The Marsh Theater is an American theater company that specializes in developing new performance, founded in 1989. It has two venue locations, at 1062 Valencia Street in the Mission District of San Francisco, California; and 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley, California.
The Marsh began in 1989 as a Monday night performance series with Peggy Howe and Stephanie Weisman at the legendary Hotel Utah, a historic drinking hole and performance venue. [1] Competition with Monday Night Football drove The Marsh to Morty’s in North Beach. In 1990, they moved The Marsh into the back room at the former Cafe Beano at 878 Valencia Street. [1] [2] They briefly operated out of the former Modern Time Books at 17th Street and Sanchez Street. [2] [3] [4] In December 1992, The Marsh moved to its current location at 1062 Valencia Street, and they purchased the space in 1996. [1]
The first staged workshop was Marga Gomez’s "Memory Tricks." [5] Josh Kornbluth’s "Haiku Tunnel" was The Marsh’s first full-length production, and Charlie Varon’s initial solo piece "Honest Prophets" saw its debut there. In December 1992, The Marsh moved to its current location on Valencia Street. In 1996, The Marsh purchased the whole building, gradually developing the 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m2) space into a community arts center. It recently has included two theaters, a comedy club, a cafe, and a youth theater.
In 2004, The Marsh produced the world premiere of Brian Copeland's solo show, "Not a Genuine Black Man." The production ran for two years, making it the longest-running solo show in San Francisco history. [6]
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theaters and venues across the San Francisco Bay Area, The Marsh had transitioned to an online broadcasting platform known as MarshStream and it provided a full calendar of live theater performances, workshops and interactive programming to patrons sheltering in place.
In 2018, [7] up to 32 teams [8] of one to five performers presented 40-minute unplugged performances over a 3-day weekend as part of a theatrical competition. Audiences voted for their favorite teams and each team scored based on votes and attendance. The top scoring teams advanced to the "Final Four Showdown" [9] on Sunday, March 11, 2018, where a judging panel of Marsh VIPs and celebrities crowned one Marsh Madness champion with $1,000 and a weekend run of their show at The Marsh. Second to Fourth place received cash prizes, plus a Marsh Rising performance. [10]
The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in the Castro District of San Francisco, California. The venue became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque façade that pays homage—in its great arched central window surmounted by a scrolling pediment framing a niche—to the basilica of Mission Dolores nearby. Its designer, Timothy L. Pflueger, also designed Oakland's Paramount Theater and other movie theaters in California during that period. The theater has more than 1,400 seats.
The Mission District, commonly known as the Mission, is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California. One of the oldest neighborhoods in San Francisco, the Mission District's name is derived from Mission San Francisco de Asís, built in 1776 by the Spanish. The Mission is historically one of the most notable centers of the city's Chicano/Mexican-American community.
The culture of San Francisco is major and diverse in terms of arts, music, cuisine, festivals, museums, and architecture but also is influenced heavily by Mexican culture due to its large Hispanic population, and its history as part of Spanish America and Mexico. San Francisco's diversity of cultures along with its eccentricities are so great that they have greatly influenced the country and the world at large over the years. In 2012, Bloomberg Businessweek voted San Francisco as America's Best City.
Theatre Rhinoceros, Theatre Rhino, or The Rhino is a gay and lesbian theatre in San Francisco. Theatre Rhinoceros claims to be the world's longest-running professional queer theatre company. It was founded in the spring of 1977 by Lanny Baugniet and his late partner Allan B. Estes, Jr.. The name is based on the lavender rhinoceros, a symbol popularized by the Boston gay community in the mid-1970s. It is a non-profit theater company dedicated to the production of plays by and about gay and lesbian people.
Marga Gomez is a comedian, writer, performer, and teaching artist from Harlem, New York. She has written and performed in thirteen solo plays which have been presented nationally and internationally. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno. She also acted in season two of the Netflix series Sense8. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Gomez pivoted to adapting and presenting her work for live streaming. She has been featured in online theater festivals from New York to San Diego, as well as a five-week virtual run for Brava, SF where she is an artist-in-residence. She is a GLAAD media award winner and recipient of the 2020 CCI Investing in Artists grant.
Azeem Ismail, better known simply as Azeem is a hip-hop rapper and performance poet, residing in Brooklyn, New York.
The Harding Theater is a historic movie theater located at 616 Divisadero Street in San Francisco, California, completed in 1926. In 2017, the Emporium Arcade Bar opened in the space.
Henry "Hank" Wilson was a longtime San Francisco LGBT rights activist and long term AIDS activist and survivor. The Bay Area Reporter noted that "over more than 30 years, he played a pivotal role in San Francisco's LGBT history." He grew up in Sacramento, and graduated with a B.A. in education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1971.
Valencia Tool & Die, (VT&D), was a 1980s San Francisco music venue and art gallery founded by Peter Belsito and Jim Stockford, that presented punk, new wave, and new music performances, as well as performance art, film, and visual art shows from 1980 through 1983.
National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF) is an annual queer festival in San Francisco organized by the Queer Cultural Center and established in 1998 to coincide with Pride Month.
Alina Troyano, more commonly known as Carmelita Tropicana, is a Cuban-American stage and film lesbian actress who lives and works in New York City.
La Mamelle, Inc. / Art Com was a not-for-profit arts organization, artist-run space, or alternative exhibition space, active from 1975 through 1995, and was located at 70-12th Street in the South of Market-area of San Francisco, California.
The California Jazz Conservatory is a private conservatory in Berkeley, California. It is the only independent music conservatory in the United States devoted solely to jazz and related styles of music. Located in the Downtown Berkeley Arts District, the CJC offers Associate, Bachelor's, and Master's degrees in Jazz Studies. The conservatory also offers community education classes and workshops for instrumentalists and vocalists and precollege youth programs for beginning, intermediate and advanced musicians. In July 2024, the conservatory announced that it would end its degree programs due to "significantly decreased enrollment and financial constraints."
Z Space is a regional theater and performing arts company located in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. Z Space is one of the leading laboratories for developing new voices, new works, and new opportunities in the American theater. In addition to commissioning and producing its own works, Z Space also presents productions created by other organizations.
The Varsity Theatre is a former movie palace on University Avenue in Palo Alto, California. It was designed in a mixed Mission Revival and Spanish Renaissance style by brothers James Reid and Merritt Reid and opened in 1927. The theater closed in 1994 and the building has been adapted for other commercial uses, initially as a Borders bookstore and since 2015 housing a co-working space and a Blue Bottle cafe.
Dhaya Lakshminarayanan is an American comedian, performance artist, TV host, and storyteller. She has performed at venues such as San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, the Siren Theater, San Francisco's Punchline Comedy Club and Cobb's Comedy Club, the Brava Theatre, Throckmorton Theatre, and others. She has also performed at comedy festivals such as SF Sketchfest 2015 and SF Sketchfest 2020; the Desi Comedy Fest, America's only South Asian comedy festival; and the Out of Bounds Comedy Festival. In 2019, Lakshminarayanan, Will Durst, and W. Kamau Bell appeared as guests on KQED in regard to the controversial proposed closure of the historic San Francisco Punchline Comedy Club. The same year, she regularly opened for Greg Proops at the Punchline.
Marcus Books, was founded in 1960, and is the oldest bookstore that specializes in African-American literature, history, and culture in the United States. For many years, it has been located in the Western Addition neighborhood of San Francisco, with a second location in Oakland, California. The store has remained independent and family-owned since its founding, and it is considered a community space for African-American and literary culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Luggage Store Gallery, also known as 509 Cultural Center, is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary arts organization founded in 1987, and has two venues located in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The organization has sponsored many local artists, including those that are considered to be part of the Mission School, and of skateboard or street art culture.
The Hotel Utah is a historic mixed-use building known as a saloon bar, live music venue, and residential hotel, built in 1908 and located in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It is known for its diverse open mic nights, which have historically attracted some people who have later become famous. It is also known as The Utah Inn, The Hotel Utah Saloon, and simply The Utah.