Paul Festa
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
|
Paul Festa is an American writer, filmmaker, and violinist. Born and raised in San Francisco, he currently resides there with his husband James Harker.
Writing
Festa's essays have appeared in
Film
His widely acclaimed
Festa stars in his second film,
Festa wrote, produced, and edited, with director Austin Forbord, Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco (2011), an award-winning [6] documentary about the growth of theater in the San Francisco Bay Area from the Actor's Workshop in the 1950s through the present day.[7] The film features director Oskar Eustis and actors Robin Williams, Bill Irwin, and Peter Coyote, and is narrated by comedian Marga Gomez.
Festa's documentary Tie It Into My Hand (2013, 80 minutes) screened as a work in progress at ODC Theater in 2012. It captures several dozen artists—including poet Robert Pinsky, pianist Gary Graffman, actors Alan Cumming, Mink Stole, and Peter Coyote—giving Festa a violin lesson as they recount stories from their lives as artists, while also responding to the story of the hand injury that curtailed Festa's musical career.[8]
Music
As a violinist, Festa won the San Francisco Symphony Young Musicians Award, toured Scandinavia as soloist with the California Youth Symphony, studied violin at the Juilliard School from 1990 to 1993, and performed in New York with Albert Fuller's Helicon Ensemble.[9] Fourteen years after a repetitive strain injury curtailed his musical career, Festa resumed public performances in 2007 as both violinist and actor with the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater in San Francisco, and the North Bay Shakespeare Company in Novato, California.[10] At the October 2007 Boston University Messiaen Project conference "Messiaen the Theologian", Festa and pianist Luke Berryman gave the U.S. premiere of Messiaen's recently discovered 1933 Fantaisie for violin and piano.[11] He gave the New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles premieres[12] before playing the Betts Stradivarius at the October 2008 Washington, D.C., premiere with pianist Jerome Lowenthal at the Library of Congress.
Other appearances
Festa appears briefly in the films Act of Violence (1979), Filthy Gorgeous: The Trannyshack Story (2005) and Shortbus (2006).
References
- ^ Anthologies include Nerve: The First Ten Years as well as three of the annual Cleis Press Best Sex Writing compilations: Best Sex Writing 2008, Best Sex Writing 2006, and Best Sex Writing 2005
- ^ Praise for Apparition of the Eternal Church
- ^ IMDb: Awards for Apparition of the Eternal Church
- ^ Glitter Emergency awards
- ^ Glitter Emergency press
- ^ Stage Left awards
- ^ Stage Left Nominated for Emmy Award
- ^ "The Teachers". Archived from the original on 2012-09-19. Retrieved 2012-10-23.
- ^ Paul Festa: Music CV
- ^ Pacific Sun Archived 2009-01-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ U.S. premiere of Fantaisie Archived 2008-01-18 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Messiaen Centenary Celebration
External links
- PaulFesta.com, official site
- Apparition of the Eternal Church, film site
- The Glitter Emergency, film site
- Stage Left: A Story of Theater in San Francisco, film site
- Tie It Into My Hand Archived 2012-10-19 at the Wayback Machine, film site