“Too Big to Tweet”
October 1, 2010
In this issue:
Announcing the Best of the 19th Annual S.F. Fringe Festival
Fall Theatre Season at San Francisco State University
Commentary: Who Are These People and Why Are They Saying Such Horrible Things About You? - Blogs, Yelp, and the Critics
PLUS - Upcoming Productions from a Selection of Bay Area Performance Groups
THEATRE
EXIT THEATRE, 156 Eddy St., San Francisco www.theexit.org
Announcing the Best of the 19th Annual S.F. Fringe Festival
Best Comedy – Arousal - Annabelle Productions/George Pfirrmann (San Francisco)
Best Short Plays – Zero to 90 in 90 Minutes - Phoenix Arts Assn & Lucky Dog Theatre (S.F.)
Best National Solo/Comedy – Homeless – Rotimi Agbabiaka (DeKalb, IL)
Best Local Solo Show - The Burroughs and Kookie Show –RIPE/Secret Theatre (S.F.)
Best Male Solo National/Drama - The Stories of Cesar Chavez - Fred Blanco (L.A.)
Best Female Solo - Phone Whore - Cameryn Moore (Boston)
Best Performance Artist - Little Tainted Blood - Julia Steele Allen (Brooklyn, NY)
Best Stand Up Juggler - Bad Day To Be a Juggler - Aji Slater (S.F.)
Best Ensemble - Star Crossed Lovers - Magnum Opus (L.A.)
Best Site Specific Show - Paper Angels - Direct Arts (NYC)
Best Musical Revue - Joe's Café - Rupert Wates And Friends (Brooklyn, NY)
Best Sketch Comedy - OPM’s Green Tea Party -- OPM (L.A.)
Best Newcomer - The Self Rose - Ally Johnson (S.F.)
Techie Choice Award -The Burroughs and Kookie Show - Chris Kuckenbaker (S.F.)
Encore Performances – Another Chance to See Four of the Best
As a fundraiser for the 2011 SF Fringe Festival, four winning entries from 2010 donate a performance. Tickets $20 per show. (415) 673-3947, www.sffringe.org
Friday October 1, 7:00 p.m. - Zero to 90 in 60 Minutes - Best Short Plays
Friday October 1, 8:30 p.m. – Arousal - Best Comedy
Saturday October 2, 7:00 p.m. Homeless - Best National Solo/Comedy
Saturday October 2, 8:30 p.m. - The Burroughs and Kookie Show - Best Local Solo Show
Sally Dana and Danny Krueger in Arousal, one of the Best of the Fringe shows at EXIT Theatre, Oct, 1-2.
At EXIT Theatre in October and beyond
Oct. 7-Dec. 18. Obscura: A Magic Show. Award-winning illusionist Christian Cagigal returns to the EXIT. He has been named Best Bay Area Magician by the SF Bay Guardian. 7 X 7 magazine calls Cagigal “a dark little conjurer with a thoughtful view on evil and an experiential one-man show threaded with gothic whimsy.” The SF Weekly applauds both Cagigal and EXIT Theatre for collaborating to produce “strange little magic shows – and it’s turning into a sly San Francisco Tradition.”
Oct. 8-23. Love Song by John Kolvenbach. Beane's apartment has been burglarized, and Joan is baffled to find her reclusive brother blissfully happy in the aftermath! She tries to unravel the story behind his mysterious new love, Molly. Funny, enchanting, and wonderfully touching, Kolvenbach's offbeat comedy is a rhapsody to the power of love in all its forms. Directed by Bay Area veteran Loretta Janca, with Joshua Marc, Sabrina De Mio, Erin Hoffman, Jeff Newton, and Justin Netterville. Tickets $20 at lovesong.eventbrite.com Discounts available for students, military, and members of Theatre Bay Area.
Nov 4-20. Comedy Ballet. Written and directed by Martin Schwartz, presented by Dark Porch Theatre. Inspired by Court Entertainments of the Sun King, Best of Fringe Winner Martin Schwartz directs “Outrageously Newfangled” Artistic Feast of Drama, Dance, Music, and Painting. Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy St., SF. Tickets: $15 - $25 at BrownPaperTickets.com.
Dec. 3-18. Cora Values’ A Christmas Corral. Stories and songs featuring Exit Artist-in-Residence Sean Owens as everyone’s favorite truck stop waitress, Cora Values. Pie is always on the menu, but not the only thing that Cora cuts.
Feb 17 – Mar 3, 2011. Hobo Grunt Cycle by Kevin Augustine, National Artist-in-Residence at EXIT Theatre. Hobo Grunt Cycle was developed by Lone Wolf Tribe, a New York based puppet theatre ensemble and features the company's signature blend of life-sized puppets and performers.
Coming up in March. A Most Notorious Woman by Maggie Cronin. Solo show features Christina Augello as Grace O’Malley, the Irish pirate queen who defied the British Empire.
Selected Thursdays, All Year Long. Mark Romyn’s Thursday Night Combo. Theatre artists, musicians, and other performers try out new material at the EXIT Café.
WILLOWS THEATRE, 636 Ward St., Martinez www.willowstheatre.org
Oct 4 – Nov 7. Sleuth. Tony Award-winning mystery thriller by Anthony Shaffer.
Shaun Carroll (L) and Eric Inman star in the Willows Theatre production of Anthony Shaffer’s mystery thriller Sleuth, Oct. 4 – Nov. 7 at the Willows Theatre in Martinez
More who-done-what than whodunnit, the darkly comic drama is directed by Richard Elliott. Sleuth has become famous for its superbly intricate story and the way it engages its audience in the mind-games its protagonists play. Great fun for mystery fans. Tickets $22-30 at www.willowstheatre.org. (925) 798-1300. at the Campbell Theatre, 626 Ward treet in Martinez.
Nov 29-Jan 16. Holiday Special at The Willows: Sister Robert Anne’s Cabaret Class. Nunsense’s favorite nun is back to explain it all for you. So pay attention! Starring Deborah Del Mastro. West Coast premiere will be directed by Dan Goggin, creator of the Nunsense series (will he never stop?).
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Deborah Del Mastro, on right, is (once again) Sister Robert Anne in Dan Goggin’s Sister Robert Anne’s Cabaret Class at The Willows Theatre in Martinez
SHELTON THEATRE, 533 Sutter Street (at Powell), SF. 415-433-1226, www.sheltontheatre.com
Through Jan. 2. Party of 2-The Mating Musical by Morris Bobrow. New musical comedy that traces the relationship between two independent types as the meet, mate, and move in together. Bobrow, who directs, is the author of Shopping! The Musical, Are We Almost There? and Party of One. He stipulates that the show is appropriate for all age groups. Yelp audiences seem to like the intimate 55-seat theatre, although they caution that it’s not easy to find.
Fall Theatre Season at San Francisco State University
Creative Arts Building, 1600 Holloway at 19th Ave., SF. Information/Tickets: 415/338-2467; http://creativearts.sfsu.edu/events/theatre
Oct 15-24. One-Act Fringe – Three Plays
Relationships between couples in crisis and neighbors, plus the tensions between noise and silence, take center stage in this annual festival of student-penned plays. Over the past eight years, One-Act Fringe has acted as a springboard for star playwrights such as Marcus Gardley and Peter Sinn Nachtrieb. Current plays include The Ballad of 423 and 424 by Nick Pappas, Fidelity by Marilyn Harris Kriegel and Brave, Battling Autism by Mario El Caponi Mendoza. One-Act Fringe is a collaboration between the Creative Writing and Theatre Arts departments at SF State. Produced by Roy Conboy.
Oct. 15-16, 8:00 p.m.; Oct. 21-23, 8:00 p.m.; Oct. 24, 2:00 p.m. Little Theatre, Creative Arts Building,1600 Holloway at 19th Ave., SF. Admission: Advance: $5 students, faculty, staff and seniors/$8 general; Door: $8 students, faculty, staff and seniors/$10 general. Friday,
Oct 29-31. Money: A Comedy with Songs (staged reading)
A new play inspired by the scenario for a “lost” script conceived in 1937 by associates of the Federal Theatre Project. Written by SFSU graduate students in Drama. The play moves from Brazil to New York, with scenes of wealth and bankruptcy, accompanied by cabaret, chicanery and financial chaos. “Money” incorporates film clips, Depression Era news headlines, music, circus and more as production elements to explore ideas about capitalism, supply and demand, and the burning question of happiness. Cast of characters includes historic figures like Stalin, Hitler, Huey Long, Franklin Roosevelt, and a W.C. Fields-like banker. Coordinated by Joel Schechter.
Oct. 29, 8:00 p.m.; Oct. 30 & 31, 2:00 p.m. Studio Theatre, Creative Arts Building,1600 Holloway Ave. at 19th Ave., SF. Admission is Free.
Additional performance Oct 27, 7:30 pm at CounterPULSE, 1310 Mission St. at Ninth St., SF.
Dec 2-12. Engaged, by W.S. Gilbert, directed by William Peters
A topsy-turvy farce in three acts, Engaged illustrates W.S. Gilbert’s gift for absurdly complicated plots, wildly comic dialogue and sharp, exuberant social criticism. In this almost-forgotten masterpiece, one-half of the immortal team Gilbert and Sullivan takes great delight in skewering every pretension affecting money-minded people who take on the burden of falling in love.
Dec. 2–4, 8:00 p.m., Dec. 5, 2:00 p.m., Dec. 9–11, 8:00 p.m., Dec. 12, 2:00 p.m. Little Theatre, Creative Arts Building, 1600 Holloway at 19th Ave., SF. Admission: Advance: $8 students, faculty, staff and seniors/$12 general; Door: $10 students, faculty, staff and seniors/$15 general.
Writer/actor/director and SFSU alum Mark Jackson (Left) is teaching a movement course at SF State this semester. Jackson
GALLERIES & MUSEUMS
Through October 30. Micaëla Gallery, 49 Geary Street, No. 234, SF. www.micaela.com Sculpture and oils by Bella Feldman, Nancy Otto, and Monika Steiner. Friedman’s sculptures are both playful and provocative, what critic Harold Rosenberg called “anxious objects.” Steiner’s rich oil paintings are hypnotically meditative. Nancy Otto’s intimate installation of sculpture and sound present a window on her personal reality. Catalogue tells us that, ”enthralled by her soft voice and distinctive colors, we feel at first like welcomed friends, then voyeurs, and then friends again.”
Works by (L-R) Feldman, Otto, and Steiner at Micaëla Gallery, SF, through Oct. 30.
Through Dec. 11. CCA Wattis Institute Exhibition: Huckleberry Finn. California College of the Arts, 1111 Eighth St., SF. Examines Mark Twain’s canonical novel through modern and contemporary art. Featured artists include Edgar Arceneaux, Simon Fujiwara, Horace Pippin, Betye Saar, Yinka Shonibare, nad Kara Walker. The gallery layout is based on Huck and Jim’s journey down the Mississippi. Info at 414-551-9210 or www.wattis.org.
October at The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway at Columbus, SF. Permanent collection displays artifacts of Beat icons including Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady. PLUS:
Oct 10 – Wed. - 7-9 p.m. Book Signing for Beat by Stephen Jay Schwartz
Oct 14 – Thurs.- 7-10 p.m. Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts – Round IX
Oct 20 – Wed. - 6-8 p.m. Hell, Strung & Crooked - Anthology Release by Uphook Press
Oct 20 – Wed. - 7-10 p.m. Beat Spirit Workshop with Mel Ash
Oct 28 – Thurs. - Elias Schneitter & Co. Poetry
Information at www.thebeatmuseum.org or 1-800-KER-OUAC
MUSIC
October 20 Diablo Symphony with soloist Yuri Leberzon, guitar. Program includes Saint-Saens Danse Macabre, Hindemith, Symphonic Metamorphoses, Rodrego’s Concerto de Aranjuez (made famous by Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain, conducted by Gil Evans.) Diablo Symphony is conducted by Joyce Johnson-Hamilton. Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek. (925) 676 – 5888, info@diablosymphony.org
Guitarist Yuri Leberzon is featured with the Diablo Symphony,
Daily through October. (And every other month.) The Blues. The Saloon, 1231 Grant at Vallejo, SF. Chicago Blues Power with Applejack, Sundays at 4:00 pm. Johnny Nitro & the Door Slammers, Fridays at 9:30 pm. Also Lisa Kindred, Ron Hacker, Dave Workman. Call for performance times. (415) 989-7666.
Friday, Oct. 15. Baguette Quartet at the de Young Museum, SF. Playing the music of Paris cafes. To complement the exhibition: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, 6:30-8:30pm. FREE. (A separate ticket must be purchased to visit the exhibition).
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Baguette Quartet plays at the de Young Museum, Oct. 15.
Friday Nights at the de Young offers a variety of interdisciplinary arts programs, including live music, poetry, films, dance, tours, talks and more. The café is open with a special Friday Nights dinner menu and a no-host cocktail bar offers drinks. With art-making activities for everyone. Programs take place in the free zone of the museum. If you wish to visit the exhibition, you need to purchase a ticket, in advance. http://deyoung.famsf.org
FESTIVALS
Oct 2-3. Clayton Oktoberfest. Biergarten, all-day music featuring The Internationals. Traditional Bavarian (Saturday) and German (Sunday) Dancers, street performers, art & gift booths, sausages, pretzels, apple strudel, beer & wine. Plus world-famous Chicken Dancers. Free parking. Free admission. Sat, Oct. 2 – 11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.; Sun, Oct 3 – 11:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m. Proceeds support community projects, local school programs.
SCENE APPLAUSE
Congratulations to EXIT Theatre for being profiled in a piece by Chloe Veltman in the Bay Area section of the New York Times…to Kenn Adams for booking his Adventure Theatre into the Eureka Theatre for a two-week run in February.
OUT OF BAY AREA EXPERIENCES
New Paltz, NY. Oct. 23-24. Staged reading of The Wakeville Stories, a new play by Laurence Carr, SUNY lecturer of dramatic and creative writing. Directed by Stephen Kitsakos and featuring Brendan Burke, Joe Paparone, and actors from the SUNY Theatre Arts Department. The Wakeville Stories, set in small town Ohio in the summer of 1945, weaves the lives of six of its residents and shows how the obsessions of love, sex and memory bring change to each of them, for better or worse, after four long years of World War II.
Leitring bei Leibnitz, Austria. Not too late to sign up for the international conference on “Performing Arts Training Today,” Dec. 1-4 at Retzhof Castle, Leitring bei Leibnitz, Austria. Organizers say that the historic 15th century castle is in the “Green Heart” of Austria. Nearest international airport is at Graz. Registration and details at http://www.iugte.com/projects/registration.php RMPAR may look for a grant to get to Graz.
FUNDRAISERS
Oct 23. An Elegant Evening of Music, Masquerade, and Fine Arts. A fundraiser to benefit the work of St. John’s Episcopal Church. Food, wine, dancing. costumes, art auction. Music by Dawglips with Shirley Dourgarian plus Howard Walkup: pops, jazz, & country. Saturday, October 23, 7:00 – 10:00 pm. $50 per person ($25 is tax-deductible). First 50 people to arrive in costume receive a special surprise. St. John’s – Clayton, 5555 Clayton Road. (925) 672-8855.
ARTS BUSINESS
SF Business Times (Sept. 3-9) reports that Berkeley Rep has purchased a warehouse and office building in West Berkeley for $6 million. The theatre company plans to use the 67,000-square-foot building for rehearsal, administrative operations, and production work. Business Times says the property, at 999 Harrison Street, had been on the market for more than a year.
In our August issue, we commented on the Peninsula Ballet Theatre taking over a defunct Circuit City building in San Mateo. At least the real estate bust is helping someone, and in these instances, the ill wind is blowing favorably on arts organizations.
SIGHTINGS & HEARINGS
San Francisco’s Next Stage has changed its name to The Gough Street Playhouse, still at 1620 Gough Street (at Bush). The Playhouse is home to Custom Made Theatre whose current show, Stephen Adly Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, runs through October 30. www.custommade.org.
Marin-based playwright Cory Bytof reports that his The Texas Chainsaw Musical has been reworked and is “just about ready to shop around” to interested theatres. Chainsaw got its start at the 2009 SF Fringe Festival and had a three-week run as part of the Willows Theatre’s “Nextfest” series last October. Chainsaw was the second show at The Willows (after Evil Dead: The Musical) to feature a “Splatter Zone,” wherein the audience was supplied with ponchos.
COMMENTARY:
Who Are These People and Why Are They Saying Such Horrible Things About You? - Blogs, Yelp, and the Critics
by Gary Carr
The Internet and its spawn, the Blogosphere, have created a whole new universe for communication, and with it opened up a cosmic can of worms. Now that everyone who wants to voice an opinion can do so, the screens of our electronic devices are filled with what millions of people think about millions of things.
As Rodney Dangerfield might have said, “Everyone’s a critic.” (Actually, it was probably Sophocles
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| Sophocles |
who said it, and later, Jimmy Durante.)
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| Jimmy Durante |
It’s great to have so much information…but it takes time to consider the sources. For every well considered
argument that could have come from the op ed page of a major newspaper, from the New York Times to, OK, the Wall Street Journal, you get scores of emotional rants…or hundreds of effusions whose key elements are the words “amazing!”, “awesome!”, or “sucks!” It takes time to sort through it all.
Sometimes criticism can get the critic into trouble. Last year, a San Francisco chiropractor sued a former patient who wrote a negative review of him on Yelp, suggesting the chiropractor’s billing practices were dishonest. The chiropractor sued for defamation, contending the patient’s Yelp comments were intended as statements of fact, and thus libelous. The patient maintained that the comments were opinion and therefore constitutionally protected speech. Lawyers got involved, and the case was settled out of court.
On September 13 of this year, in a similar case involving a New York dentist, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that federal law immunizes Yelp from liability for comments posted on its website by third party users.
Lately, Yelp has had its own problems, with allegations arising that Yelp salespeople engaged in a form of “pay to play” with businesses – negative reviews would disappear for a fee. Yelp has vociferously denied such practices. Reputable news organizations, in our experience, maintain a firewall between sales and editorial – and thus should it remain.
We often read the comments at the end of blog posts and note that they usually fall into four categories: Sincere – either positive or negative (60%), Snarky (20%), Ranting (15%), or Ax-grinding about a totally unrelated topic (5%). We admit to reading Yelp reviews, and even posting a few of our own to commend a great dining experience. (In our world, nothing is either awesome or sucks.)
The question arises: what sorts of people are writing such criticism, and how can you trust them to be fair or knowledgeable? As a test, we went to Yelp the other day and picked a review of a Bay Area restaurant to study. The criterion for picking the establishment was that it have 20 or more Yelp reviews. Otherwise, the choice was totally random.
We looked at a neighborhood restaurant that, judging from the Yelp comments, had been open for 6-8 years and had built a following. The range of “yelps” was truly vast. The comments were about equally divided between patrons who often ate there and those who went there only once. Of the regulars, many said it remains one of their favorites, others said that they’ve noticed food quality and service declining over the past months/year. Of the first-timers, no matter when they visited, some said they loved it, others said they hated it. The restaurant features an ethnic cuisine – some aficionados of such food say it’s authentic and wonderful, while other fans of the cuisine say this is not a good representation.
Conclusion? A toss-up. Default to “It’s all a matter of taste.”
Which brings us to the matter of performing arts reviews. (I’ve discovered that one of the advantages of blogging is the freedom to make jolting segues whenever you like. Think of this one as a jump cut a la Jean-Luc Godard.)
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| Jean-Luc Godard |
In the Bay Area traditional press, when Robert Hurwitt or Joshua Kosman or Pat Craig or Chloe Veltman or Robert Avila reviews a show, you know where they are coming from, because you’ve read their work for years. Potential audience members do, too, for the same reason.
If you get a good review, consider yourself blessed, and send them a brief thank-you. If the review is not so good, send them a thank-you, as well. You might also engage in a very brief explanation of what you had hoped to accomplish in your work. Rather than trying to tell them they are wrong, explain – again, briefly – where you were coming from. These critics are not Old Testament gods casting lightning bolts upon you unto the ninth generation. It’s their job to call ‘em as they see ‘em.
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| Old Testament God |
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But what of the critics out in the Blogosphere? If you want to read some really scathing reviews, that’s where you can find ‘em. The Blogosphere can be rough sailing for artists. Clashing rocks and sea monsters are everywhere. If your ship gets swamped, you have the right to ask the swamper, “Who are you, and why are you saying this?...What are your qualifications to judge my work?”
So, do your homework. Check out what else the critic has written. What is his body of work? What sort of effort goes into his blog and how long has he or she been blogging? What’s their track record on Yelp? On Twitter? On their Facebook page. If this person seems to have a regular “beat” and hasn’t just chosen you for a one-time flame-job, contact him. Engage him in a brief dialogue. Let him know what you had in mind – again, briefly - and be sure to invite him to your next performance. Most critics are willing to give a performer a second chance. A critic who respects his craft would jump at the chance to say, “Wow, has this performer really come along!”
The same goes for rankled restaurateurs. Try to find that person who dissed your culinary efforts and invite him for a dinner on the house. These people talk to their friends. (Hard as it may be to believe, they do have friends.) So you must make an effort to nip the negative buzz in the bud.
The upshot of this advice? Go to the source, the writer him- or herself. But never issue ultimatums, (“Don’t ever send that critic into my place again!”) And don’t ask for a correction or for the publisher to pull the piece. A performer once asked us if she should request that Variety remove the less-than-flattering review of her show from their web site.
Ummm- no, not a good idea. Live with it, assume no one will google that piece in the future, and resolve that your next show will override a previous bad review. And turn it into an amusing anecdote for your next interview – or your own blog! Everyone loves a person with a never-say-die attitude.
Finally - the New York physician who failed in his attempt to sue Yelp for posting a negative review of his practice? The doctor is now attempting to subpoena Yelp to get the name and address of the “Michael S” who wrote the review, so the doctor can bring suit against Mr. S. Stay tuned on that one. This is a beat that truly will go on. - GC
Contact: Gary Carr, (925) 672-8717, carrpool@pacbell.net. Learn more about Rising Moon Marketing & Public Relations at www.risingmoonarts.com.
The Rising Moon Performing Arts Report (RMPAR) © 2010 Rising Moon Marketing & Public Relations. For permission to quote from RMPAR, please contact Gary Carr, as above. Doubtful that we’ll ever say no.
If you no longer wish to receive The Rising Moon Performing Arts Report, please contact carrpool@pacbell.net and tell us to drop dead. We won’t take it personally.
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