60 MINUTES OF OUR LIVES Comes To The EXIT Studio Stage For SF Fringe Festival

Steven Westdahl returns to the EXIT Theater this September with his fourth production at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Previously the producer/director/actor in Zurich Plays, a dada history of the dada art movement (winner of Best of the SF Fringe award in 2015) and producer/director of Fingertips, a collection of 21 short plays inspired by the music of They Might Be Giants (winner of Best of the SF Fringe award in 2019) [as well as producer/director/actor in screwmachine/eyecandy, the fake TV game show about late-stage capitalism (which didn't win anything in 2017)], Westdahl's latest show offers several firsts:

• First time performing as a visiting artist since leaving CA in Aug 2020

• First time as a Fringe playwright

• First time as a Fringe solo performer

• First time on the EXIT Studio stage

The new show, 60 Minutes of Our Lives, is an hour-long performance experiment in which Westdahl will attempt to perform 16 different short plays in a random order as selected by audience members. The 16 short scripts, all written by the actor, are each represented by a prop displayed onstage in a suitcase and the audience's program will serve as a 'menu', listing the play's title, corresponding prop, and assigned number. Each of the four performances will be unique due to the random ordering of the plays by the audience as well as direct audience interaction and elements of improvisation. Regardless of the order of the plays, this show contains adult language/themes, no 4th wall, and possible male nudity and is recommended only for mature audiences willing to lean forward and engage. [If the format sounds familiar, it is likely because Westdahl was one of the founding ensemble members of the San Francisco Neo-Futurists and wrote/performed in their ongoing and ever changing '30 plays in 60 minutes' show, Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, from Dec 2013 - Jan 2016.]

A Bay Area native, Steven Westdahl got his start with Alameda Children's Musical Theatre at the age of 9, playing Ben, singing, dancing, & whitewashing a fence, in a production of Tom Sawyer the Musical). By 12, he had written his first play, adapting a children's book from the page to the stage. Trained in Atlanta at Emory University by the Equity production company hidden in their theater department, Steven has been a professional actor and playwright for decades and traveled to Russia, Indonesia, and all over Europe with shows. Returning to CA in 2011 before departing again in 2020, he worked with Un-Scripted Theater, SF Shakespeare Festival, Playground SF, Performers Under Stress, Custom Made, The EXIT, and others while also hosting WRITE CLUB SF, Air Sex SF, events for The Go Game, and more. He currently keeps his stuff in Portland OR and continues to explore the intersection of theatre & games in the world of 'play',

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