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Arguably, there are less risky ways The Marsh founder Stephanie Weisman could have celebrated the 35th anniversary of her organization, which develops and showcases solo shows in the Bay Area. The artistic and executive director gambled on creating a monthlong festival dedicated to women and nonbinary-identifying writers and performers.
"Not to sound flippant, but if I waited to be confident or worried about the successfulness of many of my ideas, I doubt I would have started The Marsh or anything else," she says. "Projects/ideas come to me based on what seems to be needed at the time. Basically organically. And luckily, I had some funding to support this festival."
The Marsh's In Front of Your Eyes Performance Festival, a 12-show collection, runs Aug. 1-25 at its two storefront venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. Its writers and performers--Laura Jane Bailey, Tina D'Elia, Celina Demos, Elizabeth Du Val, Marga Gomez, Candace Johnson, Pearl Louise, Pearl Ong, Shubhra Prakash, Kathryn Seabron, Ananda Bena-Weber and Weisman--are a mix of first timers and veterans with in-development works.
For Marsh favorites like comedian-playwright Gomez, the offer to participate was too good to pass up, even as she finished the very long run of another Marsh show.
"I had been running my previous show ["Swimming with Lesbians"] for a solid year from San Francisco to New York and was ready to take a vacation," Gomez says. "I renewed my passport and was about to buy a plane ticket to Portugal when The Marsh invited me to their festival, specifically for new work. I did have the seeds of a new work. Opportunities to develop a show with a festival audience are rare, [so] I decided Portugal could wait--which sounds like a show title!"
Her entry "Spanish Stew," on Aug. 2, Aug. 4 and Aug. 10 in San Francisco, is another autobiographical piece, this one recounting her initial arrival in San Francisco in 1976, when she followed a romantic partner who soon broke up with her.
Romantic relationships also play a central role in "The Break-Up! A Latina Queer Torch Song," by fellow Marsh favorite D'Elia, on Aug. 10-11 in San Francisco. For D'Elia, telling a Latina lesbian love story is universal to the human experience.
"I wonder if we humans can't seem to get [relationships] right because that's part of why we are here?" she says. "Our heteronormative culture rewards people finding romantic love, getting engaged, married, etc. I would like to celebrate with each other for healing, building community, and building the muscle memory of ascending and descending the emotional mountain. I think this show is teaching me that breakups can be a mountain of emotion and it's helpful to hear 'Good job, you're halfway up Mount Everest!'"
Many of the festival shows are personally significant for the performers and writers, be they tragic or reverent.
Weisman will debut "180 Days. To Die. To Live.," in which an omnipresent narrator follows two terminally ill characters pondering legal end-of-life options. The piece, onstage in Berkeley Aug. 23-25, was inspired by Weisman's husband and a mutual friend; both were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Meanwhile, Shubhra Prakash's "Fontwala," on Aug. 3-4 and Aug. 9 in San Francisco, tells the story of a pioneering Indian typographer, loosely based on the writer-performer's uncle.
Prakash was as pleased to share the story with the world as she was fascinated to discover an unsung part of history: "Learning about my uncle Rajeev Prakash's work of designing one of the first keyboards that allowed for Indian scripts to be typed on the computer in the late '90s was a matter of great pride for me. Imagine when he did this work, Apple and Microsoft were just starting to become popular in America. While in India, at that same time, computers still had typing available in English, in a country with hundreds of languages and scripts, young entrepreneurs went to work to put their language on the computer, this technological magic machine," she says.
Prakash, who showed an early version of the play to her family in India, is pleased to expose the story to a wider audience. She also likes that it's much-needed break from typical white male stories. "The only way, in my opinion, to balance the overabundance [of white/male/hetero stories] is to create the work as artists, and as companies make the space for the work to thrive," she says. "It is a symbiotic relationship: one cannot do without the other. Also, we need to get behind those who are creating the work. I am able to have this opportunity because The Marsh has created the space for it."
Many festival contributors realize that their diverse voices are among those likely to be attacked these days.
D'Elia first performed her show online in 2021, shortly after the election and Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack. She admits that the world has changed a great deal since then.
"The anti-left backlash feels more intense, too," she says. "In 2020, I had more hope for the outcome and felt--even in 2016--the fascist dictator wouldn't win a second term. Today, I feel especially gutted by endless wars and the genocide in Palestine."
At the same time, she echoes Prakash, seeing how the festival may counter negativity in current headlines, and finding The Marsh a safe space. D'Elia says, "I feel my art reminds me of that solidarity. Envisioning a better future and taking any action we can [both] can and does lead to a better outcome. And perhaps this quirky solo show about finding community reminds me that even a 5% more sane reality is better than the alternative and we will get through this one, too."
In Front of Your Eyes Performance Festival runs Aug. 1-11 at The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St., San Francisco and Aug. 14-25 at The Marsh, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. Tickets are $15-$100, passes are $35-$135, at themarsh.org.
Charles Lewis III is a San Francisco-born journalist and performing artist. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED and San Francisco Examiner. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man's Idiot.wordpress.com.
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