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Theater
San Francisco's annual lit festival has gotten big, fast. Now a week long, it's filled with sponsors, panels, booze, music, film, and, oh yeah, lots of author readings.
A good friend of mine has on his refrigerator door cartoonist Ted Rall's classic "Everybody's Happy Nowadays," in which young, healthy, cheerful, culturally sensitive San Franciscans browbeat a skeptic until he caves in and says, yes, he also loves The City. Stories about San Francisco's Litquake festival in the local press often remind me of the Rall cartoon, with breathless writers on the verge of exhorting us, too, to say it: "We're literary! We're literary! We're splendidly literary!" More
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Theater
A Year Of Comedic Diversity
As a fellow San Franciscan, my night often involves a journey out to find a small local club or bar with the expectation of finding something unique, personal and familiar. You know, something that has the word "San Francisco" in it. We are a savvy bunch, but love it when we're given a chance to shout out when our names are being called on the microphone. What better way to promote SF spirit than to award yourself with copious amounts of sketch comedy, candid conversations with famous people, and weird happenings at this year's 5th annual SF Sketchfest. More
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Theater
The Spaces Between Film and Stage
A bare stage with a projection screen, the image of two men walking amidst a dusty, black and white cinematic landscape, the sounds of piano rumblings reminiscent of the music from the silent film era. This is where Berkeley Rep’s production of “All Wear Bowlers” opens, with Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, both the authors and stars of this production, exploring the permeations between film and stage, performer and audience, vaudeville and postmodern theater. More
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Theater
A Ripping Social Satire of Love and Marriage
W. Somerset Maugham’s plays concentrated on social commentary and the conventions of marriage, and in his clever satire, “The Circle”, Maugham presents his audience with a circuitous dilemma -- is marriage for practical purposes, or is marriage for love and passion? The drama here is in two generations of upper-crust marriages where characters are confronted with similar impulses, with wives who seek to abandon stability for a shot at romance. More
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Theater
Trigger Happy
What does a girl do when she has it all? Say beauty, brains, a happy childhood with a view of the fjords of Norway, and a fortunate marriage to a promising young scholar? Add to that a six-month honeymoon with a visit to the seven wonders of the world with a dip into Rome’s Trevi Fountain, only to return -- potentially enceinte -- to a new home brimming with fancy furniture, books, and a few pistols? Well, if you’re Hedda Tesman, née Gabler (played by René Augesen), you start shooting things. More
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Theater
Mozart’s Un-Repenting Rake
An evening at the opera, even a “school night” performance, promises something special. The night is even better with a pre-performance Prosecco at Jardiniere, a chance to bask amidst sweet smelling men in tuxedos and grand looking women in diamonds and stoles, and, in this case, the opportunity to enjoy what many consider to be the most perfect opera, the pinnacle of its form. More
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Theater
Musical Theater That Revels in Horror, and Humor
There's no doubt, a growing sub-culture has emerged of musical theater fans who want to see complex orchestration, comedic flair, and macabre songs about the business endeavors of a butcher barber and pie maker working in cahoots. For them, “Sweeney Todd” is the pinnacle of all such productions, turning musical expectations of sweet love stories and comedic song and dance into the reality of a tale centered on the barbaric transgressions of the infamous “Demon Barber of Fleet Street” -- Sweeney Todd. More
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Theater
The Civil War and All its Repercussions
It was at Appomattox Court House in rural Virginia in 1865 where General Robert E. Lee surrendered the confederate army to Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, formally ending the Civil War. With this surrender, Appomattox itself has come to represent a point in history where two warring factions made peace. And within Philip Glass’ ambitious, though sometimes uneven, opera, Appomattox is put forth as the point in history when the groundwork for future race relations and battles within America were laid. More
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Theater
TAGs, Twinkies, and Cultural Baggage
The characters in "F.O.P., Fresh Off the Plane", a new play by local playwright, director and producer Sean Lim, now being presented at the Magic Theater in Fort Mason Center in San Francisco, make us ask ourselves where we're from (really), as they struggle to come up with their own answers to this question. "F.O.P." is a provocative, tight, funny, and well-paced play in two acts that exposes the internal conflicts inherent in being Asian American today. More
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Theater
Fringe Benefits
Ask your homies why they live in the Big City, and the answer is likely to include the phrase "all the cultural events…" But if you inquire what the last "cultural event" was that they had partaken in, you're likely to encounter long pauses, vacant looks, or maybe a vague recollection of a Quentin Tarantino flick. It's a shame; in the Bay Area, right under our noses, in our own backyards, there's a wealth of cutting-edge performance art and small theatre that seems to go largely unnoticed. We default to the cineplexes when we want out-of-home entertainment, but the problem is (in case you hadn't noticed) big studio movies kind of suck lately. More
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