While I spent a good deal of time out of doors last weekend taking in, among other things, an obligatory pilgrimage to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, a jaunt on the historic schooner Alma with the WE Players, the 30-year anniversary of the Sea Chantey Sing, and Chicken John’s book release party, it was the introspective medium of the cinema that captured my attentions most of all. From the Star of Tyche at ATA, to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg at Lost Weekend’s “Offline In-Store” Film Festival, I devoured a sumptuous visual feast the satiating effects of which still linger days after. Read more »

ALICE and Folsom Street Fair fall down different holes

From North Beach to South of Market, clowning to carousing, the weekend offered up a veritable smorgasbord of sensory overload and playful edge. First off, a debut performance of a quirky bit of deconstruction in new kid venue on the North Beach block, The Emerald Tablet. Written and conceptualized by two spirited performers (Edna Miroslava Barrón and Karen Anne Light), “ALICE: Down the Rwong Wrabbit Whole” offered a welcome introduction to both the space and the still-fresh faces of the presenting duo.

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Park(ing) and Fold {Live} were far from humdrum

It’s the little things. The things we do over and over again—the automatic, the routine, the de rigueur, the rote—that we need to find ways to celebrate above all, because every moment past could be a moment wasted, or a moment redeemed. But as with conceptual artist Kate Pocrass’ long-running Mundane Journeys project, sometimes the moment needs to be curated in order to be illuminated. That principle got some play over the past weekend with Park(ing) Day and Surabhi Suraf’s “Fold {Live}” installation, two very different projects which nonetheless served to turn the most banal of routines into conscious acts.

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“Elite Waste” dumpster home makes its San Francisco Fringe Festival debut

There aren’t usually too many compelling reasons to hang out on the first block of Eddy Street, unless the exquisite aroma of urine, pigeon shit, corner store fried chicken, and tour bus exhaust appeals. But during the San Francisco Fringe Festival, now in its 20th year, there’s always a bit of a horde milling around the entrance of the EXIT Theatre-plex: patrons waiting to see shows, performers handing out postcards to the undecided or hauling heavy trunks of props up the sidewalk. 

This year the crowds have been larger than ever, thanks to the public unveiling of a unique, experiential performance-space: a customized luxury living dumpster home parked outside the front door of the theatre for all to enjoy. Read more »

Cosmic San Francisco mainstays Audium and Planet Booty shoot us to the moon.

Some only-in-San-Francisco adventures are subtler than others -- they're you-have-to-know-they’re-there treasures, unencumbered by a surfeit of fanfare or weight of fickle expectation.

Audium, a continually-morphing collaboration in sound design between composer Stan Shaff and electronics “architect” Douglas McEachern, definitely counts as one of these.

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Neo-Futurists and “Ostalgia” weather the storm

No performance in New York was quite as impactful as the front row seats we had for Hurricane Irene, as subdued as she was in comparison to her North Carolina appearance, and with the MTA not running and theatres large and small shuttering their windows and barring their doors, mostly everyone just stayed home and watched the lightning instead. Good thing I’d gone to see New York’s “only open-run Off-Off-Broadway show”, the Neo-Futurists’ “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind,” and the “Ostalgia” exhibit the night before, or this week’s installment would be a total washout.

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Well, the 16-day New York International Fringe Festival has just wrapped up, and frankly it’s all a bit of a blur. Figuring out to watch next as the festival wound down was a delicate task as fraught with mystery as when it began. Was it worthwhile to attend “A” if it meant losing the opportunity to see “B” altogether? Wasn’t that one show about scuba-diving sewer rats supposed to be off the hook? Did the show about demonic possession in Uruguay already close? Which critic reviews or citizen commentary could be trusted? Which program blurbs can be relied upon to really reveal the truth about their show?

It’s times like these when an official program guide lexicon would come in handy, so that Fringers might have an easier time determining what they’ll truly be in for when they had over their fistful of coin and storm the theatre gates.

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I’ve been flying all week and boy are my arms tired! But at last I’ve landed, soft in the lap of Brooklyn, from where I’ve been commuting to the 15th annual New York Fringe Festival (say that five times fast). 

Perhaps the largest multi-arts festival in the US, the New York Fringe hosts close to 1200 performances from 194 companies, spread out in 18 venues all over the Lower East Side. Fringers pack the sidewalks and the black box venues from Bleecker Street to the Bowery -- just minutes away from Broadway, but light years apart in terms of budget, content, daring. Read more »