Theater Pub Gets Congressional

After closing out March with both THE DRAGON at the bar and CANARY YELLOW at the BOA Festival, San Francisco Theater Pub returns in April 18 with another fantastic one night theater extravaganza – Aristophanes’ CONGRESSWOMEN!

This time, join your favorite theater company (in a bar) for some wacky sheets and sandals action when ancient Athenian housewife Praxagora (Linda Wang) borrows her husband Blepyrus (Carl Lucania)’s clothes and heads off to take his place in the local assembly while he’s taking a dump in the garden. Once on the inside, Prax and her friends, the bim…bonic Hymenia (Theresa Miller), the stalwart Rhodippe (Maura Halloran), and giggly Sostrate (Marissa Skudlarek) manage to convince chairman Chremes (Dan Kurtz) to put the women in charge of everything from the storehouses to the brothels. Wackiness ensues as new laws begin to force local hotties Lychus (Joe Miller) and Geron (James Kierstead) to run for their lives when three ugly crones (Tristan Cunningham, Julia Heitner, Jessica Rudholm) take it into their heads to enforce a new rule that promises sex to those in need before those most desired.

Freely adapted from Aristophanes by director/writer Stuart Bousel, this piece presages the Greek poet’s masterpiece, LYSISTRATA, but in its heroine’s charm and the battle between the sexes you can see the roots of one of Western literature’s oldest and best loved comedies. Edited and tweaked for a modern audience, CONGRESSWOMEN‘s foul-mouthed satire on social and political idealism will perform for one night only, so make sure you don’t miss it!

CONGRESSWOMEN performs one night only, Monday, April 18 at the Cafe Royale (800 Post, at Leavenworth, San Francisco). Admission is, as usual, free with a suggested donation of $5.00. Make sure to get there early for a good seat and stick around afterwards for a beer with the cast and crew!

The Dragon Performs One Night Only Monday

A children’s play for adults, a warped fairy tale, a searing allegory, a dark comedy, a cautionary tale – whatever you want to call Evgeny Shvart’s THE DRAGON, it’s coming with it’s three heads, four clawed feet, and eleven actors to the San Francisco Theater Pub tomorrow night. Join us for this one-night-only celebration of this hidden masterpiece. Let’s get this communist party started!

THE DRAGON performs one night only at the Cafe Royale (800 Post, at Leavenworth), Monday, March 21. The performance begins at 8pm. Admission, as always, is free.

Enter the Dragon

San Francisco Theater Pub returns Monday, March 21 with its first entry into the world of Soviet Theater – Evgeny Shvart’s satirical masterpiece THE DRAGON. The play, written in 1945, shares remarkable similarity with another work published the same year – George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Where Orwell uses farm animals as a metaphor to show how the Soviet state fell from good principles in corruption, Shvart’s play takes the form of a fairy tale. A valiant knight arrives to save a town from the dragon that terrorizes it, but as the play develops, the audience learns that there are worse things than monsters.

Shvarts, unlike Orwell, had intimate, visceral, knowledge of the conflict in the Soviet Union. He was conscripted to fight for the Tsars during the civil war, where he suffered injuries that would plague him physically and psychologically for the rest of his life. And, of course, he had to contend with the challenges of being an artist in a society where the state monitored everything produced. As a writer of children’s plays, Shvart’s satire managed to squeak by the censors unnoticed, but his message is anything but supportive of the Soviet regime.

THE DRAGON features Geoffrey Nolan, Caitlyn Louchard, Nathan Tucker, Zac Schuman, Dimas Guardado, Charles Lewis III, Juliana Egley, Brian Martin, Jocelyn Stringer, Annie Paladino, and Sara Breindel, as well as some rip-roaring music from the Soviet period. We hope you come and check it out.

THE DRAGON performs one night only on Monday, March 21 at the Cafe Royale (800 Post Street). 8pm curtain. Admission, as always, is free.