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.
I’d missed opening night for Crumbs from the Table of Joy (through May 25 at Aurora Theatre Company) because of the same DOGE-ified public transit woes I’ve mentioned before. Finally got to see it this past Friday. No sooner had I begun writing this very column when Aurora announced they were “suspending” their 2025/’26 season due to financial woes. Crumbs is the penultimate show of their 2024/25 season, whose finale, Marga Gomez’s The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, in danger of not going up at all.
It’s eerie how the theme of instant change permeates the three works below. It’s even more disturbing that the news of a crucial Bay Area theatre reducing or cancelling its season has become so common. SF Mime Troupe have raised ~$141,000 of the $236,000 they asked for this year’s show, so they may yet have a proper production. Yet, the non-travelling Aurora—which also held an emergency fundraiser last year—has a large question mark hanging over its entire future (save for its upcoming collab with Marin Theatre Co.). Should it vanish, that’s one less Bay Area performance company offering union contracts, meaning one less way to make a guaranteed living off one’s art.
That’s where we are as a society right now: Republicans want to cut MedicAid to cover tax cuts for the rich; Democrat Guv Gav (Mr. Anti-Trans Talk Box) just declared war on the homeless for being homeless; and the twice-impeached Grifter-in-Chief was surrounded by Silicon Valley oligarchs as he openly accepted a jumbo jet bribe from Qatar. The rest of us are wondering when our next meals will be.
Yet, the work continues. No one will debate the major blow being dealt to the arts community, free speech, and the Bay Area itself. But these are the “rough times” we’ve always talked about. A lot of it is happening all at once, but it’s been building towards this for years; decades even. This is the moment when artists, activists, and everyone in-between shows whether they really stand by their ethics or will gladly sell their souls.
I gladly call myself a progressive because I know destruction is quick and ugly, but progress is lasting. The growing unity amongst arts orgs like Aurora-MTC, Campo Santo-Magic Theatre-Crowded Fire, and everyone at Eclectic Box is that it reinforces the power unity as preservation.
Remember that, ‘cause it’s the ones trying to go it alone who’ll be the first to cave or crumble.
CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY AT AURORA THEATRE COMPANY
I’ll say this for Aurora: you can miss opening night, but they sure-as-hell will put on a show worth seeking out on any eve. Director Elizabeth Carter probably had no idea she was directing the production that, in the worst-case scenario, will be Aurora’s last. Nevertheless, if Crumbs from the Table of Joy were the last that the company ever puts on, it would be the sort-of powerful final statement most of us only wish we could make when we see the end coming.
In Eisenhower’s America (when the rich paid 91-92% in taxes, by the way), pious Southern widower Godfrey Crump (David Everett Moore, giving one of his best-ever performances) has just moved to a basement flat in Brooklyn with his teenage daughters, Ernestine (played book-in-hand by understudy Courtney Williams) and Ermina (Jamella Cross), in the hopes of being closer to a celebrity preacher he hopes will ease his woes. They’re soon joined by Aunt Lily (Asia Nicole Jackson), sister to Godfrey’s late wife and unabashed Commie in the middle of the red scare. Lily’s far-leftist ideals and unabashed hedonism catch the attention of high school senior Ernestine, who has little idea what to make of the world into which she’ll soon graduate. Her outlook is only more muddled by her father’s sudden association with white German American Gerte Schulte (Carrie Paff).
Carter moves the characters around Randy Wong-Westbrooke’s gritty set like chess pieces, never letting Nottage’s dialogue falter. Like the playwright herself, the director never puts any character in a permanent position of power or allows any of them to be unequivocally right in their positions. Passionate, yes, but not always right. These are all characters dealing with sudden, incomparable loss in a country about to go through monumental change. They’re trying to stay afloat in a tsunami, which the shows director traverses with practiced skill.
With the theatre only about 60 percent full (very few of us masked), the CO² readings on my Aranet4 didn’t get as high as they usually do at an Aurora show, peaking around 1,557ppm during the second act. Sadly, Aurora hasn’t scheduled its usual livestream or on-demand replays for this show, but they are instituting mask-required performances at every Wednesday evening performance and Sunday matinee.
It’s definitely worth seeking out. I dare say it’s one of the best shows of 2025’s first half.
CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE OF JOY runs through May 25. Aurora Theatre Company, Berkeley. Tickets and more info here.
the aves WORLD PREMIERE AT BERKELEY REP
It can’t be a coincidence that Berkeley Rep, one of the many victims of NEA cuts, chose to fly a “Black Lives Matter” flag on opening night. The corporate-sponsored Rep isn’t the sort of organization one would expect to take kind of stand, but when DOGE-bags in the White House target the arts specifically because of diversity, response will reveal an artistic institution’s true character.
“True character” is an almost paradoxical term when it comes to Jiehae Park’s the aves (world premiere runs through June 8), given that the low-key sci-fi comedy revolves around people who switch bodies as easily as they switch clothes. Old people become young and vital, young folks hope to gain wisdom in elderly shells. Yet, the core of who characters are never changes, for better and for worse. It’s like Celine Song’s brilliant film Past Lives with a hint of “impossible tech” that’s never actually seen. It’s a quiet, introspective dramedy about how degradation—of both tech and body—is inevitable. As always, it’s how we embrace that inevitability that matters.
There were maybe 20 to 30 percent of us masked at the opening-night full house. As usual, the Rep’s HVAC was top-notch, with CO² readings on my Aranet4 peaking around 1,169ppm by the end of the 90-min. show. The last mask-required performances will be on Sunday, May 18 at 2pm and 7pm.
the aves world premiere runs through June 8. Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Tickets and more info here.
COMPTON’S CAFETERIA RIOT AT 835 LARKIN
If it seems that Bay Area theatre patrons have been hearing about the immersive play Compton’s Cafeteria Riot (open-ended run at 835 Larkin) for several years now, it’s because we have. One part “dinner” (nay, pancake breakfast) theatre, one drag-activist performance piece, the show is Mark Nassar and Co’s years-in-the-making dramatization of the infamous 1966 queers-vs.-cops riot in SF that pre-dated Stonewall, yet almost never gets mentioned in mainstream accounts.
In short: it was worth the wait. It runs for roughly one hour and director Ezra Reaves doesn’t waste a moment of the time spent in Roxy Rose’s wax museum-like retro set. Most of the time, the audience’s close contact with the cast of off-duty drag queen and sex worker characters feels like we’ve stumbled into a secret clubhouse. When the SFPD presence makes itself known, it almost feels as if we’re trapped in a place from which there’s no escape.
Queer characters debate ethics, ghosts of characters revisit the past, hate crimes happen before our very eyes. In one hour, we get an up-close (if not as bloody) recreation of how history turned on a dime in one of the most violent ways possible. That’s the thing about radical change: it can be ugly, even if those doing the changing look fabulous in their makeup and wigs.
No wonder the show is already sold out for weeks (if not months).
Knowing the pancake meal was part of the experience, I wore a flexible pink MaskC KN95 instead of my usual solid Flo Mask. I haven’t been in a proper restaurant since February 2020, so I was careful to hold my breath and always cover my nose as I took lightning-quick bites, my MedifyAir MA-10 pointed at me at all times. Despite the place being full of patrons and performers, CO² readings stayed pretty steady, peaking at 1,813ppm by the final bow. In short, I was glad to see the show, and I was equally glad I took steps not to leave with anything other than a program and a recreation of The Vanguard.
COMPTON’S CAFETERIA RIOT currently has no set end for its run. 835 Larkin, SF. Tickets and more info here.
