Travel Back in Time with Me

FIRST THINGS FIRST: I will be performing a NEW excerpt of my solo show, “All the Great New Things to Come” on Monday, August 18th, at the Marsh Berkeley. There will be four storytellers total (20 minutes each) and I go on second. GET TICKETS HERE.

I emphasize NEW because sometimes people think they’ve already seen my show, but the truth is, it’s always changing, as I’m constantly tweaking it. However, this upcoming performance has 90% new material. And that’s a little daunting because I don’t have muscle memory with it yet. It’s also getting to be towards the end of the piece -so trying to catch the audience up briefly with transitional language is always a challenge.

Even though I have probably written about 90 minutes of material, I want to cut it down to about 55 minutes so it’s eligible for fringe festivals, and when I say fringe festivals, I just mean the San Franciso Fringe Festival because this is a Bay Area story and I don’t know if anyone outside our borders will get it.

The fantasy though, if I dream big enough, is for it to be a television series because 55 minutes is just not enough. There are chapters and chapters of Bay Area history brewing in my brain. But will anyone care? So many television shows take place in New York City. Mine would take place in San Francisco and the East Bay. A girl can dream, can’t she?

My second cousin asked me what the topic of my show was, and I recognize that saying “it’s about me rediscovering my SF Bay Area roots as a fourth-generation native“, isn’t enough. It’s not catchy, it’s not a pitch, and it’s certainly not an angle. I don’t know how to sell it or even describe it half the time. And I loathe self-promotion on social media. The cranky Gen-Xer in me rears her ugly head.

So why am I writing it? Because one day in 2020, during the shelter in place mandate, I found a photo album my father had given me years ago that included letters written from my Great Grandma Katie about growing up in the Bay Area during the turn of the century and she used words and phrases like “horse-driven-streetcar” and “1906 earthquake” and I was whisked away.

So come to my show on August 18th in Berkeley and travel back in time with me.

Bay Area Ancestors:

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How To Go Viral

I am convinced that Heather Locklear was the originally O.G. of going viral:

I only say this because I have a show coming up in November and an extremely motivated self-promoting ninja friend of mine Tony Gapastione was getting on me about self-promotion. I need to get the word out NOW that I will be doing the entire 63 minutes of my one-woman show, “Born Again in Berkeley” at the Marsh Theatre in Berkeley on Tuesday, November 7th.

But how do you affectively self-promote? I didn’t grow up with social media (as you can tell from the above 80s commercial reference I pulled out of my @#!$). Had I been 8 years old, instead of 28 years old, when everyone got online, I would have been a self-promoting wizard! When we’re young, our brains are like sponges, we take in everything and learn so quickly. But as we get older, our minds get filled with more and more memories and unless there is a way to do an actual memory dump (like in the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), our brains get full, at capacity. Old dog, new tricks.

So here I am, on the other side of 50, trying to learn new tricks. Tony told me to send him my “content”. Oh, what an ambiguous term, “content”. What promotional material do I have to promote my show? He also referred me to the website “Canva” – ya know, so I can design my own postcards and fliers with my “content”. So I scrolled through my phone for content….

What? You don’t find that effective? Okay fine. Here’s the actual promo image. But this is so basic. I need help!

So dear reader, if you could tell two friends about my show….

And then they’ll tell two friends…

And then they’ll two friends…

And so on and so on and so on…..

Day 702 – Teamwork

This morning I met with the editor of my show again, and I think…I think... we have a final sequence to my story. I will retype it tomorrow and then run the entire piece for him on Wednesday. Please God let this work.

Afterwards, I scooped up a new geocache that was hidden at a nearby trail.

FOUND IT

From there I met up with my friends who helped me with an impromptu photo shoot for my show next month:

BORN AGAIN IN BERKELEY

I like the pic on the right, but my arabesque was too straight and I look like I got one leg bro.

I’m super tired now, but so grateful for creative friends helping me with all this. Teamwork makes the dream work!

Sunday, February 13, 2022

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Day 569 -Tomorrow’s Show!

One of the most difficult parts about doing solo shows is that it can be lonely.

In conventional stage plays there are usually cast members you can bounce energy off of while on stage, back stage, and off stage. There are cast parties and friendships are made, and it can be a pretty great time. If the show does well, you celebrate. If it doesn’t, well, at least you are all in it together. You can share the fame and the blame. Everybody carries the load.,

In conventional stage plays, depending on the budget, there is also a technical crew to help with the lights, sound, and costumes. And you even have a director and possibly your show is at a theater that has a mailing list and helps with promotion. And as an actor, you only have to focus on acting.

But in a one person show- you gotta do almost everything. You wear many hats. You write, perform, do your own makeup, costumes, etc., I even learned how to edit sound cues and upload them for the sound person. And if you want a director, you gotta pay $$ for them. You are your own executive producer.

But out of all those things we have to juggle, the hardest part for me is the promotion. How many times can you send emails, post on social media, and bug your friends to come see your show? And if you are performing out of town, it’s even more of a challenge because, well, why would complete strangers come see you perform?

Today I posted again on Instagram about my show tomorrow night and their sneaky algorithm saw that I don’t get many “likes” or views on my posts -so I get these direct messages asking if I want to “buy followers”. BUY FOLLOWERS. That’s like paying for “fans”. I know P.R. is a business, but geesh.

All that to say…

Come see perform a short excerpt of my solo show “Born Again in Berkeley,” tomorrow night in SF, live and in person, or on Zoom! There are two performers total (20 min each) and I go on first at 7pm, so don’t be late!

Monday Night Marsh

Mondays, October 4th and 18th

SF Marsh Theater – 1062 Valencia Street, San Francisco 

Doors at 6:30pm, Show at 7:00pm 

Sliding Scale starting at $10 for in-person tickets- click here to purchase tickets or you can buy them at the door (credit cards only).

In-Person Peeps: You will have to show ID and proof of vaccination, and wear a mask while inside the building.

Zoom Peeps: You can click on the Zoom box here, on the evening of the performance – virtual doors at 6:30pm, show starts at 7:00pm-show is free of charge.

“Theresa has a secret. In the Bay Area where people are flinging open their closet doors, she’s not sure she’ll be accepted. Help Theresa come out…….as a Christian.”