REVIEWS 1998 - "Up From the Ground/There Be Monsters!"

Dan Carbone: SF Bay Guardian Goldie Award for Theatre
By Brad Rosenstein
Originally published in the SF Bay Guardian Sept 22.1999

“In a town where every conceivable wrinkle in solo theater seems to have been ironed out long ago, Dan Carbone crept out from under the bed and lit the mattress on fire. His show at last year's Fringe Festival, Up from the Ground, was a strikingly original, funny, and touching exploration down some seriously skewed mental pathways. Whether depicting a little boy's strange encounter in a cabbage patch or a space monkey poignantly shuffling off to another galaxy, Carbone created indelible moments from random brain detritus: Jonathan Winters meets Cocteau.

"I either have all the right influences or all the wrong influences," says Carbone, who acknowledges the formative impact of everyone from Firesign Theatre to Luis Buñuel. As an NYU film school grad, Carbone had originally hoped to commit his bizarre visions to film but was met with a predictably baffled response in Hollywood. He decided to convey his ideas directly to an audience, and he worked with San Francisco solo performance mavens Anne Galjour and Grace Walcott to hone his material. Trying bits out in small venues, Carbone was amazed to find that "the further out I got, the more abstract it became, the more people got it and were there with you."

Carbone lets his ideas gestate for long periods of time, drawing heavily on dreams and developing pieces that are more like music or stream-of-consciousness doodles than linear narratives. Naturally, the unclassifiable nature of his work has been a challenge to getting it more widely seen. But Carbone is undeterred, forging ahead with a new piece about Salvador Dali ("He's back from the grave with some new paintings," he laughs), and is considering a more serious (and marketable) screenplay about the artist. He also continues to scan his dreams for the seedlings that can grow into a piece. "I love creating other realms," he says, "but you have to be very true to the original source, and then be really brave enough to present it."

Fringe Festival
By Michael Scott Moore
Published in SF Weekly October 1998

“Up From The Ground is a one-man collection of surreal characters, including a monkey astronaut, a dead Elvis waiting on the Highway of Eternity in a limousine, and Jesus, paired with a hallucinatory, evil monkey named Jungle Belle. The title piece is about a vivid Southern Family entranced and terrified by some holy flower-like thing growing in their cornfield. It’s hilarious and elegant and really, really weird. Dan Carbone has rare gifts as an actor and writer; even his oddest noises, chants, and stories seem logical, which is exactly the sort of weirdness you hope to see at a Fringe Festival.”

The Fringe That Was
By Gene Price
Published in SF Bay Times, October 1, 1998

“Local actor/writer Dan Carbone’s brilliant, UP FROM THE GROUND, was an eerie, chilling fairy tale in which this very funny performer played a farmer, his wife, a small boy, a monkey astronaut, a cow, a pig, and Elvis stalled on the Highway to Heaven. All breathlessly delivered with a unique genius reminiscent of Jonathan Winters.”

Fringe Fest
By Brad Rosenstein
Published in SF Bay Guardian, September 23, 1998

“The San Francisco Fringe Festival concluded its seventh annual incarnation last week. Perhaps the nicest surprise was Dan Carbone’s brilliantly demented solo that searched for the numinous in the most absurd places: a space monkey poignantly shuffles off to another galaxy; a cow accepts Jesus as his personal savior. Carbone isn’t just in touch with his inner child; he’s locked with it in a furious battle on the playground of his mind. The resulting spectacle made for one of the strangest, funniest, and most oddly touching performances at this year’s Fringe.”

Metro Guide San Francisco – A Biased Guide To The Fortnight’s Ten Best Upcoming Events: UP FROM THE GROUND
By Kerry Reid
Published in SF Metropolitan, December 10, 1998

“… The beauty of Carbone’s work lies not so much in its innate weirdness, but in how he’s able to project that weirdness with a childlike ease and grace, with none of the nauseating attempts at faux street jive that passes for “edgy” performance these days.”

Curtain Call – The Rosenstein Upstage/Downstage Awards:
FINEST HOURS: “THE BEST REASON TO LOOK FORWARD TO THE FUTURE OF SOLO PERFORMANCE”
Dan Carbone – Up From the Ground
By Brad Rosenstein
Published in the SF Bay Guardian, December 30, 1998

“Dan Carbone’s brilliantly demented solos ranged from a little boy’s strange encounter in a cabbage patch to Elvis’s free fall into an eternal traffic jam. Running rampant on his inner-playground, Carbone created indelible moments from the most random brain detritus. I would never have believed that I would cherish the admonition that “the pig is sleeping!” or, that months later, still feel the pathos of a windup space monkey shuffling off to the outer reaches of the galaxy but I do, I do.”

Dan Carbone Actor

“99 People to Watch in 99”
By Kerry Reid
Originally published in SF Metropolitan December 21, 1998

“Dan Carbone is a delightful oddity among local solo performers--his off-kilter perspective on reality and its illusions creates a strange, funny and disturbing-in-a-good-way hybrid of Flannery O'Connor, The Twilight Zone, Mister Rogers and Jonathan Winters. A mild-mannered eccentric with a mind as big as Texas and a face like Silly Putty, Carbone caught the attention of many this year with his show Up From the Ground, which won raves and a "Best of the Fest" nod at this year's Fringe Festival, and he's just completed an encore run at the EXIT Theater.”