#bay-area-theatre

#bay-area-theatre

Oasis was dead. It was a certainty. I was there when Peaches Christ's planned tribute to Heklina suddenly became a wake for the very venue hosting the tribute. I was there in October when the company's annual Rocky Horror production went from ridiculously raunchy to absolutely heart-breaking. I, like all of you, have spent the last half-year reading the announcements and comforting friends as we counted down the days 'til their New Year's Eve swan song.

For instance, I didn't expect to be writing this very piece just days after PG&E shit the bed (again) and sent most of our fair city into a days-long blackout. I didn't expect said blackout a mere two weeks after a PG&E gasline caused another residential explosion in the East Bay. And I certainly didn't expect to write that the aforementioned blackout made notoriously-homocidal robo-taxis cause the very sort of gridlock everyone was expecting to happen from closing The Great Highway.

This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof. Personally, I could've done without all of last week's apotheosis of a dead fascist. Never mind the poetic justice of a right-winger being shot by another right-winger; everyone from Guv-Gav to the NY Times painted this guy as some once-in-a-generation figure.