Today we’d like to introduce you to San Francisco Neo-Futurists.
Hi San Francisco , it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
The San Francisco Neo-Futurists are a collective of wildly prolific artists dedicated to the perpetual creation of experimental theatre that is immediate, ephemeral, accessible, and cheap. We believe the stage is an extension of daily life: we perform as ourselves in a non-illusory, interactive style that challenges the audience to create alongside us as active participants with a voice of their own. We respect and uplift each other on and off stage through non-hierarchical accountability, collective decision-making, and anti-oppression practice of all kinds. We do over 100 shows a year and we will never stop.
Named one of “22 San Francisco things everyone must do” by the SF Chronicle, our flagship show The Infinite Wrench is an ever-changing collection of 30 short plays performed in a race against the clock, every Friday and Saturday, 50 weekends a year. Every week, we cut between 2 and 12 plays, to be replaced with new plays the following week.
Since the company’s founding in November 2013, we’ve written and performed over 4,000 original short plays to over 13,000 audience members. We’ve been named “SF’s premiere performance art troupe” by 48 Hills and won Best Theater Company in SF Weekly’s Readers’ Poll & the SF Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay. We are a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts.
We are part of The Neo-Futurist Tri-Company with The Neo-Futurists in Chicago and The New York Neo-Futurists, founded in 1988 and 2004, respectively. Since 2017, all three companies have been performing a show of 30 original plays in 60 minutes, The Infinite Wrench, 2+ times/week, 50+ weeks/year.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been a bumpy ride for sure! It can definitely be difficult to collectively run a company, especially in a very expensive city where theaters and venues are often having to shut down. One of our biggest challenges was the COVID-19 pandemic, and re-building our audience once things started to open up again.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Our work is:
Non-illusory: We are who we are. We are where we are. We are doing what we are doing. The time is now. We write from our lived experiences and points of view, and never ask the audience to suspend their disbelief.
Immediate: We respond to what’s happening now—personally, locally, globally—and premiere new work every week.
For everyone, especially those that mainstream theatre fails to reach: We reject the idea that theatre must be expensive, elaborate, or traditionally structured in order to be high-quality art. We keep ticket prices low and create opportunities for folks to see our work for free whenever possible.
Ongoing and ever-changing: We interweave elements of chance and chaos, and regularly discard work to keep ourselves as alive on stage as possible and create a show that is a unique experience every time.
As a company, we are dedicated to:
Strengthening the bond between performer and audience, and blurring the lines between stage and daily life. We believe that our non-illusory style more deeply engages audiences with the people and issues before them, inspiring them to collective empathy and agency.
Presenting frequent, high quality, affordable art for the Bay Area public that sparks connection, conversation, and catharsis. Our show brings together people of different walks of life and encourages audiences to come back regularly, fostering community and participatory culture.
Providing educational opportunities for the public to create their own work. We offer free or low-cost public workshops and partner with schools and local organizations to bring non-illusory techniques and creative practices to new communities.
As an organization, we are committed to practices of equity and justice, including but not limited to:
Making decisions by consensus and maintaining a nonhierarchical organizational structure
Giving each other direct, honest, compassionate feedback and maintain commitment to nonviolent communication and conflict resolution
Paying ourselves and collaborators equitably, and keeping our finances transparent
Producing specialty shows that uplift artists of a specific underrepresented group, like our annual all-LGBTQ+ Pride show, and donating funds from those shows to values-aligned community organizations
Working with artists of diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and perspectives, especially those of historically underrepresented communities
Using our position on stage to educate, inform, question, and call our audience to action.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
We love SF’s queer community and we don’t love SF’s surveillance state and police brutality.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sfneofuturists.org/
- Instagram: @sfneofuturists
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@SFNeoFuturists
Image Credits
Photos by Kayleigh McCollum
