Wanda's Picks Radio: The Fringe Festival Revue

We continue the SF Fringe Festival on the Air with a rebroadcast of the special interview with Campo Maldito playwright and director Bennett Fisher & Jesca Prudencio; continuing with Blues for Charles's playwright Harry R. Hall; and closing with the creative playwright duo: Linda Ayres-Frederick and Nancy Cooper Frank's Assorted Domestic Emergencies (smile).

Visit www.sffringe.org or 415-673-3847. All plays are at the Exit Theatre, 156 Eddy Street, in San Francisco Sept. 5-20, 2014.

To listen to the show (click the link in the title) or: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2014/09/10/wandas-picks-radio-showthe-sf-fringe-special-cont 


Blues for Charles
Sept. 7, 9 p.m., 9/13 5:30 p.m., 9/16 7 p.m., 9/17, 7 p.m.

Harry Richard Hall has got music in his blood! His dad grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Ahmad Jamal, Lena Horne, Billy Eckstein and Errol Garner were just a few of the entertainers who came from Steele Town and graced the powerful memories of his father’s youth.

Charles Sullivan (center left, with Fats Corlett sitting beside him)
in the Booker T. Washington Hotel at Fillmore and Ellis.

Music has always been a part of Harry’s life. At thirteen he took guitar lessons from a neighbor, Steve Hall, at Drapers Music in Palo Alto. Steve was a Berklee School of Music grad and really opened up Harry’s ears. Steve turned him on to Charlie Christian, George Benson, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell and Grant Green. Vern Older, a really great guitarist and teacher, ran Draper's Music and would jam with Harry and his friends and show them the ropes when they hung around his store. To this day Harry has fond memories of Mr. Older.

As a CSM broadcast student Harry started listening to KCSM in the mid 1990's. He met Alisa Clancy in one of his classes when she came to lecture about the radio business. He submitted a demo tape, was selected as an overnight jazz host and got hooked on the medium of radio!

Charles Sullivan also owned the Post Street Liquor Co.,
which was runby his brother-in-law George Hall (center, with Sullivan’s key to the city).

Harry Richard Hall is host of Jazz Sessions every Sunday at 9pm. I don’t know how his dad got to the West Coast, but his Mom came here by way of her brother Charles Sullivan, the unofficial Mayor of Fillmore and former owner of the Fillmore Auditorium and the subject of his great nephew’s murder mystery. The photos (all courtesy of the Hall family) are taken from a wonderful story by Gary Carr, "Who Shot the Mayor of Fillmore" http://newfillmore.com/2014/09/04/who-shot-the-mayor-of-fillmore/

Assorted Domestic Emergencies
Sept. 13@2:30 PM,  Sept. 14@ 6 p.m., Sept. 20@1 p.m.

Home is where the heart isn't, when you're in an isolated cabin in a blizzard with only your dog, memories and cornbread to keep you warm. Or when your plumber demands more blind faith in his unconventional (to say the least) working methods than you can muster. Featuring the best of the San Francisco Bay Area's acting talent, Nancy Cooper Frank's "The Plumber" and Linda Ayres-Frederick's "Blizzard" explore survival strategies both comic and touching.

Linda Ayres-Frederick (Playwright, Blizzard), Phoenix Theatre's Artistic Director since 1985 (www.phoenixtheatresf.org), has enjoyed a diverse career as an actor, producer, director, critic and playwright in the San Francisco Bay Area with related work travel to NYC, Edinburgh, France, and Alaska. A member of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle (VP), American Theatre Critics Association, the Dramatists Guild of America, AEA, and AFTRA/SAG, Linda is twice a Shubert Playwriting Fellow with numerous productions and publications in Bay Area Festivals including Best of SF Fringe 2010 & 2011 (for her play Afield) and Best Play of Marin Fringe 2012 (for her solo Cantata #40, also read last year in Valdez, Alaska at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference). In 2013 at the Marsh San Francisco, and at the O'Hanlon Arts Center in Marin, she performed an earlier solo version of Blizzard. Her full-length play Kiska Bay was read at Tides Theatre in the Dramatists Guild Footlight Series. Her current full-length plays include The Unveiling, Black Swan, The Umbrella Play, and One Foot on the Water. In 2011, The Mav Mum Murder was read at the LFTC in Valdez, where Linda's various work has received readings seven times over the last nine years. Two of her plays (Dinner with the Undertaker's Son and Waiting in the Victory Garden) were performed and published by Three Wise Monkeys Theatre Company in two Bay One-Acts Festivals. She has had over 20 pieces produced and over 30 pieces read publicly. Her work also appears in Monologues from the Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Poets on Parnassus. For the last several years, Linda has been a member of the Monday Night Playwrights, the longest running writing group in San Francisco, and of Artists Development Lab. She also serves as a Member of the Board of Custom Made Theatre Company and the Advisory Committee of 3 Girls Theatre. Since 2003 she has lived in San Francisco's Mission District with her partner.

Nancy Cooper Frank (Playwright, The Plumber). The Plumber won first prize at FirstStage LA's 2013 One Act Festival. It comes to the San Francisco Fringe fresh from its run in the Arundel Theatre Trail in Arundel, England (produced by the appropriately named Drip Action Theatre Company). A staged reading of Nancy's Daniil Kharms: A Life in One Act and Several Dozen Eggs, directed by L. Peter Callender, was chosen by Virago Theatre to celebrate the June 2014 inauguration of The Flight Deck in Oakland. Nancy, Kharms, and the several dozen eggs also traveled to the Great Plains Theatre Conference for a PlayLab reading this year. Nancy has contributed short plays and one-acts to the Philly Fringe (with Secret Room Theatre), Spare Change Theatre's In A New York Minute Festival, The San Francisco Theater Pub, The Bay One Acts Festival, Berkeley's Play Café, the Chameleon Theatre Circle's New Play Festival (Minnesota), to name a few. She is a proud member of the Drama!tists Guild, the Monday Night Group workshop (www.mondaynightgroup.net) and the board of The Custom Made Theatre. Nancy used to teach Russian literature and still dips into Dead Souls when nobody is looking. She lives with husband Richard and a cat with too many names in San Francisco. 

We open with a rebroadcast of an interview with playwright and director for Campo Maldito-- 9/12 10:30 p.m; 9/16 7 p.m., 9/20 2:30

Bennett Fisher, playwright, is company member of Campo Santo, an associate artist with the Cutting Ball Theater, and a co-founder of the San Francisco Theater Pub. His plays include Campo Maldito, Borealis, Pay Dirt, Hermes, Don’t Be Evil, Devil of a Time, and Whoa is Me. They have been presented and produced by the Kennedy Center MFA Playwrights Workshop, the Martin E. Segel Center, Ubuntu Theater Project, Sleepwalkers Theater, No Nude Men, New Conservatory, the Cutting Ball Theater, Custom Made Theatre Company, and Bread and Water, and others. As an actor, director, and dramaturg he has collaborated with Campo Santo, California Shakespeare Theatre, Stanford Summer Theatre, Just Theater, Crowded Fire, Pear Ave Theatre, Adirondack Shakespeare Company, Marin Shakespeare Company, and many others. Bennett was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is currently pursuing his MFA in playwriting at UC San Diego, class of 2016. http://bennettfisher.net/about/

Jesca Prudencio, Director
Jesca is a director, choreographer, and community based artist. Founder, People of Interest, member, Ubuntu Theatre. She has worked on new plays, musicals, and dance theater works with companies including The Movement Theatre Company, Fresh Ground Pepper, Ingenue Theatre, and the Asian American Arts Alliance at venues like Joe’s Pub, 3LD, FringeNYC, Bleecker St. Theater, University Settlement, and The Old Vic in London as part of the TS Eliot US/UK Exchange. Her site-specific dance pieces include We Walk, We Stop at the Astor Place intersection and Nothing Matters When We’re Dancing in Washington Square Park. As a member of Ping Chong + Company, she has worked as a writer, director, and facilitator on a dozen interdisciplinary and documentary theater projects, and including co-writing and directing Listen To Me: voices of survivors of child sexual abuse and those who help thempresented in the Bronx and Manhattan. She recently directed and choreographed a new musicalThe Firebird at NYU's Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Jesca has a BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.  http://www.peopleofinterest.org/about.html