All the yuks: A history of stand-up comedy traces the artform’s evolution
Wayne Federman's 'The History of Stand-Up: From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle' pays special attention to Bay Area
Internationally Black series ‘So Soul San Francisco’ opens up global arts discourse
Creator Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe and co-host Rotimi Agbabiaka's monthly interview show surveys Black expression worldwide
This weekend, The Breath Project streams 24 nationwide theater works in honor of George Floyd
"It’s another brick in the wall. Or rather, we’re taking the wall down, so it’s a brick out of the wall.”
[UPDATED] Arts festival sues city in push for safe live performances—before rain comes
City revokes SF International Arts Festival permit for weekend program as arts languish amid reopenings
The unstoppable ‘Who’s Your Mami Comedy’ Zooms your way
The pandemic may have indefinitely shuttered comedy clubs, but it can’t stop, won’t stop the irrepressible force of Marga Gomez. For as long as misogyny, racism, homophobia, and transphobia...
Searing, prescient, hilarious: ‘Laughter Against the Machine’ returns onscreen
Travel back with me to a distant time when the economy had collapsed, the country was visibly divided, protesters took over the streets, a border wall was being built,...
Take that, 2020: The Mime Troupe pivots to web
It’s a rough time for live theater. As San Francisco arts organizations brainstorm ways to carry their message into the COVID era, some of the city’s most veteran radical...
In ‘The Niceties,’ deep-rooted academic bias vividly on display
In The Niceties, playing online from Shotgun Theater, a Black student, Zoe (Regina Monique) at an unnamed elite Northeast university (clearly Yale given it’s in Connecticut) visits her white...
Too soon for COVID jokes? Shazia Mirza on Zoom comedy and life at home
Shazia Mirza has been making the most of quarantine. The award-winning British stand-up comedian and writer—best known for her show “The Kardashians Made Me Do It,” satirizing the real-life...
Reviving Pride’s protest origins, with ‘The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot’
Last year, the Tenderloin Museum hosted 22 sold-out performances of The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. One of the writers, Donna Personna, saw about half of them, and she says she...
