The SF Bay Area Theatre Blog

The Marsh Theatre at 1062 Valencia in San Francisco just announced their new season, and as usual it's full of unique, fresh fare, featuring young, local talent:

Here's the season, which actually kicks off with an extension of something playing right now, and then digs into six more shows:

EXTENDED!
January 3 – January 25, 2009
Carlo D’Amore’s
NO PAROLE
Directed by Margarett Perry
Thursday, Saturday at 8 pm & Sunday at 7 pm
Tickets: $15-50
In this wry, energetic adventure play, No Parole takes you on a wild journey through the life a flamboyant, live-for-the-moment con artist mother, who has no trouble posing as an attorney, professor, daycare worker, or nun—as seen through the eyes of her young son who acts as her look-out, bail and partner-in-crime. From Peru to the streets of New York, No Parole provides a hilarious look into the life of an extraordinary woman and the son who must save her from herself.

January 8 – January 17, 2009
Marga Gomez’s
LONG ISLAND ICED LATINA
Two weeks of Workshop Performances
Thursday, Friday & Saturday at 8 pm
Tickets $15-$50

Gomez continues to workshop this intoxicating comedic memoir of her awkward adolescence in Massapequa, Long Island, mixing equal parts cultural confusion, chronic virginity, mother-daughter instability and a splash of polyester fashion to paint a sardonic picture of her uprooted life as the new brown girl in a white high school.

January 16 – February 14, 2009
Brian Copeland’s
NOT A GENUINE BLACK MAN
Friday, 8 pm; Saturday, 5 pm
Tickets: $20-50
Not A Genuine Black Man returns to celebrate its fifth anniversary at The Marsh, the proud theatrical producer of what became the longest running solo show in San Francisco history. In 1971, San Leandro was named one of the most racist suburbs in America. Congressional hearings were held. The next year, the then eight-year-old Brian Copeland and his African-American family moved to San Leandro. In a monologue that's both funny and poignant, Brian explores how surroundings make us who we are. Join us for an evening of laughter tears and ociology.

January 30 – February 8, 2009
Marsh Youth Theater’s Teen Program
FEARS OF YOUR LIFE
Directed by Kim Epifano
Times to be confirmed
Tickets: $12 General Admission; $6 Student Rate
Marsh Youth Theater's new Teen Troupe is partnering with Epiphany Productions to produce Fears of Your Life. Based on the book of the same name by Michael Bernard Loggins, an artist with developmental disabilities at Creativity Explored, Fears of Your Life uses dance, music, poetry, video and huge paper mache puppets to explore our relationship with the sometimes serious and often humorous things that scare us—from our tear ducts to our funny bone. Monsters, speeding bus drivers and hugs from someone you don’t like are only some of the fears that stalk the stage in this exciting production.

February 19 – April 5, 2009
Press Opening Saturday, March 7
Charlie Varon’s
RABBI SAM
Thursday and Saturday at 8 pm
Sunday, February 22, March 1, 15 and 29 at 7 pm
Sunday matinee at 2 pm on March 8 and 22
Tickets: $18-50
Rabbi Sam tells the story of a rabbi who wants to reinvent American Judaism, and the congregation that hires him. Some people love the new rabbi. Some can’t stand him. And, of course, some can’t stand each other. Varon plays all 12 characters, including the rabbi and eight contentious board members. Funny, moving, bursting with energy and ideas, RABBI SAM is a play for Jews, Gentiles and anyone who has ever attended a meeting.

April 2 – 25, 2009
Press Opening, Friday, April 10
Carolyn Doyle’s
LIFE AS A REFRIGERATOR MOTHER
Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm
Tickets: $15-50
Carolyn Doyle’s Confessions Of A Refrigerator Mother, a serio-comic look at raising a child with special needs. The piece is a multi-media exploration of a day-in-the-life of a nine-year-old boy and his family as they navigate the mysterious world of autism.

May 1 – June 6, 2009
Press Opening: To be announced
Dan Hoyle’s
RIGHT?
Thursday through Saturday at 8 pm
Tickets: $15-50
Dan Hoyle, who won the 2007 Will Glickman award for best new play, brings us Right? —a 100 day, thirty state journey through small-town and rural America. Meetings with cowboys, frontiers men, soldiers in training, drug dealers, aryan brotherhood executives and many others….

Labels: San Francisco Theatre, The Marsh