Tag: 2007

Stories

• Maryclare McCauley, “No Matter How I Lie”
• Bruce Pachtman, “Solo Show #2”
• Merle Kessler & Joshua Raoul Brody, “Slouching Towards Disneyland”
• W. Kamau Bell, An Excerpt from “The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About An Hour”

Music

Joshua Raoul Brody, keyboards

Maryclare McCauley has been working on a three part solo performance about her time living with a cowboy on an isolated ranch in Wyoming. But tonight, she is coming down the mountain to tell you an urban story from an experience in her late teens. This is a coming of age tale of desire, lies, fear and unexpected empowerment.

Bruce Pachtman’s “Solo Show #2” (working title) is being directed by W. Kamau Bell and developed with Club Solo and David Ford. Bruce’s first solo show, Don’t Make Me Look Too Psychotic, was created at The Marsh and had runs in San Francisco, Philadelphia and LA.

Merle Kessler created his Ian Shoales persona for the legendary comedy troupe Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater, and has performed as Ian on NPR, ABC-TV’s Nightline, and stages across the country. Joshua Raoul Brody accompanies improvisational theater, composes for screens (large and small) and stage, and plays in Tango No. 9. Together they have created nearly a dozen “one-man shows so big it takes two guys and a six-pack of beer to do them”, and sometimes do just the songs, under the nom d’etage And They’re Cops!

The SF Weekly called W. Kamau Bell “smart, stylish, and very much in the mold of politically outspoken comedians like Dave Chappelle and Margaret Cho” although he was far more excited when they called him “handsome.” Kamau has been profiled in The San Francisco Chronicle on three different occasions, including not ironically during Black History Month. Kamau also directed Bruce Pachtman’s long running hit show “don’t make me look too psychotic”. However, he is most proud of being the teacher and leader of The Solo Performance Workshop at The Shelton Theater, where he is also an Artist in Residence.

Stories

• Olga Loya, “Nepantla – between worlds”
• Wayne Harris, “The May Day Parade”
• Gillian Summers, “Hush”
• Willfully Unhinged Progression Systems (Gregory Scharpen, Dean Santomieri, and Matthias Bossi), “An Aged Wine for a Cadavre Exquis”

Music

5 Cent Coffee, Neo-Skiffle Junk Yard Blues

Olga Loya, nationally known as Latina storyteller, performance artist, teacher and author, dramatically mixes Spanish and English in performances for adults, children and families.  Her repertoire demonstrates how diversity embraces the richness of cultures in the commonality and individuality of lives. Loya’s personal stories explore the struggles, complexities, and joys of being bicultural – Mexican American in the United States.Loya has performed for audiences from pre-schools to senior citizens.

Wayne Harris, one of the Bay Area’s premier storytellers, has created a series of stories about growing up in St. Louis. His latest piece, The May Day Parade, commissioned by the Marsh Theatre continues the theme of the African American experience in the US. Wayne has performed at Fringe Festivals in Canada and the US and has taken his stories into many bay area schools. He is very happy to be sharing with the “Tell It On Tuesday” audience and hopes you enjoy parade!

Gillian Summers grew up in Liverpool, UK and trained as an RN. She emigrated to Australia and in 1991 graduated from The Drama Action Centre in Sydney. Since 2005 Gillian has been writing and developing hush, a full-length solo play, with the Marsh’s David Ford. Throughout 2006 Gillian studied improvisational, autobiographical storytelling with Nina Wise and Motion Theatre.

Gregory Scharpen is (possibly most relevantly) a founding member of the Oneiromantic Ambiguity Collective, an of-late fallow organism dedicated to the assembly and dissemination of unsettling visual, aural, and textual detritus.  He is also a theatrical sound designer, and (under the moniker Thomas Carnacki) a so-called “experimental” musician.  Dean Santomieri is a writer, musician, video-maker and performer. His multimedia performances usually feature narration, music, and video. Matthias Bossi has very recently started the mercurial project CorpseFlower as an outlet for his vocal dexterity.  He hits things for Sleepytime Gorilla Museum and Book Of Knots.

5 Cent Coffee, Neo-Skiffle Junk Yard Blues, features:
Doodles Larue – Button Accordion, Washboard, Kazoo, Chain, Vocals
Smitty “Spitshine” Delacroix – Ukulele, Guitar, Washboard, Vocals
Slick Macoy – Bass, Vocals

Stories

• Tim Ereneta, “Two Sisters”
• Maryclare McCauley, “Where Yer From” (Part 2) 
• Neshama Franklin, “Grand Canyon”
• Bruce Pachtman, “Solo Show #2”

Music

Eliot Fintushel, Madman on theremin

Storyteller Tim Ereneta enjoys sharing traditional tales with adult audiences at Fringe Festivals, house concerts, and stages like this one. Past performing credits include Fringe Festivals in Edmonton, Orlando, San Francisco, and Fresno and the mainstage company of BATS Improv. He was formerly a singing dinosaur at Lawrence Hall of Science.

Bruce Pachtman’s “Solo Show #2” (working title) is being directed by W. Kamau Bell and developed with Club Solo and David Ford. Bruce’s first solo show, Don’t Make Me Look Too Psychotic, was created at The Marsh and had runs in San Francisco, Philadelphia and LA.

Neshama Franklin has been around the block, in NYC, SF, and finally Bolinas. She started to tell stories with her first words but honed her skills down the line at the Fairfax library where she works and with David Roche, et al. Now she offers folktales and personal stories at many venues and is delighted to be back at Tell It On Tuesday.  She has a local radio show in which she reads whatever has caught her fancy—and she reads omnivorously.

Maryclare McCauley has been involved with theater in one way or another for the past thirty years. She began studying the craft of storytelling about two years ago, with David Ford. For an audience member, is seeing Part 2 (of a three piece show ) similar to coming in at the middle of a performance and leaving before it’s over? She hopes not! Not tonight anyway. Enjoy!

Stories

• Margery Kreitman, “Rachel Fein, You’ve Got a Lovely Mother.”
• Zoe Sheli Sameth, excerpt from “Taste of Enlightenment” 
• Dana Chernack, “Marvin Feldman, Queen Victoria, Murray and the Puppet”
• Jeff Byers, “It is written here…”

Margery Kreitman is a playwright, performer and monologist. Her plays include Please Wait For The Beep, the Jane Chambers Award-winning Picture Me, and the lesbian hit comedy, Sax and the Single Dyke, all produced in S.F. Her solo pieces include “Bouncing,” the award-winning, “Home Plates,”  “Mug Shots,” and “Thirty Years Later”. She has performed and read her work at the Marsh, The Magic Theater, The New Conservatory Theater, Venue Nine, and numerous other Bay Area venues.  She has been working with director Jayne Wenger.

Zoe Sheli Sameth is working with director David Ford on a solo show about her topsy-turvy experiences as a young woman living in Sri Lanka who lost and found herself many times over in an extraordinary country far, far from home, while wandering the maze of new relationships, a very foreign land, and the beginning of the country’s ongoing civil war.  Zoe is a recipient of the Truman Scholarship, which funded travel and graduate studies inspiring her piece. (www.zoeplanet.com)

Dana Chernack became disabled when he fell head first into a bin full of packages. The blow to the head combined with anti-depressents resulted in a personality change. He decided to write. When no one would print any of his stories, he decided to take it to the streets, telling stories to any one who would listen. He has been married thirty-seven years (to the same woman!) and has two grown children.

Jeff Byers began telling stories the first time he got into trouble as a child, but learned to do it for fun as a member of the Storytellers at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (stories in the galleries every Sunday at 1:00). He has been nominated to join the board of the Storytelling Association of Alta California, and is looking forward to the Bay Area Storytelling Festival May 19 and 20.

Stories

• Jeff Greenwald, excerpts from Strange Travel Suggestions
• Paul Sussman, The Boundary Lands
• Mark McGoldrick, excerpts from COUNTERCOUP
• Stefanie Goldstein, Blame it on the Bossa Nova (Part I)

Music

Jugology: A jug-style band featuring mandolin, ukulele, guitars and vocals. Christoper Richards, Michael Temerio, David Sullivan, Lindsay Dixon, Jeff Norman and Krishna Khalsa

Oakland-based Jeff Greenwald is the author of five travel books, including Shopping for Buddhas, The Size of the World, and an anthology called Scratching the Surface. Highlights of his 25-year travel career include creating the first international blog, celebrating Passover with Paul Bowles, and interviewing the Dalai Lama about Star Trek. Jeff serves as Executive Director of Ethical Traveler, a global alliance of travelers dedicated to human rights and environmental protection (www.ethicaltraveler.org). He launched his stage career in 2003 with a one-man show, Strange Travel Suggestions.

Paul Sussman developed his approach to melodrama and farce through many years of work in fianancial management with Bay Area nonprofit organizations. He has written and performed a series of solo pieces over the past 6 years, seeing the world through the eyes of road-ragers, insects, cooks, Anabaptists, and others who persist in the search for meaning in a puzzling world.

Mark McGoldrick is developing his new show, COUNTERCOUP, in which a head-strong youth with more energy than wisdom careens through life, crashing into other people, hard objects, and himself. Self destruction and rehabilitation ensue. Mark’s earlier full-length show, THE GOLDEN HAMMER, Wounds, Booze, and Forgotten Misconduct, ran at The Marsh in 2005 to critical acclaim. In THE GOLDEN HAMMER, Mark explored justice and truth in a dark and funny way through the stories of people enmeshed in the criminal justice system. He works as a public defender in the East Bay.

Stefanie Goldstein is a Bay Area actress, whose favorite appearances include Get it, Got it, Good in the SF Fringe Festival; John Fisher’s debut of Schonberg; and Mortified, the cult hit from L.A. She recently finished shooting the indie film The Snake and is involved in this year’s Bay Area One-Acts Festival. She began development of this piece under David Ford’s tutelage and hopes to find redemption (or vengeance) through its completion.