Wild, Wild West
27
Green daze
Gay tunes
22
Out &About
20
O&A
19
The
Vol. 43 • No. 42 • October 17-23, 2013
www.ebar.com/arts
Falstaff rises above the fray by Philip Campbell
S
hakespeare is having a good month in the major arts houses at Van Ness and Grove. The San Francisco Symphony has been featuring works inspired by the Bard for the past fortnight, and, ironically, the San Francisco Opera is celebrating the Verdi bicentennial with performances of his final opera Falstaff, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and scenes from Henry IV. Shakespeare wouldn’t mind the publicity, and Giuseppe Verdi would be pleased as Prosecco at the rollicking treatment his late masterpiece is getting at the War Memorial Opera House. Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has returned to the SFO after a memorable run in 2000 as Nick Shadow in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress to recreate what has become a signature role. Originally too young for the part, Terfel has built a characterization over See page 26 >>
Greg Fedderly (Bardolfo), Bryn Terfel (Falstaff) and Andrea Silvestrelli (Pistola) in San Francisco Opera’s Falstaff.
Bryn Terfel (Falstaff) and Ainhoa Arteta (Alice Ford) in San Francisco Opera’s Falstaff. Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
Cory Weaver/San Francisco Opera
Life after women’s prison Author Piper Kerman appears at Litquake literary festival by Sura Wood
P
Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison author Piper Kerman.
iper Kerman’s brush with the law and her candor about the price she paid for her youthful transgressions launched a successful literary debut that has brought her unexpected fame. But then again, nothing about the author’s adult life has gone quite as planned. Shortly after graduating from Smith College, Kerman, who comes from a WASP East Coast family, fell for and in league with a glamorous woman who was a heroin dealer for a West African drug lord. After ending that relationship, she fled to San Francisco, where she met and married journalist Larry Smith, and lived for several years before moving to New York. Then her criminal past caught up with her. Kerman’s memoir, Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, tells the story of her 13-month incarceration in a minimum security federal prison in Connecticut for the drug trafficking and money laundering offences she had committed a decade earlier. (Her high-rolling ex-lover turned her in.) The
book, adapted for an engrossing series of the same name that aired on Netflix last summer, has already been renewed for a second season. Kerman, who’s now in her early 40s, is a vice president at a communications firm working with nonprofits, and serves on the board of the Women’s Prison Association. Still, if there’s one concept that courses through Kerman’s conversation, it’s the notion of “consequences,” something she learned about the hard way. Sura Wood: How do you feel about the loss of privacy that has resulted from the publication of your memoir and the subsequent TV series? Piper Kerman: Of course, writing a memoir requires an enormous amount of self-revelation. And to write a memoir that’s not about your biggest accomplishment, but your biggest mistake and moral lapse and the consequences, was definitely a little scary. But my feeling is that our prison and criminal justice systems are the place where many people are living out their struggles, and those folks are not necessarily who we imagine them to be. The women who I was incarcerated with do not fit the stereo-
types of dangerous, hardened, career criminals. I believe that my personal story offers a more nuanced and multi-faceted idea about who is locked up in the biggest prison system in the world. So for that reason, I was motivated to push myself on the self-revelation front. Has there been a downside to the recognition? I committed the crime that landed me in prison 20 years ago, and I was released nine years ago. So, for me, the ground that’s covered in the book is old history. I don’t feel that opening up about that period of my life has had anything but See page 18 >>
Sam Zalutsky
{ second OF Three SECTIONS }
Recycled fashion + The Sisters + YBCA = Futurist Art Party! CO - H OSTS
SISTER ROMA + JANE WIEDLIN
W I TH GU EST STA R
PANDORA BOXX
SAT, NOV 2, 2013 YBCA.ORG/PROJECT-NUNWAY MEDIA SPONSOR
YERBA BUEN A CEN TER FOR THE ARTS 701 MIS S IO N STRE E T, SA N FRA N C IS CO, CA 94103