2022 Spring Season Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRESIDIO THEATRE IN SAN FRANCISCO ANNOUNCES SPRING PERFORMANCES INCLUDING COLETTE UNCENSORED, BORDER PEOPLE, ROBERT MOSES’ KIN, JAZZ ARTIST MARK IZU, ANNIE, VOCALIST KITTY MARGOLIS, THE RESIDENTS, MUSIC OF REMEMBRANCE, 18^th ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR FILM FESTIVAL, MARGARET JENKINS DANCE COMPANY AND FIRST LOOK SONOMA

A variety of theater, music, dance, film and events energize the Presidio Theatre’s Spring 2022 season, Executive Director Robert Martin has announced. Running from March 19 through June 24, the season features one-person plays by Lorri Holt and Dan Hoyle; an SFArtsEd Players’ youth production of Annie; jazz concerts by Mark Izu and Kitty Margolis; Music of Remembrance premieres by Bay Area composers Nicolas Benavides, Shinji Eshima, Sahba Aminikia and Max Giteck Duykers; premieres of 35 new films during QWOCMAP’s 18^th Annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival; and premieres of new dance work by Robert Moses’ KIN and Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, celebrating its 50^th anniversary. The Presidio Theatre is located on the historic Main Post of the Presidio of San Francisco. A full schedule of the 2022 Spring Season may be found below. Tickets available here.

“As we return to public life, the Theatre is presenting work that embraces new beginnings while honoring the past,” said Martin. “Our 2022 Spring Season demonstrates the Presidio Theatre’s commitment to building a long-term home for San Francisco artists, many of whom have experienced displacement and financial hardship over the past several years. We are honored to be able to provide support and space to an incredible group of San Francisco icons this Spring.”

 

Lorri Holt
Colette Uncensored
Saturday, March 19, 7pm
Sunday, March 20, 2pm
Adult $30–55, Youth $15–30
Tickets

Colette Uncensored takes us on a titillating journey through the scandalous life, loves, and writing of the French novelist and activist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. In this masterful one-woman performance, Lorri Holt brings the legendary Colette back to the stage once again along with nine other characters from the author’s life. A pioneer for sexual liberation, women’s empowerment, and respect for nature, Colette was shunned by polite society for having affairs with both women and men, performing scantily clad in a vaudeville act, and refusing to ever compromise in her pursuit of personal freedom. Today she is one of France’s most celebrated authors and is best known for her novels Gigi and Cheri along with 50 other works of fiction, memoir, and theater. The play is inspired by co-writer Zack Rogow’s translation and collection Shipwrecked on a Traffic Island, the first new work by Colette to appear in English in half a century.

 

Dan Hoyle
Border People
Friday, March 25, 7pm (Post-show panel led by Dr. Arash Daneshzadeh of Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay)
Adult $30–55, Youth $15–30
Tickets

Following the divisive 2016 presidential elections, artist Dan Hoyle conducted interviews along the US-Mexican border, at refugee safe houses on the US-Canadian border, and in the multi-cultural housing projects of the South Bronx. What resulted is this one-man performance offering a stunning series of portraits of people who cross borders, geographical or cultural, by necessity or choice. Hoyle’s cast of characters include an Army vet turned chess master in the Bronx, an off-the-grid rancher in Arizona, and a recent refugee fleeing the Taliban, all retold in Hoyle’s signature brand of journalistic theater.

 

Robert Moses’ KIN
The Soft Solace of a Slightly Descended Lost Life (Suck It)
World Premiere
Friday, April 1, 7:30pm (Preshow reception at 6pm.)
Saturday, April 2, 7:30pm
Sunday, April 3, 2pm
Adult $15–45, Youth $8–20
Pre-show reception sold as add-on for $50
Tickets

Robert Moses’ KIN presents an evening of repertory favorites alongside the premiere of The Soft Solace of a Slightly Descended Lost Life (Suck It), an immersed performance focused on fractured heritage, risk, and theft of solace and safety from everyday life. Poetically transcribed through dance, spoken word, suspended sculptural installation, and projection design. Robert Moses’ KIN will host a limited capacity pre-show reception on Friday, April 1, at 6pm outside in the Presidio Theatre Plaza.

 

SFArtsEd Players (The San Francisco Arts Education Project)
Annie
Friday, April 15, 7pm
Saturday, April 16, 3pm and 7pm
$25 Adult, $20 Youth and Seniors
Annie plus Gala Celebration
Apr 17, 12pm
$100 Adult, $25 Youth and Seniors
Tickets

The SFArtsED Players celebrate their 20th anniversary with Annie, the Tony Award-winning musical based on the “Little Orphan Annie” comic strip. The score features classic tunes including “Tomorrow,” “It’s the Hard Knock Life,” “Maybe” and “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile” by Charles Strouse (music) and Martin Charnin (lyrics) with a book by Thomas Meehan.

The April 17 gala celebration includes access to a post-show gala reception and silent auction in the outdoor plaza of the Presidio Theatre.

 

Mark Izu
Songs for J-Town
World Premiere
Saturday, April 23, 7:30pm (Preshow ceremony at 6pm. Post-show reception at 9pm.)
Adult $25–60, Youth $15–40
Tickets

Emmy Award winning composer Mark Izu presents an evening of American Jazz, traditional Japanese Gagaku music, and storytelling about San Francisco’s Japantown. There will be a selection of songs significant to J-Town’s history including 1940s big band tunes, 1970s resistance music, and Filipino folk music, as well as spoken word performances addressing COVID, anti-Asian attacks, and hope for tomorrow.

“We’ve been displaced so many times and this is not going to destroy us,” says Izu, “Songs for J-town is a Japanese American Jazz concert dedicated to our grandchildren’s children.”

The evening will include compositions by Emmy Award Winning Mark Izu (Contrabass and Sho) with Mas Koga (Shakuhachi, Flute, Saxophones), Jimi Nakagawa (Taiko & Traps), Jim Norton (Woodwinds), Caroline Cabading (Vocals), Unity Lewis (Spoken Word), Sara Sithi-Amnuai (Trumpet & Sheng), and Brenda Wong Aoki (Storyteller). Blessing by Rev. Mas Kawahatsu, Digital Collage by Andrea Wong, Film by Tonilyn Sideco.

 

Kitty Margolis
Jazz Vocalist and Quintet
Saturday, April 30, 7:30pm
Adult $35–60, Youth $15–35
$20 VIP post-show reception at 9pm
Tickets

Acclaimed jazz vocalist Kitty Margolis presents an exhilarating and imaginative program that demonstrates the place she has earned in the legacy of jazz innovators. For her first hometown appearance in three years, Margolis will be supported by a quintet including John R. Burr (piano), Dan Robbins (bass), Dave Mac Nab (guitar) Deszon Claiborne (drums) and Alfonso Montuori (sax).

 

The Residents and John Sanborn
God in 3 Persons
Friday, May 13, 8pm
Saturday, May 14, 8pm
Adults $50–75
Tickets on sale March 15.
Tickets

The Residents’ God in Three Persons is a propulsive and brooding musical about madness. The Residents’ anonymous lead singer performs as disgraced preacher Mr. X, who tells an improbable tale of encounters with a pair of ambiguously gendered conjoined twins, who might be miracle workers. God in 3 Persons confronts audiences with the horrors of losing your soul while attempting to attain perfection.

God in 3 Persons is a live video/theater work, adapted by media artist John Sanborn, from The Residents’ groundbreaking 1988 album of the same name. Sanborn also fills the mind’s eye with “hallucinogenic” visuals to take us deep into the disturbed psyche of Mr. X. Anonymous since their 1972 debut, The Residents provide live accompaniment, performing here as a six-piece musical ensemble with a featured vocalist. Renowned gender queer porn star Jiz Lee portrays the twins, seen only on screen. Travis Chamberlain directs the work for the stage with musical direction by Joshua Raoul Brody, sound design by Jake Rodriguez, puppet and prop design by Leigh Barbier. Steve Saporito produces.

 

Music of Remembrance
Premieres of Three New Works by Bay Area Composers
Sunday, May 22, 4pm
Adult $30–60, Youth $15–$35
Tickets

Three Bay Area composers explore issues of belonging, displacement, and new beginnings in memory of the Jewish Holocaust.

Tres Minutos by Nicolas Benavides, with libretto by Marella Martin Koch
World premiere. This one-act opera tells the story of Nila and Diego, a brother and sister who share family bonds but not citizenship. Allowed a brief supervised reunion at the US-Mexico border that separates them, they wrestle with questions of identity, duty and belonging.

Veritas by Shinji Eshima
California premiere. A soulful plea against religious intolerance of all kinds. Eshima’s profound musical meditation combines with Kate Duhamel’s video imagery of striking sculptures by Al Farrow to make a powerful statement for today’s world.

Stormy Seas by Sahba Aminikia
California premiere. Five true stories of young people who braved hazardous waters in search of safe harbors and new lives: from Nazi Germany, communist Cuba, war-torn Vietnam, Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, and an orphanage in Ivory Coast. The work is a testament to hope and courage, an appeal to our shared humanity.

Music of Remembrance memorializes the Holocaust through music and honors the resilience of all people excluded or persecuted for their faith, nationality, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. In addition to rediscovering and performing music from the Holocaust, Music of Remembrance has commissioned and premiered more than 30 new works by some of today’s leading composers, drawing on the Holocaust’s lessons to address urgent questions for our own time. Music of Remembrance’s ensemble is drawn from the ranks of the Seattle Symphony.

 

18th Annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival
35 International Premieres
Friday, June 10, 7pm – Opening Night Screening
Saturday, June 11, 3pm – Featured Screening, 7pm – Centerpiece Screening
Sunday, June 12, 1pm – Centerpiece Screening, 5pm – Closing Night Screening
Admission FREE, RSVP Required
Tickets

QWOCMAP will premiere 35 films in 5 screenings at the 18th Annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival, June 10-12, 2022. From the pulse of remembrance to plexus of kinship and community, to laughter that quickens to desire and the rhythmic rituals of dance and poetry, these films breathe expansive possibility into love and birth new worlds. All films are Subtitled for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing and Audio Described for the Blind and Low Vision, and ASL interpretation will be provided along with many other forms of accessibility.

 

Margaret Jenkins Dance Company
Global Moves
World Premiere
Thursday, June 16, 8pm
Friday, June 17, 8pm
Saturday, June 18, 8pm
Sunday, June 19, 3pm
Tickets $20–$100
Multiple receptions will be offered. Details to be announced.
Tickets

Global Moves brings together four dance companies from different parts of the world to respond to the growing international atmosphere of fear, xenophobia, and isolation. This evening-length dance performance, led by Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, will include contributions from long-time collaborators from the company’s 50-year history including Paul Dresher and Joel Davel (composer/music), Alexander V. Nichols (visual design), Michael Palmer (poet/text), Rinde Eckert (text and performance), and Mary Domenico (costumes). The international dance companies will include Tanusree Dance Company from India, Yahui Lu and Guanglei Hui from China, and Kolben Dance Company from Israel, who will all be working together for the first time. The event will take over the entire Presidio Theatre with portions of the evening happening on the Theatre’s newly-restored stage, outside in the outdoor plaza, and in the Theatre’s two indoor lobbies. Global Moves is a recipient of the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions.

 

First Look Sonoma
Both Eyes Open
World Premiere
Friday, June 24, 2 pm (Pay-as-you-can preview performance followed by talkback and panel.)
Saturday, June 25, 8 pm – Opening Night
Sunday, June 26, 2 pm
Adults $20–50
Tickets on sale in April.
Tickets

Both Eyes Open is a chamber opera that tells a haunting love story and tale of perseverance about a Japanese American farmer, Jinzo, interned in a concentration camp with his wife during the hysteria of World War II. When Jinzo loses everything, a Daruma doll and the ghost of Jinzo’s wife pull him back from despair. Both Eyes Open juxtaposes true events with fantasy and the sublime, framed with a sardonic humor.

First Look Sonoma, Paul Dresher Ensemble, and Presidio Theatre co-present Both Eyes Open, a new chamber opera composed by Max Giteck Duykers with libretto by Philip Kan Gotanda. The international cast features two rising stars, Suchan Kim and Kalean Ung, and renowned tenor John Duykers, with conductor Benjamin Makino, stage director Melissa Weaver and Shinichi Iova-Koga as movement director. This opera-theater hybrid features the latest stagecraft side-by-side with elements of ancient traditions. Max Giteck Duykers’ rhythmic and propulsive score ranges from lyricism to taiko drumming, to big band and undulating electronic samples. It is scored for baritone, soprano, violin, clarinets, Marja Mutru on piano, and Joel Davel on his Marimba Lumina. Animated projections by Kwame Braun and Matthew E. Jones.

 

MEDIA CONTACT:
Scott Horton Communications
510-229-9739
Bluescott260@hotmail.com

 

Photo of Margaret Jenkins Dance Company by Kegan Marling