SINS INVALID: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility Anual Show

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 11, 2010
Media Alert and invitation to cover:
SINS INVALID: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility
Disability, art, sex and politics
share the spotlight at Theater Artaud
October 8, 9, & 10, 2010
SINS INVALID: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty in the Face of Invisibility,

San Francisco’s unique performance art and disability justice project returns for its fifth annual show, this year at Theatre Artaud. One reviewer has described the acclaimed and highly anticipated event as simultaneously “heart-stopping, jaw-dropping, funny, loud, beautiful, sad and smoking-hot...”.
SINS INVALID director and co-founder Patricia Berne describes the project’s goal as seeking to re-identify what is seen as the problem of disability. “It’s not the disability that’s the problem,” Berne states,” but the social resistance to accepting it.” SINS INVALID’s performances redefine the “problem” by exploring disability and chronic illness in the context of race, sexual orientation and gender identity. It’s a powerful mix, and SINS INVALID goes even further by offering a radical solution: celebrate all bodies as beautiful and valuable. This results in an edgy, honest, intimate, deeply felt and unabashedly sexy program. Audience members routinely say the performances completely changed their view of sex and disability.

Patty Berne, co-founder Leroy F. Moore, Jr., a group of local artists and two guest artists from outside the Bay Area will mount this year’s show, Knotting Stories over Time and Geography using theatre, dance, music, spoken word, film, video and poetry. “It’s not a cabaret, but an arc that connects the stories into a whole narrative of who we are,” says Berne.

Solidifying its national reputation as artists for social justice, SINS INVALID has been invited to perform at Britain’s DaDa Fest this fall, and performed this past July in Raleigh, North Carolina at the National Youth Leadership Network. Year-round in San Francisco SINS INVALID offers performance and educational workshops, community dialogues, and an Artists in Residence program for artists with disabilities who are also from Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Indeterminate gender communities and/or communities of color.

2010 artists include: Aurora Levins Morales, Nomy Lamm, Antoine-DeVinci Hunter, Maria R. Palacios, seeley quest, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Leah Lakshmi, Piepzna-Samarasinha, Alex Cafarelli, Amal Kouttab, Adrienne Krug, Tina D’Elia, Ellery Russian, Juba Kalamka, Pamela Greenberg, Todd Herman and Patty Berne.

For more information and to set up interviews, please contact Belinda Taylor at (510) 845-4177.