Sara Felder's MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY Begins 5/9 at The Marsh

Did Abraham Lincoln suffer from clinical depression? A grad student at Cal, newly in love, researches Lincoln's melancholy while trying to keep up with her amazing new girlfriend. The Marsh San Francisco presents the hilarious playwright, performer, juggler, and clown Sara Felder in her new solo show MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY. Felder takes audiences from the Civil War, to a Lincoln look-alike convention, to the top of UC Berkeley's Campanile, in this comedy about queer love, mental health, and Abraham Lincoln. Written and performed by Felder and directed by Michael Socrates Moran, workshop performances will be held May 9 - June 6, with the run continuing June 7 - June 28 (press opening: June 7). Performances will be presented Saturdays at 5pm and Sundays at 7pm at The Marsh San Francisco's Studio Theater, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco. For tickets ($15-$100), the public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055 between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday.

Combining comic monologue, clowning, juggling, and projections, MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY tells the story of "Sara," a history student at Cal and her new girlfriend, who is beautiful, vibrant, and bipolar. As Sara researches Lincoln's depression, she is forced to come to terms with her girlfriend's mental health. The narrative weaves together this contemporary love story with the life of Abraham Lincoln, who suffered severe bouts of depression throughout his life, and is thought by contemporary historians to have suffered from what we would now call clinical depression.

Felder's inspiration for this piece stems from her lifelong love of history, work with mental health inmates as a California Arts Council Artist-in-Residence at the Correctional Medical Facility at Vacaville, and her friendship with a beloved local clown, trapeze artist, and theatre director who was bipolar. In MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY, Felder becomes the "Clown," the joyful presence who is comfortable living in the extremes, and who uses comedy to dislodge familiar ways of seeing the world.

MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY seeks to confront societal silence and discomfort around mental illness; Once a shameful secret to be kept hidden at all cost, this play emerges at a time when mental illness is gradually being "outed" as a part of the lives of many people, contemporary and historical, and when 20th century western constructions of "mental illness" are being seriously challenged.

Sara Felder is a playwright and performer who, over the last three decades, has created a body of work that juggles personal narrative, circus shtick, and social justice. As a playwright, she has tackled the making of the atom bomb in The Lady Upstairs as well as the oral histories of three great comic actors and activists (Joan Holden, Joan Mankin, and Joan Schirle) in Keeping Up With the Joans. As a solo theater writer and performer she has addressed the marginalization of queer and Yiddish culture in Shtick, same-sex marriage in June Bride, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Out of Sight, the latter of which completed a 4-month run at the San Francisco (and Berkeley) Marsh theatres. June Bride has toured to over 40 venues and has been part of continuing the grass-roots conversation about same-sex marriage.

While the themes of Felder's performances and plays are serious, her form is comic, engaging, and vaudevillian. More often than not, her work looks at what it means to be Jewish, American, and queer, and is often based on her own experiences.

This production of MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY was made possible in part by a grant from The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund supported by generous grants form ArtPlace, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The James Irvine Foundation. The Creative Work Fund commission was awarded in partnership with the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center.

This run of MELANCHOLY, A COMEDY at The Marsh will feature a special pre-show lecture with renowned author of "Lincoln's Melancholy," Joshua Shenk. Named one of the best books of 2005 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and winner of awards from The Abraham Lincoln Institute, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the National Mental Health Association, Joshua Shenk will offer a lecture and discussion before the show (4pm) on Sunday, May 31.

This run will also feature post-show talk-backs with a wide range of experts including: "Spirituality and Mental Health" on Sunday, May 17 with the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center; "The Way We Do the Things We Do" on Sunday, May 23 with Sara Felder and Michael Moran; "Bring in the Clowns," on Sunday June 14 with Jeff Raz of the Medical Clown Project; and "Queer Issues and Mental Health," on Sunday, June 28 with Able Christian of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Photo credit: Irene Young

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