Dan is excited to be invited to develop a major new full-lengthed piece at The Garage performing arts space in San Francisco as part of their RAW Series. The work will premier on April 29th & 30, 2011 at 8pm. More details in the coming months. Recent Reviews of the "Dark Room" Series:
Underground and proud
Dan Carbone evokes the most unconventional of worlds -- and does it his way By Nicole Gluckstern
Published in the SF Bay Guardian, Feb 25th 2010
It's difficult enough to want to perform in San Francisco without the added hardship of not quite fitting into someone else's concept of "performance." And the unclassifiable Dan Carbone must surely be one of the hardest acts to shoehorn into a hapless festival curator's vision. As a performer who regularly skirts the way-out edge between the surreal and the downright schizophrenic, he's had the dubious honor of being shut out of the comedy club circuit, kicked off the stage at San Francisco's now-defunct Dadafest, and not selling out the house of numerous local and national "standard" venues.
But Carbone's ability to evoke the most unconventional of worlds — beginning with his classic one-act Up From the Ground, involving a mysterious giant flower in a Southern cornfield, and most recently with his "one man space opera" Kingdom of Not — has been discomfiting and astonishing audiences and critics on for more than 10 years, and he has the accolades, if not the ticket sales to prove it.
"The SF theater world has no idea what I'm about," Carbone confesses via e-mail. "They don't know what to do with me." Originally an experimental filmmaker, Carbone's off-kilter performance aesthetic and penchant for dream logic meshes more readily with his silver screen collaborators (including the inimitable Kuchar brothers) than with his more traditionally linear solo show peers. So what's a decidedly noncommercial, genre-shredding, avant-gardian to do to widen the scope of his influence? Start his own damn performance series, of course.
To kick start this series with a serious bang, Carbone is hosting professional provocateur-comedian Rick Shapiro in his second San Francisco appearance. A former drug addict and homeless rent boy, Shapiro's own slow rise (literally, up from the ground) serves as ample fodder for his mercurial rants against the status quo, and his unstructured, stream-of-consciousness performance style once earned him the moniker "the James Joyce of comedy." Or as Carbone puts it, "He's the only guy on the circuit who not only tells dick jokes but also riffs on Sartre and Kierkegaard — and does so simultaneously." Their shared inability to write for the mainstream, which has precipitated this joining of forces, will test the theory that art is at its best when designed to suit its creators — not its curators.
March 6, Carbone performs his two most celebrated solo shows, Up from the Ground and Here be Monsters, and premiere a show of works April 3 (both at the Dark Room Theater; check Web site for details). But his ultimate goal is collaboration. "The lesson," he concludes, "is I need to start my own scene."
Dan Carbone and Rick Shapiro Sat/27, 10 p.m., $8 Dark Room Theater 2263 Mission, SF (415) 401-7987
You Have Not Seen It All By Hiya Swanhuyser
Published in the SF Weekly March 6th, 2010
He's kind of the Daniel Johnston of performance art: Local entertainer Dan Carbone possesses an epic dedication to his art, which could be defined as "being super weird." Plenty of people (art school druggies, mostly) dabble in being super weird, but they don't have the stamina, the locked-jaw commitment, the self-knowledge, or the skill of Carbone. He's lauded by other estimable oddballs; George Kuchar says, among other things, that "his mind is a bridge where wisdom and infantilization cross deep waters." Critics, bless their hearts, do their best: SF Weekly's own former theater critic, Michael Scott Moore, said of one of tonight's offerings, There Be Monsters!, that it "almost made me fall out of my chair." The companion piece on the evening's roster is Up from the Ground, which concerns the South, an intense plant, and family issues.
There be more
Dan Carbone reclaims the Dark Room's late-night stage with wild fits of storytelling and subconscious reverie By Robert Alvia
Published in the SF Bay Guardian, Feb 25th 2010
I don't know from reclaiming rituals, but when I saw the gangling guy in the deer mask and beige unitard prancing around the stage once more, I knew the vernal equinox could not be far behind. Herald of this new season is none other than writer-performer Dan Carbone, a long-cherished and uniquely committed Bay Area talent who remarkably has eluded actually being committed. Back on March 6, Carbone was keeping it surreal in the Mission with a revival of two gems, Up from the Ground and There Be Monsters! (the latter featuring the aforementioned deer-man, among its varied and unexpected menagerie).
Carbone's upcoming single-evening production lays these two works to bed while promising new dreams directly ahead. He returns to the Dark Room with entirely new material, including the premiere of something called Ol' Blue Balls, pertaining to an encounter between Frank Sinatra and a little girl in the Eisenhower era, according to a press release, as well as a cross-cultural encounter called The Koreans and the piquantly titled Debbie and the Demons.
For those still woefully unfamiliar with Carbone's idiosyncratic oeuvre, the March 6 evening proceeded by quiet but wild fits of storytelling and subconscious reverie into a genially demented and devilishly clever assemblage of monologue, nursery rhyme, and Dada dreamscape. Ideas rushed out of Carbone's head amid a fit of logorrhea as bright and delighting as the silver tinsel yanked from the felt-lined anus of the well-soiled stuffed doggy in Monsters!
Befitting the late-night format, there were even some special guests. No less than Richard Chamberlain, ladies and gentlemen, was called out of the audience and onto the stage. And sure enough, bounding up with an aging, nearly forgotten celeb's practiced modesty and eager step was a guy who looked at least not utterly unlike Chamberlain, the star of TV's indelible Shogun miniseries, who let go a spiel too airily bizarre to recount here without much more coffee, its edge tempered by a vague mixture of nostalgia, regret, and that period ennui Jimmy Carter dubbed America's malaise. Giddy days those might have seemed too from the vantage of today's doom-clouded depravity, were it not for the growing suspicion that this guy isn't Richard Chamberlain at all and probably insane.
The late-show slot at the Dark Room is altogether apt. Carbone's stage occupies a space somewhere between Pee Wee's Playhouse and Night Gallery. It's such stuff as vaguely inappropriate dreams are made on. In so far as the Dark Room shows — which began in February with Carbone opening for Rick Shapiro — stand to be a regular thing, Satan and audiences willing, we can all rest uneasier.
Friday 5/28/10
Following last month's series of SOLD OUT shows, I'll be presenting an ENCORE performance of "Startling Tales of Mystery & Imagination" at the Dark Room in San Francisco on Friday May 29th at 10pm.
THE DARK ROOM
2263 Mission Street (at 18th Street)
San Francisco, CA. 94110
(darkroomsf.com) 415-401-7987
DATE: Friday May 28th
SHOW TIME: 10 PM (all dates)
TICKETS: $10.00 at the Door and at Brown Paper Tickets http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/111013
NEW SHOWS! NEW VIDEO!
Saturday 2/27/10
I'll be opening for RICK SHAPIRO "The Lenny Bruce of our time!" (Slate.com)
Saturday 4/3/10
Performing an entire evening of NEW WORKS!
ALL SHOWS AT:
THE DARK ROOM
2263 Mission Street (at 18th Street)
San Francisco, CA. 94110
(darkroomsf.com) 415-401-7987
SHOW TIME: 10 PM (all dates)
TICKETS: $8.00 at the Door
CHECK OUT MY NEW VIDEO "DEBBIE & THE DEMONS!" Directed by MIKE KUCHAR and Featuring the SF Band "THE ZEBRATRONICS."
