A.C.T.'s landmark celebration unveils Tosca Project and baby Montana Newsom's stage debut

ACT lifts spirits just as the arts were meant to in San Francisco post earthquake, and seeing Pascal Molat dance with Lorena Feijoo just before baby Montana Newsom made her stage debut with her parents made the day a landmark celebration indeed.

Carey Perloff said at the one hundred year landmark celebration last Saturday that ACT was the playhouse with flowers in it’s hair, according to the Chronicle. Architects looked at Europe before building it. The house has pineapples on it’s dome. It’s an intimate theater because of the shallow horseshoe shape even with a thousand seats.

With that she announced the program, starting with students Stephanie and Patrick performing swordplay from the Scottish Play. Eye contact, critical. Not the wide-eyed I’m freaking out kind but that has it’s place too.

Carey then announced a scene from the first play ever at ACT. Core actors read Father and The Boys from January 1910, about comedy about a day at the racetrack.

Celebrity sightings with the Newsoms and SF Ballet

A highpoint was the appearance by ACT graduate Jennifer Seibel-Newsom, her hubby Gavin and the first public appearance ever by their new and only baby, Montana. Montana dozed in her mother’s arms, Montana wearing a snuggly pink bunny suit with little pink fabric ears on the hood. She remained silent as did her Mom. Gavin told a funny story about Jean Attis or “Trigger” Attis his grandmother and her appearance at ACT with her twin sister in “Twice as Nice.” Gavin was twelve then.Montana he said is fourth generation. For more on Jennifer's acting in San Francisco: The Butler's in Love.

Jennifer wore a plain long black dress with a wide elastic belt, boots and her blond hair down; and Gavin wore a white shirt, jeans, long black overcoat and black high top tennis shoes.

I had attended to see the preview of The Tosca Project with SF Ballet principle dancer Pascal Molat. I had seen him across the street at Starbucks just before. Coffee, yes. I had been to Teatro ZinZanni the night before and I could barely keep my eyes open Saturday morning. My eyes opened wide when the handsome Frenchman walked into Starbucks on Geary across from A.C.T. and silently joined the line with nobody paying him any notice except me. He gave me my morning perk better than any caffeinated beverage when he smiled back and made eye contact. He wore jeans and a jacket and carried his coffees out on a tray. What a gentleman.

Pascal Molat/The Tosca Project/A.C.T.

Pascal and I would cross paths again. I went downstairs at ACT for some Boudin breakfast pastries, cookies and Peet’s coffee. Pascal walked by directly into the theater. No pastry, no Peet's.

The Tosca Project pas de deux: What'll I do?

Pascal performed with Lorena Feijoo a bittersweet and romantic pas de deux by Val Caniparoli. The play being set at the historic Tosca Café in North Beach, the scene was about sweethearts saying goodbye before he shipped out to war. He had on a little sailor hat that made him look just like Baryshikov when he performed as a sailor who washes onto shore in a Russian folktale. Baryshnikov brought that to Zellerbach a few years ago when he started his own company. He and Pascal are about the same size with those aristocratic features. As Pascal and Lorena danced together, they kissed softly. Sigh. Swoon. Lorena wore a feminine black dress, black hair flowing softly and with a girlish retro or classic plain hair band. The song? What’ll I do? Sigh.

For more on the Tosca Project and Pascal: Val Caniparoli's Tosca Project

This isn’t Lorena’s first venture into acting, I remember seeing her as a sexy Latin dancer in a film, the Lost City and more recently on Sesame Street. Lost City is with Andy Garcia and Nestor Carbonall. She’s on the internet movie data base or IMDB.

The Tosca Project movement offers some interesting ways of getting backstage and seeing previews. Privileges come in exchange for financial support to build the actual Tosca bar, provide scripts for rehearsals, sponsor an artist for one performance, or to underwrite the artistic team as they finalize casting and begin rehearsals.

Next the camera turned on the audience and a photographer climbed a ladder on stage to take wideshots of the donors and subscribers seated for the landmark celebration performance. The pictures should be on the ACT website they said.

After I toured the recesses of the theater, climbing on stage and finding my way below to the trap doors. The bed from A Christmas Carol with it’s own trap door, in the bed, remained. A young man with a tiny infant strapped to his chest talked of how all stages were raked in Shakespeare’s time so the audience could see.

2010 opens with Phedre (pronounced Fay dra).

For more info and old photos: 100 year landmark celebration

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