Drama Masks: Fear not the fan

This is Drama Masks, a Bay Area performing arts column from a born San Franciscan and longtime theatre artist in an N95 mask. I talk venue safety and dramatic substance, or the lack thereof.

Before the start of the New Conservatory show below, founder and artistic director Ed Decker gave a pre-show curtain speech. Most of it was a pretty typical before dovetailing into acknowledging how—what’s the word?—shitty the world has been lately. It almost resembled the Serenity Prayer; both in its acceptance of that which is beyond our control and Decker’s promise that “Despite all the madness in the world, NCTC is moving ahead in resolve!” Regardless of the apparent loss of a regular NEA grant, he vowed that the upcoming shows would be produced entirely as planned.

“Full. Steam. Ahead!” he declared to the enthusiastic opening-night crowd.

If you’ve been following this column’s most recent entries, you’ll know that I’ve embraced the idea of joy as an act of rebellion. That doesn’t mean escaping into fantasy to ignore a world on fire. It means not succumbing to the depression in which sadistic oligarchs want us to wallow. When we laugh at one magnate getting verbally berated by the president of Ukraine and the other throwing a tantrum because people are vandalizing his company’s cars, it helps us to see how fragile those guys really are. Bullies only get away with tormenting when those who could (nay, should) stop them, enable them instead. Yet the slightest pushback reveals what cowards the bullies really are. If you wonder “what good is protesting in the streets?”, keep in mind that those in charge are narcissists who piss their pants at the mere thought of being disliked.

Laugh at them. It shatters their world into millions of pieces, and it just may make you feel better.

NOBODY LOVES YOU AT AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER

I know a person who is an ultimate Bachelor(ette) fanatic. This is someone who has live-tweeted every episode of every show in the franchise since time immemorial. It’s someone who can watch the parody Burning Love and tell you which specific moments were being lampooned, scene-for-scene.

Incidentally, Burning Love premiered in 2012, the same year as Itamar Moses and Gaby Alter’s similarly themed musical Nobody Loves You (through March 30 at ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater.) Though I haven’t spoken to my friend in some time, I sat in the ACT wondering exactly what they’d think of the show if they were sitting beside me. Would they chuckle at the skewering of reality shows on display or be bored by the swipes at such low-hanging fruit? Would they want to buy the soundtrack or wince at how all the songs are paint-by-numbers millennium-Broadway?

I won’t try to speak for them, but I think this is the worst show to hit an SF stage so far in 2025.

My friend would probably recognize an emotional resemblance in Tanya (Ashley D. Kelley), a reality show fan whose viewing kicks off the story. She drags her pretentious hipster boyfriend Jeff (a grating A.J. Holmes) to the sofa to watch the season finale of Nobody Loves You. Misinterpreting a message by the show’s suave host Byron (Jason Veasey, hands-down the best thing about this production), Tanya dumps Jeff in the hopes of finding new love as a contestant on the show.

In a move uncharacteristic of his oh-so-delicate sensibilities, Jeff auditions for the show in the hopes of winning Tanya back. He’s accepted, but finds that she wasn’t. Now, the obnoxious Ivy-leaguer decides to reveal the proverbial wizard behind the curtain and expose the artifice of the “reality” endeavor. Producer Jenny (Kuhoo Verma) could and should stop him, but allows him to keep on.

Anyone attempting this type of satire should be required to watch the 2000 film Galaxy Quest. That movie had every opportunity to take mean-spirited jabs at Star Trek and its eccentric fanbase, but opted instead to embrace those quirks as something unique. It makes pointed and cutting jokes about fandom that both fans and non-fans will get. It’s also gut-bustingly funny from start to finish.

Nobody Loves You is its Mirror Universe counterpart, though what it lacks in a bearded Spock, it makes up for the very sort of cruelty one would expect from the Terran empire. Moses and Alter have no new insights about the faux-“reality” of reality shows, so they’re content to punch downward at the fans who keep these shows churning out year after year.

Moses and Alter’s characters never rise above straw man stereotypes to personify anything remotely human. In the duo’s eyes, reality show fans are a subspecies, pulling humanity further down into a Nietzschian abyss. They reveal themselves as the true villains, through the unearned sense of superiority they have for a pop phenomenon they don’t understand. Look, I avoid reality shows too—in fact, I’ll be the first to say the genre peaked in the ‘90s when The Real World planted stakes in a certain City by the Bay—but I still enjoy the company of my friends who embrace the genre. Neither of us is better than the other.

ACT artistic director Pam McKinnon attempts some clever stage interpretations of TV-style zoom-ins (courtesy of set designer Jason Ardizzone-West), but this show is the very thing it claims to despise: an insult to the intelligence of everyone unfortunate enough to watch.

NOBODY LOVES YOU runs through March 30. ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, SF. Tickets and more info here.

WILD WITH HAPPY SAN FRANCISCO PREMIERE AT NEW CONSERVATORY THEATRE CENTER

Fandom commentary also plays a role in the show I saw just a few days later. As with the ACT show, this one features a character who seems to think the world must hear his utter disdain for an instantly recognizable pop culture franchise—this one being Disney fandom. The difference is that the protagonist here slowly realizes the fandom he despises played more crucial a role in his upbringing than even he realized. What’s more, his greatest epiphany is recognizing the joy it brings others.

Yet, what truly stands out to me about Colman Domingo’s Wild with Happy (SF premiere through April 6. New Conservatory Theatre Center) is that it’s loaded the sort of cultural specificities only one bred into that culture can instantly recognize. The culture in question is American Blackness. I’ve never been to any of the places our characters travel to, yet Domingo has such a natural handle on the characters that populate the story he wrote that one can look at them and immediately see the Black Baptist upbringing that informs so much of what he does.

Our story begins when Gil (Marcus J. Paige) comes to claim the remains of his late mother Adelaide (Carla BaNu DeJesus.) The dear woman hadn’t heard from her aspiring-actor son in years, but never doubted he’d return home one day—such is the enduring optimism of a Disney fan like Addy. Against the wishes of Adelaide’s twin sister Glo (also DeJesus), Gil has his mother cremated in keeping with his Spartan atheist nature. Yet, even Gil’s BFF Mo (James Arthur M.) and handsome funeral director Terry (Samuel del Rosario) can tell that Gil may be avoiding other issues under the guise of practicality.

This is a joyful show. Like Nobody Loves You, it has every opportunity to take easy shots at easy targets: organized religion; pop fandom; unnecessary tradition; etc. The difference is that Domingo looks at them all from both the inside and the out. No character feels like an avatar for ideology, but rather, a human who’s grown into their worldview due to specific life choices. Another difference is that Domingo’s show is actually funny.

Directed by NCTC regular ShawnJ West, the cast are allowed to play their characters as big as they like without losing their human grounding (save for Paige, who comes off too stiff at times.) The show is a celebration of joy as an affirmation of life, suggesting that even when one passes on, those who remain will still have something to celebrate.

That’s not a bad idea in times like these.

WILD WITH HAPPY San Francisco premiere runs through April 6. New Conservatory Theatre Center, SF. Tickets and more info here.