Archive | Performance

Wonder Woman to perform at Yoshi’s San Francisco

By Jesse Russell on April 6, 2014 in Performance

Lynda Carter

Wonder Woman is going to be performing at Yoshi’s in San Francisco! Well, sort of. Lynda Carter, who popularized Wonder Woman in the live action television series, will be performing at Yoshi’s on April 9 and 10 with her All-Star Band. Music was one of Carter’s first passions before being crowned Miss World USA and eventually taking the Wonder Woman role in the 70s. Carter released an album in 1978 and it would be 30 years before she dropped a second. That second album, At Last, reached number 10 on Billboard’s Jazz charts. Carter is currently touring in support of her fourth album which will be released this April. The Bay Area Reporter recently interviewed Carter and discussed her relationship with San Francisco and music.

Lynda Carter and her All-Star Band
April 9 and 10, 2014
510 Embaracadero West
San Francisco, CA
Purchase tickets at the Yoshi’s website

Last Chance to See: ‘Lasso of Truth’ at the Marin Theatre Company

By Jesse Russell on March 8, 2014 in Performance

Jessa Brie Moreno, Liz Sklar and Nicholas Rose

Regrettably, I only found out about Marin Theatre Company running a production of Carson Kreitzer’s “Lasso of Truth” on Friday. The show, which tells the story of Wonder Woman’s creator William Moulton Marston, debuted on February 20 and runs until March 16. The story follows a woman who grew up with Wonder Woman untangling how all of the elements of Marston’s rather fascinating personal life and how those elements came into the creation of the world’s most popular female superhero. Marston invented the polygraph, was in a polyamorous relationship with his wife and a student, and had an interest in bondage. The show runs nightly until the 16th with bonus matinee shows at 2 p.m. on March 9, 15, and 16. The San Francisco Chronicle has a short interview with playwright Carson Keitzer. Below is a preview trailer for the play.

Marin Theatre Company
397 Miller Avenue
Mill Valley, CA 94941

Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell bringing “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” to San Francisco

By Jesse Russell on February 18, 2014 in Performance

Neil Gaiman will be at San Francisco’s Warfield on June 25 performing his short story “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains.” The author will be reading his short story while illustrator Eddie Campbell (illustrator on Alan Moore’s From Hell) draws and the FourPlay String Quartet perform an original score. Gaiman, Campbell, and the quartet first performed “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” at the Sydney Opera House in 2010 as part of the Graphic Festival. The opera house has a highlights video about the performance. This will be the first time the piece has been performed in the United States and coincides with the release of a hardcover edition of the story.

Tickets are now on sale at the Warfield’s website.

Photo from Forbidden Planet International.

Last Gasp’s Ron Turner to be roasted at LitQuake

By Jesse Russell on October 15, 2013 in Performance

When I wrote about comic related events at San Francisco’s LitQuake this year I made one glaring omission: LitQuake’s 2013 Barbary Coast Award Roast of Last Gasp’s Ron Turner.

Last Gasp is perhaps one of the most well known “comix” publishers from the 1970s. Many other underground publishers were hit hard by a 1973 Supreme Court ruling that local communities could determine what was too indecent to be protected by the First Amendment, but Last Gasp benefited from the liberalism of the Bay Area (unfortunately, this ruling had ripple effects in more conservative regions of the country greatly reducing off-the-rack sales for underground comix overall). Last Gasp has provided publishing opportunities for a long list of alternative creators including R. Crumb in the 70s, Bill Griffith in the 80s, Frank Kozik in the 90s, Mark Ryden in the aughts.

Wednesday night the storied company will be honored as it receives LitQuakes 2013 Barbary Coast Award in conjunction with a roast of Last Gasp founder Ron Turner. The event starts at 8 p.m. in Z Space, 450 Florida St in San Francisco. Tickets and more details are available here.

Bay Area zombies invade Mythbusters

By Jesse Russell on October 3, 2013 in Performance, Television

Mythbusters has posted the trailer for their “Zombie Special” which was filmed on the grounds of Alameda’s retired Navel Air Station using many zombies from the Bay Area. The episode will explore zombie myths with the help of Michael Rooker who played “Merle Dixon” in AMC’s The Walking Dead. The Mythbusters zombie special comes out the same week as the launch of the fourth season of The Walking Dead which premieres on October 13. In addition to the episode trailer they’ve also posted “Mythbusters‘ Top 10 tips to outlast the zombie apocalypse.” The zombie episode of Mythbusters can be seen on Discovery October 17 at 10 p.m. (PST).

We’re especially excited about this episode as our very own Maddie Greene was a member of the zombie horde during filming. You can see her in the trailer hanging on a rusty door around the 22 second mark (also screen capped).

Maddie Greene as a Mythbusters zombie

This appearance on Mythbusters is only the most recent step in Greene’s evolution from Zombie Scholar to actual zombie. She started off publishing the blog “Zomploitation” on which she’s reviewed nearly 200 zombie films (taking a hiatus in 2009), she founded the Madison Zombie Lurch in 2005 (perhaps the first Zombie Protest March in the country), and had a starring role in the original version of Z-Town: The Zombie Musical (she can also be heard on the cast recording available at CDBaby).

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Performance: Cartoonist Jim Woodring with Beautiful Dreamers Trio

By Jesse Russell on September 10, 2013 in Bay Area Comic News, Performance

Ignatz and Harvey Award winner Jim Woodring will be joining Bill Frissell’s Beautiful Dreamers jazz trio onstage at the SFJazz Center on September 14. Woodring, who is best known for his surrealist comic book Frank, will be creating illustrations live while the trio perform music from their self-titled debut. In 2006, Woodring and Frissell collaborated on Probability Cloud which resulted in the duo being among the first to be honored as United States Artist Fellows. Woodring and Frissell will be taking part in two performances on September 14. The first is a Family Matinee at 2 p.m. which is intended to provide an all-ages accessible window into the world of jazz for an affordable ticket price. The full performance with Frissell’s Beautiful Dreamers and Woodring will be at 7:30 p.m.

More information on the Family Matinee can be found here.
More information on the Beautiful Dreamers performance with Woodring can be found here.

Image from Jim Woodring’s Congress of the Animals.

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