MarshStream Offerings Include Developing Connections During COVID, Shamanism, Climate Change, And More

The Marsh continues to offer a wide variety of new programming at 7:30pm nightly on MarshStream, its popular broadcast platform.

Offerings through October 31 include: a woman's fight to stay connected in the era of COVID-19; a mordant look at climate change; a visit with House/Full of BlackWomen director, Ellen Sebastian Chang, and comedic autobiographical monologist Josh Kornbluth; a dive into family secrets, shamanism, and death; the debut of "Smartest Person in the Room" hosted by Don Reed; additional performances of Brian Copeland's captivating drama, The Waiting Period; and much more (see latest schedule below).

The program launched in April and has received overwhelmingly enthusiastic response, with hundreds flocking to view and participate each night. MarshStream programming varies daily, with Monday Night MarshStream (short performances by a variety of artists), Wild Card Tuesdays (everything from book/writer discussions, sing-a-longs, Tell It On Tuesday, to Sound Healing and Restorative Yoga), Wednesday Solo Arts Heal (offering stories of health, advocacy, and inspiration), Stephanie's MarshStream on Thursday nights (interview, bantering, Q&A, and performance excerpts, moderated by Marsh founder Stephanie Weisman), plus Bingo! hosted by Josh Kornbluth, live full-length performance concert readings, archived performance streams, performance development classes, and more. A noon series includes CJ's FitnesSing weekly singing lesson and fitness class, plus a Super Slow Weight Training and Zoomba Room. Content is offered at 7:30pm nightly, and mid-day throughout the week via Zoom, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and iTunes.

MarshStream viewers are asked to contribute whatever they can afford. Donations can be made by joining The Marsh's membership program and via a virtual "tip jar" both on the website, with funds going to support and sustain The Marsh and its performances. For more information, the public may visit www.themarsh.org/marshstream. NOTE: Most past shows from earlier MarshStream dates are also available on the website for viewing.

Monday Night MarshStream

7:30pm, Monday, October 19 - Solo Feature Special

Suraya Keating's From Prison to Peru

Inspired by true-life experiences, Suraya Keating created this tale of love, loss, family secrets, and forgiveness as a way of grappling with the shadow side of her human journey. Interconnections among the mental illness in her family, her mother's sudden death, and Keating's draw to the worlds of drug addicts, shamanism, and prison work are all touched upon in this poignant, funny, heart-opening story. Keating is an actress, Registered Drama Therapist, Registered Expressive Arts Therapist, and Shakespeare for Social Justice Director for Marin Shakespeare Company. For 20 years, she facilitated mindfulness-based theater, movement, and yoga practices with a variety of populations, including at-risk youth, adults with severe mental illness, and individuals who are incarcerated.

7:30pm, Monday, October 26 - Solo Feature Special

Aimee Greenberg's The Making of American Carnage

The Making of American Carnage is a meta-performance on theater dysfunction during the rehearsal, production, and performance of dystopian theater in the time of political chaos, post-Trump. This work is inspired by Greenberg's American Carnage: A Love Story, a play that pulls back the curtain on a future where high technology manifests organically within humans and manufactured beings. Produced by the Bay Area Women's Theater Festival (BAWTF), The Making of American Carnage was scheduled to premiere at the Brava before being postponed due to COVID-19. Greenberg is an award-winning veteran theater artist whose works have been performed worldwide. She has collaborated with theater icons Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal, and Guillermo Gentile. Greenberg is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards and fellowships including The Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, The Los Angeles Endowment, The Los Angeles Women's Foundation Award, Seattle Original Works, and the Susan B. Komen Award.

Wildcard Tuesdays

7:30pm, Tuesday, October 20

Joshua Raoul Brody's Beatles Sing-Along

Lovable accompanist Joshua Raoul Brody virtually recreates the event he's been hosting at venues around the Bay Area for over 10 years: Beatles karaoke night. After playing some of his favorite Beatles songs, Brody points the microphone at the camera and has audience members take over.

7:30pm, Tuesday, October 27

Tell It On Tuesday (TIOT) featuring special guests Rose Owens, Sally Holzman, Lois Kincy, and Claire Isaacs Wahrhaftig. Hosted by Rebecca Fisher and Bridget Frederick

• Rose Owens's My Father Goes a-Courting features Owens, a storyteller, writer, artist, mother to seven children, and grandmother to 27 grandchildren who offers up family stories, original stories, and her own adaptations of folk and fairytales. Owens has published the Maryalise Trilogy (three middle grade fantasy novels) and holds a master's degree in Special Education.
• Sally Holzman's Hair Princess is the work of Holzman, who includes in her life experience roles as a daughter, wife, teacher, mother, storyteller. In this short story performance, listeners will hear her tales bridging the world of make believe and today's reality.
• Lois Kincy's Signifying Monkey and Mr. Lion is the work of Kincy, a former clown, turned writer and teller. She is a graduate of Stagebridge's EPIC program.
• Claire Isaacs Wahrhaftig's I Love you, San Francisco! offers up a tale from Wahrhaftig who retired from a career in arts administration, began studying storytelling at Stagebridge, and hasn't looked back since.

Solo Arts Heal

7:30pm, Wednesday, October 21 - Robin Gelfenbien's The Human Connector

Hosted by Gail Schickele.

Until a few months ago, "self-isolation" was not a commonly heard term. In the midst of a breakup, Gelfenbien found herself working from home a lot more than is healthy for any extrovert. After taking a chance on a flight from St. Louis to New York City, Gelfenbien realized that it was exactly what she needed. In an incredible risky move, Gelfenbien brought a flight of passengers together in the most unexpected way, helping her fight her loneliness and ultimately restore her faith in humanity. A three-time Moth Story SLAM winner, Gelfenbien has performed on PBS, RISK! Mortified, and countless other shows. She is the creator and host of the storytelling series and podcast, Yum's the Word. The show has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and named a Critic's Pick by New York Times and Time Out New York. Gelfenbien has been a featured speaker at New York Social Media Week, NYU, the National Board of Certification for Occupational Therapists, and more.

7:30pm, Wednesday, October 28 - Ross Travis's Tempting Fate

Hosted by Gail Schickele.

A satirical work on climate change, Tempting Fate invites audiences to balk at the science, bemoan the social impacts, and scream in horror at the political divide. Ross Travis is an award-winning actor, bouffon, physical comedian, and circus performer (specializing in Chinese pole). He has studied with world renowned master pedagogues, including Dodi DiSanto, Giovanni Fusetti, Ronlin Foreman, Stephen Buescher, Dominik Wyss, and Master Lu Yi. Ross's lineage of training and experience allows him to create provocative performances that combine circus and bouffon, developing extreme characters and igniting dialogue and change around ignored or taboo social issues.

Stephanie's MarshStream

7:30pm, Thursday, October 22

Special guest Ellen Sebastian Chang. Hosted by Stephanie Weisman.

Stephanie's MarshStream will feature an exclusive interview and Q&A with Ellen Sebastian Chang, a Bay Area-based director, writer, and arts educator whose career spans 50 years. Her current projects include an ongoing collaboration with AfroFuturist Conjure artist Amara Tabor Smith and the Deep Waters Dance company's House/Full of BlackWomen, a multi-year site-specific dance theater work that addresses the displacement, sex trafficking, and the creative well-being of Black women and girls in Oakland, California. Sebastian Chang was co-founder and Artistic Director of Life on the Water, a nationally and internationally known organization at San Francisco's Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. She is also the Creative Director of The World As It Could Be: Human Rights and Arts Education Program.

7:30pm, Thursday, October 29

Special guest Josh Kornbluth. Hosted by Stephanie Weisman.

Stephanie's MarshStream will feature an exclusive interview and Q&A with comedic autobiographical monologist Josh Kornbluth. Described as a cross between Woody Allen and Spalding Gray, Kornbluth has been performing autobiographical one-man shows since 1987, many of which were developed at The Marsh. He launched his career as a solo artist with Josh Kornbluth's Daily World, in which he described his childhood as the son of communists in 1960's New York. Other works include Red Diaper Baby (for which he received a Drama Desk Award nomination), The Mathematics of Change, Ben Franklin Unplugged, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe production Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan, among many others. He has appeared in several feature films including his adaptation of Red Diaper Baby; Strange Culture, a documentary about artist and professor Steve Kurtz; Francis Ford Coppola's Jack, starring Robin Williams; and Love & Taxes, his second feature film co-directed with his brother Jacob Kornbluth.

Game Night
7:30pm, Friday, October 16

There will be no MarshStream event held on this date. Game Night returns on Friday, October 23.

7:30pm (Game One) & 8:00pm (Game Two), Friday, October 23

Smartest Person in the Room. Hosted by Don Reed.

Smartest Person in the Room is a fast-paced, quiz format game with each multiple-choice question having three possible answers. Once contestants miss an answer, they are eliminated from the game. (Players eliminated prior to the final four of the first game will be invited back for the second game.) With Don Reed as the game's moderator and plenty of room to riff with its contestants, Smartest Person in the Room will create hilarious moments throughout the game!

7:30pm (Game One) & 8:00pm (Game Two), Friday, October 30

Smartest Person in the Room. Hosted by Don Reed.

Smartest Person in the Room is a fast-paced, quiz format game with each multiple-choice question having three possible answers. Once contestants miss an answer, they are eliminated from the game. (Players eliminated prior to the final four of the first game will be invited back for the second game.) With Don Reed as the game's moderator and plenty of room to riff with its contestants, Smartest Person in the Room will create hilarious moments throughout the game!

Solo Performer Spotlight

7:30pm, Saturday, October 17 - Rebroadcast of Lynne Kaufman's Exposing Margaret Mead with post-performance Q&A.

Margaret Mead, the world's most foremost anthropologist, has been accused of misrepresenting the Samoan culture as sexually permissive. As she summons her rebuttal, we see how amazingly progressive her life and her views are on sexism and racism. Performed by Nancy Madden.

Sunday, October 18 - Exposing Margaret Mead remains available for streaming.

5:00pm, Sunday, October 18 - Brian Copeland's The Waiting Period, with LIVE post performance Q&A

Written by Brian Copeland and directed by David Ford, The Waiting Period is a deeply moving and surprisingly funny work that outlines Copeland's own struggles with depression and suicidal thought, and is presented at no cost to remove all barriers for those who may be struggling with depression themselves. This captivating drama provides an unrelenting look at a key turning point in Copeland's life-the mandatory ten-day waiting period before he could lay his hands on the newly purchased gun with which he planned to take his own life. Laced with surprisingly funny moments that serve as a buffer against the grim reality of his intentions, Copeland hopes this very personal, and ultimately redemptive, story will reach people who struggle with depression-often called the last stigmatized disease-as well as their families and loved ones.

7:30pm, Saturday, October 24 - Rebroadcast of Joanna Rush's Kick with post-performance Q&A

When dancer Bernie O'Connell is on her way to her first big New York audition, she is tricked into a car and attacked in a vacant lot off the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Joanna Rush's Kick follows O'Connell - from a kickline to A Chorus Line, Hollywood, and back - as she picks up the pieces and finds the glue to put herself back together.

Sunday, October 25 - Kick remains available for streaming.

7:30pm, Saturday, October 31 - Rebroadcast of Solo Performer Spotlight featuring Don Reed and Kate Robards

Award-winning solo performer and NPR Snap Judgment "Storyteller of Year" recipient Don Reed shares true tales - both hilarious and heartbreaking, while Kate Robards performs excerpts from her hit shows Ain't That Rich and PolySHAMory.

Sunday, November 1 - Solo Performer Spotlight featuring Don Reed and Kate Robards remains available for streaming.

To simulate the feeling of waiting in the lobby until a theater opens, The Marsh has created the MarshStream Studio Waiting Room. Available 30 minutes prior to each performance/event for Marsh members, and 15 minutes prior to the general public, the Waiting Room can be joined via Zoom Room where guests can mix and mingle, or viewed on YouTube live, with additional entertainment such as unique content, live music, and even prizes.

In addition to nightly program offerings on MarshStream, The Marsh has also launched Marsh Youth Theater (MYT) MarshStream, classes offered at 4:00pm daily taught by MYT instructors. From Creative Dramatics to Storytelling, Dancing, and more, class types, instructors, and age levels vary for each class. For weekly class schedules and additional information, please visit themarsh.org/mytmarshstream.

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