John Fisher’s
Doodler
The Marsh San Francisco Mainstage
May 31 – July 6, 2025
Saturdays at 8pm | Sundays at 3pm
Opening Night: June 7
Talkbacks: June 21 with The Emperor Norton
July 5 with Kevin Fagan
Written & Performed by John Fisher
Directed by John Fisher & Colin Johnson
Ticket Information
Tickets: $25 – $35 General Seating | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating
100 minutes | No intermission | Ages 18+
(Please do not bring infants to the show)
Click Here for Tickets
Online ticket sales close 2 hours before each performance.
Additional tickets may be available for purchase at the door.
Show Description
After sellout houses and glowing reviews, DOODLER moves to The Marsh in San Francisco. Don’t miss the show the critics have called “chilling,” “gripping,” a “masterpiece,” “a joy to watch,” “compelling,” “witty,” and “very enjoyable,”* and audiences have heralded as “super energetic and interesting,” “athletic,” “great,” “tremendous” and a ”fantastic story and performance.”**
Set in 1970s San Francisco, DOODLER follows a young gay man on a relentless investigation to solve the mystery of the “Doodler,” a serial killer who targeted the queer community and left behind drawn portraits of each of his victims. The amateur sleuth tours the city in search of clues—from the Castro to Haight-Ashbury, from Ocean Beach to North Beach. Fisher takes the one-man show format to the extreme, operating all staging and technical elements live from the stage while performing every role in this chilling, dead-serious, and campy crusade. To this day, the Doodler case remains unsolved.
Artist Biography
JOHN FISHER (Playwright/Co-Director/Actor) recently completed a successful NYC Off-Broadway run of his show Medea: The Musical at the Actor’s Temple, after an initial run at Green Room 42 in NYC. Also recently, he enjoyed a six-month run of his solo-show A History of World War II at The Marsh, preceded by two runs of the show in Manhattan (United Solo/Theatre Row – Best Actor Award – and Pangea Performance Space) and another in Los Angeles (the Broadwater.) He is a two-time winner of the Will Glickman Award, as well as being a recipient of the GLAAD Media Award, an NEA Project Grant and ten Critics’ Circle Awards (most recently for Best Production for Cabaret in 2024.) His plays include the award-winning Action Hero, Shakespeare Goes to War, To Sleep and Dream, Combat! and Medea, the Musical. Previous COVID-19 performances include Murder in Hawaii, Shark! and A Tourist in London. John’s COVID-19 plays A Tourist in Hawaii and A Tourist in London were revived online at The Marsh. He is frequent performer of his solo work at Pangea NYC, The Tank NYC and the LGBTQ Center in Manhattan. John has worked at Golden Thread, the American Conservatory Theatre, Yale, and Berkeley Rep, as well as at the HBO Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. www.JohnLathamFisher.com.
COLIN JOHNSON (Lighting Design/Sound Facilitator/Co-Director) started with Theatre Rhino in 2012 and has assistant directed, designed lighting/sound, stage managed (often all at the same time), and much more. Favorite Rhino shows include Shakespeare Goes to War, Breaking the Code, Road Show, and At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen. He is also the Technical Director for the Joe Goode Annex and SAFEhouse Arts in addition to being a freelance lighting designer and electrician.
June 21 – Join The Emperor Norton, famed SF Tour Guide and Historian, for a Post-Show Program after DOODLER About the Emperor Norton: The Emperor Norton is renowned for his popular tours of San Francisco which delve into the history of the City. The San Jose Mercury News has this to say about his tour. Baghdad by the Bay has always been known for its embrace of eccentric characters. But the most endearing of them may well be Emperor Norton, the self-proclaimed “Emperor of the United States” and “Protector of Mexico,” who “ruled” the city from 1859 until his death in 1880. About Kevin Fagan: Kevin Fagan is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated longtime former reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. He’s an expert on murderers from the Zodiac Killer to the Unabomber, and his 8-part podcast and story package in 2021 on the unsolved Doodler serial killer case was The Chronicle’s first true crime podcast series. It was a worldwide hit, reaching #2 on the charts in America and #3 in Britain. Fagan has witnessed seven executions and covered some of the biggest stories of our times, from the Sept. 11 terror attacks and Columbine High massacre to several decades worth of crimes, presidential elections, wildfires, floods, protests and riots before retiring from newspapering in 2025 to pursue book writing.
Talkbacks & Events
“Who knew you could stroll San Francisco’s historic waterfront with Emperor Norton? The three-hour Fantastic San Francisco Time Machine Tour explores the city’s history. (Jackie Burrell/Bay Area News Group)Thank goodness for fantastical time machines, then, or we’d have missed out on a historical tour of San Francisco led by Emperor Norton himself, clad in an ostrich-plumed hat and full regalia. This is the perfect tour for out-of-town visitors, but even we locals learned new things on the highly entertaining, two and a half-hour walking tour that took us from Union Square, Market Street, the Financial District, the Barbary Coast, and Chinatown.”
July 5 – Join Kevin Fagan, creator of the Doodler Podcast, for a Talkback after DOODLER
He’s also one of the country’s foremost journalists on homelessness, and his book “The Lost and The Found,” about two unhoused people he helped rescue from the streets, came out through Simon & Schuster in February 2025. As a news reporter, he spent 6 months sleeping in the streets of San Francisco for the influential “Shame of the City”series in 2003 and has written extensively since then on aspects of the problem all over the nation. Fagan’s national awards include the James Aronson Award for Social
Justice Journalism and Excellence in Urban Journalism Award, as well as the prestigious John Knight Fellowship to Stanford University.
Doodler is a Critics Circle “Go See” Pick! Read more about “Go See” selections here. “It is at its core a coming-out story familiar to many gay boys, in which they find a way to stop feelings of inadequacy and discover the joys of being who they really are.” “DOODLER is an accomplished piece of San Francisco history.” Theater Review: DOODLER (The Marsh San Francisco, SAFEHouse & Theatre Rhinoceros) “Doodler”: Mysterious Gay Murders Still Unsolved–at The Marsh https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-francisco/article/Review-THE-DOODLER-at-The-Marsh-20250615Press & Media
–Broadway World
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