SF Queer Theatre to Close Its Doors After 30 Years - Searching for New Venue
07 JULY 2010 San Francisco, CA

Mama Calizo’s Voice Factory, San Francisco’s premier location for original queer performance, currently housed at 1519 Mission Street, a building known for 3 decades as a safe space where generations of queer performers presented work has to close its doors.

After a very difficult year, we are now facing our biggest challenge yet, a few weeks ago, the fire marshal department visited the premises after an anonymous complaint was called in. Upon this visit, what was found out is that the building is not A-assembly ready, meaning we are only a 49 allowed capacity venue. This being the case, the task of holding theater programming under this constraint while successfully surviving financially is next to impossible to achieve under our current format.

This hits us hard, as we have been working in tandem with a larger community of artists, activists and art administrators through a transition within MCVF Management. Dwayne Calizo, MCVF Executive Director, went on medical leave a few months back, leaving the space in the hands of the artists themselves. With a great deal of support from a few key people (Jorge de Hoyos, Julie Phleps, Wolfgang Wachalovsky, Philip Huang, Evan Jhonson, Bryan Dini, Mark McBeth and many other artists/advocates) we began organizing what had become the MCVF constituency for the past year or so; over 30 artists and their networks have been activated, generally under the age 30, some of them art administrators, some art/performance/theater makers. All invested in the survival of this space.

While holding informal meetings with Joe Landini (The Garage), Ed Decker (NCTC), Wayne Hazzard (Dancer's Group), and other key figures in our immediate queer performance community we have found that a place like 1519 in the SF queer performance landscape is necessary. Jon Sims Center or the Arts was housed at that location for almost 25 years, in its wake MCVF was born, now in this impass another group is forming, unofficially named THEOFFCENTER, all advocating for the same goal: to keep a place where queer emerging artists can be nurtured and be offered a safe place where to experience the inner workings of creating and staging a theater/performance piece.

Action towards finding a new space have began, we are forced to go dark at our current location at the end of July. We will keep everyone informed as to what new steps are taken towards the realization of our new home.
We are reaching out to the larger community in hopes that someone can step in and help realize this important art initiative.

In the meantime I would like to personally invite you to our last two events at this location:
Queer Autonomous Zone staged for this Sunday the 11th starting at 7pm. MCVF own community participatory activation project.
And our soon to open DIY Project by Alicia Ohs: "when i die i will be dead" this piece brings with it a celebration of life, performance and resilience even through death. We welcome all of you to attend this performances as a way to support the artists and also we invite you to keep on the look out for possible opportunities for a space in which to house this community initiative.

Please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think should be informed about it.
For More Information, Contact: Ernesto Sopprani |  415.424.1608  |  ernesto.sopprani@mcvf.org

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MCVF's mission is to nurture the development of Queer Performers,
Educators and Activists by providing them with Artist in Residence
Programs and Arts programming. We believe that the process and
product of creative activity have equal value, that all talent is worthy
of development, and that artistic expression is essential to our
community's health.

We place special emphasis on supporting the work of Queer People
of Color, Trans People and artists living with HIV/ AIDS