SF's "Brightest Satiric Star" Charlie Varon Brings The Listener to San Geronimo

On Saturday, November 16th, stand out theatrical and literary figure Charlie Varon, best known for his hit one man shows Rush Limbaugh in Night School and Rabbi Sam, will bring his new show, The Listener to San Geronimo Valley Community Center. Discounted advance tickets are recommended and are available through November 15th on Brown Paper Tickets. Day of show the box office will open at 7:30pm.

The San Francisco Chronicle has credited Varon with "reinventing the form of solo theater" and called him San Francisco's "Brightest Satiric Star". Varon is also been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Salon. His new show, The Listener brings together the dramatic and literary strands of Varon's work, as he reads original stories with a solo performer's craft and gusto.

In Fish Sisters, Selma Cohen, 86, wakes up laughing. All she can remember from her dream is that she and her best friend Beverly, both 11, were giggling and whispering in low voices so the mischief they're planning won't be overheard by the adults. Selma soon is lost in memory.... Come enter another world with this masterful artist.

Hannah: What is the ideal audience for The Listener?

Charlie: People who love a good story. People who aren't afraid of characters that are smart, complex, funny... and old! My characters are old people with rich inner lives, still feisty, still alive, still getting in trouble. Everyone's favorite character is Selma, who's 86. When she meets a 21-year-old Stanford student, she instantly imagines lying naked in bed with him. One woman in her eighties, after hearing that story, thanked me for including that bit. She said to me: "Desire never ends."

Hannah: You are now well established as an influential artist in solo theater and as a satirist, what are some pivotal experiences that brought you to this place?

Charlie: The key moment happened in 1991. Stephanie Weisman saw me perform a rough version of a solo show that I didn't even know I would finish. She took out her calendar and offered me a 6-week run at The Marsh. First I trembled; she had called my bluff. Then I said yes, and that has made all the difference. That launched me. A couple years later, almost as a lark, I did a show called Rush Limbaugh in Night School, which was a big hit at The Marsh and then went on to New York and Washington DC.

The other essential fact is my collaboration with David Ford. Director isn't a strong enough word. David has been the midwife of all my shows for 22 years. He is the most brilliant theater artist I've ever worked with and he has taught me most of what I know about theater. Few people know that the great genius of solo theater in America lives in West Marin.

Hannah: What inspired you to locate one of the stories from The Listener in Bolinas?

Charlie: I needed a beach where beginners can learn to surf. I wanted to set the surfing scene at Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands, but a surfer friend told me no beginner would surf there. So Bolinas it was! Bernie, maybe the most outrageous of my characters, decides today's the day he's going to go surfing for the first time in his life. He's 83 years old. His young companions try to talk him out of it, but he isn't easily dissuaded.

Hannah: Have you personally surfed in Bolinas?

Charlie: I have never surfed anywhere. 

Hannah: What performers have influenced you most?

Charlie: As a boy growing up in New York, I listened to the radio, and that's probably had the biggest influence on me. The pure human voice. Jean Shepherd, perhaps the best storyteller ever heard on radio. Bob and Ray, and their quietly insane comedy sketches. Malachy McCourt, Long John Nebel, Paul Harvey, a zillion radio preachers. The BBC. Oh, and my father. He wasn't on radio. He was a dentist, but he did all kinds of voices and accents, and he and my mom gave me a love of language, spoken, written, the delight in the infinite ways human beings can shape thought into language, and all of that infused with a very New York Jewish sensibility!

Hannah: How is this new piece similar and different from Rabbi Sam and your other award-winning work?

Charlie: All my solo shows, from Rush Limbaugh in Night School through Rabbi Sam, involve me running around the stage playing ten or twenty characters, because I'm too cheap to hire other actors. Somewhere in there the SF Chronicle credited me with redefining the form of solo theater. That was a thrill. But I'm restless. So now I'm trying to do something new with the form of the short story. I don't even like that term short story, it sounds so dry. I need a new word for stories that have the crackle and electricity of great theater but also have the lushness of literature. That's what I'm aiming for with The Listener.

Hannah: What do you like about performing at San Geronimo Valley Community Center?

Charlie: The intimacy. There's something magical about performing for people who know each other and are experiencing art as a community, rather than a bunch of anonymous theatergoers who assemble briefly and then disperse.

Hannah: Why should people make sure to see this show?

Charlie: To laugh, to be moved, to think... and to find out what happens when octogenarian Bernie gets in the water and tries to surf!

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Hannah Doress is a community events producer who loves intelligent satire and comedy. As events programmer at San Geronimo Valley Community Center since 2005 she has produced shows with stellar talent including Swami Beyondananda, Charlie Varon, Betsy Salkind, Sandra Valls, Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, as well as a variety of festivals including the Mexican Arts Festival, the West Marin Himalayan Festival and the Wavy Gravy Summer of Love Revival. Through Hannah Doress Events she is producer of the Earth Day Marin Festival and promotes the Dipsea Hike for Zero Breast Cancer among other events.