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“A budding holiday tradition in San Francisco” – SF Chronicle

“A runaway Christmas classic” – SF Bay Guardian

“Smashingly popular” – SF Weekly

The Holidays are the most magical time of the year, unless you’re stuck in the mall on Christmas Eve. PianoFight’s FORKING II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas, penned by Daniel Heath, an emerging playwright on the national scene, chronicles the final hours of the Christmas shopping frenzy through the eyes of a pot-dealing Santa and his cookie-stand partner in crime, a mall security guard on his last legs, a bride-to-be deserted by her would-be fiancé, and a bored mortician who’s got nothing to do until people get back to the business of dying once Christmas is over.

 

The fates of these five characters and whether Christmas can be saved for each is left up to the audience who will vote at crucial forks in the plot to determine the final outcome. This December, with 362,880 possible paths through the show, saving Christmas is up to you.

For the third year in a row SF-based production company PianoFight teams with local playwright sensation Daniel Heath for the production of FORKING II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas, a fully-scripted play in which the audience votes on how the plot will proceed.  With nine votes in the play, audiences are treated to 362,880 possible paths to the final outcome with the sum of each vote adding up to a cheerful holiday or a bah-humbug Christmas. The director of this uniquely participatory holiday play is Christy Crowley and the run will again feature acclaimed composer Arlen Hart who will play his original score live each night.  The score, recorded as A FORKING Album, was produced by PianoFight and New York-based record label SoundVise and is available on iTunes. FORKING II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas runs December 2 – 30 at 8:00pm (see www.PianoFight.com for specific dates) at Stage Werx 446, 446 Valencia Street in San Francisco’s Mission District. Tickets are $17-$35 and can be purchased at www.PianoFight.com.

In January of 2009, Heath and PianoFight caused a sensation when they came up with the novel idea of a fully scripted play in which the audience votes on how the plot should progress. The result was FORKING!, which opened to rave reviews and played to sold out shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The growth of the script and score for FORKING II: A Merry FORKING! Christmas, which have undergone changes before each year’s production, are emblematic of the growth of Heath, Hart and PianoFight. PianoFight has recently popped up on SF Mayor Ed Lee’s radar with its plans to build a state of the art theater complex in the Tenderloin; Heath just had his San Francisco world-premiere of Man of Rock produced in New York; and Hart, formerly PianoFight’s Music Director, relocated to New York last year to release his first solo album New Peace. Hart’s collaboration with playwright Heath, who was the first-ever winner of what is now the nation’s largest audience-judged playwriting competition, PianoFight’s ShortLived, marks the fifth time these artists will synch up music with actors.

With this fully-scored, fully-scripted, choose-your-own-adventure play in which the audience holds all the cards, this December, saving Christmas is definitely up to you.

Posted November 15, 2011 at 9:26 pm