"Oh boy! Oh boy! There’s a bunch of fun, interesting, artsy extravaganzas happening all over San Francisco this July. The next couple weeks are garden parties, world class workshops, world records, opera auditions, and of course music, dancing & costumes all over the place. It’s time to get out there and mix it up with thousands of other beautiful bay area weirdos. Here are the art centered events starting this weekend and running through all of July in San Francisco."
Reading at Quiet Lightning at Adobe Books /
I'm delighted to have been a part of Bay Area literary staple Quiet Lightning's 111th show at Adobe Books on July 3, 2017, where I performed my short play, "standing ovulation." Check out a full text archive and videos of the night here.
sPARKLE &bLINK cover art by Maricruz Mendoza
I'm a 2017-2018 YBCA Fellow /
I'm beyond thrilled to have been selected as one of the 2017-18 Fellows at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. I'm looking forward to spending time over the course of the next year investigating the question, "Where is our public imagination?"
The YBCA Fellows program brings together creative citizens from across the Bay Area – artists and everyday people aline – to engage in a yearlong process of inquiry, dialogue, and project generation.
SF Weekly: SF Neo-Futurists win Best Live Theater 2017 /
We're thrilled to have been voted Best Live Theater in SF Weekly's 2017 Best of SF Readers' Poll!
Fusion: "Meet two California women who are fusing humor and aerobics to keep the anti-Trump movement going" /
"Resistance takes endurance." Meet two California women who are fusing humor and aerobics to keep the anti-Trump movement going. Watch the video on Twitter.
Broke-Ass Stuart: "The First Female President of the United States is in San Francisco" /
Photo credit: Russ Levi Photography
"President Margaret McCarthy, a feminist and progressive leader who believes in climate change and healthcare as a basic human right discussed her accomplishments during her first 100 days in office including: permanently halting work on both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, as well as expanding immigration and doubling the number of refugees the US is accepting annually."
The Independent: "Anti-Trump Aerobics Class Organized to Mark U.S. President's First 100 Days" /
"For Americans opposing the presidency of Donald Trump and unsure how best to channel their anger about his pledges to scrap Obamacare, limit women’s reproductive rights or the proposed travel ban from Muslim-majority countries, there is now a solution."
Read the full piece here.
Golden Gate Xpress: "Anti-Trump aerobics: a new way to protest" /
Photo: Kyler Knox/Xpress
"Blue sweatbands, red leg warmers, ‘80s Madonna workout music and the collective chant of 'don’t build a wall' were all part of a free anti-Trump aerobics class hosted at Alley Cat Book store in the Mission District Sunday afternoon.
The 50-minute class, led by SF State theatre and English literature alumna Margaret McCarthy and University of San Francisco art professor and artist Liat Burdugo, is part of '100 Days Action', a 'call to thinkers, artists, and writers to propose gestures that can be carried out either at home or in the world,' according to the website."
Read the full piece here.
Allure: "There is now an Anti-Trump Aerobics class" /
Photo credit: 100 Days Action
"Want to feel better in the current political climate and get a workout in? Activists in California came up with an exercise class idea that could be the answer to doing both."
Read the full piece here.
Mother Jones: "Exercise Your Freedom of Speech With Anti-Trump Aerobics" /
"Alley Cat Books, located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, is ordinarily a quiet space for book lovers to peruse multicolored shelves for their next literary adventure. But on Sunday, the small bookstore buzzed with energy as a group of leggings-clad Bay Area residents protested Donald Trump's presidency in the form of a sweaty cardio workout.
'We are here because in this era, in this nation, we need to use our full bodies to resist fascism!' cried Margaret McCarthy, one of two organizers of the event."
CNN: "How artists are marking Trump's 100th day in office" /
"...a 100 Days No Ban Dance Party and a poetry reading will take place. They are initiatives of a group called 100 Days Action, which presents itself as 'a counter-narrative to the Trump administration's 100-day plan.'
The group curated a 100-day calendar of 'activist and artistic strategy,' which includes anti-Trump aerobics, a workshop about Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI, and converting popular album covers into political art."
Read the full piece here.
SFist: "Mission Bookstore To Host Anti-Trump Aerobics Class" /
Adding to the list of creative ways that Bay Area folk have found to sort out their political emotions express their resistance to the Trump regime, Alley Cat Books on 24th Street will be hosting an Anti-Trump Aerobics Class later this month with the idea behind it being to "tackle the anxiety of state change through embodied protest."
Read more.
Live105: "Anti-Trump Aerobics is 'The most San Francisco thing of the month' " /
"As part of the 100 Days Of Action project, Alley Cat Bookstore & Gallery in San Francisco (3036 24th Street) is hosting an Anti-Trump Aerobics class on Sunday April 30th from 2-3PM.
You might be asking yourself, “what are Anti-Trump Aerobics?”
The point of the class is to “tackle the anxiety of state change through embodied protest.” Margaret McCarthy & Liat Berdugo have created an aerobics routine comprised of Trump’s most common gestures & the manners you can take in which to block them entirely."
Read the full piece here.
SF Weekly: "The New McCarthy Era: Meet the First Female U.S. President" /
"Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
Trump Schmrump, we elected a woman, dammit. Margaret McCarthy is the first female president of the United States, and two weeks into the national emergency, she’s ready to steer the ship of state away from the radioactive, Ebola-infested iceberg with which we’re about to collide."
Read the full piece here.
SF Gate: "SF Neo-Futurists have a new race against the clock" /
Photo: Peter Prato, Special To The Chronicle
"When the San Francisco Neo-Futurists perform 'Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind' at 10:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, it won’t just be the show’s final performance of 2016. It will be the last 'Too Much Light' performed by all three Neo-Futurist groups — the others are in Chicago and New York — for the foreseeable future.
.....
'Change is always hard,' says McCarthy, 'but change is also what we do. Like, change is our M.O. ... Being flexible and adaptable and moving very, very fast creatively are things we’ve been training ourselves to do together as an ensemble for the past three years.' "
Read the full piece here.
SFGate: "SF Neo-Futurists win race even if they don’t finish" /
Photo credit: Siyu Song, SF Neo-Futurists
"Yet that tinderbox is a hotbed of energy and creativity. Since their founding in 2014, the SF Neo-Futurists have been a vital addition to the Bay Area arts scene, giving weekly performances that are at once accessible and challenging, hilarious and probing, with the speed and athleticism of Olympians as well as the ever-imminent possibility that the whole show might descend into chaos."
Read the full piece here.