San Francisco is a theater town with quirky queer character all its own. Sure, its been the pre-Broadway proving ground for future smashes like Wicked, Mamma Mia and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, but if you’re looking for LGBTQ-centered work by artists committed to the queer community, this is the city to scratch your niche. Several excellent mainstream local companies—including The American Conservatory Theater, Magic Theatre, The San Francisco Playhouse and Custom Made Theatre—each tend to produce at least one show featuring LGBTQ+ content every season. But for exclusively—and often eccentrically—queer productions, here’s a selection of companies to check out:
New Conservatory Theatre Company
Producing the city’s most robust and diverse calendar of queer-themed productions, NCTC has its own technically sophisticated three-stage complex in easy walking distance of the trendy Hayes Valley neighborhood. The company presents six to seven shows, most of which run for a month or longer, between September and June each year. Offerings range from the southern fried camp of Del Shores (Sordid Lives) to musicals (Fun Home) to regional premieres by prominent playwrights including Terrence McNally and Harvey Fierstein. Since 2002, the NCTC’s New Voices/New Work program has commissioned and developed over 40 world premieres, including work by Jewelle Gomez and the stage adaptation of Scott Heim’s cult novel Mysterious Skin.
Theatre Rhinoceros
As the world’s longest-running queer theater, The Rhino has been a hard-charging advocate of queer representation on stage for almost a half-century. From its 1977 debut production, mounted in a leather bar, the company has performed in a variety of venues around the city. In 1984, The Rhino commissioned The AIDS Show: Artists Involved with Death and Survival, the first professional theater piece to address the epidemic, later the subject of a PBS documentary. Intersectionality has long been part of The Rhino’s DNA: Kenneth R. Dixon, who led the company in the late 1980s was the first black man to ever run a non-African-American theater company in the U.S.; and artistic director Adele Prandini (1990-1999) championed groundbreaking feminist productions by The Five Lesbian Brothers and Split Britches. Today, under the leadership of award-winning playwright and director John Fisher, The Rhino produces a mix of queer-appeal musicals (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; a drag version of Sister Act) in mid-sized theaters and progressive work by new playwrights in the intimate Spark Arts gallery in the Castro.
Ray of Light Theatre
Company namesake and co-artistic director Shane Ray has a dayjob in real estate, a husband and two sons, yet somehow, along with co-artistic director Alex Rodriguez, he leads the production of up to three aesthetically striking musicals each year. Ray of Light’s cutting edge productions have included West Coast premieres of Jerry Springer: The Opera; Carrie; and American Psycho. With smart, slick lighting, sets and choreography, Ray of Light performances take place in the Mission District’s charming Victoria Theater. When the crowd pours onto the sidewalk post-curtain, the whole block feels like Cool Kid central.
EyeZen Presents
Fusing interdisciplinary theater with queer history, founder Seth Eisen produces work that puts a spotlight on overlooked people and places in queer history. Site-specific performances, puppetry and aerial arts have all found their way into the company’s pieces. In recent years, the Out of Site series has taken small audiences on walking tours of San Francisco neighbors during which they encountered actors portraying the likes of bell bottom-jean inventor and sometime Janis Joplin paramour, Peggy Caserta. And interactive FabLab“playshops” have celebrated fringe queer icons including Puerto Rican television psychic Walter Mercado and the 15th century Hawaiian third-gender healer Kapaemahu. Intensive research goes into the development of each EyeZen piece, much of which is archived on the company’s website.
Left Coast Theatre Company
This scrappy company is best known for lively, laugh-filled themed evenings of one-acts and flash dramas culled from script submissions by local writers. Among these anthology evenings have been I’m Not Okay Cupid, about the dating scene; San Francisco, Here I Come, with seven shorts featuring the ever-changing tenants of a single apartment over 60 years; #WTFamily about clans of both the genetic and chosen variety; and Twisted Hitchcock, a trio of parodies.
Variety venues
Several other multi-use venues in town that frequently play host to queer theater artists. And even when they don’t, they offer a range of offbeat entertainments virtually every night:
Oasis, the South of Market club best known for its late night dance parties often dedicates its early evenings to deliriously funny local parody productions. Club owner D’Arcy Drollinger has mounted full-cast drag versions of Star Trek, Friends and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her renowned take on the Golden Girls has toured the West Coast. A troupe called Fraudway Productions has presented two Rowling-routing Harry Poofter musicals: The Sorcerer’s Rhinestone and The Chamber of Secretions. Also check Oasis’ calendar for local all-male burlesque/variety show Baloney and one-night stands from nationally known comedic queens including Jackie Beat, Adore Delano and Alaska.
PianoFight is a community-centric cabaret and restaurant in the heart of the Tenderloin district. By day, the space serves as office and classroom space for local non-profits. By night, its two intimate showrooms are booked and programmed by independent artists and production companies. Among several frequently recurring events are The San Francisco Futurists’ one-of-a-kind Infinite Wrench shows in which a dozen improvised plays speed by in a single hour. And keep an eye out for future iterations of Tinder Disrupt, a live dating game show with contestants of all stripes.
Feinstein’s at the Nikko, just off of Union Square is a swanky jewelbox nightclub right out of the 1940s (with prices on the high side of right now!). But if you can afford the ticket, it’s a treat to catch Broadway stars and queer heroes—Betty Buckley, Sandra Bernhard, Leslie Jordan, Charles Busch—in such a cushy 150 seat boite.
