Magic Bus: Created by Chris Hardman and Antenna Theater. Through Aug. 8. Bus embarks from Union Square, San Francisco. 85 minutes.
It's probably appropriate that the bus was late. Punctuality isn't something one associates with urban mass transit or with the '60s. When Antenna Theater's "Magic Bus" finally pulled away from the curb, a half-hour late for Friday's opening performance, it transported the audience on a magical mystery tour... show more
Magic Bus: Created by Chris Hardman and Antenna Theater. Through Aug. 8. Bus embarks from Union Square, San Francisco. 85 minutes.
It's probably appropriate that the bus was late. Punctuality isn't something one associates with urban mass transit or with the '60s. When Antenna Theater's "Magic Bus" finally pulled away from the curb, a half-hour late for Friday's opening performance, it transported the audience on a magical mystery tour to a more hopeful era with a bliss-inducing soundtrack.
Yes, that would be the 1960s, the era of peace, love and rock 'n' roll, brought to life through documentary footage, taped interviews and the music of the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Lovin' Spoonful and more. Glimpses of the city today - when the projection screens aren't covering the windows - add to the pleasure as the bus rolls through Chinatown, North Beach, the Haight and Golden Gate Park.
"Bus" is the first new full-scale performance piece by Chris Hardman's Antenna in far too long. One of the most prominent of the groups that earned the Bay Area an international reputation for cutting-edge theater in the '80s, Antenna has been mostly occupied with special events and revivals since the eight-month run of "Euphorium," Hardman's hallucinatory take on Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" in 2001.
"Bus," which opened Friday as a highlight of the San Francisco International Arts Festival's last weekend (and runs into August), is an exciting new step in the ongoing Antenna experiment. The script is made up of audiotapes, as usual, but there are no headsets this time. Instead of walking through one of Hardman's fantastical environments, the audience sits, facing the side windows.
There's also very little interaction with Hardman's trademark expressively masked figures, though there's more with two vibrant flower-child attendants (Sarah David and the white rabbit-coddling Rana Kangas-Kent). The focus is on the story told through broadcast voices (reminiscences, newscasts, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Ronald Reagan) and the footage on screens that roll down over the windows.
It's a trip. Hardman not only plunges into the excitement of making an alternative culture but grounds it in the conformity of the '50s, the Cold War, the Beats and the civil rights movement. He hits the highs of euphoria but seasons them with the dark side running on through the '70s - Vietnam, the toll of runaways and the assassinations of the Kennedys, King, Moscone, Milk and John Lennon.
The organization is thematic rather than chronological, which may confuse younger attendees. Those of us who lived through the era may nitpick a bit, but it's hard to resist the presentation and rejuvenating music. Not to mention the ride. Even the delayed departure paid off Friday. Without it, we would've missed a glorious sunset.
show less
