Returning to the Circle

One of the surprises when I entered my freshman undergraduate year was that I tested so high in German that I was put in an advanced literature class where most of the other classmates were graduate students. A rather stern group, as I recall, and I was a bit intimidated, but I was glad that we'd be reading Kafka's Metamorphesis which I'd only read in English up to that point.

However, the first story we were to read was Bertolt Brecht's Der Augsburger Kreidekreis (The Ausburg Chalk Circle). This short fable set in war time raised the question about what determines a worthy parent stuck with me through the years. I have always wanted to see a production of Brecht's play The Caucasian Chalk Circle which is an evolution of his story which he borrowed or stole from ancient China.

Last night I got to see the opening preview of the American Conservatory Theater's production directed by John Doyle, noted minimalist who had great success with deconstructionist versions of Sweeney Todd and Company. While certain Brechtian influences figure heavily in the former and this production had some of that show's cast members, deconstructing Brecht is a tricky business.
The play is intentionally disjointed, non-realistic and didactic. If you don't like being preached at, don't go see Brecht. What's most difficult with Brecht is whether or not there can be any emotion or heart injected into the presentation of the characters which are archetypes and representations after all. The cast in this production featured actors who did seem to go beyond archetypes, but when they were engaging, I'm not sure what I was engaged with. Especially engaging were Omozé Idehenre as the surrogate mother on trial and Manoel Felciano as the singer/narrator who has a particularly fetching voice and played Tobias in Doyle's production of Sweeney Todd. Though I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more in Ragtime. It's fitting that he played the same role Mandy Patinkin played in the movie version of the same story since he recalled a younger Patinkin in voice and demeanor.




The show featured songs but is certainly not a musical. Those songs are certainly where the show is most didactic. I came away finding the whole production engaging enough but not compelling. Brecht is ever the curious creature to watch and read, but it's hard to remember what the point was the morning after. However, after exploring Manoel's website linked above, it appears he has Catalan heritage and has at least one song you can download from his site in Catalan. That alone made the night worthwhile.

Junk Thief's Theater News

We're off to see this at American Conservatory Theater tonight. We'll try to follow with a review.

An Update on Our Board of Directors Retreat

After last night's ugly little brawl (lesson learned: kewpies can't handle more than two martinis well), all is back on track. After a big breakfast, they have spent the day mounting a musical version of Antigone with an Afro-beat score. (Think Fela, but with a more ancient Greek theme.)

Be sure to "embiggen" the photo to see the full scale of the set. We thought the cows and Ganesh were interesting additions to Sophocles' original stage directions. (However, he does call for pine trees and Japanese space monsters.)

Street Critic Weighs in on Wicked

This Is Junk Thief's Role Model for His Dotage

We recently managed to pick up a pristine copy of "An Evening with Beatrice Lillie" which Junk Thief plans to re-enact song for song, beat by beat in 2037 while accompanying himself on a zither and singing eastern European folk songs. "Weary of It All" will be the stand out number.

Can You Hear the Difference Between K and G?

The oddest thing about the passage of time and the accumulation of experience is not what is forgotten but what is remembered. For some unknown reason, this morning I started thinking about Professor Alfons Fritz who taught my course on 19th and early 20th Century European theater. Besides reading every play of Shaw that semester, we also studied and read all the major Scandinavian playwrights of that era who were, fortunately, less prolific. I think we covered Chekov during one intense two week block in February.

Professor Fritz was fond of quoting some of his worst student essays in his 45 years of teaching. One of his favorites was a junior musing on T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats: "Cats, cats. They is cats everywhere."

His all time favorite was when he gave an impromptu assignment, verbally asking the class to write a 300 word reflection on the contributions of Henrik Ibsen to literature. A student wrote: "Not only does Henry Gibson manage to play a great straight man on Laugh In, he is also one of the most accomplished poets of the late 20th century."

Caption This...

...so we don't have to.

Reason to Move Back East, #2

My loan officer at Wells Fargo called this morning over brunch with his mom at Boulevard. (Banker's hours? Ha!) Things are looking good for my approval to buy the Brooke Astor place, so I may soon become bicoastal for real. As if that were not reason enough, I am really wanting to see the Julie Klausner show "Wasp Cove" opening in another week. With a character named Devon St. Palestine, I know I would love it.

Sweet 16 - Let There Be Jewels!

This afternoon I went to the 84th birthday for George Birimisa who leads the intergenerational writing group I've been a member of for nearly nine years. George is a pioneering gay playwright and coeditor of the book Return to the Caffe Cino, an anthology and memoir of the theater where he and other ground breaking writers launched their works in the 1960s.

Jewelry seemed to be in abundance as gifts at this year's event, and, as you can tell, George shares my fondness for eccentric headgear, though he tends to favor the brimless crowns of a heretical sodomite priest as opposed to my fedoras, porkpies and flat caps. Obviously it was a room filled with a galaxy of blog stars, including Bryce Digdug (center) and Jim (right) of The Blue Elephant. Before the party, I helped Jim load some of his videos of recent peace and reproductive rights rallies. Jim, some may recall, had a popular video here when he house/cat sat while I was in Catalonia.

Happy Sweet 16 George!

Too Long at the Faire?

Last night I went to the Edwardian World's Faire with R. R and I dated back around the turn of the century, and I spent the night of 9/11 at his apartment atop Twin Peaks as we heard helicopters circling above. It seemed fitting to take him to an event celebrating another turn of the century, but it also reminded me of why we're no longer together. R is a good, sweet man, but innovative and curious are not exactly a part of his nature. He enjoyed it for a good 30 minutes or so and then excused himself.

If only San Francisco's Homosexual Community had as much innovation as the organizers of this little event. It had its fair share of homosexual in attendance, but it was a lot more fun than the vomit-enduing Folsom Street Fair or the snooze fests such as Pride and the Castro Street Fair.

My only complaint is that I was hoping for bit more Faire exhibits. Those on display were appropriately weird without being gross and icky and fey and whimsical without being cute or maudlin. Bizarre machines, costume masks, millinery and jewelry are fine, but I wanted more. The acts were reasonably entertaining and none went on too long.

The best part of the evening was seeing the revelers themselves decked out in Edwardian finery and oddities, including a good selection of young men wandering around on O'Farrell Street (just down the street from the Mitchell Brothers' strip joint) on stilts.

I only got tickets for the opening night faire, knowing that R would likely not be up for being a dance partner and tonight's grand ball or Sunday Gorey Sunday.

Those down south might be interested to know that the event will be at the American Legion Hall in November. Of course, it really wasn't a costume party for Junk Thief whose fashion sense has always been rather Edwardian.

Mein Shtetl Ist Dein Shtetl

JT Exclusive: Tru Heads Out for the Evening

A number of my friends and I debate the merits of the two recent movies heralding the continued Truman Capote revival of the past few years, with most of us agreeing that Infamous is more satisfying than Capote. Surprisingly, I never hear mention of 1991's Tru. These final minutes of the play are the most touching and iconic to me. You'll not find it on DVD, VHS or (for now) YouTube, but you can see it if you want to arrange for a screening at the JunkPlex.

Trixie Friganza - Restored at Long Last!

Yes, yes, I know I just made my comment about curbing my YouTube postings, but I still have a couple more to go before topping this month's quota, and this one is just to glorious to wait on.

While weaving through incredible third disc of The Jazz Singer, I just about fell off my chair, when to my delight, I saw the charming face and full figure of Trixie Friganza. Trixie Friganza! I first discovered her a few years back in an American Masters episode on Vaudeville. Trixie appeared in the 1937 A Star Is Born, some Chaplin films and others. She was also a suffragette at the turn of the century.

This is a brief clip from a six minute clip in The Jazz Singer reissue, one of nearly three and a half hours of Vitaphone Varieties, a series of weird and wonderful shorts from the late 1920s and early 1930s. In a jazz age rap, Trixie gives tips on how married gals who like a nip at the speakeasy when the husband isn’t watching can cover her tracks.

Each minute is superb, but this half minute clip is arguably the pinnacle in which she chronicles the fate of Lulu who ventures off to the Aloha state. Though comic, what's amazing about Trixie, is that she's a pretty strident feminist even by today's terms. This 33-second interlude comes out of nowhere in the middle of a technically comic tune in which she tells the fate of her two husbands. They're both losers, but when one decides to hit her, she does him in.

Enjoy!

Trixie the suffragette.

Timon of Tuba City

If my presence here next week is less than usual, it's partly because I'll be at the locale above. Perhaps I should take some heirloom tomatoes for the journey. Do they count as part of the carry on gels and liquids.? I can't remember.

For those who don't remember my last journey through this state, barely more than two months ago, it is a place that reminds me of my favorite character chronicled by Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, a once glorious party giver who went on to become a sever misanthrope before going mad in the desert. A pivotal scene in the play is when the once generous host throws a water banquet for his fair weathered friends who are expecting the usual display of opulence he can no longer afford. The play has meant different things at different moments in my life. I keep coming back to it, expecting to find meaning that may never have been there. Typically simultaneously discredited and revered as Shakespeare's most challenging, weired, incomplete, and profound work, I find that I cannot push it away. At once fearful of it yet also intrigued, like German tourists walking in fascination into Death Valley with fascination or like the characters in Eric Von Stroheim's Greed, staggering in the heat with bags of bounty but not a drop of water to drink.

Lost, Found and Widening Queer Circles

Through a typically random referral, JunkThief came the show Lost and Found in the Mission put on by Mama Calizo's Voice Factory at the Jon Sims Center for Performing Arts and had the pleasure of going to see it this evening.

The co-artistic directors Rowena Richie and Susie Hara seem grounded in the belief that the best search engines are our eyes, feet and hands, and they have mounted a revue of sorts built around found objects discovered in various corners of the Mission District. These range from shopping lists, to letters, to post its, to notes passed in jail, to a single black high heel shoe intended for a male Cindarella. Most of the objects are words written on paper, and aside from a few songs, the bulk of the show is made up of verbatim stagings of these words from anonymous authors. The source materials were on display outside of the performance space, serving as a trailer of sorts for the show before the doors opened.

JunkThief had not been to a production at Jon Sims Center since friend/fellow writer/blogger "Bryce Digdug" of JudyMeat did queer stand up comedy there last fall. At the time, word was out that the center was going into its swan song, but JunkThief was pleased to learn tonight that it is alive and well and embracing the broadest term of "queer theater" which this production healthily embodies with a wide representation of ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and ages.

As a production, it sometimes was better in execution than concept, and it's not clear if there was ultimate meaning to the intentionally random pieces coming together. But then, isn't that life in this city, and there were moments of brilliance. The cast was great overall, but Carole Landes was especially strong in various roles, most notably reading the letter from some unknown grandmother in Florida writing at the age of 75 in 1989. Her embodiment of this woman who is likely no longer among the living was a real highlight of the offering. It really felt we were being offered some little overlooked gem held up a lost treasure that is just outside of our grasp. Having known a few women who spoke in such cadences, it was touching to hear her bring such dignity to a woman whose words were abandoned somewhere in the 94110 zip code.

Needless to say, for a blogger with the JunkThief moniker, the show resonated frequently, in part because of its striving to bring either meaning or rhythm out of the chaos of our lives, neighborhood and city. It runs through June 9.

Sure, It Was All About the Sets and Lighting

JunkThief went to see Wilde Boys at New Conservatory Theater courtesy of Bob, a playwright in his Monday night writing group. It was a pleasant enough entertainment, somewhere between a revue and a musical and reference to Oscar Wilde but never featuring him as an onstage character or burdening the audience with the sadder parts of his life. There was a bit of nudity, plenty of randy little songs, and a good appearance by a dancing and singing mummy. Can never have too much of that! As Bob said, it's the kind of entertainment best enjoyed after a few drinks, and JunkThief would add the type that one would likely not recall in the morning. It did feature a renowned local gogo boy/Trannyshack performer and founding member of the Cockettes, which is all in its favor. At the end of the evening, JunkThief commented that it had clever use of sets and lighting. Bob said that reminded him of his mother always saying after seeing a nearly nude revue in Vegas that she was so impressed with the costumes. Good point, Bob, its capacity to engage had nothing to do with sets and lighting.