With Rita Felciano of the S.F. Bay Guardian, Evangel King’s ”Bare Bones Crow” lured me to The Garage, 975 Howard Street, San Francisco September 14. Her remarkable solo was supported by Brenda Hutchinson’s inventive sound and the harvest-like ancestral trio created by Gillian Garro.
The Garage announces itself with a red door in an area still seedy and awaiting several subsidized housing projects. During the daytime, the living space above it proclaims the building is post Earthquake vintage, painted a cheerful white with blue trim. From the Website there is reference to a third summer festival in 2008. Little else tells the curious its head honcho, Joe Landini, has operated this venue at least five years, providing space for an incredible spectrum of theater arts. Two slogans accentuate this: RAW for Resident Artist Workshop and SAFE for Saving Art From Extinction.
Evangel King’s body was draped in black lace-like formations, emulating the layers of crow feathers, serving her movements well. The stage was punctuated with three totemic constructions with large end-of-growing season, time-to-harvest approximations of corn stalks, two sticks peeping out near the floor to convey ancestral connection. The sounds were equally evocative of harvest, scavenging, nature at its loneliest. King’s movements emulated the pecking, stroking and exploratory movements of a bird, facially and with her arms, torso and sustained balances on one leg. She allowed her face to distort, the tongue to loll out of her open mouth, reinforcing the bird image.
The lighting in the Garage prevented me from reading the program prior to its non-stop exposition. Not knowing it was a connection to the deep feminine which became apparent in masturbating gestures, I felt King delved into an anthropological study of the Ohlone Indians and their multiple triblets, long ago native to the San Francisco Bay Area,. Whether individual evocation or tribute to tribal custom to mimic surrounding creature life in a life style long vanished, King’s solo and her collaborators presented a fascinating portrait. Thanks to Joe Landini’s generosity for space given a work otherwise unlikely to enjoy a venue.
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