Virtual lecture- Curtain going up: Entertainment in San Francisco before the 1906 quake - Tuesday May 25 at 7pm

Practically overnight, San Francisco transformed itself from a sleepy village into an instant and vibrant city. The city was alive with all kinds of entertainments from opera to the shady melodeons. It went from a cultural backwater to an entertainment mecca with something for everyone. Join us here online at www.mpdsf.org on TUESDAY MAY 25 at 7pm as Stanford Associate Professor Emeritus William Eddelman explores the theatrical venues and stars who made San Francisco a city of acceptance, free ideas and a love of the bizarre and unusual. Was this the beginning of San Francisco’s reputation as that “wicked city” on the Pacific Ocean; a shock to puritanical America? As H.L Menken said,”What fetched me instantly, and thousands of other newcomers with me, was the subtle but unmistakable sense of escape from the United States."

William S. Eddelman (Associate Professor Emeritus, Stanford University) holds an MA and PhD in Theater from Stanford University. He has been a set and costume designer and a theater historian for more than forty years, is a specialist in international theatre design, a lecturer at the Fromm Institute, and serves on the board of the Achenbach Graphic Arts Council at the Legion of Honor and as Vice President and Treasurer for the Museum of Performance + Design.

This event is sponsored in part by a grant from Grants for the Arts