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Theater Rhinoceros back on Corona Radio Theater - ODC: Drinks & a Dance - Hope Mohr Bridge Project

This week on Open Air, KALW’s weekly radio magazine for the Bay Area Performing Arts in Times of Corona, host David Latulippe welcomes back Theater Rhinoceros to the virtual stage of Open Air’s Corona Radio Theater, and their performance of Then and Now, performed by John Fisher and Gene Mocsy. 

Then and Now was written by playwright, and The Rhino’s executive director, John Fisher. Theatre Rhinoceros is the longest-running queer theatre in the world. Written especially for radio, Then and Now shows us Jeff, who “at the beginning of Shelter-in-Place, [..] gets a very strange phone call that gives new meaning to the word frenemy.” 

We talk with ODC Artistic Director Brenda Way and composer Paul Dresher about  Drinks & a Dance, an evening ‘in’ and a trip back to the 1930s, presented as an immersive virtual event on September 10. The evening kicks off at 5:15pm with a cocktail class from San Francisco's Stookey's Club Moderne, a lounge evoking the style of post-prohibition San Francisco. After that, guests can sip and settle in for a lively conversation with ODC/Dance Founding Artistic Director and Choreographer Brenda Way and composer Paul Dresher. A livestream viewing of ODC's Walk Back the Cat culminates the evening.

Walk Back the Cat by Brenda Way, which premiered in 2016, explores the choreographic process and arrives in a world inspired by visual artist Thomas Hart Benton's muscular and vital murals of American City Life in the 1930s. The work features visuals by photographer RJ Muna, video by Ian Winters, and a commissioned jazz-inspired score and live performance by Paul Dresher and musicians.

Plus, we talk with participating artists Ranu Mukherjee and Cherie Hill about the Tenth Anniversary edition of the Hope Mohr Bridge Project, titled Power Shift: Improvisation, Activism and Communitywhich runs from September 13 - November 22. 

Power Shift invites artists and activists to share the practice and performance of improvisation. Co-curated by Cherie Hill, Hope Mohr, and Karla Quintero, Power Shift brings you inside the improvisational practices of Black/African American, Latinx/Latin American, Asian American, female-identifying and queer improvisers and social justice activists. The Festival's program highlights voices from African dance, jazz aesthetics, social and street dance, contemporary forms, and Capoeira.

The Festival features art & activism workshops, panel discussions, intensives, practices, live-streamed performances, and an Antiracism Training for the Dance Community, facilitated by Beatrice Thomas and co-organized with Dance Mission Theater and Kambara+.

Power Shift opens September 13th with Imagining the Future. A collaboration between The Bridge Project and Oakland-based nonprofit ARTogether, Imagining the Future is a story-building workshop focused on imagining how we want to live into the future. Co-led by painter Ranu Mukherjee and choreographer Hope Mohr, this workshop is for artists of all mediums, using the tools of writing, movement and drawing.

Open Air with host David Latulippe, heard live on September 10 at 1pm, and afterwards at this location…