BATS Improv and LA's Impro Theatre Present: California Noir-Off

When: Friday and Saturday, November 8th and 9th, 8pm

Where: Presidio Theatre - 99 Moraga Avenue, San Francisco.

What: BATS Improv, the Bay Area’s premier improvisational performing company and improv training school and Impro Theatre, the critically acclaimed improv theater company from Los Angeles, will collaborate in a “California Noir-Off” for two nights at the newly remodeled, historic Presidio Theatre.

Two of the premier practitioners of full-length improvised plays pay tribute to the Godfathers of California Noir: Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler in a two night-festival of unscripted noir.

Impro Theatre from Los Angeles reunites with the company that spawned it, BATS Improv, for a split-bill of dames, detectives and double-crosses. Friday night they face off as The San Francisco team fashions a spontaneous homage to Hammett and L.A. improvises in the style of Chandler. Both companies will join forces Saturday night for an improvised noir musical created and directed by BATS musical director Joshua Raoul Brody.

“BATS Improv and Impro together represent the country’s best live improvisational theater and we are thrilled to have the Noir-Off as one of the first events in the newly transformed Presidio Theatre!” said Robert Martin, Executive Director of the Presidio Theatre. “What a great opportunity for the public to see not one, but these two amazing companies come together.”

"BATS and Impro Theatre have such a long wonderful history together, with some of BATS founding members going to LA to form Impro theatre,” said BATS Artistic Director Ken Robertson. It parallels the path of the film noir literary tradition, which started with Dashiell Hammett’s detective Sam Spade in San Francisco, then rose to new heights with Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled LA detective Phillip Marlowe. Noir’s origins are irrevocably tied to both cities.”

Public Information: Ticket prices range from $20 - $30. To purchase tickets or for more information visit www.presidiotheatre.org or call 415.392.4400.

About BATS

Founded in 1986 BATS is the most highly acclaimed and longest running improvised theater company and school in Northern California. The BATS professional theater company is an artistic community that cultivates and innovates the craft of improvised theater through engaging, playful, creative performance and training. A center for improvised theater, BATS has performed to sold-out audiences continually in their 200-seat Bayfront Theater at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture.

About Impro Theatre

Impro Theatre has evolved from a successful short form improv troupe into a critically acclaimed improvisational theater company. In southern California, Impro has performed sold-out shows at South Coast Repertory, The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, North Coast Repertory in San Diego, Falcon Theatre in Burbank, and The Pasadena Playhouse, as well as venues around the world including the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, The Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago, The Melbourne Fringe in Australia and Theatre Adyar in Paris.

About Presidio Theatre

The newly transformed Presidio Theatre on the Main Post of San Francisco’s historic Presidio opened its as a performing arts center in September 2019 featuring a 600-seat proscenium theatre with multiple lobbies and comfortable spaces for audiences, a pavilion and courtyard for events, large rehearsal and backstage spaces and other amenities. The 1939 art deco Theatre’s transformation is the result of a gift from the Margaret E. Haas Fund that restored and expand the facility and returned it to the public for a wide variety of uses including live music, theater, dance, film, lectures and events.

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