FENCES Film's San Francisco Premiere to Reopen the Curran Next Week; Enter Ticket Lottery!

Paramount Pictures, with the Curran theater and the San Francisco Film Society, will present the San Francisco Premiere of the film Fences, which has been adapted into a motion picture by the late August Wilson. The event, 30 years after the play first played at the Curran theater ahead of its Broadway premiere, will reopen the Curran following a just-completed, extensive renovation.

The evening will be hosted by Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., who was mayor of San Francisco when Fences premiered at the Curran in 1987. The event will be followed by a conversation with the cast including Denzel Washington, Jovan Adepo, Mykelti Williamson, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Saniyya Sidney.

100 tickets will be released by online public lottery today. Details for entering the lottery can be found at sfcurran.com/shows/fences.

The original stage play of Fences, produced by Carole Shorenstein Hays and starring James Earl Jones and Mary Alice, premiered at the Curran theater on February 6, 1987 and opened on Broadway that spring. It went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play, as well as the Pulitzer Prize. The Tony Award was again given to Fences for the Broadway revival, which opened in the spring of 2010, produced by Carole Shorenstein Hays and Scott Rudin, and starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis (who both won Tony Awards for their roles as Leading Actor and Actress).

Fences is directed by Denzel Washington from a screenplay by August Wilson, adapted from Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The film stars Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, Jovan Adepo, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, and Saniyya Sydney. The film is produced by Scott Rudin, Denzel Washington and Todd Black.

Built in 1922, the Curran has housed some of the most important productions in history and has maintained a reputation over the course of its life as one of the greatest venues in North America. Now, nearly 100 years after it welcomed its first Bay Area audiences, the Curran has just completed a major restoration and renovation. Under the curation of eight-time Tony Award winner Carole Shorenstein Hays, the Curran is reopening as a 1,600 seat venue with a new mission, being a home for the most exciting stage works being conceived and created anywhere in the world.

For information, visit SFCURRAN.COM.