Fort Mason
“Nevermind then…”
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
San Francisco, CA | 2022
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, San Francisco, CA, 2022
About the Show
event link: https://fortmason.org/event/whoop-dee-doo/
In September and October of 2022, Whoop Dee Doo artists produced a free Halloween spooktacular for the Bay Area at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture. The show was produced through a series of free arts workshops with 3 participating youth groups and 3 performance groups.
Our collaborating youth groups, which included 4 students from Galileo High School’s Futurama Program and two young adults from Sunset Youth Services, helped conceptualize the main themes of our Halloween show, ranging from rats and spiders, to classic characters like Dracula, werewolves, and Frankenstein’s monster. We began brainstorming skits, games, set pieces, and costume designs.
We additionally collaborated with nine students from the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco. These students joined our workshops and began brainstorming and creating costume pieces as well as choreography for the live shows.
During our workshop series, the student groups met with leaders from each of the three performance groups, and the students learned the history, traditions, and regalia of each performance group. As a collective, we brainstormed ideas as to how to alter each performance group’s performance under the guise of a Halloween show. Together we developed prototypes, facilitated performative practice sessions, and created costumes and set pieces.
Our first performance collaboration began with David Hardiman’s San Francisco All Star Big Band. Throughout the workshops, the Big Band and our students created an epic mid-show werewolf transformation. Our young artists created costuming and makeup designs and the Big Band created their own werewolf sound effects and choreography.
Our second collaboration was with TURFinc. and their founder and director, Johnny Lopez. Johnny worked with Galileo students to teach the history of the Oakland dance style, Turfing. We utilized a zombie theme to create TURF’s undead costumes, created fake limbs, and co-directed their spooky choreography. Some of our Boys & Girls Club students performed with the Turf dancers live on stage.
Our final collaborating performance group was Bolivia Corazón de América, whose Director, Isidro Fajardo, gave a presentation on the history of the “Kusillo,” a historic Andean clown dance with unique costuming, and the importance of preserving folkloric dance. For our collaboration with BCA, we created a 3-headed puppet inspired by the dance’s symbolism. The entity puppet appeared on-stage during the finale of the dance and possessed the dancers.
With all of our collaborators (almost 80 individuals), we produced 4 free live shows in the Cowell theater on Fort Mason’s campus grounds. We worked with Bay Area Video Coalition, the Bay Area’s community media hub, to film and live-edit our shows, which were then broadcasted on San Francisco’s public access channel “SF Commons” on Halloween night.
Collaborating Organizations
Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
The Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco
Galileo High School Futurama Program
Performers
David Hardiman’s San Francisco All Star Big Band
Whoop Dee Doo Artists
Ursula Anderson
Theresa Bui
Miguel Centeno
Danny Crump
Sarah Dahlinger
Sofia Dixon
Emily Flores
Micah Fornari
Jeila Gueramian
Josh Pavlick
Carbon Therrien
Jaimie Warren
Collaborating Young Artists, Galileo High School Futurama Program (ages 14-15)
Thunder Bravmann
Lana Groom
Alice Wu
Alisha Wu
Collaborating Young Artists, Sunset Youth Services (ages 19-21)
Mel Dancel
Kamilah Satchell
Collaborating Young Artists, Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco (ages 8-10)
Adeline
Angela
Ashley
Jade
Jaylah
Lupita
Maddy
Miriam
Mya
Extra Special Thanks
Wendy Baker, Sunset Youth Services
Jamon Tyus, Galileo High School
Erin Guitierrez, Boys & Girls Club of San Francisco
Frank Smigiel, Director of Arts Programming & Partnerships at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
Marijane Kubow, Arts Program Manager at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
Dave Coffman, Production Manager at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
Eugene (Jun) James, Operations Manager at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
Bay Area Video Coalition, with extra special thanks to Andy Kawanami, Melanie Ayala, and Javan Jiles
Justin Oswald
Gaye Russell Bruce
The Cowell Theater