one year and more

The Garage artspace

975 howard street @ 6th street

san francisco

look for the red door

415 885 4006
"— about as underground a venue as you can have in the city —"  San Francisco Bay Guardian
history press coming archives programs mailing list new coming
May 16-17 (Fri-Sat) @ 8pm 
May 15 (Thu) @ 8 pm - Last Beckett TONIGHT!

SAFEhouse and Performers Under Stress (PUS) at The Garage artspace present

Book of Mark

world premier original solo show

adapted and performed by by Charles Pike
Son of Sam I Am

rarely performed short plays by Samuel Beckett
Info (415) 885 4006,  Tickets $15 -$20,   brownpapertickets.com

Ever wonder how to feed 5,000 guests who just happen to pop in for dinner? How to walk on water? Ever try to give swimming lessons to 2,000 pigs? These are just some of the complex perplexities encountered in THE BOOK OF MARK, the story of one man’s journey into eternity. Perhaps there has been no figure in the history of western culture as controversial as the man known as the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. All denomination, doctrine, and theology aside, this story-teller has spoken words deep into the psyche of world history. A return to the bare-bones of story-telling this original story about the original story-teller marks PUS co-founder Charles Pike’s return to San Francisco.

SON OF SAM I AM features an eclectic selection of Samuel Beckett’s short works, including Catastrophe, Rockabye, and Krapp’s Last Tape, as well as several short pieces of fiction that the audience will blindly pick from a clothesline.

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Written in 1982 and dedicated to then imprisoned Czech reformer and playwright Václav Havel, Catastrophe finds a tyrannical Director molding an actor on a platform into his own personal vision of a catastrophe, with the aid of his befuddled Assistant.

Perhaps a comment on Beckett’s own work, Catastrophe is a comment on societies that restrict free speech through state-censored art, and of course, the tyranny of certain stage directors.

A woman dressed in a black gown sits rocking in a chair that rocks of its own volition. A voice speaks to her. It is lulling her to sleep, perhaps her last sleep. Or maybe, it is waking her up. Beckett penned Rockaby in 1980 for a festival and symposium in commemoration of his 75th birthday.

Written in the late 1950s and later translated into English by Beckett himself, Rough for Theatre I echoes both the themes and situations of Endgame and Waiting for Godot. A is a blind street corner fiddler looking for spare change. B is an invalid in a wheelchair looking for company. Will it be love or violence between them, or both?

In Rough for Radio I, written in 1961, A Woman comes to visit A Man in his room. She asks to listen. The Man instructs her to turn the knobs of the instrument. Voices emerge. There are births. There is death. Nothing is resolved, but we do learn The Man’s name.

One of Beckett’s funniest and most ironically chilling works for the stage, Krapp’s Last Tape premiered as a curtain raiser to Endgame in 1958 and was originally written for Northern Irish actor Patrick Magee. It is Krapp’s 69th birthday and, as has become his custom, he hauls out his old tape recorder and reviews one of the earlier years – in this case the recording he made when he was 39. As he looks back with longing on the ashes of his youth, he finds he has nothing he wants

to record for posterity.

 

Scott Baker, PUS co-founding Artistic Director, and critically acclaimed director helms the company’s West Coast Premiere at at The Garage artspace of Son of Sam I Am, the illuminating take by Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet, Samuel Beckett (Endgame, Waiting for Godot), and Book of Mark the original solo show adapted and performed from the biblical text by acclaimed playwright Charles Pike (Chicago’s Steppenwolf, Second City, and others).

 

Comprised of Scott Baker and Charles Pike, recipients of Joseph Jefferson Awards for their theater work in Chicago, and Joseph Jefferson Award nominee Valerie Fachman, PUS has been in existence for over 15 years and has been critically lauded for its bare-bones productions of Samuel Beckett plays and original works. Other PUS productions include Anatomy of It’s a Wonderful Life; Robinson Jeffer’s Dead Soldier Walks Home; Glory Hole; Pound Bound; Fun with Dick and Perry; and Jungle of Tongues.

(Photo above right)

“Krapp’s Last Tape” by Samuel Beckett
Skip Emerson

(photo by Scott Baker)
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May 18-19 (Sun-Mon) @ 8pm 
Dance

RAW (resident artists' workshop)

at The Garage artspace presents

 

The Beginning of the End of the Road

 

A collaboration

of Aura Fischbeck and Sonia Reiter,

with Kathleen Hermesdorf of MOTIONLAB


Tickets $10-$20

brownpapertickets.com

Info (415) 885 4006

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RAW (Resident Artists Workshop) presents Aura Fischbeck and Sonia Reiter in a trilogy of work inspired by apocalyptic predictions, current trends, and Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road'.  

The evening will explore and expose catastrophic isolation, residual beauty and survival tactics through solo dance, film and a duet with direction and music by Kathleen Hermesdorf & Albert Mathias of MOTIONLAB.

Face the opposite of endlessness and taste bittersweet hope in the visceral form of articulate, eclectic motion.
Read a review in the Bay Guardian of Aura Fischbeck's recent performance at The Garage - click here.
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May 20 (Tuesday) @t 8pm
Performance

Four consecutive Tuesdays, April 29, May 6, May 13, and May 20

at 8pm


 
“In Time and Spacey”

a performance art piece about love’s expansive elasticity


 
Brian Shapiro’s CultureWorks, featuring performance artist

Brian Shapiro,

original music by Shapiro and Parisian composers Etienne Pons and Olivier Soubra.
 
$15 General,

$10 Students/Seniors/Groups

of 5 or more
 
(415) 885-4006

or (415) 283-8052,

www.cultureworksinc.org
Bay Area Performance Artist Brian Shapiro brings his latest work, “In Time and Spacey” to San Francisco’s The Garage artspace.  Part theatre, live music, dance, and video, this 60-minute performance illuminates loves’ expansive elasticity, guiding the audience in directions that traverse the rather intimate landscapes that accompany love, some known, some revealed, and some created.  A timeless poetic mélange, Shapiro allows music, song, text, movement, and film to tell multiple love stories.  Often humorous, at moments dramatically intense, and certainly stimulating, from road rage to hot tubs, “In Time and Spacey” consists of a dozen vignettes that combine autobiography and fiction. The show originally received direction from San Francisco director Joseph Graham, and has been shaped in collaboration with other Bay Area artists and choreographers, including Sara Shelton Mann and Maxine Moreman.
 

May 21 (Wed) @ 8pm  NOTE: Wed show SOLD OUT  -  May 22 (Thu) @ 7:30 & 9pm  AVAILABLE

Dance

Silver danced in Europe, Israel and New York City for over 10 years, most notably with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, the Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company (Israel), Alexandra Beller Dances, Sean Curran, Li Chiao Ping Dance, Kevin Wynn (NYC).  Her choreography has been shown at DanceSpace (NYC), Pentacle (NYC) Taos Dance Festival (NM) and Jacob's Pillow (MA).  LiYana is a recent transplant to San Francisco and is also a relationship counselor, teacher and writer.

RAW (resident artists'workshop)

at The Garage artspace presents

 

 

LiYana Silver's BeFor(e)Play

 

May 22 (Thu) @ 7:30 & 9pm  AVAILABLE

NOTE: Wednesday show

SOLD OUT


Tickets $10-$20 brownpapertickets.com


Information or reservations:

(415) 885 4006.
LiYana Silver's new work, BeFor(e)Play was developed as part of RAW at The Garage and deals with social disconnections the are dissected, bisected and interrupted by an over-technologized culture, creating misunderstandings and brutal consequences.
May 28-29 (Wed-Thu) @ 8pm     
Performance /Theatre

RAW (resident artists’ workshop)

at The Garage artspace presents

The Unspeakable Act

Tickets $10-$20

brownpapertickets.com
Info/res (415) 885 4006

RAW (resident artists’ workshop) and 23 Elephants present The Unspeakable Act, a comedic farce inspired by an ancient Japanese fairytale.

This provocative one-act follows an empress on her journey of sexual discovery with an unlikely lover: a hermit-monk turned demonic sex stud.

Through the use of improvisation, dance and movement, 23 Elephants creates an environment rife with physical comedy and throbbing innuendo.

Originally presented in the 2002 New York Fringe Festival, NYTheatre.com hailed it as “the most notably engrossing theatrical opening in recent memory.”
 
June 1 (Sun) @ 8pm 
Dance

At The Garage artspace

Tickets $10-$20 brownpapertickets.com
Reservations (415) 885 4006.

RAW (resident artists’ workshop) presents

choreographers

Katarina Eriksson and Caroline Simon

Choreographer Caroline Simon (Germany) presents a new work titled "a piece", a solo that incorporates fantasy and humor with some surprising twists. Simon’s work encourages the audience to create their own images by questioning daily routines and examining performance modes. Local choreographer Katarina Eriksson presents "Dr. Frank", a new solo inspired by the life of Dr Eugenia Frank. This new work explores Frank’s story through dance improvisation, creative writing and clowning.  Dr. Frank incorporates Bollywood Dancing, performance art, a typewriter, big glasses, spoken word, a divorce, trance states that inspire ugly movement that is both beautiful and provocative.

(left) Katarina Eriksson

(right) part of Caroline Simon's fantasy

 
June 5 & 6 (Thu-Fri) @ 8pm
Performance

Self portrait by Leah

Qcc/SAFEhouse AIRspace Program at The Garage artspace

THE GROWN WOMAN SHOW
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha


Tickets: $10-$20  Info/res. 415 885 4006

The Grown Woman Show is a fearless, sexy and powerful one-woman show about a long-term incest survivor and a femme of color making love, family and heartbreak within queer and trans of color communities. Using storytelling, spoken word, ritual and movement, Leah traces one year in her life as she leaves her long-term white partner and returns to finding love and trouble in a series of new lovers of color – while simultaneously attempting to reconnect with the family she hasn’t talked to in a decade.

Biography and more info: www.brownstargirl.com
June 7 (Sat) @ 8pm
Spoken Word/Lit

THE BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO IN EXILE:

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE



Tickets: $10 - $20 Sliding Scale

Info/res. 415 885-4006

Photo of Horehound Stillpoint

San Francisco in Exile is a rabble-rousing, trail-blazing queer performance series.

Started in 2001 by queer arts visionaries Kris Kovick and Sara Moore, SFinX has been a cornerstone of San Franciscan queer and outsider culture, promoting new and emerging queer artists alongside queer arts’ Most Valuable Players; showcasing and exploring everything from femme and pansy fabulousness to homo hip-hop; and of course, queering virginity, home-wrecking, gender, the holidays, and marriage, among other juicy topics.

Join Jen Cross, Gina de Vries, Cindy Emch, Robert Lawrence, Zuleika Mahmood, Horehound Stillpoint and others (TBA) as they read fabulous new stuff and tell tales of Ye Olde SFinX days. Come ready to be inspired.

Website: www.sfinx.org
June 8-9 (Sun-Mon) @ 8:00pm
Performance / Play reading

Qcc/SAFEhouse AIRspace Program

CHILDREN OF THE LAST DAYS


Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor

Tickets: $10 - $20 sliding scale

Brown Paper Tickets

Info/res. 415 885-4006

Children of the Last Days is a semi-autobiographical, multi-media performance piece that explores, juxtaposes and satirizes the modern Black church and the Black gay community. Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor uses prose, monologue and dance in this colorful and comedic commentary on the past, present and future.

Thandiwe Thomas De Shazor

as AlphaHydroxy

(photo: Ri Ri Garcia for

Rimarkable Things)

Thomas has been performing for over ten years in such shows as Oklahoma, The Music Man, Lysistrata and Ron Allen’s Tibetan Book of the Dead.  Thomas has studied under Hilary Ramsden, co-founder of the Furniture Factory and was an apprentice at Oakland University’s Meadowbrook Theatre.

As a writer, he was first published at age 19 in Between the Lines Newspaper where he became a staff writer and wrote the weekly entertainment column “Check This Channel Out”.

Most recently, his story “Pussy Pass it On” was published in If We Have to Take Tomorrow, an anthology of black gay writers. Since moving to California he has toured singing with artist Ri Ri Garcia, performing at The House of Stormz and San Francisco Gay Pride. Thomas also performed at the 2007 NQAF event Why are Faggots so Afraid of Faggots?
June 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 (Tue-Sat)  @ 8:00pm
Performance

Writer/performer Kirk Read and musician Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney create an evening of stories about sex work, hallucinations and the apocalypse. Read learned to perform in a touring Virginia evangelical youth group, with some in his hometown expecting him to become a preacher. Instead, Read became an escort and an avowed fan of magic mushrooms. In short, Read is a different sort of preacher. Read's stories weave in and out of Mooney's soundscape, creating an atmosphere of magical trance. Read's humor and acute observation, together with Mooney's trippy, layered music will take you to church. Expect to hear stories about a 450 pound sex work client, the surly employees at Guitar Center, teenage Satanism, touring through rural Alabama with strippers and praying in public.

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Tickets: $12-$15 Sliding Scale
Buy Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/32515

Read Artists bio's

here

Photo by Ed Wolf

Adapted from a design by Kirk Read

(with apologies)

June 15-16 (Sun-Mon) @ 8:00pm
Performance / Reading

Qcc/SAFEhouse AIRspace Program at The Garage artspace

FUGUE STATE
by WICKIE STAMPS

An evening of staged readings from Fugue State, Wickie Stamps’ New Gothic crime novel-in-progress. Fugue’s sketchy characters—a queer girl out for revenge, her troubled sister, a “defrocked” psychiatrist and his incarcerated brother, and more—will read from their journals, prison files and psychiatric records.


Wickie Stamps is a widely published writer and emerging screenwriter whose work has appeared in The Advocate, OutWeek, Gay Community News, Pucker Up and over a dozen short-story collections. Prior editor of the notorious hardcore gay-boy sex mag Drummer as well as Socialist Review a left-wing journal, Wickie is the lead writer of the award-winning short film Foucault Who?,  Co-partner of Heads Will Roll Productions www.headswillroll.net, a rag-tag media biz, Wickie’s current obsessions —showcased on HWR’s Head Wound podcast—include crime, horror, and esoteric spiritual research and practices. Find Wickie's latest written ravings can be found at Heads Will Roll Productions blog. Also check out her work on wild rocker sitcom Rock Court at rockcourt.net and her creative co-conspiratorial coaching biz Monstre Sacré www.monstresacre.net.

Tickets: $10-$15 Sliding Scale

Info/res. 415 885-4006
June 18-19 (Wed/Thu) @ 8:00pm
Performance

Tickets: $10-$15, Sliding Scale, Brown Paper Tickets,   Info/res. 415 885-4006

(Sunny Drake Photo by Alia)

A SAFEhouse AIRspace Program at The Garage artspace

SUNNY DRAKE

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Have you ever wondered if what you think you want is what you really want? Or just what you’ve been taught to want? In these two one-person-shows, in collaboration with visual artists and musicians, Australian performer Sunny Drake explores love, heartbreak, gender and the manufacturing of emotions. Sunny seamlessly weaves story-telling, theatre and creative movement with layers of sound and visuals. Sunny embeds intimate and exposing autobiographical stories in broader political contexts, creating performance that is socially relevant and resonates with many different people’s experiences.

Sunny Drake is a human critter who weaves story telling, theatre and creative movement with layers of sound and visuals. Sunny embeds personal experiences and stories in broader political and social contexts to create bold, raw and challenging performance. Explorations include body image, gender, sexuality, concrete, sexual assault, identity, confessions, fear and professionalism. Sunny has performed in many places around Australia, the USA and Canada including in theatres, festivals, living-rooms, backyards, forests, streets, basements, work places, conferences and deserts. Sunny’s solo works include Umbilical and I Should Have Turned the Mattress Over too. Sunny was born on stolen Indigenous land in Australia (Jaggera-Turrabul land, Brisbane).
June 20 (Fri) @ 8:00pm / June 21 (Sat) @ 2:00pm & 8:00pm / June 22 (Sun) @ 7:00pm
Performance

A SAFEhouse AIRspace Program at The Garage artspace

SWEET DELIVERANCE
Veronica Combs aka Vixen Noir

Sweet Deliverance traces the evolution of Vixen Noir’s sexuality from sensual toddler to teen years wrought with erotic fantasies; boys with big cocks and coming out as a lesbian.  Her drug-induced twenties were replete with low self-esteem, bad choices, the elusive orgasm and her never-ending search for sexual freedom on a higher plane. 
In a funny, edgy, sexy and raucous one-woman show, Vixen gets down and dirty with her grandmother, Sweet, as she sets out to prove that her smutty ways were passed down through her matriarchal bloodline.  Vixen believes, “I came out of my mother’s womb sexually charged!”  Sweet Deliverance employs a fierce mix of storytelling, poetry, monologues, songs, burlesque and contemporary dance, punctuated by excerpts from Vixen’s interviews with Sweet, culminating in an explosive, mind-bending, toes-curling climax that just might make you look at your own sexuality in a whole different light!

Tickets: $10-$15, Sliding Scale

Brown Paper Tickets, Info/res. 415 885-4006

(Vixen Noir Photo by karen marisa)
June 26-28 (Thu-Fri) @ 8:00pm
Performance

A SAFEhouse AIRspace Program

THE TWILIGHT VIXEN REVUE AND SF BOYLESQUE

The Twilight Vixen Revue and SF Boylesque present a 3-night double-header Q-baret Spectacular.  This extravaganza will feature the talents of San Francisco's all queer showgirls, the Twilight Vixen Revue and the tantalizing all-male cast of SF Boylesque showcasing a night of classic burlesque, decadent cabaret and contemporary vaudeville.

Tickets: $10 - $15, Sliding Scale, Brown Paper Tickets

Info/res. 415 885-4006
And that's the  at The Garage.  Info click here

The Garage presents SPF3 late june & july (third annual summer performance festival) 20 shows!

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The Garage has a sprung dance floor with mirrors and is available for
performances, workshops and classes.

joe landini (The Garage artspace / director)

michael michalske (The Garage artspace / technical director)

RAW, a 12 week residency program offering approximately 4-6 hours of free rehearsal space that culminates in a
two night performance. performance artists of all disciplines are encouraged to apply.

SPF3 (third annual summer performance festival) july 06 - august 25
artists participate in shared two week programs. artist fees available.

AIRspace, a 12 week residency program for bay area queer performance artists.
culminating in a performance at the national queer arts festival.

the raw & uncut performance showcase (march), all disciplines encouraged.

please contact joe landini 415 885 4006 for more details.