I will be performing “Tortured Artists Fanclub,” an excerpt of my new play in-progress, at a Monday Night Marsh Monday, November 2nd, 7:30 pm. Three other performers and I will be doing work developed in David Ford’s Performance workshop. The Marsh, 1062 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA, 94110. (www.themarsh.org) Tickets $7 at the door (cheap!)

Reliable sources in Buffalo said that the reading of Savage Arts was a success. The reading was directed by Betsy Bittar, who played Becca and Heidi when my play, Becca and Heidi, was at the Alleyway Theater in Buffalo. The audience responded to the humor, the drama, and the local references. Hopefully, the play will be on its feet in a full production in Buffalo next year!

If you are in the Buffalo NY area, check out the New Phoenix Theatre

Reading of “Savage Arts”, 4 October 2009, 8pm

September 2, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Richard Lambert, Executive Director Robert Waterhouse, Artistic Director

New Phoenix to present reading of exciting work based on Buffalo history!

Buffalo, NY:

As part of the 2009 – 2010 season, Betsy Bittar directs Wendy Hall in a reading of SAVAGE ARTS, a solo piece written by Sharon Eberhardt, which is based on a true story in Buffalo in 1930, the infamous Clothilde Marchand murder.

Full Press Release: SavageArtsRelease

I hope you can come to the staged reading of my new play, Seriously Compromised, Thursday, June 11 7:30 pm at 142 Throckmorton Theater, 142 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley

A psychology professor, who studies deception, gets an offer to take up clandestine work. She questions the morals of using her research this way, and questions her sanity when she finds her husband engaged in deception of his own.

Directed by Mark Routhier with Sofia Ahmad, Jerin Lynn Cohen, Charles Isen, Joel Mullennix.

Seriously Compromised
Thursday, June 11 7:30 pm
142 Throckmorton Theater
142 Throckmorton Ave
Mill Valley, CA 94941
Phone: 415-383-9600
http://www.142throckmortontheatre.com

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My one act play “In The Middle” is being performed Friday and Saturday February 20-21 at 7:30pm at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley, California. 

Buffalo Spree Magazine featured the subject of Savage Arts, the Marchand “Witch Murder Trial” as part of its December 2008 article on famous scandals in Western New York history.  

The Theater: ‘Savage Arts” at the Marsh

By Ken Bullock, Special to The Planet 2008-02-15

Savage Arts, a solo piece written and performed by Berkeley playwright Sharon Eberhardt, which concerns an actual murder and trial that focused on witchcraft and Native American beliefs in 1930 Buffalo, N.Y., will have its final performances 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) and tomorrow night (Saturday) at The Marsh in San Francisco’s Mission District.

“Two Seneca women were accused of murdering a Frenchwoman whom they thought was a witch,” said Eberhardt. “The murdered woman’s husband was an artist from France who was painting dioramas in science museums on the East Coast. I felt foreign to the main characters and was concerned about how images, particularly of Native Americans, get manipulated, so I play a blue-collar neighbor, keeping her point of view, going back over the story, the information as she learns it. And things become more and more convoluted the more she finds out. It becomes a transforming experience for her; her impressions and prejudices change. I also become the other characters as it goes along.”

The trial was recorded in the local papers every day, earning a story in Time magazine. The Bureau of Indian Affairs even appealed to Herbert Hoover’s Vice President Charles Curtis (himself part Native American) to send U.S. district attorneys to investigate, but “the federal government backed off when the New York prosecutors objected.”

It was a time when “the Native Americans in that part of the country had ongoing direct contact with Europeans since the late 1600s. The reservations were established right after the Civil War; they seemed pretty deracinated by the 20th century. I think it was something of a shock to discover that some were still practicing their religion by the time of the 1930s. There were about a thousand Seneca speakers. It seemed to be a dying culture.”

Eberhardt was also concerned with the impression mainstream American society had—and has—of Native Americans.

“We know how to drive a car, but maybe not how to hunt,” she said. “With industrialization, society started romanticizing, revaluing what were thought to be Native American secrets. The Boy Scouts learned Native American tracking; the Campfire Girls, weaving. There was a sense, too, of primitive sensuality, passions we can’t feel every day—and that we can tap into those primitive passions. In the play, it comes up how we use these ideas, and plays with all this—the narrator, following the trial, is amazed by the passions.”

Eberhardt—whose one-acts have won awards and whose full-length Becca and Heidi, a female twist on the Jekyll-Hyde story was produced by The Shee Theatre Co. in San Francisco a few years back, commented on performing her own work.

“Stephanie Weissman, The Marsh’s founder, knew of my plays and that they’d gotten good reviews, and got me involved,” she said. “People responded to the characters in the workshops I went to. I worked in a class with David Ford. I used to be amazed at what actors did with the things I wrote. Now I realize I unconsciously knew more when I wrote my plays; I have to act them to know what they’re about.”

There are plans for the future for Savage Arts.

“We’ve approached a small theater in Santa Rosa about putting it on,” said Eberhardt, “and in the fall, I’m working to take it to Buffalo, have a workshop in a school there—and connect with the Seneca community. I look forward to developing the characters. maybe write some new scenes.”

Eberhardt, who’s from Buffalo, has an M.F.A. in playwriting from Columbia. Her husband, Perrin Meyer, introduced her to his friend, Malcolm Margolin, author of The Ohlone Way.

“Buffalo was a declining industrial area when I grew up there,” she said. “Then I lived in New York for years. It took awhile when I came here to appreciate living in beauty. But I’d never move to Florida! In the Bay Area, it’s not just beauty, but how we’re encouraged to go beyond tribalism, group prejudices … There’s more of that on the East Coast. It’s something in the play—I’m encouraged that we’ve gotten a little bit better in some areas. I hope we can move on.”

SAVAGE ARTS
Through Feb. 16 at The Marsh,
1062 Valencia St., San Francisco.
(415) 826-5750.