The term “boxed in” takes on new meaning in the world premiere of American Conservatory Theater’s “Stuck Elevator,” based on the true story of a Chinese deliveryman trapped in a Bronx, N.Y., elevator for 81 hours.
“The story really intrigued me,” says Julius Ahn, who plays the lead character, Guang. “Here is somebody that seems to be integrated into mainstream America. You see the surface, but what’s beneath is much more complex.
It’s such a compelling story of one man, his background and coming to America — to live that dream.”
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The Cockettes, San Francisco’s famed gender-bending, convention-mocking theatrical melange, have returned.
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Sometimes nothing much happens in a play, or at least nothing surprising, but the journey its characters take feels so authentic, so palpably representative of the human condition, that audiences are likely to cherish the passing minutes.
Such is the case in Magic Theatre’s Bay Area premiere of Los Angeles playwright Julie Marie Myatt’s 2009 play “The Happy Ones.”
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In a society as beauty-obsessed as ours, the fairly simple story that playwright Neil LaBute tells in “Reasons to Be Pretty” rings true in ways that can be discomfiting.
The comic drama, which premiered on Broadway in 2009, is directed here by Susi Damilano in a stellar SF Playhouse production. Both funny and sad, it reveals, in stark relief, the often unattractive vulnerabilities of its all-too-human characters.
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With a steady string of world premieres and regular accolades in the national media, the San Francisco Ballet has been on a roll the past few years, and 2014 might be even better.
America’s oldest professional ballet company announced its 81st season today. It begins Jan. 22 and ends eight programs and 61 shows later on May 11, 2014.
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If Baz Luhrmann and Busby Berkeley had raised a rambunctious love child back in the 1970s, it might resemble something like “Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma.”
The full-length, revamped version of The Cockettes’ wildly unconventional 1971 musical gets a robust reboot in Thrillpeddlers’ sixth annual Theatre of The Ridiculous, which opens in previews at The Hypnodrome this week.
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Playwright Neil LaBute continues to address the question: Why are positive character traits associated with people who are physically attractive?
It’s one of the themes in “Reasons to Be Pretty,” opening this week in an SF Playhouse production following runs in New York, both off- and on Broadway.
The show, the third in a trilogy that includes “The Shape of Things” and “Fat Pig,” deals with how body-image issues affect people and their relationships, and follows a template similar to its predecessors.
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San Francisco choreographer Sean Dorsey likes stories.
With his company Sean Dorsey Dance, his most recent projects have mined personal histories from the LGBT community, including “The Secret History of Love,” which returns to Dance Mission Theater on Thursday.
“I became passionate about uncovering, documenting and sharing stories that get lost from mainstream history and fall between the pages of family albums,” Dorsey says.
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A magnificent dance production, San Francisco Ballet's "Onegin" also exemplifies romantic poetry and theater of the first order. Thursday’s opening performance of the woefully short one-week run was thrilling in every way.
The reprise of the company's 2012 U.S. premiere of choreographer John Cranko's revised 1967 "Onegin" stands up next to Pushkin's original 1837 novel and Tchaikovsky's 1879 landmark opera. The piece onstage in the War Memorial is a vital, gripping dance drama that unfolds continuously and cohesively.
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It’s no wonder journalist-playwright Lawrence Wright was drawn to Italian superstar author-reporter Oriana Fallaci as the subject for “Fallaci,” his two-character drama receiving its world premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre under the assured direction of Public Theatre artistic director Oskar Eustis.
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