really young. Then, the archive of [P- Orridge’s children] Genesse and Caresse singing “Are You Experienced?”, and a little tiny image of Jaye performing when she was much younger in New York City.

SFBG That moment when they are in the alley, dressed up in leather, and Gen has the little Hitler mustache?

Losier Sorry, yes, this is footage that Bruce LaBruce gave me. That was interesting because I would not have staged that, but it showed Jaye in a way that I didn’t have.

SFBG One thing that strikes me is that there’s quite a large chunk in the middle in which Jaye does not appear. I wonder if you had originally intended to interview her more about her past and her art? Losier Yes, but Jaye was a lot more shy, or a lot more fleeting in front of the camera, so I spent more time, in a way with Gen. But even if you don’t see her as much in the film, she’s very present. S/he never dies because even to the end she’s still there, and also you feel her in the atmosphere all the time through the film. But it’s true I had less footage of Jaye, and it was only when s/he passed away that I realized I didn’t have enough to make her own full story, but in a way that also made sense. She was very kind but also kind of wild, more secretive than Gen, so it also corresponded to her personality.

SFBG Were you ever intentionally trying to go for a cut-up feeling or technique while you were filming the film, or trying to shape it?

Losier To be totally honest, it’s really the way I edit. If you see my short films, they are all made this way because they are all shot with non-sync sound, 16mm, three-minute rolls of film … so it’s already a collage. I also always mix between the surreal aspect of tableau vivant, and the construction of daily life. I think with Gen and Jaye I found the symbiosis of the perfect cut-up couple to match how I work, and how I build a story.

Check out Pixel Vision for an extended version of Nicole Gluckstern’s interview with Marie Losier and film subject Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE opens Fri/9 in Bay Area theaters.

The Performant: The Secret to Life, the Universe, and Nothing in Particular

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The Performant: The Secret to Life, the Universe, and Nothing in Particular

“Celestial Observatories for Cyanobacteria” illuminate the knowledge gap at the San Francisco Arts Commission

“The purpose of our lives is to celebrate the grandeur of the cosmos” — William Kotzwinkle, Dr. Rat

At the age of eight, possibly inspired by my first encounter with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wind in the Door, the notion occurred to me that just as individual cells were undetectable (to the naked eye) in the human body, so were individual human beings virtually undetectable on the great organism that is the world, and just as the planet earth was virtually undetectable in the vastness of a single galaxy, that single galaxy was virtually undetectable within the infinite scope of the universe.

As I imagined that individual cells were equally incapable of fully comprehending the individual body or organism that they inhabited, so I became aware that mere specks such as human beings could never hope to comprehend the universe entire. Not really a ground-breaking theory, you understand, but heady conjecture for an eight year-old.

It’s precisely that gap of comprehension between the very large and very small that conceptual artist Jonathon Keats addresses with his “Celestial Observatories for Cyanobacteria,” aka the Microbial Academy of Sciences.

At first glance you might mistake it for the leftovers from a classroom science experiment, a tabletop of uniform petri dishes each filled with clear liquid (“brackish water” the description clarifies). But when you bend over the otherwise unremarkable display, a projection of Hubble telescope imagery shimmers into view, a colorful array of swirling galaxies and sparkling stars, spread out across the patient petri plates, an exotic tapestry.

What you can’t really tell about the contents of the petri dishes just by looking is that each one contains cyanobacteria, oft-referred to as blue-green algae, a photosynthetic bacterium with an ability to withstand almost any environmental extreme. But whisked from the relative comfort of their “homes”, these particular bacteria are being exposed to the grandeur of the cosmos for a reason—so that they might tackle the knotty conundrum that has plagued human scientists for generations—that of a unified theory of everything. “Might it be,” wonders Keats in his artist statement, ”that organisms simpler than us are better able to grasp the simplicity underlying the universe?” If so, the cyanobacteria aren’t telling—not in a language we can comprehend anyhow. But after their higher education is over (presumably when the show closes), the plan is to introduce them back to where they originated, so that they might further educate their bacterial peers in whatever grand hypotheses they might have hit upon. 

Just one exhibit of several at the San Francisco Art Commission’s “Vast and Undetectable” show, a collection of artworks exploring the stated theme in a variety of mediums, Keats’ piece comes closest to identifying the unknowable on both sides of the undetectability spectrum—from the unfathomable expanses of the cosmos, to the infinitesimal recesses of the micro-universe. And though we may never know how their exposure to astronomy will affect the microscopic “students” of Keats’ academy, we can follow their example, however briefly, by pondering the implications of a space race between beings so fundamentally disparate they might never even know that they are in competition.

 

The Performant: Rep flow

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The Performant: Rep flow

Boxcar Theatre gets hardcore with Sam Shepard

Every year it feels like it’ll be impossible for the ever-inventive Boxcar Theatre company to top their last season, and somehow each year they pull it off. After launching an ultra-ambitious repertory program of four Sam Shepard plays, to be performed in two separate locations over the course of the next two-and-a-half months, artistic director Nick A. Olivero — who isn’t just producing the festival, but also directing “Fool For Love,” and co-starring in “True West” — still made time for an internet interview about “Sam Shep in Rep.”


The Performant A couple of years ago you guys presented a three-play repertory program of Tennessee Williams plays. What made you decide to up the ante to four for Shepard?
 
Nick A. Olivero Because I’m insane. People should know that by now…

Performant What is it specifically about those two playwrights that makes them so appealing to be tackled in such a manner?

Olivero They are both amazing writers… Rep is not easy, any actor will tell you that, and you won’t convince an actor to give up four months of their acting life for crummy roles. Williams and Shepard write rich characters that just about every actor is foaming at the mouth to play.

Performant You yourself are alternating the roles of Lee and Austin in “True West” with Brian Trybom. What attracts you about each role? What daunts you?

Olivero Have you ever heard the phrase, “It sounded like a good idea at the time?” This show is exhausting. And invigorating. Lee has this incredible physical journey and is completely spontaneous, it’s fun to play that on stage. Austin’s journey is much more emotional; the descent into madness (and drunkenness)… Although audiences historically tend to love Lee… it is actually Austin who is the tougher role to play. Anyone can go out there and start slapping people around, it takes precision to figure out the mental roller coaster of Austin who loses it all. It’s precisely that which attracts and scares the hell out of us at the same time.

Performant Originally you had planned to stage “Fool for Love” in an actual motel, but are now working on building space for it in your Boxcar Studio space. What were some of the complications in trying to arrange for an offsite presentation?

Olivero I would still love to do it in a motel room, but with everything going on in this project it became a larger headache then it was worth… Plus this new space as been an idea of mine for some time now and it made financial sense to invest that motel rental money into a permanent venue that other groups can benefit from as well.

Performant  Tell me a bit about the staged Sam Shepard reading series. What plays will you be reading and who will be involved?

Olivero We are presenting Icarus’ Mother, Savage Love, Curse of the Starving Class, Suicide in B Flat, Action, 4-H Club, and Cowboy Mouth throughout March at the Studios. We are working with Eileen Tull, Barry Eitel, Ellery Schaar, Mark Mieklejohn, Will Hand, and Ben Randle

Performant Ever think to yourself that life would be so much simpler if you had just gone into Dentistry?

Olivero I have no idea why I do this except there is some stupid part of my brain that says “wake up and go into the theatre and do dumb stuff”… truth be told, when the houses are packed I never give it a second thought …. nowhere else in the world is someone stupid enough to craft a rep experience like this where, as an audience member, you can dig deep into a Contemporary American treasure like Sam Shepard and fully explore the themes and characters he has created. Dentistry has got nothing on a visit like that.

“Sam Shep in Rep”
Through April 26
Boxcar Playhouse and Boxcar Studios
505 Natoma and 125A Hyde, SF.
(415) 967-2227
www.boxcartheatre.org

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The Performant: Strangelove

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“City of Lost Souls” at ATA, and “Awkward Dinner Party” at the EXIT Theatre, subverted the Valentine spirit.

Talk about a hot mess. The florid, fluid, City of Lost Souls (1983), Rosa von Praunheim’s seldom-screened, “transgendered ex-pat food-fight sex-circus musical extravaganza” begins with a motley cast of unapologetic misfits sweeping up a trashed-out Berlin burger joint, the “Hamburger Königin” (Burger Queen). Shimmying on the counter, falling out of her lingerie, punk rock’s first transwoman cult darling, Jayne County, belts out “The Burger Queen Blues” while her fellow wage slaves, Loretta (Lorraine Muthke), Gary (Gary Miller), and Joaquin (Joaquin La Habana) gyrate suggestively across the linoleum until the boss-lady, Angie Stardust (as herself), a regal, “old school” transsexual wrapped in an enormous fur coat, curtails their goofy antics with a whistle and megaphone.

In stern German she orders them back to work—preparing for the next round of abusive food fights, which characterize the “service” at her uniquely unappetizing restaurant. A Theatre of the Ridiculous-style foray into the secret lives of gender outlaw ex-pats in flirty, dirty Berlin, “Lost Souls” isn’t your typical romance—but it’s a love story all the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOh0bn03xt4

Though much of the film adheres to just the merest suggestion of plot, the characters that emerge from its glitter-dusted frenzy are well worth getting to know. Angie Stardust in particular is given reign to share not just her conflicted opinions of Germans and Germany, but also her stories of childhood abuse, reminiscences of her career as a club singer in New York, and her longing for gender-reassignment surgery.

A model matriarch of the tough-love variety, she alternately flatters and bullies her employees and tenants of her Pension: the glamorous Southern trannie Tara O’Hara, the “sexual trapeze” artists Tron von Hollywood and Judith Flex (who also narrates much of the film in humorously-exaggeratedly, American-accented German), the frail, pouty Loretta, trashy, spotlight-seeking Lila (Jayne County), and downright spooky Gary—not just a burger-flipper with a smoking hot dancer’s body, but a quasi-cult leader and practitioner of erotic black magic.

Presented at ATA by New York’s Dirty Looks film series, the film manages to wear serious commentary on racism, homophobia and transphobia, ageism, politics, abortion, and sexual identity on its gold lamé sleeve, while shamelessly rocking shredded pantyhose and too much mascara, masturbating from the perch of a flying trapeze, serving dog turds as dinner, and billing writhing orgies with nubile bodies as “group therapy”. Recently restored, this historical, hysterical document of Berlin-dwelling sexual revolutionaries provides giddy enjoyment alongside its food (fight) for thought, from Jayne County’s signature grimaces, to Tron von Hollywood’s rippling abs.

While no dinner is so awkward as one in which dog turds serve as the meat, improv concept show “Awkward Dinner Party” rallied with a boorish dinner guest (John Kovacevich) who turned out to be a 4000 year-old deity with a crush on the hostess (Lisa Rowland), a gracious retiree saving up for a Winnebago with mild-mannered husband Frank (Dave Dennison). Conceptualized and performed by Rowland and Dennison, every “Awkward Dinner Party” features a different guest star, and as a completely improvised work, each night promises to be its own unique smorgasbord.

What remains a constant is the awkward — the dinner guest you can’t get rid of no matter how boring (or scary) they might be, the third wheel who reminds you why you became a coupled two-wheeler in the first place. A nomadic production, ADP will be serving its next tasty improv at Noh Space in April. No jacket required, but an RSVP is always a nice gesture.

The Performant: Science, Honor, Psychogeography

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The Phenomenauts and Alley Cat Books shoot for the moon.

Trapped in a world they didn’t create, the spacecraft-garage band known to us as The Phenomenauts must surely come from a more evolved time and place, as evidenced by the spiffiness of their natty uniforms — and the electric jolt of their stage shows. As refinement and heroism (the band motto is “Science and Honor”) are qualities in tragically short supply among your run-of-the-mill rock groups, bands which contain both are bound to stand out, with or without the additions of attention-grabbing technical flourishes such as pinpoint lasers, billows of stage fog, and the custom-built Streamerator 2000, which shoots festive streamers of toilet paper out onto the frenetic crowd. Speaking of frenetic, I love a band that can make San Franciscans dance as if possessed by dervishes with hyperkinesis. For that feat alone, they deserve an intergalactic medal for courage in the face of cosmic indifference.

Headlining last Friday night at the Rickshaw Stop, the band was in top form, steering their craft through a set-list packed with velocity and passion. Their sonic profile can be described as a jaunty blend of Devo, the B-52’s, Oingo-Boingo, the Aquabats, and the Stray Cats, and their costumed concept is straight out of a low-budge sci-fi serial, let’s say “Jason of Star Command,” or “Lost in Space.” From their high-octane, punky cover of the Polecats’ “Make a Circuit with Me,” to the pumped-up psychobilly of Phenomenauts classics such as “Space Mutants,” complete with call-and-response oddience participation, to “It’s Only Chemical,” a slo-mo doo-wop duet between Commander Angel Nova and Leftenent AR7, a robot with strikingly human harmonizing capabilities (obviously an advanced model), the ‘nauts never let their tongue-in-cheek, space-explorer personas get in the way of solid musicianship and creative range.

If NASA had a house band, my guess is they’d want them to sound like the Phenomenauts. Actually, maybe NASA should just hire the Phenomenauts. You heard it here first.

Meanwhile, the excitement surrounding the grand opening of Alley Cat Books — the fourth sibling of an honorable lineage that includes Dog Eared, Red Hill, and Phoenix Books — maintained its momentum with the opening of a new art show in the somewhat cavernous space in the back of the store. The theme was California maps, though the interpretation was open, and one of the more striking pieces involved an interactive slideshow installation of Cuba designed by Hanna Quevado and Azael Ferrer, who I’m assuming also invited the percussion players jamming in the corner of the room. Other pieces included a textured tapestry of California Delta patterns, by Adrian Mendoza and a bare bones affair by Geoff Horne, an unadorned web of straight lines connecting the bars of San Francisco, a useful bit of reference knowledge. I’m looking forward to the promise of events to come, bands, readings, and film screenings are all rumored to be in the works, and of course, when all else fails to capture the imagination, there’re always *books.* And honor.

The Performant: Strangers in a strange land

Andrew Lam
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Dan Carbone and Kitka resculpt old terrain

From the dark corner of the stage throbs the low rhythm of a skin-clad, Celtic-style drum and the strum of acoustic guitar, while in the light a man clad in a white dress shirt sways in hypnotic time, eyes shut tight, arms flung wide. “Sleeping, sleeping,” he croons softly, “I’m only sleeping.” Still swaying, he begins to tell the tale from the beginning, about a little baby boy whose “brain is knitting itself in an unusual way.”

You’d be forgiven for thinking in this first moment that the man is speaking of his own infancy, after all, brains don’t come knit much more unusually than that of East Bay-based avant-gardian Dan Carbone. But the infant’s name is not Dan’s, and though his brief and tragic backstory reverberates through much of the rest of the play, the infant soon yields the spotlight to his younger brother, the creator of the piece, “Father Panic,” which made its stage debut at the Garage on Friday. 

Although “Father Panic,” is indubitably Carbone’s most autobiographical work, a fretful monologue about a precocious childhood both hideously warped yet strangely innocent, familiarly eccentric, flourishes abound throughout. Puppets, poltergeists, twisted songs that expose the tortured inner monologues of the characters to the surface, a live video installation curated by Philip Bonner (a.k.a. Bulk Foodveyor) of childhood detritus and memory bank fodder.

Catherine Debon takes a turn as television-land language teacher, who translates self-loathing lyrics such as “maybe we can hate ourselves together,” into mellifluous French. And instrumentation is handily provided by swampabilly guitarist Andrew Goldfarb, who comprises, with Carbone, the performative music duo The Wounded Stag. But the unacknowledged star of the show is probably Carbone’s mother, who gradually takes over the piece, a raw bundle of outré obsessions and an embattled nature, the very embodiment of a stranger in a strange land — like a Raëlian without a cause, or an aquatic African frog in a solitary tank.

***

The mountains of Serbia, and a vocal tradition almost unknown this side of the “pond,” lie thousands of miles away from the basements of Connecticut. But an intriguing collaboration between Kitka, Oakland’s premiere ensemble of acapella Eastern European music and Svetlana Spajic, a renowned Serbain folk singer, brought that faraway land to stirring life during a two-part concert staged over the weekend at CounterPULSE.

After a video of venerable vocalist Jandrija Baljak teaching his technique to Spajic’s homeland ensemble, the concert began in earnest when Spajic took the stage. Dressed in Sunday best attire suggesting a peasant en route to Ellis Island circa 1914, Spajic’s passionate ululations did little to dispel the sensation of being transported backwards through time and space. Joined in the second half by Kitka, the remaining songs were characterized by an almost medieval lack of vibrato and elongated interludes of dissonant voice-bending harmonies. Even when comprehension of the lyrics was impossible, the music tapped into a complexity of almost primal emotion—though some slyly inserted San Francisco-centric lines did bring us briefly back to home before we were whisked once more into the territory of the unfamiliar by our fearless musical guides.

The Performant: Discord fever

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The Performant: Discord fever

San Francisco Tape Music Festival unwinds at ODC

The fact that it’s raining makes it an unexpectedly perfect night to attend the San Francisco Tape Music Festival. The water rushing through pipes and sweeping across the rooftop of the ODC Theatre adds an extra layer of ambience to the cacophonic tones emitting from a modest bank of speakers, squatting on the stage like forbidding monoliths. The here-and-now intrusion of the rainfall ties even the most outré compositions of the evening together in an entirely unanticipated manner, from the oldest (dated 1857) to those created this still-young year by members of the current incarnation of the San Francisco Tape Music Collective and sfSound.


Snugly protected from the bluster of the elements, we sit in patient anticipation as the lights dim to as near a full blackout as can be achieved with glowing EXIT signs and lighted soundboard. The darkness forces focus on the content of the composition, not the conduit, freeing the senses from the unconscious tyranny of vision. And a certain amount of focus does come in handy for an evening spent listening to the trajectories of polyphonic dissonance whizzing through the room at reckless speeds. Field recordings, samples of radio-age music scores, spoken murmurings of French, English, Greek, percussive clatterings, static-y white noise, and a host of sonic curiosities stack up on top of each other like the building blocks of childhood, leaning precariously, threatening to topple. “Purposeless play,” John Cage once described it, though of course such purposelessness contains a purpose all its own.

Maggi Payne, SF Tape Music Fest, SFBG.com

Composer Maggi Payne

A 16-minute Matthew Barnard composition entitled The Piano Makers sweeps the oddience into the Kemble piano factory, where Barnard made a series of field recordings of piano manufacturing: all clatter of machinery, zing of taut strings and tuning forks, and pounding of keys. John Cage’s Williams Mix kicks off a centennial celebration of Cage’s birth with a frenetic mélange of classic cartoon scores, old jazz standards, church hymns, radio announcements, and a lonesome foghorn. One of the evening’s most distinctive aural pleasures comes courtesy of noted theatrical sound-designer Cliff Caruthers, whose eerie, affecting Underneath would serve perfectly as the ambient score of some great, underwater epic — Gilgamesh perhaps — all creaking boards, and groaning depths, punctuated by the primal bellow of some unfathomable creature and a twinkle of silvery fish. Maggi Payne’s Glassy Metals rounds out the first half with a textural layering of metallic sounds manipulated to mimic the wet gurgle of a deep forest brook and rush of dry desert winds.

Ma++ Ingalls, SF Tape Music Fest, SFBG.com

Performer Ma++ Ingalls. Photo by Lenny Gonzalez

Two of the highlights of the second half include the second John Cage piece of the night, Imaginary Landscape No. 5. Composed on a block graph designating eight tracks and 42 separate sound clips, the realization of this version was created collaboratively by the Tape Music Collective, and performed by Ma++ Ingalls. Sterfos, by Orestis Karamanlis, also performed by Ingalls, transports the listener to a fishing village on the edge of the Aegean Sea. Bucolic village sounds such as the somber clang of church bells, footsteps crunching on gravel, the lapping of waves, dogs barking, children playing, and an elderly man with the oratory tone of a storyteller, all layered over with the urgent textural tones of aggressive modernity. More than any other piece of the evening, Sterfos embodies the cinematic quality of the music, a clearly defined story arc winding through the village entire. Only a minor technical glitch halfway through the piece mars the otherwise seamless meander along the shoreline of a strangely familiar sea.

 

The Performant: World on fire

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The Crucible’s “Machine: A Fire Opera” puts a blowtorch on it

First off let’s just all admit that fire is freaking cool. Or, rather, hot. And fire art? That’s about as hot as it gets. ‘Cause it’s art, see, but it’s also fire, and fire is awesome. Unless it’s busy burning down your apartment, then maybe not so much. But we are talking abut fire art right now, and if it’s fire art you want, then the first place you’re going to want to go is West Oakland’s Crucible, one of the most intriguing arts studios in the Bay Area.

With a focus on the industrial arts, The Crucible offers classes in all kinds of crafting, including blacksmithing, stoneworking, jewelry-making, and leather-working. But probably the most memorable pieces to come out of the Crucible are the signature large-scale sculptures and installations with flaming components that dominate its Fire Arts Festivals and stage productions. Currently lighting up the warehouse stage is their latest exploration of fire and art, “Machine,” an opera written by composer Clark Suprynowicz and librettist Mark Streshinsky, which — probably not incidentally — manages to showcase a large spectrum of Crucible-created work.

In fact, not long into the opera, it becomes apparent that the true star of the show may be the multi-level, interactive set, designed by Jean-François Revon, which gives a solid foundation to the abbreviated tale of a man enslaved by a great machine, which in turn sustains an imprisoned goddess. Solid metal scaffolding encloses an army of percussionists as well as the center stage, and the supertitles are displayed on a chunk of detritus emblazoned with the ghostly remnants of an EXIT sign. The rest of the musicians huddle beneath a large platform, above which a bare-chested strongman turns an enormous wheel, while beside them a cage of laser-like beams keeps the Goddess, Brigid (Dawn McCarthy) in her chamber. What appears to be a modified shipping container hulks in the background of the center platform, sliding open occasionally as a portal into memory. A scattered array of monitors display an understated video montage designed by Lucas Benjamin Krech, and the low throb of factory sounds and ambience by Phil Lockwood set the overall tone, sometimes more so than the actual score. Theatre design and industrial arts nerds will find much to praise.

Whether the opera nerds will concur is somewhat debatable, not least because the singers are all miked, and the libretto often seems at odds with the musical composition. But it seems safe to say that they’re probably not the target audience anyhow. Of the performers, the true standout is Eugene Brancoveanu, whose mellow baritone and expressive features serve the staging well, even during moments when the staging fails to serve him. Playing the role of a man awakening from a 10-year-long trance during which he has worked in the machine without memories of himself as a man, he is aided in his quest to escape by one of the only self-aware individuals in the establishment, the controller Sonya (Valentina Osinski), whose Thunderdome dominatrix gear brooks no subordination. Naturally they fall in love, and naturally there are unforeseen consequences for same, but really what’s important to know is that surrounding all the action is fire and fire—especially on a cold winter night—totally rules.

Through January 21
8:30 pm, $45-$65
The Crucible
1260 7th St., Oakl.
www.thecrucible.org

The Performant: Power to the people

Andrew Lam
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The Performant: Power to the people

Mugwumpin’s deconstructive history of Tesla electrifies

It is one day and 69 years after prolific inventor and notable oddball Nikola Tesla died of a heart attack, yet in the raw, unfurnished basement of the Old Mint, he stands quite alive before a contingent of captive theatre-goers, explaining his views on solitude.

“Be alone. That is the secret of invention,” he assures us, smiling in the manner of a man who knows he is about to be disagreed with. He has a lot of opportunities to display that same tight-lipped countenance throughout Mugwumpin’s “Future Motive Power,” as being disagreed with is one of the most recurring themes of Tesla’s biography. A man of compulsive and erratic habits and stubbornly-held views on the future impact of his own inventions, Tesla’s indomitable personality could be as hard to fathom as his scientific contributions were impossible to discredit. Channeled by Mugwumpin artistic director Christopher W. White, he alternates — in a manner akin to his most famous electrical system — between comedic mania and tragic inflexibility, as the patterns of his life entwine literally and figuratively with those of his dearest-held principles and hard-won triumphs.

As kinetic as White’s performance is, the attention is grabbed initially by a trio of players: Misti Boettiger, Natalie Greene, and Rami Margron, who personify, among other things, electrical forces, rotating magnetic fields, flocks of pigeons, and Greek choruses of skeptics and admirers, buzzing and zapping across the stage or encircling Tesla with a web of cables or a Kabbalistic variety of diagrams chalked out on the bare concrete floor. Founding company member Joseph Estlack plays a rough-necked, cigar-chomping Thomas Edison — one of Tesla’s main rivals — with gusto, parroting banal platitudes while swaggering around the stage. (Read Guardian writer Robert Avila’s review here.)

“Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” he boasts to Tesla with a wink, to which Tesla responds dryly that he certainly does seem to sweat a lot. A disagreement over money and methods is further exacerbated by an aggressive game of catch with a leather ball, and a charged scene involving the first execution by electric chair gives Edison the opportunity to assert that death by “electricide” should bear Tesla’s name, just as the unfortunate guillotine bears the name of its own well-meaning champion.

Like many site-specific performances, part of the pleasure of the production lies within its use of space, especially a space as intriguing as the Old Mint, and about three-quarters of the way through the piece, we are split into two groups and given brief reign to explore the warren of small brick rooms and an oppressively weighted corridor that take up the rest of the lower level. Eventually reunited, we are led to the end of the hall by a frail, geriatric Tesla, who lies on a single bed, surrounded only by his beloved pigeons. “Never mind my absence in body,” he assures before his dying, “it is no consequence. I am with you in spirit.” And when the lights come back on for the curtain call, in a blaze of AC glory, you see exactly what he means.

 

“Future Motive Power”

Through Jan. 29

8 p.m., $15-$30

Old Mint

Mission and Fifth St., SF

(415) 967-1574

www.mugwumpin.org

 

So long, farewell

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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So long, farewell

arts@sfbg.com

FILM When Ingrid Eggers announced that 2012 would mark her last German Gems film festival, the news came as a bittersweet reminder that nothing lasts forever.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this theme is perfectly summed up by the quintet of films that comprise German Gems’ final line-up. From the scandal-inducing, incestuous love affair (and its slow-burning aftermath) between artistic siblings Georg and Margarethe Trackl in Christoph Stark’s Taboo: The Soul is a Stranger on Earth, to the rejection of childhood dreams portrayed in Robert Thalheim’s Westwind, this year’s festival deals overwhelmingly with the impacts and lingering reverberations of loss. Whether Eggers planned it this way — to help us work through our grief at losing her curatorial prowess — isn’t clear, but in any event, the selection does prepare the viewer emotionally to accept her graceful auf Wiedersehen.

An understated portrait of Germany’s relationship with nuclear power, Under Control is a quietly compelling observational documentary. Crafted simply from footage taken inside nuclear power plants across Germany and Austria, along with interviews with various plant operators and nuclear energy experts regarding each particular plant’s focus and future, Under Control offers an intriguing look at a side of nuclear power we’re not normally privy to: the somewhat banal day-to-day operations which go into its generation.

These glimpses include stark imagery of long, sterile white corridors; retro-futuristic control rooms filled with panels and flashing monitors; plant employees being scanned for radiation; steam curling above bucolic countryside from the giant mouths of cooling towers; a subterranean bunker where contaminated washrags go to be buried; and a tense emergency-preparedness training session during which a reactor shutdown is simulated.

By the film’s end an unexpected realization becomes apparent: the almost foregone conclusion that Germany’s nuclear age is drawing to an end. As filmmakers Volker Sattel and Stefan Stefanescu are given a tour of the remains of what was once the Kalkar nuclear facility, completed in 1985 but never taken "online," their guide mourns the loss of jobs, and more importantly, of the billions of Deutschmarks used to fund the construction of a doomed power plant.

"Chernobyl broke our backs," he asserts almost wistfully, while astonishing footage of a modern-day carnival ride built inside the shell of the old cooling tower spirals onscreen.

A film dealing more directly with loss of the utterly human variety, Jan Schomburg’s Above Us Only Sky follows Martha (Sandra Hüller), a soft-spoken schoolteacher married to PhD student Paul (Felix Schmidt-Knopp), with whom she plans to move to Marseilles after he accepts a job offer at a hospital there. Or so she thinks. In a series of brief, clipped scenes, she discovers that the man she has been living with for years has been leading a secret life she’s known nothing about.

Struggling to regain her bearings, she meets Alexander (Georg Friedrich), a charismatic, tattooed professor at Paul’s former university, and in a series of awkwardly-engineered moments, initiates a relationship with him. As their attachment grows, their pairing begins to resemble Martha’s previous relationship — right down to a discussion about moving to Marseilles. The main attraction of this film is Hüller’s nuanced performance, and her disarming veneer of almost girlish delicacy and neurotic sexuality concealing an iron will. Her previous tragedy informing her actions, she keeps her motivations to herself, revealing as little as possible for as long as possible, a stubborn survivalist strategy which finally unravels just enough for Alexander to be able to reveal his own hidden past.

A first feature for Schomburg, the deceptively simple Above Us Only Sky doesn’t waste a frame while tracing the subtle contours of a paradise lost, and one regained.


GERMAN GEMS

Sat/14, $8-$10

Castro Theatre

429 Market, SF

Sun/15, $8-$10

Arena Theatre

214 Main, Point Arena
www.germangems.com

The Performant: The Great Leap Forward

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The Performant: The Great Leap Forward

A year on the city’s wilder side, and looking ahead to more fine times

End-of-the-year roundups are all well and good, allowing us the opportunity to celebrate one last time the innovations of the past. But I’ve always preferred to look ahead into the future, so in that spirit here’s a shortlist of some of my fave Performant coverage from 2011 of ongoing and perennial events that you can still look forward to checking out in 2012—and beyond!


Sea Chantey Sing: The monthly Sea Chantey sing <www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/chantey-sing.htm> at Hyde Street pier just turned thirty, but it feels utterly timeless, and is guaranteed the most fun you’ll ever have sober on a Saturday night, no contest. The multi-generational turnout always includes salty old pros benignly rubbing elbows with landlubbers who think the Pogues wrote “South Australia,” and just as no-one is turned away for lack of funds (it’s a free event), no-one is turned away from participating, even if “participating” means sitting in gap-mouthed awe of the regulars whose encyclopedic recall of dozens of Chanteys would make Alan Lomax weak at the knees.

Home Theatre Festival: It’s almost embarrassing how I can’t stop gushing about the homegrown phenomenon that is The Home Theatre Festival. Seriously, it’s like I’m a pre-pubescent girl at the Gymkhana, swooning over the stallions. But it’s hard not to be enamored of an event that took a devastatingly simple concept (hey artists, make art at home for fun and profit!) and turned it into a branded, annual festival whose participants span the globe and whose influence just keeps spreading. Don’t think art made at home is “legit”? You’re on the wrong side of history, friend.

Hoodslam: Real-life superhero training or reckless mayhem? This monthly amateur-wrestling tournament, currently located at the Oakland Metro Operahouse, is a rough-and-tumble turf war between spandex-clad Zombies, dubious family dynasties, videogame-inspired villains, mobsters, gimps, dark overlords, and carnivorous werewolves. Further cranking the sensory overload to eleven with acerbic commentators, an aggro-metal house band, fire-eating babes, a seven-foot tall Pink Panther referee, and the uber-suave ring announcer Ike Emilio Burner, whose booming introduction of each match rolls across the room like a tsunami of too cool, Hoodslam taps into an almost primal gladiatorial urge with an unmistakably Oakland swagger.

The Lost Church: Neither lost, nor a church, this hidden temple of tunesmiths and troubadours worships at the altar of Americana with offerings of the dirty blues, Appalachian-style folk, and alt-rock in a retro jewel-box theatre space. And speaking of theatre, they do that too on an occasional basis, and an evening at The Lost Church might turn out to be a combination of all of the above—an intriguing alchemy.

American Tripps: Spreading the gospel of Berlin-style Ping-pong since August 2011, American Tripps has attracted a cult following of sporty young things in sweatbands who gather every couple of weeks around a single ping-pong table for a rousing evening of rundlauf. Another deceptively simple concept just waiting for someone to come forward and run with it (in this instance, Allan Hough of Mission Mission) American Tripps is a perfect balance between being challenging enough to attract good players and easy enough to keep the uncoordinated masses in the game, whether it’s the first round, or the thirtieth.

Give The Performant a reason to Twit. Follow @enkohl for of-the-minute updates from the underground.

The Performant: Tripp hop nation

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Going balls out for Berlin-style ping-pong with American Tripps

The only thing lacking is a haze of cigarette smoke curling over the lone ping-pong table bogarting the cosy dance floor of Project One. A polite jostle of players, perhaps 25 strong, rings the table, shoulder to shoulder. Each one clutches a paddle in one hand, and, more than a few, a drink in the other. The game is “Berlin-style” ping-pong (also known as rundlauf)—a participatory style of play in which every participant gets a turn serving or receiving as the circle shuffles one spot at a time, counter-clockwise around the crowded table.

And despite the resolutely smoke-free Californian air and the proliferance of decidedly un-Germanic striped sweatbands worn by the regulars, it’s easy to imagine the scene in general transplanted to a basement in Prenzlauer Berg, right down to The Fine Young Cannibals on the sound-system. Welcome to American Tripps.
 
Trust the Germans to come up with a group variation on an ostensibly individualistic pastime. And trust a San Franciscan enamored of the practice (Allan Hough) to be the one to transport it overseas and invite the neighbors, in this case the faithful readers of his Mission Mission blog, to play a few rounds. And then a few more. Now nearing its six-month anniversary, American Tripps has attracted a core group of loyal followers and a slew of curious first-timers to each of its nomadic ping-pong parties, held in a variety of bars and art spaces in and around the Southerly neighborhoods.

Although the general demographic is skewed heavily (about 3-to-1) towards “dude-ness,” the testosterone in the room is far from frothing over. Clearly at the end of each round there will be a winner, and a table’s worth of losers, but this statistic seems of little concern to the people patiently standing in line, waiting to be eventually eliminated. At American Tripps it’s very much about playing the game, not so much about whether or not you make it to the final round. At least that’s what I tell myself each time I miss the ball (almost every time), or volley it into the DJ booth at the back of the room (once). Achtung, baby!

Thankfully there are better players, and at each tournament a half-dozen or so wind up dominating most of the final rounds, which are played at frenetic top speeds in contrast to the leisurely strolling that defines the first part of the game. For instance, at Lower Haight’s D-Structure store the week before, the unassuming-looking Tim Walsh (the drummer for neo-psychedelic ensemble the Stepkids) rose to the top more than a few times, while the genial Peter Allen (whom I secretly dubbed “The Mayor of the Lower Haight”) maintained a decent game through almost every round while greeting close to every single person who entered the room, dancing ecstatically to Jimmy Cliff, and coordinating his sweatbands to his Wing Wings t-shirt.

Of course being a good player doesn’t guarantee you’ll get far in any given game—pitting oneself against an entire room full of strangers is a great leveler. And so leveled, you might discover the best parts of the evening don’t even involve the game at all, except as an excellent ice-breaker, or as Allan Hough puts it, “the grand prize is that everybody had an epic time all night.”

I’m sold. Now where do I find a set of sweatbands?

Curtain calls

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Curtain calls

arts@sfbg.com

YEAR IN THEATER With a grateful nod to former colleague Brad Rosenstein, we re-inaugurate a system of accolades and nah-ccolades celebrating some memorable highs and lows of the rapidly closing year in theater and performance.

 

Most Memorable Food Fight

A Three Little Dumplings Adventure

Within seconds of the appearance of the three titular protagonists of Megan Cohen’s A Three Little Dumplings Adventure — a hot pink and powder blue hurricane wreaking havoc on the subdued prison of a suburban living room — it was impossible not to get sucked into their chaotic orbit. Alternating between being patently obnoxious, emotionally unanchored, and frankly homicidal, the “three little dumplings” played by Sarah Moser, Molly Holcomb, and Megan Trout teased, baited, jabbed, and wrestled each other across the stage, culminating in Moser pinning Trout to the floor threatening to eat her (“dumpling” being no tidy euphemism here, but a physiological condition). Presented at the Bay One Acts Festival, it was definitely the year’s best meta-cannibalistic food frenzy, and it whetted our appetite for more. (Nicole Gluckstern)

 

Best Drug Story

Greg Proops at “Previously Secret Information”

Admittedly the best highs are often hard to remember. Kudos to the seemingly rock-hard memory of otherwise mellow-ab’d comedian Greg Proops, who recalled prodigious intake and takeout as a Chicken Delite delivery boy in 1970s San Carlos for an edition of Joe Klocek’s storytelling series, “Previously Secret Information.” (Robert Avila)

 

Best Political-Historical Thesis Disguised as a Wildly Funny and Louche “Songplay”

Beardo

Their own prior hit, 2008’s Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage, was going to be a hard act to follow. But Banana Bag & Bodice and producers Shotgun Players made playwright Jason Craig and composer Dave Malloy’s take on Rasputin look like child’s play — very precocious child’s play — where performances, music, costumes, mise-en-scène, themes, and dialogue all contributed to another hirsute masterpiece. (Avila)

 

Most Inscrutable Triumvirate

Mimu Tsujimura, Lily Tung Crystal, and Katie Chan in Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven

Speaking of frankly homicidal, the otherwise nameless characters “Korean 1, 2, and 3” in the joint Crowded Fire/Asian American Theater Company production of Young Jean Lee’s Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven were as outrageously bloodthirsty a collection of countertypical characters as ever graced the Thick House stage. By turns violent, ecstatic, girlish, and demented, the eclectic trio played by Mimu Tsujimura, Lily Tung Crystal, and Katie Chan skewered every tradition-bound Asian stereotype in the book. Clad in the dazzle camouflage of their flowing silk dresses, rendering their monologues in their respective “mother” tongues, not spoken by this or many other audience members, the fiercely energetic characters expertly revealed themselves by not revealing a thing. (Gluckstern)

 

Best Lighting Design

Allen Willner for inkBoat’s The Line Between

Willner’s worked wonders before, not least with longtime collaborators inkBoat (Heaven’s Radio), but he outdoes himself in this wild and excellent production, making the lighting design a full member of the ensemble with a world of shifting moods and ideas. (Avila)

 

Best Tentative Revival of a Theatrical Artform

Puppetry

Where have all the puppets gone? It seemed like for a few years there they all went into hiding, perhaps barricading themselves in little puppet bunkers, awaiting the end times. But a modest slew of puppet-driven performances resurfaced over the course of 2011, reigniting our hopes for a full-blown revival in the future. A shortlist of memorable puppets encountered this year include Lone Wolf Tribe’s dark circus of clowns and war veterans in Hobo Grunt Cycle; a beleaguered Orson Welles puppet manipulated by Nathanial Justiniano’s sociopathic Naked Empire Bouffon Company alter ego Cousin Cruelty; Thomas John’s “hard-boiled” egg puppets who populated his Humpty Dumpty noir thriller The Lady on the Wall; the over-the-top awesomeness of a trio of Audrey Jrs. in Boxcar Theatre’s Little Shop of Horrors, and the silently suffering soldier of Aurora Theatre’s A Soldier’s Tale. Here’s hoping this miscellany foreshadows the triumphal return of the missing puppets, to as opposed to their last hurrah. (Gluckstern)

 

Nicest timing

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs

Just before public figures across the spectrum wailed their approval of a fallen business idol, Seattle-based monologist Mike Daisey, at Berkeley Rep, not-so-quietly reminded people of what a corporation is. Then Occupy Wall Street happened. (Avila)

 

Most Polarizing Descent Into the Reptilian Complex

Chekhov Lizardbrain

Whether you loved it or loathed it, Pig Iron’s touring production of Chekhov Lizardbrain was certainly one of the year’s most striking. Performing as part of foolsFURY’s Fury Factory, the Philadelphia-based Pig Iron spearheaded an expedition into the inner workings of one man’s brain beset by shifting vagaries of memory and truth. Combining a series of pompously-referenced “rules” of drama, stock Chekhovian alter-egos, and the dual personalities — internal and external — of an undersocialized protagonist (James Sugg) struggling to shape his memories into a recognizable narrative, Chekhov Lizardbrain elicited the most polarized reaction from its sold-out houses I saw all year. From a standing ovation to a fair number of disgruntled walk-outs, this dark-edged exploration inspired a panorama of strong responses in its audience, a solid sign of success in my book. (Gluckstern)

 

Best Labor of Love

The Companion Piece

Inspired by a concept by Beth Wilmurt, who was inspired by a book about the biological roots of human emotions (A General Theory of Love), Mark Jackson directed Wilmurt and fellow “vaudevillians” Christopher Kuckenbaker and Jake Rodriguez at Z Space in one of the most inspired pieces of devised theater all year (with a close second going to Jackson’s own SF State production of the blissful Wallflower). (Avila)

 

Best Conversation Starter

The closure of a “remixed” Little Shop of Horrors

Another polarizing moment in Bay Area theater occurred this summer when Boxcar Theatre’s ambitious remix of the cultish Alan Menken and Howard Ashman musical Little Shop of Horrors was shut down by Music Theatre International due to admitted violations of its licensing agreement. The debate inspired by both the violations and the show’s subsequent closure was as passionate and considered as the production that inspired it, from both perspectives of the situation. Without taking sides, I found the conversation about artistic freedom vs. artists’ rights to their own works to be as stimulating and thought-provoking as any night in the theater could strive to be. It seems unlikely that Boxcar Theatre knowingly set out to become the vanguard for open-source theater-making, but here’s hoping it’s a banner they are willing to carry a little longer. (Gluckstern)

 

Best Part of Getting Old

Geezer at the Marsh

I’m glad I lived long enough to see Geoff Hoyle live long enough to produce this solo piece extraordinaire. (Avila)

 

Best Couch-Surfing Opportunity

“Home Theater Festival”

Sometimes it’s hard to leave the comfort of one’s home to gamble on the capricious vicissitudes of a theater outing. Gambling in the comfort of someone else’s home was, on the other hand, really easy. (Avila)

 

Best Ostentatious Design Overload

The Lily’s Revenge

Watching the four-and-a-half-hour epic performance mash-up that was Taylor Mac’s The Lily’s Revenge at the Magic Theatre was in parts harrowing, exhausting, and transcendentally fabulous, but what stuck with me long after the vague twists of plot and character had mostly faded from my memory were indelible images of the seriously overwhelming design. From dazzling, sequined flower costumes by Lindsay W. Davis, to four complete sets built to accommodate five acts designed by Andrew Boyce, to the extravagant lighting by Sarah Sidman, The Lily’s Revenge could have been subtitled The Tech Crew’s Revenge, which would have been a fitting description of the glorious fantasia created by the uniformly top-notch production team. (Gluckstern)

 

Best Jump on George Clooney

Farragut North

North is better known to multiplex crowds as The Ides of March. But Bay Area theatergoers were first to get a former Howard Dean speechwriter’s fictionalized story of real-deal electoral politics in a so called democracy — and in a nimble low-budge production from OpenTab Productions at Noh Space that made it all the sweeter for not being Hollywooden. (Avila)

 

Best Planned Revitalization of a Theater District Linchpin

PianoFight at Original Joe’s

When the venerable, family-run Original Joe’s at 144 Taylor burned down in 2007 it was a catastrophic blow to the neighborhood — especially to all the theaters in the area who had adopted it over the years as a go-to post-show hang-out. It even served as a San Francisco Fringe Festival off-site venue for several years, hosting the likes of RIPE Theatre and Dan Carbone. So it was wonderful news on many levels when the turbo-charged PianoFight theater company signed a ten-year lease with the Duggan family to turn the old Original Joe’s into the new home of PianoFight. In addition to rebuilding the restaurant and bar, PianoFight plans to house two theaters, offices, and rehearsal spaces under the same roof — a huge boost to the neighborhood and greater theatrical community both. (Gluckstern)

 

Worst-Attended Theatrical Gem

Hobo Grunt Cycle at the Exit Theater

I’m not sure why there were so few people in the audience for this stunning cri de coeur against warfare by Kevin Augustine’s rightly acclaimed New York–based puppet theater ensemble, Lone Wolf Tribe. As hard as it can be to look at the real face of war, this piece brilliantly insisted on the need to do just that: manipulated with consummate grace by one or more black-clad puppeteers, Augustine’s life-sized puppets remained strikingly sentient, heartbreakingly damaged beings you absolutely could not take your eyes off. (Avila)

 

Classiest Beginning to a Final Bow

In the Maze of Our Own Lives

Playwright-director Corey Fischer’s sleekly staged, prescient take on the radically influential Group Theatre ensemble of the thoroughly agitated 1930s, In the Maze of Our Own Lives, which lead off the Jewish Theatre’s 34th and last season. (Avila)

Best Reason to Cross the Bridge: SQUART at Headlands Center for the Arts This 24-hour, all-stops-pulled-out version of choreographer Laura Arrington’s shrewd experimental series in collaborative performance-making capped a residency at the Headlands with a well-attended set of four sneaky, astonishing pieces by a multi-talented ensemble of harried sleep-deprived creator-conspirators. Why isn’t art always made this way? (Avila)

Worst Gas-to-Show Ratio Lolita Roadtrip at San Jose Stage A surprisingly unmoving outing from otherwise quick playwright Trevor Allen, who indeed quickly bounced back with a remounting of his popular solo, Working for the Mouse. (Avila)  

Strangest Encounter Between “Performer” and “Audience” Robert Steijn Steijn questioned everything, including what the hell he was doing onstage in front of the people assembled to see the famed Dutch performer at Joe Goode’s new annex in the Mission. They were all good questions, and the micro-choreography of physical and psychic states to which they pointed charged the room with a delicate intensity that encouraged many thoughtful beers afterward. (Avila)

Short takes: Biggest Dick: Kevin Spacey as Richard III. With balls and chops to match.  

Best Beefcake Ham and Cheese on Wry for under $100: Hugh Jackman at the Curran.

Best use of salvia: Philip Huang at “Too Much!”  

Best medicine for complacency: Cancer Cells, selections from late works and words by Harold Pinter by Performers Under Stress.  

Biggest site-specific punch (with gloves on or off): Peter Griggs’ one-man show, Killer Queen: The Story of Paco the Pink Pounder, at Michael the Boxer Gym and Barbershop.

Most intellectually stimulating drag lecture: David Greenspan reading Gertrude Stein’s Plays at the Contemporary Jewish Museum. (Avila)

The Performant: Tradition! Tradition!

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Golden Girls, Kung Pao Kosher, Merry Forking Christmas … the holidays are coming whether you like it or not.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the holidays just keep on coming around. And unless you plan on hibernating the entire month of December away, sooner or later someone is going to force you into an ugly sweater and drag you to some seasonal entertainment designed to fill you with goodwill towards all humankind — or some such optimistic twaddle. Even so, there’s certainly no reason you have to subject yourself to endless renditions of Tchaikovsky’s famous suite or stale Bing Crosby carols in order to fulfill your holiday spirit quota. Alternatives abound here in Babylon-by-the-Bay, and you’re sure to stumble across a few that speak to your own imitable tastes.


Call it nostalgia, or call it an abiding love for the dubious fashions of the late 80’s, but whatever the attraction, this year’s edition of Trannyshack’s “The Golden Girls Christmas Episodes,” (through Dec. 23) has been packing the house at the Victoria Theatre with its irreverent rendition of the iconic television show. The four Tranny Grannies — Heklina, Cookie Dough, Pollo del Mar, and Matthew Martin — embody their characters with real affection, as their enthusiastic audiences sing along to the retro jingles of old Dr. Pepper commercials while cat-calling each spectacular costume change.

Another tradition-in-the-making, Pianofight’s third annual production of “A Merry Forking Christmas,” (through Dec. 30) is also packing the house with a good mix of PianoFight first-timers and old “Forking” initiates who are easily identified by their crumpled brown paper BYOB bags. The concept of “Forking” is both deceptively simple and yet infinitely clever — a choose-your-own-adventure story which “forks” off in several, audience-mandated directions, mostly determined by chaotic bursts of applause. Set in that oppressive microcosm otherwise known as “The Mall,” the play follows a handful of characters battling the stress and hopelessness of Christmas Eve either engaged in last minute selling, buying, security guarding, or Santa Claus-ing as the “true meaning” of the holiday in question eludes each.

Since nothing can make one feel more self-consciously Jewish than a month full of Christmas cheer, it’s good to know that Lisa Geduldig’s Kung Pao Kosher Comedy event (Dec. 23-25) has been stuffing holiday orphans of all faiths full of potstickers and potshots for nineteen years. This year’s headliner is Elayne Boosler, and if you go for the dinner show your ticket includes a seven-course feast, which sounds like my kind of Christmas. Or it would if it didn’t compete with the First Satanic Church’s annual Black X Mass (Sun/25) at the Elbo Room. Basically an excuse to throw a high-voltage rock show on the quietest night of the year, Black X Mass consistently boasts some of the most eclectic line-ups imaginable, combining costumed concept bands with “abstract metal” ensembles, mean-tempered go-go devils, various permutations of Mongoloid and Graves Bros. Deluxe, and a black-clad specialist in a rarified musical field — “Theremin Wizard Barney.” It’s a season’s greeting more reminiscent of “The Shining” than “It’s a Wonderful Life” but let’s face it, sometimes that’s exactly the kind of tradition we like best.

The Performant: Please appropriate me

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Bryan Boyce and Negativwobblyland pump up the culture jams at L@te

Nighttime at the Berkeley Art Museum. An undercurrent of glee emanating from the patrons, as with a roomful of children up past their bedtimes. Enhancing the playground vibe, a giant orange mountain of rippling wooden waves designed by Thom Faulders, squats in the middle of the room, serving as seating for the assembled crowd, as well as pre-show entertainment as we scramble up its sides.

We’re here for the last L@te program of the year for a fanciful pairing between filmmaker Bryan Boyce and electronic noise ensemble Negativwobblyland, comprised of two parts Negativland (Mark Hosler and Peter Conheim) and one part Wobbly (Jon Leidecker). Pop culture appropriationists all, Boyce may be best known as the creator of the crassly hilarious political short “America’s Biggest Dick,” a tortured marriage of Dick Cheney and “Scarface,” while Negativland has been creating sonic mash-ups of samples and electronically-generated noise since 1979—including the infamous, legally-contested “U2” which combined a rude Casey Kasem rant with a casio-tone undercurrent of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” and landed Negativland on the Fair Use frontlines.

As the lights dim, a brief burst of fanfare grabs attention, while on the projection screen the face of G.W. Bush superimposed on top of a cartoon sun, rises above the placid hills of Teletubbyland as a baby giggles offscreen. As cute little bunnies come out to play, the G.W. Bush sun firebombs them into oblivion with unexpected superpowers, smiling genially the whole time.

Terry Gilliam springs immediately to mind, and as more politically-pointed clips roll, so do the Yes Men, except instead of dressing up as politicians or corporate shills, the “characters” employed by Boyce is tweaked footage of actual politicians. “This is absolutely unbelievable,” boasts an “infomercial host” G.W. Bush with Jonathan Crosby’s “stunt mouth,” hawking macaroni and glitter “Election Collectibles” alongside Al Gore. Veering into more introspective ground, Boyce’s final two pieces ditch the politics for poetry-in-motion with “More is Always on the Way,” a series of quietly remarkable photographs of signs and billboards in their “native” urban habitat displayed with a spare, electronic soundtrack, and the other, “Whisper Hungarian Softly to Me,” a haunting blend of old Bela Lugosi footage and a trio of modern belly dancers with original music composed by Dan Cantrell. 

Negativwobblyland, clad in identical grey plaid shirts, take their places at a table set with piles of gear, in particular a series of five devices they call “boopers”—feedback devices inventively engineered from recycled radio and amplifier parts. The sonic onslaught created by these deceptively simple devices (and a few judiciously appended drum loops and samples of insect and animal noises) can be likened in some ways to the meandering of jazz improvisation, and inspires (in me, anyway) similar free-associations of image and impression. As the drone of an underwater sea creature, the loneliness of the long-distance trucker, a buzzing chainsaw disco, a teenage Atari foxtrot, the rumble of Tibetan long horns, and the high whine of a Himalayan mosquito swirl through my particular streams of consciousness, onstage, three fearless captains set a course for the opposite shore, jamming our earwaves with their slyly subversive, yet ultimately inclusive, collaboration.

 

The Performant: Cheap thrills

Andrew Lam
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Bargain Basement Mondays and Amoebapalooza

The upside to living in a city as notoriously pricey as San Francisco is that despite the myriad opportunities to blow too much cash on a mediocre time out, there are plenty of options for cheaper entertainments, keeping the broke-ass among us from being eternally housebound. This weekend in particular, a couple of low-budge music showcases offered those too skint to make it to Iggy Pop a way to afford more beer by charging less cover, and one even threw in the pizza! Sure, rocking out with the godfather of punk would have been quite a bang for its buck, but at least Bottom of the Hill and Café du Nord offered economical alternatives to hanging out in a drafty San Francisco flat Google-stalking Mike Watt. Not that I’d know anything about that.

If free’s your price, then Bargain Basement Mondays at Bottom of the Hill is your place. A once-monthly showcase of local musicians with no cover charge, the attitude is chummy and freewheeling. This week’s lineup was intriguing in that it was not just a random assortment of strangers, but instead a loose coalition of one-man bands gathered together to put on a show subdued only in decibels, but certainly not in invention.

I made it just in time to catch Andrew Goldfarb “The Slow Poisoner” halfway through a cluster of bug-themed songs, such as the instrumental “Spastic Maggot” (a personal fave). Goldfarb’s musical sensibility is one part Southern Gothic, one part B-movie creature feature, and one part swampy psychobilly, and in addition to accompanying himself on the electric guitar and kick drum, he also provides a visual “slideshow” of oversized flashcards with the names of each song painted in Goldfarb’s distinctive cartooning style, deceptively simple lines, skewed perspectives, and boneless, Piraro-esque physiology.     

Sean Lee’s 1manbanjo act followed, in which he led a spontaneous conga line of oddience members around the dance floor, beating time on a snare drum strapped to his back while strumming his mandolin-sized banjo, a hobo pied piper in a rumpled suit. A member of Thee Hobo Gobbellins, about half of Lee’s set was comprised of songs from their Alice in Wonderland-themed “Cheshire Rock Opera”—next slated to play the Oakland Metro on Jan 27, 2012. Last but certainly not least, Jordan B. Wilson debuted his very interesting music-making machine, which the other musicians kept referring to as a “squid”. An elaborate array of cables , computers, mixing boards, and drumsticks snaked around an entire drum kit’s worth of percussion, additionally Wilson played a double-necked guitar with keys, and sang, a triumph of multi-tasking, to say nothing of the three-year creation process of his singular contraption. 

Sunday’s Amoebapalooza, the annual open-to-the-public holiday party of Amoeba Music employees, was as quirky and varied as the music selection at our favorite converted bowling alley, during which the employees rocked the stage, and the aforementioned pizza was distributed like the modern equivalent to a Dickenson turkey. With a couple of exceptions (Vanishing Breed being one), most of the bands gave the impression of being hastily assembled for the purpose of playing this one show, but for five bucks, and all-you-can eat, it basically paid for itself, which was ultimately the desired effect..

Give The Performant a reason to Twit. Follow @enkohl for of-the-minute updates from the underground

 

The Performant: TLC for the holidays

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The Performant: TLC for the holidays

Try to ignore it as we might, the end of another year draws near, accompanied by all its attendant solstice-cycle celebrations — last ditch attempts to keep warm perhaps. Well, spike the eggnog with everclear and pass the bacon-wrapped latkes, in my book a little conviviality goes a long way in making bearable the quickly darkening days, the applejack-crisp night air. Sure, shaking off the hibernation vibe can be hard to do, but a good compromise between comatose and cabin crazy is to cuddle up to nightlife’s cozier side: intimate venues, good company, low lights, warm interiors. The Lost Church provides all of the above with its lushly-appointed “parlor performance” space and a tight-knit crew of regulars who call the venue their artistic home, plus homegrown music, a multi-media nod to vaudevillian theatre, and quiet cheer.

An ambitious TLC bill awaits the intrepid each Saturday night through December 17. Actually, ambitious musical lineups abound on Thursdays, Fridays, and even one Sunday (the 11th), but in December, Saturdays include a tongue-in-cheek, meta/metaphysical musings of a brief one-act entitled “The Golden Goddess, Demon Dan, and the Doorway to Darkness,” nestled in the center of the evening, the jelly in the sugar donut. A brashly conniving demon (Dan C.) finds himself in literally the middle of nowhere where an extremely bored goddess (the projected image of Jessica K.) is spending her eternity guarding a doorway that no-one wants to open. No-one but Dan, that is, and his persistent, flirty wheedling, rendered de facto charming by a wise-guy cockney accent, gradually wears down the goddess’ resolve. The battle-of-the-immortal-sexes dialogue is interspersed with snatches of Rolling Stones songs (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “It’s All Over Now,” “The Last Time,”) provided by a rock n’ roll “Greek Chorus” fronted by bodacious blues chanteuse Kim K., by far the heavenliest presence on the stage.

Taking a page from the hootenanny handbook, the theatrical portion of the event is bookended by an assortment of musical acts, a little something something for everyone. Last weekend, the evening opened with Brian B. playing a variety of instruments including a sultry slide guitar, an accordion, and the harmonica while singing a series of introspective ballads which began on a blue note with a love lost and spiraled further downward and outward encompassing junkyards, street corners, and a nod to St. Cecilia, martyred patron saint of music. A quick flurry of rock songs from venue hosts Brett and Elizabeth C. in their joint bass n’ drum incarnation as “Juanita and the Rabbit” followed, and the post-show glow was further prolonged by more singing from the divine Kim K. An evolving work-in-progress, TLC has carefully crafted a tempting cocktail of home comfort blended with retro cool and hot licks, all of which make it a great place to spend the
 holiday, or any, season.

Give The Performant a reason to Twit. Follow @enkohl for of-the-minute updates from the underground.

The Performant: Hamburger helpers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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There’s certainly no shortage of live comedy in the Bay Area, but you have to hand it to Club Chuckles for keeping it weird. Avoiding line-ups packed with middle-aged men whining about their therapy bills, or cosmonaut princesses with pubic hair obsessions, Club Chuckles can often be found lurking in the rock-saturated shadows of the Hemlock Tavern’s back room performance space, infused with the kind of punk rock vibes you’ll never pick up at the buttoned-down, two-drink minimum comedy clubs. The sold out, eight-year anniversary show at the considerably swankier digs of the Verdi Club might have been better lit, but the rowdy element still prevailed, as an entire line-up devoted to the comedy of the awkward braved the hecklers to bring the laffs.

Imagine if you will an idiot savant of the yo-yo who turns out to just be an idiot, and you’ve got a good idea of what to expect when Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser takes the stage. The befuddled alter-ego of Mark Proksch, “K-strass” is a yo-yo wielding man-child out to save the environment from the ill-effects of too much toilet flushing. Determined to wow the crowd with one of his patented yo-yo tricks, The William Tell, Strasser put a bucket and an apple on the head of his first of two volunteers, who quipped, “is this like Guantanamo?” “I don’t know him,” Strasser responded immediately, nervously readying his yo-yo to fly, uncontrolled, in the general direction of the apple.

The most traditional comic of the evening, affable Duncan Trussell delivered a stand-up set filled with references to medical marijuana, tripping at Great America, and the embarrassment of being human. But then he veered into prop comedy territory with a long rambling story about his Wiccan parents and The Book of Shadows, which culminated in an impromptu séance and an appearance by ventriloquist dummy “L’il Hobo”. A classic, hinge-jawed variant, L’il Hobo became apparently possessed by Lucifer halfway through the otherwise standard dummy/ventriloquist act, culminating in an eerie duet of “Wish You Were Here,” and the devil’s gruff demand for worship.

Dressed like a turn-of-the-nineteenth-century butterfly collector, Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric Awesome Show fame, launched into his bumbling act clutching a cheat sheet like a lifeline, dropping his punchlines as often as he dropped the mic. Declining to indulge in any of his recently released Herman Cain-inspired anthems (“Cainthology: Songs in the Key of Cain”), he instead turned his affection to Newt Gingrich’s presidential aspirations, and introduced an ambitious high-speed rail project dubbed “Zazz Rent-a-Train.” “Why own when you can rent?” intoned the movietone narrator of the video-screened infomercial on the rail project designed to connect all the continents by rail.

Kicking the emotionally tone-deaf dial to eleven, headliner Neil Hamburger emerged at last, his trademark greasy comb-over and bow-tie suggesting the desperation of the small-time Vaudeville circuit. “Get some drinks up here asshole,” he snarled at booker Anthony Bedard, before launching into a series of dead-weight knock-knock jokes, a lengthy segment focused on the dubious “talents” of Britney Spears, embittered rants against various oddience members (“laugh your fool head off…this is fun. Everyone else is having fun…with your girlfriend”), and “an award-winning tribute to ice cream” which segued into a ribald joke about Ben and Jerry’s and prostitutes.

Like Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser, the Hamburger character is a long-inhabited alter ego, whose public appearances often appear more painful for the character than for his cringing fans, who really ought to have some kind of convenient moniker by which to call themselves, like “Hamburger-heads,” or “total masochists.” And indeed, by the show’s end only the true total masochists remained, each empty seat in the rows attesting to that peculiar comedic format of anti-success that Hamburger wields so well.

The Performant: Humanesque

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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“More Human Than Human” and “Two Clowns” explore the in/human condition

If our frail human lives begin, as the fundies would have it, at the moment of conception, at what point are we defined as being possessed of humanity? Is it simply a matter of our genetic makeup? Is it possible for a fully “human” consciousness to develop in non-human entities, and is it such consciousness that defines us at all? At what point, if ever, do we abdicate our rights to lay claim to our humanity? These questions may not be new, but they never seem to go entirely out of fashion, and this weekend you can catch two very different pieces of theatre tackling these persistent conundrums: “More Human than Human,” at The Dark Room, and “Two Clowns” at the Boxcar Theatre Studios on Hyde Steet.


“More Human than Human,” penned by B. Duke (Paul Addis), is a prequel to the cult film Bladerunner (1982) and the novel from which it was adapted, Philip K. Dick’s enduring sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). Taking the tack that it is the artistic abilities displayed by the rogue replicants which propels their burgeoning self-awareness, “Human” turns pleasure model Pris (Kendra Coeur) into an aspiring ballerina, assassin/burlesque dancer Zhora (Alissa Magrill) into an opera singer, the slow-witted Leon (Alejandro Torres) into a sensitive photographer, and the ringleader Roy (Ronan Barbour) into an appreciator (though not a writer) of poetry.

Two other replicants, Hector (Sean Mann) and Jennifer (Francesca Crebassa) created especially for this origin story, display similar talents, and together the six formulate a plan to hijack a shuttle and head to earth to pursue their dreams. The very definition of “bare bones,” it’s not a production that seems destined to reach a broad audience, though certainly “dickheads” and Bladerunner completists will be intrigued, but the suggestion it raises that self-awareness is a side-effect of the creative drive is one worth mulling over, whether in the theatre, or maybe just over a few beers.

In Ronnie Larsen’s “Two Clowns,” the oddience is introduced to two very different icons of our collective American consciousness—Divine and John Wayne Gacy. The first half follows Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine’s alter-ego and creator, for the last 24 hours of his short life, preparing to put the Divine character to rest and seek his fortunes playing male roles. Actually it’s a little misleading to bill it as a play about Divine, since the play is really about Milstead’s desire to shed the Divine character and reinvent himself, but the second half of the show, the John Wayne Gacy half, is very definitely about the notorious “killer clown”.

As Gacy, Larsen morphs chillingly into a fast-talking, swaggering braggart whose hardened exterior shell can’t entirely conceal a gaping hollow within that he ravenously tries to fill with violence and sex. Alternating between bragging about his exploits and protesting that he’s no “sicko,” Gacy’s snarling monologues are interspersed with testimony from his mother, his ex-wife, and Jeffrey Ringall, one of the few of his victims known to have survived his encounter with the prolific serial killer. Like “More Human than Human,” the subject matter of “Two Clowns” proves more compelling than the actual staging, but its unflinching focus on the outer edge of humanity’s imperfections does provide an intriguing opportunity for reflection.

More Human than Human
Through Nov 19
8 p.m., $25
The Dark Room
2263 Mission, SF
(415) 401-7987
www.darkroomsf.com
www.morehumanthanhuman.org

Two Clowns
Through Nov 26
7 p.m., $20
Boxcar Theatre Studios
125A Hyde, SF
(415) 967-2227
www.boxcartheatre.org
www.ronnielarsen.com

The Performant: Revenge of the nerds

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Gaiman and Palmer, the Bay Area Science Festival, and a live game of Frogger

Nerd might still be a four-letter word in high school locker rooms (assuming these are still high school locker rooms to be found), but there’s really never been a better time in history to be an adult nerd. No matter if your inclinations lie in language, linux, or the laws of thermodynamics, a nerdish life lived well is truly the best revenge for all those real or imagined slings and arrows of awkward youth.

Epitomizing this truism, geek-elite power couple Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer launched a joint mini-tour across the West Coast entitled simply “An Evening with Neil Gaimna and Amanda Palmer,” which turned out to be exactly that, no more and no less.


Though shades of goth tinge both artists’ output, their overall aesthetic is more playful than grim. Neil Gaiman, a prolific writer in many mediums, will perhaps always be best known for his long-running graphic novel series The Sandman, while Amanda Palmer, first hit international acclaim as co-founder of the antique punk/Weimer cabaret act The Dresden Dolls. During a pleasurably meandering three-hour evening at the Brava Theatre (two days before their appearance at The Palace of Fine Arts), the two performed bits of their own work—Neil reading from his 2006 collection of short stories Fragile Things, she playing the ukulele and piano with her singular panache. The songs that they performed together were naturally the highlights. Who knew that Neil Gaiman had a torch singer tucked within his black garb and quiet English reserve? He also penned the lyrics for some of the more notable tunes, including a lovelorn lament “I Google You,” plus one of opening act The Jane Austen Argument’s tunes: “Holes.”

It was a brainiac weekend all around, thanks to the Bay Area Science Festival, which hosted a plethora of walking tours, lectures, exhibitions, and hands-on activities for all. Ducking into my friendly neighborhood Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror fiction bookshop, Borderlands, I got an earful from science fiction authors Scott Sigler, Mira Grant, and Jeff Carlson about the “Science of Science Fiction,” primarily about how much research goes into being able to create with a mostly scientific justification for “melting faces” and “zombification”.

Last but not least, the Come Out and Play Festival, wrapped up a week’s worth of street games with an intensely-packed weekend of battle-scaled dodgeball, cardboard tube fighting, city-wide scavenger hunts, and labyrinths. In Everett Middle School’s vast playground, about forty adults plus a handful of kids, showed up to play a few rousing rounds of Field Frogger, a completely analog twist on the classic arcade game of yore. Participants playing “froggers” sat on giant yoga balls and bounced through an obstacle course of banner-carrying “cars,” “turtles,” and ”logs.” By the end of the morning, there were six froggers hopping through the roads and rivers at the same time, which gave the playing field more of an appearance of a collision course than in the original Konami version, combining innovation with chaos and homage with humor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDgqJjht2vQ

GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: Ingrid Eggers

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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GOLDIES 2011 Lifetime Achievement: Ingrid Eggers

GOLDIES In a city that boasts far more film festivals than movie theaters, one of the most singularly focused is the annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival — the largest German-language film festival in the United States. Carefully curated for 14 years by Dr. Ingrid Eggers, former program coordinator of the San Francisco branch of the Goethe-Institut, Berlin and Beyond has showcased an eclectic mix of movies by established filmmakers, debut features, documentaries, shorts, and silent films, from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Eggers’ major criteria — that the movies be filmed primarily in German, a language she felt was often missing from San Francisco’s foreign film scene — still left plenty of room for variety. Over the years, quirky documentaries about East German break dancers (Nico Raschick’s 2006 Here We Come) have shared screen space with gritty culture clashes such as Fatih Akin’s 2004 Head-On, wartime dramas such as Margarethe von Trotta’s 2003 Rosenstrasse, and non-traditional romances, such as Andreas Dresen’s 2008 Cloud 9.

Now, two-and-a-half years after her unanticipated removal from the Berlin and Beyond helm, which shocked the San Francisco film community, Eggers insists on looking forward. “We have made our peace,” she says genially, referring to the current incarnation of Berlin and Beyond, which just celebrated its sweet 16 in October.

When Eggers talks film, whether in a café in the Mission or on the stage of the Castro Theatre, her whole face lights up, a beatific glow. She may have reached Germany’s mandatory retirement age of 65 a few years ago, but her youthful vigor attests to a university background in physical education (along with history and literature) and her personal propensity for sport. Every film of the over 500 she’s presented — from the smallest short to the biggest blockbuster — has received a notably warm introduction, and more than one person has remarked in my presence that it is as if she were born to be a festival host. Yet it’s Eggers’ unassuming, collaborative nature rather than any kind of cult of personality that made Berlin and Beyond so successful. For example, it was by working closely with Anita Monga, former Castro programmer, that Eggers learned the ropes of festival scheduling.

“For our opening night in 1996 she insisted we show Fassbinder’s Martha,” Eggers reminisces. “A very difficult film; we had people walk out.”

From early partnerships with the then-San Francisco-based International Film Financing Conference and Kinofest Lünen, a sister festival in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state, to later ones with corporate sponsors such as Kuehne + Nagel, who underwrote the shipping costs of the film canisters, Eggers’ ability to forge unique partnerships has served her in good stead. Her current film festival project — the smaller-scale German Gems — is set to screen for a third year in January 2012.

After that, Eggers is not so sure. “It’s incredibly expensive to put on even such a small festival,” she admits ruefully, though her many years of festival directing has provided her with the unquantifiable currency of influence. The first German Gems festival, a jam-packed day in 2010 at the Castro (with an encore performance in Point Arena), included von Trotta’s biopic of Hildegarde von Bingen, Vision, and received an official blessing from Dieter Kosslick, director of the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.

Since she’s less interested in competing with than enhancing the selections at Berlin and Beyond, Eggers has shifted German Gems’ focus toward student and first feature films, one of her favorite components of B and B festivals past. But like any proud parent, she still speaks fondly of her first-born festival, pointing out the big-name film personalities who graced Berlin and Beyond’s stage: Bruno Ganz, Michael Verhoeven, and Wim Wenders — coups that put the event on the map, even in Germany. It won’t ever be quite the same without her, but thanks to Eggers’ persistent efforts over the years, the future of San Francisco’s premiere showcase of German cinema seems assured.

The Performant: Hell of a ‘ween

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Getting scared with The Residents — and other Hallowed traditions

Used to be that on Halloween you could be assured of catching either The Residents or The Cramps storming the stages of San Francisco; bands practically designed to blend in with the emissaries of the afterlife creeping through the thin membrane demarcating the spiritual plane. But with the sad passing of The Cramps iconic frontman Lux Interior in 2009, and the always-sporadic scheduling of The Residents, it seems like those days may be gone forever. But perhaps not coincidentally, in a unique twist on the Halloween season tradition, The Residents lead singer Randy Rose has been workshopping a disturbing cabaret all his own at the Marsh in Berkeley.

Entitled “Sam’s Enchanted Evening,” the production in its current permutation is a stripped-down acoustic medley of altered cover tunes and rambling monologues, blustery dispatches from the tortured depths of a character named Sam—an old high school chum, according to Randy. A broken-down shell of a former Casanova and Vietnam War veteran, a stooped and decrepit figure tottered onstage, walker and bourbon in tow, dragging the oddience down the claustrophobic rabbit hole of his pessimistic world view. Accompanied by occasional Resident’s collaborator and Marsh stalwart Joshua Raoul Brody on the keys, Sam warbled through an All-American pop-culture soundtrack from “Sixteen Tons,” to “Living the Vida Loca,” with desperate intensity. A haunting portrait of a twisted, tragic life, and possibly the scariest thing you could have seen during the long Halloween weekend.

As party-packed as the weekend was, for Halloween traditionalists, Monday night was still the real deal. And what better way to celebrate the scariest night of the year than at a bona-fide, old-fashioned, haunted house? For years, tiny corner grocery store Appel and Dietrich Market at 6001 California has been hosting haunted house mayhem in its basement, conceptualized and staffed by a stalwart crew of Richmond district denizens. An eye-catching guillotine and witch-burning stake out on the sidewalk entertained the passerby, while in the “dungeons” below the street, mouthy chopped off heads in baskets, strobe-lit tortures chambers, a mad scientist’s laboratory, and a sacrificial ritual lay in wait for the thrill-seeking horrorphiliacs who ventured down.

Later that evening, the third annual Halloween edition of FlashDance, one of the city’s most low-key yet exuberant howl-day traditions, occupied an anonymous pier on the Embarcadero, affording a great view of the Bay bridge, lit up in the background like a strand of party lights. While the mild evening pulsed with the soundtrack of the evening (heavy on the Michael Jackson, a favorite of FlashDance founder Amandeep Jawa), a costumed frenzy of flashdancers put their hands in the air like they just didn’t care. If there were any spirits walking that evening, they blended right in with the spunky aerobics instructors, zombies, and deep sea creatures otherwise disguised as party revelers, which is exactly the point of such revels, both for the living and the dead. It makes one suspect that whatever the afterlife has going for it, dance parties are not among them, so we’d best enjoy them now while we can.

Sam’s Enchanted Evening
Through November 26
The Marsh Berkeley
2120 Allston Way, Berkeley
$15-$50
(415) 826-5750
www.themarsh.org

The Performant: Baring all

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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The Trial of Lucullus at CounterPULSE and Shazia Mirza at the Punchline

Open rehearsals are a hot topic in the theatre world, with compelling arguments on both sides of the debate about how much of the “process” in the creation of theatre should be public? On the one hand, the argument goes, the demystification of the process can only help audiences to understand a piece better, and connect more deeply with the finished production. On the other hand, the counter-argument proposes, so much is subject to change during rehearsal, that judging the potential merits of a future work based on an unfinished version may not be in the best interests of either audience or company.

My feeling is that transparency in art, as in life, enhances our experiences—and open rehearsals, like staged readings, can afford an audience a rare look at a work stripped down, naked, unencumbered by the dazzle of tech design and polish. To this end, during a special edition of the Shaping San Francisco Public Talk series at CounterPULSE, a group of San Francisco Sate University students performed an open rehearsal of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Trial of Lucullus,” which opens on the 27th for a weekend-long run.

For Joel Schechter, who co-directed the piece with fellow SFSU professor Barbara Damashek, the chance to test drive the work in front of an audience who probably won’t make the trek to SFSU for the finished production is definitely of value for the students. An ensemble cast of undergrads took the CounterPULSE stage to enact this little-performed Brecht play, which was originally written for the radio, and later staged as an opera with music by Paul Dessau.

Casey Robbins played the Roman General Lucullus on trial in the Underworld for his worldly deeds, the decision to send him to Hades or to the Elysian Fields in the hands of a panel of five jurors, commoners, whose ilk have not fared particularly well at the hands of fighting men. With movement, song, and somber monologue, the trial proceeds to its end, a plea for peace, as timely now as when Brecht wrote the play in 1939, and even as far back as 57/56 BC, when Lucullus himself passed away.

Are there any performers more naked than stand-up comedians? Those mercurial characters whose success so often comes at the expense of familial harmony. Friends, lovers, siblings, and parents are all perfect fodder for the stand-up comedian’s wry outlook and devastating observations, and the better the comedian, the less separate their “private” life becomes.

Shazia Mirza, who hails from Birmingham, England, the eldest daughter of devout Pakistani Muslims, has a wealth of family anecdotes to draw upon, many of which center around her parents’ desire to marry her off, or at least reap grandchildren from her. When Mirza points out laconically that for grandchildren to happen she “needs cock” for it to work, her mother apparently agrees. “Fine, have cock, have five cocks!”

Mirza, who also writes a column entitled “Diary of a Disappointing Daughter” for the Guardian (the UK Guardian), has a seemingly endless treasure trove of such stories, and during her set at the Punchline last Tuesday, she put a number of them on display. Naked. Beguiling. Human. Hilarious.

The Trial of Lucullus
Oct. 27-28, 2 p.m. and Oct 29-30, 2 p.m.
$5
SF State Studio Theatre
(415) 338-2467
creativearts.sfsu.edu/events/3086/trial-lucullus

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