Get ready for the ninth annual Solo Mio Festival in San Francisco, CA, Sept. 23-Oct. 11. This year's featured solo performers include Brenda Wong Aoki, Sean San Jose and Diane Torr, plus an evening of pieces by up-and coming performance artists, including Anna Ernstthal {sic], Craig Landry, Katrina Lashea, and Janet Thornburg.
Sept. 23, the festival will open at 7:30 PM on the third floor of the Bayfront Theatre's Building B with Best of Writers Who Act. The evening feautures Ernstthal, Landry, Lashea, and Janet Thornburg, all members of Solo Mio's ongoing workshop taught by Anne Galjour (Alligator Tales) and Ellen Chang. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 for students, seniors and Fort Mason members.
Sean San Jose weaves together AIDS-related works by Erin Cressida Wilson and Herbert Siguenza with material by Migdalia Cruz, Maria Irene Fornes, Rhodessa Jones, and others in Pieces of the Quilt - Part 3, running Sept. 24-26 at 8 PM at the Bayfront Theatre. Backed by DJ Fuze of Digital Underground, percussionist Josh Jones of Latin Quartet, and vocalist Scheherazade Stone of Hueman Flavor, San Jose blends vocals, percussion, and a live DJ into his performance. Tickets are $14-16 with $2 off for students, seniors and Fort Mason members. The Pieces of the Quilt collection comissioned the piece, which benefits the Artist Alliance Against AIDS and the Barbie Stein Memorial Fund.
The second full piece of the festival will be Diane Torr's Drag Kings and Subjects, a presentation and deconstruction of Sylvia, a white middle aged woman of the 90's who becomes Danny King, founder of the real life "American Society of Men". Drag Kings will play Sept. 30-Oct. 3 at 8 PM at the Bayfront Theatre. Tickets are $16-$20 with $2 off for students, seniors and Fort Mason members.
Brenda Wong Aoki performs the final piece of the festival, Uncle Gunjiro's Girlfriend, the love story of her samurai great uncle and an archdeacon's daughter. The romance caused such a stir in 1909, the lovers ran away to Seattle to be married. Composer and musician Mark Izu will accompany Wong Aoki as she presents her story against a backdrop of large-screen projections. Uncle Gunjiro's Girlfriend runs Oct. 10- 11 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street, San Francisco. Tickets are $16-18 with $2 off for students and seniors and $3 off for Yerba Buena members. Past festivals have included the talents of Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Claire Bloom, Nora Dunn, Karen Black, John Waters, and Harvey Fierstein as well as introducing Danny Hoch, Roger Guenvere Smith and James Lecesne to Bay Area audiences.
Tickets for all performances are available through the City Box Office at (415) 392-4400 or online at www.ticketweb.com.
-- By Christine Ehren and Sean McGrath
