The first time I went to an indoor show with a big audience this year, I was a danger to myself and others.

这是一场音乐会Spencer Dayat Feinstein’s at the Nikko, and the whole day leading up to it, I couldn’t stop recalculating how long it would take me to get downtown and when I’d need to leave — stats that were once second nature. Anything I held shook in my hands. I banned myself from sharp objects. Once inside the venue, I had to restrain myself from staring too deeply into the eyes of my fellow audience members, lest they think I was trying to fall in love with each of them at first sight.

Just going back to to theater again — whatever your first time was, if you’ve had it yet — was necessarily the most important thing that happened in the art form this year. At my first indoor play, San Francisco Playhouse’s“The Song of Summer,”I was gobsmacked by formerly everyday qualities — the way an actor’s gesture activates the space above him, transforming a playhouse into a sacred vessel for movement and air.

那是回报本身。这是我们到达剧院时发生的一些最重要的事情：

‘Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story’

就像“海滩毯子巴比伦，”它的前身在富加西俱乐部诗意，坚韧的马戏团show from the creators of Montreal’s 7 Fingers deserves to have a long, healthy run. Banish thoughts of clown shoes, rubber noses, “Entrance of the Gladiators” and razzle-dazzle ta-da’s. This valentine to the City by the Bay uses hoop-diving, hand-to-trap, hand balancing and diabolo spinning to create an array of tones and feelings: sardonic distance, over-the-top yet loving spoof, earnest self-discovery and psychedelic euphoria.

“Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story”: Ongoing. $35-$89. Club Fugazi, 678 Green St., S.F. 415-273-0600.www.clubfugazisf.com

Guaranteed income for artists

随着湾区的生活成本对艺术和娱乐工作者的越来越高，两个新的项目提供了专门为艺术家提供保证收入的新项目，这是一个令人鼓舞的迹象，即世界更充分地认识到演员，插画家和各种创作者的社会价值。有Yerba Buena艺术计划中心和旧金山市长办公室程序（尽管执行came under firefor racial equity reasons). There’s alsoCalifornia Shakespeare Theater’sown, much smaller initiative, the Artist Circle. Both programs attest to artists’ pivotal role in the Bay Area’s recovery from the pandemic.

‘The Winter’s Tale’

说起摇晃，艺术总监的任期Eric Ting继续提供一些湾区最大胆的剧院。Ting的方向莎士比亚的浪漫could be menacing and inward, like a psychological thriller, then homespun and inventive, like a traveling wagon show. In his vision, the giddily wacky and the emotionally raw don’t just co-exist but reveal each other more fully. Where else would you guffaw at a sheep puppet, then hold your breath as a suspicious husband confronts just how undeserving he is?

‘Twelfth Night’

这部旧金山剧院制作的最佳消息是您必须在1月15日之前抓住它。你真的应该。Susi Damilano指导Kwame Kwei-Armah和Shaina Taub的莎士比亚浪漫喜剧的音乐改编敏锐地了解每个角色。托比·贝尔奇爵士（迈克尔·吉恩·沙利文）不仅是醉汉。他是自己的炒作人（塔西·阿拉巴斯特罗）。奥利维亚（Loreigna Sinclair）不仅是伯爵夫人，而且必须通过Sashay进入每个场景，并配有自己的二线乐队。然后是Atticus Shaindlin的表演Malvolio，这可能是今年湾区舞台上演员和性格最合适的婚姻。

“Twelfth Night”: Through Jan. 15. $30-$100. San Francisco Playhouse, 450 Post St., S.F. 415-677-9596.www.sfplayhouse.org

‘When Your Skin Calls You Home’

Lots of theater artists like to call their work ritual. This roving户外游戏，这是关于印章的凯尔特神话，实际上赢得了标签。Combining aerial work, beguiling choral harmonies, live cello, thoughtful narration and gorgeous costume and mask construction with spectacular views of the Oakland hills, Metzmecatl: Moon Rope Theatre and Crescent Moon Theater Productions’ co-production gently invited audiences to ponder losses in their own lives as we dived deep into another’s.

更多湾区剧院艺术家大声疾呼

2020年，戏剧艺术家本地和全国published“我们见到您，白人剧院”的文件和生活文件，列举了他们在剧院行业中经历的公开和结构性种族主义，并要求纠正它。在2021年，这种势头并没有减轻。在一个中等帖子中，Petaluma剧院艺术家Nikko Kimzin在索诺玛县的超越剧院公司对种族平等失败的有力指控，大小的海湾地区领导人是incorporating the documents’ demandsinto everything from their board membership to how many understudies they hire. But as many theater artists of color have rightly pointed out, a true mark of progress will be when organizations of color attain the clout and funding of their predominantly white peers.

‘Assemblage of Monsters/An Immersive Gothic Fairytale’

Props and set pieces alone were worth the admission in 13th Floor Dance Theater’s immersive, walk-through,特定地点的表演在旧薄荷。在作品开始之前，关于寻找对年轻女子的心理疾病的可疑治疗方法，观众可以走过角色的卧室以了解每个人：谁有鹅毛笔和鸦片管；有冒泡小瓶的人；有工具/酷刑工具的人。该节目本身巧妙地使用了建筑物的走廊和窗户。在一项令人敬畏的壮举中，它同时在毗邻的房间里上演了两个场景，观众的两个部分呆在一个场景中，只有一个场景猛烈地进入另一个场景。

‘Sign My Name to Freedom: The Unheard Songs of Betty Reid Soskin’

This project, still in its early stages and produced by San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company as part of its New Roots Theatre Festival, represents a stunning intergenerational bridge. Twenty-three-year-old Jamie Zimmer set out to make a musical built on the original music of美国最古老的公园护林员who’s still working at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond at age 100. Reid Soskin is staggeringly multitalented — a gorgeous writer, a venturesome composer, a thoughtful singer — and Zimmer, an old soul, is ideal as interpreter of her work. May theater find more such ways to honor our extraordinary local elders.

The death of Stephen Sondheim

就像今天的剧院迷可能想知道与威廉·莎士比亚同时还活着的感觉一样，后代也会惊叹于我们与我们共享地球的幸运作曲家和作词家他意识到音乐剧的潜能。如何did it feel, they’ll wonder, to watch “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “A Little Night Music” and so many others premiere in real time? We’ll have to tell them we did our best, but we knew it wouldn’t be good enough; we knew we’d need centuries of interpreters, aficionados and scholars to appreciate the multitudes Sondheim’s canon contains.