THE REAL AMERICANS
Written & Performed by Dan Hoyle
Developed with & Directed by Charlie Varon
Sound Design by David Hines
Light/Soundboard Operator: Aaron Aguilar
October 6 – November 3, 2010 | San Francisco
Show Description
Escaping the liberal urban bubble, award-winning playwright and performer Dan Hoyle spent 100 days traveling through small-town America. Living out of his van, he found himself sharing meals and conversations with union coal miners, rural drug dealers, anti-war Veterans, and closeted gay creation theory experts, among others. Hoyle sought to see the world through their eyes, and found himself at ground zero of our country’s growing economic inequality and polarized politics.
Two Obama terms and 300 performances in a dozen cities later, the show is back in the Bay Area where it all began. Why? Because Donald Trump has made it all wildly relevant again.The show returned to San Francisco last July with additional material gathered in June 2016, to update the state of polarized politics in the era of Donald Trump, and proved to be the same sold-out hit it was when it debuted. The new post-election ending will bring heightened relevancy in 2017 as the new president championed by Middle America begins his first term.
Artist Biography
Dan Hoyle is an actor and playwright best known for his solo shows created in his unique brand of journalistic theater. He premiered all five of his solo shows at The Marsh, in San Francisco, where he lived before moving to the South Bronx in 2013. His most recent solo piece EACH AND EVERY THING, which won the BATCC award for best solo show, recently finished a run at Portland Center Stage and has been playing Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. THE REAL AMERICANS just finished a run at Playmakers Rep in North Carolina, and previously had runs at Culture Project, Berkeley Rep, Cleveland Playhouse, The Lensic (Santa Fe, NM), Portland Center Stage, Painted Bride (Philadelphia), and The Park (Kolkata, India). TINGS DEY HAPPEN had a long run at Culture Project, won the Will Glickman Award for best new play, snagged a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Show, and then toured five cities in Nigeria. His multi-actor play, GAME ON, co-written with Tony Taccone, won the TBA Award for Best New Play. As an actor, he most recently appeared in Samantha Chanse’s FRUITING BODIES at The Sheen Center. He’s been a Fulbright Scholar, a Pew Theater Initiative Grantee, a Prize of Hope award winner, been commissioned by SF Playhouse, Aurora Theater, and First Person Arts, written for Sports Illustrated, Mother Jones, and Salon, and is a proud graduate of Northwestern University (Performance Studies and History, Honors). This summer, he will travel to reconnect with people he met eight years ago who inspired THE REAL AMERICANS and then mount an updated version of the show. In 2016-2017 he will be an Artist-in-Residence at the Heyman Center for Humanities at Columbia University while working on a new solo piece. He is also working on a new Northern California marijuana thriller for both stage and television. www.danhoyle.com
Post-Show Talkbacks:
October 6: Markos Moulitsas, Founder & Publisher of Daily Kos, and author of The Resistance Handbook: 45 Ways to Fight Trump.
October 14: Liz Pellegrin is an Oakland based immigration attorney that has worked with foreign nationals for over a decade. She is the past co-chair of the immigration Committee of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of National Lawyers Guild (NLG) and is a current member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the National Immigration Project of the NLG.
October 20: Mark Follman, National Affairs Editor of Mother Jones where he helps direct news & politics coverage and produces investigative projects on subjects ranging from the rise of mass shootings to the resurgence of white nationalism under Trump.
October 27:Al Letson, Host of Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.
“Impressive, hilarious, moving, and provocative. Beneath the masterful humor, a rich texture of human connections asserts itself.” –San Francisco Chronicle
“Hoyle paints his characters with the meticulous determination of a pointillist like Georges Seurat. There is no smoke. Nor are there mirrors.” –Huffington post
“Mr. Hoyle is both a first-rate reporter and actor.” –New York Times
“This celebrated master of disguise, this chameleon of personality, this mimic of dialect, and this man with the sharpest of wits and the biggest of hearts has returned better than ever. A man who instantaneously transforms before us into so many different characters with ease and authenticity.” –Talkin’ Broadway
“A pleasure to watch. ‘The Real Americans’ is over-the-top brilliant, a belly-laugh evening of the best that solo performance has to offer.” –SF Theatre Blog
“Hoyle’s cultural commentary is pointed without being mean spirited and the portraits he creates are sharply drawn without being caricatures.” –San Mateo Daily Journal