Winner: Best of 2024 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Terry Baum’s
Lesbo Solo
My Gay History Play
The Marsh Berkeley Cabaret
September 7 – October 12, 2025
Sundays at 5pm
Opening Night: September 14
EXTENDED: October 26 – November 23, 2025
Sundays at 2pm
(No Show November 16)
Written & Performed by Terry Baum
Directed by Sarah Albertson & Bill Peters
Ticket Information
Tickets: $20 – $35 General Seating | $50 & $100 Reserved Seating
80 minutes | No intermission | Ages 14+
(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
Slightly world-renowned lesbian playwright, Terry Baum, has both created and ridden the wave of history that has freed gay people. She tells that true story in Lesbo Solo, My Gay History Play, which won Best of Fringe at the 2024 S.F. Fringe Fest, and was a big hit at World Pride D.C. this year. The play begins in 1963, when Terry’s beloved high school teacher, Miss Pearl, is threatened with being fired over rumors that she’s a lesbian. Lesbo Solo ends 50 years later, with the astonishing redemption of Miss Perl in a world that has been transformed for lesbians and gays. . In between those two events, Terry grows from a homophobic teenager to a pioneering lesbian playwright who demands to be honored by her reluctant parents — and marches in the Pride Parade in a contingent so politically incorrect that no one will march with her! The powerful arc of the gay liberation movement over five decades is seen through Terry’s moving and hilarious personal narrative.
Artist Biography
Terry Baum (Writer & Performer): Slightly world-renowned Terry Baum has had her plays produced all over the world and translated into five languages. She toured the U.S., Canada, Europe, Israel, Cuba and South Africa as a solo performer. Terry’s plays have won Best of San Francisco Fringe Awards in 2016, 2019, and 2024 (for Lesbo Solo). HICK: A Love Story was chosen a Fringe Fave by the New York International Fringe. One Dyke’s Theater, an anthology of Terry’s plays, was published by Exit Press in 2019. Terry ran for mayor of San Francisco in 2011. She had a lot of fun and did some good.
Sarah Albertson (Co-Director) has worked off-Broadway and with theatre companies in the US and Canada. She has MFA degrees from the Yale School of Drama and the Yale School of Art in film. She has taught theatre workshops in London and Paris. Sarah lives in Santa Cruz CA. where she is on the Theatre Arts faculty at Cabrillo College and directs at the Santa Cruz County Actors’ Theatre in their long running ten minute play festival, 8-10’s at Eight. Sarah co-directed Terry Baum’s HICK: A Love Story at The Marsh San Francisco in 2024.
Bill Peters (Co-Director): Bill’s directing credits include projects at the Manhattan Theatre Club (NYC), The Denver Center, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Jewel Theatre (Santa Cruz), and the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. Among his more recent directing projects: Doll’s House, Part 2, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Skylight. Bill has adapted and directed Melville’s Moby Dick, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and The Possessed, Dickens’s Hard Times, and several short stories by Chekhov. Bill co-directed Terry Baum’s HICK: A Love Story at The Marsh San Francisco in 2024.
Press & Media
Audience Reviews:
“An inspiring, joyous journey that everyone must see.”
“As always charming, goofy and artful, Terry tells her personal tale and the story of a
movement. Funny and surprisingly touching.”
“Powerful to have Terry take the stage to give us the wisdom, the pain, the humor —
and the liberation of both her and her community over a span of 50+ years. The
audience was enraptured.”
“At the end, I had tears in my eyes. Terry demonstrated the transformative power of
theater. Thank you, Terry — for your work, your humor, your vision, your life.”
Read Terry’s Interview in Bay Area Reporter
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