FOOLSFURY THEATER COMPANY’S ARCHIVE TO BE HOUSED AT THE MUSEUM OF PERFORMANCE + DESIGN IN SAN FRANCISCO

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact: John Hill

johnhillpr@gmail.com

510.435.7128

The “Legacy Project,” documenting 23 years on the vanguard of

ensemble theater, opens to the public this month

Museum of Performance + Design

2200 Jerrold Ave, Suite T

San Francisco, CA 94124

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, [March 2022] – FoolsFURY Theater is pleased to announce that it has found a home

for its archive documenting 24 years on the vanguard of ensemble and devised theater. The company’s

rich collection of filmed performances, festival events, conferences and workshops, together with newly

recorded oral histories will be accessible to the public at the Museum of Performance + Design starting

next month.

FoolsFURY’s “Legacy Project” aims to preserve an expansive and holistic view of the company’s activities

and its impact within a broader community. FoolsFURY Artistic Director Debórah Eliezer called upon

Mercilee Jenkins, a member of foolsFURY’s board of directors, and librarian Emily Weak to join her as

core members of the archival team.

Among the many digital records collected are videos from all seven FURY Factory festivals, biennial

events convening practitioners of devised theater from across the U.S. and Canada, the United Kingdom,

India and beyond, presenting a cross-section of the field with works by more than a hundred companies.

“I’m very proud of what our Legacy Project has achieved,” said Eliezer. “Although small theater

ensembles often create the most innovative work, those works are rarely preserved. FoolsFURY’s Legacy

Project provides a vital service, archiving not just our company’s own world premiere plays and

signature workshops, but also the work of hundreds of other small theater groups and independent

artists who performed new work in our festivals or participated in our digital convenings which focused

on new ways to create community around racial equity and economic justice.”

“Legacy is the right name for this project,” added Weak. “The archive chronicles deeply meaningful

work. FoolsFURY created a place for artists to train and collaborate in ways that were not widely

available.”

“Amplifying the archival footage of performances, festivals and other events, are the stories of those

who engaged in the projects,” said Jenkins. “We wanted to preserve the stories of the participants in

order to reveal how the work was accomplished and how it might be carried forward.” Thanks to donors

who supplied $8,000, foolsFURY has collected more than 25 oral histories as part of its archive.

The Legacy Project invites all those with foolsFURY stories, comments or farewell wishes to visit the

company’s Facebook page [get static URL]. For more information, visit foolsfury.org.

About the Museum of Performance + Design

The Museum of Performance + Design was founded in 1947 by San Francisco Ballet dancer and designer

Russell Hartley. It mounts online and onsite exhibits and has both digital and physical collections. The

vast archive is open Wednesdays from 1 - 6 p.m., and by appointment. The Museum is the official

archive of San Francisco Ballet and houses records of many other organizations including the San

Francisco Opera, Stern Grove Festival, Pickle Family Circus, Noh Oratorio Society, Lamplighters Music

Theatre and the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. It also houses the Legacy Oral History Project, with

interviews that aim to preserve the artistic legacies of San Francisco Bay Area performing arts

community members who are at-risk.

About foolsFURY Theater Company

Founded in 1998 by Ben Yalom, foolsFURY earned national recognition for its adventurous, physically

oriented productions of new plays, its introduction of works by European playwrights to Englishspeaking

audiences, and its tireless evangelism for the practices of ensemble theater-making, work

which it promoted through a biennial festival and countless workshops by master teachers. The

company first garnered wide attention with the world premiere of Monster in the Dark by Doug Dorst,

followed the next year with the U.S. premiere of Fabrice Melquiot’s The Devil on All Sides, which toured

from San Francisco to Performance Space New York (formerly PS122). Among the playwrights foolsFURY

has supported through new commissions are Sheila Callaghan, Katie Pearl, Angela Santillo and Kate

Tarker. In its final years, under the direction of Debórah Eliezer, the company made overt strides to

address longstanding inequities in the theater field, producing two digital conferences by and for

ensemble theater makers.