Another Opening, Another Show: August 2025

Here we are in pretty much the middle of summer, though we (the Bay Area) seem to be the only place in the country with cool temperatures & overcast skies (I am neither complaining nor boasting, just noting). But I'm already receiving messages about the year-end holidays  (New Year's Eve cruises, fancy advent calendars, Christmas cards, new calendars. . . ), so, in case you hadn't noticed, time does continue to move on. As usual, this is a slowish time of year for live performances, though there are certainly some meaty offerings below, particularly the West Edge Opera Festival & the Piano Festival. Let's get to it.

Theatrical

At The Marsh Berkeley, Josh Kornbluth’s What Is To Be Done? Fighting Fascism and Depression, an improvisational work-in-progress written & performed by Kornbluth, has been extended through 22 August.

On 4 -5 August, as part of its Champagne Staged Reading series, Shotgun Players presents Glitter in the Glass by R Eric Thomas, directed by Elizabeth Carter, about "a Black artist whose time is running out to deliver on a grant – a piece of art set to replace a Confederate monument in Baltimore".

Golden Thread Productions, in partnership with Art2Action, presents The Return by Hanna Eady & Edward Mast, directed by Eady, in which a Palestinian & an Israeli Jew meet "in an auto-body shop in the mid-sized city Herzliya . . .  and by the end of the play, both of their lives will be changed forever by the realities that surround them", & that's 7 to 24 August at The Garrett, on the fifth floor of the Toni Rembe Theater in downtown San Francisco.

The Exit Theater in San Francisco presents the SF Fringe Festival from 8 to 24 August; click here for the schedule & a list of the plays.

Brian Copeland performs The Waiting Period, his one-person show about the waiting period to buy a handgun while struggling with suicidal thoughts (developed with & directed by David Ford), at The Marsh Berkeley on 10 & 24 August.

Bard Theater presents Macboth (that's not a typo), a two-person adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy, with Alan Coyne & Em Ervolina as "ruthless thespians" going after one dream role, & you can see the bloody results at the Eclectic Box Theater in San Francisco on 14 - 16 August.

At The Marsh Berkeley on 16 & 23 August, Wayne Harris performs his Drapetomania, directed by David Ford, about Harris's US State Department-sponsored time in Palestine to conduct storytelling workshops & perform a piece about Martin Luther King Jr.

Actors Ensemble of Berkeley presents The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Jay Manley with Jane Goodwin, on weekends at the John Hinkel Park Amphitheater, beginning 16 August through Labor Day.

On 16 - 17 August, the Magic Theater presents a staged reading of For Honor by Lee Sankowich, with lyrics by Robin Bradford & score by William Beatty, a new musical about a group of young Jewish resistance fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

On 18 August, the Magic Theater presents, as part of the Rainbow Zebra/Magic Theater Reading Extravaganza!, a reading of House of Glass by Michael Lynch, directed by Andrea Gordon.

Talking

As part of its Unscripted series, BroadwaySF presents An Evening with Robert B Reich, who will be discussing his new book, Coming Up Short: My Memoir of America (a copy of which is included with your ticket), & that's 13 August at the Golden Gate Theater.

Operatic

The annual West Edge Opera Festival takes place this month, with a truly stellar line-up: the world premiere of Dolores with music by Nicolás Lell Benavides & libretto by Marella Martin Koch, about the labor leader Dolores Huerta, focusing on what happened after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, & that's 2, 10, & 16 August (check here for my post on the preview performance West Edge presented in 2023); David & Jonathan, about the Biblical boyfriends, with music by Marc-Antoine Charpentier & a libretto by Father François Bretonneau, & that's 3, 9 & 16 August; & Alban Berg's Wozzeck, a modernist masterpiece, & that's 9, 14, & 17 August.

The Merola Grand Finale will be held at the Opera House on 16 August.

The Lamplighters present Gilbert & Sullivan's ever-popular HMS Pinafore on 2 - 3 August at the Lesher Center for the Art in Walnut Creek, 9 - 10 August at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, & 16 - 17 August at the Blue Shield Theatre at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco.

Choral

A cappella group Naturally 7 performs at the SF Jazz Center on 9 - 10 August.

See also the San Francisco Choral Society's performance of the Brahms Requiem under Orchestral.

Vocalists

On 7 August at the Toni Rembe Theater, The Transgender District & Opera Parallèle present the fourth annual Expansive, featuring transgender & non-binary classical artists, this year featuring baritone Lucia Lucas along with pianist Taylor Chan, bass baritone Wilford Kelly, & host Afrika America.

Festival Opera presents American Song Cycles, a program featuring Julia Seeholzer’s Portraits of Disquiet & Jake Heggie's monodrama At the Statue of Venus, both featuring soprano Carrie Hennessey & pianist Daniel Lockert, & that's 24 August at the Piedmont Center for the Arts.

​Orchestral

On 16 August in Davies Hall, the San Francisco Choral Society presents the Brahms Ein Deutsches Requiem.

On 16 August, Sixto F Montesinos Jr leads the SF Pride Band at Saint Mark's Lutheran in San Francisco in a program including Descarga by Jorge Sosa, Tricycle by Andrew Boysen Jr, Tango  & Chandé by Victoriano Valencia, & Los Caminos de Langerke by Rubén Darío Gómez.

Chamber Music

On 10 August, the Berkeley Hillside Club Concert series will present Alexi Kenney (violin), Tanya Tomkins (cello), & Audrey Vardanega (piano) performing Schumann’s Piano Trio in G Minor, Opus 110, along with other selections to be announced.

Instrumental

On 1 August at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, you can hear the Harp Immersive Closing Recital.

The San Francisco International Piano Festival, founded & led by pianist Jeffrey LaDeur, arrives for its 8th season, which will extend from 21 to 31 August, with a focus on the music of Ravel in his 150th birth year; check here for a full list of concerts & master classes.

Early / Baroque Music

Jeffrey Thomas leads the American Bach Soloists in the San Francisco Bach Festival at the Conservatory of Music from 4 to 10 August; there are five concerts featuring a variety of instrumental works by Bach & other baroque composers, as well as lectures & master classes, & you can find the details here.

On 12 August at The Conservatory at One Sansome in downtown San Francisco, Philharmonia Baroque is offering the second in a new series, Coffee Concerts: Freshly Brewed Baroque, featuring works by Bach, Handel, & Telemann performed by Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin), Stephen Schultz (flute), Corey Jamason (harpsichord), & Elisabeth Reed (cello); the concert begins at 11:00 AM & runs until noon & is free & open to the public.

Country / Jazz / Blues

The Sun Ra Arkestra will perform at the SF Jazz Center over four nights, with a different focus each time: on 31 July, Cosmic Space Jazz, on 1 August, Big Band Swing, & 2 August, Marshall Allen 101 Salute (Allen himself will not be performing), & 3 August, Space Is The Place; the Arkestra is currently led on tour by  saxophonist Knoel Scott, but continues Sun Ra's mission of "blending big band swing, free jazz, cosmic philosophy, and Afro-futurist pageantry into a transcendent live experience".

Jack Everly conducts the San Francisco Symphony in Dolly Parton’s Threads: My Songs In Symphony, an "innovative multimedia symphonic experience featuring Dolly on screen, leading audiences in a visual-musical journey of her songs, her life, and her stories", & that's 1 August at Davies Hall (Parton does not appear in person at the show).

BroadwaySF presents Jesus "Aguaje" Ramos & The Buena Vista Orchestra at the Golden Gate Theater on 14 August.

Taj Mahal performs at the SF Jazz Center from 14 to 17 August.

Art Means Painting

Bay Area Then, a retrospective of 1990s Bay Area artists, opens at the YBCA on 1 August & runs through 25 January 2026.

At the Asian Art Museum, Yuan Goang-Ming: Everyday War, a powerful exhibit by the Taiwanese video artist, closes on 4 August, & New Japanese Clay, featuring contemporary Japanese ceramics, opens on 15 August.

Lee ShinJa: Drawing with Thread, the first North American survey of the Korean fiber artist, opens at BAM/PFA on 6 August.

Wayne Thiebaud: Art Comes from Art at the Legion of Honor closes on 17 August.

Cinematic

On 1 August at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater, you can experience An Evening With Francis Ford Coppola and Megalopolis Screening; after a screening of the 2024 film, the famed director will "lead an interactive conversation about the future of humanity, along with a live audience Q&A".

CatVideoFest 2025 will be held at the Roxie in San Francisco on 2 August; this event tends to sell out, so move quickly if you're interested in getting a ticket.

Jack Everly conducts the San Francisco Symphony in a live performance of Mark Knopfler's score for the much-loved film The Princess Bride, on 2 - 3 August at Davies Hall.

On 13 - 14 August at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, you can see Divine in one of his great roles, Francine Fishpaw, the beleaguered star of John Waters's Polyester (presented in Odorama).

Tsai Ming-liang in Person at BAM/PFA features the Taiwanese director, along with actor Lee Kang-sheng. discussing his own films as well as some that have influenced him, & the series runs 14 to 31 August.

On 17 August, director Afshin Hashemi will be in person at the Roxie in San Francisco for a showing of his film Sea Boys & a Q&A (presented by Diaspora Arts Connection).

The Orinda Theater's Classic Movie Matinee for this month (held as usual on the last Tuesday – 26 August) will be Swing Time, with Astaire & Rogers.

.

The Roxie in San Francisco will be showing a new 35mm print of Fellini's 8 1/2, struck from the original camera negative, so the film vs digital purists will want to check it out (despite technical issues that render some of the subtitles unreadably white-on-white), & the showings are 29 - 31 August & 1 September.