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People, Places and Trends of 2000 (continued) Craig Garrett Artist Having recently received his Ph.D. in leisure arts from Stanford University, Craig is shaping up to be a pioneer in the hot new field of hanging out. "Despite recent overly hyped technological advancements, hanging out is still stuck in a very antiquated 1960s paradigm," Craig says, adding, "The next five or six years will see a complete restructuring of hanging out, driven by forces ranging from recent discoveries in linguistics to the wider availability of generic drugs." (TF) Prince Gomolvilas Playwright Maybe after the artistic directors at the larger houses are finished moaning about how hard it is to find the next generation of playwrights, they'll get around to producing Prince Gomolvilas. Despite the fact that Gomolvilas has won several playwriting awards this past year (including the prestigious International Herald Tribune competition with The Theory of Everything), he remains a prophet without honor in his own town. (Singapore gets the world premiere of Theory ... .) That may be changing, however. He currently is working on new scripts with Brava! for Women in the Arts and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre--and a recent Chronicle Datebook profile on struggling theater artists highlighted Gomolvilas (who daylights as associate editor of the local theater trade publication Callboard). When it comes to the aptly named Prince, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. (KR) Sam Green Non-fiction Filmmaker Documenting the misunderstood history of radical political group the Weather Underground is less an act of '60s nostalgia, more of Sam Green's search for that dedication amidst today's flabby subculture. With production support from Turbulent Arts' Marc Smolowitz and KQED this time around, it promises an ambitious future. The filmmaker's love for the underdog found a perfect target in his wild documentary, Rainbow Man/John 3:16, examining the tragic influence of media on one individual. (CB) Margo Hall Actor/Director Margo Hall has one of the most hypnotic presences of any Bay Area theater artist--and that presence makes itself felt even when she's not onstage. This past year showed Hall coming into her own as a director. From her aching and eerie staging of Erin Cressida Wilson's Trail of Her Inner Thigh (which she co-directed with Rhodessa Jones for her home company, Campo Santo) to her luminous production of Alice Munro's Friend of My Youth with her sister pals at Word For Word, Hall has more than earned her position as a theatrical hyphenate. Up next: directing Adrienne Kennedy's Funny House of a Negro in May at Intersection for the Arts. (KR) Heklina Ringmistress Heklina is more than your ruin-of-the-mill drag queen. No broken heels or (unintentionally) smeared makeup on her face. In addition to continuing to host Trannyshack with the glorious Juanita More and the occasional visit from perennial favorite Pippi Lovestocking, Heklina has recently offered her services to Metropolitan as our new Emily Post-op etiquette doyenne. Ah, such heady power doth she wield in 2000. (MS) Kathleen Hermesdorf Choreographer Kathleen Hermesdorf is the most intense, gnarly, sexy sprite to ever tear across a stage. Thank God, she's making modern dance cool again. Kathleen's new company, Sister Hermes Dance Machine, has Bay Area postmodern dancers licking their chops, and the audiences are certainly lining up at ODC Theater to check out her nostalgic, ferociously romantic work, seemingly danced by human-shaped, acrobatic velociraptors on ecstasy. The trick to their gorgeous sweeping style: yoga, qi gong, using one's hands as feet, and basically "falling in love with the floor." Check it out--it ain't no Merce Cunningham or Martha Graham, it's tasty, and it's hypermodern. (TB) James T. Hong Astringent Filmmaker When Dockers™ doled him a Classically Independent grant for a short film, he responded with a characteristic display of levity--a grimy black and white of a young woman smashing a computer with a plumber's wrench, before a caption "Independence is the destruction of the machine." Ever raging, his 16mm self-auto-da-fe Behold the Asian: How One Becomes What One Is held little back in its narration: "San Francisco, the most beautiful city in the world--home of the White Asshole." He's our vitriolic antidote to Party of Five, Chris Columbus, and Nash Bridges. (SB) Bob Hope Survivalist Why hasn't this genius--who introduced Cole Porter's "It's De-Lovely" to Broadway in the '30s, began his extensive USO association in the '40s, drew out Roy Rogers' latent bestiality in the '50s and insulted me in the '80s (Handshake. Pause. "Well, aren't you a nice li'l girl?")--yet clasped the Reaper's mitts? Make it past this year, Bob, and you're a show business immortal. (SB) Jesus da Christ Carpenter Tell me you're not the least bit curious. I'm an atheist and yet, for all the Y2K hype, I'm really looking forward to a WWF-style Armageddon. Will He get the Anti-Christ in a sleeper hold? Will our eyes melt like in Raiders of the Lost Ark? I'm not really hoping He comes back, but I sure do wonder. I mean, like, it is the millennium ... (MS) The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up Rock Band The four former high school classmates that make up The Jim Yoshii Pile-Up have been quietly playing gorgeous, precise and literate slow-core (a la Bedhead, Slint, Seam, etc.) out of Oakland for years. Their devastating self-titled, self-released CD EP is a promising teaser for their debut LP, which is due from SF's Absolutely Kosher records in 2000. No one in the group is named Jim. (TF) Dino Johnson Composer During his collaborations with Eric Bauer (vinyl doll instrumentalist) at the latter's new SoMa Clitstop space, he cagily used/treated/manipulated "virtual, electric and underwater" pianos. It's criminal that Johnson has thus far (a) avoided being institutionalized, (b) not been canonized for his soundtracks on Episcopal Church TV spots and (c) not been included in MIT Press' recent art-sound tome Noise Water Meat. It's just bad manners. As well as being Grace Cathedral's sound engineer, Johnson also pens a column in zine The Ventilator. (SB) Mari Kodama Pianist Born in Japan and educated in France, classical pianist Mari Kodama made her concert debut when she was 17. Barely a decade later, she lives quietly as a mom in San Francisco with her Ferrari-driving conductor husband, except when she appears on other continents as a major international performer. (DP) Kountry Kays American Band With their single, the sublime cowgirl anthem "Ricky" (no, not that "Ricky"), already charting in Philly and Austin, J. Byrd Hosch and the Kountry Kays look to finally get their due. After a few years and wilder incarnations they've streamlined their approach, and their album Cat o Nine Tails is imprinted with authentic honky-tonkin' and whiz-bang twang. (EC) Neel Kizmiaz Disc Jockey Neel N. Kizmiaz (a.k.a. Neel Boyett) was born the day Jayne Mansfield died and the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper: June 29, 1967. A native of Tulsa, Okla., he moved to San Francisco in 1989. There he earned a bachelor of arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute. Since 1995 he has dedicated himself to exploring the '60s and '70s groove through DJing and promoting successful parties: Tryst, Switch, Aqua Velva Lounge, White Trash, Lipstick Lounge, Zodiac (monthly party for each sign of the zodiac), Werepad "Salon" parties and, currently, Hai Karate and Lush. His groovadelic mix of party music has been sought after by local designers for fashion shows such as Art Car West '98-99, Space Cowgirls '97-99, Stormy Leather Anniversary Benefit '98, Do Mo Do Duds '98-99, and Burning Man Fashion Show '99. Neel also plays keyboards in the Mercurians. Currently he is preparing a compilation CD of rare '60s and '70s grooves. (MS) Kerry Laitala Archivist Best know for her astonishing optically-printed film Retrspectropscope, Laitala is a prodigious transcontinetal figure, shuttling between Post Street and Stuttgart. As much a salvager and tinkerer in old media, film gauges and forgotten pre-digital cousins, she is currently at work on four short films for her German residency. (EC) Mangela Lansbury Miss Trannyshack 1999 After all the glamour we've endured over the past few years, we need someone to get the house in order. Ms. Lansbury, with her unassuming eye glint and watchful ear, may be just the person to do it. Look for her everywhere this year, and like any good housemother, if you don't find her, she'll find you. And she'll fix you like nobody's business. (MS) Miko Lee and Michael Edo Keane Multimedia Artists Taking over the artistic directorship at Theatre of Yugen from beloved founder Yuriko Doi is a challenge--but one that Miko Lee and Michael Edo Keane are well-suited for. The two teamed up two years ago with Wandering Ghost, an intriguing, if incomplete, multimedia look at the early life of writer Lafcadio Hearn, and have produced socially progressive film and theater through their production company, Azameworks. Their interest in multimedia should continue to lend an interesting edge to Yugen, which has made the cross-hybridization of classic Asian theatrical forms with Western storytelling a specialty (as witness their annual production of Noh Christmas Carol, which Lee and Keane readapted and directed this year). Their next production, Keane's original script The Good Guys, follows three ill-fated Vietnamese brothers as they take over the title electronics emporium; it opens in April at Theatre Artaud. (KR) Albert Lujan Artist Aside from his gravelly, heart-on-sleeve character turn in Abigail Severance's short film Pump, Lujan has recently been published in a literary anthology, Virgins, Guerrillas & Locas: Gay Latinos Writing about Love. His short "Strong Arms" revisits his first true love: a Hasbro muscle toy. His writing style, curiously, jibes with his screen presence--searing, clear, compulsive. (EC) Mabel Artist At a benefit for the Belazo Gallery, Mabel's moody, weird linocuts grabbed me by my neckerchief and I couldn't stop shaking. Displaced, perspectiveless and brick-thick with weepy, ink-stained grief, this cool Chilean works an oddly beautiful territory of, as in the translation of one of her fastest selling prints, "Beautiful Shit." (EC) Kevin Magliulo Agitator Sound designer on Richard Walsh's nutso Swine, Magliulo has now set his sights on something larger and more terrifying to Americans: French Canada. Working alongside a Quebecois, this local's next work will be [translated, a la Mark Twain, back from the French]: "A road movie ... three people ... Juliette sees her grandfather in the only way possible ... a carriage bound for hell ... . The pleasures if the inferno and paradisical austerity collide." Whew. (EC) Dmitri Matheny Musician As one of the jazz world's most talented horn players, Dmitri Matheny may not be a household name ... yet. With three excellent albums under his belt, he is a rarity in the music world: a rising star free of ego and hubris. Matheny's mild-mannered appearance belies the smoldering passion that oozes from his horn. His recent CD, Starlight Cafe, shows off Matheny's prodigiously versatile talent and promises that San Francisco's jazz scene is well-stocked for the future. (CD) Albert Mathias Composer Albert's band, Livehuman, has just been signed by Matador Records. Now, we all know that major-label signing is no mark of greatness, but in Albert's case it may well be. His drum kit includes a stack of digital samplers, a handmade slide sitar (for lack of accurate terminology), a bass drum, and an arsenal of fat, juicy beats and trance-inducing drones. Throwing in recorded text read from science books and transcripts of lunar landings, Albert works up the big sound, and not in a cheesy way--it's actually really, really good. Livehuman includes an upright electric bass player and, last we listened, a keyboardist (perhaps a guitarist, too?). The result is deeply original, woozy, brainy music that causes instant, almost involuntary head-bobbing and shoulder-bopping. Which is great considering that he is co-director of Sister Hermes Dance Machine, one of the city's most progressive, athletic and all-around bitchin' dance companies. (TB) << Previous Next >> [ San Francisco | MetroActive Central | Archives ]