EXIT Theatre, San Francisco's downtown indie home for new and alternative performance for 24 years, announces its 2007 season. The EXIT Theatreplex has three performance venues at 156 Eddy Street and a fourth at 277 Taylor in San Francisco.
Odd By Nature II: The Stranger Journey by Sean Owens will run Feb 8-24. The original Odd By Nature drew great reviews for its successful blending of Noel Coward, Monty Python, and Mother Goose. Once again, Owens and composer/pianist Don Seaver collaborate on the music.
In addition, Exit Theatre will present the world premiere of Sean Owens' one-person show,
Naught But Pirates, "an outrageous swish-and-swashbuckling adventure," according to press materials.
Naught But Pirates previews March 2 and 3 at Exit Theatre, in preparation for its debut at New York's FRIGID Fest, March 7-18, at the Red Room and other venues. The FRIGID (Fun Risky Intimate Gritty Indie Downtown) Fest is a co-production of San Francisco's Exit Theatre and New York's Horse Trade Theater.
FRIGID Fest is the newest member of CAFF, the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, and will be the first stop on the 2007 North American Fringe Festival Circuit.
At the Exit in March is Ripe Theatre Company's
Hardly Breathing, a comedy about star-crossed lovers who fear commitment, heights, and a fiancée who breaks into poetry at inopportune moments. Ripe Theatre Company won a "Best of Fringe" award at the 2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival for its ensemble show
@six.
Hardly Breathing is scheduled to run March 8-31.
Mark Romyn hosts the ongoing
Thursday Night Combo, a variety show in the Exit Café. Anyone and anything is likely to appear, from songsters to magicians to comics trying out new material. 2007 dates include February 15, March 15, April 5, May 3, May 31.
The 6th Annual DIVAfest runs at all three Exit venues, in addition to Original Joe's Cabaret Room, Thursdays through Saturdays, April 26 - May 26. The 2007 DIVAfest features a mainstage production of a new work by Bay Area playwright Deborah Eubanks. Her play,
Crystal Daze, explores the anguish and interaction between two mothers confronting their teenage daughters' descents into methamphetamine addiction.
DIVAfest 2007 will depart from previous formats by showcasing four workshop productions of previously unproduced works-in-progress. Each will have an initial performance on Saturday, April 28. All plays will then be reworked and presented in final form on DIVAfest's closing weekend, May 25 and 26.
Human Hands, by veteran playwright Kerry Reid, focuses on the frenzies generated by two "icons of handwashing" (or lack thereof) – "Typhoid Mary" Mallon and Ignac Semmelweiss. Mary Mallon's name has become a synonym for a disease-carrying pariah. Less known is Semmelweiss, who in 1847 suggested that the high death rate of Viennese infants was due to the failure of doctors and nurses to wash their hands prior to delivering the babies. Both Mallon and Semmelweiss became pariahs in their times, but for different reasons.
Human Hands will be directed by Ripe Theatre's Sarah McKereghan.
An Affair of Honor by Lee Kizonas is an original one-act about a cross-dressing sword fighting opera diva forced to fight in Parisian taverns for francs until she is discovered by the Duc D'Orleans, who takes her to Marseilles to sing in the opera. Kizonas' Killing Stalin recently appeared at the EXIT Theatre.
An Affair of Honor will be directed by Cutting Ball Theatre's Adriana Baer.
Obsessed by Maria Rokas deals with the portrayal of women by the media and our fascination with celebrity.
Obsessed shows a suburban couple wrestling with their teenage daughter's demand for breast implants as a high school graduation gift. It will be directed by Laura Smith, who directed
Guns & Ammunition at last year's DIVAfest.
The fourth workshop production is
The Other Choice by Bay Area playwrights Carrie Kartman and Jennifer Berry. Two women, one a would-be writer and mother, and the other her childless neighbor with a dark secret, engage in heavy examinations of their lives.
The Other Choice will be directed by Jayne Wenger (DIVAfest's
Beauty and the Breast).
DIVAfest brings back long-time favorite poet Diane di Prima, a San Francisco icon who was, along with Ginsberg and Kerouac, a fixture in the Beat scene. Di Prima will read from her Alchemical Fragments on April 28.
Every Friday and Saturday during DIVAfest, Sean Owens hosts the Diva Cabaret, featuring Bay Area "divas" starring in original songs and sketches. The Cabaret will feature work by female lyricists, including Diane Valory, who formerly wrote for Journey. The venue will be the Cabaret Room at Original Joe's restaurant (144 Taylor Street, San Francisco). Diva Cabaret runs for three weekends, April 27-28, May 4-5, and 11-12.
The 2007 San Francisco Fringe Festival will run September 5-16 at the Exit Theatreplex (Exit Theatre, Exit Stage Left, Exit on Taylor), plus other venues in downtown San Francisco. This will be the 16th year for Exit to produce the San Francisco Fringe Festival, the second oldest Fringe Festival in the U.S. and the largest non-juried, artist-oriented grassroots theatre festival in the Bay Area.
Applications for the 2007 San Francisco Fringe Festival are now being accepted. Deadline for applications is Friday, January 19, 2007. All theatre companies and solo performers in three categories, International, U.S., and Bay Area, will be chosen by a lottery on January 24, 2007.
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