COMING TO CASTRO VALLEY AND TO THE MARIN CENTER:

BRIAN COPELAND & CHARLIE VARON:
GREAT AMERICAN SH*T SHOW
Castro Valley Center for the Arts, Castro Valley, CA
Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 7 PM
Showcase Theatre at the Marin Center, San Rafael, CA
Sunday, August 18, 2019 at 7:30 PM

Purchase by midnight tonight (Sunday, May 5), and save $20 a ticket. Just enter the discount code RuleOfLaw.

BUY TICKETS HERE FOR CASTRO VALLEY - Save $20 per ticket when you use the discount code RuleOfLaw.

BUY TICKETS HERE FOR MARIN - Save $20 per ticket by using the code RuleOfLaw, or buy three and your fourth ticket is free!

"Smart, funny, provocative and at times, unexpectedly deeply moving, this is theater as a welcome dash of hope in dark times and a much needed call to arms. GASS packs a lot of bracing punch into a highly entertaining 90 minutes. Created by three of the most accomplished solo theater artists in the Bay Area—exceptional playwright-performers Brian Copeland ('Not a Genuine Black Man,' 'The Waiting Period') and Charlie Varon ('Rush Limbaugh in Night School,' 'Rabbi Sam') and their director/co-developer David Ford—GASS is four beautifully crafted and oh-so-timely monologues that run the gamut from responding to the rising tide of racism and cult-like denials of facts to psychiatrists coping with Trump-induced nightmares to the perils of canvassing for a Democratic congressional candidate in a dark cul-de-sac in Modesto. This may be the perfect piece of theater for our times."
—Rob Hurwitt, former San Francisco Chronicle theater critic

"Welcome to the – Well, we can't spell it out

"'The Great American S— Show,' in Chroniclese, and is the brainchild of two outstanding monologuists, Charlie Varon and Brian Copeland. The two, who usually do solo shows, came up with a tag-team presentation, doing two monologues each.

"At the Marsh, both in the Mission and in Berkeley, they drew plentiful laughs based on Donald Trump. Easier said than done.

"Copeland was the inspiration for the show. Last October, at a mini-festival at the Marsh, he did a short piece he had written, with his collaborator, David Ford, 'trying to make sense of someone who was very important in my life who is now a Fox News, brainwashed Trump supporter.'

"Varon, a 30-year veteran as a comic actor and monologuist, and an artist in residence at The Marsh (which may simply mean that he lives there), saw Copeland, who recalls Varon telling him 'that the piece articulated so many things that he's been feeling. He suggested we do a show.'

"Copeland came up with the name, which, he says, 'perfectly describes the current administration.'

"First performed at the Marsh in November, the show has been a hit wherever it's popped up.

"Copeland, a comedian whose side gig as a talk show host on KGO ended last year, has had success with solo shows, including 'Not a Genuine Black Man' (which is back on the Marsh calendar).

"Besides his piece about his friend-turned-Trumpster, he does one about having been an opening act for Bill Cosby in Bay Area concerts, and about the #MeToo movement. He doesn't play it for laughs but does note that Cosby 'was convicted on three counts of aggravated, indecent sexual assault... which is something that I don't understand. Is there such a thing as decent sexual assault?'

"Varon also has a radio background, and when we sat together for my show on KQED-FM, 'Fog City Radio,' in 1994, he was earning raves for his multiple-character 'Russ Limbaugh in Night School,' a fantasy about Limbaugh landing in enemy territory, amidst liberals and radicals. Limbaugh, he told me, 'is a very skilled carnival barker.'

"In 'S— Show,' Varon recounts an evening when he volunteered as a door-to-door canvasser, for a political candidate, in Modesto, on a cul de sac, which he finds 'creepy. I think there should be more than one route of escape.'

"Sure enough, he goes through a moment of fear before making his escape.

"Varon is also Dr. Dubro, a psychiatrist whose patient is another psychiatrist tormented by wild dreams, which Dubro connects with the Mueller investigation, Rudy Giuliani and other MAGAmania. The dreaming shrink comes to understand that 'We are all suffering from a new form of mental illness. The DSM (a manual on mental disorders) will ultimately call it something like Adverse Megalomania Reaction. I call it "Caught in a Sick Man's Dream."'

—Ben Fong-Torres

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