Sunday 12/27: Will Viharo (Vic Valentine, Private Eye) and Scott Funks (The Space Needler’s Intergalactic Bar Guide, a collaboration with Viharo) will be reading in a Tiki Bar in Alameda. Noir + Tiki in the afternoon sounds like a winning combination to us. Free, 3 p.m., Forbidden Island.
Monday 12/28: Bay Area Generations returns to its bi-monthly berth at Berkeley City Club for Edition #29, guest curated by Alexandra Naughton. A whopping eighteen readers (nine intergenerational couples) will perform a one hour mosaic of words, interspersed with music by Nancy Hall of The Curios. $7 ($10 with book), 7 p.m., The Berkeley City Club.
Tuesday 12/29: Lachlan The Bray, a performance poet who was a finalist in the 2012 Australian Poetry Slam, has been attracting some attention with his 80-minute performance of “spoken word bedlam,” Sex, Cynicism, and Other Small Miracles, in collaboration with musician Garrett Wiley (Hungry Skinny). $10-15, 8 p.m., Doc’s Lab.
*
Finding Literary Community: As the New Year approaches, we thought you might want to include among your resolutions a greater participation in the Bay Area’s literary scene. Why wouldn’t you? To help in that worthy endeavor, here is a short (arbitrarily limited to twelve—one for each month), admittedly incomplete, highly personal selection of some of the interesting players you might like to know about.
Bay Area Generations
CCA Writing Events
The Holloway Series
Lyrics and Dirges
Nomadic Press
The Octopus Literary Salon
Quiet Lightning
Rolling Writers
Saturday Night Special East Bay Open Mic
Studio One Reading Series
Why There Are Words
Writers With Drinks
This list is so far from exhaustive, it isn’t funny, but if you want to be part of a literary community, attention to any one of these could serve as an entry point.
*
This week’s theatre recommendation is A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. The musical is based on the same early 20th century novel (Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman) that inspired Kind Hearts and Coronets, the classic film starring Alec Guiness. Young Monty Navarro, upon discovering he is related to landed gentry, gleefully sets out to murder all the obnoxious relatives that stand between him and the title of Earl of Dysquith. All eight relatives are played by one actor (the dazzling John Rapson). The operetta-inspired score with its hints of Gilbert & Sullivan is a delight. To read a review, click here. For further information, click here.
For more extensive coverage of the Bay Area theatre scene, visit TheatreStorm.
*
Evan Karp presents video of this week’s featured local author, Kate Robinson. Read an interview here.
And, finally, here’s some video of recent SF Notable, D. A. Powell, reading new work at Green Apple by the Park earlier this month.
***
If you have a Bay Area event listing you’d like us to consider, please contact [email protected] as far in advance as possible, and include the date of the event in the subject line.
