January 2 , 2007

Local Theater Companies Provide Excellence, Diversity

By Allyse Heartwell

“It’s sad but true that in the Bay Area you’re generally in an extremely diverse part of the country – except when you’re in a big theater,” Tony Kelly of Thick Description observed recently. Luckily Kelly’s lament doesn’t hold true for the small companies and theatre venues located in Southeast San Francisco, particularly Potrero Hill. Here first-rate theater and cultural diversity go hand-in-hand.
            Founded in 1973 as an American Conservatory Theater-sponsored playwriting workshop, the Asian American Theater Company (AATC) has staged more than one hundred plays.  AATC’s performances explore the distinct perspective of Asian Pacific Islander Americans, a voice that’s otherwise underrepresented in mainstream theater.  AATC’s plays tend to have a political flavor, and the company emphasizes new works:  the majority of their plays are original world premieres, including 2005’s Banyan by Jeannie Barroga and Sleeper: A Chronicle of the Return of the Remarkable by Samantha Chanse.  As AATC Artistic Director Sean Lim reflected, “To change things you have to start with the writing.”
            Z-Space Studios, which maintains administrative and rehearsal space on 10th Street in the South of Market district, also emphasizes “new voices, new works, and new opportunities,” according to their website.  The studio commissions, develops and produces original work, while also acting as a space for theatrical artistic development that’s more focused on process than product. Z-Space’s productions are staged at a number of venues, including Thick House and Project Artaud.
            Named after visionary French playwright and philosopher Antonin Artaud, Project Artaud is a cooperatively-managed nonprofit located on Alabama Street that houses more than 70 artists from a range of disciplines.  It’s also home to no less than four public theaters – Project Artaud Theater, Traveling Jewish Theater, Theater of Yugen, and Studio 300.
            Project Artaud Theater was managed by a separate organization, Theater Artaud, until it closed due to financial difficulties in 2002. It now continues as a performance venue under the umbrella of the larger Project Artaud.
            Traveling Jewish Theater (TJT) does travel – periodically nationally and internationally, and annually throughout the Bay Area – but Project Artaud has functioned as its home base since 1994. The group focuses on Jewish history, experience and identity, with the aim of creating a “vital, creative and inclusive Jewish culture and to serve as a bridge to other cultures,” according to their website.  Through theater, TJT seeks to accomplish the Jewish vision of tikkun olam:  repairing or healing the world. “Our cultural context comes out of three thousand years of storytelling,” explained Artistic Director Aaron Davidman, “There’s a ritual aspect to the work that we do, in which the audience is intimately involved.”
            Theater of Yugen is one of the country’s only theaters that focuses on traditional Japanese aesthetics. The company produces mostly original works, as well as traditional Noh and Kyogen plays presented in translation. Noh is a highly stylized, musical dramatic form, which is typically solemn in tone and subject matter. The closely-related Kyogen style emerged as a sort of comic intermission between Noh plays. But as Administrative Director Edward Schocker remarked, “Even the comedies are dark. A lot of Kyogen deals with people’s selfishness and finds the humor there.” This sensibility is befitting of the company’s name and aesthetic: “yugen” means darkness and subtlety.
            Thick Description’s Thick House venue on 18th Street in Potrero Hill also acts as an incubator and staging ground for new works and a number of small companies, including Killing My Lobster, Encore Theater Company, and Golden Thread Productions.
            Golden Thread Productions was founded in 1996 in response to what Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian saw as the inadequate representation of Middle Eastern people and perspectives in Bay Area theatre. In the context of deepening cultural misunderstanding since September 11th, Golden Thread Productions seeks to replace Arabic stereotypes with real faces through theater’s emotionally energizing media.  “It’s immediate, live,” said Yeghiazarian, “and it creates opportunities for artists and audiences to come together in a way that’s not possible in other art forms.”
            Of course it wouldn’t be true cultural diversity – or San Francisco for that matter – without LGBTQ theater. Theatre Rhinoceros has been producing plays that reflect the queer community for nearly three decades. The country’s oldest gay theater company, Theatre Rhinoceros staged its first production in a south of market leather bar in 1977. After a series of growth spurts, the company landed in its current Mission District venue on 16th Street, where it continues to pack its season with productions that explore the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of the queer community.
            Politics and theater are closely linked, and many of San Francisco’s small companies that cater or explore cultural or ethnic niches do so with an overt political agenda. But as Kelly pointed out, “It’s also a straight up argument for quality. The bigger an artistic pool you’re drawing from then the better your results are going to be.” Diverse theater is good theater – and around Potrero Hill it’s as good as it gets