Charlie Varon's "Feisty Old Jew"

The Marsh announces, after a wildly successful extended run in 2014 at The Marsh San Francisco, Charlie Varon’s FEISTY OLD JEW, a fictional comic monologue about a 20th-century man living in a 21st-century city, will return and transfer to The Marsh Berkeley. FEISTY OLD JEW, declared “Comic gold” by the San Francisco Chronicle, will be presented February 21 through March 22, 2015, with performances Saturdays at 8:30pm and Sundays at 5pm, at The Marsh Berkeley (2120 Allston Way). For tickets ($25-$100), the public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055 between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday.

The latest work created by Varon and his collaborator and director of 23 years, David Ford, FEISTY OLD JEW takes place entirely in one hot October day in the Bay Area. At age 83, here’s what Bernie hates: yoga studios, tattoo parlors, boutiques of all kinds, medical marijuana dispensaries, $6 cups of coffee, and the young people who are drinking them. Out on Post Street, Bernie gets tired of waiting for a cab and sticks out his thumb. He’s picked up by three 20-somethings in a Tesla with a cappuccino maker in the dashboard and two surfboards strapped to the roof. By the time they get to the beach in Bolinas, Bernie has convinced the kids to let him surf for the first time in his life, and bet them $400,000 that he’ll ride a wave.

“This monologue is not autobiographical,” says Varon, who has been an artist-in-residence at The Marsh for over 20 years. “It’s about a city in flux. It’s about what I see when I step out of our theater and walk down Valencia Street – the hipsters, the techies, the restaurants serving truffle butter and pink aioli. When I moved to the Mission District in 1978, my rent was $70 a month. Now people pay $70 a month just for lattes.”

Following the wildly successful Marsh San Francisco run which opened in February of 2014, and went on to extend three times, Varon continued to work on FEISTY OLD JEW at the Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C.

Charlie Varon has been called “very funny” (The New Yorker), “hilarious” (The Washington Post), and “wildly entertaining” (SF Chronicle). The Chronicle has also credited Varon with “redefining the art form” of solo performance. His hit shows – all created in collaboration with David Ford – include the award-winning Rush Limbaugh in Night School (1994; revived 2004), The People’s Violin (2000), and Rabbi Sam (2009), which the Chronicle named one of the year’s 10 best plays. In 2012, Charlie collaborated with David Ford and Jeri Lynn Cohen on the 2-actor comedy Fwd: Life Gone Viral, which enjoyed critical acclaim and an extended run at The Marsh. As collaborator/director, Charlie has worked with Dan Hoyle since 2004, on his award-winning solo shows Circumnavigator, Tings Dey Happen, and The Real Americans.

David Ford, who co-developed and directed FEISTY OLD JEW, has been collaborating on new and unusual theatre for two decades. His work includes Brian Copeland’s new and critically acclaimed holiday show The Jewelry Box, as well as Copeland’s upcoming show The Scion and previous shows The Waiting Period and Not a Genuine Black Man, which currently holds the record for longest running solo performance in Bay Area history and has been performed more than 650 times in San Francisco, LA and New York. Other work of note includes Say Ray, with storyteller-holy-man Ron Jones and Michael Rice, a mentally disabled performer; Geoff Hoyle’s Geezer; Marilyn Pittman’s It’s All the Rage; and Cherry Zonkowski’s Reading My Dad’s Porn and French Kissing the Dog. He also worked with Bill Talen on the original creation of Reverend Billy, the Obie Award-winning theatre/political action piece. Ford’s work has been seen regionally at Public Theater, Second Stage Theatre, Theatre at St. Clement’s, Dixon Place, New York’s Theater for the New City, Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, as well as at theatres around the Bay Area including Magic Theatre and Marin Theatre Company. Ford also teaches Creating and Performing Your Own Work at The Marsh and is a Resident Artist.