The cold and rain is apropos to the bleak state of the world. Sometimes it seems we’re helpless before the advancing tide of hate, callousness, and greed.
What we need is some chicken soup for the liberal soul.
Acclaimed Bay Area folk musicians Marcus Duskin, Carol Denny, and Jim Nelson will revive your progressive heart with classic labor and protest songs like Workers of the World Awaken, I Really Like the Cops, and more. We’ll spread around the laughter with comedy sketches, and throw in some righteous indignation with the sermonizing of Reverend Woo.
Performed at the Freight & Salvage 2/25/19
What happens when everything you love has been taken away? Call God, of course. But will God stop playing Xbox long enough to listen to you? Follow one drunk homeless man, one unscrupulous preacher, and one… maybe two inquisitive narrators on an irreverent journey to decipher the meaning of loss.
Clips from the show, recordings of the post-show panel discussions, and more here >>
The fateful moments—the minutes or days where life careens out of our control. Do we face what’s around the corner? Join us for a special night of solo theater when four talented performers share the moment their lives were inalterably recast—times epiphanal and bizarre.
One night, four performances
by Marcus Duskin
The Folks This! Songbook is a musical memoir which features songs collected by the author throughout his life from age nine to the present, performed with a four piece ensemble including Carol Denney, Jim Nelson and Elliot Warren. Interspersed between the songs are stories about coming of age, race relations, revolutionary communism, muses and mentors, and performing protest songs (for better or worse).
Marcus Duskin is a co-organizer of the East and has been involved in theatre since the age of nine as an actor, singer, writer, producer and director. His interests include musical theatre/opera, children’s theatre, political theatre and solo performance. He is the founder of Folk This!, a protest music ensemble and “News From Nowhere”, a journal focused on creative resistance. For this showcase he will be presenting excerpts from “The Folk This! Songbook”, which will be premiering at the upcoming San Francisco Fringe Festival in September.
by Peter Griggs
Killer Queen is a coming-of-age story that follows the life of a fictional gay boxer, Paco the Pink Pounder, from his early boyhood conflicts family, school, and church through his coming out and later struggles as a minority within a minority group as a gay person of color. The British rock band Queen serves as a source of consolation and inspiration to the young Paco, who fashions himself as a kind of Freddie Mercury for the boxing ring.
Peter Griggs’ work includes collaborations; with Boathouse Productions, and EmSpace Dance theater. Recently at Shotgun players “Eurydice” with the Erika Chong Shuch Performance Project. He is founder of the Burning Monk Collective which has produced three of his original works “Subrosa” , “The Musical Prostitute” “Killer Queen,” Peter is so honored to be part of East’s Solo Showcase.
by Barbara Saunders
Three cats, a sweet Haight-Ashbury Victorian, free bagels, and a pot-grower housemate. What could possibly go wrong?
Barbara Saunders is a writer and performer. She has featured at That Really Happened storytelling series, Saturday Night Special poetry series, and the Last Word reading series in Berkeley. Her writing has won awards from the Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, the Cat Writers’ Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Love, Loss… Chicken
by Steven D. Low
What happens when everything you love has been taken away? Call God, of course. But will he stop playing Xbox long enough to listen to you?
Tastes Like Chicken premiers in it’s entirety starting Oct. 20 at The Monkey House.
Steven D. Low is a co-organizer of the East. He’s been creating and performing solo theater since 2000. His travelogue of a six month road trip through the US, The Yellowfever Express, featured at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Combining scholarship with biography, Chink Monkey, successfully debuted at the Phoenix Theater in San Francisco and explored the intersection of identity and power in interracial relationships.
Part of the 3rd annual The East: Solo Performance Laboratory performance showcase. Performed 8/19/18 at The Monkey House in Berkeley, CA
Rev. Woo’s Spring Sermon
In these tumultuous times, Reverend Woo’s words brings spiritual rejuvenation and squeezes epiphanies from the wounded soul.
Part of the Radical Acoustic cabaret with, Carol Denney, Marcus Duskin, Peter Griggs, Barbara Jaspersen, and Christy Rodgers.
Performed on 5/19/18 at Cafe Du Soleil in San Francisco, CA.
They embarrass us, they’re infuriating, and we certainly didn’t choose them… but we love them anyway. Join us for a special night of solo theater, when four gifted solo performers share their stories of family–intimate and absurd.
Performances by: Steven D. Low with Used to be Strangers, Tastes Like Chicken; Marcus Duskin, What’s it Like Being White; Barbara Sanders, Crepuscule; The T, PKs
Part of the 2nd annual The East: Solo Performance Laboratory performance showcase.