This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area Performing Arts - still in Times of Corona - guest host JoAnn Mar will be talking about the SF Playhouse production of Hold These Truths, not only with stage director Jeffrey Lo and actor Jomar Tagatac about the play itself, but also with theater director Susi Damilano, about what it takes to reopen a theater after the pandemic. Also, a conversation with Phil Connell, director of the movie Jump, Darling, part of Frameline45 — the world’s largest LGBTQ+ film festival, currently at venues in San Francisco, and streaming online. Plus, Peter Robinson in conversation with Stanford professor Joshua Landy on the topic of ‘Thinking about Thinking’.
Hold These Truths, currently in-person at SF Playhouse, and streaming on demand online through July 3, is a documentary solo play by playwright Jeanne Sakata. It is based on the incredible true story of Seattle-born sociologist Gordon Hirabayashi, best known for his principled resistance to the Japanese American internment in February 1942, which authorized the relocation and incarceration of tens of thousands of innocent American citizens of Japanese ancestry.
Hirabayashi’s defiance of the internment order catapulted him into a 50-year journey of conscience to protect the Constitution from a country that viewed him as the enemy. Hold These Truths is based on many hours of interviews with Hirabayashi by Jeanne Sakata.
For SF Playhouse, this production of Hold These Truths marks the return to in-person live theater. Founder and co-director Susi Damilano, who runs the theater with husband Bill English, joins us to talk about what it takes to reopen a venue and produce live theater post-Corona; and about how they and their actors have made it through the pandemic.
We talk with Phil Connell, director of the movie Jump, Darling, part of Frameline45 — the world’s largest LGBTQ+ film festival, currently at venues in San Francisco, and online through June 27.
Jump, Darling is a Canadian drama film, starring Thomas Duplessie as Russell, a rookie drag queen reeling from a break-up. After a disastrous non-debut at a Toronto drag club, Russell takes shelter with his grandmother Margaret in the Canadian wine country. Margaret, played by the inimitable Academy Award winner and gay icon Cloris Leachman in her final starring role, is a woman coming to terms with her own mortality and decline, while determined to hang on to her independence.
The film was one of Leachman's final performances before her death in 2021. Jump, Darling can be seen in-person on Saturday, June 26 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. Digital screening is available through Sunday, June 27.
Plus, Open Air’s regular contributor and critic at large, Peter Robinson, opens up an engaging discussion with Joshua Landy, professor of French, and of Comparative Literature; co-director of the Literature and Philosophy Initiative at Stanford; and co-host of KALW’s Philosophy Talk, about ‘Thinking about Thinking’.
After more than twelve months of pandemic, we have all had plenty of time to think about everything. But what about metacognition, thinking about thinking..?
Open Air with guest host JoAnn Mar, heard live on Thursday, June 24 at 1pm; to be archived at this location afterwards. Listen now or anytime…