Freebie of the week: Since opening in 2022, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco has employed an outsider role in the city’s art scene. It charges no admission, holds no permanent collection and follows what founding director Ali Gass calls a “startup” approach, relying on flexibility and creativity to stay afloat in a time when many museums and nonprofit arts organization struggle. Also: Bay Area tech companies supply a good chunk of its financial base. The museum says the approach won’t change, even though the facility is moving from its original home in the Dogpatch area to a funky little building dubbed “The Cube” in the heart of the financial district. The grand opening, at 345 Montgomery St., is Friday, and there are three new exhibits. Maryam Yousif’s “Riverbend” collection of wooden architectural structures is inspired by recollections of her youth in Iraq. A multi-artist collection curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah titled “The Poetics of Dimensions” features provocative works crafted from such everyday items as durags, plastic objects and shoelaces. A “Spotlight” exhibit focuses on Kathleen Ryan, whose sculptures, as the museum describes them, “reimagine the detritus of American consumerism.” Opening weekend includes special events Friday through Sunday. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and admission is still free. More information is at icasf.org.
Here come the singing 😀😄😝: In 2018, Keith Harrison Dworkin and Laura Schein hatched what is either the most brilliant or most deranged idea in theater history with their musical “Emojiland.” Yes, we are talking about an entire musical (two hours and 20 minutes) devoted to those little faces, animals, household objects and other symbols developed in the 1990s and now a ubiquitous element of written communication. You may frown (😠) on the concept but consider that one of the finest writers in history—Vladimir Nabokov — suggested back in the 1960s that the world needed a typographical alphabet to capture essential human emotions. Unlike its subject matter, “Emojiland” has had a little difficulty really taking off. It debuted to mostly favorable reviews at the New York Musical Theatre Festival in 2018, which led to a follow-up 2020 off-Broadway production that ran headlong into the COVID pandemic (😷) and was canned after some 60 shows. A national tour in 2022 was scuttled after the show’s first stop. Since then, there have been a smattering of one-off concert productions of the musical, but that’s it. Until now. San Jose Playhouse is presenting a new, slightly condensed version of “Emojiland” which eliminates a few characters but adds a new one: “Angry Face” (probably inspired by Silicon Valley rush hour traffic). The show involves a community of emojis living in a smartphone who find their existence threatened by—wait for it —a software update. “Emojiland” is playing through Nov. 24 at San Jose’s 3Below Theaters and Cafe. Tickets are $65; go to 3belowtheaters.com/.
We have a new ‘Clue’: The long-running iconic “Clue” franchise dates to 1943 with a board game designed by British game designer Anthony E. Pratt, who probably had no idea of the monster he unleashed on an unsuspecting public. The game debuted in 1949 by Waddingtons in the U.K.—its title at the time was “Cluedo”— and eventually was acquired by Hasbro. Updated and launched several times since, it went on to sell more than 200 million copies worldwide. Spinoff games, books, a TV series and a 1985 film comedy (which, in deference to the game’s ever-changing storyline and finale, featured three different endings) all emerged, as well as a stage farce that premiered in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 2017 with a cast that included Sally Struthers. The productions are based on the concept of a group of odd strangers gathered at a mansion and who find themselves thrust into a murder mystery that players and viewers are meant to solve as the mystery unfolds (giving rise to phrases such as “Colonel Mustard in the library with the wrench”). A national tour of play, with a script adapted by Sandy Rustin from Jonathan Lynn’s film screenplay, is onstage through Sunday at San Francisco’s Curran Theater and Oct. 29-Nov. 3 at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. San Francisco tickets run $50-$130 at broadwaysf.com and San Jose tickets run $32-$130 at broadwaysanjose.com
An orchestrated Boo! Symphony San Jose is doubling down on the Halloween spirit this weekend by offering two performances of “Symphonic Spooktacular,” a concert of spine-tingling music labeled “Haunting Harmonies.” They’re pulling out the usual suspects when it comes to pieces that can stir up the dread, beginning with J.S. Bach’s famous Toccata & Fugue in D minor, a masterpiece so harrowingly evocative it has been deployed in at least 29 film scores, most notably in Disney’s “Fantasia,” but also in “Sunset Boulevard,” “Psycho,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “The Babadook” and “7 Faces of Dr. Lao.” Also in the eerie lineup are Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” (another “Fantasia” fave), Saint-Saens’ “Danse Macabre,” Schubert’s “Die Erlkönig” and selections from Bernard Herrmann’s screechy “Psycho” Suite and John Williams’ “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Concertgoers are invited to don costumes, as there will be prizes awarded. Peter Jaffe conducts the orchestra and the Symphony San Jose Chorale. Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the California Theatre. Find tickets, $35-$115 plus a $6.50 fee at symphonysanjose.org or (408) 286-2600.
The first time’s the charm: The San Francisco Opera Orchestra has given many a stand-alone concert in the 101 years of the company’s history, but never, curiously enough, has it performed Beethoven’s mighty Ninth Symphony, which has a stirring vocal component in its concluding movement’s “Ode to Joy.” That omission is rectified this weekend as the Orchestra and the Opera Chorus, along with four soloists, give the famous work its due in observance of its 200th anniversary. At 7:30 p.m. Saturday, music director Eun Sun Kim will lead the performance, which will feature soprano Jennifer Holloway, mezzo-soprano Annika Schlicht, tenor Russell Thomas and bass Kwangchul Youn. Tickets, $140-$300, are available at (415) 864-3330 or sfopera.com. The concert is preceded at 6 p.m. by an exploratory lecture about the work by company musicologist Kip Cranna.
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