If you gathered the artifacts from one day in your life — what you use, things you consume, what you value or discard — and buried them, what would some future archeologist infer about your life? This was the question Minneapolis-based choreographer Morgan Thorson pursued for “Spaceholder Festival,” an evening-length performance piece for five dancers getting its West Coast premiere at ODC Theater this weekend. Thorson became interested in the concept of movement artifacts as expressions of who we are by reading about archeology.
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There’s a new Hamlet striding the stage at the California Shakespeare Theater, and he’s a powerhouse.
In the title role of Shakespeare’s monumental tragedy, actor LeRoy McClain is the vital, eloquent center of Liesl Tommy’s gripping new production.
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Spoiler alert: “Mystical Abyss” ends with the Sky Woman of Iroquois legend falling into the void, with birds and animals breaking the fall, until she lands on a giant turtle and creates the continent of North America.
That’s just a small bit in a cosmic tale from Yuriko Doi, founder-director of Theatre of Yugen.
Doi is pulling together a wide range of The City’s talent from various disciplines to produce “Mystical Abyss,” a fusion of Japanese dramatic arts, Native American legend, Noh choreography and world theater.
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As Sharr White’s intense, compact new play, “The Other Place,” proceeds, mysteries deepen.
Why is Juliana, a middle-aged research scientist, consulting a doctor; is it true, as she is convinced, that she’s inherited the brain cancer that runs in her family?
Who is the woman in the yellow bikini incongruously seated among the doctors attending a medical conference at which Juliana is giving a promotional speech about a new drug — and what exactly is this new drug about anyway?
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If you lived in San Francisco (or New York) in the 1980s, Larry Kramer’s landmark 1985 play “The Normal Heart,” about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in New York, will likely bring back the agony of that desperate decade.
You’ll recall how President Ronald Reagan ignored the impending disaster and activists like Kramer (and the main characters in his play) struggled to alert the establishment, mobilize the gay community, educate the country at large and, of course, raise funds for research and treatment.
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Comedy queen Roseanne Barr recently weathered a Comedy Central roast — but could she survive a campy reboot by San Francisco drag queens?
Two words: Bring it.
The sitcom legend turned activist is the inspiration behind Velvet Rage Productions’ festive stage romp of “Roseanne,” which opens at Rebel next week.
Two favorite “Roseanne” episodes will be “re-imagined” in two shows most Wednesdays through Nov. 14.
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Just when you think you’ve figured out who the characters are, and what’s going on in Tunisian-Swedish playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s 2011 Obie Award winner “Invasion!” you’re thrown for a loop.The satirical comedy, which premiered in Sweden in 2006, is receiving a buoyant production by Crowded Fire Theater Company under director Evren Odcikin.Woven throughout is the mystery of a quasi-mythological figure called Abulkasem. He’s first referred to by a high school kid who savors the sound of the name, and the word becomes joking, multipurpose slang at his school.
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Comedian Gina Yashere is constantly confusing Americans with her British accent.“Most people don’t realize that there are black people in England,” says Yashere. “The general perception is that I’m Australian, that I’m Aborigine. And it’s not just white Americans; it’s black Americans too. It’s hard for them to compute it.”Yashere — who is taping her performance Saturday at Brava Theater for a new DVD “Laughing to America” — now lives in Los Angeles, but grew up in London in a British-Nigerian family.
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From the opening scene of We Players’ site-specific “Twelfth Night” on the Hyde Street Pier, it’s clear this will be a unique rendering of one of Shakespeare’s most delightful comedies.
Welcomed to the seaport town of Illyria from a balcony, we then traipse down to a beach to see the shipwrecked heroine, Viola (director Ava Roy), being rowed frantically ashore.
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In the musical “Sunday in the Park With George,” pointillist painter Georges Seurat encourages his mistress Dot to concentrate so that she will be a better artist’s model. It’s apt advice, according to Lorraine Olsen, author and star of “Figuratively Speaking,” which opens today in The City.
The solo show, an award winner at last year’s San Francisco Fringe Festival, explores Olsen’s insights from more than a decade spent as a professional artist’s model.
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