Local Participates in LaborFest2014

Bay Area SAG-AFTRA actors shone in the spotlight at LaborFest2014. Held every July, the annual, monthlong cultural festival honors the legacy of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike and its leader, Harry Bridges. This year’s LaborFest celebrated the 80th anniversary of the historic strike.

The actors performed a staged reading of A Christmas Carol, directed and adapted by playwright Michael Gene Sullivan, also a SAG-AFTRA member. The event was a fundraiser for The Actors Fund.

“We are honored to be a part of LaborFest and share in San Francisco’s deep labor history,” said Len Egert, executive director of the San Francisco-Northern California Local. “We also appreciate the opportunity to bring awareness of The Actors Fund to the labor community and the public, and are proud to showcase our exceptional local SAG-AFTRA talent.”

SAG-AFTRA actors perform a staged reading of A Christmas Carol, adapted by member Michael Gene Sullivan, for LaborFest 2014. From left, Sullivan, Velina Brown, Michael Ray Wisely, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Cassidy Jamahl Brown and Mark Anderson Phillips.

Held on July 28 at The Tides Theatre on San Francisco’s Union Square, actors Sullivan, Velina Brown, Cassidy Jamahl Brown, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Mark Anderson Phillips and Michael Ray Wisely performed a rousing, worker-oriented version of the time-honored Christmas story. Playwright Sullivan brought Dickens’ themes of labor unrest, joblessness and poverty and into the 21st century, where the Cratchit family now lives in an Occupy encampment.

The reading featured classic songs from the labor movement, including There is Power in a Union and We Will Sing One Song. Musical director Joshua Raoul Brody provided accompaniment on accordion, with Eric Lenchner on guitar, while the 80 audience members clapped and sang along to every song.

July 28 would have been Bridges’ 113th birthday (he died in 1990), and the local wrapped the evening with a memorial tribute to Bridges, with cake, champagne and music.

The Bridges family attended the event and Bridges’ son, Robert Bridges, spoke to the crowd saying, “My father would have loved this tonight. He traveled all over the world and saw so many people who lived in poverty. He devoted his life to helping them.”

Harry Bridges’ granddaughter, Marie Shell (also a SAG-AFTRA member), sang The Ballad of Harry Bridges, by Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Shell spoke of her grandfather’s personal connection to SAG-AFTRA, noting that as the former regional director of the CIO in the 1940s, he worked to bring SAG into the fold.

“When SAG joined the CIO, he called it a ‘feather in his cap,’ and was very proud of me when I got my SAG card,” said Shell.

For more information about LaborFest, click here.

This item was originally featured in the October 2014 local newsletter.