Editorial
March, 2019
- British Light Artist Bruce Munro Illuminates Montalvo
- Lauren Yee’s Multi-Layered Play is a Chinese Puzzlebox
- MoAD Hosts Exhibition from Harlem’s Studio Museum
- New Asian Art Exhibition Spotlights Kimono
- Exploring Monet’s Last Years
- The Best Friend an Artist Could Have
- Artists Explore Self with Nuance and Complexity
- Bluegrass Inspires Kate Weare Work at ODC
- Berlin & Beyond Showcases German Film
February, 2019
January, 2019
December, 2018
November, 2018
October, 2018
September, 2018
August, 2018
July, 2018
June, 2018
May, 2018
April, 2018
March, 2018
February, 2018
January, 2018
December, 2017
November, 2017
October, 2017
September, 2017
- Cunning Sociopolitical Tale Premieres at Crowded Fire
- Why Citizenship? YBCA Invites Artists to Ponder the Question
- Margaret Jenkins Dance Opens 43rd Season
- One-Woman Play Captures Yearning for Home
- Poignant Ballet Examines Homelessness
- Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed
- Degas: A Tip of the Hat to Milliners
August, 2017
July, 2017
June, 2017
May, 2017
April, 2017
March, 2017
February, 2017
- “The Blues Project”: A Performance for Our Time
- Faith-Based Play Explores Compassion, Belief, Community
- Photo Exhibit Captures a Lost Generation of Syrians
- Noche Flamenca Brings Passion, Soul to “Antigona”
- The Tale of Two Afghan Women at Heart of New A.C.T. Play
- Feb Film Fests: Eclectic, Compelling
- Cal Performances: A Home Away From Home For The Trocks
January, 2017
December, 2016
November, 2016
October, 2016
September, 2016
August, 2016
July, 2016
June, 2016
May, 2016
- Beethoven Pops Up All Over Town
- The San Francisco Symphony Brings Bernstein Classic to the Stage
- Activism Takes Center Stage at SF International Arts Festival
- Ojai at Berkeley Celebrates Josephine Baker, Simone Weil
- SFDanceworks Debuts Inaugural Season
- Bringing the Blues Forward
- CJM Hosts Bill Graham Retrospective
April, 2016
March, 2016
February, 2016
January, 2016
December, 2015
November, 2015
October, 2015
September, 2015
August, 2015
July, 2015
June, 2015
May, 2015
April, 2015
March, 2015
February, 2015
January, 2015
December, 2014
November, 2014
October, 2014
September, 2014
August, 2014
July, 2014
June, 2014
May, 2014
April, 2014
March, 2014
February, 2014
January, 2014
December, 2013
November, 2013
October, 2013
September, 2013
August, 2013

Christopher Chen’s “A Tale of Autumn” is informed by the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In 2015, when Crowded Fire Theater offered San Francisco playwright Christopher Chen an open commission, he decided he’d write an entertaining power-struggle play. He’d been binging on the TV shows “House of Cards” and “Game of Thrones” and thought, “This is the most engrossing stuff.” He considered “House of Cards,” especially, to be a modern-day version of a Shakespearean drama—“an epic power struggle plot-wise, but also, as in Shakespeare, philosophizing mixed in with the storytelling, in the way that Brecht and Shaw do as well.” At the same time, he was “translating” “Antony and Cleopatra” into contemporary English for an Oregon Shakespeare Festival project (36 playwrights commissioned to modernize Shakespeare’s language), so the Bard was on his mind.
But after the 2016 presidential election, he found himself in a “different kind of head space,” unsure how to proceed. “One thing screamed at me above all else,” he says. “I had to turn this play into something a little more serious, a little more overtly sociopolitical.”
Now “A Tale of Autumn,” one of Chen’s most sociopolitical plays yet, opens as a world premiere at Crowded Fire, where Chen is resident playwright.
A multiple-award-winner whose plays have been produced in New York, London, Seattle and elsewhere, Chen currently is under commission with four other theaters (not counting Oregon Shakespeare), including American Conservatory Theater. Crowded Fire artistic director Mina Morita, an award-winning local director, former artistic associate at Berkeley Rep and Chen’s close friend and colleague, was confident that anything he wrote would suit the 20-year-old company, which stages adventurous new work.
Set in a parallel world that’s unnervingly not unlike our own, although in no way futuristic, “Autumn” is a contemporary fable, with, by design, a looser and nimbler framework than Chen’s other plays (which number more than a half-dozen, among them, “The 100 Flowers Project” also produced by Crowded Fire, the Obie Award-winning “Caught” and, most recently, “You Mean To Do Me Harm” a premiere at San Francisco Playhouse). If his plays in general tend to twist and turn structurally, and are tricky and metatheatrical, in “Autumn” it is the characters themselves who are twisting and turning, alliances and declared beliefs constantly in flux. Thus the audience is unsure whom to trust in the swift-moving, deeply unsettling two-act, 23-scene play. Should we believe in any one or more of the four department heads (shipping, water, agriculture, chemicals) at the all-powerful and ostensibly beneficially minded Farm Company? Is the company saleswoman reliable? Or the local independent farmer and her tenant? The company’s board president? What about the late, lamented CEO, who promoted the ambiguous concept of corporate ethical conduct called The Way, and whose demise has caused an upheaval among the staff? Or maybe the presumptive new CEO—or his lover? Chen wrote the biggest, most powerful roles in the multi-ethnic cast for women (although “Genders of characters are variable,” he notes in the stage directions), but there are no easily identifiable heroines or villains here. “I think all the characters should be cared about to some extent,” he posits, “but I definitely wanted to make the issue of morality very unsteady. The play itself does have a point of view, but I wanted the audience to work for it, to keep them on their toes.”
As they were developing the play, Chen, director Morita and other collaborators watched a documentary, “The Corporation” (a primer on corporate greed, says Chen), read Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and talked, according to Morita, about “how dark or evil we can go with a character.” How morally bankrupt can a person be, they wondered, if he or she appears to be aiming for the common good? “Then with the shift after the election,” Morita continues, “and the divisiveness of that, it turned into, how does a person become complicit within a larger system?… And with that pivot, it became much more about the deeper psychology, and the plot became simpler—it expanded and opened up to the psychological maze of how we make decisions.”
In casting, she chose actors adept at Chen’s particular style: “There’s such a musicality, a poetry, a unique rhythm to the way Chris writes,” she observes, “coupled with such a density of ideas and thoughts.” She points to “the kaleidoscopic way ideas are shifted in a single speech or moment of dialogue.”
“Trump’s election helped me put into focus the idea that we elected him—we, as a country, are responsible,” muses Chen. “We are complicit in this relentless quest for power, which he’s crystallizing.” He notes that it is we the people who, in all kinds of insidious or perhaps self-delusional ways, accept giant corporations’ “relentless quest for power.” “I [myself] also instinctively think, Oh, yeah, certain companies are good, certain are bad,” he admits. “But it’s all within the same system, so it’s the totality of the system itself that I wanted to focus on.”
Crowded Fire has audience discussions after most performances, and Morita hopes the discussions after “Autumn” will be about recognizing how we are all part of a system even when we don’t want to be, and how we can participate in effecting change. “I feel such a deep commitment to our existence as a civic leader,” she says, of Crowded Fire, “and an awareness of how our art can shape culture, based on the provocation and interrogation we have on our stages.”
Says Chen, “The best plays for me are plays that get me thinking and actually wanting to question myself…shake me up a little bit. That’s my goal for [’Autumn’] as well.”
Sept. 18 → Oct. 7
Potrero Stage
1695 18th St., San Francisco
crowdedfire.org/(415) 523-0034