Saturday, June 20 & Sunday, June 21!
Penny Arcade’s
OLD QUEEN

Marsh Main Stage
Saturday at 5pm
Sunday at 7pm

The password “queen” gets you a $10 ticket!

"I am nothing if not the dutiful daughter of New York's criminal, psychedelic, intellectual, homosexual avant garde."
- Penny Arcade

Old Queen. The two most dreaded words in gay male culture! But was it always this way? "Not so," says Penny Arcade who, as a teenager, knocked around in gay bars from Hartford, Connecticut, Providence, Rhode Island, Boston, and Provincetown and finally at 16 washed up on the shores of Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. She sought refuge and enlightenment in the gay bars and gay coffee shops from the early 1960's, the fomenting place of modern culture where the ridiculous met the sublime, where criminality forged with intellectual innovation, where low art met high art, and where the outsider status of homosexuality was a breeding ground for unique world views. Presiding over these palaces of the synthesis of culture were the old queens.

Says Arcade, "When I was 14, 15, 16... my goal every night was to get to sit at the table with the old queens. A difficult invitation to get for a teenage girl. But the old queens knew everything I wanted to know for them conversation was more than an art, it was an existential nectar that gave form to the power of the word. The old queens knew everything about life and travel, the human condition about the world, this one and others and I craved their company. They did not tolerate banality and theirs was a fierce and unapologetic intelligence and wit. Just sitting at a table of old queens in a dark bar or fluorescent coffee shop, lifted your IQ twenty points! Unbeknownst to me, I was on a trajectory to be an old queen. And I am finally an old queen... in a world that has no understanding of the value of old queens."

As the host and producer of the long-running "Lower East Side Biography Project" and the feature-length "Stemming the Tide of Cultural Amnesia", with long time collaborator Steve Zehentner Arcade has a demonstrated commitment to preserving the rich cultural and intellectual history of the off the radar NY downtown and the East Village and Lower East Side. For the first time in her theater work she revisits these neighborhoods from the perspective of the teenage, runaway Susanna Ventura.

Arcade's theatrical memoir evokes the magic and memory of the gay men who raised her: from little known figures like Jamie Andrews, the gay man who took her in off the streets, gave her a place to live,and took her from performing on the streets to the stages of The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous. Jackie Curtis Bobby Beers, Ritta Redd, Herbert Hunke, Joel Markman, to seminal figures like John Vacarro, Charles Henri Ford,HM Koutoukas, Jack Smith, and Andy Warhol. "Old Queen" is latest offering from a veteran playwright and performance artist at the peak of her powers. Expect Arcade's signature blend of spot-on impersonations, trenchant wit, and theatrical political humanism. It's an intoxicating combination you won't want to miss!

June 5 thru June 27, 2009
Kenny Yun’s
LETTUCETOWN LIES


Marsh Studio Theater Upstairs
Frid & Sat at 8pm

The password “lettuce” gets you a $10 ticket this weekend!

“One of the most extraordinary solo artists I\'ve ever witnessed onstage. Brilliant and painfully funny. Awesome.” – Ann Randolph

“Funny…terrific” – SF Bay Times

He's Gay. He's Asian. He's coming of age in Lettucetown, aka Salinas. If that’s not bad enough, he's got a crush on a hick. If that’s not bad enough, his friends think fun is blowing up a field of lettuce. If that’s not bad enough, he has to sneak to the highschool bathroom to buy drugs and Donna Summer records. Adolescence! It's fun, it's lies. In Lettucetown.

Kenny Yun has appeared in film shorts and plays, including local productions of Twelfth Night, The Cherry Orchard, and The Tempest. He also performs standup comedy all over the Bay Area and was a winner of the Russian River Comedy Competition. Yun studied acting at Studio ACT and the Berkeley Repertory Theater and has a degree in English Literature from UC Berkeley.

Here’s a link to a youtube video preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ct2KJMZLpwI

Through July 18 2009

Don Reed’s
EAST 14th:
True Tales of a Reluctant Player


Marsh Main Stage
Friday at 8pm
Saturday at 8:30pm
Sunday at 3pm

The password ‘cadillac’ gets you a $15 ticket this weekend.


“Hilarious. The audience can’t stop laughing…Don Reed plays all the characters with both ease and inexhaustible energy”
– The New Yorker

“A graceful genial performer... It’s hard not to love 1970’s funk and soul and Don Reed.” – New York Times

NAACP Double Nominee – Best Actor & Best Playwright

Back in 1970’s Oakland, his stepfather forced him to be a straight A, God-fearing church boy - but he wanted to be just like his dear old Dad. Too bad he didn’t know dear old Dad was a pimp.

Don Reed has performed and written for film, television and theatre. His work on an HBO special of up-and-coming comedians years ago caught the attention of Bill Cosby and led to the creation of a guest-starring role for him on “The Cosby Show.” Don went on to play the recurring role of Chip in “The Cosby Show” spin-off “A Different World” and was recently in "Bee Movie Shorts" starring Jerry Seinfeld.

Don has performed all over the country and opened for Tony Award winner Tommy Tune. You may have heard his voice on: "Spiderman", "The Flintstones", "Johnny Quest", "ER", "Frasier", "Friends", "Scrubs", "Will & Grace", "Law & Order", "SNL" and The Golden Globes. He has written/developed screenplays with Spike Lee's 40 Acres and Mule Filmworks and Maverick Films.

For more information, visit www.east14th.com

July 19, 2009

PHILOSOPHY TALK
with Ken Taylor and John Perry

Marsh Main Stage Theater
Sun at 12pm & 3pm

This is an afternoon of two live radio broadcasts.

12:00 show: "What are Words Worth?" with Professor Geoff Nunberg, an American linguist and professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. He also serves as the language, usage, and society commentator for National Public Radio's Fresh Air, and is the author of "The Years of Talking Dangerously." Hosts Ken Taylor and John Perry welcome back Professor Nunberg to explore how words shape our minds. Why do we adopt new words, or give old words new meaning? Can we eliminate a concept by renaming it, or eliminating the word for it?

3:00 show: "War, Sacrifice and the Media" with Professor Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley and author of "Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?" The media often presents a sanitized and one sided narrative of war, torture and other forms of violence that blots out the faces and silences the voices of many of the main victims: the refugees, the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture, and the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement. Join hosts John Perry and Ken Taylor as they probe the limits of the media representations of the real human costs of war and other forms of violence.

October 17 thru November 22, 2009

Charlie Varon’s new play
RABBI SAM

Marsh Main Stage Theater
Sat at 8pm
Sun at 7pm

Tickets are on sale now!

“A stunning tour-de-force” – George Haymont. MyCulturalLandscape.com

“Mercurial genius of solo performance… dazzling virtuosity… wildly entertaining… the two hours fly by.”
– Rob Hurwitt. SF Chronicle

“Charlie Varon is very funny” – The New Yorker

“An uncannily gifted mimic” – Washington Post

“San Francisco’s brightest satiric star” – SF Chronicle

Rabbi Sam is the spiritual genius who will bring American Judaism into the 21st century. Or he’s completely out of his mind. You decide.

San Francisco phenomenon Charlie Varon is back with his first new full-length play in nine years. The Marsh is thrilled to have back on stage our edgy, comic genius!

RABBI SAM tells the story of a man who wants to reinvent American Judaism, and the congregation that hires him. Some people love the new rabbi. Some can’t stand him. And, of course, some can’t stand each other.

Varon plays all 12 characters, including the rabbi and eight contentious board members. Funny, moving, bursting with energy and ideas, RABBI SAM is a play for Jews, Gentiles and anyone who has ever attended a meeting.

The San Francisco Chronicle has credited Charlie Varon with “redefining the art form” of solo theater. He’s the creator of the hit shows Rush Limbaugh in Night School and The People’s Violin, and director of Dan Hoyle’s Tings Dey Happen.

http://www.charlievaron.com/