San Francisco - Alison Bing [27]
San Francisco tantalizes movie buffs with thousands of film premieres and classic revivals each year, thanks to plucky independent cinemas and a packed calendar of annual film festivals. As a shooting location, San Francisco’s filmography is checkered with perfectly dreadful rom-coms, in the apparent hope that such a picturesque backdrop might detract from such fatally flawed setups as Mark Ruffalo falling for Reese Witherspoon in a coma (Just Like Heaven), or Jennifer Aniston falling for the geezer who seduced her mom and grandma (Rumor Has It). To see San Francisco in some of its better star turns before you arrive, check out opposite. For classic noir films set in SF, see the boxed text.
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THEATER
Before San Francisco was a foodie town, or a tech town, or even much of a town at all, it was the West Coast’s home of independent theater. Sure, there are still major productions destined for the lights of Broadway and London – the American Conservatory Theater sees to that, with breakthrough productions by Tony Kushner (Angels in America), Robert Wilson and William S Burroughs (Black Rider), Tom Stoppard (Arcadia) and David Mamet (Oleanna, November).
For better or for worse, depending on how likely a tune is to haunt you, San Francisco also serves as the proving ground for musicals such as Rent and Phantom of the Opera in the grand Downtown theaters such as the Curran and the Orpheum. One homegrown musical event is Beach Blanket Babylon Click here, a drag spoof now into its third decade. But San Francisco’s true claims to dramatic fame are the sights seen nightly in the city’s small theater spaces, where (for a change) you really don’t know what will happen next.
In the 1960s several cutting-edge companies opened in San Francisco, and the scene has staked its claim on the public imagination ever since. San Francisco’s answer to Glasgow is the annual Fringe Festival at the Exit Theater and the boundary-pushing Theater Artaud. Magic Theatre gained a national reputation in the ’70s, when Sam Shepard was the theater’s resident playwright, and it’s still one of the city’s most important theaters. The Magic continues to stage works like Shepard’s 2006 political satire The God of Hell and premieres by such established playwrights as Edna O’Brien and David Mamet, but also provides a platform for rising stars like Betty Shamieh and Josh Kornbluth.
For the past few years, novelist Denis Johnson of Jesus’ Son fame has been a playwright at Intersection for the Arts, the plucky multi-use space whose tiny theater showcases brave new worlds, playwrights and ideas. For a listing of theaters, Click here.
If you can’t splash out for tickets, even at half-price in Union Square (see the boxed text, for details), do not despair, gentle theater-goer: free street theater happens to be a San Francisco specialty. Beyond its spontaneous sidewalk scenes and quasi-daily protests, the city offers free Shakespeare (Click here) and traveling shows around town by the San Francisco Mime Troupe. No, not that kind of mime – think The Simpsons with a leftist bent, a dose of kabuki kitsch, and just enough burlesque to make sure you’re paying attention. Troupe founder RG Davis won a free speech case way back in 1962, and ever since, the Troupe has been gleefully trying (and sometimes succeeding) to get itself arrested and get audiences on their feet (whichever happens first).
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top picks
PERFORMING ARTS VENUES
San Francisco Symphony
SF Opera at War Memorial Opera House
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
San Francisco Performances at Herbst Theater
Intersection for the Arts
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