About This Show
The Bay Area’s amazing and unique one-day live theater extravaganza showcases 100 theater groups and solo artists on 14 stages. Shakespeare, comedy, drama, musical theater, 20 children’s shows, solo performances, improv… Fun & festive. Indoors and outdoors at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, YB Gardens, Metreon & Zeum. (Mission/Folsom and 3/4th Streets).
The line-up includes:
*AfroSolo Festival preview
*Amiri Baraka’s provocative plays of black experience, including his new play, Sisyphus Syndrome
*Lamplighters Musical Theatre’s Mikado
*Best of Playground’s one act plays
*Aleshia Brevard and Gina Grahame — a two-woman story of gender change, family, love, and self, One Damn Man!
*Oh My Godmother, gay Cinderella
*Best of the Buddy Club, 20 great children’s shows
*Improv Groups: Blue Blanket, BATS, SPF, Big City
This year’s festival is a true adventure in theater — plays, musicals, solo performers, improv, staged readings, new work, excerpts — and defies concise description. Here is an attempt at a summary: Broadway and original musical comedy, gritty black experience, Vietnam, racism, Jewish ritual, Jazz opera premiere, World War II, Iranian storytelling, US Policy, being a man, South Asian assimilation, travel and wanderlust, white privilege, Philippine culture, dating, Gilbert & Sullivan, aging and beauty, Turkish belly dancing, marching bands, puppetry, love and relationships, Lorca, Shakespeare’s insults, new local writers, old time radio mystery, Rocky Horror SF, the president’s challenge, Nazi justice, SF’s 1863 drug scene, circus, barbershop quartet, shopping, teen singers, sketch improv comedy, antique roadshow spoof, absurd theater, inter-species love, relationships, conservation, jug band, one weak moment…, folk tales, poetry, Asian identity, God & man, magic, illusion, clown, and more.
Featured theater companies: The Marsh, Tell it on Tuesday, 42nd Street Moon, Stagebridge, No Nude Men Productions, Three Wise Monkeys, Uncle Buzzy’s Show, The One Act Players, AtmosTheatre, San Francisco Buffoons, Golden Thread Fairytale Players, Galatean Players, SF Recovery Theatre, PUS Theater, Acme Players, APE Theater, Lower Bottom Playaz, Wordslanger, and many others. Many have won awards or been recognized for their shows at the Fringe and other venues. There will be 30 hours of performance throughout the day with six or seven shows being performed simultaneously on 14 stages, which are located within a short walk of each other.
