Performer Interviews, Q & A, and performance excerpts
with Marsh and MarshStream founder Stephanie Weisman
Thursday March 25, 2021 at 7:30pm
Josh Kornbluth
Bingo, Letters and Community
Thirty-seven years after his father dies, Josh Kornbluth receives a box of letters his father had written to his grandparents. Josh lets the box sit for months. Yet, one night during Bingo—the infamous Bingo game that has occurred on MarshStream every Friday for the last year where Josh improvs, Stephanie sidekicks and Josh calls out “B9” etc— Stephanie and his bingo entourage encourage him to open a letter.
It is amazing! It is 1948 and Josh’s dad is in Georgia canvassing to get a socialist president elected. One letter describes how a KKK member holds a gun to his head and how he is devastated by the racism and poverty in the Black communities in Georgia as he works to get out the vote.
Now, each Friday, after the 3 weekly ”bingulations,” the game-playing audience waits for Josh to reach into the box and read the next letter.
Join Josh Kornbluth on Stephanie’s MarshStream to talk about these letters, the community and performance the MarshStream is igniting.
Click Box to Watch
A Message from Stephanie
About the Guest
JOSH KORNBLUTH he/him (Writer/Performer)
For three decades, Josh Kornbluth has been performing his autobiographical monologues for theater audiences all over the world. His show Red Diaper Baby ran Off-Broadway and was selected for the Best American Plays of 1992 collection, nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and made into a performance film for the Sundance Channel. His monologue The Mathematics of Change was also made into a performance film. His shows Haiku Tunnel (accepted into the Sundance Film Festival) and Love & Taxes have both been adapted into nationally distributed feature films.
He collaborated with Michael Gene Sullivan and the San Francisco Mime Troupe Collective in writing their summer show, Mr. Smith Goes to Obscuristan. He collaborated with director David Dower on five shows: Ben Franklin: Unplugged, Love & Taxes, Citizen Josh, Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, and Sea of Reeds for the Shotgun Players. Josh has toured throughout India with his monologue Citizen Josh, sponsored by the U.S. State Department. He hosted an interview program on public TV station KQED for two years. He was also artist-in-residence at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. Josh’s shows have been collected into a book, Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues, as well as two audiobooks from Audible.com. He has taught a course in autobiographical storytelling at Stanford University. Since January 2017, he has been an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute, where he produces the “Citizen Brain” series of online videos (citizenbrain.org); he also served a stint as Hellman Visiting Artist at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center.
He lives in Berkeley, Calif., with his wife, Sara, a retired public school-
teacher; their son, Guthrie is a budding filmmaker and an
undergrad at UC Santa Cruz.
About the Host
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.
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