In Tree City It’s a Pity
When Intersection gave up its Valencia Street home a year ago to move into the Chronicle building downtown, it also gave up its dedicated performance space. Since then it’s had to get creative about reimagining and reinventing its space. Last year’s Nobody Move was staged in a basement meeting room, and for Tree City Legends the Intersection office itself has been transformed into a theater, with the action taking place on all sides and amid the audience. Tanya Orellana’s set has walls full of windows with bare lightbulbs in them, and a stack of cinderblocks filled with candles. A screen up front shows Joan Osato’s video projections of trees, rippling water, cathedrals and Felix the Cat, and from time to time we can see through it to a live band set up for a recording session. Written by Dennis Kim, Tree City Legends is a world premiere developed with Intersection, its company-in-residence Campo Santo, Youth Speaks’s theater company the Living Word project, and Ictus.
Shining Mirrors
When you walk into Intersection for the Arts to see Mirrors on Every Corner, the new play by 25-year-old playwright Oakland native Chinaka Hodge, it looks more like a gallery exhibit than a stage set. Evan Bissell’s art installation and set design run together, with a mural on the rear wall of one Mission family and a side wall of framed portraits and short ruminations on race and identity from other families around the neighborhood. The seats are obscured by two rolling dividers displaying large photos of the flattened Nimitz Freeway right after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and what looks like the shiny new Mandela Gateway apartment complex across the street from West Oakland BART. A card table with hands dealt sits in the middle of the room, and a baby bassinet hangs low from the ceiling in the corner.
