Jill Vice to Bring TIPPED & TIPSY to The Marsh, 3/1-4/6

Solo performer Jill Vice brings her "Best of Fringe" award-winning show TIPPED & TIPSY to The Marsh. A hilarious and touching send-up of American bar culture, TIPPED & TIPSY plays March 1 - April 6, 2014, with performances Saturdays at 5pm and Sundays at 7pm at The Marsh Studio Theater at 1062 Valencia Street. (Press opening is Sunday, March 9.) For tickets ($15-$50), the public may visit www.themarsh.org or call 415-282-3055 between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, Monday through Friday.

TIPPED & TIPSY takes place at HAPPY'S, where Jill Vice's deft physical comedy skills bring to life 14 characters including bartender Candy, three of her regular, hard-drinking customers, the lascivious bar owner, and an assortment of other saloon denizens. Traditions of the bar are celebrated and feats of alcohol induced courage honored, as Candy fights to keep her favorite regular from drinking himself to death.

Vice draws on 13 years' experience as a bartender for her high-energy one-woman show, having worked at more than 28 bars in San Francisco (some for just one day). She was inspired to answer both the questions people always ask about bartending, like "What's the craziest thing that's happened to you behind the bar?" - and some they don't - "How do you decide when to cut someone off?"

Praised by critics and audiences for its performances at the 2013 SF Fringe Festival, Jill Vice's TIPPED & TIPSY has been in development for more than two years at The Marsh in San Francisco with David Ford. The show made its debut at the Chicago Fringe Festival in 2012, and has since been performed at The Rogue Festival in 2013, and at the San Francisco Fringe Festival in 2013 where it won "Best of Fringe."

Jill Vice began studying performance art at the San Francisco Art Institute with Tony Labat. She trained in circus and clown with Jeff Raz at the San Francisco Circus Center (Class of 2009) and studied mime and mask with Leonard Pitt and James Donlon in the first year Flying Actors Studio (Class of 2010). A graduate of A.C.T.'s Summer Training Congress, Vice's background includes a wide array of performances in physical comedy, mime, clown, improv, and film. She played the lead in the short film "Last Trip to Spain," which received the award for "Best Short" at the Portland, Maine Film Festival. She once toured the UK as the lead singer and guitarist in the punk band Chester. Vice has bartended at more than 28 bars and clubs in San Francisco and recently did a piece for the Porchlight Storytelling series, Kitchen Confidential. Vice also coaches solo performers and actors in physicality and movement.

David Ford, who co-developed and directed TIPPED & TIPSY, has been collaborating on new and unusual theatre for two decades. His work includes Brian Copeland's new and critically acclaimed holiday show The Jewelry Box, as well as Copeland's current show The Scion and previous shows The Waiting Period and Not a Genuine Black Man, which currently holds the record for longest running solo performance in Bay Area history and has been performed more than 650 times in San Francisco, LA, and New York. Other work of note includes Say Ray, with storyteller-holy-man Ron Jones and Michael Rice, a mentally disabled performer; Charlie Varon's Feisty Old Jew; Geoff Hoyle's Geezer; Marilyn Pittman's It's All the Rage; and Cherry Zonkowski's Reading My Dad's Porn and French Kissing the Dog. He also worked with Bill Talen on the original creation of Reverend Billy, the Obie Award-winning theatre/political action piece. Ford's work has been seen regionally at Public Theater, Second Stage Theatre, Theatre at St. Clement's, Dixon Place, New York's Theater for the New City, Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, as well as at theatres around the Bay Area including Magic Theatre and Marin Theatre Company. Ford also teaches Creating and Performing Your Own Work at The Marsh, where he is a Resident Artist.

Photo credit: Christina McNeill

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