Review Round-Up on The 7 Fingers Show “Dear San Francisco”: Looking Back and Moving Forward
The 7 Fingers (Les Sept Doigts de la Main) collective’s newest show, “Dear San Francisco: A High-Flying Love Story,” opened to the San Francisco public at Club Fugazi on October 12. The show in some ways signals a return to form, for Club Fugazi itself, and for 7 Fingers co-founders Gypsy Snider and Shana Carroll, returning to their San Francisco roots. In other ways, the show defies the performance forms that came before it. They set out to define the city by the bay– and what the city means to them– through innovative contemporary circus. To offer you all a sneak peek of the production, we took a look at reviews and articles about the show, and gathered the best sources from around the web. Here are the recaps:
Behind the Curtain
Speaking to HearSay media, Gypsy Snider describes the show as a “love letter” to the city, stating, “we want to… celebrate [San Francisco’s] complexities and say, ‘Look how lucky we are to be here’- and look at some of the more fragile aspects of the city that need to be celebrated in order to preserve them.” It draws on 7 Fingers’ well-honed techniques of storytelling through abstraction: the audience feels narrative beats in the city’s story are felt, rather than told, through how performers move and emote onstage. In doing so, the cast and crew will capture San Francisco’s essence, both in historic memory, and the present moment– and the show will evolve as the city’s moments keep marching onto the next. Snider hopes to “leave the audience feeling as deeply rooted to the city- or this moment in the city- as possible.”
City People
“Dear San Francisco” is not only the city’s story; it also reflects stories of its cast, says Jim Gladstone of the Bay Area Reporter. It is, perhaps, a story of return for San Francisco natives Snider and Carroll. Before establishing The 7 Fingers in Montreal, both women began their circus careers as part of SanFrancisco’s Pickle Family Circus, and they “have long hoped to bring their work and its philosophical underpinnings back to the city that inspired it.” The show also draws upon the experiences of its performers: newly-arrived circus artists, building their careers in the city by the bay. In Snider’s words, “we haven’t hired circus acts and stuck them into a review. We’re creating original material that’s build [sic] around the performers we’re working with.”
Read Gladstone’s full article, “Air supply: ‘Dear San Francisco’ revives Club Fugazi,” at The Bay Area Reporter
Coming “Next”
The show has big shoes to fill as Club Fugazi’s newest resident production, according to Jim Harrington of Mercury News. Club Fugazi holds a storied place in San Francisco history: its stage has seen everyone from the Beat Poets to Italian pop stars. Moreover, its last resident production was the long-running revue “Beach Blanket Babylon,” which closed in 2017 after four decades– quite a tough act to follow, most would say.
Rather than be daunted by the challenge, The 7 Fingers seem eager to proceed. Shana Caroll calls it an honor to follow Beach Blanket Babylon, saying that the show “straddled something that felt very authentic to locals… and yet it was something that tourists could come [to] and feel like they were getting a taste of San Francisco. We are hoping to have that similar stradling of being able to really do justice to the city.” They inherit Club Fugazi’s stage with a new vision: one that will reinvent the space, while respecting the acts which have preceded them to it.
Read Harrington’s full article, “‘Dear San Francisco’ opens at former ‘Beach Blanket Babylon’ venue,” at Mercury News
Then and Now
Indeed, “Dear San Francisco” is full of send-ups to the city, past and present.7×7 Club writer Shoshi Parks mentions several stand-out momentsthat illustrate San Francisco’s history: “scenes of earthquake and fire, and scenes of boom and bust,” as well as an innovative tribute to the Beat Poets, where “the performers simultaneously accomplish acrobatic feats and recite beat poetry with heart-racing urgency.”
Read Parks’ article, “The show goes on at Club Fugazi with a high-flying circus tribute to San Francisco,” at 7×7 Club
Reviewing the Oct 12 premiere, theatre critic Lilly Janiak remarks on the production’s timeliness, calling it “an apt flagship for arts reopening” following pandemic lockdowns. It brings audiences into the experience, using love letters they’ve written to the city as “clever segues” into dance acts, trapeze, diabolo, and hand-to-trap. Fugazi’s venue is small enough to feel reverberations of an acrobat’s movements from the seats. Altogether, the show becomes “a love letter not just to the city but also to the human body.”
Read Janiak’s review, “Review: New circus show ‘Dear San Francisco’ is love letter to city and the human body” on SF Datebook Chronicle
Outlooks: Going Forward
That wasn’t the first time Lilly Janiak has mentioned The 7 Fingers recently: in a previous thinkpiece forDatebook, she works “Dear San Francisco” into a discussion of the current landscape of circus. As industry mainstays like Ringling Brothers and Cirque du Soleil experience hardships, smaller circus companies– like the 7 Fingers– have become key change-makers. Contemporary forms lend circus credence as art, and not just “spectacle.”
The same holds true of “Dear San Francisco.” Janiak mentions that “the show… eschews ‘ta-da!’ razzmatazz for the gritty, edgy aesthetics of modern dance or performance art” in an unpretentious way. She speaks admiringly of 7 Fingers for their creative ambitions. In a quote, Shana Caroll remarks how their shows always try to “put it [circus] on a human scale.” If Janiak’s full review of the show is anything to go by, Snider and Caroll have met their goal with flying colors.
As Janiak argues, the industry’s moment is one of change. So we’ll let “Dear San Francisco” mark the “next chapter” for Club Fugazi– and, perhaps, the rest of us.
Read Janiak’s full piece, “New show ‘Dear San Francisco’ opens at a turning point for circus as art form,” on SF Chronicle Datebook
Do you have a story to share? Submit your news story, article or press release.
