Frank Smigiel, from SFMOMA, calls me up and asks if I want to play the Mayor of San Francisco. Not the actual mayor, but some conceptual version of a mayor in a performance piece by these South African artists in the Mission District.
I’m thinking: Why me? I’m not an actor. I’m not a politician. I’m definitely not qualified to represent civic authority of any kind. But Frank’s persistent, and there’s something about the whole thing that gets under my skin in that good way, you know? When you’re uncomfortable but intrigued. When saying yes means stepping into something you don’t fully understand but probably should.
These artists, Sello Pesa, Vaughn Sadie, and the Ntsoana dancers, they’re not interested in theatre-theatre. They’re interested in the street, in what happens when bodies move through changing neighborhoods, when light shifts, when the crowd becomes part of the thing without necessarily knowing it. The Mission’s been ground zero for all the tensions that come when money floods a place that used to be something else. When long-time residents get priced out. When the fabric of a neighborhood gets stretched until it’s barely recognizable.
And here I am, supposed to embody civic authority in the middle of it all. The irony isn’t lost on me. I’m part of the problem, in a way, another outsider, another media figure parachuting in. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s exactly what makes it work.
The whole thing takes place at dusk, which is perfect because that’s when cities become something else entirely. When the day people go home and the night people emerge. When shadows get long and ambiguous. The dancers blend into the crowd, you don’t always know who’s performing and who’s just walking home from work. People get invited to participate, and suddenly the line between audience and actor dissolves completely.
Playing mayor means standing there as a symbol while real life swirls around you. It means being complicit, being watched, being a stand-in for power structures that shape neighborhoods without asking permission. It’s uncomfortable as hell. Which is probably the most honest position I could occupy.