Went to my First Live Performance in 16 Months!

August 25, 2021 My First Live Performance in 16 Months!! PREVIOUS BLOGS: TERRYBAUM.BLOGSPOT.COM PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO ANYONE WHO MIGHT BE INTERESTED. PODCASTS, EVENTS, INFO, POSTERS: LilithTheater.com

On Sunday, Tara and I enjoyed an incredible array of performers at the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival. EIGHT different music or dance or music-and-dance groups performed. I continue to be astounded at the wealth of talent in the Bay Area community. Yerba Buena is downtown, between Third & Fourth Streets, across from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It's a lovely oasis in the middle of skyscrapers and has its own small museum. I got there early in case it got crowded, and watched performers rehearsing. I love watching rehearsals. That's my favorite part of theater.

As you can see, it's a small stage in a small park. The chairs were set up in two's, with six feet between each two. The wonderful thing about Yerba Buena is that the free events are never crowded. I don't know why. I guess that whole place -- park and museum --

has never taken off as an "in" place to be. That's just fine with me, since I wasn't fond of packed crowds even BEFORE the pandemic. The event was titled "WELCOME BACK TO THE PERFORMING ARTS!", presented by Lamplighters Music Theatre, SF's very own Gilbert & Sullivan troupe.* And what a welcome it was. The whole program was scheduled for two hours, but ran three. That was perfectly fine as far as Tara and I were concerned. *(The Lamplighters are no slouches. One year, they won the Grand Prize at the International G&S Festival in England.) All the acts were signed for the hearing impaired by two truly wonderful. You haven't lived until you've seen Gilbert & Sullivan signed. The characters and situations are so exaggerated, and the music is so FAST! The two signers were obviously having a lot of fun. I couldn't take my eyes off them. This is Cathleen Riddley, signing the Modern Major general song.

The photo right is the filled park. We even had the gift of perfect weather! That doesn't happen often. Watching wonderful performers LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE LIVE! felt so...I don't

know...NORMAL. Did I really used to do this at least a few times a month? Oh, how I've missed it. I'm only going to show photos of three of the groups. This next one is Ars Minerva, which I'd never heard of before. This company revives long-forgotten baroque operas. They performed excerpts from Messalina by Pallavicino & Piccoli from the 17th Century, which the company describes as "a sex farce with teeth." The title character is a very scandalous Roman empress who lived in the first century and whose life inspired other operas, all of them titled Messalina --- the most famous by de Lara. When I googled the composers of the Ars Minerva Messalina, I found NOTHING! This company doesn't mess around when it says it does "long-forgotten" operas! The singing was great and the costumes were fabulous.

I didn't capture the first phase of Messalina's costume. She enters, prepared for a night on the town -- incognito. The pink rose skirt you see here began flipped up and over the naughty empress's head as an elaborate hood to hide her identity. So first a hood, then a kinda wiggy skirt, and THEN she pulls the skirt off and

she's "naked" (in a body stocking) covered only by her blond tresses and a pink rose! AND she could sing beautifully! AND she looked great in a skin-tight body stocking! AND it was free! Who ARE all these crazy artists in San Francisco who are so talented and wonderful and perform for free or almost nothing?!? Why don't they go somewhere else where they might get famous and make some money or at least have cheaper rent?!? Next up: Theatre Flamenco SF, with the artistic director, Carola Zertuche, dancing. Flamenco is so elemental: The dancer, the singer, the accompanist. What else could anyone possibly need? Each performer is a superlative artist and gets a chance to show their stuff. But in the end, the two that are seated are there to support and inspire the dancer.

And then there was... POCKET OPERA, performing an aria from La Traviata URBAN JAZZ SF DANCE Company, doing fascinating choreography with a mix of disabled & able-bodied dancers OPERA PARALLELE with selections from Marcus Shelby's new opera about Harriet Tubman, Harriet's Spirit VOLTI with original contemporary choral music and 42nd STREET MOON which revives Broadway musicals It was a true feast of music and dance in the park in the gentle sunshine. Hmmmmm.... Maybe THAT'S why people keep hanging on in San Francisco! And THEN we went across the street to savor Diego Rivera's largest and most complex mural that is now in SF Museum of Modern Art. It's in their free public space, whose entrance is around the corner on Howard. You absolutely have to see this gigantic work of art. Rivera named it The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on this Continent. It is commonly called Pan American Unity. Rivera was commissioned to paint it for the "Art in Action" program hosted by the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. People could watch Rivera working on it. Unfortunately, he didn't finish it before the Exposition ended, so it wasn't fully displayed at that time. Be sure to pick up a copy of the very detailed brochure that talks about the history of the mural, its symbolism, and identifies every person and thing that Rivera painted.

Click "ART IN ACTION" on the left to watch a video of Rivera painting the mural.

Click the photo right to read/see a wonderful NY Times article about the moving of the mural from CCSF to SFMOMA. (I know that some will not be able to use the link. Sorry.) Pan American Unity was intended for a library in SanFrancisco that was never built because World War II stopped all non-essential construction. The mural languished in crates on Treasure Island for 20 years. During the McCarthy era in the 1950s, no one wanted it because of Rivera's communist politics. Finally in 1961, it was installed in the theater at City College of San Francisco, the lobby having been  redesigned for it. I have been to several productions there, so I've enjoyed this mural over the years. I used to get to the theater at least a half an hour early, so I could spend some time with the mural. I could NOT figured out how it ended up tucked away there. The answer: Because of McCarthyism! Nobody wanted it!  In the CCSF theater, I saw the opera Frida, based upon the life of Rivera's wife. Frida Kahlo. The actress playing Frida not only looked like her, but was an an incredible singer and actress AND a student at CCSF!! (Again, the theme of amazing talent in the Bay Area.) One of the costumes for the opera was a reproduction of what Kahlo wears in the mural! You can spot her in her Zapotec dress. You can't tell from my photo, but Frida is in the precise center of the mural. They were actually divorced when they arrived, separately, in San Francisco. Frida had an adoring San Francisco MD, Dr. Leo Eloesser, who treated her physical AND emotional ills.  On his advice, she moved in with Diego, and their love blossomed anew. Thus, her centrality in the mural. According to Marisol Medina-Cadena, writing on the KQED website: Once again, Rivera’s art sparked controversy -- not because he painted his communist politics but because he portrayed the cruelty of Nazi Germany. It was his way of urging the U.S. to intervene in World War II and protect all of the Americas, including Mexico. When Kahlo was discharged from the hospital and felt physically and emotionally stronger, she and Rivera remarried at San Francisco City Hall on Rivera’s 54th birthday. Pan American Unity is something that should be visited many times, so it's good that it's free. Here are a few close-ups:

Well, Bloggelinis, this was a truly great San Francisco day. But I have to tell you, I woke up at 5am thinking about Afghanistan. The day before, I spoke to my friend, Carol Ruth Silver, who helped found a school there and has visited many times. She said the most important thing we can do is contact our President, Senators & Congresspeople and urge them to bring in as many Afghan people as they can as soon as possible, to resettle here. We did it for the Vietnamese. We can do it for the Afghan people. So here again is the contact info: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials . Terry