Solo Acts Descend on San Francisco in September | Playbill

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News Solo Acts Descend on San Francisco in September San Francisco is getting ready for the seventh annual Solo Mio festival of Solo performance, a five week celebration of some of America's top solo artists, presented by the Climate Theatre and held in three theatres at Fort Mason Center.
The festival, dedicated to presenting startling and original writer-performers, begins on September 18 and runs through October 13. Some of the artists include; Sherry Glaser, Dan Butler, Robert Anton Wilson, and Lauren Tom. Take a look at the powerhouse schedule given by Jeff Diamond Publicity:

SOLO MIO SCHEDULE

Dan Butler: The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me
Sept. 18-29 (9/1 8-20 @ 8 PM, 9/21 @ 7 & 10 PM, 9/22 @ 7 PM, 9/28 ~ 7 & 10 PM, 9/29 @ 4 & 7 PM) Bayfront Theatre $14-18
Dan Butler, a versatile actor best known for his role on the top-rated TV show "Frasier," performs his semi-autobiographical tour de force--14 humorous and pathos-filled vignettes, all connected by the theme of sexual identity. Butler transforms himself moment-by-moment into a panoply of characters who resist falling into stereotype--from a flamboyant opera queen, to his mother, to an 8-year-old-boy. The jokes are plentiful, the acting exceptional, and Butler's message is irrepressible. Named Best of the Weekend by the LA Times and Pick of the Week by the LA Weekly. "Resembles a gay Eric Bogosian as he mixes autobiographical tales with invented characters."--LA Times.

Gomez A-Go-Go
Solo Mio Award: Marga Gomez
Sept. 20 8 PM
Cowell Theatre $20 includes post-show party
This year the annual Solo Mio Award goes to Marga Gomez. Since 1991, Marga has developed three theatrical monologues by workshopping them at her favorite local venues. Marga's Line Around the Block, Memory Tricks and Pretty, Witty and Gay have been presented all over the country and internationally.This year, Marga enjoyed an extended, critically acclaimed, off-Broadway run of A Line Around the Block at The PublicTheatre. Bay Area artists are also familiar with Marga's raucous and irreverent work as a stand-up comedian since the
early 80s. The Bay Guardian readers voted her Best Local Comedian in 1994.
Paying homage to Marga's groundbreaking talent as well as her commitment to helping others will be world music divas Wild Mango, and performers Josh Kombluth, Holly Hughes, Rhodessa Jones, Dan Butler, J. Raoul Brody, Marylin
Pitrman, Culture Clash and more. Your ticket to the show entitles you to the dance party (featuring Wild Mango) that follows. Proceeds from Gomez a Go-Go will be donated to the Coming Home Hospice in the Castro.

San Francisco is getting ready for the seventh annual Solo Mio festival of Solo performance, a five week celebration of some of America's top solo artists, presented by the Climate Theatre and held in three theatres at Fort Mason Center.
The festival, dedicated to presenting startling and original writer-performers, begins on September 18 and runs through October 13. Some of the artists include; Sherry Glaser, Dan Butler, Robert Anton Wilson, and Lauren Tom. Take a look at the powerhouse schedule given by Jeff Diamond Publicity:


SOLO MIO SCHEDULE

Dan Butler: The Only Thing Worse You Could Have Told Me
Sept. 18-29 (9/1 8-20 @ 8 PM, 9/21 @ 7 & 10 PM, 9/22 @ 7 PM, 9/28 ~ 7 & 10 PM, 9/29 @ 4 & 7 PM) Bayfront Theatre $14-18
Dan Butler, a versatile actor best known for his role on the top-rated TV show "Frasier," performs his semi-autobiographical tour de force--14 humorous and pathos-filled vignettes, all connected by the theme of sexual identity. Butler transforms himself moment-by-moment into a panoply of characters who resist falling into stereotype--from a flamboyant opera queen, to his mother, to an 8-year-old-boy. The jokes are plentiful, the acting exceptional, and Butler's message is irrepressible. Named Best of the Weekend by the LA Times and Pick of the Week by the LA Weekly. "Resembles a gay Eric Bogosian as he mixes autobiographical tales with invented characters."--LA Times.

Gomez A-Go-Go
Solo Mio Award: Marga Gomez
Sept. 20 8 PM
Cowell Theatre $20 includes post-show party
This year the annual Solo Mio Award goes to Marga Gomez. Since 1991, Marga has developed three theatrical monologues by workshopping them at her favorite local venues. Marga's Line Around the Block, Memory Tricks and Pretty, Witty and Gay have been presented all over the country and internationally.This year, Marga enjoyed an extended, critically acclaimed, off-Broadway run of A Line Around the Block at The PublicTheatre. Bay Area artists are also familiar with Marga's raucous and irreverent work as a stand-up comedian since the
early 80s. The Bay Guardian readers voted her Best Local Comedian in 1994.
Paying homage to Marga's groundbreaking talent as well as her commitment to helping others will be world music divas Wild Mango, and performers Josh Kombluth, Holly Hughes, Rhodessa Jones, Dan Butler, J. Raoul Brody, Marylin
Pitrman, Culture Clash and more. Your ticket to the show entitles you to the dance party (featuring Wild Mango) that follows. Proceeds from Gomez a Go-Go will be donated to the Coming Home Hospice in the Castro.
Geoff Hoyle: The First 100 Years
Cowell Theatre $1 8-20
Sept. 21-22 (Sept. 21 8:00 PM Sept 22 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM
The Beezelbub of Clowning cuts loose for three shows of new material mixed with old favorites. Be prepared for anything as the Gladiator of Mirth surprises us, dazzles us and mixes up a cocktail of potent laughter. "Geoff Hoyle is one of the most daring and reckless of solo performers. His lunatic energy and glib English charm is a potent combination: you feel he's capable of spinning out of control at any moment and knowing just what he's doing in the process. There's a calculated intentional madness to his art. Hoyle is a genuine original."--S. Winn, SF Chronicle

Elizabeth Heffron: Moses Lake and Morphometrics
Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
Sept. 23-27 (Sept. 23 & 26 @7:30 PM, Sept. 25 & 27 9:30 PM)
Heifron brings two powerful and quirky pieces from Seattle. In Moses Lake, an insurance agency receptionist and her dead sister, both raised in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, find a certain measure of release. Moses Lake is a finalist in the Actors Theater of Louisville's New Play Program. In Morphometrics, a biological anthropologist does battle with the demons of sexual dimorphism and the workings of her own heart when her boyfriend of 14 years starts losing interest. A hilarious piece.

Lauren Carley: Chrysalis
Sept. 23-27 (Sept. 23 & 28 9:30 PM, Sept. 24 & 27 7:30 PM) Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
Chrysalis is more than a superb evening of Kurt Weill, styled in Lauren's seductive mezzo voice; Ms. Carley takes the audience into her alter ego's dressing room (a mysterious cabaret diva), she reveals her life stories while preparing to step behind the grease paint.

Peter Buckley: What Happened
Sept. 24-28 (Sept. 24 & 26 9:30 p.m., Sept. 25 &28 7:30 PM Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
No less than the story of virtually every activity in human existence, What Happened mixes history, baseball, politics, religion, babies, Bosnia and personal experiences in a spoken word celebration of the incredible contradictions at the heart of everything. "A master storyteller." -- Times Standard

Mark Eitzel
Sept. 25 @ 8 PM
Cowell Theatre $10
Solo Mio is about people telling stories. Mark Eitzel, Warner Brothers recording artist, singer-songwriter, founder and leader of the American Music Club, San Francisco resident and now story teller comes to the Solo Mio festival for a special evening of song and story. Coming off the release of his new album, 60 Watt Silver Lining, a record that finds its beauty in the imperfection of the world, Mark's songs sift though emotional debris with a wounded dignity that is always compelling. A unique chance to experience this commanding performer prior to his European tour.

Anne Galjour: A Celebration of Cajun Culture
Sept. 26-27 @ 8 PM
Bayfront Theatre $14-16
Visit Bayou by the Bay as we welcome back Anne Galjour, "the Cajun Queen of San Francisco." (Bay Guardian). Like a good gumbo, this evening is a rich mix of Galjour's incomparable storytelling, swinging tunes from a band led by singer/accordionist Andrew Carrier and fragrant samplings of Cajun foods from local restaurants. Galjour received the American Theatre Critics Circle Award for Hurricane as one of the top three plays of 1993. Hurricane was followed by Mauvais Temps (the second part of the Hurricane trilogy) at the Berkeley Rep this past Spring. Here, Anne will complete the trilogy (still in progress). "[Galjour's] lyrical imagery and touches of magical realism make her more like a bayou version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez."--S. Winn, SF Chronicle

Dick Gregory: Dick Gregory Live!!
Sept.26 & 29 (Sept.26 @ 8 PM & Sept. 29 @ 7 PM)
Cowell Theatre $8
"Do yourself, your mind and your heart an enormous favor and rush to see Dick Gregory Live!" --Clive Barnes, NY Post. There are no sacred cows in a Dick Gregory show. This trailblazer influenced the work of Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy and was a contemporary of Mort SahI and Lenny Bruce. Barrier-shattering comedian, self-styled political pundit, and civil rights leader, Gregory draws directly and wonderingly from today's headlines as he pushes his own brand of absurdist logic to the outer limits.

Margaret Cho
Sept. 27-28 @ 8 PM
Cowell Theatre $18
Margaret Cho has been busy since bailing out of theatre classes at SF State and moving to Los Angeles. She appeared on Star Search, was named Hottest Stand Up in Rolling Stone, did an HBO special, appeared in a number of films, palled around with Quentin Tarantino and starred in her own sitcom ("All-American Girl," the first to feature a primarily Asian cast). Margaret returns to her hometown with her trademark irreverence and bravado firmly in tow.

Sountru: MultimediaStoryBandSept. 29- Oct 3 (Sept. 29, 30 & Oct 1, 7:30 PM; Oct 3, 9:30 PM)
Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
Multimedia artist Sountru returns to Solo Mio with a computer driven show using original music, sound effects and video to enhance his riveting, character driven short stories.

Matt Smith: Helium
Sept. 29 -Oct 4 (Sept. 29 & 30 @ 9:30 PM, Oct 3 & 4 ~ 7:30 PM)
Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
Matt's obsession with Asian women leads him to Japan where he learns the language..specifically 30 ways to say vagina. Undaunted, he encounters venereal disease, excruciating social situations and an undignified ordeal in a surgical ward.

Sherry Glaser: Family Secrets

Oct 1-6 (No Wed Show) Oct 1-5@ 8 PM, Oct 6 @ 7 PM Cowell Theatre $14-18
Make way! Off-Broadway's longest running one-person show finally arrives at The Solo Mio Festival! In Family Secrets, Sherry Glaser portrays three generations of one family, both male and female in ages ranging from 16 to 80. This five character comedy smash broke all box office records in New York. 'Exhilarating! 100 minutes that fly by in a flash and would fly by even faster if the audience were capable of withholding its laughter for more than 30 seconds!"-- NY Times

Marilyn Pittman: But Enough About You
Oct 1-2, 5-6 @ 9:30
Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
Marilyn Pittman's But Enough About You is a hilarious trip through the chaotic 90's life of "a new wave, new age, boomer lesbian capitalist". Pittman's many careers--radio commentator, voice talent, voice coach, stand-up comic--provide the backdrop for a series of animated monologues aimed at finding some sanity amid the madness. "Marilyn is quick on the uptake and stiletto sharp on the delivery."--Washington Post

An Evening with Robert Anton Wilson
Oct 2 @ 8 PM
Cowell Theatre $18
Robert Anton Wilson is a man of many weirds: trickster, satirist, beat poet, historian of the Sixties cultural revolution, standup comic and author of over 28 books, including the best selling IlluminatusTrilogy and Cosmic Trigger. (Illuminatus is the best selling trade sci-fi paperback in the CS, and Cosmic Trigger was recently listed at the top of Changing Times recommended New Age reading list.). Join us for this special evening with the man tagged by the Denver Post as being "a 20th Century Renaissance Man...funny, wise and optimistic...the Lenny Bruce of philosophers." Pop author Tom Robbins called Wilson "a dazzling barker hawking tickets to the most thrilling tilt-a-whirls and dating loop-o-planes on the midway of higher consciousness;" while the late Timothy Leary lauded him as "one of the most important scientific philosophers of this century--scholarly, witty, scientific, hip and hopeful."

Bridget Hanley: May Day Sermon
Oct 2-6 (Oct 2, 5 & 6 @ 7:30 PM, Oct 5 @ 9:30 PM
Solo Sightings Young Performers Theatre $10
The dramatic debut of James Dickey's May Day Sermon "will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up." (BBC Scotland). The harrowing and moving tale of a young girl's sexual awakening, a boy on a motorcycle answering the call of
Spring, and a Bible thumping father's exacting retribution. Dickey's poem is an exploration of female sexuality and the God fearing men who use religion to control and punish women for their erotic desires.
David Sedaris: An Evening with David Sedaris
Oct 4-5 @ 8 PM, Oct 6 @ 7 PM Bayfront Theatre $14-16
"Sedaris is wickedly funny...one of America's most prickly, and most delicious, young comic talents." Washington Post
David Sedaris made his debut on National Public Radio's Morning Edition with 'Santaland Diaries,' a recounting of his hellish-but-true experiences as a Macy's Christmas elf trapped a world of lecherous Santas, vomiting tots, and cruel parents. One of the NPR's most popular commentators, Sedaris is also the author of the national bestseller Barrel Fever and an OBIE Award winning playwright. "A brilliant satirist, Mr. Sedaris both celebrates and skewers contemporary American culture in what has been called 'a caustic mix of J. D. Salinger and John Waters." (Publisher's Weekly) A Q-and-A session will follow Sedaris reading of some of his favorite pieces, many too 'steamy' for NPR.

Lauren Tom: 25 Psychics
Oct. 8-12 8 PM (No Show Wed) Oct 13 7 PM.
Bayfront Theatre $14-16
Lauren Tom, star of the film, 'The Joy Luck Club' and the character, Julie on TV's super-hit Friends, hilariously traces her experiences as a self-professed New Age Seeker. Leading us along her journey toward enlightenment, Tom portrays assorted swamis, psychics, yogis and Zen masters-- and the wonderfully pragmatic grandmother who inspired her. From walking on hot coals to consulting a dog psychic, Lauren's one-woman show is "a work that one cannot easily forget."-Variety. 25 Psychics is currently being developed by HBO and Lauren has signed with Fox for her own television series. Catch her now! "A consciousness-raising comedy...humorous and refreshingly devoid of new age sanctimony."--LA Times.

For more information, call the City Box Office , (415) 392-4400 or the Solo Mio Recorded Info Line (415) 978-2345.

-- By Blair Glaser

 
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