Goldstar

The Marsh presents Ann Randolph's Loveland. The award-winning solo performer (Squeeze Box) has been compared to the late Gilda Radner by Mel Brooks. In this hilarious, deeply moving show, Randolph plays a women taking the greatest journey of her life: a trip from Los Angeles to Ohio. Learn more...

The Marsh presents Don Reed in East 14th: Tales of a Reluctant Player. This hilarious and poignant solo show is the story of Reed's boyhood in 1970s Oakland, torn between his strict, church-going mother's upbringing and his admiration of his father, a pimp. East 14th was an Off-Broadway hit, nominated for two 2008 NAACP Theatre Awards. Learn more...

The Marsh welcomes Lucky Dog Theatre. A four-person cast of veteran improvisers performed fully spontaneous plays, ranging from humor to poignant emotion and political drama. The acclaimed group is accompanied by violinist Yehudit. Learn more...

The Greatest Bubble Show on Earth is an enchanting brew of breathtaking bubbles and bubbly music that will appeal to everyone, no matter what their age. The audience will witness all kinds of extraordinary things such as spinning flying saucer bubbles, square bubbles filled with fog, universe bubbles with orbiting planets and bubble chains that look like centipedes. Learn more...

Fun-derful Holidaze is a fun-filled performance show for the entire family from beloved Bay Area clown Unique Derique. Derique will be joined by Prescott Clown Circus theater alumni, youth jugglers, a hambone body music team and hip-hop dancers for a program that will have audience members laughing and dancing throughout the holiday season. Learn more...

Flush is a premiere USA/Czech collaboration of physical theater, created and presented by award-winning actors and designers. A subversive, imprisoned comic actor and his jailer/interrogator explore a surreal friendship that reveals the guts of power grasped, denied and surrendered. Learn more...

Brick Circk features a green clown with bricks everywhere and everything for the whole family. This is classic European clowning from the heart of the rich Prague tradition, created and performed by Stevo Capko, master teacher and movement theater actor at AMU, the Czech Republic's national conservatory for the performing arts. Learn more...

As part of The International Czech Theater Festival, The Marsh presents Albert's Fear, a celebrated one-man show by noted young Czech actor Vojta Svejda. Albert's Fear examines the triumphs of a small boy over his timidity and indecisiveness. Suitable for the whole family. Learn more...

Two 19th-century arctic explorers test reality vs. the imagination in the unendurable cold. Polaris is a rare romance about consciousness, values and the close ones, created and performed by Vojta Svejda and Jan Benes-McGradie. Learn more...

The Marsh presents live tapings of public radio's Philosophy Talk. Ken Taylor and John Perry host this show, syndicated from KALW 91.7 FM to radio stations across America. They welcome top academics, authors for an entertaining and spirited discussion of serious philosophical dilemmas. Learn more...

Dan Hoyle portrays warlords, militants, oil workers, prostitutes and the American ambassador to Nigeria in his hit one-man play about Nigerian oil politics, based on his year there as a Fulbright scholar. Tings Dey Happen is a funny, challenging solo performance; Hoyle has been invited to perform the show in Nigeria this fall by the U.S. State Department. Learn more...

The Marsh is proud to welcome acclaimed comedian Rick Reynolds in his latest autobiographical solo show, Only the Truth Is Funny: Mid-Life at the Oasis. Rick's first show, Only the Truth Is Funny, was nominated for an Emmy; his second, All Grown Up... And No Place To Go, inspired the CBS series Life and Stuff. Learn more...

Actor-comedian Kenny Yun brings his autobiographical one-man show to The Marsh. In the funny and poignant Lettuce Town Lies, Yun recounts his adolescence in Salinas, where the culture shock of moving to an all-white, rural town was just one of many challenges facing an Asian teenager who was also discovering that he was gay. Learn more...

Playwright and performance artist Penny Arcade weaves together spot-on impersonations and trenchant wit as she revisits New York City neighborhoods from her childhood through the perspective of the teenage runaway Susanna Ventura. Her theatrical memoir evokes the magic and memory of the gay men who raised her, taking her in off the streets, giving her a place to live, and bringing her to the stages of The Playhouse Of The Ridiculous. Learn more...

The musical Ciribiribin is set to the infectious swing music and dance of the 1930s and 40s. As the US gets drawn into World War II, an Italian family's language and customs are outlawed, and they begin to question the meaning of home. Learn more...

Brian Copeland returns to the Bay Area with his hit show, Not a Genuine Black Man. The longest running solo show in San Francisco history, Not a Genuine Black Man is a hilarious and poignant autobiographical story about Copeland's childhood in one of the most racist suburbs in America. Learn more...

Sixty-seven years after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, this show follows the journey of one Japanese family's forced evacuation from their Berkeley home during WWII to the Topaz Camp in Utah. Inspired by actual events, Lunatique Fantastique tells the story of two brothers in Live 3-D Animation using a suitcase, weathered wood and a Japanese tea set. Learn more...

A one-woman play written and performed by Carolyn Doyle, Confessions of a Refrigerator Mother explores a day in the life of a nine-year-old boy and his family as they navigate the mysterious world of autism. Based on Doyle's experiences with her own autistic son, the show is about love and faith, mixing in moments of comedy. Learn more...

The Marsh welcomes Scott Capurro. The London-based comedian is known for his taboo-breaking, controversial performances. In his latest show, Scott Capurro Goes Deeper, he ponders a number of unspoken questions through stand-up and sketch comedy. Learn more...

Marsh Youth Theatre's new Teen Troupe presents their first production: Fears Of Your Life. Based on the works of Michael Bernard Loggins, an artist with developmental disabilities, this whimsical and vibrant show incorporates dance, music, theater, aerial dance, video and huge papier-mâché puppets in an attempt to express the nature of fear. Learn more...

No Parole takes audiences on a journey through the life of a flamboyant, live-for-the-moment con artist mother. From Peru to the Hollywood Hills to an NYC walk-up, No Parole provides a funny, but gut-wrenching look into the life of an extraordinary woman who saw the world as her playground. Learn more...

Drama Desk nominee, national headlining comedian, and GLAAD Award-winning solo performer Marga Gomez presents her latest one-woman show, Long Island Iced Latina, at The Marsh. Recently named '2008 Best Comedian' in the SF Bay Guardian Readers Poll, Gomez will tell tales of a childhood filled with cultural confusion, chronic virginity and mother-daughter instability. Learn more...

Liebe Wetzel has the packing materials taking matters into their own "hands" in her show, Wrapping Paper Caper. In true private eye guise, our Bogart-esque "detective" follows a trail of styrofoam packing-peanuts, encountering a witty and wonder-filled cast of characters along the way, including an elegant wrapping-paper damsel in "dis-dress", a cardboard-tube horse, a packing-box Zamboni and a cast of bread rolls, cutlery, linens and dishware that display extremely unusual table manners. Learn more...

Along with magician Kim Silverman and juggler Stefan Fisher, David Hirata has crafted a show that brings wonder directly to the audience on the intimate space Marsh stage. The magicians mingle with the crowd before the show, bringing the magic up close. Then, when they take to the stage, classical magic illusions are given new life. Learn more...

Originally produced by Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, Ann Randolph's one-woman show Squeeze Box was an off-Broadway hit. This is her strange and wonderful tale of working at a woman's shelter while pursuing Harold, "the accordionist of her dreams." Wickedly funny and poignant, the show will be followed by excerpts from Randolph's next production. Learn more...

Award-winning performer and San Francisco Bay Area favorite Wayne Harris stars in A May Day Parade, a tale centered on his lifelong love of marching bands. Harris portrays a Baptist preacher, three generations on a porch, a four-man bass drum ensemble, 12 rather large "letter" girls bumping and grinding down a midtown boulevard, and the 100-member Pleasant Green Missionary Baptist Church Drum & Bugle Corps. Learn more...

Gundlach Bundschu, California's oldest family-owned and operated winery, is celebrating its sesquicentennial throughout 2008 at the winery and across the nation by putting wine on center stage with the creation of Towle's Hill, an original, one-man play performed by Mark Kenward and directed by David Ford. Towle's Hill will be followed by a tasting of Gundlach Bundschu wines--a multi-sense event! Learn more...

Recently named the "Best Local Public Radio Show" by San Francisco Weekly, Philosophy Talk is the only interactive radio show where listeners can discuss philosophic issues ranging from Socrates and Plato to truth and terrorism. Witness hosts Ken Taylor and John Perry and the Philosophy Talk crew up close and personal as they tape two shows live at The Marsh. Learn more...

The Marsh presents Liebe Wetzel's Lunatique Fantastique. The acclaimed puppet troupe, known for their ingenious use of everyday found objects, presents a workshop performance of their new show Chicken Stock, which tells the story of avian influenza through the perspective of a family of birds. Both startlingly clever and genuinely moving, it's a puppet show like none you've seen before. Learn more...

The Marsh presents the return of Liza Reynal's American Joe, a funny and frightening story about the effect one life en-route to battle has had on the lives around him. Last November, Liza's nineteen year old brother enlisted in the US Army. He is heading to Afghanistan in America's war on terror and Liza is coming to the Marsh to tell her side of the story. Learn more...

Every year, Victoria Doggett participates in Fancy Food Shows in San Francisco and New York, a surreal environment offering strange and quirky personalities, including booth "babes" and buyers with a variety of motives for showing interest in her products. Doggett depicts the stress, the humor and the competitiveness of working these shows. Learn more...

"Strange travel suggestions," Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote, "are dancing lessons from God." It's those sudden inspirations and unpredictable encounters that make world travel so wild and illuminating. Travel writer Jeff Greenwald (Shopping for Buddhas) brings the hand of destiny into this series of improvised monologues inspired by the vagaries of wanderlust. Audience members spin a Wheel of Fortune, and where it stops, Greenwald's tales begin.... Learn more...

Sherry Glaser's show is the culmination of more than 20 years of her theatrical comedy and peace activism. It features a trio of outrageous characters who all challenge the status quo in different ways: Miguel De Cervantes, Mother Superior and SAM SLAM (Super Lesbian Activist Mother). Learn more...

Beloved local performers Deborah Gwinn and Jim Cave perform in Romeo & Juliet and Other Duets, a stroll along the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as re-envisioned through the works of William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes and Eugene Ionesco. With this series of playfully experimental duets, Deb and Jim continue their long-standing collaboration. Learn more...

Come Home is Jovelyn Richards's new solo play about twenty-six black soldiers who leave their home in lynch-torn rural Arkansas to fight against Germany in the Second World War. There are only thirteen survivors. Although the plot unfolds in the segregated South, Come Home is timeless in its evocation of how war and violence can change a community and its way of life. Learn more...

Sharon Eberhardt's solo performance piece Savage Arts is based on the true story of an Indian witchcraft trial that took place in New York State in 1930. A volatile mix of illicit longing, opposing cultures, criminality, art and prejudice, the play builds to its explosive conclusion with a quiet yet devastating subtlety. Learn more...

Siddhartha, The Bright Path recounts Prince Siddhartha's journey to become the Buddha, and is told in parallel with that of Chandra, a modern-day San Francisco girl who finds herself posing similar questions about the importance of that next pair of $200 sneakers as opposed to the human suffering she sees all around her. The show is flavored with Indian music, art, kathak dance and even a hip-hop Bollywood scene. Learn more...

The Marsh presents Merle Kessler (aka "Ian Shoales") and Joshua Brody in their new comedy Slouching Towards Disneyland. In words and music, the duo modestly present a history of the world, from the Big Bang of pre-yesteryear to the bleating blogs of today. Learn more...

Countercoup is a dark cautionary tale, a careening ride through writer/performer Mark McGoldrick's rebellious youth. Edgy and funny, with no punches pulled, his story travels from delinquency to spinal chord injury and then through the rigors of rehabilitation before returning to the outside world. Learn more...

After a two-month run this summer, in which he won both critical and popular acclaim, John O'Keefe brings his revelatory version of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" back to the Marsh for a return engagement. O'Keefe is an internationally acclaimed playwright, director, and solo performer who retells Whitman's profoundly moving poem that celebrates all of America--and the American spirit--in all its passion and hope. Learn more...

Flyaway Productions previews Lies You Can Dance To, a new dance work co-presented by The Marsh and ODC. The piece responds to the absence of truth in American political culture. By investigating how the human body responds to lies told over and over at the level of national policy, the performance explores the bending of democracy that currently surrounds us and how that resonates kinesthetically in the bodies of its citizens. Learn more...

Will Franken's new solo show features the outrageous comedian's takes on topics ranging from the sacrosanct (therapy, Burning Man) to the erudite and obscure (Noam Chomsky and moral relativism). Armed with what the New York Times describes as a "highly developed sense of the absurd," Franken brings life's inherent weirdness to the stage, poking fun at a broad range of cultural strongholds. Learn more...

Set against the backdrop of 1970s working-class Liverpool, Hush is the haunting story of a young girl's coming of age. With honesty, humor and tenderness, Gillian Summers draws us into her strange yet familiar family, rich in dynamics, disco music and colorful characters. Central to the story is her unique relationship with her little sister Helen, the one person she can depend on. Learn more...

San Francisco's most outrageous comedian takes on topics ranging from the sacrosanct (therapy, Burning Man) to the erudite and obscure (Noam Chomsky and moral relativism). From an absurdist's take on Christianity, to everyone's favorite political prisoner Too-koo Moo-moo, to some facetime with 9-year-old airline pilot Captain Griffin and a funny send-up of Scientology, this one-man comedy show is both funny and thoughtful. Learn more...

A humorous look at heartbreak, humiliation and bad wedding songs through the eyes of 30 outrageous characterizations, this one-woman show by Carla Zilber Smith is a fantastic musical odyssey about a Canadian singer traveling along the boulevard of broken dreams. Wedding Singer Blues will crack up audiences with the unvarnished truth about big fat weddings. Learn more...

The Marsh presents a workshop performance of Steven Karwoski's Are Ya Dating? This solo show asks the questions: Do women really want men to be in touch with their feelings? Can even the best date go on too long? Come discover the answers to these questions as veteran solo performer Steven Karwoski chronicles his life in the trenches of the dating world. Learn more...

In this hilarious, reckless and ultimately heroic story, Erica Lann-Clark goes on a wild search for meaning, looking in all the wrong places. Her journey takes her from department store fitting rooms to drama therapy groups, to the allure of late-in-life sex, and, worst of all, to her family of Jewish atheists. Learn more...

Rebecca Fisher's family hails from Memphis, where old money, country clubs, and white columned mansions are insubstantial barriers against senseless violence. When drugs and murder implode Fisher's sedate world, she turns to her Southern roots for lessons in how to transform catastrophe into survival. Learn more...

A man and a women -- both middle-aged and looking for love online -- reflect on their lives in Richard Jennings' two-act musical for soprano and baritone. It's a mostly sung "boomer" tale of common life experiences: love, family, career, divorce, loneliness and middle age. Learn more...

Don't Let Go of the Potato is a one-man comedy created and performed by emerging Bay Area monologist Todd LeJeune. This darkly humorous autobiographical piece offers a vivid portrayal of growing up in the cultural backwaters of rural Louisiana, exploring racism, class tension, and domestic conflict through a very personal lens. Learn more...

Beautiful floating snow flakes. Miraculously vanishing sugar plums. Magician, illusionist and performance artist David Hirata brings fellow magicians Kim Silverman and Stefan Fisher to The Marsh for a lovely, delight-filled magic show in the spirit of the holidays. Audiences of adults and children alike will find themselves drawn in to participate in this engaging and mystifying performance! Learn more...

The Hummingbird Woman is sexually wild, forever young, a sparkling bit of light in constant motion. In pursuit of her, Rutherford tries a vegan diet, contact dance jams and a broadening of his middle-aged sexual horizons. Hoping to restore his youthful vigor he even endures a master colonic cleanse. In the course of his exotic journey, he comes to see that what's unusual and unsettling can also be deeply alive. Playwright Randy Rutherford displays his trademark mix of music and life! Learn more...

A tour-de-force account of the rise of the anti-depressant industry and the resultant loss of a generation, Big Pharma explores "the great anti-depression" era of ads directed as a quick-fix for society's most marketing-vulnerable population: women and children. The rise of drug consumption among her friends led Berry to question their validity. The play explores the softened regulations of drug distribution among doctors and the government as a fast solution to everyday feelings of sadness. Learn more...

The Marsh presents Faulty Intelligence, an evening of scathing satirical songs, written and performed by the man the Los Angeles Times calls "a latter-day Tom Lehrer." Armed only with a guitar, a strident baritone whine, and wicked sense of rhyme and ridicule, Faulty Intelligence includes a love song to the sexiest man alive, "Dick Cheney," a lesson in "Creation Science 101," a portrait in song of "Jerry Falwell's God" and the bawk-along "Chickenhawk," already a Zimmerman classic. Learn more...