From the misbehaving on and off stage at the saloons along San Francisco’s Pacific Street Corridor (heart of the Barbary Coast) in the years following the Gold Rush, to the bawdy one-liners and flirty peek-a-boo shows of the vaudeville and burlesque eras, to the radical self-expression of Burning Man, the unusual, the naughty and the avant-garde have always had a home in the Bay Area.
San Francisco’s Sensory Supper Adventures
By Bill Picture
Published: November, 2005
From the misbehaving on and off stage at the saloons along San Francisco’s Pacific Street Corridor (heart of the Barbary Coast) in the years following the Gold Rush, to the bawdy one-liners and flirty peek-a-boo shows of the vaudeville and burlesque eras, to the radical self-expression of Burning Man, the unusual, the naughty and the avant-garde have always had a home in the Bay Area.
San Franciscans definitely have an appreciation for the outrageous, jokes Pat Osbon, Executive Director of San Francisco’s Circus Center, the only circus arts school in the country with its own professional troupe.
But Osbon insists it isn’t San Franciscans’ childlike curiosity that sets them apart from their fellow Americans. Rather, it’s their ability to see the skill in the oddball and to recognize the artistic merit that lies just beneath an artist, or an act’s titillating, shocking or strange face value.
We value art very highly here, whatever shape or form it may take, Osborn says. You can see that in the loyal patronage of The City’s many arts organizations. [And] I think it really goes back to the bohemian nature of this city.
Don’t forget that it was right here in San Francisco that Gold Rush-era superstar Lotta Crabtree got her start before later taking Broadway by storm. In 1853, the red-haired twelve-year-old, who sang and danced for fortune-seekers in the mountain mining camps, was dubbed San Francisco’s Favorite. Later, her gift to her beloved city, Lotta’s Fountain at the intersection of Market, Geary and Kearny Streets, would become a central gathering point for survivors in the hours and days following the 1906 earthquake.
Comedienne Gracie Allen, George Burns’ charmingly airheaded other half, also got her start in San Francisco, sharing stage time with the ukulele players, dancing dog acts, two-bit magicians and slapstick duos that characterized the vaudeville circuit. And it was on a San Francisco stage that Al Jolson performed what would later become his signature song, Mammy, for the very first time, black face and all, in 1909.
San FranStrange
Acclaimed Bay Area restaurateur Stanley Morris, the man responsible for bringing Seattle’s Teatro ZinZanni to San Francisco, credits Bay Arean’s taste for the unusual, along with their willingness to try just about anything once, with the popular dinner-and-a-cabaret’s continuing success.
Teatro ZinZanni opened at Piers 27/29 in early 2000 and was originally slated for a relatively short 15-month run. Nearly six years later, Morris says he’s not surprised that ZinZanni is still around and still packing them in five nights a week under its colorful, antique spiegeltent. Morris and his partners, Seattle-based One Reel, are currently working with city officials to find a permanent home for ZinZanni along San Francisco’s waterfront.
This kind of entertainment really has an historical point of reference for Baghdad by the Bay, he says. [And] audiences here are very special.
They’re also very demanding. In a been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt city like San Francisco, coming up with ways to keep ZinZanni’s audiences on their toes and entertained is a full-time job for Morris and his staff, particularly when one-third of ZinZanni’s patrons are repeat customers.
So we [try to] reinvent ourselves with each and every show, Morris explains. We’re always bringing in new acts and developing new acts and attracting world-class talent. Keeping it fresh is what the art form is all about.
Pushing the circus envelope
Pat Osbon of the Circus Center agrees. Since the school was founded in 1984, Osbon says the circus arts have grown and evolved in giant leaps and bounds.
In some cases, the Circus Center has even helped the art form along by integrating newer forms of movement such as breakdancing, whose relationship to circus-style acrobatics was clear but had yet to be explored.
Osbon credits Montreal’s Cirque du Soleil with affording circus performers the room they need to experiment and grow by helping open American audiences’ eyes to the infinite possibilities of the circus arts.
He believes Cirque has forever changed what circus is in this country and says that Cirque’s creators have helped elevate the circus arts in America to a higher art form, as they have been considered in Europe and Asia for centuries. The classic, three-ring American spectacle is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as increasing amounts of theater, dance, visual art and performance art are worked into the circus fold.
But the Circus Center and its professional company, The Pickle Circus, consider themselves part of an even newer circus movement, one that eschews the fantastical feel of most of Cirque’s productions to date, with their surreal atmospheres, heavy costumes and otherworldly music, in favor of something much more human, more real and more accessible.
Last year, for instance, The Pickle Circus set its annual holiday show in a factory, where fed-up workers rebelled against management in a carefully choreographed series of juggling, twisting, tumbling and aerial fetes that provided dramatic counterpoint to a well-developed and almost cinematic story line. This year’s production, High Water Radio, which opens December 14 at the Palace of Fine Arts, promises more of the same.
We’re taking circus back to its roots, Osbon explains. And audiences are really embracing it. Our audiences have quadrupled over the last five years.
Don’t call it a show
Alex Lustberg of San Francisco’s Supperclub, shies away from using the words circus, vaudeville or even show when describing the performances at the barely one-month old dinner bizarre. Even so, he admits that the four-hour-journey of tastes, sights, sounds and the occasional touch embodies a three-ring spirit of unpredictability, along with the cheekiness of vaudeville and the innocent flirtation of burlesque.
While Supperclub and Teatro ZinZanni both fit neatly under the dinner theater heading, their approach is markedly different. Unlike ZinZanni, where the food shares center stage or, rather, center ring with an endless cast of crazies (singers, jugglers, clowns and such), at Supperclub, food is the main act.
And while the quality of the dishes emerging from Supperclub’s kitchen is on par with The City’s finest restaurants, Supperclub’s imaginative presentation puts its more provincial predecessors to shame.
How about fresh-popped popcorn drizzled in truffle oil as an appetizer served in a Chinese to-go box, or blueberry crème brulée served in a crystal ashtray?
Every aspect of the evening is intended to be multi-sensory, Lustberg explains. That’s the Supperclub experience.
That experience begins the minute that guests are ushered, party by party, by a towering drag queen hostess into the all-white dining room with its double-decker rows of oversized platform beds. From atop their perch, guests are able to survey the goings-on throughout the room, including the open kitchen and the DJ booth, where a live DJ spins a progressive soundtrack to complement each of the night’s five courses and the party that inevitably follows dessert.
The room’s stark white walls act as blank canvases for talented visual artists working in a variety of mediums, from paint-and-brush to video. And throughout dinner, massage therapists wanders from bed to bed offering welcomed relief to urban stress-outs.
It’s very ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,’ Lustberg jokes. We lead with the food, and everything else sort of happens around it. The music, the visuals, the unusual performances are all intended to provide additional atmosphere.
The unusual performances to which Lustberg refers are also what set Supperclub apart from its distant waterfront cousin, Teatro ZinZanni. The quick bursts of PG-17 eye-candy that punctuate the evening range from traditional and tame to darkly comic to surreal to sexy to downright strange.
For the opening party, for instance, a silver-clad diva belted out a live aria as a young man covered entirely in mirrors made his way around the room like a human disco ball. On another night, unsuspecting diners were yanked from their beds, bound with strips of white wicker and whipped with feathers. More recently, a juggler in an Artful Dodger-type getup amazed diners with his juggling and balancing abilities, followed by a Dietrich-esque cabaret chanteuse who stripped from the waste up while delivering a naughty ditty about her two-timing, alien lover, in a campy German accent.
Something in the water
While Teatro ZinZanni, the Circus Center and Supperclub approach performance from their own refreshingly unique angles, what they share is a common desire to provide a platform for performing artists, particularly local artists, with not-so-usual talents.
And Morris, Osbon and Lustberg also agree that their organizations and San Francisco are a perfect match.
There’s a weird energy here that seems to breed creativity, Lustberg explains. I don’t know how else to describe it... I love that the avant-garde takes precedence over tradition in this town.
Teatro Zinzanni
Piers 27/29, San Francisco. Seating Wed.-Sat 6p.m.; Sun. 5p.m. Tickets are $110-$135.
Call (415) 438-2668
http://love.zinzanni.org.
Circus Center
755 Frederick St.,
San Francisco.
Call (415) 759-8123
www.circuscenter.org.
Supperclub
657 Harrison St.,
San Francisco.
Call (415) 348-0900
Photos courtesy of Teatro Zinzanni (Top), and Circus Center (below)
