foolsFURY Factory Festival ~ SF Mime Troupe: Seeing Red ~ Ross Everett ~ Stanford Repertory Theater

Published July 4, 2018 at 12:17 PM PDT

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Ladies in White in UMO's The Resistance Cabaret, part of the seventh FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theater, July 10-22 at venues in San Francisco and Oakland… ";

Andy Dunnicliff

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Monserrat Videla in Swim Club's Other Inland Empires, part of the seventh FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theater, July 10-22 at venues in San Francisco and Oakland… ";

Krystle Coughlin

This week on Open Air, KALW’s radio magazine for the Bay Area performing arts, guest host Peter Robinson talks with Ben Yalom, Founder and Co-Artistic Director of foolsFURY Theater Company, and with director Deborah Slater, about the seventh FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theater, which runs from July 10-22 at venues in San Francisco and Oakland.

Deborah Slater will be directing one of the 12 shows on the festival's main stage, which features two world premieres, two West Coast premieres and three Bay Area premieres. The ensembles and artists taking part in the 2018 edition of the festival include, among others, 13th Floor, A Host of People, Alison De La Cruz, foolsFURY, Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Swim Club, Felonious, Hope Mohr Dance, Human Ark, Naomi Stein, Pelú Theater, Pratik Motwani, Sandglass Theater, Square One Collective, UMO Ensemble and Uplift Physical Theater.

We meet with Ellen Callas and Taylor Gonzalez, members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, now in its 59^th season, who share details about the ensemble’s 2018 Summer Show, which opens this week and tours Bay Area Parks through September 9.

The Mime Troupe’s latest production is titled Seeing Red: A Time-Traveling Musical, and tells the story of a disillusioned Trump voter who travels back in time to 1912, when her town was a hotbed of the American Socialist party. She realizes that she may have more in common with those blue-state progressives than she previously thought.

We have a pre-recorded interview by regular host David Latulippe, with Bay Area native and acclaimed comedian Ross Everett, about his solo show Stop Stopping the Unstoppable. Everett plays Dale Thorhammer, ‘Transformation Artist to the Stars’ and offers a satirical look at the world of personal development and motivational seminars. Stop Stopping the Unstoppable runs through July 28 at The Marsh in San Francisco.

Plus, Peter Robinson talks with Rush Rehm, artistic director of Stanford Repertory Theater, about the company’s 20^th anniversary summer season, titled ‘Nevertheless They Persisted’. The festival features a new adaptation of Euripides’ Hecuba and Helen, the story of two mythic women on opposite sides of the Trojan War, who take control of their destinies and manage to triumph over the men who try to dominate them.

Open Air with guest host Peter Robinson, heard live on Thursday, July 5 at 1pm. Listen now or anytime…