Unearthly numbers at SF Olympians
The sheer numbers of the SF Olympians Festival, now in its eighth year, stagger: 36 plays by 30 local writers, performed as staged readings by 86 actors over three weeks. This year’s theme, “Mediterranean Cruise,” means each play was inspired by an Egyptian, Mesopotamian or Latin myth, and the double bill on Thursday, Oct. 12, is especially tempting.
“Tiamet,” by festival founder Stuart Bousel, in and of itself builds on the festival’s extraordinary numbers, featuring a unicorn, a dungeon master, a five-headed dragon, each head played by a different actor, and six one-dimensional teenagers, all played by one actor.
In Megan Cohen’s “Abzu, or Thirst Trap” (Abzu and Tiamet are both Babylonian gods), a mere 1½ inches of water is dangerous, even deadly, and a god’s waterlogged origin story is only as crazy as our entry into the world: through a zestily envisioned birth canal.