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.