"This was the best reading I've ever been to. The stories were phenomenal, the actors were great. I was enthralled the whole way through."
- Ben Black
This second successful Action Fiction! was held in a unique arts space in the Mission. For years the Chez Poulet has been a home of underground events in San Francisco, and the local home for a range of traveling artists from around the world. A converted warehouse that hosts epic parties, gallery exhibitions, live events ranging from concerts to puppet shows, and even a radio station, it is a center of innovative performance. We brought in 75+ rapt attendees and kept them there until close. Take a look at what you missed.
Performances
"Destroy the Rich" by Daniel Roche> read by Anthony Villafuete + Meghan Rutigliano Notice to the SEC on demonization of the rich. My mother cheated on my father with Nasdaq, resulting in my birth being on an escalator rising up to the depths of Wall Street. I tied my umbilical cord as a Full Windsor and power walked before I crawled. My first word was an instructional presentation detailing the devastation caused by bottle-feeding economics “We will benefit from a survivalist mentality. Groupthink is death.” Continue reading >
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"A Moment of Weakness" by Olga Zilberbourg> read by Danielle Levin (clipped) Vasya enters the doorway of the building where his father lives, and a gust of unforgiving August wind shoves him deeper inside, sending with him a twister of wet maple and poplar leaves. Vasya pauses in the vestibule to shake the water off his cap and from the collar of his jacket. A stranger on his way out of the building—whose face Vasya doesn’t have time to notice, but whom he doesn’t believe to be one of the neighbors—bumps into Vasya and steps on his foot. O, a hapless descendent of a glorious family! Everything is going against him, the entire world has conspired to mark with pain every moment of his existence. Continue reading >
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"Dandelions" by Nona Caspers> read by Emma Shelton One afternoon I put on my watchman’s cap and my jacket, grabbed my wallet and keys and stepped outside my apartment building. The sun was taxiing through the clouds and leaving light vapors on the sidewalk. I stepped into light and then shadow and then light again, the air shifting from warm to lukewarm to warm. It was Sunday. I had nowhere to be. As I walked I thought about my mother in her house in the cold. I thought about the white expanse of her backyard. I could see a crow land in the middle of the yard, and my mother’s face at her window. She was pressing her forehead and lips against the glass, so her lopsidedness from the stroke was exaggerated. Continue reading >
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"We Are All Wearing Jackets" by Ben Black> read by Mark Plutynski In the interest of saving time and preventing confusion our Director issued a decree eliminating regional signifiers. We refer to each other as Countrymen, ignoring such distinctions as Southern or Northern or from this city or that. Even something like “out-of-towner” is illegal now. Those who enforce this policy, informers like George, receive supplemental income from the Information Office. I see him, George, leaving every morning on his way to his work. He returns around one in the afternoon, has lunch with his family, and goes out again at around 3. I am writing all this down in my log. I keep a record on him, like all the others. Continue reading >
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"What Would You Have Done?" by Gabriel L. Bellman> read by Robert Thomas What would you have done? I saw the belt buckle on the table and the underwear in the window and called the police. I suppose I was panicked, but who wouldn’t be? Have you any idea how embarrassing it can be to have underwear in your window and belt buckles on your table? At the very least, it’s unsanitary. I doubt there are very many people in the world today who would refute this. Continue reading >
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"The Black Metal Barreled BB Gun" by W Ross Ayers> read by Jimmey Cross Mom, Rich and I were driving down Rogers highway on the way to Tecumseh; the town twenty miles north of Blissfield. It was a beautiful hot Michigan summer day. The sky was blue with big white clouds. The fields where covered with short bushy soybeans and tall green corn stalks higher than our car. The green fields blurred by as we drove down the straight flat road. “Hey boys, there’s a garage sale. Wanna stop?” Continue reading >
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"RE- Sugar" by Scott Lambridis> read by Caroline Scippa + Don Menn Hi Joseph,
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"The Monk's Soul" by Benjamin Wachs> read by Devon Jones The monk could not find his soul. He rose, early in the morning, to pray to the saints for wisdom and to meditate upon the potent symbols of resurrection carried across generations for two thousand years. Through this process, he understood many things: why there is suffering, and how to heal it; why there is evil, and how to banish it. Demons did not set foot upon the same continent as the monk, for fear that he would see them. Continue reading > |
