48 Hills editors and writers are weighing in with their favorite things in the Bay Area as part of our 50th Best of the Bay. Tell us what you love in the Best of the Bay 2024 Readers’ Poll!
I write these words having just agreed to attend opening night for the season premiere show from La Lengua. That’s the SF-based Latine company that frequently produces Spanish-language theater smack-dab in the middle of a primarily English speaking market. It’s produced some of the best shows I’ve seen in recent years. With an emphasis on stories by, about, and (not exclusively) for Latinas, it makes sense that the company usually performs in the Mission District’s Brava! for Women in the Arts. That Mission-based company and venue that’s been adding a diverse woman’s perspective to SF’s theater scene since 1986.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that, like many vital independent theatres, Brava! is in danger of closing. Since early June, they’ve been holding a fundraiser to help keep the lights on an provide a vital space for marginalized theater, particularly theater with a femme vantage point. The past few years have seen the closure of so many similar spaces—EXIT Theatre, PianoFight, pretty soon Cutting Ball—that it’s easy to wonder if SF has any remaining theaters that aren’t BroadwaySF satellites. For every Stage Werx resurrected as Eclectic Theatre, there’s a black box closed forever.
But Brava! isn’t a black box. Sure, it has its tiny studio upstairs and storefront cabaret, but the main theater—formerly the York Theatre movie house from the 1920s—is a grand, 300-seat palace that once hosted vaudeville shows; the sort of venue indie artists only dream of performing in. I say that having done so myself as part of a 2021 show by BATCO, another PoC theatre company that frequently calls the Brava! Theatre home.
I was happy to reserve my place at La Lengua’s show because they’re a great company performing in a crucial venue. I have no qualms about encouraging others to do the same during Brava!’s ongoing fundraiser. It would be a shame for the next show there to be its last.
BRAVA! FOR WOMEN IN THE ARTS 2781 24th Street, SF. More info here.
