Excerpts, talkbacks and Q&A with special guests
providing health and healing education and advocacy.
Wednesday
April 14, 2021 at 7:30pm
Solo Arts Heal Celebrates One Year on The MarshStream!
Featuring our illustrious first guest Joanna Rush returning with a new Zoom version of her show SEX & POWER and in a talk-back with Director Seth Wilpan. Join Us!
Joanna Rush
Sex & Power
Joanna Rush probes the complexities of Sex and Power in today’s fraught sexual landscape. Drawing on diverse fields of knowledge and presented with the theatricality and humor honed by her years as a performer, she offers hope that we can evolve as a society, and heal our sorry state of sexual affairs. Rush’s observational powers provide revelatory guidance for navigating the #MeToo movement into healthier sexual territory for us all.
Watch Below
ABOUT THE PERFORMER
Joanna Rush (Playwright/Actor) Actor, playwright, dancer, author, and interfaith minister Joanna Rush probes the complexities of Sex & Power in our culture through her dynamic 75-minute monologue. After enduring multiple sexual assaults including both date rape and gang rape, Rush sought a deeper understanding of the root causes of sexual violence. Despite her trauma, she’s experienced a successful and varied career in both theatre and film. As she performed various roles of seductress on stage and screen, she was exposed to additional misogyny as practiced internationally throughout history.
Sex & Power covers territory from evolutionary biology to Greek mythology as well as hilarious anecdotes from Rush’s career. Joanna Rush takes a cold, hard, and honest look at rape culture, toxic masculinity, the origins of sexual inequality, and ultimately inspires productive ways for both men and women to effect change. This one-woman phenomenon provides insights that will help heal today’s sorry state of sexual affairs. Rush’s creative, nontraditional outlook offers hope and a roadmap for how to propel the #MeToo movement into a healthier sexual landscape for all.
Special Guest
Seth Wilpan (Director) When I got out of the Army I enrolled at the University of NY at Albany and got the part of Bernie Litko in Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago”. On the night of the second performance I decided to improvise, which was, of course, disastrous, and it was the night that my director was being graded by his teachers. Anything I do in theater will be in repentance and atonement for that sin.
ABOUT SOLO ARTS HEAL
SOLO ARTS HEAL, a weekly MarshStream Public Broadcast Platform program, presents empowering performances about healing and resilience. Through hosted interviews, talkbacks and audience Q&A, the Solo Arts Heal program provides transformative experiences, education, community outreach and advocacy through stories that celebrate the healing power of the arts.
About the Hosts
Stephanie Weisman founded and has been the Artistic/Executive Director of The Marsh since its inception in 1989. Under her leadership, The Marsh has grown from a one-night-a-week performance series to producing 600-700 shows annually on its four stages. In addition to its developing work performance series, The Marsh’s programs include: artist-in-residencies, after-school and summer workshops for youth both onsite and in 5 SFUSD, and performance development classes, workshops and Performance Initiatives. In 1996 Stephanie spearheaded the drive to successfully buy their 12,000 sq ft facility on Valencia Street in San Francisco. This increased The Marsh’s programs four-fold as well as provided for a stable Bay Area arts organization. In 2010, The Marsh added a second venue in Berkeley. In 2020, Stephanie initiated MarshStream. She is currently at work developing her opera, Aphrodisia, with dancer, Wei Wang
Gail Schickele champions arts & sciences as a writer, speaker, consultant, and producer. In January 2020 she convened an artist collective to assist solo artists whose unique stories of physical and mental challenges manifest the healing power of The Arts. COVID inspired Stephanie Weisman to create SOLO ARTS HEAL on The MarshStream to share these outstanding stories of resilience, dramatic and comedic, for the entertainment and benefit of communities everywhere. Gail’s work in marketing, management, and production has served various theaters, festivals and events nationwide. Trained as a journalist in New York and Colorado, she has covered Colorado state politics and the environmental landscape of the Rockies. Environmental educational and advocacy work in California includes the League of Women Voters and The Climate Reality Project. Gail is honored to curate and host SOLO ARTS HEAL where artists powerful stories offer audiences great performance and ‘informance’ on issues related to health and the environment, inexorably linked.
Kristin Scheel, has worked in production and development at The Marsh since 2018. She is a freelance writer and member of Open Windows art cooperative in the Bayview. She has a background in social work with the State of Oregon and program management experience as a small business owner and preschool director in San Francisco. She has an MFA from Mills College, and serves on the boards of Guerrilla Cartography and PATHSTAR.