Culture Fiend

Minus the Bear, 10 Years Later

Bassist Cory Murchy talks about their early years and boys becoming men.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Nov 10, 2011 at 09:00AM 0 Comments

Minus the Bear

View Slideshow » Illustration:

Minus the Bear

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Minus the Bear

Ten years ago, Minus the Bear was just a fledgling Seattle indie band. Or, more specifically, five dudes who hung out in a bar all the time, trying to crack an inundated local music scene with prog-rock songs about sex and booze. Their beards were shorter; their song titles sillier (“Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!”) But they had talent, no doubt. Their debut album Highly Refined Pirates—a party in a CD case—came out at the hands of legendary producer Steve Fisk, who also worked with Nirvana, Soundgarden, and the Posies.

A lot can happen in a decade. Four albums. A new keyboardist. A chance to open for Soundgarden. Headlining tours. Marriage. Babies. It’s enough to make a man reflect. Before the band wraps up its 10-year-anniversary tour at Showbox at the Market on Friday—where they’ll play Highly Refined Pirates in its entirety—bassist Cory Murchy chatted with us about “five boys turning into men.”

How has Seattle changed since you guys started?

When we first started out our shows were at the Paradox [an all-ages club that’s since closed]. Luckily the Vera Project still does all-ages shows. It’s kind of neat, though: It’s a lot of the same characters and a lot of the same players from 10, 15, 20 years ago. There’s a thread of continuity.

Do you think your music has changed drastically?

Hopefully it just shows progression, growth—you know, five boys turning into men, learning how to live together and make the tour happen. This is our livelihood, our business, and it’s also our art and our life.

What would you call what you’re playing now?

Classic rock for the future. You want to listen to it now, and hopefully you want to listen to it 20 years from now.

What’s the biggest highlight of your career so far?

The fact that we can do this 10 years on is our biggest achievement. It took us a while to gain some respect in Seattle. There were other bands that came out at the same time that got a lot of attention, and got really big, and a lot of those bands are gone. I’m proud to say that 10 years on, we’re still chugging at it and there’s really no end in sight. It’s awesome to see Seattle finally come around and realize we’re not just another local band.

Minus the Bear plays Showbox at the Market on Nov 11 at 9. The Velvet Teen opens.

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Tags: Concert, Interview, Seattle Music, Minus the Bear

Jane Espenson Is a Grown-Up Girl Geek

One of TV’s biggest science-fiction writers comes to EMP for GeekGirlCon.

Posted by: Allison Williams on Oct 05, 2011 at 11:30AM 3 Comments

Who are you calling a geek? Oh, this lady. Cool.

If you’ve ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, or Game of Thrones, guess what: You’re probably a geek. It also means you’ve seen episodes penned by Jane Espenson, a prolific television writer and producer who’s also behind this fall’s drama Once Upon a Time and comedic web series Husbands (check out the Nathan Fillion cameo!).

With nerd cred like that, it’s no wonder she’s a featured guest at this weekend’s GeekGirlCon. Espenson will be at the EMP to talk about her career on Saturday at 1pm, then wax poetic on her Buffy years in a Whedonistas panel at 5:30pm. We caught up with the sci-fi celebrity to find out what’s so exciting about girls and geeks:

Would you call yourself a nerd?
Sure, absolutely. [Nerd] is used now to mean a fan, anyone who’s obsessively into anything. But it used to mean someone more academically advanced and socially disadvantaged. I definitely fit both of those.

What do you expect from the GeekGirlCon?
It’ll be good, as long as it’s not exclusive. I want boys to feel included. The whole emphasis should be that we’re not the cool kids, so we don’t exclude anyone.

Do you ever get tired of being a poster child for female geeks?
No, not at all! I love science-fiction fandom, because there’s no reason why anyone should know my name. But in science-fiction shows, people pay attention to who writes the show. They value writing and they value ideas. Writers get to be as revered as the actors, or more. And I love that, because I’m a writer.

Many sci-fi shows film in Vancouver, including your own upcoming Once Upon a Time. Is the Northwest naturally geeky?
I think there’s something about tax breaks [in Vancouver]. There are enormous financial incentives, and it makes it much more affordable. And with sci-fi, you’re wanting to spend some money on effects, so you’ll want to save money on other areas. And it’s part of the tax break, that you employ local hires, so you can hear the Canadian accents all over sci-fi.

What’s the geekiest piece of clothing you own?
Oh my gosh. On my first season at Buffy, the Christmas gift we got from [actor] Alexis Denisof was a fanny pack that says BUFFY. I wear it in Las Vegas when I go to there.

Are there still gender issues in the world of sci-fi and fantasy?
Yes, though maybe a little less acute than similar problems outside of science fiction and fantasy. I think they have a great history of inclusivity. There’s always been a pretty good presence in sci-fi for women…. People think sci-fi must be the worst boys’ club in TV. No, that’s sitcoms.

I try to make myself hyper-conscious of [gender portrayals]. I ask myself, what if I switched all my genders? I try to make sure that I’m writing something as enlightened as I’d like to think I am.

So your writing is genderless?
No, it’s not genderless portrayals… [but] I’m not sure I’m willing to say that men and women are different, that women are more romantic and men are more likely to fly off the handle. I would like to see things a little more genderless. Why do we assume that the female will fall in love and the man will, like, pick his nose? I know a lot of active women who pick their noses.

Hear Jane Espenson at GeekGirlCon on October 8.

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Tags: Television, Interview, Experience Music Project, GeekGirlCon

Q&A: Chris Cleave, Author of Little Bee

We talk books, Bin Laden, and cracked-out squirrels.

Posted by: Annie Rose Favreau on May 11, 2011 at 11:30AM 0 Comments

“Squirrels on crack and writers on caffeine are both tragic and funny.” — Chris Cleave

London-based author Chris Cleave flies into town this week to talk about his 2009 novel Little Bee, the year’s Seattle Reads pick by Seattle Public Library. Though the Brit’s book topics tend to be heavy—refugees, terrorism—he manages levity with each. To wit: We chatted about squirrels on crack and Osama bin Laden before he arrived.

Last time you were in Seattle, you seemed to really enjoy our coffee culture. Are you looking forward to another caffeine spree this time around?

A few years back when I was living in Brixton, in South London, the neighborhood had a lot of problems with wild-eyed, overconfident squirrels. There was a rumor circulating to the effect that the squirrels had become adept at locating, unearthing and consuming the supplies of crack cocaine judiciously buried in parks and gardens by local users. In truth I’ve no idea how they got that way—maybe it was just an attitude thing—but the squirrels were pretty funny in the way that any hopped-up, three-inch-high herbivore is inherently comic. Anyway, that diminutive, confused, supercharged creature? That was me after my eighth coffee of the day on my last trip to Seattle. I just had no idea how strong you guys make the stuff up there, and I completely overdosed. I wrote a piece about it.

You’ve said Little Bee is about “the horror of being alive in a world where atrocities happen.” What do you hope readers will take away from this work?

The novel is about a refugee and what I learned while researching it—and what I hope people will take away from it—is that our lives here in the West, while often very hard, are rarely impossible. On a planet largely characterized by suffering, we are comparatively lucky. Even when we do not currently have a job, at least we have the right to seek work. Even when we cannot currently afford foreign travel, at least we have the right to hold a passport… These are things we often take for granted… If people take away a second thing from the book, I hope it might be the idea that we are not powerless to help refugees.

Your first book, Incendiary, is a novel-length letter from a grieving mother to Osama bin Laden. Do you think recent events will change the way the book is read?

I try to think how my protagonist, the bereaved mother, would have reacted to the news of bin Laden’s death. The letter she writes to him is an effort to make him understand what he has done in murdering her son… She writes: “I want you to understand what a human boy is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind.” … When dealing with evildoers, death alone does not bring closure. It seems with bin Laden, it was simply not possible to effect a capture—his death was the best available outcome. However, it means there will never be an opportunity to point a high-definition camera at his face while he is asked the two questions the bereaved victims would really like answered: “Why did you do it?” and “Do you truthfully feel no remorse?”

Will your next project tend more toward comedy or drama?

A good book should accommodate both comedy and tragedy. I think life makes us only one promise—that it will break us all—and I think we can make life only one promise in return: that we will not take it personally… If we can wrestle moments of humor from its jaws and laugh in its face, then we come out of the process with more dignity than life does. This, for example, is why squirrels on crack and writers on caffeine are both tragic and funny.

Chris Cleave discusses Little Bee at Seattle Public Library’s Central Library on May 13 at 7pm. He also meets readers at public libraries across the city from May 12–14. For more info, go to spl.lib.wa.us. UPDATED 5/11/11. Cleave will also be at the Sorrento Hotel on May 12, 8:30pm, for Night School.

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Tags: Interview, Books & Talks, Seattle Public Library, Books & Authors

Queen of the Night: Q&A with The Magic Flute’s Emily Hindrichs

Posted by: Annie Rose Favreau on May 04, 2011 at 10:05AM 0 Comments

Photo courtesy Richard Hubert Smith.

Louisiana native Emily Hindrichs makes her Seattle Opera debut as Queen of the Night.

When Mozart’s fairy tale The Magic Flute opens at McCaw Hall this Saturday, soprano Emily Hindrichs will make her Seattle Opera debut as the infamous Queen of the Night. (The part is shared with Mari Moriya, another SO newcomer.) Hindrichs is no stranger to the role: By 2012, the former SO Young Artist will have played the Queen in England, New Orleans, Mississippi, Seattle, Syracuse, and Germany. She took a few minutes from a hectic opening-week schedule to talk opera villains and Cupcake Royale.

The Queen of the Night was your first major role [in 2004 at the University of Southern Mississippi]. How has your understanding of the role changed, from that first performance to this one?

When I first played the Queen, I wasn’t confident enough to seek the non-obvious choices. She was powerful and dark, but there was no chink in her armor… In this production, she’s more sensitive, more vulnerable than I’ve ever played her before. It allows the audience to empathize with her, instead of seeing her as manipulative and vengeful from the get-go. It also makes the transformation into venom and rage even more effective.

What’s different or surprising about this production of The Magic Flute?

Zandra [Rhode’s] costumes are some of the most creative and beautiful I’ve ever seen. I’m completely in love with the animals she designed—watch for the emu, she’s my favorite. What’s surprising is the amount of depth [director] Chris Alexander has been able to execute in such a short period of time. His knowledge and understanding of the characters has allowed us to build more complex relationships.

When you’re performing in Seattle, do you get the chance to explore the city?

My best friend says I like to eat my way through a city, and Seattle is no different. I’m a longtime devotee of Cupcake Royale (the Ballard shop is my favorite) and I’m trying to work my way through all of Tom Douglas’s new restaurants. I’m hoping to make a trip out to Woodinville to visit the wineries while the weather is still nice.

Any behind-the-scenes details we should look for?

There’s a very festive prop in Act II—you’ll know it when you see it!

Seattle Opera’s The Magic Flute is at McCaw Hall from May 7–21. For more from Hindrichs, check Seattle Opera’s blog at seattleopera.blogspot.com.

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Tags: Interview, Opera

Brown Derby Gang Performs “The Shining” at Re-Bar

It’s a parody that pays homage to Stephen King—a “paromage.” Ha.

Posted by: Katie Ormsby on Mar 08, 2011 at 03:00PM 1 Comments

Shelley Duvall perfects “crazy eyes” for The Shining.

Remember that creepy hallway scene in The Shining when the Grady twins beckon little Danny to come play forever and ever and ever? While more silly than creepy, the Brown Derby Series invites Seattle to come play for three nights, with ‘ridiculously staged readings’ of the screenplay at Re-bar all weekend.

Since 1999 Brown Derby has simultaneously parodied and paid homage—a “paromage” or “homarody,” as founder and director Ian Bell puts it—to some of Bell’s favorite scripts. This season is dedicated to Stephen King: no word yet who’ll replace Sissy Spacek for their “production” of Carrie, but we’re hoping it’s Nick Garrison. (The local actor fills in here for Shelley Duvall as the freaked-out wife.) Bell gives Culture Fiend the backstory on his madcap creation.

What inspired you to start Brown Derby?

Back in the late ’90s, I was talking with my boyfriend (now husband) Andrew about how I would love to see some of my favorite local drag performers play certain roles in our favorite movies. He said, “I think I’ve heard about an annual private party in New York where celebrities get together to read Valley of the Dolls for each other just for the fun of it.” And as they say, the rest is history.

What is your goal for each show?

It’s important to me that the Brown Derby feels less like theater and more like a social party—like those celebrities cramming into folding chairs in someone’s NYC apartment, script in one hand, drink in the other. It’s very much about lowering the expectations of the audience, so that even the crudest cardboard prop or most under-rehearsed performance can become wonderful, brilliant even.

What can people expect from The Shining this weekend?

Lots of knives, blood, over-the-top screaming, and patented Stephen King “crazy eyes.”

What do you love to hear from audience members?

Perhaps my favorite thing to hear, which I hear all the time, is that the Brown Derby Series was their first live theater experience. I like to think of the Brown Derby as theater’s “welcome mat”—perfect for wiping your feet on and designed to get dirty.

What screenplays are up next?

In May we’re doing Stand by Me, and Carrie in October. The August slot is still up in the air, though I’m drawn to Children of the Corn. Misery, Creepshow, and Christine have been suggested. I’m taking votes at brownderbyseries@gmail.com.

The Shining runs March 10–12 at 8pm at Re-bar. Tickets are $16 and available on a first-come, first-served basis one hour before showtime. Online reservations are available for parties of five or more.

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Tags: Interview, Brown Derby

4 Q’s for Billy Collins

The former U.S. poet laureate wouldn’t mind owning a frame shop. Or working at an airport.

Posted by: Olivia Margoshes on Nov 23, 2010 at 12:30PM 0 Comments

Billy Collins

It’s hard to resist Billy Collins—the laugh-loving former U.S. poet laureate (2001-2003) who’s penned or edited 15 books of poetry and been called the “most popular poet in America” by The New York Times. No surprise: His poems are as funny and poignant as they are accessible—even to a three-year-old, whose recitation of “Litany” was a YouTube sensation.

I was able to snag a few minutes of the poet’s time while he was in town last night to do a reading for Seattle Arts and Lectures.

What, in your opinion, is a poem?
I only know one airtight definition, and it’s Henry Taylor’s. He said: “A poem is an arrangement of lines whose length is determined by some principle other than the width of the page.” … Every time you stop the line before you get to the end of the page, you’re turning a reader’s attention back into the poem…. Poets are line-making creatures. Kenneth Burke says: “Poetry is the dancing of an attitude.” All of these definitions are engaging, but basically you’re making lines.

What is your writing process like?
I don’t have any work habits exactly. I don’t have a time to write; I write very much on the run, and kind of spasmodically whenever it happens. But when it does happen I do write almost all the poems in one sitting, whether that’s 10 minutes or all day. I need to know where this thing is going as soon as the poem starts. The only reason I continue to write the poem is because it exhibits a desire to go somewhere—it seems to have momentum. I’m not going to get up until I get there. I’m not going to go out and get a pizza or something. It’s game on. I’m in it.

What would you do if you weren’t a poet?
Maybe open a frame shop in town. It could be closed on Wednesdays and open at 10 or 10:30. I always thought opening a frame shop would be interesting…or just something to do that wouldn’t be obsessive. I always wanted to work on the tarmac of an airport, too. I’d want to be outside in Hawaii where the weather was pretty nice, or maybe San Diego. Whether it would be baggage or directing, all that busyness and airplanes, I guess that’s kind of a 9-year-old’s career choice. But whenever I land and I’m looking out the window at those guys I think, That’s kind of a fun thing to do. Maybe I’m romanticizing that. It seems like with all their technology those people would have been replaced, but they’re still there.

Have you noticed a decline in appreciation for poetry?
I think quite the contrary. I think poetry’s expanding, becoming a little more central to culture. I think people are gradually, through the efforts of certain poets who are writing beautiful and engaging poetry, getting over their poetry phobia. I’m not optimistic about anything, but my philosophy in life, if I have one, is summed up by this Turkish proverb: “When the axe goes into the forest, all the trees think, At least the handle is one of us.” It’s sort of a hopeless optimism. But poetry’s fine. Poetry will outlive television.

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Tags: Pub grub, Interview, Poetry

Waiting for ‘Superman’

Director of An Inconvenient Truth recruits a high-profile local to tackle America’s “broken school system.”

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Oct 01, 2010 at 11:00AM 1 Comments

Director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) is on a lifelong crusade: to make sense of what he calls America’s “crappy” public education system. “Our school system is broken for too many kids,” he said during a recent visit to Seattle. “It’s morally unacceptable and 
economically unsustainable. Our economy’s going to fail because of it.”

He returns to the soap box with documentary Waiting for “Superman”, out in theaters today. But he’s been making his case over the last few weeks (he caught Oprah’s ear) with the help of a high-profiled local: Mr Microsoft Bill Gates. Read on here.

Waiting for ‘Superman’ is in theaters nationwide on Oct 1. It’s showing at AMC Pacific Place and Landmark Neptune Theatre.

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Tags: Interview, Film

On Mothers and Monkeys

New Century Theatre Company launches its sophomore season with a “bittersweet comedy” this Wednesday.

Posted by: Karen Quinn on May 03, 2010 at 11:00AM 0 Comments

Stephanie Timm

New Century Theatre Company follows up its award-winning debut season with an original comedy penned by company playwright Stephanie Timm. On the Nature of Dust, about a 16-year-old girl (played by Brenda Joyner) and her sophomoric mother (Amy Thone), launches New Century’s new season with great expectations. Before the show’s bow on May 5, I chatted with the young, giggly Midwestern native about her “dark” writing style and what a chimpanzee has to do with mother-daughter bonding.

Is the play based on anything in your real life?

Every girl is a teenage girl at one time. Even though my mom is nothing like the mom in the story, I was a nightmare when I was 16. We would have these huge fights over the fact that I left too many pairs of shoes in the entryway, or that I wanted to eat Doritos for breakfast. Other than that, the mom in the story is based on my friend in middle school’s mom. She was a single mother, and she was very immature. When I would go over their house, she was like the cool mom: She would sit and talk with us, and she was beautiful, and funny, and treated us as equals. But, that said, it was really my friend Amy who was making sure the rent was paid and all that stuff.

Why did New Century choose On the Nature of Dust for its third-ever production?

We knew that the third show would be something I had written. The company read through everything I was working on, and this piece really resonated with everyone. Our first show was Adding Machine, which was a big, theatrical spectacle. And the second show we did was Orange Flower Water, which was small, and intimate; it was real human storytelling without the spectacle. And my play is exactly between those two. Plus, it’s a comedy, which we really wanted to do. It’s a bittersweet comedy, though. It might creep up on you because it has sad parts to it, but it was important to us to do a comedy. And I don’t write very many comedies.

Is this play indicative of your overall writing style? Or did it break the norm?

I like to think that I don’t write the same play twice. I have a really wide range, and I think all my plays are really different. I wrote one recently that was a grim fairytale world that explores human trafficking. And recently I wrote a play called Everything Nice, which is rooted in realism and is a psychological thriller. That’s probably the darkest thing that I’ve written. But usually my work tends to be darker in tone.

Last year’s budget for New Century was pretty tight. What’s the budget like for this play?

The budget is really teeny tiny for the set, but we pay the artists more than we spend on the materials for things, which is a cool thing about our company. It allows us to work with artists who can be really, really creative with very, very little.

And have to ask…what’s up with the monkey in the promo posters?

In the play, Clara is 16 and she wants to go abroad for her junior year, and that’s where everything starts. Clara wants to get away from her mother and form her own identity, which is the nature of adolescence. And so, her mother won’t let her go abroad, and then Clara turns into a chimpanzee. She devolves into more and more primitive species, and this really forces her mom to grow up and figure out how to take care of her.

On the Nature of Dust runs May 5-30 at ACT Theatre. Read more about New Century’s powerhouse debut season here.

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Tags: Theater, Interview

A Family Affair

Constanza Romero, August Wilson’s widow, lends a hand for SRT’s Fences.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Mar 31, 2010 at 10:30AM 2 Comments

Constanza Romero and her daughter, Azula Carmen Wilson, attend the opening of August Wilson’s Radio Golf on Broadway in 2007.

Things are getting personal over at Seattle Repertory Theatre—in a good way. August Wilson’s play Fences, opening tonight, will feature costumes by his widow, Constanza Romero, a talented designer who’s also created the outfits for the cast of Broadway’s Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis (and, coincidentally, opening in two weeks). Suddenly, Romero’s a jet-setter, crossing the country to bring a special, familial touch to one of Wilson’s greatest dramas: the story of a Negro League ballplayer-turned-garbage collector who watches Jackie Robinson rise to fame as his own American Dream turns to dust.

Romero says she’s happy to be working again—she took a break after Wilson’s passing in 2005 to manage his estate—but she admits that the dual production schedule is daunting. “I designed this show a long, long, long time ago when I was just getting out of grad school,” she said over coffee back in February. "It just seems like nothing I did then is helping me now!” Romero weighs in…

…On her costumes…
My approach is kind of like a portrait. I can think of the face and the inner workings of the character, and clothes come last.

…On working with Wilson…
He had an amazing amount of respect for visual artists. He kind of always wanted to be like Picasso or Matisse. We’d be working on a play and I’d be sketching in my studio, and I’d draw a character. He’d go up and look at it really closely, and sometimes he’d say, let me go downstairs and write the character so it fit more with the sketch. It was really cool.

…On why Fences matters now…
Fences is about a lot of deferred dreams. In 1957, there was a man who could have been anything, done anything, and yet the limitations of his time, his race and economic state limited him to being a garbage collector. But that did not lessen the greatness of his spirit. There should be a reason for everybody to hope for the better. That is as true now as it was then.

Fences, celebrating its 25th anniversary, runs at Seattle Repertory Theatre through April 18. For tickets, go to SeattleRep.org.

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Tags: Seattle Repertory Theatre, Theater, Interview, Fences, Constanza Romero, August Wilson

The World According to Brian Copeland

Playwright sounds off on growing up black in one of America’s “most racist suburbs” in Not a Genuine Black Man.

Posted by: Laura Dannen on Feb 11, 2010 at 09:30AM 0 Comments

When Brian Copeland was eight, his mother moved his family to an all-white suburb of San Francisco; that neighborhood came to be known as one of the most “racist suburbs in America” in the 1970s. Now a comedian, Copeland unpacks his past in his hit one-man play, Not a Genuine Black Man, which runs at Theatre Off Jackson February 11–14.

But before the show opens, he reveals a bit…

…about the play’s title:
“I host a Sunday morning radio show for the ABC affiliate in San Francisco and the title came from an unsigned crank letter that said: “As an African American, I am disgusted every time I hear your voice because you are not a genuine black man.” It’s the same nonsense Barack Obama had to deal with—the very first question he got during the YouTube debate was “Are you black enough?” and his response was, “Well, I can’t get a cab.” I thought that was great comeback. So then I went through this whole litany of, okay, why do people say that? Is it how I dress? How I talk? Because I watch Frasier? Then I had the revelation that culturally, from the time I was eight—when my family moved to San Leandro, California in the early ’70s, when San Leandro was 99.4 percent white—I spent my youth and formative years as the only black face in the room.

“I’ve been called an Oreo. There are Asians who’ve been called bananas or Twinkies by their Asian peers: yellow on the outside, white on the inside. Latinos tell me they’re referred to as coconuts. Who determines what you are? Who determines what it means to be authentic? That’s a major theme of the play.”

about San Leandro’s dirty secret:
"I tell the librarian at San Leandro Library [about the play I’m working on] and she gives me this yellowing stack of papers; it was a term paper written for a sociology class at what was then Cal State University Hayward (now East Bay) called “How San Leandro’s 10 Homeowners Associations Keep the City an All-White Ghetto.” And I thought, what? I knew that I had had difficulty growing up, walking down the street with adults yelling “nigger” out the car window, but what I didn’t know until I saw this paper was that it was an organized plot and had been investigated.

"I find out that Newsweek magazine had come to town, and had interviewed a couple guys who were popping off about how San Leandro needs a Hitler to take care of the troublemakers. I find out that U.S. Commission on Civil Rights had conducted hearings; I find out that a documentary had been done called The Suburban Wall. See, San Leandro is on the border of Oakland, and at the time, Oakland was half black. Most of the white flight to San Leandro was from Oakland. So at the border, it used to be known informally as “the invisible wall.” If you were black and you crossed over the city limits, there was a cop whose beat it was to follow you until either he had a pretext to stop you, or you turned around and went back across the border. Even little kids on bicycles.

“And this is all 20 miles from San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in America. The story takes place five years after the Summer of Love, 10 miles from the UC Berkeley campus. That’s what makes this a story. If this took place in Mississippi or Alabama, people would say, what’s your point?”

…about earning the title ‘one of the most racist suburbs in America’:
“I should say it was considered by fair housing advocates to be one of the most racist suburbs in the country. Prior to 1948, it was legal to put race covenants in the deeds to property, where you could say no one is allowed to live here except for people who are Caucasian. Then the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed it, so this realtor here in the East Bay area came up with this scheme of homeowners associations. They tell you what color you can paint your house and that your hedges can only be so high, those kinds of things. But they can also arbitrarily decide who was or was not a fit homeowner to purchase in an area.”

…about what to expect during the show:
"This isn’t stand-up routine. It’s two acts and it’s just as funny as it is heavy. I play 30 different characters and I tell the story about how we got to San Leandro juxtaposed [with] when I was in my thirties, when I was suffering from PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from all the stuff I had repressed when I was a kid.

“This also isn’t about being black. When people see the word black in the title, they’ll assume it’s some Def Jam thing. It’s about being different. When I was Off-Broadway with the show, my largest audience was Holocaust survivors. They relate to this story of a little boy who’s isolated. There’s no safe haven—not at home, where there’s domestic violence, not on the street, where he’s harassed by bullies and the police. No place.”

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Tags: Theater, Interview, Theatre Off Jackson, Not a Genuine Black Man