By Nora Sawyer, Sausalito Historical Society
In the absence of the Sausalito Art Festival this Labor Day weekend, Festival organizers and Antenna Theater are debuting The Heart of San Francisco, a COVID-safe theatrical event celebrating the elements that make San Francisco so beloved. The Bay Area will be transformed into an outdoor theatrical venue for this interdisciplinary audio-visual performance. The Heart of San Francisco will unite sky writing, boats, windsurfers, music, the Golden Gate Bridge, mountains, and islands together for a performance to experience in-person or via video streaming.
PHOTO BY BRUCE FORRESTER
Chris Hardman (standing, center) with members of Snake Theater in the 70s. Flanking Chris are waterfront legends TJ Nelsen (far l.) and Don Arques (far r.)
The man behind this ambitious undertaking is Chris Hardman, who founded Antenna Theater 40 years ago. As a thirteen-year-old, young Chris first set eyes on Sausalito from the back seat of his parents' car. The son of a writer of TV Westerns, Hardman had spent most of his life in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Looking down into Sausalito from the 101, with "the fog coming down, and all the boats laid out, was like looking into Middle Earth," he remembers. It was a vision of another world, a place where he wanted to be.
But first, he "ran away and joined the theater." While attending Goddard College in Vermont, Hardman encountered Bread and Puppet Theater, a radical, political theater troupe. Hardman was inspired by the way the way the group merged sculpture, music, language, and dance to create art that worked in conversation with its audience. He left Goddard to work with the theater, ultimately moving to Coney Island, where he lived and worked, building a carnival fun house.
When he moved back to the West Coast, a friend offered him the use of a studio at Gate 3 in Sausalito. The catch, he was told, was that "it wouldn't be there for more than three months before the whole thing got torn down." He ended up staying there for over a decade.
Hardman brought the interactive, immersive aesthetic he’d cultivated with the Bread and Puppet Theater and at Coney Island to Snake Theater, which he co-founded and brought to Sausalito in 1972. Snake Theater created site-specific pieces that told stories utilizing existing environments — an empty gas station, or the beach at Fort Cronkhite — and turned them into something new, telling stories that made the familiar spaces resonate in new ways.
He also got involved in the waterfront’s political battles. Hardman moved onto the Liberty, a 65-foot tug located near the Napa St. Pier. Then, on August 4, 1980, Bob’s Boatyard was torn down. Hardman, along with Annie Hallett, Chris Tellis, Phil Frank, Stewart Brand, and others, started Art Zone, which sought to protect the waterfront from development, preserve Sausalito’s unique character, and protect the artists and artisans who had made it their home. Hardman even ran for city council, using what may be my all-time favorite political slogan, suggested by Phil Frank: “A Hardman is Good to Find.”
Hardman recalls thinking it would be simple. “I was naïve,” he says. “I thought if you stated things clearly, it would be obvious — people would understand.” Instead, “it turned into a giant slog.” Developers saw Sausalito’s waterfront as an under-developed asset, occupied by hippies and squatters. Some Sausalito residents looked at the houseboats and saw only lawlessness. And many on the waterfront weren’t interested in organizing. “Before Galilee, it was a bit of a cowboy town,” Hardman remembers. “People were building boats, feeling temporary, thinking short term.”
Even those who didn’t have their eyes on the horizon needed some convincing. People were drawn to the waterfront as a place to express their individuality. “It started off as this free, libertarian place, an alternative to living in society.” Creating a coalition from that mix proved difficult. “We had to convince people it was in their best interests.”
Ultimately, an even broader coalition is what made it work. “We found allies,” Hardman explains, “people who were invested in Sausalito, the meaning of it, a vision of it that went beyond real estate.”
Meanwhile Hardman was still creating art. Snake Theater productions often addressed the tensions felt along the waterfront, and residents’ fear of displacement. He also founded the Antenna Theater, which incorporated prerecorded interviews with members of the community, and used headphones to create mobile, interactive pieces. In art and in politics, Hardman sought to tell stories that blurred the lines between play and audience, between people’s stories and larger folkloric themes.
This September 7th, large and small boats will sail out on the bay for a performance that will be live-streamed for viewers at home. At 3 PM, a skywriter will draw a mile-high heart over the Golden Gate Bridge, which will be visible throughout the Bay.
“America is going through a gigantic re-appraisal right now.” Hardman says. The performance is a response to death and loss, to the guilt and powerlessness people are feeling. Hardman wants to give people a way to transform those feelings, and empower them to change things for the better.
“This is a radical invitation,” he explains. “Do we live in a bubble? We do. We need to make the bubble bigger – that’s the only way out of this.”
To learn more about the Heart of San Francisco performance, visit antenna-theater.org