In her ominously titled feminist revenge comedy, “You’re Going to Bleed,” now world-premiering as part of Exit Theatre’s DIVAFest, playwright Melissa Fall co-opts some characters and tropes from theatrical literature.
For example, a marginally employed actor, John (as in Proctor, from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”), is seduced by a teenager named Abigail (“The Crucible” again).
Here, John is Abigail’s audition-monologue coach. She’s preparing an erotic boy-and-horse scene from “Equus,” and that drama too figures into Fall’s plot in weird and abstract ways.
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Director Becky Kemper based her version of Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” now at African-American Shakespeare Company, on the chitlin circuit, the network of theaters and clubs where black performers entertained black audiences during segregation.
To that end, she set it in the 1950s (represented by some songs and by Linda Tucker’s period-appropriate costumes) and created a loosey-goosey, raucous atmosphere with actor Amy Lizardo as an assured and vivacious emcee.
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Six years after Michael Smuin’s death, Smuin Ballet continues to carry his torch, performing his works and new pieces he would have loved.
“Bouquet,” the mixed spring program with two local premieres onstage this week at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, shows the company at its adventurous best.
Helen Pickett’s “Petal,” an anticipated West Coast premiere, is fervid and furious. Pickett, a California native who danced with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt for more than 10 years, reflects both his influence and her individual ambition in the work.
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Sometimes, in transforming tragic events into art, a terrible beauty emerges.
Such is the case in the National Theatre of Scotland’s much-acclaimed touring production of Gregory Burke’s 2006 play, “Black Watch.” The Drill Court at the Armory provides enough space, and a suitably bleak atmosphere, for such a dramatic, and at times downright thrilling, spectacle.
In 2004, a regiment of the Black Watch — a branch of the Scottish military with a centuries-old history — was sent to the so-called Triangle of Death in Iraq to replace American forces departing for Fallujah.
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Twenty years ago, Z Space burst onto the scene and offered The City a place for artists to revel in their process. Audiences did not mind, either. Since then, Z Space has produced an array of compelling works, from music and visual art to dance and theater.
To commemorate the milestone, Josh Kornbluth, one of the Bay Area’s most prolific monologists, brings back his hit “Love & Taxes” in a two-night engagement benefiting Z Space beginning May 22.
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Maybe you have to be a baby boomer to appreciate Will Durst’s latest solo act, “Boomeraging from LSD to OMG.” But I doubt it.
It is, of course, about the travails of what Durst terms being “chronologically gifted,” or “what happens when acid flashbacks meet dementia.”
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If a sold out week-long run of Christopher Wheeldon’s “Cinderella” is anything to go by, San Francisco Ballet should note that story ballets and fairy tales sell.
“Cinderella,” which opened at the War Memorial Opera House on May 3 and closes May 12 – is a lavish, glittering, high-tech production with scenery and costumes by Julian Crouch. It made its world debut December in Amsterdam with the Dutch National Ballet; San Francisco Ballet’s run is the U.S. premiere.
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Everybody’s favorite nanny flew into the Orpheum Theatre on Wednesday.“Mary Poppins,” the Broadway musical based on P.L. Travers’ classic children’s book and the 1964 Disney film it inspired, is making its first Bay Area appearance, bringing the umbrella-toting British icon to life in a vibrant, kid-friendly production.
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It was a tough opening night for the cast of “Talk Radio” at Actors Theatre of San Francisco. Anyone unfamiliar with Eric Bogosian’s acerbic play might not have known that lead actor Christian Phillips was valiantly trying to correct a technical glitch of the radio station set at the beginning of the show.
With expert, seamless ad-libs, Phillips, in radio talk-show host mode, asked for a sound engineer and gamely tried to keep things going before finally breaking that fourth wall and stopping the show for a few minutes.
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Sutton Foster, who officially opens the new Feinstein’s at the Nikko nightclub today, is a charming contradiction to the George Bernard Shaw maxim, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.”
Foster clearly can do. She racked up five Tony nominations in the past decade — for all but one of her past six Broadway gigs — and won twice, for “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Anything Goes.”
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