Josh Kornbluth

in conversation with Founder/Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman

Josh will perform an excerpt of his show “Citizen Brain”

Click Box to Watch!

About the Guest

I was raised by Jewish Communists in New York City. Paul Kornbluth and Bernice “Bunny” Selden had been told repeatedly that they would be unable to conceive a child — but, like Sisyphus (though I hope with more enjoyment), they kept at it anyway. I was born on May 21, 1959, in Roslyn, NY, on Long Island; hitting the scales at 10 pounds even, I apparently made quite an impression on the locals: many years later, when I called the Roslyn city clerk to get my birth certificate for a passport application, she said, “Oh, I remember you!”

Sadly, I remember nothing from those Roslyn days — my brief experience of suburban life. I’m told that we had a house, and were even a two-car family. By the time I became conscious of stuff, Mom and Dad were divorced and living in Manhattan. They staked out opposite ends of the island: Mom near the northern tip, in Washington Heights, and Dad way south, on the Lower East Side. When I was five or so, my father, a public-school teacher, started dating the sweet young teacher in the next classroom, a recent immigrant from small-town Michigan named Sue Kover. Intra-school unmarried couples were proscribed, so one would stay in the car for a while and “arrive” at work a few minutes after the other. Four years later, perhaps having tired of this ruse, they tied the knot. By this point, Dad and Sue had moved north to Washington Heights themselves; appropriately for the time when détente with the Soviets was just beginning to take flight, they and my mom were able to coexist peacefully — my mother even babysat their first child, Jacob.

Get tickets to watch Josh at SHOTGUN PLAYERS

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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.