Monday, July 9, 2007 - 7:00-8:30 pm

At San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum (SFPALM)

401 Van Ness Avenue at McAllister

Veterans Building, 4th Floor, San Francisco

415-255-4800    www.sfpalm.org

Presented by San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum in association with Thrillppeddlers and Professor Mel Gordon

Featuring live performances, ghastly special effects, banned erotic dances, horribly un-PC stereotypes, and a lecture

In the annual tradition of their smash Grand Guignol events for the past five years, SFPALM, Thrillpeddlers, and Professor Mel Gordon again join forces for a special celebration in honor of Bastille Day.  The evening will focus on the use of stereotypes in the Grand Guignol, France’s renowned theatre of shock and horror, featuring live excerpts from three Grand Guignol plays and an evocation of the career of Valeska Gert, the pioneer of performance art who billed herself as the “Dancer of the Grand Guignol.”

UC Berkeley professor Mel Gordon (author of The Grand Guignol:  Theatre of Fear and Terror and Voluptuous Panic : The Erotic World of Weimar Berlin) will offer a provocative multimedia presentation about Valeska Gert, a fascinating and notorious artist in Weimar Germany whose performances defied standard definition.  In the end, Gert billed herself as a "Grotesque Dancer" or “Dancer of the Grand Guignol.”  Working with dancer Bijou O’Keefe, Professor Gordon has recreated several of Gert’s dances, which will be presented live along with film clips of Gert herself performing.

Thrillpeddlers with the company's director Russell Blackwood will perform scenes from three of The Grand Guignol's most popular horror plays of the 1920's:  1929’s Le Faiseur de monstres (The Maker of Monsters), 1920’s Devant la mort (Before Death), and 1922’s Le jardin des supplices (The Torture Garden).  All of these plays, like Gert’s dances, deal in stereotypes of race, gender, and nationality which, while shockingly un-PC, can also prove surprisingly revealing of their time and place.

Not recommended for children under 12 or the faint-of-heart.  SFPALM is fully wheelchair-accessible.

Admission is $10 general / $5 SFPALM members.  Seating is limited and advance tickets are strongly recommended.  Call (415) 255-4800.  More info is also available at www.GrandGuignol.com.