We Have A New Mission Statement and New Opportunities!

So, nineteen of us went to the woods: Founding Artistic Directors Stuart Bousel and Brian Markley, Art Director Cody Rishell, and long time collaborators Megan Cohen, Jeremy Cole, Ashley Cowan, Nick and Lisa Gentile, Karen Hogan, Dan Kurtz, Sang Kim, Maria Leigh, Will Leschber, Carl Lucania, Jan Marsh, Karen Offereins, Sunil Patel, Kirk Shimano and Marissa Skudlarek. We spent two nights making food together, drinking, arguing and laughing about art, the local theater scene, and the best and worst of the first three years of Theater Pub.

On Saturday we spent six hours seriously looking at the future of the Pub, the way we structured our season, how we got people involved, etc. We talked a lot about what made Theater Pub special, what worked the first couple years, and most importantly, what wasn’t working any more, and what needed to change to allows us to not only move into the future, but continue to grow.

We decided one thing that definitely had to change was our mission statement, and after about half an hour of tinkering and trying out different phrasing, this is what we came up with:

“The San Francisco Theater Pub produces re-imagined classics and scripted orginal works in a casual bar environment, emphasizing collaboration and connection between new and established theater artists and audiences.”

That’s one classy complex sentence, isn’t it?

But in all seriousness, we are excited to have a mission statement that fits what Theater Pub has become, and encourages us to keep in mind our core value systems (namely fun, inclusivity, creativity and artistic challenge) as we move into the future. To get things going on the right foot, we spent dinner that night brainstorming the January show, which will be produced by Sang S. Kim, producing for us for the first time!

In it’s three years, we’re proud to say that Theater Pub has worked with over 200 actors, directors, musicians, writers, producers, artists, dancers, and tech people- fifty-three of whom have been involved with three or more shows! Those are impressive numbers for any theater company, and we’re glad to have given so many people a chance to shine, try something new, push their own boundaries, and entertain our audience. Going Forward, we want to make sure that we keep bringing in new people, even as we work to strengthen relationships with our favorite collaborators, and hence we will be opening six of our one night slots in our 2013 year, to new producers.

So- got an idea for a one night show that works in a bar-space like ours and you think fits in with the new mission statement (and the kind of crowd we tend to attract)? Let us know! We’ll be accepting project ideas for the following dates, all the way up till January 1st!

February 18
April 15
May 20
June 17
August 19
November 18

Additionally, we are looking for a larger project for October, to play October 15, 21, 22, 28 and 29. Halloween themed preferred, but not limited to. This production could potentially be fully staged, though once again, within the limitations of the bar (i.e. we don’t do much in way of standing scenery, full orchestras, or lots of light and sound).

Be sure to include as much info as you can- about you, anyone you want to bring in with you (actors, musicians, etc.), how you see this idea working in the bar and what your plan is to get thing thing on its feet with a budget of zero. Remember this is indie theater as trench warfare- innovative and passionate wins the day!

Send proposals to theaterpub@atmostheatre.com

Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Pint Sized Plays Interviews 5: The Directors

As the count down towards this year’s Pint Sized Plays Festival continues, we thought we’d take a moment to chat up some of our directors. With voices as distinct as the writers whose work they get to direct, these backstage snapshots offer a window into some of the indie theater scene’s best and brightest. Enjoy!

Who are you, in fifty words or less.

Meg O’Connor: I am Meg O’Connor, marketer for immigration law by day, but by night! – theater junkie. Playwright, director, improviser, expert in reading Stage Directions.

Neil Higgins: I’m an actor, writer and director who loves the SF theatre scene and is excited by how much it has been growing in the past few years.

Eileen Tull: I am Eileen Tull. I have met Hanson. I was on Oprah once. I moved to the Bay Area about a year ago from Chicago. I direct and generally do theater all of the time.

What’s the play you’re directing about?

Meg O’Connor: Beeeeeeaar by Megan Cohen is about love, loss, dancing, and roaring. Llama, by Stuart Bousel and Megan Cohen is about a Llama at a crossroads, and it will take a heroic act to bring him back to his former glory.

Neil Higgins: This play, Celia Sh**s, by William Bivins, is about a little-discussed issue that arises between the sexes. And existential crises. And, to a lesser extent, beer.

Eileen Tull: Loss, love, and hate. This is what makes up Leah M. Winery’s To Deborah.

What drew you to this kick-ass show?

Eileen Tull: The cleverness in its simplicity.

Meg O’Connor: I’ve been involved every year and have had a blast each time. The bar setting makes for a great atmosphere, the audience is inebriated enough to find us funny, and I get to pay my actors in beer. It’s a pretty sweet gig.

Neil Higgins: It’s a really fun script that talks about something that doesn’t really get talked about a lot. The situation and characters are at once comically exaggerated and realistically relatable.

What are you discovering is the challenge of working at Theater Pub?

Eileen Tull: This is my second time working with Theater Pub (though I’ve been a wallflower fan since I got to the Bay Area), and I feel like the challenge lies in filling the space, which is non-traditional and spilling full of people.

Neil Higgins: Time is always an issue; both in how little there is before the show compared to a traditional production schedule and trying to get all of one’s actors in the same place at the same time to rehearse.

Meg O’Connor: In rehearsal, I make sure to have water to practice with…so, there are lots of pee breaks.

What has you most excited to be there?

Meg O’Connor: Theater Pub’s community is fun, intelligent, and passionate. Working with them is the epitome of the phrase “Work Hard – Play Hard.”

Eileen Tull: The vibe is just super positive. From the producers to the collaborators to the audience. It’s as if everyone has the Theater Pub motto on their mind: “Make it good, keep it casual, have a beer.”

Neil Higgins: It’s a talented group of people and I can’t wait to see all the great pieces that come out of it.

What’s been your biggest, craziest, most HA! I PULLED THAT OFF, BITCHES! moment as a director?

Neil Higgins: An actor broke his leg a week or so before we opened. I had to add a couple lines, change almost all the blocking and some choreography.

Eileen Tull: The first play I ever directed ended with the stage direction “Then, spring.” It was a ten minute play about a post-apocalyptic freezing Earth run by robots. I am still dating the playwright. But it was a daunting playground of a stage direction for a little first time director. I ended up using costume changes, pastels, and Louis Armstrong to bring it to life.

Meg O’Connor: This one time, I had an actress enter the stage through a giant vagina. That was pretty cool.

If you could direct anything, with limitless budget and stars, what would it be and why?

Meg O’Connor: Mourning Becomes Electra starring RuPaul

Neil Higgins: Tie between The Importance of Being Earnest and Titus Andronicus because they are such
amazing shows and my ideas for them require a lot of money.

Eileen Tull: I would do a marathon in rep of The Rover, Cyrano de Bergerac, She Stoops to Conquer, and Twelfth Night. And then commission re-imagined adaptations of each one. And then direct those. Rinse and repeat with Doctor Faustus, Macbeth, and Hamlet.

What’s up next for you?

Neil Higgins: Acting in Measure for Measure for Theater Pub in August!

Eileen Tull: Directing and producing Flesh at the Santa Cruz Fringe Festival, performing an original solo show Jesus, Do You Like Me? Please Mark Yes or No. at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, and directing a couple of Olympians Festival plays in the winter.

Meg O’Connor: My play In the Deep about the titan Tethys will be featured in this year’s Olympians Festival in December.

What else in the SF Theater scene has you excited?

Eileen Tull: I just wrapped up stage managing The Odyssey on Angel Island. Woof. I’m so excited about the work We Players and other site specific companies are doing to transform spaces and redefine what it is to have a theatrical experience.

Meg O’Connor: Banana Bag and Bodice’s Space//Space has got me jazzed (they have to bring it to SF now, plz) and the piece The Collaboratory is working on (Dirty Laundry) sounds fascinating.

Neil Higgins: Olympians III in December is going to be most marvelous.

What is your favorite beer?

Neil Higgins: I’m more of a cider man.

Eileen Tull: I would be lying if I didn’t say PBR. But I did have a chocolate beer in Chicago one time that blew my mind. Still recovering from it.

Meg O’Connor: I’m currently having an affair with Alaskan Amber, but I’m fickle. I break beer-hearts like it’s my job.

Don’t miss the Pint Sized plays, opening July 16 and playing July 17, 23, 30 and 31 with a special performance at the Plough and the Stars on July 18. All the rest are at our usual stomping grounds, Cafe Royale, located at the corner of Post and Leavenworth in San Francisco’s lovely Tendernob neighborhood. Performances are free, no reservations necessary, but show up early and stay late- we’re bound to be sold out and the crowd is always the best part of Theater Pub!

Artistic Director Julia Heitner Announces This Year’s Pint-Sized Plays!

I spent a marathon day on Monday getting inspired at the Theatre Bay Area annual conference, gathering information about interactive experience from Burning Man founders and tips from site-specific mavens, Kim Epifano (Epiphany Productions/Trolley Dances) and Lauren Chavez & Ava Roy (We Players.) With this knowledge fresh in my mind, I am so pleased to announce the line-up for our annual bar-specific play festival, The Pint Sized Plays!

We have 10 new plays by 10 fantastic local playwrights. For Pint Sized III I plan to include everything our audiences love about the festival: entertaining theatre, great acting and direction, live music, beer drinking, and of course, our resident llama! For the first time this year, we are also taking the show on tour to other bars around San Francisco. First stop, the fantastic Irish Pub, The Plough and Stars on Clement Street!

The Line-up:

Beeeeeear by Megan Cohen
Third time Pint-Sized fest playwright, Megan Cohen continues to surprise us with this play about a beer-drinking bear.

Beer Theory by Marissa Skudlarek
Boy meets Girl. Dionysian meets Apollonian.

Celia Sh*ts by William Bivins
What happens when all the mystery is lost from a relationship?

Circles by Seanan Palmero
Watching a Nascar race brings up philosophical questions from the bar patrons. Are we all just going in circles?

Circling by Nancy Cooper Frank
Don’t we all deserve… a parking place right out front?

To Deborah by Leah M. Winery
Friends and family reveal their true feelings about the dearly departed.

Llama by Stuart Bousel
The llama is back!!!

Man vs. Beer by Sunil Patel
A Teetotaler is peer pressured by a talking beer.

Play it Again, Friend by Tim Bauer
Man contemplates life through the music of the bar pianist.

Put it on Vibrate by Tom Bruett
Pleasure party + Mother-in-Law = Hilariously Uncomfortable

The festival runs July 16,17, 23, 30 & 31, 8pm @ Café Royale, (800 Post St @ Leavenworth in San Francisco) with a special touring performance, July 18, at Plough and the Stars, (188 Clement St. @ 2nd Ave in the Richmond District), SF. Additional dates for the festival TBA.

Theater Around The Internet: Ten Questions with Linda-Ruth Cardozo

A few months back, before we jumped on the general promotion band-wagon, Linda-Ruth started a Facebook page devoted to getting the word out about the Bay Area theater scene and all the crazy-wonderful stuff going on here. As a woman after our own hearts, how could we resist the chance to find out more about this local luminary?

So, in a nutshell, who are you and what do you do in the San Francisco Theater Scene?

I am an actor, as yet non-Union (I have some points toward AEA and that Taft Hartley thing but I don’t know how many. I should get on that.) and a drama teacher. I’m a Bay Area native, majored in Theatre/Liberal Studies at SFSU, and studied at ACT in the Certificate Program. I’ve been “doing theatre,” since I was 12. I had an agent for a while, and have done some film and commercial gigs. I just directed my first piece with adult actors since I was last in a directing class at State. It’s cool. I’d do it again.

Do you think we actually have a Theater Scene here?

There are many established theatres and theatre companies that are based here, so, yes, we have a “scene.” The Exit Theatre has the Fringe, there’s the Bay One Acts Festival, the Phoenix Theatre and Stage Werx, among many others. There are also newer companies, and actors that I see again and again.

In what ways are we building, or building up, the Scene and what do you think is working best?

Technology seems to contribute. There are so many changes since I was first taught, for example, how to do headshots. No more waiting weeks for that heavy package from that place in L.A. Now we just send off pic/resume–bling! Lois Tema, photographer extraordinaire (you might want to spell check that) was telling me about the transition she’s had to make. At the foundation of “the Scene” is the Stage. The Magic, Exit Theatres, the Pheonix, Theatre Rhinoceros, (and so on) have been around for a long time. And Stage Werx has gotten a new lease on life at the new space on Valencia. Building up, I think, is largely hard work, and sticking it out, as well as maintaining a sense of being part of a community. Theatre does not happen in a vacuum; we can’t do it unless we do it with other people, and that means appreciating the contributions of everyone involved. It’s teamwork.

Is there anything that isn’t working?

When I attend a show, the audience often seems to consist of, largely, other actors, family and friends. When I encourage “civilians” to see live theatre, they are discouraged by the cost of a ticket, unwilling to dish out the money for a show that’s not “guaranteed” to entertain them. There’s also the whole Equity issue. So many actors who want to stay in the Bay Area choose not to join Equity because they will not be working as much. (See Valerie Weak’s article on Theatre Bay Area website.) This hasn’t changed much from when I was in college and heard that actors in San Francisco generally “work for free.” There are so many talented performers who have to keep those day jobs, and that limits the time and energy they can use for the craft.

What groups or individuals do you think are contributing, and how, to the formation of a San Francisco Bay Area Theater Scene?

Ty McKenzie, owner of Stage Werx is really community minded; the performers and companies who work there represent the diversity of our city. Christina Augello brings us the Fringe Festival every year. The Playwrights’ Foundation and the Playwrights Center of SF are always bringing new, relevant works to the stage. Martin A David’s And-Still a Theatre Company is another group producing new pieces. And, of course, the Magic, Theatre Rhinoceros, Cutting Ball, Impact, and Shotgun, the Marsh, BRAVA and others are firmly established in the Bar Area theatre tradition.

What possessed you to create the Theatre SF Bay page on Facebook?

It was sort of an accident. I was getting confused with FB Friends and Invites and Likes and I had to find a way to organize them. I created a group to distinguish my theatre stuff from everything else; I just labeled it “Theatre.” I would look around, “Like” stuff, and then post it on my own page as reminders to myself. Then I had to categorized things further, so I grouped the local stuff and called it Theatre SF Bay. This way I wouldn’t send notices of my own shows to people in Cape Cod, Colorado and Scotland. Linda Ayers Frederick encouraged the new title by writing “Good idea, Linda-Ruth, more specific” and I realized other people were actually looking at what I posted. It seemed that there was a need for a place where theatre people could post about shows, auditions, ask around for certain props, and so forth. The positive feedback from friends gave me incentive to expand the group. I ran into William Hall and he told me to “keep it up.” So I did and I do.

It seems to be growing all the time- does that mean more or less work for you, and how does that affect your energy and time in regards to your own theater career?

I feel more connected to the theatre community. I’ve come to realize how much stuff is going on around me, and I’ve become involved in projects and made connections through the page. I hope others have as well. I would love members to post more often, since I worry about missing stuff, especially when I’m busy with rehearsals and don’t have as much time for FB.

So many shows are currently being promoted on your page- about what percentage do you personally make it out to see?

About 25%. So much talent, so little time.

Anything you know about that’s coming up you really want to recommend?

BOA for sure.

What are you doing next?

Auditioning.

To find out more about Linda-Ruth, check out http://www.Linda-Ruth-Cardozo.com. And keep your eye on us as we continue to bring you deeper into the Bay Area’s small theater scene. Have a story you want to share, a profile to sketch or a production to promote? Let us know!

Theater Around The Bay: The Kurt Weill Project

Happy Friday the Thirteenth Everyone!

Today seemed like a good day (a lucky day!) for us to launch our new project- which is essentially a digital form of the Pub where we give you another look into the diverse and exciting theater scene that defines the Bay Area performance community. Like all Pub projects, this is an experiment and we’ll see how it goes, but the goal is to create an online stomping ground for the small theater scene, eventually bringing you a blog a day, profiling a group here, an actor there, a project or perspective to generate a collage of what’s going on, who is doing it, and what it’s like to make this theater scene happen. Think of it as a lifestyle mag for the black box, storefront, rear-bar crew- which can include you! Have a story to tell? Let us know. We’ll be constantly on the lookout for new material and just like the live portion of Theater Pub, the best way to get involved is to drop us a line and tell us what you want to do.

In the meantime, check-out this profile of The Kurt Weill Project, brought to you by Theater Pub veteran (and Kurt Weill diva) Michelle Jasso. 

The Kurt Weill Project, clockwise: Zoltan DiBartolo, Allison Lovejoy, Harriet March Page, Martha Cooper, Alexis Lane Jensen, Nathan Tucker, Michelle Jasso, Sibel Demirmen.

German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950), son of a cantor, was working as a theatre accompanist by the age of 15.  Eventually reigning as the leading composer for the German stage, Weill enjoyed many fantastic collaborations.  Two of note were Bertolt Brecht, with whom he composed his most (in)famous Threepenny Opera, a “biblical parable” actually serving as a Marxist-inspired critique of Capitalist values, and famed diseuse Lotte Lenya, who would become Weill’s wife and a champion of his compositions.  Shanghaied into childhood prostitution in Imperial Vienna, Lenya had many a story about the complicated lives and hearts of “Ladies of the Night,” and Weill wrote stacks of songs for her based upon her experience.  The couple split and separately fled Nazi Germany, only to re-meet and reunite in the US.  Shortly thereafter, the couple attended the final dress rehearsal of George Gershwin’s masterpiece Porgy and Bess.  After the curtain descended, Weill allegedly turned to Lenya and said “So jazz-influenced American opera does exist — and I’m going to write it.”  His next project was Street Scene, a massive, complex, beautiful piece of heartbreaking theatre for which Weill won the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score.  Sixty years after his death, the music of Kurt Weill continues to be performed regularly in classical, jazz, cabaret and even pop and rock settings.  Songs of Weill have been covered by artists like Nina Simone, David Bowie, The Doors and Tom Waits, to name a (very) few.

The true genesis of The Kurt Weill Project (KWP) would be in the San Francisco Concert Chorale, which Harriet March Page, now Artistic Director of Goat Hall Productions, joined in 1987.  In SFCC’s annual variety show in 1988, Page and Miriam Lewis (now a sought-after SF theatre costume designer) performed a rendition of the “Jealousy Duet” from Threepneny in which they ended up on the floor entangled in the curtains at the SF Community Music Center.  All the Kurt Weill-loving singers soon stepped up and, later that year, had their first Weill performance as Salvation Army-Turned-Whore at Hotel Utah, and later in 1988 performed a concept piece written by Page called The Sea Is Blue at the Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, a fully staged production with chamber orchestra.  Weill later fell by the wayside as the group evolved into Goat Hall Productions and began producing full seasons of opera, but Weill has never left Page’s heart.  Approximately a year ago Page decided to resurrect the KWP, stating simply “I want to sing this music until I die.”  A small handful of us got to work, reading through the mountain of Weill’s opus; the ensuing months brought about vicissitudes of personnel and therefore creative direction, but the goal has remained steadfast: to learn and perform as much of Weill’s rich repertory as humanly possible.   

This new incarnation of KWP had its debut performance as part of StageWerx’s Underground Sound series in July 2011, and has been going strong ever since.  Essentially a cabaret group, there’s always a theme: Moon Floating on Water; Songs of Ships and the Sea; Berlin, Broadway and Beyond, etc.  We’ve done something special for the month of April and are showcasing the work of KWP member and local pianist/composer/treasure Allison Lovejoy.  A second performance of this program of her original cabaret tunes will happen at The Red Poppy Art House in the Mission on Saturday, April 14th at 8pm.  The KWP appears every 2nd Monday at StageWerx (also in the Mission), and our next theme is Brecht!  

More about all this, as well as Goat Hall’s full season may be found here: http://goathall.org/

Director Sara Staley on “Brainkill”

Bay Area thespian Sara Staley will be directing “Brainkill”, by Stuart Bousel, for this year’s BOA Festival. The show is being produced by San Francisco Theater Pub, who is one of ten producing partners that make the festival happen. For more information on the festival, check out http://www.bayoneacts.org. For more information about Sara, just keep reading! 

So we know you’ve directed for Theater Pub in the past, but what else do you do out there in the Bay Area Theater Scene?

A lot. Since 2001 I’ve been the director of the YouthAware Educational Theatre program at the New Conservatory Theatre Center (NCTC). I’m also directing my first Pride Season show there, The Laramie Project: Ten Year Later, which will open March 31st and then go on tour in Northern and Central California in June with NCTC’s new Pride on Tour program. I directed my first show for Wily West Production last summer, and now this season I’m working as Artistic Producing Director with them. I’ll also be directing a Pat Milton play called Believers for Wily West that will go up in August. In my spare time, I like to produce and direct sketch comedy. I’m directing a sketch for PianoFight’s next Foreplays show going up in April, and working on the second show for Hot Mess SF, a new sketch group that I started with some very talented producer, writer, director and actor friends, that will happen the third weekend in May.

This isn’t your first time directing for BOA either. What have you done there in the past?

In 2008 I directed an eerie, twisted little play called Absolute Pure Happiness by Isaiah Dufort for Three Wise Monkeys. Theater Pub alum Theresa Miller, who is in Brainkill, was also in that show for me. I met Jessica Holt , who kicks booty producing the BOA festival, when she started working at NCTC directing for our Teen Summer Stock program. I designed sound for her show (one of the other theatre hats I wear), and we synced up well, so she asked me to sound design for one of the BOA programs in 2010. Then last year for BOA I was lucky to get to direct a lovely play called Twice as Bright by Daniel Health for the Playwrights’ Center of San Francisco, another local theatre organization that I worked with for several years.

How is this show, Brainkill, a potentially new experience for you?

The pace and the dialogue moves unlike any show I’ve staged before, but I think that’s also what attracted me to the play in the first place.

When directing, what steps do you go about to get “inside” a piece?

The plays I want to direct are the one’s when I read them the first time and the production immediately starts coming to life inside my head. I think having that initial vision or connection with a play is really important as a director. That makes the getting inside the piece part much easier because you don’t have to work as hard to get past the surface of the material. I try to learn as much as I can about the world of the play, but not so much that it distracts me from just telling the story, which is the essence of what we do as theatre artists. In a play like Brainkill, where the world of the play is less specific, I enjoy filling in the missing piece. I also enjoy the fact that it allows more flexibility as a director when the play takes place in a world where really anything can happen.

So what’s this thing about?

To me Brainkill is about the desire to fill the voids that this society creates for us with stuff, when really what we desire is a connection with other people. In a world where we are so very connected with technology, we are actually feeling disconnected from basic human interaction. Theater is wonderful because it not only creates community, but it can also provide society with the emotional catharsis and connection with other humans that we crave.

What speaks to you, or draws you in the most, about Brainkill?

I love the pace and the surprises in the script. Also, I tend to connect more with theatre that tells a story that comments on society in some way. To me, a good play will get audiences to think about society’s flaws and their own, and hopefully spawn a discussion about how we can improve things.

What do you see as the biggest hurdle to overcome to make this thing rock?

The fast paced dialogue will, I’m sure, be a hurdle for actors to get over, and the play shifts from scene to scene a lot for a one act which will be somewhat challenging to stage, but luckily the set configuration/design at Boxcar Playhouse this year gives me lots of options as a director.

What excites you the most?

I love a good dark comedy, and this one also feels very edgy and unique. I’m also really excited to work with the talented actors I’ve cast.

What do you hope the audience will get out of the show?

I hope it helps audiences look past the noise and the clutter in our world to pause and think about what is really important in our lives. As one character says in Brainkill, “There is so much more to life than stuff.”

What else in this year’s BOA Festival are you looking forward to seeing?

Really all the plays. BOA is such a fabulous collaboration of local independent playwrights, directors, actors and production companies. The BOA play I directed last year was in the same program as Megan Cohen’s play A Three Little Dumplings Adventure directed by Jessica Holt, and I grew very fond of that wacky play and it’s amazing cast, so I’m also looking forward to the next installment, Three Little Dumplings Go Bananas, this year.

Join Us This Monday As We Kick Off Our 2011 Season

Back after a little winter break, the San Francisco Theater Pub prepares to kick off its 2011 season with THEATER FOR THE INATTENTIVE this Monday, January 17th at the Cafe Royale. Keeping with our commitment to exploring a wide variety of work and theatrical forms, THEATER OF THE INATTENTIVE is in a category all it’s own, as director and Theater Pub co-founder Victor Carrion explains:

“By playing these stories, a terrific cast brings us snapshots of our daily existence. Presented in less than 50 minutes, we’ll be able to enjoy the tribulations of others, but also remember our own. Simple pleasures of life and those more complex situations that make us ponder intersect each other as haiku-like stories, one page plays and small anecdotes are interwoven into a narrative trip that is hungry for your full attention. Theater for the Inattentive will make you think quickly and deeply, leaving you with plenty of time to be distracted at a later time…”

Hope that grabs your attention. See you at the bar.

THEATER FOR THE INATTENTIVE performs Mondays January 17, 24, and 31 in the Cafe Royale (800 Post Street, San Francisco, at Leavenworth). 8pm curtain. Admission is free.

Happy New Year!

Many thanks to everyone who made 2010 a huge success for the San Francisco Theater Pub!

This has been a tremendous first year for us. We completed 11 projects over the course of 12 months and worked with 100+ actors, directors, artists, writers and musicians! We received media coverage in Theater Bay Area Magazine, The Guardian, Words On Theater/KUSF and on numerous blogs and events listings! Our crowds ranged from full to capacity to bursting and whether it was original work, classic Greek tragedy or modern drama we found our audience to be supportive and ready to let us play and push our own boundaries!

Rest assured, San Francisco Theater Pub will be back in 2011. Here is a taste of our upcoming season:

January 17, 24,  31: Theater for the Inattentive, 50 short stories adapted from John Ashworth’s Is The Barn Still Standing, directed by Victor Carrion.

February 21: Personal Politics, an exploration of the personal drama found in 600 years of English political rhetoric, directed by Stuart Bousel

March 21: The Dragon, a fairy tale satire of bad government, adapted and directed by Bennett Fisher from Evgeny Shvarts’ classic play.

April 18: Congresswomen, by Aristophanes, a profane and provocative sex comedy from Ancient Greece, adapted and directed by Stuart Bousel.

May 16, 17, 23, 30 & 31: The Boar’s Head, a revisioning of William Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays, directed by Jessica Richards.

June 20: Joyce’s Voice, a dramatization of selected writing by James Joyce, conceived and directed by Megan Cohen and Nirmala Nataraj.

Writers and Directors Announced for ‘Pint Sized Plays’

The results are in. After considering a massive amount of wonderful scripts submitted to us from Bay Area writers, we have finalized our selections for THE PINT SIZED PLAYS in August. The evening of plays will run for three performances on three consecutive Mondays, August 16, 23, and 30. The plays range from the short to the very short, showcase a range of styles and genres, but one thing remains constant throughout: beer.

THE PINT SIZED PLAYS

PIGS

written by Elena McKernan, directed by Meg O’Connor

POUND IT

written by Bennett Fisher, directed by Alex Curtis

QUEEN MAB IN DRAG

written by Stuart Bousel, directed by Julia Heitner

HOT? OR NOT

written by Jeremy Cole, directed by Claire Anne Rice

EVESDROPPED

written by Molly Benson & Karen Offereins, directed by M. R. Fall

DRINKING FOR TWO

written by Marissa Skudlarek, directed by Sara Staley

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE MONEY

written and directed by Megan Cohen

AN EXERCISE IN INTENTION

written by Victor Carrion, directed by Paul Cello

GENIE IN A BUD LIGHT

written and directed by Ashley Cowan

San Francisco Theater Pub in Theater Bay Area Magazine

Heard of San Francisco Theater Pub? Well, yes, probably if you’re visiting our site. But now Theater Bay Area has. The June 2010 issue of the Theater Bay Magazine features a short article on the Publicans on p. 16 with some delightful quotes from co-founder Stuart Bousel about our mission, our past projects, and our future. It’s nice to see that even though we are not yet half a year old, San Francisco Theater Pub’s presence is starting to be felt in the local theater community. Check it out.