Joyful Raven’s
Tactical Frivolity – How to Save the World in a Unitard
Berkeley Theater
Nov 6 – Dec 5, 2026
Friday at 7:30 pm, Saturday at 8pm
Written & Performed by Joyful Raven
Directed and Developed by Jael Weisman
Ticket Information
Tickets: $25 – $35 General Seating | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating
60 min | No Intermission | Ages 13+
(Please do not bring infants to the show)
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance.
Additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
Show Description
Born into a radical theater company, Joyful Raven was tasked from the tender age of 5 with the daunting mission to save the world from impending doom… using theater. Forced into animal-print unitards and political positions long before she was a consenting adult, she never had a fighting chance at anything resembling a normal life. You think your parents were embarrassing? Did you have to sing about salmon sex on stage, in a unitard, at 12 years old… WITH your parents? I didn’t think so. In an attempt to heal her hippie trauma, she runs away from home to seek solace in the arms of a spiritual teacher… and accidentally finds herself in the yoga-to-fascism pipeline. Can she save herself? Can she save the world… using theater?! Blending standup, drag, storytelling, & clown, Raven takes audiences on a dystopian and hilarious romp through the looking glass.
Artist Biographies
ACTOR: Joyful Raven is an award-winning actor, director, and “story midwife” known for her powerful and thought-provoking solo shows, where she tackles thorny social issues with humor, heart, and nuance. Born into an iconic political theater family, she has been devising original work for over 20 years. Her first solo comedy, Tales of a Sexual Tomboy, was dubbed “…one of the funniest shows now on display on Bay Area stages” by the SF Chronicle, won Best of the Fringe at the 2016 San Francisco International Fringe Festival, and enjoyed an Off-Broadway run in 2017. Her latest solo show, Breed or Bust, was nominated for Best Comedy at the 2022 Hollywood Fringe Festival, critically acclaimed at the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, where it won an Offie (OffWestEnd Award), and went on to have an extended run at The Marsh, where it received a Critics’ Pick in the SF Chronicle. She co-founded the award-winning theater company Rococo Risqué and co-authored four plays for the Prize of Hope-winning company Human Nature. As an actor, she has appeared in numerous stage and film projects, including Odyssey Works, the film The Pursuit of Happyness alongside Will Smith, and Spring Awakening, directed by Stafford Arima. Joyful holds an MFA in Dramatic Art from the University of California, Davis, and teaches solo performance and storytelling at Berkeley Rep School of Theatre, The Marsh, and her own studio in Berkeley.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joyfulraven/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyful.raven
DIRECTOR: Jael Weisman, a founding member of the Dell’Arte Players Co. and a multi-Obie-winning director, is a trailblazer in actor-based theater, directing acclaimed productions like “Whiteman Meets Bigfoot,” “Performance Anxiety,” and “Mad Love.” With Dell’Arte, his works have toured extensively in South America and Europe, earning him numerous Dramalogue Awards for Directing. Noteworthy projects include “The Dragon Lady’s Revenge,” which traveled to New York and was awarded an Obie, the American premiere of “Red Noses” at the San Diego Repertory Co., “Uncle Gunjiro’s Girlfriend” at the Adelaide Festival, and “Mermaid Meat” for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with luminaries like Carlo Mazzone-Clementi and Joe Chaikin and worked with renowned Bay Area performance artists including Jeff Raz and Brenda Wong Aoki. In his early career, he worked with The San Francisco Mime Troupe, directing among other things “The Dragon Lady’s Revenge,” which was awarded an Obie. Weisman holds a BA from Reed College and an MFA from Carnegie Tech
Additional Credits
Lighting Design: Kiara Valderrama
Show Photos: Cynthia Smalley
Special Thanks
It is with great love and a deep bow of gratitude that I roast by inimitable parents, Jane Lapiner and David Simpson and their theater company Human Nature.
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