With support from the California Arts Council, Eye Zen Presents will premiere OUT of Site: SOMA, a new site-responsive, theatrically immersive walking tour through the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco celebrating its new national status as the first LGBTQ+ and Leather Cultural District. The tours will place audiences in actual physical sites of LGBTQ ancestry in San Francisco neighborhoods, showing the overlap of social histories, industrial space and workers with queer emergence and identity.
Since its founding in 2007, Eye Zen Presents has created multidisciplinary community-building events in San Francisco in traditional and alternative theater spaces, private homes, gardens and community centers. Our productions focus on LGBTQ+ history and experimentally blend performative and visual disciplines: physical theater, puppetry, contemporary dance, drag, circus, live music, and video. We work with community partners to devise and produce new performance, curate exhibitions and offer educational opportunities. Our walking tours create an immersive spectacle in real time and in public space, using sidewalks, plazas, parks, and privately owned public open spaces (POPOS).