We love you all, really, we do. Performers, writers, audience. You make this seem so easy. Thanks for another successful Action Fiction!. A game of spin the bottle between drunk underage latina girls? Yep. A hunchbacked old lady recalling a gunshot in France? You betcha. A pair of cannibals perusing a menu on a first date? That too. And Robert Thomas in dark goggles, straight-faced. Oh man I want it all again again...
FYI, we're working on tracking down the videos. In the meantime...
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
"Try My Shank" by Kenton Yee
> performed by Stephen Frothingham and Charlotte Speck
Try My Shank first appeared in PANK Magazine (May 2012).
You’ve been one-legged since the lasso trap. Your personal ad says “Kids: undecided” even though you desperately want two. When the maître d’ shows you to your blind date’s table, you are pleased with her prominent forehead and symmetric face. She has potential... Continue reading >
"Photographed in Drag" by Salvatore Zoida
> performed by Robert Thomas
“Photographed in Drag” was published in Writers’ Bloc.
That I was six years old and in the company of my father, whose inapproachability was increased by certain spatial proximities such as that which our weekly drive to the old-age home involved, with me seated next to him, silently counting the telephone poles flitting by... Continue reading >
"Milagros in the Bathroom" by Juliana Delgado
> performed by Margarita Galindo and Jen Terry
“Milagros, la verdad ó te atreves?”
“Truth”
“Did you make-out with the panadero on Monday?”
We all giggle. Rumor has it that half of the seventh grade has been fingered by the baker during recess behind the basketball court. Rumor also has it.... Continue reading >
"Mice on Fire" by Eric Myers
> performed by Sara Judge
The ants always burned too quickly for their adolescent pleasure. The three of them would spend weeks building the miniature metropolis in Sam’s back yard, and it was all over in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t fair. Or fulfilling. It would have to change. Continue reading >
"Rue Benoit Bunico: Night" by Scott Lambridis
> performed by Gray
Every night, around four in the morning, on the rue Benoit Bunico in Nice, there is a shouting match between a man and a woman and though they are not always the same man and woman the shouting match always ends with a gunshot. The man is the one clapping and laughing... Continue reading >
"Survivors" by Olga Zilberbourg
> performed by Sara Renauer, Anthony Villafuerte, and Jimmey Cross
"Survivors first appeared in Eleven Eleven.
A methane explosion sealed a coal mine, killing many and leaving seventeen miners trapped underground. They would be able to survive for six weeks on daily rations of two spoonfuls of canned beef, one biscuit, and vodka. They waited for communication from the surface, but so far none had come. After three weeks, a downward hole opened up just a few steps away from the miners’ shelter. It seemed to be filled with breathable oxygen, accented with a faint fragrance of rosehips. The mad Ivan was the first to say, “What if?” And after another three days of sleeping on the ground striated with smut, he hooked a rope ladder to the edge of the hole and climbed down. Continue reading at Eleven Eleven >
"The Paintings of the Suicide Machine" by Ben Black
> performed by Margarita Galindo
The suicide machine was created as a mobile unit, an in-home service available with just a phone call or an online order. It rolled on treads, and features many attachments that get the job done. Pincers, hoses, retractable lengths of rope, needles, and bludgeons come... Continue reading >
