Mission Mission

Governor Brown says California won’t stand for this kind of thing. But we’ll see what happens.

The Examiner reports:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents may have sought to detain an undocumented immigrant on Thursday morning at a building that houses a preschool in San Francisco, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

The action, which sources familiar with immigration called “unusual,” comes only a day after President Donald Trump signed two executive orders that — among other actions — called for 10,000 new ICE agents to perform deportations across the country.

[...]

Visiting a preschool and other sites containing children is prohibited for ICE officers under a 2011 Department of Homeland Security “sensitive locations” memorandum, save for exceptional circumstances.

“They had batons, they had walkie talkies, they had police belts and vests on top of their black uniforms. I didn’t notice if they had guns,” said Jaime Aragon, services coordination manager at Good Samaritan.

Read on.

You’ll definitely feel some feelings:

Once and Future Band, from Oakland, headlines their own record release show tonight at the Chapel on Valencia Street. Get tickets here.

And you can get the new album at the show or order it directly from Castle Face.

Now seems like an important time to revisit critiques of a traditional women’s role in society. So when we heard that Hedda Gabler (the classic Ibsen play about the iconic female protagonist, Hedda Gabler, and her struggle for power and freedom in a patriarchal world) was being performed by the Cutting Ball Theater company at EXIT Theater we knew we had to go out for some drama talk and drinks.

Britney Frazier is Hedda Gabler. Photo by Liz Olson

Brittany: I really loved it. I have a soft spot for Hedda Gabler since I studied it in college, and she’s such an amazing character. I think they did a great job making it really fast and light, which isn’t easy. The whole cast was really strong, especially Hedda (Britney Frazier), she was amazing!

Katie: Yeah, she was great.

B: She had such a stage presence. Just a half smile, or a slight turn of her head said so much. Total girl-crush. I just loved it. I have no idea if you did, or if I’m just a Hedda head maybe.

K: I don’t know if I LOVED it, but I certainly didn’t dislike it. I did really enjoy how fresh it felt. It kinda reminded me of the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet- edgy and artistic. Particularly what they did with the music. It almost felt like they were scoring the play at the beginning which was cool. I’m just not as big a fan of old-school plays like this. I mean Chekhov and Ibsen are fine, but they can sometimes be a slog.

B: I think that’s what they did so well in this production though. That script has some dense language, and normally it runs over two hours. This show was 75 minutes flat. It was fast. They got in, out, and told the story. If you’re a purist you’d probably be upset with how much they cut, but I didn’t really miss anything. They had such urgency to their performances it made the show exciting.

K: True, and it was visually really cool. An inventive set, and great use of such a small space.  I loved the costumes too. Her dresses in particular were beautiful. Hedda was so powerful. She brought this sense of danger and urgency to the show, it was refreshing.

The Verdict: A vibrant and fresh take on a classic piece of theater. Go see it!

The Drama Talk: This production does a great job of distilling the story of Hedda Gabler down to its essence. It feels fresh, while still honoring the world of the play that Ibsen originally envisioned. Cutting Ball pulls the symbolic imagery from Ibsen’s script and manifests it onstage with a minimalist set full of flowers. Britney Frazier does a masterful job as Hedda, bringing to life one of the greatest female roles in theater. Her powerful performance holds the same power over the audience as Hedda holds over the people in her life. While Hedda is trapped in the domestic life that society demands of women, this production does not feel trapped in the past, and makes for a refreshing night of great theater.

The Drinks: After the show we wanted to go somewhere that kept the energy going. We went a few blocks down to Tradition, which if you haven’t been yet is a totally awesome bar, with great drinks and very cool seating (the have private booths you can reserve). Katie got the Grand Hotel and Brittany got the Molecular and we toasted to a refreshing night of drama talk and drinks.

Hedda Gabler runs through February 26th at the EXIT Theater in the TL. Performances are Thursday-Sunday. Tickets, which can be purchased through the Cutting Ball Theater website, seem to go up in price as the run goes on, so go early to get cheaper seats.  Prices range from $27-$45 for General Admission, there are also discount student tickets available.

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Pops Bar is bringing you a new party this Saturday, Rump Shaker! To get you through the week, here is a vinyl mix of nineties jams to put your azz in the bootie shaking mood.

So free your mind/booty with hip-hop, house and other loose grooves assembled by Teemoney + DJ Stef this Saturday.

Check out this week’s full entertainment line up at Pops Bar:

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Do you remember the 2004 award winning film with Johnny Depp called Finding Neverland? It’s about the playwright, J. M. Barrie, and the story of writing the original play Peter Pan. We really like the film, which made us excited for the musical adaptation to come to SF. It’s usually either a super-hit or mega-miss when a popular film gets made into a musical, so we headed to the Orpheum Theatre to see which of those this one was going to be.

Katie: Wow. I’m disappointed. This was a business as usual musical for me. It felt like the producers pulled a lets-just-check-the-boxes and throw together a musical based on an award winning film with a popular story and cash-in. This story and music didn’t move me. There was no soul or depth. I didn’t really care about the characters. The music was super generic. I don’t understand how this got green lit. Maybe this was for kids?

Brittany: I don’t think it was 100% business as usual. There were some interesting and beautiful visuals (which you expect from Tony Award winning director Diane Paulus), but you’re right about the music and the play generally, it felt very cookie-cutter. I liked that they tried to create a fantastical spectacle, but even some of the background video projections were too much, they almost looked like screen savers.

K: Yes! I couldn’t think of a word for those wonky projections but that is exactly what it looked like!

B: The music was the big disappointment for me, it didn’t even match the period of when the show was set. Finding Neverland is set in the early 1900s and it sounded like shitty pop-music. I didn’t like any of the songs.

K: Me either, nothing was memorable. From the first 5 minutes I knew this was going to be generic and corny as all hell!

B: Despite the mediocre score and book though, there were some strong performances. Tom Hewitt, who played the producer, Charles Frohman, and the id-version of Captain Hook was fascinating to watch. Also I was so impressed by the kids in the show. The boys were really sweet and genuine and the boy who played Peter (we saw Ben Krieger) was great! So it’s not like there weren’t good elements to this production but the play itself was not good. It’s just not a very good musical.

The Verdict: Finding Neverland was a miss as far as we’re concerned, but some of the kids in the audience seemed to be pretty taken with the whimsical staging. If you have a kid in your life that loves Peter Pan they may like it, but otherwise we’d say sit this one out.

The Drama Talk: This is a very pretty production with some great costumes, sets and actors, but it stops there. There isn’t a single memorable song. The music and lyrics were done by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy, who both worked on the X-Factor (the British American Idol spin-off). They have much more impressive pop-music resumes than they do musical theatre, which may explain some of the terribly corny out of place pop-power-ballads in the show. The Peter Pan story is so well loved that you can’t help but smile when Tinkerbell appears, but the play relies on these easy moments of nostalgia to keep the audience engaged while not creating anything truly unique. We’d rather just see Peter Pan again.

The Drinks: We were tired after seeing this show (it’s a 2 hour and 30 minute show with a 15 minute intermission). We needed to go somewhere we could get a strong and quick drink so we headed to Oddjob on 9th and Mission, which satisfied both of those needs.

Finding Neverland runs through February 12th at The Orpheum Theatre. There are $40 both virtual and in-person rush tickets available. You can check-out the SHN website for rush instructions. Goldstar also currently has tickets for $75 (normally priced $105).

San Francisco is often referred to as Neverland.  It makes sense then, that a kid that grows up in the Bay Area would be a perfect cast-member for the first tour of Finding Neverland, a Broadway hit about the origins of the Peter Pan story based on the 2004 film by the same name.

Tyler Patrick Hennessy, a young Walnut Creek native, is living the stage-kid dream and is currently on the road playing the roles of Jack and Michael in Finding Neverland. When Drama Talk & Drinks learned that we had some local talent on the tour, we wanted to sit down with Tyler to learn a little more about him and the show (so we could legitimately say we knew him before he was a famous).

DT&D: Tyler, How did you first get involved in theater?

Tyler: My three older sisters all did theater first, and it looked like a lot of fun, so I wanted to try it. That’s how I originally got involved.

DT&D: Why should people come see this show, Finding Neverland? 

T: I think people should come and see the show because it’s a lot of fun, they get to have time to be a kid again.

DT&D: What’s it like to be on tour?

T: It’s really fun. I like all the people in the cast. They’re so nice.

DT&D: What’s the most exciting part of the tour?

T: I had never really been past Arizona before, so when I got to go to New York for the auditions, and then to rehearsals in Buffalo, that was really exciting. I love performing. It’s really fun to do the play in front of different audiences and see their reactions. I’m excited to perform in LA, and in San Francisco for my friends and family.

DT&D: Before you were cast in this tour you primarily did shows in the Bay Area, what are some of your favorite places you’ve performed?

T: I had a lot of fun when I was in Ragtime at Stage 1 Theater [ed. in Newark, California] I also have been in shows at the Lesher Center for the Arts [ed.in Walnut Creek] which I really liked.

DT&D: Do you have a favorite thing to do in SF or the Bay Area when you’re not in a play?

T: I like watching Giants games with my dad. Buster Posey is my favorite.

If you want to check out this soon-to-be Bay Area celebrity, Finding Neverland opens at SHN’s Orpheum Theater on January 18th and runs through February 12th. Tickets are available on their website and range from $55-$125, or if you want to try your luck, they have a limited number of $40 rush tickets available for each night of the show – rush instructions here. Stay tuned for our DT&D review of the show coming soon!

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It’s a bit different now.

[via The Tens]

Spin The Night at Pops Bar is a fun boozy filled evening showcasing the local heroes working hard to keep the music scene alive and well in San Francisco. No particular genre, just music that inspires us to party on. This Wednesday features Miss LonelyHeart. Come out and support your local music scene!

Check out this week’s full entertainment line up at Pops Bar:

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