Program Director: Alexa Almira
House Manager: Arnie Warshaw
Light/Soundboard Operator: Alexa Almira
About Monday Night Marsh
Stephanie Weisman, our theater’s founder and artistic director, started The Marsh because she wanted a place for writers and performers like herself to easily develop their work. IN 1989, she planted a see by starting a Monday night performance series at The Hotel Utah on Bryant Street. Monday Night Marsh is the seed that sprouted into what is now The Marsh Theater: A Breeding Ground for New Performance. The program prides itself in sharing personal stories and unique experiences of all types, with a goal of amplifying the voices of our community. It is crucial, now more than ever, to share your story. Local celebrities like Josh Kornbluth, Marga Gomez, Irma Herrera, Diane Barnes, and so many others got their start on Monday Night Marsh.
Every Monday (unless it’s a holiday), we feature 3 people who perform up to 20 minutes of their (work-in-progress) piece. Each group performs twice in a month. After each show, we do a Q&A with the audience and performers, which allows for the opportunity to give and receive any feedback. You can watch in person, or stream via zoom for free.
Follow us on Instagram! @mondaynightmarsh
You truly never know what you’re going to see at a MNM.
Join us. Wonderful things can happen.
We Accept Submissions
Are you a monologuist, solo performer, movement artist, solo musician, comedian, etc.? Whether you are in the very beginning stages of your piece, or have a polished piece you’re putting the final touches on, MNM wants you! We encourage you to apply whether you’re a first-time or seasoned performer artist.
We will begin accepting submissions for the winter/spring 2025 series on October 15, 2024. At the beginning of October, we will post the dates for the series and information on how to apply. If you have any questions, please email our program director at mondaynight@themarsh.org
Happy writing!
Mondays at 7pm
Two Ways to Watch
IN-PERSON
Click for Tickets
In Person at The Marsh Theater in San Francisco
1062 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Doors open at 6:30pm | Show starts at 7pm
STREAMING via ZOOM
Click to Watch
Click here to stream the performance for free
Zoom doors open at 6:50pm | Show starts at 7pm
Ticket Information
IN-PERSON
Click for Tickets
Tickets: $13 – $35 General Seating sliding scale
Tickets may be purchased online or at the door
(credit card & cash accepted)
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance,
and additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
STREAMING
Click to Watch
Free
Mondays at 7pm | Doors open at 6:30pm | San Francisco Mainstage
Please read our
Health, Safety and COVID-19 Information
Our commitment to our patrons
As of June 10, 2023, face masks are strongly encouraged but no longer required
Upcoming MNM 2024 Performances
October 7 & 21
GINGER PARNES
What Was I Thinking?
Show Description: It’s the 70’s I’m 26 years old and I’ve just moved to San Francisco. This is a true, personal story about my naïveté in those younger years. Trusting, and sometimes stoned, I make decisions that are questionable.
Artist Biography: Ginger discovered Stagebridge in 2016 and there she gained a community and confidence in telling stories. She has shared some of her complicated experiences at Tell It on Tuesday, The Monkey House, Mechanics Institute and Marsh Livestream. Learning about herself and life through interactions with others, she tells her stories with humor and insights.
SUZANNE PULLEN
“Is This About Abortion?” Or Why I Keep Telling My Stillbirth Story.
Show Description: “Is this about abortion?” The legislative aid asks me in a DC congressional hallway. No, I scream to myself for the millionth time. It’s about my desperately wanted baby who died unexpectedly before he was born – NOT the same thing. Instead, I patiently tell him it’s about a bill to prevent stillbirth and help grieving families. “Yeah,” he smuggly mansplains. “But if you say grieving, it means it’s a life, right? We’ll sound like we’re siding with the pro-lifers, and our pro-choice constituents won’t like that.” Turns out, while he’s wrong, he’s also right. It is about abortion. Pull up a seat, and I’ll tell you my story so maybe you’ll understand why.
Artist Biography: In another life (pre-2000), Suzanne Pullen was a local oral history and historical playwright with Tale Spinners Theatre whose plays included Out of My Parent’s Closet, Burning the Bra When Women Wore Corsets, and A Man’s Duty, A Woman’s Crime, and an actor who appeared in Credit to Her Country, Pizza Man, and Real Voices, and directed and stage managed shows at venues like The Marsh, The Exit Theatre, The Actor’s Theatre, Theatre Rhino, and The Women’s Building and The Fringe Festival. Her current life finds her mostly performing at academic conferences thanks to the PhD in Communication Studies, an occasional piece at Stage Werx’s Solo Sundays (we miss you!), and sitting in the audience of her Performance Studies classrooms at San Francisco State helping students create their own autoethnographic and biographical performances (they are AMAZING!). Tonight, she’s stepping back on stage so that she practices what she preaches to them.
CHRISTIAN JIMENEZ
Monologuez (gen Z)
Show Description: Trying to grow up in a world of skibidi toilet, Fanum tax, rizz, baby gronk, o.g Fortnite mewing to looksmax, a young man tries to figure out adulthood, love and happiness in this new world. It’s going to be a collection of monologues about life as a Gen Z boy and everything that entails….
Artist Biography: Christian Jimenez is an actor, playwright and graduate of the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts Theatre Department. He is a San Francisco Native. He was most recently seen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Sausalito shakes, SF BATCO’s Sign My Name To Freedom, Z Space and Word for Word’s Citizen and YPTMTCs LegallyBlonde. Represented by JE Talent.
November 4 & 18
SUSAN EVANS & MARLEEN SMITH
(Mis)adventures at the Pea Ridge Cafe
Show Description: Road trips are such fun! They open up new, unforeseen experiences and broaden our horizons. But, sometimes we encounter the discordance associated with contrasting, mismatched customs and communication styles. What to do?! Please join us at the Pea Ridge Cafe in Arkansas—population 7,852–and see what we mean.
Artist Biography: Susan Evans and Marleen Smith are both mental health professionals who have performed on stage together (often at the Marsh) for many years and are often referred to as “The Dynamic Duo”. Their work includes:
EMIL GUILLERMO
Transdad
Show Description: Emil Amok had two daughters, until he had a third. What to do when you lose a son to the culture wars.
Artist Biography: Emil Guillermo is a San Francisco native in exile who has taken his award-winning journalistic observations on life and moved them to the stage in his Amok comic monologues. An award winning journalist, Emil was the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” has worked in TV as a reporter and talk host, before moving to writing columns and commentary in print. A collection of his essays won an American Book Award in 2000. Having interviewed Spalding Gray in the 1980s, Emil was inspired to try solo performance in 2014 and studied at the Marsh and Berkeley Rep with Charlie Varon among others. He has toured with three of his Amok Monologues, “All Pucked Up,” “Lost NPR Host,” and “A Phool’s Filipino History,” performing versions at Fringe Festivals since 2017 (San Diego, Baltimore, Orlando (2), Washington DC, San Francisco, Fresno Rogue, New York (2). He has taught storytelling and memoir, and has also studied with teachers like Seth Barish and Mike Daisey. In 2023, he appeared in an Off-Off Broadway production of Ishmael Reed’s “The Conductor.” Emil has added standup comedy, appearing in clubs around the country where he makes fun of having graduated from Harvard, with its illustrious alumni like the Unabomber.
MARION LOVINGER
November 4 – How to change a changeling?
Show Description: How do you become a changeling? A substitute. A fraud. A bad child that does not fulfill her mother’s expectations. Who replaced the real child, the good one. When you are a fairy tale character, you have to embark on an imaginary quest. Will there be a happy ending? Can you change a changeling?”
November 18 – Who is that? Duh, it’s God
Show Description: In my family, we believed there were people in the sky. But it was not God or the Devil or Angels or Demons.Actually I had never been told about God or the Devil or anything like that. Until one day…
Artist Biography: Marion Lovinger started writing solos 10 years ago, developing them with David Ford. She performed many times at the Marsh or Stage Werx. Trying to make sense of memories and experiences with humour and critical hindsight proved to be the most enlightening journey that can be.
December 2 & 9
DIRK ALPHIN
Urban Archaeology
Show Description: A dead body found on the roof is tied to Lubia’s transsexual outing as an apartment building manager sits as court room witness and relates the story of Robert Rivers, his cleaning person, and Rivers’s obsession with digging through leftover trash in what he terms “urban archaeology.”
Artist Biography: Dirk Alphin’s acting credits include both classical and contemporary plays. He has helped develop numerous new playwrights’ works and acted on Bay Area stages, in film, video and television for over forty years. He currently coaches actors. His credits in theater include director, playwright, producer, and designer. He helped create and manage two landmark performance venues: Valencia Rose Cabaret in the 1980s and Josie’s Cabaret & Juice Joint in the 1990s. The past year two of his full length plays have been featured at The Marsh: RECIPROCATING PUMPS (2023) and AXIS (2024) – both of which were extended in their runs.
HOWARD JENNINGS JR.
Black Men
Show Description: Black men written by Howie BELAFONTE Obama is a conceptual piece that showcases different beliefs journeys and attitudes of black men. From Great Leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr to the common Man You get it all with black men. There are 3 Characters “Chief” Master Sargent Howard Jennings…..a proud American and career military veteran he leaves no doubt about his love of country. Lenny Green aka ” UNCLE LENNY From the 3 marriages being a former drug abuser ( crack cocaine was his choice) whether he giving life lessons, hustling a project or reading spoken word pieces from the works of BELAFONTE. UNCLE LENNY gonna give a performance that you won’t forget. BELAFONTE speaks of the Conscious of the black men …the History Future and Present….. IT TIME TO GIVE BROTHER A SHOT AT SUCCESS ….If. You have seen Black men before…. Come see the 2024 Improvement and Tell a Friend
Artist Biography: Howard Jennings Jr is writing under the by line Howie BELAFONTE Obama. A combination of 3 of his nicknames. An entrepreneur, a political and social activists. His first introduction to the Arts was as an extra in the movie Tick.tick,tick starring Jim Brown. He was one of the only 2 black cubs scouts in Northern California in 1968, which was the reason he was chosen. He had the lead role in Phoenix community college drama production “Give Em Hell Harry” (spring 1979) Decades later Howard a a Pivot was Made in in 2022 he performed Black Men from the first time at Monday Night Marsh and has been writing another performing every chance he gets.
NOEMI ZEIGLER
You’ve Been Served: Return of the Server
Show Description: This is a continuation of the story “You’ve Been Served” which was performed on Monday Night Marsh on May of 2024. “Return of the Server” tracks my journey to redefine myself in mid-life after my husband leaves me for a woman who bakes flan. Think Eat, Pray, Love but seen through the lens of a frustrated peri-menopausal artist who desperately seeks career validation, lasting romantic love and a sense of belonging and purpose.
Artist Biography: Noemi’s films and music videos have screened at South By Southwest, Ann Arbor Film Fest, SF Jewish Film Fest, SF Documentary, Caostica (Bilbao, Spain), Euro Underground and the Student Academy Awards. Her self-directed music video for her original song, “Feminem”, was featured in the Huffington Post. Another self-directed video of her original song, “Rabbi of Rap” was an online video pick of the month for the Jewish Film Institute. Noemi’s screenplays have won awards at Broad Humor and Female Eye film festivals and have been finalists in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, Austin Film Festival, Cinestory TV, BlueCat Screenplay Competition, Santa Barbara Screenplay Awards and more.
December 16 & 30
BENNET CAFFEE
Psych Nurse
Show Description: Bennet is a new grad psych nurse with a special kind of insight. He used to be a patient himself, but he’s keeping that secret.
Artist Biography: Bennet Caffee began solo performance shortly after accepting treatment for bipolar disorder. At first sharing the funny stories that he’d only told his closest friends, but with time including the darker side of his experiences leading to his first full length show “My First Miracle – adventures in bipolar disorder”. Currently he has been touring his new show “Orange you glad to be in Miami?” which premiered at the Nanaimo Fringe Festival in Canada.
RANDALL DENHAM
Miss Titty Rides Again
Show Description: The story of my leaving isolated Mendocino, CA, to seek fame and fortune in the early Castro District in 1973, finding the Angels of Light, Sylvester, aging Cockettes, and the exiled Warhol people from New York, all within the world of pioneering avant-garde Theatre in San Francisco. This is my relationship with Miss Titty, an iconic drag Queen with the heart of a veteran, and myself, a young man traveling on a drug ridden road that seems to lead to glamour and fame.
Artist Biography: Randall Denham is a Veteran of the San Francisco stage and has been entertaining Bay Area audiences since his debut in 1975 at the Veterans Auditorium Theater in San Francisco with the legendary Angels of Light in the show: Parasites Under the Bourgeoisie.”
JULIA PURCELL
Wedding Hater
Show Description: Wedding hater skewers the pressure cooker of expectations single women face around their thirties. It’s a comedic rant with a tear in its eye, as our heroine navigates a social minefield of white dresses, bad chicken at receptions, and thinly veiled jabs from relatives about “finding someone special.” Through her hilarious struggle, the piece exposes a deeper truth: the societal shaming that surrounds a woman’s choice (or lack thereof) to get married. It’s a relatable, laugh-out-loud exploration of defying expectations and celebrating self-worth, wedding ring or not.
Artist Biography: Julia Purcell is a comedian and designer based in the Bay Area. She has performed at Cobb’s Milk Bar, Comet Club, and The Faight among bay Area venues. Her comedy is grumpy, self-deprecating, and cynical (and super fun to watch!). She produces Working Blue Comedy, a comedy show featuring new ad upcoming comics from the Bay Area.
