“Josh Kornbluth is a genius: his latest show displays the full breadth of his keen insights and biting wit.”
–Theatrius
Josh Kornbluth will perform two of his award-winning solo shows this year. “What Is To Be Done?” is Josh’s latest solo offering. “Ben Franklin: Unplugged” is one of Josh’s classic pieces.
What Is To Be Done? – Fighting Fascism and Depression
A story of defeating depression by resisting fascism — and defeating fascism by resisting depression — this show is funny, inspired, timely, and deeply human. How do we find joy, even hope, in dark times? How can we discover our own power when the news makes us feel powerless? Is it possible both to acknowledge our current trauma and break through to positive action?
Josh creates his renowned long-form monologues through improvisation, and this improvised performance is part of the journey toward his next piece.
Developed in collaboration with Jon Tracy.
Review of “What Is To Be Done?”
Ben Franklin: Unplugged
Written & performed by Josh Kornbluth
In collaboration with director David Dower
Original Music Compositions & Sound Design: Joshua Raoul Brody
Ben Franklin: Unplugged will be performed with one intermission.
Gazing into the bathroom mirror one morning while shaving, Josh Kornbluth realizes that he looks remarkably like the guy on the $100 bill. Like any good Jewish son, he immediately calls his mother. From there he becomes obsessed with what it means to be a founding father, especially when your own father/son relationship (Ben had an illegitimate son named William who was a British loyalist during the Revolutionary War) is more than a bit strained. Part History Detectives and part embarrassingly hilarious autobiography, Kornbluth’s resulting investigation of the man behind the famous spectacles will take you from the hallowed halls of academia to Kornbluth’s richly comic interactions with his mother Bunny and Aunt Birdie, sharing along the way his discoveries about America’s history, family foibles, and the surprises beneath the surface of even our most familiar American tall tales.
Review of “Ben Franklin: Unplugged”
BONUS Performance – Helen Shumaker
In this very short excerpt from her solo piece Mona Rogers in Person, Helen Shumaker unleashes a woman so sharp she could “walk through a crowd and shred it.” Consider this your glittering, cigarette-scorched amuse-bouche — high hair, higher heels, and a tongue dipped in battery acid. Mona arrives armed with a beehive, a bad childhood, and a mother she’s never stopped arguing with. It’s camp. It’s caustic. It’s a former burlesque queen refusing to go quietly — and daring you to keep up.
Helen Shumaker is an American stage and screen actor best known for her unforgettable solo performance as Mona Rogers in Mona Rogers in Person, a cult favorite character she’s embodied in productions from San Francisco to Off-Broadway. She has a rich history in theatrical performance, appearing in classical and contemporary works as well as musical cabaret and ensemble theatre throughout her career. In addition to Mona Rogers, Shumaker has appeared in film and television credits like Haiku Tunnel and Love & Taxes, bringing her sharp comic instincts and commanding stage presence to each role.
“A sex bomb with a short fuse who dishes with the best of them in a voice that makes Bacall sound coy.” – Amy Hempel, Interview Magazine
Josh Kornbluth interviewed Helen Shumaker
Joshua Raoul Brody is a musician, composer, and sound designer specializing in improvisational theater (he has been musical director for BATS Improv since minutes after its inception 40 years ago) but has also done a bunch of other stuff. One of his proudest moments is having breakfast with Mr. Kornbluth at which each of them polished off three double-lattes.
David Dower is the Co-Producer and Executive Director of Club Fugazi. David’s journey as a theater producer began in San Francisco, where he founded Z Space and produced over fifty productions over a twenty-year span.
In that time, David began a long collaboration with monologist Josh Kornbluth, with whom he developed and directed new works for the stage including Ben Franklin: Unplugged, Love & Taxes, Citizen Josh, Andy Warhol: Good for the Jews?, Sea of Reeds, and staged the films Red Diaper Baby and Mathematics of Change in 2006. David also developed and directed new works by many Bay Area artists and ensembles, including Anne Galjour, Gary Leon Hill, Charlie Varon, and Word for Word. David led Z Space for 12 years before leaving to assume the role of Associate Artistic Director at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. He then became Artistic Director at ArtsEmerson, in Boston. He returned to San Francisco at the end of 2020 to assume the role of Executive Producer for The 7 Fingers US operations and lead the Club Fugazi project.
Note from the Sound Designer:
Careful listeners to the taped period music throughout the show will hear samples relevant to this evening’s performance in different ways. There are samples of Franklin’s invention, the glass armonica, which operates on the same principle as running one’s wetted finger around the rim of a fine crystal glass. The instrument caught the fancy of a few daring composers such as those featured here: W. A. Mozart and Nino Rota (who included the instrument in his score for Fellini’s tribute to Franklin’s contemporary, Casanova). There are also samples of Franklin’s composition: a suite of string quartets whose very novelty—they can be played on open (or “unfingered”) strings, thereby very democratically enabling just about anyone to play them—results in their being nearly unlistenable. And there is a Scottish folksong that made Franklin cry every time he heard it.
Coffee & Solo Story Workshop w/ Josh Kornbluth
In addition, you have three chances to have coffee with Josh while he leads a workshop designed to inspire you to write your own life story.
Sundays March 8, 15, and 22 at 11:00 am.
Josh Kornbluth
Festival Curator and Performer
Josh has been creating and performing autobiographical monologues for over three decades. Red Diaper Baby, his Off-Broadway debut, was selected for the Best American Plays of 1992 collection and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. He wrote and starred in feature-film adaptations of two of his shows, Haiku Tunnel (which was selected for the Sundance Film Festival and distributed by Sony Pictures Classics) and Love & Taxes (a “100% Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes) — both directed by his brother Jacob Kornbluth. For two years he hosted his own interview program on KQED-TV in San Francisco, cleverly titled The Josh Kornbluth Show. He was a Visiting Artist, and later a volunteer, at the Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco. He has also been a Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, based at UCSF. His “Citizen Brain” videos (citizenbrain.org) have been viewed by over half a million people. He has a Substack called “But Not Enough About Me” (https://joshkornbluth.substack.com/), which you can subscribe to for free. You can also find him at joshkornbluth.com. He lives in Berkeley with his wife and son.