End Of Life Festival Presents DESIGNATED DAUGHTER

The Designated Daughter is being presented by The Marsh San Francisco as part of the Reimagine End of Life festival, a citywide exploration of death and celebration of life through creativity and conversation. Every family has one: the dutiful child who stays behind shouldering familial responsibilities. Podesta wasn't that daughter. However, when her elderly mother moves in - wreaking comic chaos, forcing a painful confrontation with a buried past, and prompting the search for the perfect pajamas - she has one last chance to build a bond of truth and love.

The result is a haunting, beautiful, and ultimately uplifting show about caregiving for a dying parent that asks: What do the living owe the dying? Moreover, what do the dying truly bequeath the living? Post-show talkbacks, featuring experts in everything from caregiver educators to authors, will be offered throughout the run.

The Designated Daughter will be presented October 19 - November 2, 2019 (press opening: October 19) with performances at 8:00pm Wednesdays, 5:00pm Saturdays, and 2:00pm Sundays at The Marsh San Francisco, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. For tickets ($20-$35 sliding scale; $55 and $100 reserved) or more information, the public may visit www.themarsh.org or call The Marsh Box office at 415-282-3055 (open Monday through Friday, 1:00pm-4:00pm).

Victoria Podesta (Performer/Author) first performed at The Marsh almost 30 years ago with the solo work Far To Go. Had she known that title would be prophetic, she might have chosen another. Following 2019 performances of this new work at Chicago Dramatists Theatre and the United Solo Festival in New York, she is returning to The Marsh San Francisco with The Designated Daughter, offering other tales of the mother/daughter bond/bind.

Free talkback engagements following certain performances of The Designated Daughter are:

Saturday, October 19: Talkback with Amanda Coggin from Zen Hospice Project, who specializes in mindful caregiver education and teaching open death conversations.

Saturday, October 26: Talkback with Jim Van Buskirk, discussion leader of the Death Café, a respectful space where attendees can feel comfortable sharing questions, curiosity, fears, beliefs, and stories about any/all aspects of death.

Wednesday, October 30: Talkback with Gayle Greene, Ph.D.; Professor Emerita, Literature and Women's Studies; and author of Missing Persons, a memoir about dealing with death in a culture that gives no help.

Mark Kenward (Director) is a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Nominee and two-time selection for the Best of San Francisco Solo Series. He has performed his work in over 40 cities throughout the U.S. and Canada, including a reception for The House of Representatives and several runs at The Marsh. Kenward is the creator and performer of eight solo shows and the director of over 30 full-length solo shows. He regularly teaches one-day Telling Your Story workshops and eight-week The Elements of Solo Performance classes, and is currently the Director of Artist Relations & Special Projects at The Marsh.

Reimagine End of Life is a week-long, community-wide exploration of death and celebration of life through creativity and conversation. Drawing on the arts, spirituality, healthcare, and design, weeklong series of events are created that help break down taboos and bring diverse communities together in wonder, preparation, and remembrance. Initially prototyped in 2016 as part of an effort to investigate the intersection of art, community, and the end of life, Reimagine End of Life will be in San Francisco in October 2019 and in New York in 2020.

The Marsh is known as "a breeding ground for new performance." It was launched in 1989 by Founder and Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman, and now annually hosts 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."

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