Dan Hoyle to Return to The Marsh San Francisco With BORDER PEOPLE
Border People, developed with and directed by Charlie Varon, runs May 26–June 24, 2023.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Apr. 20, 2023
Award-winning actor and playwright Dan Hoyle will return to The Marsh San Francisco with his critically acclaimed hit, Border People. This work, last seen at The Marsh in January 2020, is based on Hoyle's conversations and interviews from the South Bronx housing projects courtyards, Refugee Safe Houses on the Northern Border with Canada, and travels along the Southwestern Border and into Mexico. Featuring eleven monologues of people who live on or across borders both geographic and cultural, this work is an intimate, raw, poignant, funny look at the borders that many negotiate in their everyday lives. Border People has been greeted with unanimous critical acclaim, earning the highest rating from the San Francisco Chronicle, which noted "This is what it is to witness a master of his craft. Dan Hoyle is one of our theatrical gems," and praised the production as "A testament to the core-to-nerve ending commitment and courage" of those living on borders of any kind. Border People, developed with and directed by Charlie Varon, runs May 26-June 24, 2023 with performances at 7:00pm Fridays and 5:00pm Saturdays at The Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. For tickets ($25-$35 sliding scale, $50 and $100 reserved) or more information, the public may visit www.themarsh.org.
Hoyle began work on the show after the election of Trump in November 2016, working with increased urgency to complete the work as the American immigration debate continued to grow more heated. Border People is based on Hoyle's conversations and interviews along the Southwestern border and into Mexico, as well as at refugee safe houses on the Northern border with Canada, and in the courtyards of housing projects in the South Bronx. It offers a startling gallery of portraits of those, in Hoyle's words, "who cross borders, geographical or cultural, by necessity or choice." Border People continues Hoyle's brand of journalistic theater that has been hailed as "riveting, funny and poignant" by The New York Times and "hilarious, moving and very necessary" by Salon.
Border People was welcomed by critics, who called it, "Enthralling. Deeply moving. Sometimes heartbreaking, more often funny" (SF Examiner) and "Visionary. Seventy-five spellbinding minutes." (BroadwayWorld). In October 2019, Border People headlined the world's premier storytelling event-the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. After its closing run at The Marsh San Francisco, Border People made its Off-Broadway premiere at the Gural Theatre at the A.R.T./New York Theatres, where The New York Times applauded Hoyle for his "empathy and cultural border crossing." OnStage Blog called it "an exhilarating, linguistic rollercoaster of 75-minutes," adding that "Hoyle expertly paints strokes of the difficult, different realities of unique individuals wanting to be heard."
ABOUT Dan Hoyle
The Marsh has been home to Dan Hoyle's (Writer/Performer) World Premiere shows Talk To Your People (2022) Each and Every Thing (2014), The Real Americans (2010), Tings Dey Happen (2007), and Florida 2004: The Big Bummer (2004). These shows have all received raves, with The Huffington Post praising Hoyle's brand of journalistic theater for its "emotional depth and intellectual breadth." Hoyle's newest work, Talk To Your People, received its World Premiere at The Marsh in 2022, extending multiple times at the San Francisco and Berkeley theaters. The critically-acclaimed Each and Every Thing debuted at The Marsh in 2014, and was declared "smartly constructed and highly entertaining" by the San Francisco Chronicle and a "poignant, funny comment on the digital age" by The Mercury News. The show's run was extended several times due to popular demand. The 2010 World Premiere of The Real Americans was an instant hit, receiving kudos from major news outlets, with The New Yorker praising his performance as "smart, entertaining, funny, insightful and surprising." In 2007, Tings Dey Happen was awarded the Will Glickman Award for Best Play, while The New York Times called it "funny and poignant." When discussing his work at The Marsh with East Bay Times, Hoyle proclaimed "The Marsh is to me the best place in the country to develop new work...there's nothing else like it."
ABOUT Charlie Varon
Charlie Varon (Director/Co-Developer) is an artist-in residence at The Marsh. He has collaborated with Dan Hoyle on his solo shows Circumnavigator, Tings Dey Happen, Each and Every Thing, and The Real Americans. As a playwright and performer, Varon has collaborated with David Ford to create hit shows including Rush Limbaugh in Night School (1994), Rabbi Sam (2009) and his latest work, Great American Sh*t Show, an evening of monologues that Varon and Brian Copeland have performed around the Bay Area.
ABOUT THE MARSH
The Marsh is known as "a breeding ground for new performance." It was launched in 1989 by Founder and Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman, and pre-COVID hosted more than 600 performances of 175 shows across the company's two venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. A leading outlet for solo performers, The Marsh's specialty has been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "solo performances that celebrate the power of storytelling at its simplest and purest." The East Bay Times named The Marsh one of Bay Area's best intimate theaters, calling it "one of the most thriving solo theaters in the nation. The live theatrical energy is simply irresistible." Since its launch in April 2020, the theatre's digital platform MarshStream has garnered more than 100,000 viewers. Notable MarshStream moments include the debut of MarshStream International Solo Fest 1 and 2, The Marsh's first-ever digital festivals, and the U.S. premiere of The Invisible Line, a new documentary about one of the world's most famous social experiments gone wrong. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic MarshStream has hosted over 700 LIVE streams, providing some 300 performers a platform to continue developing and producing art. The Marsh will continue to offer digital content on MarshStream, as well as in- person performances.
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