Course Syllabus

English 1B, Fall 2010
College of Alameda; Professor Wanda Sabir
Course code 42730, Room CV200 9-10:50 TTh
Class Meetings: August 24-Dec. 9; No classes: 9/6; 11/11; 11/25-28

Final Exam: 8-10, Tuesday, Dec.16 (Portfolios due via e-mail)
Drop dates: Sept. 7 (w/refund), Sept. 24 (w/out a W), Nov. 24 (w/W).

Syllabus for English 1B: College Composition and Reading

“It is simply a fact that black people understand race long before white people do. They know how it shapes their lives—or at least that it does shape their lives, even if they remain a bit sketchy for a while on the details—before they finish elementary school in most cases. And for every ounce of racial wisdom contained in the mind of a black child barely ten years old, or even seven for that matter, there is a corresponding void in the mind of a similar white child, the latter having never had to contemplate her racial position or identity in most cases, and thus remaining gleefully ignorant of the role of race in the warp and woof of her society.

“It doesn’t matter, by the way, if you’re a white kid who grew up around black and brown folks. It doesn’t matter if you had black friends—I mean really had them, not just acquaintances. If you’re white you simply will not, cannot, understand race, or even see that race matters at that age. There is no reason that you should; no experience would have forced the issue, and few parents would have sat you down to begin the lesson.

“That’s a luxury, a privilege. Not necessarily one that serves us well—after all, to be ignorant about the world which one lives is never advisable—but a privilege nonetheless” (Tim Wise in White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son 23).

I agree it is a rather long excerpt, but it takes two paragraphs to get to the word I want to highlight: “privilege,” Tim Wise, a Southerner, is such the poster boy for airing his laundry on the front pages of the American discourse on race and privilege. If you don’t know him, you certainly should. His third book is hot off the presses, July 2010: Color Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity.

This semester we will read a variety of books interrogating the notion of “privilege” and what gives some people certain benefits denied others. We will also look at our subjective and societal world view and see how this is enhanced or truncated depending on one’s place in the hierarchy of “privilege” whether one is a part of the “in-crowd” or banished like Cinderella to a station by the fireplace. I use the term banished intentionally. For those who know the story, recall Cinderella’s place at the head of the table, heir to the riches stolen from her by the interloping step-mother and step-siblings—she was robbed.

The same story—Cinderella’s, could be used as an analogy for the colonizers and Western nations’ exploitation of labor and people through African chattel slavery, and global kidnap and extortion. The west came by its riches through criminal actions, unprosecuted and for the most part, without redress.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones, introduces its readers to a peculiar scenario, black slave owners. The novel makes both reader and character question its “known world.” What characters and values populate one’s known world and how does this affect one’s behavior? Can we really be surprised when the mentee or apprentice ends up like the master or mentor? When you look at your life, are you surprised at how you turned out or was it to be expected? When you recognized the pattern, did you choose to continue or was it too late to change? What about the characters in Jones’s Known World, can they change or is it too late?

In the novel: Angry Black White Boy or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, author Adam Mansbach looks at guilt (based on collective wrong doing) and how this motivates a character to try to correct a wrong. Is guilt a sustainable motive for change? What would Tim Wise or Shakti Butler—two scholars who look at race and privilege say about this?

Are you privileged and if so, what have you benefited from without having to exert any effort? Have you ever thought about this before: your privileges?

From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multi-Cultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002 edited by Ishmael Reed is our final book and it presents a vast cross section of America through the voices of its artists both young and older more established writers in a variety of styles. We will read the play based on the book by the same title: To Kill A Mockingbird. Students will also have the opportunity to present an essay based on a book of their choice this semester taking it’s theme from a topic covered this semester: privilege.

Now more about the course
English 1B is a transferable college writing course. It builds on the competencies gained in English 1A with a more careful and studied analysis of expository writing based on careful reading of selected plays, poems, novels, and short fiction.

Plan to have a challenging, yet intellectually stimulating 18 weeks, which I hope you begin by setting goals for yourself. Make a schedule and join or create a study group. Writing is a social activity, especially the type of writing you’ll be doing here. We always consider our audience, have purpose or reason to write, and use research to substantiate our claims, even those we are considered experts in.

We’re supposed to write about 8000 words or so at this level course. This includes drafts. What this amounts to is time at home writing, time in the library researching, reading documents to increase your facility with the ideas or themes your are contemplating, before you once again sit at your desk writing, revising, and writing some more.

Writing is a lonely process. No one can write for you. The social aspect comes into play once you are finished and you have an opportunity to share.


Student Learning Outcomes

Student Learning Outcomes include a better facility with written communication which includes critical thinking, analysis and of course comprehension. Such tools help us make better choices and decisions about our lives and the lives of those persons we are responsible for. Hopefully students will gain an appreciation for the literary arts beyond what is due for the course. Education is not limited to the classroom, rather an implicit goal is always to trigger a desire in students to continue the cultural pursuit after transfer, after graduation, after career goals are met. Reading and writing are skills one does have to practice to prevent dullness, so another goal and SLO for this course is for students to know how to keep their tools ready for use which might translate into keeping a journal once the semester ends, reading more for pleasure, going to literary events, and/or hanging onto some of the course reference books like Diana Hacker's Rules for Writer.


Extra book requirement and presentation(s)

Students will also profile a Northern California artist who is using their work to shatter racially biased or stereotypical myths and empower the powerless. The book one reads and presents can be about this person or written about this person. Students who chose a person who is under 30 get an extra point. The person does not have to be alive (but they have to be contemporary—recently deceased). Pick someone you admire. Each of these is a separate presentation – book and person profiled (2). Students can work with a partner on this.

Methodology

Keep a reading log. Discussion groups will meet each week. Students will also keep a reading log/journal/notes with key ideas outlined for each discussion section, along with vocabulary and key arguments listed, along with primary writing strategies employed: description, process analysis, narration, argument, cause and effect, compare and contrast, definition, problem solving.

Each book or play will have a corresponding essay. There will also be a series of short 250 word essay responses posted on the class blog. Students have a choice of writing a new paper or expanding the cyber-assignment into a longer work. Each research paper will be between 3-4 pages long.

The portfolio is due Tuesday, Dec. 7. We will begin working on the portfolio essays the week of Nov. 30-Dec. 2. There is no final the day of the final. Student presentations will be on-going throughout the semester. The final week of classes students will present their essays based on their independent readings.


Essay research requirements

Each essay needs to use at least 3-4 outside sources which should include at least one (1) scholarly article along with other material (taken from the COA Library or on-line Library Database (if possible). Each essay should also include One (1) direct quote, one (1) free-paraphrase and one (1) block quote—one citation per page—no more, no less. Each essay also needs to include a works cited page and a bibliography. We will practice this in class. We will write many of the shorter essays in class or for homework. The task should be simple once students decide which four (4) elements they’d like to respond to in depth.

I am making an assumption that students know how to correctly document their sources using MLA. For those students who are rusty on MLA or grammar, I suggest purchasing Stewart Pidd Hates English and reviewing the book self-paced with me. For each essay that does not receive a passing grade (A, B, C), students will have to write an essay in third person discussing what errors the writer made, what rules apply, and how the corrected passage or sentence should read. Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers or an acceptable reference like this will be the source for the corrections and cited in the works cited at the end of the essay. This essay will accompany the corrected essay and the graded draft—three (3) essays in total. Students only have two opportunities to correct failed essays this way (unless the student is also participating in the SPHE tutorial sessions). After these opportunities have passed, students are stuck with the grade they receive. Reasoning: At this level, I expect students to know how to write passing essays at the first submission. Submit your best work the first time. Don’t submit drafts, masquerading as polished work.


Midterm
There will be a midterm. It’s topic will probably come from the Reed anthology.


Theatre Field Trips (4)
1. I’d like to take a field trip to see the play: Trouble in Mind By Alice Childress, Directed by Robin Stanton, August - September, 2010

Obie award-winning classic Trouble in Mind follows a mixed-race cast attempting to mount a production of a “progressive” new play on Broadway in the 1950s. The play—an anti-lynching drama set in the South—is written by a white man and directed by a white man, and marks the first opportunity for a gifted black actress to play a leading role on Broadway. But what compromises must she make to succeed? More than 40 years after it was written, Trouble in Mind, according to The New York Times, “still has the power to make one feel its anger and humor.” Bay Area favorite Margo Hall will make her Aurora debut with this play. Taken from the website: http://www.auroratheatre.org/

Check your calendars for Tuesday, August 31, 7 PM or Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010. The Aurora Theatre is in downtown Berkeley and on the BART route: 2081 Addison Street in Berkeley.

2. Another play I’d like to attend as a class is free: Genny Lim’s 1982 play, Paper Angels in a new multimedia production to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West, Wednesday to Friday: September 15, 16 and 17 at dusk in Portsmouth Square, (the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, (Grant Street at Clay Street) as a part of the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Visit www.sffringefestival.org and www.directarts.org. I am going Friday, Sept. 17. I have classes the other two nights.

Set in 1915 during the Chinese Exclusion Act, PAPER ANGELS is about an elderly Chinese railroad worker attempting to bring his wife to America after many decades of separation. A seminal play by San Francisco native Genny Lim, the play premiered in 1982 and was subsequently filmed for American Playhouse on PBS starring James Hong and Joan Chen. Dusting off this prescient gem nearly three decades later in the wake of heated debates on America’s immigration policy, Direct Arts’s new multimedia production incorporates projections of archival images, live traditional Chinese music, spoken word and segments of Chinese opera and folkdance.

3. The third play I’d like us to see, maybe three and four, respectively, are: Dan Hoyle’s THE REAL AMERICANS, through November 6, 2010. Developed with and directed by Charlie Varon, the show will play Wednesday through Friday at 8:00 pm and Saturday at 5:00 pm. All shows are on The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia Street in San Francisco. For tickets, the public may call Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

Hoyle’s THE REAL AMERICANS connects two worlds that usually prefer to stay apart: the liberal, achingly hip, moral-relativism of gentrified city life and the conservative, absolutist, and often hostile populism that Hoyle found overflowing in small-town America. Living out of his van and sleeping in people’s yards and Walmart parking lots, Hoyle shared meals and conversation with cowboys, coal miners, soldiers, farmers, rural drug dealers, itinerant preachers, gun salesmen, closeted gay fundamentalists and creation theory experts. Frequently grateful for their hospitality, often perplexed by their beliefs, he sought to see the world through their eyes and understand their anger. Hoyle won the prestigious 2007 Will Glickman “Best New Play” Award for “Tings Dey Happen,” which enjoyed extended runs at The Marsh and also Off-Broadway, where it was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. Both “Tings Dey Happen” and THE REAL AMERICANS are directed by Charlie Varon. We can talk about dates in class.

4. Don Reed's EAST 14TH - TRUE TALES OF A RELUCTANT PLAYER has been extended at The Marsh Berkeley through September 12, 2010. The show has now entered its second sold-out year – it started at The Marsh San Francisco in May, 2009! – and its fourteenth extension.

Recently, Reed shared one of the stories from EAST 14TH with Oprah's new television network. Entitled BUTTER, it is already available on her website at http://www.oprah.com/own/innerview.html?page_id=14 and will air beginning 1/1/11.

Reed, who is the comedian/warm-up host for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno during the week, is delighted to be spending his weekends performing on his home turf in the East Bay. When playing on Fridays, the show will start at 9:00 pm, on Saturdays at 8:00 pm and on Sundays at 7:00 pm. All shows take place at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley. For tickets, the public may call Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

EAST 14TH chronicles the true tale of a young man raised by his mother and ultra-strict stepfather as a middle class, straight A, God-fearing church boy. The boy, however, wanted to be just like his dear old Dad. Too bad he didn't know dear old Dad was a pimp. Very funny, definitely poignant — a ride down a street you won't soon forget. The San Francisco Chronicle described Reed as an "Irresistible presence," and the East Bay Express declared the show ‘...Nothing short of amazing." The show is a best Bay Area Critics Circle Award Solo Performance nominee.

Friday, August 6; Sunday, August 8
Saturday, August 14; Sunday, August 15
Friday, August 20; Sunday, August 22
Saturday, August 28; Sunday, August 29
Saturday, September 4
Saturday, September 11; Sunday, September 25
Saturday, September 31; Sunday, September 12


Jot down briefly what your goals are this semester. List them in order of importance.

1.



2.



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4.



5.



Homework Assignment 1:
E-mail introduction due Aug. 31-Sept. 2 Send to coasabirenglish1B@gmail.com

Please send me an email and introduce yourself to me. Besides the usual: where are you from? What languages do you speak besides English? What child are you in the family? What are your hobbies and why are you taking this class?

Include: your contact information: Name, Address, phone number, best e-mail address, best time to call and answers to these questions as well: What strengths do you bring to the class? What do you hope to obtain from the course – any particular exit skills? What do I need to know about you to help you meet your goals?


Homework Assignment 2:
Written Response to the Syllabus due by Sept. 2

Write a comment to me regarding the syllabus: your impressions, whether you think it is reasonable, questions, suggestions. This is our contract, I need to know you read it and understand the agreement.


Presentation 1: Due Tuesday, Sept. 14

Bring in an object that represents American culture. Be prepared to share. Write a brief profile on the object justifying its inclusion in the archives (100 words or so). You will post the written response on the blog. I’ll take photos.


Library Orientation
TBA

Grading

Blog essays and comments: 15 percent
Discussion Groups and Preparedness: 10 percent
Midterm: 25 percent
Research Essays/Presentation: 25 percent
Portfolio: 25 percent


The blog and in-class essays, which take their themes from the class readings are practice essays, and are about a fourth of your grade, your midterm is another fourth with the peer reviews. The short research essays or expanded freewrites are another fourth. Your portfolio is the final chunk bringing the grand total to 100 percent! The portfolio is really just a compilation of your work this semester with two cover essays, each just one page in length. (Save all of your work.) I suggest students start a personal blog for the class and send me the link for your portfolio at the end of the course.

To encourage participation and for this students have to be prepared, I weighed the preparedness and participation strongly which means I will be taking notes when students do not do their homework. If you are in a group where students are pretending to be prepared when they are not, drop me an anonymous note. If a student is absent, he or she cannot make up in-class assignments such as group work, freewrites, presentations, etc.

I am not above pop quizzes on readings. Remember, this plan can change in a twinkling of the eye, if we find it isn’t working.


Writing Center

The Writing Lab (L-234-235, 748-2132) is a great place to get one-on-on assistance on your essays, from brainstorming and planning the essays, to critique on the essay for clarity, organization, clearly stated thesis, evidence of support, logical conclusions, and grammatical problems for referrals to other ancillary materials to build strong writing muscles such as SkillsBank, the Bedford Handbook on-line, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers on-line, Townsend Press, and other such computer and cyber-based resources. Call for hours. There is also an Open Lab for checking e-mail, and a Math Lab. All academic labs are located in the Learning Resource Center (LRC) upstairs from the library.

Students have to enroll in LRNE 501 (Supervised Tutoring) Class Code: 43990 to use the academic labs and to print essays. It is free and there no penalties. It takes 24-hours to kick in, so register now. Go to www.peralta.edu Click enroll now link. Click activate my account link… and follow the instructions to activate your account and set your password. The steps are too many to type here. If you have questions see Pat Denoncourt, LRC Coordinator, Rm. L-204 The student ID is necessary to use the labs and to check out books. The IDs are free and you can take the photo in the F-Building, Student Services. There is also a Cyber Café in the F-Building on the second floor in the cafeteria area.

Have a tutor of teacher sign off on your essays before you turn them in; if you have a “R,” which means revision necessary for a grade or “NC” which means “no credit,” you have to go to the lab and revise the essay with a tutor or teacher before you return both the graded original and the revision (with signature) to me. Revise does not mean “rewrite,” it means to “see again.”

When getting assistance on an essay, the teacher or tutor is not an editor, so have questions prepared for them to make best use of the 15-20 minute session in the Lab. For more specific assistance sign up for one-on-one tutoring, another free service. For those of you on other campuses, you can get assistance at the Merritt Colleges’ Writing Center, as well as Laney’s or Berkeley City’s. If I have an assistant this semester, that will be additional support for writers and we will post study halls hours. Presently, you can come to my office hours for assistance.

All essay assignments you receive comments on have to be revised prior to resubmission; included with the revision is a student narrative essay to me regarding your understanding of what needed to be done and what composition rules support this conclusion; a student can prepare this as a part of the Lab visit, especially if said student is unclear over what steps to take.

Students can also visit me in office hours for assistance; again, prepare your questions in advance to best make use of the time. Do not leave class without understanding the comments on a paper. I don’t mind reading them to you.

English language fluency in writing and reading; a certain comfort and ease with the language; confidence and skillful application of literary skills associated with academic writing. Familiarity if not mastery of the rhetorical styles used in argumentation, exposition and narration will be addressed in this class and is a key student learning outcome (SLO).

We will be evaluating what we know and how we came to know what we know, a field called epistemology or the study of knowledge. Granted, the perspective is western culture which eliminates the values of the majority populations, so-called underdeveloped or undeveloped countries or cultures. Let us not fall into typical superiority traps. Try to maintain a mental elasticity and a willingness to let go of concepts which not only limit your growth as an intelligent being, but put you at a distinct disadvantage as a species.

This is a highly charged and potentially revolutionary process - critical thinking. The process of evaluating all that you swallowed without chewing up to now is possibly even dangerous. This is one of the problems with bigotry; it’s easier to go with tradition than toss it, and create a new, more just, alternative protocol.


Grades, Portfolio

We will be honest with one another. Grades are not necessarily an honest response to work; grades do not take into consideration the effort or time spent, only whether or not students can demonstrate mastery of a skill - in this case: essay writing. Grades are an approximation, arbitrary at best, no matter how many safeguards one tries to put in place to avoid such ambiguity. Suffice it to say, your portfolio will illustrate your competence. It will represent your progress, your success or failure this summer session in meeting your goal.


Office Hours

I’d like to wish everyone good luck. I am available for consultation beginning week two: Monday mornings 9:30-10:30 a.m., Wednesday 9:30-10:30 a.m., Wednesday afternoon 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, if you want to take me to lunch—just kidding, I am available after 12 for appointments if you notify me in advance. All the office hours take place in my office, L-236. I am not on campus on Fridays. (Jot my cell number down in this section.) My office number is (510) 748-2131, e-mail varies per class: coasabirenglish1B@gmail.com

I am more a phone person than an email person, so you can call me if I don’t respond to an email. I do read your blog posts.

I’d encourage students to exchange phone numbers with classmates (2), so if you have a concern, it can be addressed more expediently when I am not available. Study groups are recommended, especially for those students finding the readings difficult; don’t forget, you can also discuss the readings as a group in the Lab with a teacher or tutor acting as facilitator.

Keep a vocabulary log for the semester and an error chart (taken from comments on essay assignments). List the words you need to look up in the dictionary, also list where you first encountered them: page, book and definition, also use the word in a sentence. You will turn this in with your portfolio.

I do not expect students to confuse literal with free paraphrase (a literal paraphrase is plagiarism). Students should also not make confused word errors, sentence fragment errors, comma splice errors, subject verb agreement errors, errors in parallel structure, subject verb agreement errors, MLA citations errors, errors with ellipses, formatting an essays—margins, headings, etc. If you are not clear on what I mean, again I suggest you run through Stewart Pidd Hates English. It is on reserve in the COA library.

Students are expected to complete their work on time. If you need more time on an assignment, discuss this with me in advance to keep full credit. Again certain assignments, such as in-class essays cannot be made up. All assignments prepared outside of class are to be typed, 12-pt. font, double-spaced lines, indentations on paragraphs, 1-inch margins around the written work (see Hacker: The Writing Process; Document Design.) In class writing is to be written in ink—blue or black.


Cheating

Plagiarism is ethically abhorrent, and if any student tries to take credit for work authored by another person the result will be a failed grade on the assignment and possibly a failed grade in the course if this is attempted again. This is a graded course.

Homework

If you do not identify the assignment, I cannot grade it. If you do not return the original assignment you revised, I cannot compare what changed. If you accidentally toss out or lose the original assignment, you get a zero on the assignment to be revised. I will not look at revisions without the original attached – no exceptions. Some student essays will be posted on-line at the website. Students will also have the option of submitting assignments via email: coasabirenglish1B@gmail.com.

All assignments completed away from class should be typed. Use blue or black ink when writing responses in class. You can annotate your books in pencil.

Textbooks Recap:

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Amistad/Harper Collins, 2004.

Mansbach, Adam. Angry Black White Boy or The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay. New York: Crown/Three Rivers Press, 2005.

Reed, Ishmael, editor. From Totems to Hip Hop: A Multi-Cultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2003.

Student choice: published novel, play, collection of poetry, preferably a Northern California writer under 30 years old.

Other Books
Students need a grammar style book. You don’t have to purchase mine, but you need something comparable.

Hacker, Diana. Rules for Writers. Fourth or Fifth edition. Bedford/St. Martins. (If you don’t already have such a book.)

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (any edition). Visit the website: http://www.bartleby.com/141/ I need to check this against the book. I saw re: possessives where Strunk does not agree with Hacker (smile). When in doubt, chose Hacker.

A college dictionary. I recommend American Heritage.

Additional Items
Along with a college dictionary, the prepared student needs pens with blue or black ink, along with a pencil for annotating texts, paper, a stapler or paper clips, floppy disks, a notebook, three hole punch, a folder for work-in-progress, and a divided binder to keep materials together.

Also stay abreast of the news. Buy a daily paper. Listen to alternative radio:
KPFA 94.1 FM (Hardknock), KQED 88.5, KALW 91.7. Visit news websites: AllAfrica.com, Al Jazeera, CNN.com, AlterNet.org, DemocracyNow.org, FlashPoints.org, CBS 60Minutes.





COA Sabir English Classes Fall 2010
Theatre Field Trips (4)

1. I’d like to take a field trip to see the play: Trouble in Mind By Alice Childress
Directed by Robin Stanton, August 20 – September 26, 2010

Obie award-winning classic Trouble in Mind follows a mixed-race cast attempting to mount a production of a “progressive” new play on Broadway in the 1950s. The play—an anti-lynching drama set in the South—is written by a white man and directed by a white man, and marks the first opportunity for a gifted black actress to play a leading role on Broadway. But what compromises must she make to succeed? More than 40 years after it was written, Trouble in Mind, according to The New York Times, “still has the power to make one feel its anger and humor.” Bay Area favorite Margo Hall will make her Aurora debut with this play. Taken from the website: http://www.auroratheatre.org/

Check your calendars for Tuesday, August 31, 7 PM, Thursday, Sept. 2, 2010. Sunday, Sept. 19, 2 PM or 7 PM is also a possibility. Under 30 years old is always half price. I think they also have a student rate. We’d go as a group which is also discounted. The Aurora Theatre is in downtown Berkeley and on the BART route: 2081 Addison Street in Berkeley.

2. Another play I’d like to attend as a class is free: Genny Lim’s 1982 play, Paper Angels in a new multimedia production to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of Angel Island, the Ellis Island of the West, Wednesday to Friday: September 15, 16 and 17 at dusk in Portsmouth Square, (the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown, (Grant Street at Clay Street) as a part of the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Visit www.sffringefestival.org and www.directarts.org. I am going Friday, Sept. 17. I have classes the other two nights.

Set in 1915 during the Chinese Exclusion Act, PAPER ANGELS is about an elderly Chinese railroad worker attempting to bring his wife to America after many decades of separation. A seminal play by San Francisco native Genny Lim, the play premiered in 1982 and was subsequently filmed for American Playhouse on PBS starring James Hong and Joan Chen. Dusting off this prescient gem nearly three decades later in the wake of heated debates on America’s immigration policy, Direct Arts’s new multimedia production incorporates projections of archival images, live traditional Chinese music, spoken word and segments of Chinese opera and folkdance.

3. The third play I’d like us to see, maybe three and four, respectively, are: Dan Hoyle’s THE REAL AMERICANS, through November 6, 2010. Developed with and directed by Charlie Varon, the show will play Wednesday through Friday at 8:00 pm and Saturday at 5:00 pm. All shows are on The Marsh MainStage, 1062 Valencia Street in San Francisco. For tickets, the public may call Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

Hoyle’s THE REAL AMERICANS connects two worlds that usually prefer to stay apart: the liberal, achingly hip, moral-relativism of gentrified city life and the conservative, absolutist, and often hostile populism that Hoyle found overflowing in small-town America. Living out of his van and sleeping in people’s yards and Walmart parking lots, Hoyle shared meals and conversation with cowboys, coal miners, soldiers, farmers, rural drug dealers, itinerant preachers, gun salesmen, closeted gay fundamentalists and creation theory experts. Frequently grateful for their hospitality, often perplexed by their beliefs, he sought to see the world through their eyes and understand their anger. Hoyle won the prestigious 2007 Will Glickman “Best New Play” Award for “Tings Dey Happen,” which enjoyed extended runs at The Marsh and also Off-Broadway, where it was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show. Both “Tings Dey Happen” and THE REAL AMERICANS are directed by Charlie Varon. We can talk about dates in class.

4. Don Reed's EAST 14TH - TRUE TALES OF A RELUCTANT PLAYER has been extended at The Marsh Berkeley through September 12, 2010. The show has now entered its second sold-out year – it started at The Marsh San Francisco in May, 2009! – and its fourteenth extension.

Recently, Reed shared one of the stories from EAST 14TH with Oprah's new television network. Entitled BUTTER, it is already available on her website at http://www.oprah.com/own/innerview.html?page_id=14 and will air beginning 1/1/11.

Reed, who is the comedian/warm-up host for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno during the week, is delighted to be spending his weekends performing on his home turf in the East Bay. When playing on Fridays, the show will start at 9:00 pm, on Saturdays at 8:00 pm and on Sundays at 7:00 pm. All shows take place at The Marsh Berkeley, 2120 Allston Way in Berkeley. For tickets, the public may call Brown Paper Tickets at 800-838-3006 or visit www.themarsh.org

EAST 14TH chronicles the true tale of a young man raised by his mother and ultra-strict stepfather as a middle class, straight A, God-fearing church boy. The boy, however, wanted to be just like his dear old Dad. Too bad he didn't know dear old Dad was a pimp. Very funny, definitely poignant — a ride down a street you won't soon forget. The San Francisco Chronicle described Reed as an "Irresistible presence," and the East Bay Express declared the show ‘...Nothing short of amazing." The show is a best Bay Area Critics Circle Award Solo Performance nominee.

Friday, August 6; Sunday, August 8
Saturday, August 14; Sunday, August 15
Friday, August 20; Sunday, August 22
Saturday, August 28; Sunday, August 29
Saturday, September 4
Saturday, September 11; Sunday, September 25
Saturday, September 31; Sunday, September 12