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THEATER A couple of days after the opening of the Cutting Ball's documentary play, Tenderloin, I spotted independent filmmaker Rob Nilsson crossing the street at Taylor and Eddy, less than a block from the theater. Drawn to the neighborhood and its residents for decades, Nilsson is one of the more prominent artists who have found inspiration, collaboration and a kind of authenticity in the Tenderloin, long among San Francisco's poorest and liveliest districts.Read more »

THEATER Political borders have their way with the bodies of ordinary people, but ideas are harder to stop at an airport or checkpoint. So when Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour found himself unable to leave Iran (having demurred from mandatory military service, the state demurred in providing him a passport), he decided to send on a play that would stand in for him, and maybe stand for something more.Read more »

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THEATER There's a clipped Spanish twang in the roughhewn but lucid English of George Milton (Jos Viramontes) and Lennie Small (A.J. Meijer), the iconic bindlestiff protagonists in Of Mice and Men. It's the only obvious bit of updating in TheatreWorks' and artistic director Robert Kelley's generally faithful rendering of the 1937 John Steinbeck classic (a stage adaptation penned by the author himself for a Broadway premiere the same year).Read more »

THEATER Bay Area audiences set off for The Coast of Utopia with Shotgun Players' production of Voyage, the first play in Tom Stoppard's celebrated 2002 trilogy based on the lives and careers of certain radical Russian émigrés in 19th century Europe. Read more »

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DANCE Strange how being "of a certain age" can bring so much uncertainty along with it. In the installment of Berlin-based choreographer Silke Z.'s "Just Between Us — The Generation Project" making its US premiere at CounterPULSE this weekend, two guys, at least, will move boldly forward into the middle ages.Read more »

THEATER Art is a life and death matter at the Garage this weekend, with the premieres of Dead/Alive and No Exit, two new contemporary dance-performance works from Minna Harri Experience Set and Christine Bonansea, respectively.Read more »

THEATER It's a rare thing, really too rare, to find an audience eagerly erupting into political discussions between acts of a play. But that's what Little Brother inspires, and in an unaffected way, without pretension or unwelcome goading. It's too cool, confident, and contemporary for that. Read more »

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