‘The city saw me, and so I found myself.’
What 60,000 postcards say about loving — and surviving — S.F.
SF Chronicle Article by Lily Janiak - theater critic
Taken together, the missives paint the city as the ultimate ride-or-die. “One of the things that I think is defining about this collection is how many people talk about, ‘The city saw me, and so I found myself,’” Dower said. That’s not true of other places he’s lived, he added: “In New York, it’s like, ‘The city kicked my ass, so I became better.’”
The postcards also suggest a fundamental truth about valentines. They’re not high-flown, amorous poetry. They’re moments of vulnerability and truth-telling, the result of the alchemy of committing pen to paper and being asked for one’s thoughts.
Ten minutes before curtain time, the few cast members who will read the letters aloud during the show gather in the wings to make their selections. Sometimes audiences write 20 postcards, sometimes 200. All that joy, heartache and candor becomes fuel for the stage. “I’m taking it all with me!” Walier said.
The performers aren’t looking for the most original or the best-written notes but more an “energy of authenticity,” reported East Bay native Dominic Cruz, who specializes in hoop diving and pole climbing.
Chloe Somers Walier’s favorite part of “Dear San Francisco” isn’t the Chinese pole,the hoop diving is interspersed with Beat poetry or even her own hula hoop act, where she make multiple tornadoes out of her own limbs.
No, her favorite part of the circus show-qua-San Francisco Valentine is something even non-acrobats can do: Write a love letter to the city and hope
it gets read aloud from the stage as part of an act.
“It’s insane how beautiful it is,” she gushed to the Chroni-
cle before a recent performance at Club Fugazi. “I feel like I’m reading people’s diary entries.”
Now in its fourth year, Shana Carroll and Gypsy Snider’s creation asks arriving audience members to write down a personal story about the city on the back of a postcard. “It could be a love letter. It could be a breakup letter. It could be
a memory. But why is San Francisco special to you?” as Club Fugazi Experiences Artist and Performance Manager Jenjen Wong put the prompt in shoeboxes in a supply closet.
One time recently, he recalled, “A kid, like 12 or 13, wrote a card about how much fun they have in San Francisco with their grandpa.” As Cruz read the note to the audience, the pair were sitting nearby in onstage seats. “Then the grandpa was hella tearing up, and the little kid hugs the grandpa,” he continued. “I was dying. I cry about it right now.”
The show itself helped inspire at least one young audience member to come out to their parents as trans. That parent later returned to the show and wrote a postcard, saying, “I’m so grateful to have come with my child because they felt empowered enough in this moment to tell me who they are,” Walier recalled. She got to say back, “Thank you so much for being the dad that we all need in the world.”
When the postcards are read aloud, the show stops being about the acrobats, and “the card writer is the main focus and what they have to share,” Cruz said. It also bridges the divide between performer and audience without making spectators punch lines, as in so much cringey audience participation.
“People consider us to be superhuman because we’re doing these beautiful, amazing tricks,” said performer Thea LaSan, who’s a San Francisco native. “This part of the show is really to just connect that I am a human and you are a human.”
One time, she loved an audience postcard so much she took it home and hung it in her bedroom. “It was a poem by an older man,” she said. In it, “San Francisco is a city of love and a beam of hope for so many people who think that hope is lost.”
Why Dear San Francisco Is the Must-See Holiday Show in the Bay Area!
It all begins with an idea.
If you're looking for the best things to do in San Francisco this holiday season, looking for a top-rated live show in the Bay Area, or trying to plan a memorable night out in city, the San Francisco Chronicle just confirmed what thousands of visitors already know: Dear San Francisco at Club Fugazi remains one of the most extraordinary, high-energy, and emotionally resonant shows in the city.
In her latest highest-rating holiday theater review, SF Chronicle critic Lily Janiak calls Dear San Francisco: Home for the Holidays “your best bet for holiday theater — without trying too hard.”
“Dear San Francisco” doesn’t make many changes for its holiday show. But it doesn’t have to.
Add a vintage projection of the ice rink at Union Square here, a more romantic, un-religious twist on “Silent Night” there. When your work of circus, dance and performance art already brims over with joy, generosity and awe year-round, there’s no need to make the trapeze artists do flips in Christmas tree suits to give off a December vibe.
But for those needing a reason to revisit or finally try out 7 Fingers’ production, now in its fourth year at Club Fugazi, the “Home for the Holidays” edition is the perfect excuse.
Watch as the ensemble hoists performer Liu Qi upside-down so that he appears to be going for an inverted stroll on the top of the stage’s proscenium arch. Marvel as acrobats on the hand-to-trap (a non-swinging, low-hanging trapeze, a specialty of Shana Carroll, who co-directs the show with Gypsy Snider) seem to construct an invisible ladder in the air between them and the ground.
As Chloe Somers Walier reveals the human body — including, spectacularly, the nose — as a site for infinite ways to hula hoop, reconnect with your inner child. Remember what it was like when you didn’t just do boring things like walk and sit but saw your quad or your scalp as a fulcrum, your back as a Slinky, your feet arches and toes as expressive as your fingers?
“Dear San Francisco” isn’t just beauty, though. It’s the kind that dumbfounds you and expands your consciousness at the same time, that bespeaks years of rigor and craft. Lots of circuses have talented gymnasts.
This one has something to say, which is that it loves its hometown of boundless riches, and you should fall in love, too — if you haven’t already, national media headlines be damned.
This message comes through most ardently in one sequence in which performers read aloud valentines audience members have written to San Francisco that evening, and another in which they read snippets by poets with local connections — Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima, Maya Angelou — in between dives through a hanging, rotating hoop. As the jumps become ever more creative, including partner flings through and back again or with rolls in which gymnasts form a hoop from their two bodies, it becomes clear that there are as many ways to squeeze a body through a circle as there are ways to combine words on a page. Poets and circus artists are both mediums through which the infinite speaks.
Speaking (and singing and instrument playing), circus performers are another refreshing 7 Fingers hallmark. What’s more, they don’t just incorporate locals’ humor about the confusing new name of the Oakland airport or the ubiquity of Waymos.
In contrast to other circuses, where performers default to a “ta-da” expression or gaze toward each other and the audience with vacuous expressions, the “Dear San Francisco” cast members give glimpses of their personalities, especially after mistakes that only make the successful redo all the more impressive.
Dominic Cruz, backing up to give himself some runway, might look back at you as if to say, “Excuse me? Are you not going to cheer for me? How rude!” Melvin Diggs, kid brother-style, might make an erasing motion and tell us, “You didn’t see that.”
In a world of ubiquitous screens and CGI for special effects, the analog wonder of “Dear San Francisco” feels medicinal.
Liu, juggling a half-dozen balls, seems to have sprouted an additional arm or two. On the diabolo, the Chinese yo-yo, he repeatedly creates the illusion of levitation, his movements with his two controlling sticks as graceful as a conductor helming a symphony. For a second, it all looks like an AI hallucination, and you might have the urge to dust off the wiring between your brain and your eyeballs.