Mastermind

You've known for some time that someone was pulling the strings. What you didn't know is that it was always us. We slipped your keys between the couch cushions, we pointed Seal Team Six to Osama's compound in Pakistan; we're the ones who told your wife about the girl at the coffeeshop.

On Sunday, June 26, watch Portuguese Artists Colony wind the crank that makes the world turn on its axis.

Colonist Cary Tennis will be hosting this month!

Featuring guest readers:
Jason Flores-Williams is a novelist and civil rights attorney who has been featured on CNN, NPR, Air America and in the New York Times.  He has been arrested for protest against the US government and organized creative resistance against the corporatization of American culture.  He has written three novels that are published in four countries and is a frequent contributor to the Brooklyn Rail. His new novel, Character and Fitness, is about an unemployed social justice lawyer and his nurse girlfriend living in a shitty apartment complex behind a strip mall in the suburbs of Philadelphia—a story of people being hit from all sides while trying not to lose who they are. The novel is currently being serialized by the Brooklyn Rail.

With six world premieres, four of them full-length plays, William Bivins was the most produced playwright of the 2009/2010 Bay Area season. His Biblical comedy "Pulp Scripture" (Original Sin/PianoFight) won the 2009 Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Original Script, and grabbed eight SF Fringe Awards, including Best New Comedy. William is currently at work on “Remaking Pussycat,” a psychotronic farce commissioned by the SF Playhouse. He was one of twelve Bay Area playwrights chosen in 2008 for Theatre Bay Area/TheatreWorks Playwrights Showcase and has been a finalist for the Heideman Award in the National Ten-minute Play Contest.

James Warner humbled the opposition with his winning piece in last month's live writing. He returns this month to read his finished piece, inspired by the prompt Did you feel that?

Musical guests: The Northerlies

Live writing
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing is always a treat and a surprise. Place your bets!

Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious. 
Lauren Becker (Editor, Corium Magazine)

Patrick Kitchen
Charles Kruger (Storming Bohemian)
Roberta D’Alois (Jump! Theatre Company)

Join us Sunday, June 26
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm 

Will you be in Lisbon on Monday, June 27? 
Caitlin Myer will host live writing and an open mic for participants in the DISQUIET International Literary Program (ILP), as a co-production with Portuguese Artists Colony.

Monday, June 27
6:00 pm
Grémio Literário
Rua Ivens, 37

Vertigo

We love high places. We like to climb to the very top of the tower, that little winding staircase after the elevator creaks to a stop. We hike to the precipice, place our toes at the edge, and feel the earth begin to shift beneath our feet, the world around us lift free of its foundations and spin.

On Sunday, May 22nd, come to Fivepoints Arthouse and see if we finally give in to the urge to jump.

Featuring guest readers:
Sherril Jaffe’s latest novel, Expiration Date, was recently released from The Permanent Press.  “Written with warmth, humor, wisdom, and sublime control,” (Kirkus), “this rare conceptual book containing characters that readers will root for,” (Publisher’s Weekly), is “a delightful reminder of the unexpected lives that await us,” (Booklist).   Jaffe is the author of eight other books: Scars Make Your Body More Interesting, This Flower Only Blooms Every Hundred Years, The Unexamined Wife, The Faces Reappear, House Tours, Interior Designs, Ground Rules, and, in collaboration with her late husband, Alan Lew, the PEN Award-winning One God Clapping.  Her stories appear regularly in journals such as Epoch, Alaska Quarterly, and Superstition Review.   She is a 2010 MacDowell Fellow and Professor of Creative Writing at Sonoma State University.

Anna Pulley is the social media sassmaster for Mother Jones. She also writes a social media etiquette column for SF Weekly, a relationship column for teh gays at After Ellen, and writes about things like pegging and orgies for AlterNet. One time, Amanda Palmer asked her out on Twitter. Buy her a drink and she'll probably write you a haiku.

Maisha Z. Johnson studied Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where she learned to blaspheme through writing with style. Her poetry has appeared in sPARKLE & bLINK, and her fiction in Transfer magazine, where she was awarded the Leo Litwak Award in Fiction. Maisha has read her work at events throughout the Bay Area, including Quiet Lightning, Bitchez Brew and New Poetry Mission. She also blogs regularly about the relationship between writing and social change. On her blog, she once called out Oprah for neglecting women writers, and she's been fearing for her life ever since. If she survives Oprah's wrath, Maisha will begin an MFA Program in Poetry at Pacific University this summer.

Maisha kicked ass with a story about partying nuns in April's live writing throwdown, inspired by the prompt: She listened for breath. She returns this month to read the finished piece.

Musical guest: Quinn Deveaux

Live writing
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing continues to astonish. Place your bets!

Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious. 
Matthew James DeCoster (Fourteen Hills staff)

Lauren Eggert-Crowe (2010 Best Poet of Santa Cruz)
James Warner (author of All Her Father's Guns)
Lady Monster (Queen of the Fire Tassels)



Plus! Colonist Daniel Heath will return with the thrilling conclusion of his live writing championship piece inspired by the prompt: That's why I wasn't wearing any underwear. Heath won the championship despite the handicap presented by his participation via Skype from the tropics. Maybe some future championship will have to take place at a beach.


Join us Sunday, May 22
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm

Guilty Parties

We are guilty. We admit it, we were the ones that balled up the piece of bread and stuffed it behind the piano until it grew mold and started attracting rats. The key marks on your new car? That was us. The body on the side of the mountain, only identifiable by dental records. Blame us. Graffiti in the bathroom, millions of dollars "lost" in Iraq, bad daughters who don't call their mothers. Guilty as charged.

We are accountable for all sins, small and large. Join us Sunday, April 24th to gawk at our burdened consciences.

Featuring guest readers:
Matthew Siegel is a poet, essay writer and educator from New York. He has poems are forthcoming in Gigantic Sequins, Indiana Review, The Lumberyard, Lo-Ball, and Saw Mill Online. He is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco.

Shideh Etaat is a writer from Los Angeles who likes words, but likes the people who read her words even more. Her articles have been published in The Santa Barbara Independent, Javanan Magazine, and her poetry can be found in Flatmancrooked’s Slim Book of Poetry, the Atlanta Review Iran Issue, as well as the forthcoming anthology Love and Pomegranates. She is the 2010 Glimmer Train Fiction Open Finalist as well as the 2010 Semifinalist for the Nimrod Literary Awards- Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction. She is hard at work on her first novel- The Book of Dastans.  She deserves a glass of wine.

Musical guest: Erma Kyriakos

Live writing
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance.  We have a hell of a lineup this month - place your bets now!

Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious. 
David Corbett (Edgar-nominated author of Do They Know I'm Running?)

Maisha Z Johnson (winner of the Leo Litwak Award for Fiction)
Jesus Angel Garcia (author of badbadbad)
Evelyn Pine (winner of two PlayGround Emerging Playwright Awards)

Plus! Readings from Colonists Leslie Ingham, Daniel Heath, and Benjamin Wachs

Join us Sunday, April 24
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm 

Portuguese Artists Colony wants your work

Portuguese Artists Colony is now accepting submissions! Send us your work, and have your chance at a spot behind our legendary lectern.

I live here

One year ago, Portuguese Artists Colony staged an intervention at Fivepoints Arthouse.  We have been corrupting the youth, lowering the tone and rousing the rabble on a monthly basis ever since. And we're just getting started.

Come on over to our place on the 27th. There will be cake.

Featuring:
Beth Lisick is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody Into the Pool and the national bestseller Helping Me Help Myself. Her work as been published in the Christian Science Monitor, Best American Poetry and heard on the NPR program This American Life. She is also the founder and curator of Porchlight, a monthly show for amateur storytellers in San Francisco. She’s currently working on a monologue about appearing in a series of Midwestern bank commercials.

Tim Bauer  is a playwright. He’s been a three-time finalist for the Heideman Award, a PlayGround fellow, a Lark Playwright’s Week finalist, a STAGE International finalist, and is the San Francisco Bay Area regional rep of the Dramatists Guild.  Tim is hilarious.

Musical guest: Brad A

Champions of live writing
The winners from previous shows will meet for an epic re-match!

Four quick-witted authors will write on a prompt they hear for the first time onstage while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on the winning piece.

This edition may be the first-ever Skype-enabled live writing. Daniel Heath will be kicking back in the tropics, but is willing to Skype in for the big rematch. Cross your fingers that his grass hut has decent internet connectivity!

Andrew O. Dugas won November's zipper malfunction with God must love me tonight.
Daniel Heath is the most recent victor from February's awesome, star-shod heat.
Caitlin Myer won September's show with a cautionary tale about mixing sex with business. And guns.
Matt Stewart kept January's winning story all in the twisted, drug-addled family with a raucous ride to prison.

PLUS! Readings from the Colonists who make it all happen every month: Leslie Ingham, Caitlin Myer, Cary Tennis and Benjamin Wachs.

Join us Sunday, March 27
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm

Grownup Shoes

You're only pretending, and one of these days, you'll be found out. You wear lipstick and carry a purse. You go to work in an office and your life insurance payout might cover a modest funeral. Your kid asks Why and you make something up, hoping his science class tomorrow doesn't expose you for what you are. The truth is, it's all a sham, you never made it past six years old and you're dressing up in Mom's clothes, pretending you have all the answers.

In your grownup office, you keep a window open to #JustinBieber, your hand jumping to close it when a co-worker drops in, and at night you wish you could clutch your stuffed panda with the chewed ear close to your chest, and whisper all your fears and dreams into his polyfill heart.

Portuguese Artists Colony understands the peculiar genius of your inner child, and is polishing up wonders just for her.

Featuring guest readers:
Tim Bauer  is a playwright. He’s been a three-time finalist for the Heideman Award, a PlayGround fellow, a Lark Playwright’s Week finalist, a STAGE International finalist, and is the San Francisco Bay Area regional rep of the Dramatists Guild. He has rollicked the PAC lectern before, and we're thrilled to have him back.

Scott Landers' debut novel, Coswell's Guide to Tambralinga, was described by David Kipen on NBC's Today as "funny, sad, and just really perverse,"  and by the San Francisco Chronicle as painting a "diabolically conceived dreamscape, part utopia, part hell."  According to U.S. News and World Report, the novel " shows a sharp eye for the details, expectations, disappointments and encounters that shape international travel" and Publisher's Weekly compared it to Alex Garland's The Beach "only more grown-up and better written." No doubt critical acclaim accounted for initial sales of well over 30 copies. His short fiction has appeared in West Branch, Other Voices, Cimarron Review, Beloit Fiction Journal and other literary journals. A graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, he currently works as a technical writer and instructional designer. He lives and pays taxes in Sonoma County.


Matt Stewart's debut novel, The French Revolution, has been called “wildly imaginative,” “brilliant,” and “an excellent achievement,” and was named a Best Book of 2010 by the San Francisco Chronicole. He's mildly infamous for releasing the novel on Twitter first. His stories have been published in Instant City, The Millions, McSweeney's, Opium Magazine, and more, and he blogs for The Huffington Post and The Nervous Breakdown.
More importantly, Matt trounced the opposition in January's bloody live writing event, and will be reading his finished piece, inspired by the prompt: My mom is driving me to prison. What more could you ask?

Musical guests: Fox and Woman, singing in Portuguese for the first time ever in public!

Live writing
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. We have some heavy hitters this month - it will be a clash to remember!


Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious. 
Tanya Egan Gibson (author of How to Buy a Love of Reading)

Rajshree Chauhan (co-founder of Quiet Lightning)
Jeremy Hatch (writer for The Rumpus)
Daniel Heath (playwright and Colonist)


Plus! Readings from Colonists Leslie Ingham, Cary Tennis, and Benjamin Wachs

Join us Sunday, February 27
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm

We blushed

Litseen touts our last show, courtesy of Maureen Blennerhassett:

THE PORTUGUESE ARTISTS COLONY: penile sentencing

Don't miss our next show. We're bursting our seams with guest writers in their very best grownup shoes.

Watch this space for more info!