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.