It's show time
Theater faces off with budget-slashers, armchair soldiers, and thought police.

By J.H. Tompkins

ONSTAGE IN 2003 -04 you'll find every shape, size, and style of performance that can lay claim to the name theater. But this season, with the Bush administration threatening more war even as the unpopular conflict in Iraq drags on, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts slashed to the bone, and with censors going after language – the heart and soul of theater – we have been forced, no matter how unwillingly, to consider context with new eyes.

Theater is as human an art as there is, a group effort that lives while it's performed, and for that reason uniquely suited to engaging the world beyond. Today, we need to do exactly that – we need theater with an urgency suited to the times, theater that undercuts what is familiar and comfortable and unravels the routines that allow us to accept the unacceptable. Call me the Mime Troupe or force me to fidget through a healing Israeli-Jenin refugee roadshow, but the truth is I'm not a great fan of what in these parts is called political theater: the issue-driven scripts and plays-by-committee that should be distributed as leaflets rather than put on a stage. Still, I'm all for work that offers blasphemous counterpoint to America's patriotic jihad, work that challenges the self-serving clique who threaten war abroad and smother essential freedoms at home. But more than that, I'm dreaming of a theater that acknowledges but isn't chained to events of the day, a theater with vision, able to soar through the heavens and see it all – past, present, and future.

There are a number of promising productions in the works: Brava Theater's Nickel and Dimed, Berkeley Repertory Theatre's two-part Continental Divide, American Conservatory Theater's Yohen, Campo Santo's Wheel of Fortune, and Fixed Boundaries, by Lunatique Fantastique's Liebe Wetzel, to name a few – plus the Shotgun Players' excellent Mother Courage is up through Sept. 14 in Berkeley. And if all else fails, at least no stage will feature The Guys, the wretched, self-congratulatory exercise in reactionary emotionalism that came to Berkeley Rep in June. The play was the kind of soul-sucking art-substitute that has infested popular culture post-9/11 – karmic retribution for cheering as America responded to international crisis not with statesmanship but with a line of NYPD hats, patriotic car accessories, and presidential sounds bites lifted from John Wayne movies.

Wouldn't you know that the agencies that feed art are the same ones that create the need for it. But artists will endure. Upheaval adds dimension to live performance, inspiring anger, anguish, frustration, and the rare beauty found in small joys and faint hope – and of course an appreciation for the hilarious futility of human existence. Here's where I'll look first.

San Francisco Fringe Festival

The Fringe Festival draws big crowds looking for fun, and with so much to choose from – 56 plays (give or take a few cancellations), all less than an hour long – you'll find something or someone you like. Sept. 3-14, various locations, S.F. $8 or less (10-show pass $55). (415) 931-1094, www.sffringe.org.

Yohen, Philip Kan Gotanda

Gotanda has written Japanese American families into the American cultural mainstream. ACT's Yohen examines the 30-year marriage of a black American man and a Japanese woman that is threatened by familial tensions and cultural collision. Sept. 9-27, Zeum Theater, 221 Fourth St., S.F. $19-24. (415) 777-2800.

Much Ado about Nothing, William Shakespeare

California Shakespeare Theater closes a fine season with Much Ado about Nothing, about love, jealousy, treachery, and confusion – which may be nothing to Shakespeare, but it's really something on a stage. L. Peter Callendar and James Carpenter, two of the Bay Area's best, lead the cast. Sept. 10-Oct. 5, Bruns Memorial Amphitheatre, Shakespeare Festival Way (off Highway 24), Orinda. $13-$49. (510) 548-9666.

Triptych, Edna O'Brien

O'Brien has had an impressive nine novels banned in her native Ireland for examining the institutions and mores that have shaped it – which bodes well for this play about three women examining the things we'll do for love. Dec. 2-Jan. 4, 2004, Magic Theatre, Fort Mason Center, Bldg. D, Marina and Laguna, S.F. $22-$37. (415) 441-8822.

The Continental Divide: Mothers Against and Daughters of the Revolution, David Edgar

Berkeley Rep artistic director Tony Taccone – perhaps defining his career, post-Angels – directs an ambitious two-play cycle, a co-commission with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that examines two sides of a gubernatorial campaign in order to track social and political changes since the upheaval of the 1960s. Nov. 6-Dec. 28, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Allston Way, Berk. $39-$55. (510) 647-2949.

Domino, Erin Cressida Wilson

Wilson, Intersection for the Arts, and Campo Santo's brilliant Sean San Jose use memory and music to reckon with loss in the follow-up to the fabulous I Feel Love. Dec. 8, Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia, S.F. $5-$15. (415) 978-2787.