Ken Bullock reviews

Dionysian Festival--first show, Saturday night

2009-05-30T17:43:00.000-07:00

Highlights of the first show of the Dionysian Festival at the Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance included Mary & her own troupe, stalwarts like Christina Braun (who did a fine solo piece, Chopin's "Butterfly"), Yuu Asahina, Monique Goldwater & Amber Held, performing Isadora's choreography circa 1900-13; Mary's young students (& some, like Marcelle Rutherford & Emma Stearns, are developing excellent stage presence); a work-in-progress collaboration between Mary, koto player Shoko Hikage & pianist-narrator Tony Chapman for the 150th anniversary of the voyage of the Kanrin Maru, naval vessal which carried the first Japanese emissaries to the States from Japan, landing in San Francisco after five weeks of storms at sea--& the improvisational performance lab in movement that Sotomotion performed, coming up with a funny, sprawling piece that reflected their mentor's comic sense (dancers Jessica Brown, Marialuisa Diaz de Leon, Tatjana Kaurinovic, Noemie Lanier,
Cameron Richardson, Rosario Sammartino, at one point impersonating pigeons--a misdemeanor, I believe in the City & County of SF ... ), & Soto's own exquisite, profoundly reflective & deeply humorous 'Wind & Clouds,' a solo piece with music from Yuem Sang, Baaba Maal & Antonio Pinto, in which Soto builds up stances & movements from dance, martial arts--& a lot of fretting about something or other--& waves them away with the touch of a magician, only to start up again. He's been Mary's coach for improvising movement with spoken word, just one of his specialties.

Sunday at 5 promises to be a different mix, as the improvisations change shape, & Edward Schocker leads a quartet in contemporary music, with bamboo flutes, shakuhaci, voice, hichiriki, sho--& laptop computer.

Dionysian Festival at Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance

2009-05-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

Mary Sano has been Isadora Duncan's avatar in the city of Isadora's birth for over a decde now--& this weekend, The 12th Annual Dionysian Festival will be presented at the Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, 245 Fifth St. Studio 314 in San Francisco's South of Market district, to honor Isadora's 132nd birthday.

Performances are Saturday, May 30, at 8 & Sunday, May 31, at 5. Both shows feature Mary with her Duncan Dancers ensemble, as well as two great treats: Mary performing solo to Shoko Hikage's exquisite koto playing--& a performance by movement maestro G. Hoffman Soto (a longtime collaborator with Anna Halprin) & Sotomotion, his own troupe. Rebecca Whittington will dance South Indian classical Bharata Natyam on Saturday only; Edward Schocker & Friends (Edward a well-known presence on the SF new & improvisational music scene, & collaborator with Theatreof Yugen) will play international contemporary instrumental music on Sunday.

Tickets are $15 in advance, $17 at the door. Reservations advised (it's a studio!) (415) 357-1817 www.duncandance.org

'The Nose'--Great Russian Humor Performed By Russian Actor

2009-03-20T16:39:00.000-07:00

Oleg Liptsin, the remarkable Russian actor-director who staged and performed in Beckett's HAPPY DAYS and Dostoyevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND (aka A PROPOS OF THE WET SNOW) in San Francisco and Berkeley, has extended his run of a piquantly funny solo storytelling show, with creative interactive video (and some surprise cameos--in a one-man show!), the visuals by Kevin Quenneson, of Gogol's THE NOSE, the tale of a social-climbing bureaucrat whose snout leaves him for the Bog Time. A celebration of the great author's 200th birthday. Extraordinary theatrical technique combined with great humor, and an offbeat sense of Gogol's age and our digital one. At the Phoenix Theatre Annex, 414 Mason, suite 406, off Geary, near Union Square, San Francisco. Tickets: (415) 944-1555 phoenixtheatresf.org Held over though March 28.

OLEG LIPTSIN DIRECTS INNOVATIVE VERSION OF GOGOL'S 'OVERCOAT

2009-01-11T14:31:00.000-08:00

In theater, the great Russian writer Nicolai Gogol is best-known for 'The Inspector General,' his savvy, savage satire on corruption--& a chaming con-man.

But Gogol--very much a contemporary of Dickens & Balzac--wrote great satiric stories about the pretensions of the meager Russian professional class that captured the whole society--& has more than just resonance to what's happening now.

Oleg Liptsin--who starred in, & helped direct, some of the best Russian theater of recent times--is putting on a workshop version of his adaptation of Gogol's 'The Overcoat,' conflated with 'The Nose,' & other Gogol material, featuring the rigors of physical theater, shadow play (with the collaboration of Larry Reed & his truly great Shadowlight Productions), robots--& who knows what else.

Oleg (who performed Beckett's 'Happy Days' & 'Apropos of the Wet Snow,' from Dostoyevsky's 'Notes from Underground' with distinction in the Bay Area), practices theater arts in ways we don't see so much anymore in these parts.. Anyone who admires rigor, fine emotional shading yet bravura performace should see him onstage.

This Monday & Tuesday only, Jan. 12-13, at Noh Space, Mariposa & Floridat St's in San Francisco (south side of Project Artaud, near 18th & Harrison) in San Francisco's mission-potrero District. (415) 621-0507, or theatreofyugen.org

JACK SPICER TRIBUTE SF MAIN LIBRARY SATURDAY Jan. 10

2009-01-09T04:44:00.000-08:00

A tribute to poet Jack Spicer--& a celebration of the publication of his Collected Poems, MY VOCABULARY DID THIS TO ME, edited by Peter Gizzi &Kevin Killian, (Wesleyan University Press, $35), will be held 1 pm, Sat. Jan. 10 in the Koret Auditorium of the San Francisco Main Library, with poets reading from Spicer's work, including Killian & Spicer's friend Lew Ellingham, his biographers (POET, BE LIKE GOD; Wesleyan). Spicer can be heard reading his poetry online at PennSound.

Spicer, who co-founded the Berkeley Renaissance poetry movement with Robert Duncan & Robin Blaser in the 1940s, & the 6 Gallery (where Allen Ginsberg famously debuted "Howl") in the 50s, was a remarkable poet, always involved in the community of writers on the San Francisco scene, an influence on Gilbert Sorrentino, Richard Brautigan (who dedicated 'Trout Fishing in America' to Spicer) & countless others.

After his death at 40 in 1965, his seven books & the magazines he founded or participated in became hard to find. In 1975, Black Sparrow published THE COLLECTED BOOKS OF JACK SPICER, edited by Robin Blaser, with a seminal essay, "The Practice of Outside" (now in Blaser's THE FIRE; UC Press)--all of what was available then of Spicer's "serial poems"--sequences of shorter poems, meant to resonate with each other & explore uncharted territory. Later, Donald Allen brought out ONE NIGHT STAND (Grey Fox Press)--how Spicer referred to his earlier, individual lyrics. Both are out of print, the COLLECTED BOOKS commanding $40-50 or more for very used paperback copies.

But the new COLLECTED isn't just a stopgap--new material's been added, including several newly edited serial poems, all in chronological order for the first time.

I squint my eyes to cry
(No tears, a barren salt mine) and then take two sniffles
through my nose
This means emotion. Chaplinesque
As the fellow says.
We pantomime every action of our bodies
Do not wait
On one sad hill
For one sad turn. I've had it
Principly because you're young.

--from "Thing Language," 'Language,' 1964

Dennis Banks in Mary Sano's Dancing Dreaming Isadora

2008-11-04T18:04:00.000-08:00

Dennis Banks, founder of the American Indian Movement, will join exquisite dancer-choreographer Mary Sano in a multicultural program that will feature works from Isadora Duncan's dance repertoire, Mary's original choreography, Shoko Hikage's dynamic koto playing, the songs and piano-playing of Tony Chapman as well as classical pianist Alpin Hong and Dennis Banks' Native American storytelling and drumming, 6 p. m. Sunday November 9 at Cowell Theater in San Francisco's Fort Mason Center in the Marina District. Tickets: $20 adv., $25 at the door ($18 for students). Boxoffice: (415) 345-7575; fortmason.org Information: (415) 357-1817; duncandance.org

Following up on her Mother Earth Event (last August with Dennis Banks and Tony Chapman) and her annual Dionysian and Terpsichorean celebrations in honor of Isadora Duncan, all at her Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, Mary has envisioned a bigger, more ambitious performance, featuring the individual talents of these diverse artists and their joint collaboration, celebrating "Isadora's ... past, present and future." Collaboration between the arts, improvisation and innovation have often marked Mary's events, which have featured surprising juxtapositions and joint endeavors by artists of different disciplines and styles from very different places--very much in the spirit of Isadora herself, born not far from Mary's South of Market studio, who brought the origins of Modern Dance from San Francisco to the world, collaborating with the greatest musicians, visual and theatrical artists and poets to create a new, freer performing artistry that anticipated
an emancipated world of the arts and humanity.

Nathaniel Tarn Reads in the Bay Area: 50 Years of Poetry

2008-10-25T09:35:00.000-07:00

Poet Nathaniel Tarn, among the finest of living poets, celebrated his 80th birthday recently, and is reading in the Bay Area this week. Sunday, Oct. 26, he'll read at 3 pm at Meridian Gallery on Powell St. near Union Square in San Francisco ($5), in association with the San Francisco Poetry Center; Monday night at 7:30, he'll read, then converse with Owen Hill at Moe's Books on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley (free)--and on Tuesday, Tarn will appear at a special event for the Borneo Project, an organization dedicated to the preservation of rain forests and advocacy of aboriginals' land rights, the only venue where he'll read the title poem of his new collection from New Directions, 'Ins & Outs of the Forest Rivers,' written while traveling a few years back in Borneo. The poem's also an elegy, dedicated to Saging Ani, a friend of the Borneo Project, who died suddenly on the trip. For information: joe@borneoproject.org

At the Poetry Center at SF State last Friday, Tarn read some of the poems from 'Ins and Outs ...' which show the most recent metamorphoses of his style--a style which can, by turns, convey some of the finest love poetry of our time, something more than nature poetry (cosmologic might be a better word) and social-political satire, besides self-reflection, or refraction of the present state of the world through the self. Afterwards, he genially answered audience questions at length, telling about his "sentimental education" concerning America and encountering (and publishing) postwar American poetry (Charles Olson, Robert Duncan & other contemporaries), his career as an anthropologist and his present "confirmed agnosticism" after a lifetime of studying Eastern religions (coming in part after reading Nietzche). "If I had been more a French student," said Tarn, whose parents were French & English, and who was evacuated from London to Cornwall during the
Blitz, "I would've had 'philou,' as they call it, a background in philosophy ... a few years ago, I picked up Spinoza & went on from there ... Nietzche, a great writer in the way few philosophers are, said that life may be miserable, but it's all we have; we have to love it. I've reflected sometimes that if we'd committed ourselves to life, to the world--realized that this is it, all we've got--maybe less of the destruction we've witnessed would have resulted. Maybe."

In cities, where the noise by day is overwhelming,
birds have evolved in time to sing by night, thus
to be heard by other birds. That is what we birds
are doing now, that once were poets of the day.
We sing at night, all hope on standby, but we ARE
heard by our own kindred . . .

(opening of part three, "Ascending Flight, Los Angeles," from 'Ins & Outs of the Forest
Rivers')

Cooper-Moore Will Play in Rare SF Appearance

2008-10-12T04:54:00.000-07:00

Cooper-Moore, free jazz pianist, multi-instrumentalist, instrument builder & composer extraordinaire, makes his first Bay Area appearance in 37 years at 8 p. m. Tuesday at Mama Calizo's Voice Factory, 1519 Mission St. (at 11th), San Francisco (moved from the Noodle Factory in Oakland) on his solo tour, 'Old & New Paths,' featuring his handmade instruments. (There's a grand piano on site, too.) A cohort of William Parker, who has played at the behest of Sonny Rollins, Cooper-Moore will play " a stew of Gospel, Bop, free jazz, Blues and roots music"--& tell stories (some of his growing up in the Virginia Piedmont). Poet David Gitin, who programmed music at KPFA-fm in the 60s & 70s, commented, "His appearances are so rare, they're excited when he plays in New York [where he lives]. A wonderful player, something of a secret." $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Brown Paper Tickets: (800) 838-3006 or brownpapertickets.com Info: (510) 547-8932. On Cooper-Moore
& the tour, see aumfidelity/cooper-moore.com (with sound bites).
[Berkeley Daily Planet 10/09/08)

*

Dennis Banks: Film, Storytelling, Drums & Dance

2008-08-08T06:43:00.000-07:00

Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, puts in an unusual appearance in an evening of "storytelling, drums and dance," when he and filmmaker Masaou Yamamoto will show a documentary film-in-progress on the Longest Walk 2, a walk across America for the environment, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the original Longest Walk for Native American rights, 7 p. m. Tuesday, August 12, at the Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, #314--245 Fifth St. (between Howard & Folsom). Banks will speak, tell stories and play drums in a performance on the theme of helping to clean up Mother Earth, with dancer/choreographer Mary Sano and pianist/songwriter Tony Chapman. (415) 357-1817 or duncandance.org /$10-15 suggested donation.

SKITTISH!--A Half-Dozen Unusual Comic Sketches

2008-07-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

SKITTISH--the title is apt for this evening of a half-dozen comic sketches which make the audience giddy, hysterical, even a little queasy, by turn.

Most short comedies, especially evenings which collect a few, follow pretty conventional lines in their content and delivery, mere variants on the kind of sketch originated in improv, popularized by Second City, the Compass Players, The Committee, Saturday Night Live ... with maybe a dollop of topicality, or a little coceptual shading, to add some ballast to the silliness.

Skittish takes a somewhat different route. Bruce Moody, who's written for National Lampoon, the New Yorker and Look, and who's performed on stages in the Bay Area and elsewhere for years, has arranged this selection of his dialogues from a larger group to run a gamut of moods and dynamics, all generally humorous, in the space of 90 minutes.

Cultivating the art of simplicity, Moody grounds each short sketch in a simple formula: two actors, two chairs, a table and a door. The returns he and the ensemble get from this spare ground makes the laughter all the richer.

There's 'Instead of Which, or Mr. Shunderson's Story,' where one old friend confesses to another that he's led a secret life, and they both might be in danger--right now. And 'Snap Beans,' in which sisters Faith and Hope prepare the repast for their late sibling Charity's wake, talking about growing old--and the young. In 'Birthday,' a mother insists on treating her grown son as a kid--and then reveals a few things about being a kid and a parent. 'Cruisine' finds two tele-chefs shipboard, in a duel for the gamiest ingredients in the gourmet meals they're demonstrating, while the ship pitches in heavy seas. 'Loafing' marks an encounter between ingenue masseuse and cynical client which stretches the bounds of a massage table. And 'Random Act' takes another tack on the disparity between age and youth in the visit a gaffer pays to his old neighborhood.

The actors are well-cast for the two very different pieces they each play in, opposite different partners each time. Besides Moody, who weighs in as one chef, as well as either a witness-in-hiding or a grim joker, Joe Higgins provides genial comedic talent as a confused buddy and a sentimental curmudgeon. Kenna Hunt is both an outre Julia Childs and a mourner with a wry mouth. Candy Campbell is the other grieving--and quibbling--sister, and the unquiet subject of Ariana Hooper's far-out ministrations in massage and the spirit. Ms. Hooper also plays a loopy-seeming mother to Demetrius Martin's protesting but conciliatory son. And Martin is the younger foil to Higgin's curmudgeon. It all circles back on itself. Though the sketches aren't directly related, they're meant to fit together, as if randomly, and the actors make it happen.

The actors and master director Alfredo Fidani. Fidani--actor, mime, teacher and director--hails from Argentina, where he's highly regarded. There aren't too many opportunities to catch this quiet artist's work hereabouts, but he has a distinctive touch in staging, which peaks in the hysterical physical comedy, amid words, of the pas-de-deux of the ethereal masseuse with her earthy client on the narrow stage of a massage table, draped with a sheet.

Fidani's shown masterful handling of shows of works by Shakespeare, Beckett, Ionesco and Steinbeck. His style and humor comes across beautifully, as does the author's, in these very funny encounters between oddballs, portrayed with panache by six adroit professionals. It's a refreshing and enjoyable evening of theatricality in miniature.

(SKITTISH! plays Friday and Saturday nights at 8 through August 31 at Stage Werx, 533 Sutter, between Powell & Mason, off Union Square in San Francisco. Tickets are $15-20. reservations & info: 510-787-2706, or www.skittishcompany.com)

Tennessee Wms' 'Out Cry': Theatrical Fun & Games

2008-05-17T16:59:00.000-07:00

Two actors, a brother and sister, find themselves trapped on tour in a "state theater in an unknown state," abandoned by cast and crew, with the audience expecting a show. They decide to improvise the Southern Gothic-style 'Two Character Play'--or have they been doing it all along? Tennessee Williams' late 60s reaction to the "Theatre of the Absurd," directed by Oleg Liptsin (who Bay Area theatergoers will remember for his version of Beckett's 'Happy Days' at the Shelton Theatre & the Berkeley City Club and 'A Propos of the Wet Snow,' (Dostoyevsky's 'Notes from Underground') at the Phoenix & the Willard Metalshop Theater. Liptsin and Felecia Faulkner (a cousin of the novelist, who started out with Southern Gothic--Williams encouraged her to perform 'Out Cry' "when you're a little bit older") follow the playwright's Ariadne's Thread through the labrynth of waking dreams and gamey memories with wild emotional swings and great humor, while Martin David
impersonates the gentle Tennessee, framing the show, which opens with a recording of Williams reading a poem. Final weekend Fri at 8, Sat at 2 & 8, at The Next Stage (Trinity Episcopal Church), Gough at Bush in San Francisco tix $15-25. (415) 333-6389 or TicketWeb. info: internationaltheatreensemble.com

'Clown Bible' A Musical, Slapstick Scriptural Tour-De-Farce

2007-03-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

Ten Red Hen, an innovative young company whose '99-Cent Miss Saigon" was one of the best things in the Bay Area last year, have outdone themselves with 'Clown Bible,' a musical comedy revue from Scriptural stories, Genesis to the Gospels, off to a bang when Adam & Eve pluck red noses from the Tree of Life, & God, silhouetted in a circle of light above the stage, shouts through a ringmaster's
bullhorn, "Alright, put 'em on!"

And they do--through a tapdancing, stuttering Moses, working overtime to appease the Lord and curb his tribe's appetites; Samson as an Action Hero, grinning and letting the Philistines have it (singing "I'm Samson, I'm crazy ... Get out of my way so I can do my hair!"), until getting vamped by a Delilah right out of a kitschy old movie; and Jesus preaching in parables, like jokes that the Apostles just don't seem to get ...

The music is original and good, with a swinging little combo onstage that becomes part of the action (the guitarist, as David, soothes the raging Saul; Dave Malloy at the keyboards--coauthor & composer--doubles as Job, whose Sorrows are represented by the loss of his piano, accordions & pitchpipe, while the other cats rib him for it). It's a talented young cast doing its schtick, featuring operatically voiced Jane Chen, a fine performer, as two persons of The Godhead.

Don't miss this work-in-progress. It's out there entirely on its own, with its own slant, a different feel. And it's genially, not contentiously, funny. The stories are almost all literal from Scripture, with a couple apocraphal transitions. A constant, delightful surprise.

(A full review was posted March 30 in the Weekend Edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet--berkeleydailyplanet.com)

'Clown Bible' runs through April 14 at Willard Metalshop Theater, 2425 Stuart St. (behind Willard School on Telegraph Ave) Berkeley $15-20 at the door or brownpapertickets.com (though nobody will be turned away for lack of funds). Info at: tenredhen.net

Blossoms of Poetry & Dance at Mary Sano Studio/Duncan Dance

2007-03-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

8 pm Saturday March 31
245 Fifth St. #314, between Howard & Folsom
$14 w/reservation, $16 at door
info@duncandance.org or (415) 357-1817

Mary Sano is celebrating the 10 years of her studio's activity with BLOSSOMS OF POETRY & DANCE, featuring Mary herself and guest dancer Junko Sodeyama, Merrill Collins on keyboard and Hideo Sekina on bamboo flute, and poetry by Kaori Annan, with video & photographic images by Yvon Chausseblanche.

The studio was founded just South of Market on Fifth to teach, practice and perform the dance style of pioneer Isadora Duncan, who was born a few blocks away in the late 19th century, the avatar of what would become modern dance around the world.

Mary is one of Isadora's most luminous followers, in her teaching, the book she wrote in her native Japan, her choreography and in her own exquisite performances.

But--just as important--her studio has served as a venue for many artists of diverse styles, in a time of academic and aesthetic provincialism. Her annual Dionysian celebrations--of Isadora's birthday in the spring and a festival in the fall--and other, sometimes impromteau events, gather surprising arrays of talent under the same roof, with an at-home hospitality and friendliness: from Duncan Dance to Butoh, the tragedy of Japanese Noh and the spare intensity of its music to the improvisations of performance art, modern dance and movement, popular song, Indian classical dance, Korean drumming and calligraphy, Chinese brush painting ... there's no telling what you'll see, what mood will be created.

So celebrate with Mary what she's done for the past decade, that's become a San Francisco institution, but remains in its own, original way a well-kept secret, a constant discovery.

Mary Sano presnts Isadora Duncan Dance, Japanese Musicians

2006-11-21T21:27:00.000-08:00

Mary Sano is an exquisite dancer & choreographer, an exemplar of Isadora Duncan whose studio is just blocks from Isadora's birthplace. Twice a year, she celebrates Isadora's extraordinary contribution in founding modern dance and her inspiration to artists of different media--and to women--everywhere.

On the weekend of Dec. 2-3, Mary will perform with her Duncan Dancers, as well as host exceptional koto player Shoko Hikage & Hideo Sekino on wood flute, as well as Tony Chapman on piano & keyboards. Mary's events are always intimate & unpredictably eclectic, with a chance to mingle with the artists & other audience members afterward. Sat. Dec. 2 at 8 pm, Sun. Dec. 3 at 3 pm. Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, 245-fifth St # 314 (between Howard & Folsom), San Francisco. $15 in advance, $20 at door (raffle tix $5) info@duncandance.org (415) 357-1817

mugwumpin presents super: anti: reluctant @ Exit Stage Left

2006-11-21T21:11:00.000-08:00

The whole phenomenon of heroes, superheroes & the urge to see or be them is explored in quickly changing tableaux by mugwumpin, one of the most talented of physical theater troupes, in: super: anti: reluctant, playing at Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy St, San Francisco (between Mason & Taylor). Info:
(415) 673-3847--through mid-Dec.

The urge to mayhem up through the fantasies of unrestrained power fuel mugwumpin's scenes of the grandiose and the ludicrous, played in a super style that reminds of--particularly hilarious--martial arts; they're great action figures of the stage! Always an act to catch ...

SHADOWPLAY OF THE MONKEY KING AT SOMARTS

2006-10-25T11:49:00.000-07:00

The fantastic adventures of the mischievous Monkey King, Sun Wu Kong, from the satiric novel (a favorite of the poet known as Chairman Mao) 'Journey To The West,' which dates from the Ming Dynasty, telling of the dire straits and ingenious escapes that mark the overland trek of a monk who is charged with bringing the Buddhist scriptures

back to China, have long been a staple of Chinese performing arts, for all ages, from acrobatic Chinese Opera to high-tech anime'--

And now they're fleshed out again by living shadows at San Francisco's SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan St. (between 8th & 9th, near Trader Joe's and The Concourse), as SF's ShadowLight Productions and Taiwan's Puppet and Its Double Theater stage a collaborative marvel with live actors as masked shadow puppets, mingled with real shadow puppets and projections, moving fluidly through Chinese landscape paintings that form and dissolve, cloud-like, across an enormous screen, to the percussive sounds of Chinese Opera, in MONKEY KING AT SPIDER CAVE, through Sunday afternoon, Oct. 29.

Three beautiful sisters, who just happen to be spider women, plan to eat the holy monk as they play with a ball of light or bathe in a stream; an evil alchemist, posing as a Taoist hermit, broods over his malevolent potions; Monkey and his friends, the companions of the good monk, wage a wild, slapstick battle with a plague of insects; the Monkey King, caught in a spell, turns into a pangolin and burrows through the earth to seek help from a lady Boddhisatva ...

Larry Reed, ShadowLight's founder, learned shadow puppetry in Bali, founding ShadowLight here in 1972. Since that time, he's brilliantly expanded on the traditional art, learning its secrets from different cultures and adapting techniques from other performing arts, notably cinema, to bring such stories to his 30 x 15 foot screen as IN XANADU, the tale of Kublai Khan; the Jazz Age poem, THE WILD PARTY; COYOTE'S JOURNEY, a California Indian myth narrated in English and Karok by a Native American elder; as well as tales from the Gold Rush; Dia de los Muertes, the Mexican Day of the Dead; and the ancient Indian epic, The Mahabhrata. (DVDs are available from Shadowlight.)

MONKEY KING AT SPIDER CAVE's due to tour Taiwan in March--but catch it quick! while this glorious fantasy's still Stateside--a spectacle for all ages, enchanting and original, the perfect combination of all the arts, old and new.

Tickets: $15-20 www.ticketmaster.com discounts for children, seniors and groups available.

Info: www.shadowlight.org --or call (415) 648-4461

Russian Performer Oleg Liptsin Plays Beckett At Shelton

2006-09-21T14:16:00.000-07:00

Russian actor and director Oleg Liptsin performs the part of Winnie, in Samuel Beckett's HAPPY DAYS, becoming a Russian modern form of Kabuki theater's onnagata (male playing a female role), accompanied by Jayne Entwhistle as Winnie's mostly silent husband, Willie.

In Beckett's last full-length play (here in a shortened adaptation by Liptsin), Winnie soliloquizes about her Happy Days, as she gradually is engulfed by a mound of earth. With only her handbag and its contents for props (and Willie's newspaper, umbrella and dirty postcards), this wry, knowing play is a perfect expression of the spare poetic elegance that's been called Beckett's "minimalism."

It's also an opportunity to see an exponent of Russian theater technique perform a modern classic. We hear a lot about Meyerhold, Bio-Mechanics, even Eccentrism, and the great innovations of the first half of the 20th century, but rarely is there a chance to experience it from an heir to this research in performance and what has come since.

Liptsin directed HAPPY DAYS at the Beckett Centennial Festival in Krakow earlier this year.

Liptsin has also directed LIVING CORPSE, from Tolstoy, opening at the Shelton Theatre at the end of the first week in October.

HAPPY DAYS running Thurs. Sept 21 and 28 only at Shelton, 533 Sutter (bet. Powell & Mason in San Francisco), (415) 433-7875
--& in a one night-only benefit performance, Sat. Sept. 30, at the Berkeley City Club on Durant (bet. Shattuck & Telegraph). Call Anne Novak, (415) 531-8454

Eastenders Stage PINTERESQUE at the Eureka

2006-09-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

Eastenders Repertory Co. (their name refers to Oakland; only slyly, if at all, to London's Cockney quarter) is a genuine rep theater. In recent years their "A Hundred Years Of ..." one-act festivals, under various subject rubrics (politics, sex &c), have been a mainstay of the Bay Area theater scene.

Now, taking a cue from a new word in the OED (online), they're essaying PINTERESQUE: Harold Pinter's "The Lover," the tense dialogue of a husband & wife engaged in erotic games, and the premiere of several new works inspired by Pinter, add a new dimension to The Eastenders' ongoing project.

"The Lover" features longtime collaborators Craig Dickerson and Michaela Greeley together again as the strange, happy pair.

Running through Oct. 8, Wed. through Sat. at 8, Sun. at 3, at 215 Jackson (in the Golden Gateway), San Francisco. Tix: $15
Wed, Thurs, Sun; $18 Fri-Sat. Discounts available. info & tix:
(510) 568-4118--or see www.eastenders.org

'POMP & CIRCUMSTANCEo' @ THE FRINGE

2006-09-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

Courtroom dramas regularly feature duelling attorneys--but what if it's a courtroom comedy, and the antagonists are father and son?

David Rouda, a fourth generation San Franciscan and himself a civil litigator (and TV writer) received acclaim and a "Best of Fringe" Critics' Award at last year's SF Fringe Festival for his play, SPERM WARFARE.

This year, he's entering the Fringe lists again with POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE--"Family Law has never been so dysfunctional!"--a 60-minute version of a full length script that will open later this year in an SF theater, having run 5 weeks in July-August at the Shelton Theatre downtown.

The fun will be to watch the 17-actor cast play fast and hard with the action wound to the breaking point--comic and dramatic tension to equal the exhilarating rush of The Fringe, with a slew of shows playing on a plethora of stages (some door-to-door) at the same time. Audiences barely finish applauding before running off to see another. It's the Fall event of the busy Bay Area theater community, a scene that itself includes over 300 companies and projects, bringing troupes from all over the world to perform at their edgiest.

POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE plays:

Thurs. Sept. 7 at 10 p. m.

Sat. 9/9 at 8:30

Sat. 9/16 at 2:30

Sun. 9/17 at 8:30

--at Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy (bet. Mason & Taylor), a block off Market (take Mason), 4 blocks from Union Square in Downtown SF.

Tix: $10 (there're special Fringe packages)

All curtain times firm--no late arrivals!

(415) 518-7683; 931-1094

wwwsffringe.org (or the company of POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE, www. shtickle.com)

Alfredo Fidani Directs 'The Bald Soprano' At Belrose

2006-06-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

Alfredo Fidani's a stage director of note in his native Argentina. For some years now, he's lived in the North Bay, keeping his hand in with a few small productions there and in Berkeley. His shows of Samuel Beckett's 'Endgame' at College of Marin and of a creatively cut and staged 'Julius Caesar' (in the claustrophobic depths of LaVal's for Subterranean Shakespeare, that caused Fidani to exclaim wryly, "There isn't room enough here for the bodies!") are particularly memorable.

Last year, he presented an unusual version of Steinbeck's 'Of Mice & Men' at the Belrose Studio Theatre, across from the San Rafael Library at 1415 Fifth (near 'E') Street, that once again showed the thoroughgoing artistic and humane honesty of his approach.

Now Fidani's back at Belrose, with a personal favorite of his, Eugene Ionesco's Absurdist comedy, 'The Bald Soprano,' which involves two English couples at a dinner party, a maid and a fire chief who are literally old flames--and a great deal of hilarious, cockeyed verbiage ... everyday life is never the same after 'The Bald Soprano.'

Opens Friday, June 9, for weekends through July 14.

For info & tickets: (415) 454-6422.

Eclectic Weekend Of Performance At Mary Sano Studio

2006-05-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

To celebrate the 129th birthday of Isadora Duncan (a third-generation Irish San Franciscan, born near the site of the celebratory performances), Duncan Dance acolyte Mary Sano has announced the annual Dionysian Festival Fri and Sat, May 26-27, at 8 p. m. & Sun. at 3 p. m. at her Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, 245 Fifth St. #314 (between Howard & Folsom), $14 reserved, $16 at door. (415) 357-1817; duncandance.org

One of the most creative, yet least-known, performance venues in the Bay Area, Mary's studio features the maximum in eclecticism of the performing arts. This program features her own exquisite dancing with her Duncan Dancers to Isadora's and her own choreography; G. Hoffman Soto, long associated with Anna Halprin & a unique "mover," with sensitivity & humorous flair, with his troupe Sotomotion; Hiroko Tamano (a pioneer in Butoh in America) performing her own special style of intensity; koto innovator Shoko Hikage with Nami Sagara; and Misao Mizuno with the ancient Hula dance company, Na Manu Lani O Anuenue.

Isadora broke with both classical & Romantic ballet to pioneer modern dance, & incidentally inspire many in the other arts & in fashion. Mary Sano--one of her foremost interpreters internationally today--follows in her footsteps with the great diversity of the artists she hosts at her studio, a place where surprises are the daily fare.

Noh Actor Performs, Teaches at Duncan Dance Studio

2006-05-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

Masayuki Namiyoshi is a shite ("shtay"), a principal actor with the Hosho School of Noh, one of five centuries-old schools of Japan's extraordinary, poetic classical tragic theater. Sparely staged--though using sumptuous costumes and carved masks for some roles--Noh relies on the physical and auditory techniques of its performers to convey a hypnotic, sometimes-unearthly sense of sublime beauty and internal truth. Expressing the stories from myth, legend and medieval Japanese history, Noh performances usually employ three drummers (tsusumi and taiko) and a nohkan (transversal flute) player, a chorus of chanting actors and two or more actors, trained since early youth in movement techniques originally from dance and martial arts that rival in their rigor and complexity any other classical performance form, including ballet.

It's rare for Noh shites to perform and teach overseas. Namiyoshi is coming to San Francisco to do both. On Saturday, May 6, he'll teach a workshop (2-5 p. m.) in utai, the choral chanting or singing of poetry that accompanies both Noh plays and performances of shimai, the dances from Noh performed apart from the play itself. The Hosho School is especially acclaimed for its style of utai, which combines forcefulness and lyrical beauty.

On Sunday, May 7, Namiyoshi will teach a second utai workshop (11 a. m.-2 p. m.), then at 4 p. m. perform with Mary Sano, native of Japan, but for the past decade and more, a leading exponent of the dance of San Francisco's Isadora Duncan. Mary's performance last March with master tsusumi drummer Shinosuke Okura, patterned after a Noh play, was outstanding; this first onstage meeting with Namiyoshi promises to be exciting and fascinating.

All events will be at the Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dance, 245 Fifth St. (between Howard & Folsom) in downtown San Francisco. Performance: $15. Workshops: $30 (or $50 for both). Space is limited--RSVP to Toby Dubes, (415) 819-9882
--info at: piazzatrading.com

DON Q @ NOH SPACE

2006-04-26T15:57:00.000-07:00

If Don Quixote adapted to the stage by Theatre of Yugen, a company that usually specializes in Japanese classical dramatic arts seems a cultural mixed metaphor--or at least a stretch--consider: this is a departure for Yugen; there's no particular emphasis on Japanese style, though those performers in this show who were trained in Kyogen & Noh just tend to move that way ... and besides, Kyogen, the ancient (& hilarious) stylized comic form that's best known as a humorous interlude between tragic Noh plays, not only preserves language and customs from roughly the same period in Japan as Cervantes' time in Spain, and satirizes Japanese feudal society's interpersonal relations just as the great Spanish humorist dispatched the Middle Ages in his hidebound land ...

but Kyogen itself means "Crazy Words," a sense of humor coming from a Zen-like fresh view of what people say & how they act ..So the spirit of Yugen's usual fare isn't really so far off the La Manchan comedy they've bit into..

Theatre of Yugen Joint Artistic Director Lluis Valls--not only adaptor of Cervantes' classic, but also Sancho Panza, at least in this show--hails from Barcelona, & has practiced Kyogen & Noh for many years here in San Francisco. To celebrate the centuries of Spain's greatest book, Lluis foregrounded Don Quixote and Sancho, and the tale is told with much clown sctick of an international cast. Accompanied by David McLean on flamenco guitar, a lively ensemble "of chivalrous clowns" tilts at windmills withsomething other than chopsticks in Yugen's DON Q at Noh Space, 2840 Mariposa (bet. Florida & Alabama in the Mission-Potrero), Thurs-Sat at 8 thru May 13, directed by Libby Zilber, w/set & props by Max, costumes by Marilyn Yu-Li, & lights by Stephen Siegel. $15-20 (Thurs. pay-what-you-will) (415) 621-797 theatreofyugen.org

'ISLAND OF ANIMALS' Stages Ancient Middle Eastern Fable

2006-04-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

Shipwreak strands a multinational crew on a desert isle abounding in animals. When the humans begin to hunt and try to domesticate these natural inhabitants, the animals take them to court, asking the wise chief of the Djinn, 'What gives them the right?"

So goes the medieval fable of 'The Island of Animals,' an allegory by the mysterious Ikhwan al-Safah, illuminati of the region which is now Bahrain by the Persian Gulf. The Ikhwan al-Safah were probably related to the Isma'ilis, progressive Shi'ites, whose best-known modern sect is led by the Aga Khan. The fable would later be an inspiration for Ibn Tufail, whose Arabic novella of a castaway civilizing a desert island would in turn inspire Daniel Defoe when he wrote 'Robinson Crusoe.'

Golden Thread Productions has joined forces with Ballet Afsaneh and the Afghan Coalition to produce Hafiz Karmali's
adaptation of this cogent fable, opening Sat. April 22 at SF's Thick House on Potrero Hill, after two days of pay-what-you-can previews, and will continue for several weeks before moving to an old cinema, renovated for theater, in Fremont. Info at: goldenthread.org.

Hafiz Karmali, himself of Isma'ili extraction, was trained in theater in North America, and currently lives in Paris, where he studies and translates medieval Shi'ite philosophy at the Sorbonne, and stages Middle Eastern stories in a variety of Western theatrical styles.

Golden Thread, under the direction of Torange Yeghiazarian, produces the annual festival of one-acts about the Middle East, 'ReOrient,' and much else in the way of theatrical and cultural activity regarding that most ancient and complex part of the world. ballet Afsaneh, directed by Sharlyn Sawyer, is an innovative company specializing in Persian and Central Asian dance.

VIRAGO'S THREEPENNY OPERA IN ALAMEDA

2006-03-31T12:41:00.000-08:00

With THE THREEPENNY OPERA, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill created the hallmark of Germany's Weimar Republic, a cynical cabaret of operatic musical theater about the underworld of thieves, beggars and whores, set in old London (and drawn from John Gay's 18th century ballad opera, THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, that satirized British society).

This story of upside-down social values, of anti-anti-heroes, seduced its audiences with its remarkable songs that fused folk and popular songs with modern music, the sentimentality of torch songs and hymns with cutting sarcasm and social criticism. CABARET, the ever-popular musical of Weimar Berlin, is a pale realist impression of Brecht and Weill's "fantasy" that slides effortlessly under your skin.

Brecht's theater, a staple of the 1960s (and since then in Britain), seems to be making a comeback in the Bay Area. Virago Theatre Co.'s recent run of THREEPENNY OPERA was virtually sold out. Now, Virago's announced a reprise--one performance at 7:30 on April 8 at the Masonic Hall, 2312 Alameda Ave. (off Park), Alameda--featuring Mack The Knife, Jenny Diver--and soprano Eileen Meredith as Polly Peachum. Directed by Virago Artistic Director Laura Lundy-Paine. /$17 gen. $10 students & seniors/ virago.org (510) 865-6237