Here are the first few paragraphs from a great piece done by Robert Hurwitt in the SF Chronicle and The Gate, looking ahead to the opening of PianoFight in San Francisco where I will be performing in the remarkable space in the holiday “classic” A Merry Forking! Christmas. The show opens December 19. Please click on the link and read the whole thing. And, of course, I hope you can make one of the performances. Tickets should be part of your holiday gift-giving, don’t you think? My dad would like a plane ticket to San Francisco, Santa. (I know you read this. You know when I’ve been sleeping, for goodness sake.)
(By Robert Hurwitt, TheGate.com) Three guys walk into a theater to put on a play and, before they can start rehearsal, they’re handed the keys to the three-theater complex. A few years later and several blocks away, they’ve renovated a burned-out former Tenderloin landmark restaurant — the old Original Joe’s — and turned it into their own two-theater complex, with a full bar and restaurant, a cabaret stage, dressing rooms, green rooms, rehearsal spaces and even a small film production unit.
It didn’t happen quite that fast. For the PianoFight founding trio — Rob Ready, Dan Williams and Kevin Fink — it’s been close to a third of a lifetime since that first play in 2007.
They’ve produced, performed in and fostered quite a few productions since then, some ingeniously interactive, from their first real success with audience-judged new-plays contests (“ShortLived”) and Daniel Heath’s “Forking” plays (in which the audience keeps choosing which path the plot takes) to its “Throw Rotten Veggies at the Actors” nights, and pop-up events in Bolinas and beyond.
“We’re all 30 years old,” Ready says. “We started when we were 23.” (continued: click the photo below to read the rest of the article)
Great pics and history about PianoFight in San Francisco.
Find out more about PianoFight at their cool new website.
