Sights & Sounds is your weekly guide to the Bay Area arts scene through the eyes and ears of local artists. Our guest is El Beh: San Francisco-based musician and actor in the Shotgun Players current production of Hamlet.
Beh told KALW’s Jen Chien about three cool arts events happening this week around the Bay.
Colossal is a play merging football and dance is at the San Francisco Playhouse until April 30th. The show follows a wheelchair-bound athlete who’s adjusting to life after an accident. It’s structured like a football game with four 15 minute quarters, a pre-game training, and a halftime show.
BEH: It has a really solid drum line that just drives the play and makes the show really fierce and palpable.
Birdheart, an animated puppet theatre work, is at Z Below through April 17th. Using found objects and brown paper, Julian Crouch, from piece by piece productions, and musician Saskia Lane create a hauntingly beautiful work that explores “transformation, loneliness, and the urge to fly.”
BEH: I’m always interested in interdisciplinary work. It really pushes our imaginations and the ideas we ascribe to a theatrical experience.
Floaters, an improvisational dance and music triptych, is at The Lab on Friday, 4/8, and Saturday, 4/9. Over two years, choreographer Christine Bonansea developed this piece, which places the audience in the center of an environment of performers, projected light, and sound, composed by Voicehandler, that is reminiscent of the body’s inner sounds.
BEH: I believe in Bonansea as a performer and as an artist. When a live improvised dialogue is done well, whether verbally, aurally, or bodily, with the audience, it can be really incredible and visceral.
