The San Francisco International Arts Festival returns April 29 through May 10 with its mix of theater, circus, music and educational activities. The festival, founded in 2002, is an eclectic celebration of the performing arts worldwide. This year, it includes a North Bay touch.
Sausalito-based poet and playwright Lynn Lohr has turned the experiences of her late husband and artistic partner, Lance Belville, a foreign correspondent in Brazil during its 1964 military coup, into a short play called Rio Journal.
“I kept telling him to write it himself,” Lohr recounts. “But he kept saying that the story happened to a man in his 20s and 30s, and now in his 70s he didn’t recognize that man anymore.”
After Belville’s passing in 2020, Lohr found a treasure trove of correspondence and journals. Using that information, along with transcripts and other sources, she wrote a two-person play.
“It’s very relevant,” says Lohr. “It’s about a military dictatorship, the CIA, censorship and corruption.” She pauses and continues: “I don’t want to get preachy. We’re in the entertainment business, so I do want people to be entertained. But the play is set in 1963–1971, and here we are again.”
“The coup was in ’64,” says actress Juliana Eiras. “And the way things are going here now, we can learn from that.”
Erias has other reasons to be excited about the show as well. “I was so happy when Lynn invited me to do this project, especially since the story is set in Brazil. The lines in Portuguese and some of the songs really remind me of home,” she notes.
If one has yet to see Erias on stage, she is a relatively recent addition to the North Bay theater scene. Originally from Brazil, she has an impressively deep background in theatrical training. She was most recently seen on the local stage in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui at Petaluma’s Mercury Theater.
Erias plays all the characters except Belville, who is played by Bay Area actor Sean Mireles Bolton. The show will be at Theater of Yugen, a small Noh theater space on Mariposa Street in San Francisco, one of 16 spaces hosting various parts of the festival.
“Festivals are a great place for people to come together as a community. And it’s international, so you can meet other artists and see how they do theater around the world,” Erias says.
“It’s only a 60-seat house, though,” Lohr warns. “So get your tickets while you can.”
San Francisco International Arts Festival presents ‘Rio Journal’ at Theatre of Yugen’s NOHSpace, 2840 Mariposa St., San Francisco. Thursday, May 7, 7pm; Saturday, May 9, 2 & 8pm. $25–$40. 415.399.9554. sfiaf.org.
