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’ve got SoMA FM’s “Sonic Universe” channel playing in the background. Its space-like jazzy instrumentals are a much-needed mental balm for the daily stress of life. Between the acclaimed Aurora Theatre company announcing its closure on Monday, the AD of another company e-mailing me about its own not-yet-announced closure, and the stress of still owing half the rent for my unheated room in the Sunset flophouse where I stay, I’ve got plenty of cortisol-raising factors that have nothing to do with the world being on fire.
I certainly don’t fault most folks for leaning into coping mechanisms, so long as they don’t do lasting harm. One healthy one: SF is the quintessential walk-around city.
When I moved to the Sunset last year, I expected to frequently walk along Ocean Beach, but haven’t even been near it since I got here. Fortunately, Golden Gate Park and The Haight are close enough to stroll through on a regular basis. Walking through Haight often leads me to Market, then into The Mission, where some time in Dolores Park keep me from wanting to tear my hair out. Even seeing shows in the East Bay offers me good reason to hoof around Oakland for a few hours.
Whatever it is for you, I hope it works without doing damage. The world seems like one big wave of bad news with no clear sign of when the tide will pull back. We can survive the tide, but now’s the time where we hit on lots of rocks on the beach. In spite of all that, find something in the sea to focus on and let it clear your head. Then you can get back to swimming.
Incidentally, the two shows below both revolve around the mind being pushed to its breaking point.
SCAT-TER BRAIN AT THE MARSH–BERKELEY
Western trauma is often amplified in the lives of its marginalized citizens. Part of that has to do with being the recipient of much of that trauma; another part has to do with a lack of trust in proven healing methods. Black folks, for instance, have no shortage of inherited trauma from Eurocentric violence, but we’re also likely to turn away legit treatments and therapies in favor of homeopathic snake oils. (I’ve spent the last 5½ years arguing with Black folks who wholeheartedly believe anti-vax bullshit.) Hell, my first time in therapy was done against my will by family attempting to “fix” me like a car owner getting tires rotated.
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Candace Johnson knows full well how dismissive people can be of someone Black—particularly, a Black woman—seeking help for their mental health. Early on in her solo show, Scat-ter Brain: The Music of ADHD (through September 13 at The Marsh-Berkeley), she’s reluctant to take the advice of a life coach and see a psychiatrist. Upon doing so, she’s diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD, which answers a lot of questions she didn’t know to ask.
To put us in her average state of mind, we follow her through sessions with her gratingly-chipper therapist, act as students in the university gospel class she teaches, and jump from memory to memory as the gifted, opera-trained youngster shows incredible talent, but risks having her university goals derailed because the professor of a single class can’t hold her focus.
If that all seems like a lot to follow, that’s the point: the show bounces from scene-to-scene to mimic Johnson’s mind ping-ponging from topic-to-topic, almost non-stop. Major moments are often accompanied by original songs that have a childlike manner of contextualizing the quirks of her life.
To the credit of writer-performer Johnson (there’s no credited director, though Marsh founder Stephanie Weisman is credited as a “creative consultant”), the show leans more on method than madness, allowing the audience ample time to catch our bearings with each transition. Johnson has an affable, relatable presence that makes one instantly empathize with her when, say, an important audition is torpedoed by her unknowingly stacking the music sheets out of order. Even if one doesn’t share her diagnosis, one doesn’t want her to fail anymore than one would want to fail oneself. And even though not all the songs feel necessary, none of them are bad.
About half the opening-night audience were masked at the Berkeley Marsh, which is noticeably larger than its SF counterpart. As such, CO² readings on my Aranet4 stayed relatively low, peaking around 1,088ppm at the end of the two-act/90-min show.
If the comments from fellow audience members are to be believed, Johnson’s play nails many of the idiosyncrasies of neurological conditions the way most interpretations don’t. Several of the folks sitting around me spoke of several actions and attention-splitting details ringing true in ways most of us wouldn’t understand. I can’t fully speak to that end, but the result is a pretty entertaining story by and about someone trying to maintain in a world that doesn’t care for people who don’t fit the mold.
SCAT-TER BRAIN: THE MUSIC OF ADHD runs through September 13 at The Marsh-Berkeley. Tickets and further info here.
THE RETURN BY GOLDEN THREAD PRODUCTIONS
What happens when the oppressed parrots the words of the oppressor? How does a former oppressor support the oppressed without causing more harm? When Israeli Jew Talia (the always watchable Elissa Beth Stebbins) steps into an auto shop, she’s surprised to find a Palestinian Arab called Yakub (Nick Musleh) as the only one working this late. More than that, she’s pretty sure they know one another, which means she owes him an apology. But if she’s right, she may find she’s talking to someone who doesn’t even recognize himself anymore.
By pure happenstance, the opening night of The Return (through August 24 in The Garrett above ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, SF) coincided with the Israeli government bragging about killing Al-Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif. It was an almost-painfully-perfect accentuation of the epiphanies made by this play’s characters. Since October 7, the world has suddenly realized that all of Israel’s post-Nakba acts of colonialism had nothing to do with any form of justice. As playwrights Hanna Eady and Edward Mast have their duo state, in order for Israel to thrive, Palestine has to “not exist.” That’s always been the endgame. Any claim to the contrary is propaganda.
Eady also directed the show, which fits in perfectly to The Garrett’s red-bricked walls. The action is staged in the round, with the actors often on opposite sides of the long rubber flooring. It’s a tennis match of Gazan ideologies, but with the Israeli character supporting Palestine, and vice versa. It’s not quite a spoiler to say that Yakub is not who he claims to be, because he personifies the colonized mind, believing that if he just refuses to make waves that he’ll be safe. It’s as sad as it is compelling to watch. (In the match of wits, however, Musleh is clearly outmatched by Stebbins.)
The show runs a scant 70 minutes, and there were only about six of us masked in the intimate Garrett. CO² readings peaked around 1,297ppm by the final bow.
The Return is a slow-motion tragedy that deserves as large an audience as it can get. It wisely foregoes any physical acts of violence and simply reveals two characters damaged by the same Israeli colonialism that boasts of killing journalists. It ends with an act of defiance that could result in even more pain. But it’s an act of healing that the world could use more of as we face the ever-rising tide.
THE RETURN runs through August 24 in The Garrett above ACT’s Toni Rembe Theater, SF. Tickets and further info here.
