Performer Interviews, Q & A, and performance excerpts
with Marsh and MarshStream founder Stephanie Weisman
Thursday April 29, 2021 at 7:30pm
Mark McGoldrick
In conversation with Founder Stephanie Weisman on the Upcoming Solo Performer Spotlight Special Series COUNTERCOUP A Life, Redux
Includes a sneak peak performance excerpt!
Click Box to Watch
About the Guest
Mark McGoldrick started performing publicly with A Public Defense, a collection of short spoken-word pieces about the people who populate the world of indigent criminal defense. His first full-length show was The Golden Hammer which made its first appearance at The Marsh San Francisco in 2005, and reprised at The Berkeley Marsh in 2016.
The Golden Hammer was a flowing narrative, throwing the audience backward and forward through time, bringing to life a 1980s juvenile negotiating a precarious relationship with a predatory adult and a present-day an Oakland public defender fighting caprice in criminal courts, wondering how often and badly the legal system botches the job.
Of The Golden Hammer, the San Francisco Guardian wrote, McGoldrick “wins over his audience with unpretentious charm and quiet intelligence. . . . With ready humor and relaxed bonhomie, he regales and unsettles us with the personal, professional, and ethical conundrums that arise, while ultimately eschewing any pat response.”
The Golden Hammer was followed with another critically acclaimed show, Countercoup in 2007. Countercoup was a largely biographical show covering the turbulent teen-aged years before and following an accident that broke his neck, and relaunched his life into an exploration of disability.
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.