Repeat After Me by Hand2Mouth

Remember the days when you went to costume parties, others got drunk and started playing bad songs, singing very loud and pouring beer on their heads?  And you were there, sober as a nun,  staring at them with a grin?

Yeah, you remember.   And yes, you would always leave because the party would go on forever and was just not funny at all.

Well, this is how you’ll feel if you go to see Repeat After Me by the Hand2Mouth  from Portland, Oregon that is playing at the Traveling Jewish Theater, on Florida Street. If you stay, it will give you a bad migraine. There is no dialogue, no story, no play. It’s just a succession of patriotic songs with people–I won’t use the term actors— filling the time on  stage. They put on wigs, show their boobs, try to make fun of themselves, North Americans.
Can I call them singers? I don t think that’s possible either. They simply aren’t good enough. Sometimes they try to save the evening, by  playing the original song louder than the “people.” But that offers such a bad cocktail of noise, that you nearly reach for the dial to turn it off. Then you realize, it’s supposed to be theater, and you are stuck. By STEFANIA ROUSELLE
Repeats Saturday and Sunday, June 13 and 14th at 9 p.m.

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I’ve been a Mission resident since 1998 and a professor emeritus at Berkeley’s J-school since 2019. I got my start in newspapers at the Albuquerque Tribune in the city where I was born and raised. Like many local news outlets, The Tribune no longer exists. I left daily newspapers after working at The New York Times for the business, foreign and city desks. Lucky for all of us, it is still here.

As an old friend once pointed out, local has long been in my bones. My Master’s Project at Columbia, later published in New York Magazine, was on New York City’s experiment in community boards.

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2 Comments

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  2. Sounds like a misguided knock-off of Prague’s Orange Alternative in the 80’s. The Alternative was guerrila street theater; you didn’t have to pay to see it in a little black box. And of course it was connected to a real political movement.

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