Thanks to everyone - performers, writers, and audience - for making this another successful Action Fiction! We managed to pack over 80 people onto the Tribune Tower balcony for third Action Fiction!, but as fun as that evening was (and as cool as the location was), we kept hearing how ideal the Chez Poulet arts space was for performance. So for our fourth, we took the suggestion and headed back. And the performers took that as an opportunity to step it up. Sock puppets? Check. Blue silk clown pants, gold sequins, a velour unitard? Check. Checkemout. There are 7 videos below for the 7 performances.
Chez Poulet has been a home of underground events in San Francisco for years, 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.
Performances
"We'll Always Have Parrots" by Alisa Golden
> performed by Don Menn, and Sara Renauer
Most of my pets I won. Except the two parrots. A real estate lady gave them to my wife as payment for doing typing and filing in her office over a bar. The lady had a room full of birds, my wife says, and asked her nosy questions about her love life while she typed. That was before I was involved, and now the birds are ten with forty or more good years ahead of them, which is probably more than I’ve got, due to my sedentary habits. The parrots came with the names Ilsa and Rick, and for some reason they like Mexican food and can weave and braid plastic cord. I don’t really know how to deal with birds, so my wife has the last word on their care. The parrots get along okay, but no baby parrots, yet, which is just fine. My wife taught them to say “I can talk, can you fly?” and “appearances are deceiving” and “reality is the best medicine for denial” so that’s what they say all day when I work at home because they know it bothers me. I thought about teaching them “time goes by” but I’m not really sure how to do that. Continue reading >
"Vaginas" by Gabriel Bellman
> performed by Stephen Frothingham
It was criminal, all those vaginas staring at me, frowning with their lips, swiveling with their hips, acting like they’d never met me from the crease of their jeans, from behind the scenes, waxed and combed and made presentable. It was like I was just a trophy to them. Continue reading >
"Vipers" by Kevin Halleran
> performed by Meghan Rutigliano
Tuesday, sometime around noon, Mrs. Marilyn Pierce, all thirty-nine years and seventy-three inches of her, stretched out on the sofa listening to the television. She lay on her back, her head propped against a soft green pillow, gazing at the familiar cream ceiling of the living room. Her long legs were wrapped in tight black yoga pants and crossed at the ankles. No makeup or lipstick, hair tied back plainly, no paint on her bare toes. John at work, Gerry at school, the laundry piling up, the refrigerator almost bankrupt, a Little League registration form sitting on her dresser, and the jasmine sunlight through the bay window keeping the room anesthetized. Continue reading >
"Abraham" by Benjamin Wachs
> performed by Andie Grace, Jen Terry, and Mark Plutynski
Abraham bundled his son Isaac up to protect him from the sun. God had said that Isaac must die like cattle and be turned into a burnt offering. Isaac belonged to God now. “Where are we going, father?” Isaac said, and Abraham did not have the heart to tell him. He hid the knife among the kindling wood. Continue reading >
"Queen Bee: The Goddess of Pheromones" by Abigail Jardine
> performed by Sarah Judge
My mother’s youngest cousin Eileen had a stunning form and was fully aware of having a body that inspired lust in every male who laid eyes on her. Her sweet face, with blue eyes and soft freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks gave her an impishness that defied her womanly body. The summer when I was eight years old, we drove north to visit Eileen and my mother’s family our home in Texas. Continue reading >
"Kitchen Blinding" by Sarah Griff
> performed by Gray
there is a fat, spherical little bumblebee on the windowsill. as she waits for the kettle to boil, she lowers her head and thinks to herself, oh, what a lovely coat he has, all yellow and black and stripy and furry. and soft, she imagines greedily, envisioning a long coat in those very colours that she would wear, made of the rarest and tiniest creature. a bumblebee fur coat, oh yes, thousands were killed, but this truly is an impeccable piece of clothing. revolutionary? very much so. it’s art, you say? I’d have to agree. Continue reading >
An excerpt of "Superassassin" by Lysley Tenorio
> performed by Robert Thomas
September, 1958. Coast City, California. The noble alien Abin Sur, protector of sector 2814 of our galaxy, crash-lands on Earth. Buried beneath the rubble of his spacecraft, he uses his last flicker of energy to summon test pilot Hal Jordan and offers him the fabled Ring of Power, a weapon created by the Guardians of Oa. With his dying breath Abin Sur asks, “Will you be my successor, Hal Jordan? Will you swear to use this ring to uphold justice throughout the universe?” Continue reading >
