Ray of Light Theatre, the local musical-obsessed theater group that has performed mostly at the Victoria Theater in the Mission District for much of its 25 years of existence, has a new home downtown.

As of last week with the opening of Mean Girls, the Musical, Ray of Light Theatre has been entertaining audiences in the newly refurbished Barbary Stage — aka the former single-screen movie theater next to the Safeway at 215 Jackson Street, which most recently was home to the now defunct 42nd Street Moon theater group.

There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Barbary Stage last week, presided over by former SF Drag Laureate D'Arcy Drollinger and state Senator Scott Wiener.

"To be opening a new theater is... truly extraordinary," Wiener said at the event. "And it needs to become less extraordinary, because we need more art, not less."

Ray of Light renovated the theater with the help of donations from its fans and subscribers, expanding the size of the stage, installing new lighting, and remodeling the lobby and restrooms — adding historical photos of the Jackson Square and "Barbary Coast" areas to the lobby.

Purple hues now cover the walls and floors of the restrooms and lobby, with black accents and gold bathroom fixtures. And as the Chronicle reports, a new platform has been installed above the stage for the orchestra, making them visible during shows.

"Twenty-five years ago I started Ray of Light because I wanted a home — for the theater kids, the observers, the people who grew up feeling everything and needed somewhere to put it," wrote Ray of Light's founding Artistic Director Shane Ray at the outset of the project. "I wanted a place in SF where we could put passion, danger, hilarity, and rebellion on stage (often all at once)  and not be precious about it; a place where audiences could have a great time and still walk out changed. We’ve built every show on volunteer labor and love, and after two and a half decades of making this work in other people's spaces, we are building something permanent, a home of our own."

"The Barbary Stage is a bet that what made this city iconic isn't gone yet — just looking for a room," Ray adds.

The Jackson Square neighborhood, as the Chronicle points out, is now home to multiple AI startups (and also former Apple product designer Jonny Ive's design firm that got acquired by OpenAI), but Ray of Light is hoping to fit right in.

"This is an opportunity to meet people in this neighborhood where they’re at and say, ‘OK, maybe that’s your work life. We’re down the street,’” says Artistic Associate Jenn Bevard, speaking to the Chronicle. “It feels ripe with a sense of possibility — not like we’re at odds with the community."

And the all-volunteer leadership team of Ray of Light Theatre says that they're glad to be downsizing from the Victoria in terms of seating capacity, with the Mission District theater seating 480, and the new Barbary Stage seating 199, making for a better sized and more intimate theater-going experience.

Mean Girls runs through May 30, and you can find tickets here. And Ray of Light's 2026 season will continue in August with Urinetown, and in October with the Britney Spears jukebox musical Once Upon a One More Time.

Farmers market colors; Club Waziema’s food menu; 10-cent half-pints; up-and-coming musicians; drag and horror; men loving men; Michael Jang and the Giants; honoring Filipino heritage; remembering Salesforce Tower’s architect; and a rare albatross sighting.

Rolling tribute

San Francisco’s cable cars are dressed for Filipino American History Month, wrapped in banners celebrating “Roots, Routes, and Resilience.” The designs trace stories of migration, family, and community through bright portraits and flag motifs that move with the city’s hills.

Created by local Filipino artists in partnership with the San Francisco Arts Commission, the rolling exhibit honors generations who built their lives here — from early farmworkers to modern creatives keeping the culture visible on the move. — SFGov

Red velvet and injera

At Club Waziema on Divisadero, the jukebox plays Metallica and Marvin Gaye while the old jazz stage now holds a pool table. Alongside the drinks, regulars order Ethiopian stews and injera — including an all-you-can-eat veggie combo that’s quietly become the bar’s biggest draw.

The dishes are served with housemade injera and warm service from owner Nebiat. Once a jazz club called Club Morocco, the space still carries that lived-in glow of neighborhood history and late-night generosity. — KQED

Ten-cent communion

At Berkeley’s Triple Rock Brewing, a small crowd gathers each evening just before 5:10 pm, dimes in hand. For ten minutes, half-pints go for ten cents — a nod to the 510 area code.

The bartender picks a different beer each day, and regulars like “Bar Momma” Linda Wardlaw make sure to keep a dime tucked somewhere safe. The bar fills up fast, with neighbors lingering over pints and conversation. — KPIX

Living architecture

Argentine-born architect Cesar Pelli reshaped skylines around the world, from Kuala Lumpur to San Francisco. His son Rafael Pelli — now a noted architect himself — remembers his father’s joy of sharing his work and teaching others.

The Salesforce Tower, Pelli’s final gift to San Francisco, embodied his belief that architecture should breathe with the people who use it. — KGO

Giants and film

Photographer Michael Jang and his family began making the trip to Giants games the year Candlestick Park opened in 1960, and he picked up a camera soon after — a nine-year-old chasing the thrill of a new city team and the glow of stadium lights. He still remembers the chill off the Bay during the 1962 World Series and the sweep of the crowd when Mays took the field.

This time, decades later, it was his own name shining on the Jumbotron — a small hometown salute to a life spent watching and documenting the city's growth alongside its team. His photos carry that same pulse of San Francisco pride, a record of baseball and belonging caught in silver grain. — Michael Jang

Hidden gestures

Loving II: More Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850s–1950s gathers quiet, everyday moments of affection between men across a century. Discovered in attics, flea markets, and forgotten albums, the images trace small acts of tenderness that endured despite the world outside.

On Wednesday, October 15, authors Hugh Nini and Neal Treadwell will share the collection with a visual slideshow, conversation, and book signing at the San Francisco Main Library. — SF Public Library

Rising sounds

August Lee Stevens, B DeVeaux, and Naima Nascimento, a trio of young musicians from the Oakland Rising collective, are making waves with their mix of piano, vocals, and violin. The trio, who first gained fame performing at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and later at the Kennedy Center, will headline the Oakland Grown: Student Art & Music Festival at the Oakland Museum of California on October 25, bringing their signature energy and experience back to the Bay Area.

Each brings a unique story: Stevens’ classical training, DeVeaux’s songwriting from childhood, and Nascimento’s early start at Big Sur Fiddle Camp. — The Oaklandside

Autumn stages

Theater season is waking up across the Bay, with new shows and returning favorites ready to pull audiences in. October kicks off with Alameda’s Vau de Vire returning to the Gold Rush circus in The Soiled Dove.

Misfit Cabaret stirs ghosts and drag in Ghosted, Marga Gomez digs into memories in her autobiographical Spanish Stew, Terror Vault’s Hexed twists horror and lust through the old SF Mint, and Golden Thread presents the intimate journey of five women in Pilgrimage. — 48 Hills

The colors of fall

October at the Castro Farmers’ Market brings a mix of fall produce: bright orange persimmons, split pomegranates, and a variety of heirloom apples. Stalls are full of winter squash, artichokes, and leafy greens, all in deep, appealing colors.

Farmers like Allard and Arata bring years of experience to their rows, while Ken’s Top Notch comes from Fresno with particularly juicy fruits. The last market of the season will be on November 19. Wednesdays, 3–7 pm, at 270 Noe Street, off Market. — SF Bay Times

Albatross off the coast

A small group of birders on a weekend tour near Bodega Canyon got an unexpected visitor: a waved albatross, normally found near the Galapagos. With a wingspan nearing eight feet and a bright yellow bill, the critically endangered bird circled the boat for nearly an hour, giving everyone a close look.

Locals cheered and snapped photos, amazed by the size and rarity of the sighting — the first recorded north of Costa Rica. — The Press Democrat

Image: Terror Vault’s Hexed/Facebook

Previously:Field Notes: Tarantulas, Ghost Tours, Floating Flicks, Blight to Bling, and Stonestown Buzz

Nick Olivero, the executive director and co-founder of SF's Boxcar Theatre — most well known for their immersive piece The Speakeasy — has resigned from the organization after a social media vigilante posted a video accusing him of attempting to meet up with a minor for sex.

The video, shot at a grocery store in San Diego, is one of over 500 posted to the social media accounts of People v. Preds. It's a group run by someone who calls himself Tim Johnson, who regularly uses apps like Grindr to pose as a 14-year-old boy and exchange messages with men. If they're receptive to meeting, he films the encounter, very much in the style of the TV series To Catch a Predator, which aired on NBC for three seasons 20 years ago.

In the video, a person whom Johnson identifies as Olivero, is seen walking away from the camera and not responding as it chases him into a parking lot, with the voice, presumably Johnson's, saying, "Nick, I just want to have a conversation with you. I have pictures of you, I can turn them into the cops if you want... you're here to meet a fuckin' 14-year-old kid bro... This ain't gonna look too good."

A subsequent post to the People v. Preds X account from August 8 purports to show the text exchange that Olivero had on Grindr with the fictional boy, who talked about needing to wait for his dad to leave the house. The messages say that he is "'bout to be 15," and notes that he can't share photos on the app because he legally shouldn't be on there.

It is unclear if police are involved in San Diego, or if Olivero will face any criminal charges. As the Chronicle explains in a piece today, cases like this, brought by vigilantes, can prove tough to prosecute — and the vigilantes themselves, seeking social media clout, often ignore the legal nuances around entrapment. As the host of To Catch a Predator himself, Chris Hansen, was careful to say, the subjects of the show should be considered "potential sexual predators." (The TV show was canceled after three seasons following the on-camera suicide of one those subjects.)

The board of Boxcar Theatre was made aware of the videos last week, and had planned to meet Monday to begin a removal process for Olivero, as they informed SFist.

The theater company subsequently posted a message to its Instagram account Monday saying that Olivero had resigned.

The post refers to the "private citizen's social media accounts" that had made the accusations against Olivero, adding, "We are shocked and appalled by these allegations and take them very seriously."

The post goes on to say, "Thankfully we have expert leadership ready to assume executive duties, and keep Boxcar Theatre's mission moving forward." Managing Director Stefani Pelletier and Executive Producer Laura Drake Chambers are stepping into the role, apparently as co-executive directors.

Olivero's alleged activities in San Diego are unrelated to his work at Boxcar Theatre, and it's unclear how long he had been staying in Southern California. The Speakeasy, the immersive show that Olivero created and directed, had its most recent limited run last year, after first premiering in 2014, and moving to North Beach in 2016. Pre-pandemic, the show ran for 425 performances.

In April 2024, the Chronicle published an investigative piece detailing allegations from performers of misconduct and professional neglect at the production. In particular, performers complained that they were often harassed or touched inappropriately by (often drunk) audience members, and the sale of alcohol combined with the interactive nature of the show often left performers unsafe.

As a result of the complaints, Olivero and another producer said they were stepping back from daily involvement with the remount of the production. Olivero gave a statement at the time saying, "Some of the people who worked on the show during its previous iteration expressed the opinion, in social media and elsewhere, that leadership didn’t always act consistently or equitably. Only a handful of the hundreds and hundreds of individuals whom we employed made such complaints."

One of those who was quoted in the Chronicle piece, local actor Ezra Reaves, commented on the People v. Preds video, saying, "I’ve been leading a crusade against this man in SF but even after an article came out about the culture of abuse he created as a boss and director, he could never get pinned for any wrongdoing."

Lately, Boxcar Theatre has been using the Palace Theater in North Beach — the subterranean venue that was home to The Speaseasy — to host magic shows, one called Magic Cocktail Hour, and another called The Illusionist. Olivero appeared in an April video posted by the theater discussing how they created Magic Cocktail Hour to celebrate both cocktails and the art of magic. A spokesperson for the company tells the Chronicle that they are "working on a new haunted house production concept," but a planned production this Halloween season at the historic Haas-Lilienthal House has reportedly been cancelled.

Previously: Performers at Immersive Theater Piece 'The Speakeasy' Allege Harassment and Other Problems as Show Remounts

A prom inside San Quentin, vintage treasure maps, librarians turned rock stars, trans quilts and immersive theater, pupusas in the Tenderloin, and a family recipe cook-off — this week’s Field Notes rounds up joy, art, and memory from San Francisco and beyond.

Pupusas, family roots, and Salvadoran art in the Tenderloin

What began as a Mission street cart is now Estrellita’s Snacks — a brick-and-mortar tribute to one family’s journey. Founded by Estrella Gonzalez and her son Angel, the Tenderloin shop honors Gonzalez’s mother, who once sold yucca chips outside local bars and restaurants.

Their pupusas, plantains, and pan con pollo fill a gap in the neighborhood’s food scene, while Salvadoran folk art and family photos fill the walls. — Mission Local

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Just beans, and other winners

Food critic MacKenzie Chung Fegan eats at top restaurants — but the Tenderloin Family Housing Cooking Competition is her favorite meal of the year. Families at 201 Turk dish out glutinous rice cakes, chicken masala sliders, and a Yemeni bean dish that claimed first prize. “It’s just beans,” the cook insisted. Not to the judges. — Chronicle

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Librarians by day, kids’ music icons by morning

Berkeley’s Story Time Band is turning toddler storytime into a full-fledged musical movement. Led by children’s librarian Michael Kwende (aka “Mr. Michael”), the all-librarian band fuses read-alouds with reggae, hip-hop, and global folk traditions — complete with plush animals, puppets, and dancing flamingos. — Berkeleyside

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Trans stories sewn into every stitch

Quilts, audio, and trans care come together in “Transmissions Quilts,” a multimedia exhibit at Berkeley’s Central Library, which runs through June. Curated by Cordy Joan and spanning three floors, the show honors trans lives through hand-crafted quilts, recorded stories, and collaborative art—each piece a testament to affirmation, resilience, and community. — Berkeley Public Library

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot play extends run

The Tenderloin Museum’s sold-out immersive play, Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, has extended its run through October. Set inside a recreated late-night diner, the show tells the story of the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot — a landmark moment of trans resistance. A 12-person cast brings the uprising to life with “breakfast for dinner” and a front-row seat to history. — Tenderloin Museum

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Inside Ruth Asawa’s home studio, a legacy of art and family lives on

Ruth Asawa raised six kids in a Noe Valley home where art, parenting, and community blurred together. Her grandson Henry Weverka walked DrawTogether’s Wendy MacNaughton through the SFMOMA retrospective, where a recreated living room shows how family dinners and wire sculptures shared the same table. — DrawTogether

Treasure hunting gets a digital upgrade

Krystyl Baldwin, a former tech worker turned vintage guru, has mapped out San Francisco’s under-the-radar retro scene with SF Vintage Maps—an interactive guide to 90 vintage shops across the city. From etched shower doors to rare Art Deco furniture, Baldwin’s passion for history and design is tangible in both her own North Beach showroom and this growing online resource.

Whether you’re seeking Gaultier gowns, mid-century cookware, or museum-worthy posters, the map connects vintage lovers to SF’s scattered gems — one QR code at a time. — 7x7

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San Quentin fathers reunite with daughters at first parenting prom

Back in April, a group of incarcerated men organized a powerful event at San Quentin: a prom where 17 fathers danced with their daughters — some reuniting for the first time in over a decade. With corsages, cake, and slow dances to Luther Vandross, it was a night of joy, healing, and new beginnings. — Local News Matters

Saving nature’s soundtrack, one hike at a time

Soundscape engineer Martin Sanchez treks into the Bay Area wilderness to record moments of pure quiet—birdsong, breezes, frogs—before they disappear. With mics hidden in forest crevices, he captures audio that's later used in meditation apps and films, building a library of the sounds that keep us grounded. — Bay Nature

Top image: 'Bodies of Water' by Lunilah Project

Previously: Field Notes: Bold Films, Pride Hikes, Show-Tune Karaoke, and Skateboarding Legends

In what could be a precursor to full closure, Berkeley's Aurora Theatre Company announced today that it is "suspending" its 2025-26 season due to financial instability. When this happened to the nearby California Shakespeare Theater a couple years back, it was the beginning of the end.

Aurora Theare Artistic Director Josh Costello tells the Chronicle this week that the main problem the 33-year-old theater company is facing is declining subscriber support and shrinking audiences, which led to a $500,000 deficit last year that was patched with an emergency fundraising drive.

Such emergency fundraising was not enough to save CalShakes, which permanently shut down last fall after celebrating its 50th anniversary, nor San Francisco's Cutting Ball Theater, which closed last summer.

Larger companies like Berkeley Repertory Theater and American Conservatory Theater have come back from the pandemic and seem to be faring okay, but the leaders of those groups have similarly complained in the last few years that they are searching for new subscribers to make up for the subscriber attrition they've seen since even before the pandemic — with older, loyal subscribers steadily aging out of their regular theater habits.

Costello tells the Chronicle that he primarily blames social media for younger people's lack of interest in live theater — which, he says, "is all about being in a room with other people and sharing in a communal act of imagination." Social media, meanwhile, "makes us feel that [only] the individual is what matters."

Aurora's 150-seat theater, on the same block of Addison Street as Berkeley Rep, may still have hope of coming alive again either as a venue shared with another arts group, or some sort of arts hub, to help pay the rent.

Aurora's suspension comes just as a homegrown play that it originally commissioned and premiered, Eureka Day by playwright Jonathan Spector, which takes place in Berkeley, received a Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Play, after going to Broadway earlier this year.

Still happening at Aurora Theatre Company, if you want to show your support, is Lynn Nottage's Crumbs From the Table of Joy, playing through May 25, and coming up is The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life In the Universe, the one-woman show originated by Lily Tomlin which will star local performer Marga Gomez. That plays from July 12 to August 10.

Late Thursday, a message went out from Cal Shakes' Executive Director Clive Worsley making the sad announcement that the 50-year-old theater company, based in Orinda, would be shutting its doors for good amid significant financial strain.

All the last-minute fundraising of the last year was apparently not enough. The California Shakespeare Theater has hit an "insurmountable financial impasse," Executive Director Clive Worsley said in an announcement Thursday emailed to patrons and posted to Instagram. He said the company was "faced with no alternative but to suspend operations, begin layoffs and take steps towards what will be the ultimate closure of the company."

Worsley concluded, "We are grateful to you for everything you have done to make Cal Shakes the venerable institution it has been for the past 50 years. More news will come in the following weeks as the process gets underway."

Cal Shakes has been one of several Bay Area theater companies that has struggled in recent years, entering a pandemic period with an already declining subscriber base — as older subscribers pass on and fewer younger subscribers replace them. The pandemic proved too difficult to overcome, and even a $100K gift from Zendaya in February, and an emergency drive this summer to cover a $350,000 shortfall to mount this season's sole production, As You Like It, were apparently not enough to keep things afloat.

The theater had already looked in dire straits after canceling its 2023 season entirely, and doing truncated seasons in 2021 and 2022. Last year, in an announcement to patrons about the canceled season, Cal Shakes said "we’ve seen donor support diminish at the same time that subscribers are aging out faster than they are being replaced (both of these trends are associated with the Baby Boom generation entering its seventh decade), while costs keep climbing."

Cal Shakes began life as the Emeryville Shakespeare Company in 1974, later becoming the California Shakespeare Festival. They started by doing free shows in Berkeley’s John Hinkel Park, and ultimately landed in their current home, the Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda, in 1991.

As Bay Area News Group notes, its peak years were from the early 1990s to the early 2010s, when Cal Shakes put on a four-show season that generally ran from late May or early June into October. Each season would feature bookend productions of Shakespeare, with other 19th and 20th Century classics performed in between.

Memorable productions that I reviewed for SFist include a 2008 production of Uncle Vanya (made more poignant by the presence of live cows grazing on the hillside behind the stage), a 2009 production of Beckett's Happy Days, a wonderfully spooky 2010 production of Macbeth, and a 2019 production of the little-performed Brecht play The Good Person of Szechuan.

Nights in the outdoor amphitheater could be chilly, but patrons knew to bring blankets or borrow from the theater's collection, and to warm themselves with tea or wine. And setting up a picnic in the eucalyptus grove before a show, and moving to your seats with your wine and dessert, was always a unique pleasure.

The company, and its children's programs, were an early jumping-off point for Zendaya (whose educator mother worked for the theater during the summer), and Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali.

The land on which the theater sits belongs to the East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), whose spokesperson expressed some hope to the Chronicle that another group might want to activate the space. "We’re hopeful that maybe there is another theater partner who would like to utilize that space,” said agency spokesperson Andrea Pook. But if not, “unfortunately, it would need to go back to being natural watershed land.”

The theater scene, particularly among smaller companies in the Bay Area, has been in a state of contraction. This year saw the demise of Cutting Ball Theater in SF's Tenderloin, and nearby performance venue PianoFight shut its doors last year. Other companies that have shut down include TheatreFIRST, Bay Area Children’s Theatre, and Dragon Theater.

Another Bay Area theater company, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, had said last year that they were also facing imminent closure, but the company received an emergency $3 million influx of cash that they said would save them, for now.

Previously: As One Local Theater Faces Possible Closure, Bay Area's Regional Theaters Seek Stability — and New Subscribers

A September production of Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' is full-steam ahead at the California Shakespeare Theater, after an emergency fundraising drive launched in July succeeded in covering a $350,000 budget shortfall.

Cal Shakes, which is celebrating 50 years of performing Shakespeare works and other classics every summer, has been among a number of nonprofit theaters in the Bay Area and beyond that continue to struggle in the post-pandemic era. As Bay Area News Group reports this week, the problems for Cal Shakes actually began before 2020, with audience habits changing, subscriptions dwindling, and the costs to mount productions going up.

After canceling its season in 2020 and doing truncated seasons in 2021 and 2022, Cal Shakes announced it was canceling its 2023 season entirely. A $100,000 gift from Challengers and Euphoria star Zendaya, who got her start taking acting classes at the theater (and her mother worked there for a number of years), came just in time in February, and the theater said it would be put toward facility improvements and the mounting of the previously announced production of As You Like It.

But the theater still faced a $350,000 funding shortfall last month as they prepared to put the show on. And now, Cal Shakes executive director Clive Worsley has announced that the gap was covered by 700 individual donors, in amounts large and small.

"That tells us, there is still very much a desire and support [in the community] for our work to continue. We just have to find a way to make it sustainable," the theatersaid in a statement.

"Because of you, rehearsals will begin, scenes will be blocked, lights will be hung, costumes will be fitted, the set will be moved into place," they said. "Our resident raccoons, coyotes, hawks and bats will see more activity backstage."

Worsley tells Bay Area of the production, "It’s amazing. The cast is stellar, the design team, etc., is amazing. It’s going to be a gorgeous, gorgeous show for our 50th anniversary production."

Cal Shakes began as the Emeryville Shakespeare Company and then as the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, which staged performaces starting in 1971 in Berkeley's John Hinkel Park. Starting in 1975, it became known as the California Shakespeare Festival, and later the California Shakespeare Theater. It moved to its permanent outdoor amphitheater, the Bruns in Orinda, in 1991.

Cal Shakes seasons from the 1990s until the late 2010s typically consisted of four productions, bookended by Shakespeare but with selections from George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and others in between. Under the artistic direction of Jonathan Moscone, son of late SF Mayor George Moscone, the theater featured a number of acclaimed artists in the 2000s.

Previews for As You Like It begin on September 12, and the opening night gala will be held on Saturday, September 14. The show runs through September 29. Find tickets here.

Previously: Zendaya Gives $100K to Struggling Cal Shakes

2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist The Far Country makes its way to the Bay Area stage, with a brutal depiction of what it took for Chinese immigrants to enter San Francisco in the early 1900s.

Countless pop culture works have depicted San Francisco’s historic Chinatown, from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1950s musical Flower Drum Song, to the 80s action flick Big Trouble in Little China, to the more recent Bruce Lee-penned HBO series Warrior. All of these works largely ignore the ugly legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act — which was in effect from 1882 to 1943 — and that law's traumatic effects on Chinese immigrant families during that 60-year period.

But that’s the focus of playwright Lloyd Suh’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize finalist play The Far Country, which is coming off a highly acclaimed New York run, and playing at the Berkeley Rep through April 14. Only a small part of the play takes place in San Francisco Chinatown proper — more of it is set at the long-defunct Angel Island Detention Center, which was used as a holding pen for immigrants to determine whether they could be admitted to SF or the US. (The vast majority of Chinese immigrants were sent back.)

The Far Country covers events between 1909 and 1930, and the play feels like a huge, sprawling historical epic. This suspension of disbelief is largely aided by the dazzling, larger-than-life visual projections by Hsuan-Kung Hsieh and the lighting design by Minjoo Kim: real headlines from SF newspapers of the day, the images of 19th Century passports, vintage family photos, and even some old San Francisco video footage from the early 1900s. Projection mapping, after all, is the great new smoke and mirrors of contemporary theater.

But there are real-life elements to designer Wilson Chin’s stage sets that also take you to another place or time. These are simple but convincing depictions of rural Chinese farms in Guangdong, the prison cells of the Angel Island Detention Center, and slum apartments of Chinatown. But throughout the entire play, rolls of barbed wire stay set atop the stage, reminding us that in this tale of immigration, no one ever finds a land where they are free.

Director Jennifer Chang leans heavily on bleakness throughout this production, though it is not entirely depressing, even in its darkest moments. A very lengthy scene in the first act inside the detention center makes remarkable use of poetic narration from the cast members, and projected Chinese-language characters that melt on the walls before your eyes.

(As an aside, there are poems posted in the Berkeley Rep restrooms during this production, poems written by actual Chinese detainees at Angel Island during this era. These seem very nice if you read them before the show. But they take on a whole different power if you read them at intermission, given what you have just seen at the end of the first act.)

The two lead actors Tommy Bo (as the young Moon Gyet) and Feodor Chin (the witty antihero Gee) pull off very convincing portrayals of men in two different twenty-year intervals of their lives. Bo, in particular, pulls off being a preteen in the first act, and a grown man in the second. Sharon Shao (the love interest Yuen) emerges with very welcome and snappy comic relief in the second act, after the audience has endured some scenes that are not particularly pleasant subject matter.

But The Far Country does feel like a great, stirring, sprawling historical epic, despite being just seven actors on a small stage in a modest-budget production. Chang’s direction takes you on a journey across continents and generations, in a small production whose emotional impact punches way above its weight. And for Bay Area theatergoers, this depiction of what happened here 100 years ago will hit very close to home.

The Far Country plays at the Berkeley Rep through April 14. Tickets here

Related: 'Cult of Love' Is a Wry and Wrenching New Family Drama at Berkeley Rep [SFist]

Top Image: Tommy Bo (Moon Gyet) and Whit K. Lee (Yip/One) in Lloyd Suh’s breathtaking The Far Country performing at Berkeley Rep through Sunday, April 14, 2024. Credit: Kevin Berne

A dazzling and kinetic Tina Turner musical biography goes for nearly three hours at the Golden Gate Theatre, but the musical stylings of a ten-year-old playing a young Tina are simply the best moments of the show.  

The jukebox musical Tina - The Tina Turner Musical, playing through August 27 at the Golden Gate Theatre, is not some rush job that was hastily put together after the singer’s death this past May. The show premiered in London in 2018, and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith won the Olivier Award for his portrayal of Ike Turner in that production. It hit Broadway in 2019, where Adrienne Warren won the Tony Award for Leading Actress for her performance of Tina Turner.

So this is proven award-winning material, but if anyone’s winning any national awards in this production, it will be ten-year-old Ayvah Johnson for her remarkable singing, dancing, and presence as the little girl version of Tina Turner (technically, Anna-Mae Bullock, prior to the singer’s name change).

We meet Johnson early as Young Anna-Mae, in a version of Turner’s “Nutbush City Limits” that shows this musical is going to use several of these hit numbers to express plot points, not just as big production numbers. The visual backdrops for these plot-point numbers achieve stunning effects, like the cotton fields seen above. And the first half of the show is a memorable musical treatise on race relations and sexism in 20th Century America.

And of course, domestic violence. The adult Tina Turner will alternate by night between Naomi Rodgers and Zurin Villanueva. We got Villanueva Wednesday night, and she’s definitely up to the task of the challenging choreography, a demanding vocal role, and a character working through a deep amount of personal pain. (Though some of the wigs are, well, unconvincing). The pompadoured savior-turned-abuser Ike Turner (Roderick Lawrence) gives a convincing and very human study of emotional manipulation and drug addiction. Interestingly, the stagecraft of domestic violence scenes is structured so the actors’ bodies are always blocking your view of the actual strike, so the audience never directly sees someone being hit.

There are a number of great comical notes for the background dancers, though it does feel a lost opportunity that the Phil Spector character (Geoffrey Kidwell) isn’t played more villainously, and comes across as just a garden-variety show business sleazebag. And despite an absolutely soaring first act, the second act portraying Turner’s 80s comeback lacks anywhere near the drama or interesting characters we see in the first half of the show.

But Tina - The Tina Turner Musical has many spectacular moments over its two hours and 45 minutes, including a sort of gay disco scene in the rousing finale numbers. It doesn't cover a ton of ground that wasn’t already covered in the 1993 Angela Bassett vehicle What's Love Got to Do With It. But it does cover that ground with top-notch stage effects and choreography, plus one of the most memorable performances by a ten-year-old that you’ll ever see onstage.

Tina - The Tina Turner Musical plays through August  27 at the Golden Gate Theatre. Tickets here.

Related: 'A Chorus Line' Delivers Some Classic Broadway Dance Delights at SF Playhouse [SFist]

Top photo: Naomi Rodgers as Tina Turner in the North American touring production of TINA THE TINA TURNER MUSICAL. Photo by Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

Those grants for cultural institutions that we talked about way back in December have finally been distributed by the Small Business Administration, and over 300 Bay Area theaters, music venues, museums, movie houses, and more have been awarded grants totaling $326 million.

This welcome aid is sure to be an enormous relief for venues and institutions that remained mostly or entirely closed for the last year and a half. And many of the grants — which nationwide averaged around $769,000 — were quite generous. The SF Business Times has word of the distributions, via publicly available data, and they've put together this spreadsheet just of the Bay Area awardees.

In total, the SBA received 15,429 applications and awarded 9,844 grants. This all came out of a $15 billion pool of funds within the $900 billion stimulus package, and the grants were meant to cover six months of payroll, and pay for things like rent and maintenance costs.

The biggest grants went to Berkeley-based Another Planet Entertainment and specifically Outside Lands, which canceled its 2020 edition — and did that virtual version on Twitch called Inside Lands — and has postponed until Halloween weekend this year. They appear to have received $29 million in three separate grants.

SFMOMA and the Exploratorium are each getting $10 million. The SF Ballet and Symphony are each getting $8 million, while the Opera is getting $7 million. American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco received $3.35 million; the owners of the nightclub Love + Propaganda, RHS Partners appear to have received $1.6 million; SF Jazz received $3.7 million; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco received $5.76 million. San Francisco Playhouse received $1 million, and the Fort Mason Center is getting $4.7 million.

SoMa nightclub Oasis, which got a windfall from a telethon earlier this year, is getting an added boost of $818,750. And the beloved Roxie in the Mission got $650,000.

Over the East Bay, the California Shakespeare Theater in Orinda is getting $900,000, and Berkeley Repertory Theatre is getting $3.3 million.

Plenty of smaller outfits, talent managers, and niche museums are getting some cash as well, including the Beat Museum in North Beach ($69,000), and Audium ($51,000). PianoFight also got a grant of $163,000.

Congrats to all, and we hope it's enough to keep the lights on and reopen properly sometime soon.

Previously: Bay Area Music Venues and Theaters Can Apply For Lifesaving Grants Under New Stimulus Bill

Arts organizations of all sizes, all over the country are suffering due to pandemic lockdowns and eight straight months without live audiences. And the latest casualty in San Francisco is the scrappy theater company known as Bay Area Musicals.

The company has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and announced its permanent closure, as SFist has learned. Subscribers have received debtors' notices in the last week.

"Sometimes life throws curveballs, and the devastation of COVID-19 and its mandated closures presented a challenge we have been unable to overcome," says company founder and artistic director Matthew McCoy in a statement. "Sadly, despite the Board of Directors finding a pathway to survive, we had no alternative except to accept the reality that Bay Area Musicals has become one of the casualties of the pandemic's global impact."

The 2019/2020 season was the company's fifth anniversary season.

McCoy founded Bay Area Musicals in 2014, and since then the group has mounted ambitious productions of many Broadway and off-Broadway hits, complete with orchestration, including Hair, Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Gypsy, and Hairspray.

And like other small San Francisco theater companies Ray of Light Theatre, SF Playhouse, and Custom Made Theatre Co., Bay Area Musicals took on big shows with often big casts, all with a view toward brining more musicals into the lives of Bay Area fans — besides the touring fare that comes to down through Broadway SF (formerly SHN SF).

The last show staged by Bay Area Musicals was The Full Monty, which ran through March 15, 2020. Broadway World gave the production a largely positive review, with critic Jim Munson noting that it's "curious show" with a lot tricky elements to balance — not the least of which being a group male striptease that's supposed to be fun and sexy but not too sexy — and director and choreographer Leslie Waggoner succeeded in achieving "a welcome consistency of tone."

The two planned shows left in the season that never made it to the stage were A Chorus Line, and Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning first Broadway show, In the Heights.

"Our hope is that theatre will one day return…and with everyone’s support, it will," McCoy writes. "When that happens, I will be thrilled to see you again as a fellow audience member in another theatre."

Photo from the company's 2019 production of Hairspray via Instagram

It’s our first summer in 58 years without free San Francisco Mime Troupe performances in the park, but the show will go on over the internet and local radio.

You did not get the opportunity to enjoy the annual July 4th San Francisco Mime Troupe show in Dolores Park this year, nor did the SF Mime Troupe get the honorable distinction of Breitbart writing an article about them with the glorious headline “Trump NEA Grants $20K for Lesbian Illegal Alien Musical.”

But not all is lost for Mime Troupe fans, in fact, their shelter-in-place solution is pretty innovative and harkens back to their radio era. This year they’re back with a nine-part episodic radio show called "Tales of the Resistance," also streaming on-demand over the internet, that keeps alive the spirit of their irreverent political shows that started way back in 1959, hit the parks in 1962, once got the whole cast arrested (Jefferson Airplane raised their bail with a show), and have been a summertime staple in the Bay Area for decades.

Missed watching San Francisco Mime Troupe at Dolores Park this July 4? You can catch their new nine-part serialized radio drama as part of this year's LaborFest. https://t.co/TkxbdWmeQ3

— KQED Arts & Culture (@KQEDarts) July 8, 2020

The first episode in the radio serial is already up online, and has received good reviews from KQED and the Examiner. Jade for Hire! is detective noir that parodies our collective dependence on Amazon, and will be followed up every other week with new episodes on the theme of resistance. Forthcoming episodes include Novice Nurse: Susie Terse! (a well-timed satire on the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries), and a police brutality sendup called Fear of the Dark. Per the Troupe’s website, the anthology of episodic shows “will culminate in a finale where all the narratives converge.”

In a tip of the hat to old-timey radio tradition, the shows will also be broadcast weekly on a number of different stations nationwide. Locally, these will air on 91.7 KALW and 102.5 KSFP, and the first episode is on KALW at 1 p.m. on Thursday, July 9, as part of their Corona Radio Theater series.

In light of the recent George Floyd protests and national conversation on police violence, the Mime Troupe is also re-upping their 2015 show Freedomland that also addressed police brutality in comedy fashion. (Here’s the Examiner’s review). It’s on Vimeo and does require a purchase, which they suggest as a $10 donation, though they’ll take as little as 99 cents, since they cannot pass the bucket in the park this year.

Tales of the Resistance will release a new episode every other Saturday until October 24th. You can listen to the episodes here.

Related: The Hellraising History Of The SF Mime Troupe [SFist]

Images: San Francisco Mime Troupe via Facebook

Marking the end of an era, the Tix Bay Area booth — SF's equivalent of the TKTS booth that has long doled out last-minute tickets in New York's Times Square — is taking a final bow at 5 p.m. on Saturday. The Tix Bay Area website will continue to sell discount theater tickets, but as their brick-and-mortar kiosk disappears, it seemed like a good time to explain all the options that Bay Area tourist and theater-lovers alike have for finding below-market tickets for all kinds of shows.

For 27 years, a little booth in Union Square has been offering day-of-show discount deals for San Francisco theater performances. That little booth is called Tix Bay Area, but sadly for theater fans and bargain-hunting tourists, it’s shutting down this weekend. The San Francisco Examiner reports that the booth is closing forever on Saturday, September 28, though its website will continue offering similar online sales.

“With the advent and convenience of online ticket sales, our organization is refocusing on how we can continue to catalyze theatergoing through theater community-wide initiatives,” says Brad Erickson, executive director of Theatre Bay Area, in a release. (Theatre Bay Area in a nonprofit that gets a cut of Bay Area Tix sales.)

So where and how do you find cheap theater tickets in SF now that the little booth is exiting stage right? Here are few a few good actors that remain on set:

Rush Ticket Apps and Websites

The TodayTix site, and its app counterpart for iOS and Android, offers shockingly affordable tickets for most of the big shows and many local indie stages alike. You can literally get a Saturday night Hamilton ticket for $49 for this weekend’s show.  

RushTix works a little differently, it’s a multi-tier subscription service that also offers steep discounts on tickets to theater, comedy shows, concerts, films, and cultural events, though its selection of shows is more limited. Subscribers accumulate tokens, which do not expire, and those tokens can be used to purchase tickets often a week or two before a performance.

The Hamilton Lottery

The drill is the same as the last time Hamilton came to town, though now you can also use “Hamilton - The Official App” for iOS or Android to participate. The lottery opens two days before the show, closes at 9 a.m. the day before the show, and winners have five hours to buy their tickets for the next night’s performance once they find out they've won.

Rush Tickets for SHN Shows

Not all SHN shows release rush tickets, but a few do. The best way to keep track of this is via SHN SF’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds. Otherwise, they may be giving most of those last-minute tickets to Tix Bay Area.

Theaters That Offer Age Discounts or Just Generally Offer Affordable Tickets and Package Deals

At the esteemed Berkeley Rep, you can generally find decent seats in the $20-$30 range — and all their ticket are available to theatergoers under the age of 30 for half price, with proof of age required when you pick them up. The Magic Theater at Fort Mason often offers seats starting at $20. Ray of Light Theater often has "Industry Night" performances on Monday — there's one next week for Caroline, or Change — with tickets for $20.

And CalShakes, which is currently wrapping up its summer season in Orinda with a production of Macbeth, offers 20 day-of tickets for $20 when available before 2 p.m. — just call the box office and ask for the "20 for 20" deal. They also offer $20 off any ticket for theatergoers under the age of 30.

At ACT (American Conservatory Theater), there's also an "Under 30" deal available for will-call pickup only, and they offer package deals for preview performances that are as cheap as they come — a four-play package, albeit with balcony seating, starts at $56, or $14 per ticket. Cheaper than a movie!

It’s also possible that any given show at any of the other above theaters will have lower-priced preview tickets before Opening Night, so keep an eye out for preview performances when something you want to see is coming to town.

Related: Hoorah! Curran Theater Will Continue To Be Run By Carole Shorenstein Hays Following Settlement With SHN [SFist]

Image: Union Square Shop

On Wednesday night, iconic San Francisco revue Beach Blanket Babylon announced that this is its last year at the North Beach theater it has called home since 1974. The periodically updated show, which has epitomized a piece of the city's politically satirical attitudes, will play its last show at Club Fugazi on December 31, 2019.

Billing itself as "the longest-running musical revue in the world," Beach Blanket Babylon has been ongoing in North Beach — briefly at the Savoy Tivoli and then the larger Club Fugazi — since the Nixon administration. Alongside the Cockettes and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the show was born out of the mostly LGBT, hippie-theatrical, drag-inspired, simultaneously humorous and activist zeitgeist of the early 1970s.

Producer Jo Schuman Silver, widow of founding creator and director Steve Silver, informed the cast Wednesday that she had decided to close the show at the end of the year, as the Chronicle reported. Upon his death in 1995, Silver told his wife that "she would know" when the right time would be to close the show, and that time has apparently come. "There was no reason — I just started thinking, ‘Wow, how much longer do we go?’" Schuman Silver reportedly said.

As the LA Times recalls, the show was built around Silver's street performances, and "The original show included 'a chorus line of hula-dancing middle-aged housewives doing card stunts' and a band dressed as poodles. It was supposed to run six weeks."

The plot of the show — the only piece that has remained unchanged — follows Snow White in her search for Prince Charming, and along the way she encounters an array of current-event figures (the current show includes Stormy Daniels and Oprah Winfrey). The drag influence came in with the show's legendary hats, often featuring the SF skyline — one of which has was on display for several years at SFO.

So that's it. You've got 8 months to see it if you haven't seen it. And after the cast recovers from the shock this week that their beloved gig is coming to an end, you can expect a last flourish of creativity for Beach Blanket's swan song.

In the midst of a barrage of fire-related news last week, I neglected to note that the brilliant Taylor Mac — who just completed the second-ever complete performance of his 24-Decade History of Popular Music in San Francisco — was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship grant. The grant, often referred to as the foundation's "genius" grant, much to their displeasure, is a no-strings-attached sum of $625,000 spread over five years, with which an artist, scholar, scientist, activist, or leading figure in any number of fields can do whatever they please. The foundation says it awards these fellowships to "exceptionally creative people,” and Mac is one of two dozen recipients this year.

Recipients were apparently informed several weeks ago, so it's possible Mac was in the midst of his performances here when he heard the good news.

"I’m still in a bit of a haze," Mac told the New York Times. "It’s ridiculous. It’s wonderful. It’s embarrassing. It’s all of it."

Mac's 24-hour work, which traces American history through a queer lens via popular songs and the stories of marginalized groups, has been lauded widely despite only having been performed once prior to last month, at a single 24-hour performance in Brooklyn last fall. Following that, the piece was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, and received the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, the same prize that Hamilton won in 2016 — and creator Lin-Manuel Miranda was also a MacArthur grant recipient.

Previously, Mac was awarded a fellowship in 2016 by the John Simon Guggenheim foundation.

Other MacArthur "geniuses" this year, per CBS News, include Los Angeles-based opera director and producer Yuval Sharon of The Industry, playwright Annie Baker, Stanford-based mathematician and statistician Emmanuel Candès, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen.

This list is as follows:

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, painter, Los Angeles.
Sunil Amrith, historian, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Greg Asbed, human rights strategist, Immokalee, Fla.
Annie Baker, playwright, New York.
Regina Barzilay, computer scientist, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Dawoud Bey, photographer and educator, Chicago.
Emmanuel Candès, mathematician and statistician, Stanford, Calif.
Jason De León, anthropologist, Ann Arbor, Mich.
Rhiannon Giddens, singer and songwriter, Greensboro, N.C.
Nikole Hannah-Jones, journalist, New York.
Cristina Jiménez Moreta, social justice organizer, Washington, D.C.
Taylor Mac, theater artist, New York.
Rami Nashashibi, community leader, Chicago.
Viet Thanh Nguyen, fiction writer and cultural critic, Los Angeles.
Kate Orff, landscape architect, New York.
Trevor Paglen, artist and geographer, Berlin.
Betsy Levy Paluck, psychologist, Princeton, New Jersey.
Derek Peterson, historian, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Damon Rich, designer and urban planner, Newark, New Jersey.
Stefan Savage, computer scientist, La Jolla, California.
Yuval Sharon, opera director/producer, Los Angeles.
Tyshawn Sorey, composer and musician, Middletown, Connecticut.
Gabriel Victora, immunologist, New York.
Jesmyn Ward, fiction writer, New Orleans

Related: In Which I Gush And Process The Wonder Of 'A 24-Decade History Of Popular Music'