Market Street at Sixth, San Francisco, Saturday, Oct. 15, 2011 march
Terry Acebo Davis and I attended a matinee at Bindlestiff Theatre in San Francisco Saturday, featuring PMSTA, a Filipino themed comedia dell’arte group: Pinays Maintaining Sisterhood Through Art. We were quite impressed with the program of six one- act works that explored issues of feminism, sexuality, exploitation and the Filipino diaspora. Three of the writers acted in other writers’ shows. I thought the piece about imagining Oprah Winfrey visiting an imprisoned woman was like Mindy Kaling’s “Matt and Ben.” Christina Ying was the author and it starred Teresita Brown and I think Andrea Almario (there were three Almarios in the production, so excuse my confusion). I found myself mentioning “Passing Strange” more than once. I wonder if this show, or works by some of the principals, could workshop further at Stanford or in town at Dragon Theatre. The sequence, backed by a grant from the Zellerbach Foundation, was called “Death of a Player.”
I was also impressed with Tonilyn Sideco, who starred in a piece by Shannon Lee L. Pacaoan . She said that she is a Saint Ignatius grad inspired by Stevie Wonder and Lea Salonga. I took the opportunity to mention to her the great Chicago singer-songwriter Anna Fermin, and also mention David Byrne’s song cycle about Imelda Marcus, “Here Lies Love“. I would love to produce a version of that work, or an excerpt, that showcases a versatile and powerful Pinay performing voice — the album features several different singers.
After the Q & A, we ran into the Occupy march, at Market and Sixth. The hundred or so — two hundred — demonstrators chanted “THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!” I made eye contact and gave thumbs up to two people, and also trotted after to shake hands with a young singer-songwriter I know, J__ B_____.
The day before I was approaching El Camino via Oregon on bike and I could make out a crowd gathering at what I knew to be a retail outlet for a large phone company. By the time I got there I realized it was not a protest but people lining up to buy a newly released phone product. 
They were not singing or chanting or even relating to each other; most were on their phones. I did chat with one guy whose corporate badge revealed him to share a name with a famous football player; I had sat next to the actual Dwight Clark on a airline a few months ago but didn’t speak to him. As I watched the PMSTA showcase I tried to tell myself not to project potential projects onto the young cast, but when the meet-and-greet started and Terry was chatting them all up, I could not help but offer my ideas; I got three cast members, and the Bindlestiff managing director, Allan Manalo, to sign my program. And I snapped this ensemble shot of not the Algonquin Round Table but something that might prove equally historic:
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
The actor in the Oprah piece is the other talented Almario sister Aureen who has been getting rave reviews across the board.
THANKS FOR COMING TO THE SHOW, MARK!
Please come back for Nicole Maxali’s solo performance “Forgetting the Details” opening November 10th.
More information can be found at http://www.bindlestiffstudio.org or by adding “Folks at Bindlestiff” to your Facebook network.
Alan S. Quismorio
alanq@bindlestiffstudio.org
Thanks for the correction, Alan. Terry is going to help me label the picture — not a great picture, but potentially historic. Aureen Almario signed my program after the show. I will have to keep tabs on the various PMSTAs and watch their ascent, “individually, professionally and collectively” as they say.
And good luck — mabuhay — to Nicole and her lola, fictional or real.
pepper spraying of students at uc davis — public university my tax dollars support — november, 2011, 100 miles north-east of Palo Alto:
http://boingboing.net/2011/11/20/ucdeyetwitness.html
The public is invited to attend and even to speak at the City Council “retreat” Saturday morning and early afternoon at the downtown library. The main topic is infrastructure.
I am cynical enough to see “pork” when they say “infrastructure” and I also therefore think of the Blue Ribbon Committee as Pork Cordon Bleu.
Yeah, I think government is a we not a they and I think we should have “free libraries” and services, and make this as good a place for teens and seniors and the arts as it was when I grew up hereabouts.
This is a bit of a red herring but my reaction to Mr. Bacchetti’s letter to the editor (another editor) about the propriety of a bank running an ad referencing “The Stanford Indians” is that I would actually like to see our City Council come to meetings in face paint and feather bonnets because at the very least it would indicate some type of function in the higher cortex. With all due respect. Good luck Mayor Yeh — the first Red and Black alum in office — and Vice Mayor Scharff and maybe we can have a special election to get our so called representatives to listen to citizens and residentialists and not just the builders and the concrete and asphalt mongers — who to my mind are first cousins to the War Mongers.
In sum I tend to downplay the significance of the infrastructure problems just as I previously thought the budget problem was overplayed.
i shot a photo and can be seen in this video at about 2:08 on the side wearing a blue jacket as Paul George et al sang at Lytton Plaza in November, 2011. I stood near them not with them, for various reasons.