Past Events

Dia de los Muertos 2009

Oakland Improv Collective particpated in its 3rd year of performances for Dia de los Muertos! Here were the dates of our shows:

Friday, October 16
6:00pm
SOMArts Dia de los Muertos 2009 Opening Reception

Also featuring classical & jazz music by Mutual Admiration Org, contemporary Mexican & Chicano music by Liliana Herrera, an Artist Market of Dia de los Muertos crafts and art for sale, and of course, incredible altars and installations by local artists.

SOMArts Cultural Center
934 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 863-1414

Admission $5-10
For more info: http://blog.somarts.org

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Sunday, November 1
10:00am-5:00pm
Fruitvale Dia de los Muertos Festival

Oakland Improv Collective will be making its usual informal appearance in the afternoon at this popular festival. Look for us in the streets between stalls, wherever there is some space to perform, or at an altar or with some of the musicians. We usually draw quite a crowd!

International Blvd. between Fruitvale and 35th Aves.
Oakland

Free
For more info: http://www.unitycouncil.org/ddlm/index.htm

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Monday, November 2
7:00pm and 8:30pm
Dia de los Muertos San Francisco

This is the 26th year for the procession and Festival of Altars in Garfield Park. The procession begins at 7:00pm at 24th and Bryant Streets and ends at Garfield Park at 26th and Harrison Streets. The Festival of Altars begins in Garfield Park at 8:30pm.

Free
For more info: http://www.dayofthedeadsf.org

The Oakland Improv Collective finished the evening at Casa Bonampak’s new location, performing for the grand opening and celebration.

October 10, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Dia de los Muertos 2008

Oakland Improv Collective will be performing at 3 venues again this year for the Day of the Dead. This time, however, we will be venturing further afield–OIC has been invited to participate in Petaluma’s Dia de los Muertos festival, to be held at the Petaluma Art Center. For more information, visit www.petalumaartscouncil.org.

In addition, we have been invited by artist Peter Perez to perform at his altar at the Oakland Fruitvale festival. The Dia de los Muertos festival in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood is one of the largest celebrations of the holiday in the United States–over 80,000 people are expected to attend this one-day event. This will be the Oakland Improv Collective’s 2nd year at the festival. The Fruitvale festival takes place this year on October 26. For more information, visit www.unitycouncil.org.

Finally, we will once again be performing at the Oakland Museum’s Dia de los Muertos exhibit at First Fridays on Friday, November 5. For more information, visit www.museumca.org.

All of these events are FREE and open to the public.

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September 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

“Pasion por Frida” at SF MoMA, Sunday 9/28

Oakland Improv Collective co-founder Tania Llambelis will be one of several artists enacting moments of Frida Kahlo’s life at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Sunday, 9/28, 2-7pm. Since she already bears a remarkable resemblance to Frida both in appearance and temperament, Tania is certain to occupy a prominent position in the event.

Okay, maybe not so much of a resemblance when Tania is smiling…but come see for yourself!

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September 23, 2008 · Leave a Comment

“Illusion” this Saturday!

Come to the final Illusion at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts this Saturday, September 27! 77 artists transforming a space for 4 hours–from white walls, ceilings, and floors to a vibrant riot of rich colors, sounds, and experiences. Oakland Improv Collective will be performing in conjunction with Bay Area musicians, painters, dancers, performers, sculptors, and many others.

The theme is “dreams” (suenos), the performers will be wearing white, and audience members are asked to dress in black. Tickets are $5 (what a bargain).

More information is available at http://www.missionculturalcenter.org/illusion-2008.html.

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June 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment

“Three Figures / In Transition” Unperformance

Tonight we’ll be holding an informal showing of our latest site-specific work. Meet at 6pm SHARP on the corner of 14th and Jefferson St. adjacent to the Federal Building, and ushers will escort you to the site. Since we’ll be outdoors, dress accordingly and be prepared to stand for part or all of the event (approx. 40 minutes).

Frequently in the performing arts the audience is put in chairs (comfy or uncomfy) and sits back to passively watch the spectacle unfold in front of them. The Oakland Improv Collective takes a different approach: we prefer to actively involve the audience in our work, so that the line between performer and audience is blurred and both witness and performer participate in the creation of the “performance.” This may challenge some people in the audience who are more accustomed to the passive experience, and it certainly can challenge the performers! But it also gives you the freedom, as an audience member, to move around and find a better spot to witness the action at any time, and to find additional ways, other than just watching, to relate to the experience. And afterward, to provide feedback–here, if you like. See you around (and in, and among)!

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June 4, 2008 · 1 Comment

Stephen DeStaebler

About Artist Stephen De Staebler

Berkeley-based artist Stephen De Staebler is widely known for his evocative renderings of the human figure in both clay and bronze. He was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1933 and attended Princeton University, graduating with a B.A. in religion. During his summers as an undergraduate he studied at Black Mountain College, where the faculty included such pioneering artists as John Cage, Merce Cunningham, and Willem and Elaine de Kooning. At BMC De Staebler was exposed to ceramic artist Peter Voulkos, among others, who had a significant influence on his artistic development. In addition to his work in clay and bronze, De Staebler has also worked with printmaking and monotypes.

In March of this year I had the extraordinary opportunity to interview Mr. De Staebler in person at his home in the Berkeley hills. The grounds of his home and studio are practically littered with both finished and unfinished works, some of which I recognized from coffee table books on ceramic art.

I asked Mr. De Staebler about the history behind the public art site of “Three Figures:”
The installation was commissioned by the City of Oakland. Working in partnership with a local architecture firm, De Staebler and the architect generated a design for an outdoor theater based on the ancient Greek theaters (not an “amphitheater,” he said, as that refers to a full circle as opposed to the semicircular seating of this site). In the initial meetings with the city and all throughout the process there were no problems or major objections, he noted with some surprise. As an artist, you learn to expect resistance, he said, but this particular project went very smoothly–everyone liked the project.

De Staebler and the architect imagined the space as a place to hold performances, and proposed to use the storage room behind the theater seating as a greenroom or staging area for performers, but the city never embraced this idea, and the storage room remained as it was.

On the specifics of the site:
The paving at the base of the theater is a circle, as in Greek theaters. The spacing of the bronze figures throughout the space was not deliberate as De Staebler has done for other installations. He mentioned that he found the curve of the back wall to be subtle but very satisfying, and felt that the figures worked well off that. The seated figures are male and female, and the winged figure is meant to be an angel.

The groove in the wall was De Staebler’s contribution, and is reminiscent of an older installation that he did for New Harmony Inn Conference Center in Indiana, in which a groove in the wall projects up through the space and tapers away into the wall. In speaking of his work, particularly installations such as this one, De Staebler says he takes seriously the rhythms of the space.

At the time of the design and installation of the project (1993), the construction site across the 13th Street pedestrian walkway was just an empty lot of weeds with wire fencing.

Some of the figures, as with many of De Staebler’s figures, are missing limbs. He calls these “incomplete” bodies.

Standing Figure with
Blue Shoulder (1986)

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June 2, 2008 · Leave a Comment

History

As part of the process of creating a site-specific performance, I have been researching the history of the immediate area surrounding our site (the blocks encompassed by 12th and 14th Streets and Jefferson Street and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way). Below is a summary of what has turned up at the Oakland History Room of the Oakland Library and through interviews with longtime Oakland residents.

About this area…

Around the late 1800s and early 1900s, this part of downtown Oakland was occupied by mixed residences and small stores. Several theaters were located not far from here, such as the Orpheum Theater and the Empire Theater, damaged in the 1906 earthquake, on 12th Street between Broadway and Washington Street. After the earthquake, many San Francisco-based businesses moved their offices and storerooms to Oakland while San Francisco was rebuilt. By 1918 such businesses as the Bruguere Co. (based at 518 Montgomery St. in San Francisco), the Charles Jurgens Co., and the Eastern Outfitting Co. were all found on these two blocks.

By 1951, a significant shift had occurred with the popularization of the automobile. Most of the block between 12th and 13th Streets was taken up, like now, by open auto parking, with a few 4-story wood frame stores. The block between 13th and 14th Streets consisted of the Oakland Police Department garage, the Oakland Fire Department garage and repair shop, and the Oakland Firehouse #1 (see photo).

Apparently the Oakland Fire Department had moved into a former ice rink on the site. The Oakland Ice Rink, where professional hockey games were played and professional skaters trained, stood here from 1929 to 1948 (or earlier).

With the exception of the Oakland Firehouse #1, the area mostly looked like this 1954 photo of Thrifty Gas Station at 1125 Grove St. (the former name of Martin Luther King, Jr. Way) at 12th St.

Sometime after the 1950s, however, the area began to fall into disrepair. By the 1970s, crumbling buildings and SROs gave the neighborhood a poor reputation. Oakland began a redevelopment plan for many parts of the city in the late 1950s, and these blocks fell under the Central District Renewal Plan , first drawn up in 1965 (see map). The Central District Renewal Plan initially called for bulldozing 70 city blocks, but after public protest the plan was scaled back to 12 blocks. Many other features of this plan continue to influence urban planning efforts (see http://www.business2oakland.com/main/centraldistrict.htm for an updated map).

Called the City Center project, the plan underwent many revisions before ground was finally broken on new construction in the area. Among the proposed uses for these two blocks were parking and department stores (see map below).

First, however, the current buildings and residents had to be removed, as they apparently were under a plan called Operation Padlock (Walker 1997: “Oakland: Dark Star in an Expanding Universe” at http://geography.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/R_Walker/OaklandDarkStar.pdf).
One long-time Oakland resident describes the area as a wasteland of demolished buildings in the late 1970s. He says, “In those days there were no lights from Grove St. to Broadway. I used to get off the bus here at 14th and walk up to DeLauer’s to look at comic books, and you had to be careful where you stepped or you might step on someone and get a bottle thrown at you. We called it ‘Wino Alley’.”

Another resident concurs, claiming that no one who has never seen it can imagine how such an area could exist in the middle of an urban center. This corroborates the description of the CityWalk condo construction site by a Oakland resident who has lived or worked in the area for over 15 years. She says that many years ago, the condo site was an open area full of weeds and building foundations, where people parked their cars or sat and ate lunch.

Although other areas of City Center were completed earlier, the City Center parking garage seems to have been completed closer to the late 1980s-early 1990s. Artist Stephen DeStaebler, well-known for his pioneering figurative art in both ceramics and bronze, was commissioned along with a local architecture firm to create an outdoor public art installation on the back wall of the parking garage. Completed in 1993, “Three Figures” was designed to be a space for performances.

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