SMALL BATCH, ARTISANAL COMEDY Will Play The Marsh Berkeley

The Marsh Berkeley offers up a work for the spiritually adventurous and existentially exhausted with the premiere of Alicia Dattner's Small Batch, Artisanal Comedy, a new solo show about love, loss, and the search for something handmade in an algorithmic age. Poking fun at the gourmands and the gauche alike, Dattner composts a season of stories into a self-deprecating comedy that turns the mundane absurd. Performed barefoot and drawn from Dattner's own life, the piece roams from organic coffee to artificial intelligence as it asks what gets lost when people stop making things with their hands and get bottled into digital identities.  Small Batch, Artisanal Comedy, directed by Tom Bentley-Fisher, will be presented 8:00pm Saturdays, September 19 – October 17, 2026 (Opens to press September 26) at The Marsh Berkeley (2120 Allston Way). For tickets ($25-$35 general admission sliding scale, $50 and $100 reserved, plus a $3 convenience fee per ticket) or more information the public may visit themarsh.org.

Said The Marsh Artistic/Executive Director Stephanie Weisman. "As we navigate this hyper-curated digital age, Alicia Dattner is the kind of performer who invites us to roll up our sleeves, dig deep, and cultivate something hilariously and poignantly human. Small Batch, Artisanal Comedy is the kind of exploratory work we nurture here at The Marsh."

Small Batch, Artisanal Comedy was presented as a Marsh Rising performance in May 2026, then titled Joke Mandala.

ABOUT THE CAST AND CREATIVES

Alicia Dattner (Playwright, Performer) is a Los Angeles based comedian who has performed with renowned local talents including Ali Wong, Moshe Kasher, and Arj Barker. Her signature colorful and eccentric style of embodied humor has garnered awards including “Best Comedian” titles from East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and San Francisco Weekly. A multi-Best of Fringe winner at the San Francisco Fringe Festival, Dattner has gone on to captivate audiences across the world in places like New York City, London, Honolulu, Bali, and Mumbai.

Tom Bentley-Fisher (Director) is an accomplished director, educator, and artistic director. He is currently the artistic director of Yat-Bentley Centre for Performance in Oakland. His productions have been featured at the acclaimed Festival Grec de Barcelona, including his 2016 multilingual international co-production of Burning Vision, incorporating film, dance, and original music. He has also been featured at the Festival Internacional Teatro Clásico de Mérida in Spain, directing an all-female version of The Iliad. Bentley-Fisher has been the artistic director of five professional theatres, has directed over one hundred productions at theatres across Canada, Spain, and the U.S., and has taught his approach to movement and acting in universities, theatre schools, and studios throughout North America and Europe for over 30 years.

ABOUT THE MARSH

The Marsh is known as “a breeding ground for new performance.” Launched in 1989 by Founder and Artistic Director Stephanie Weisman, it annually hosts more than 500 performances across the company's two venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. A leading outlet for solo performers, The Marsh's specialty has been hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “solo performances that celebrate the power of storytelling at its simplest and purest.” The East Bay Times named The Marsh one of the Bay Area's best intimate theaters, calling it “one of the most thriving solo theaters in the nation. The live theatrical energy is simply irresistible.” In April 2020, The Marsh launched its digital platform MarshStream and hosted more than 700 livestreams which provided 300 performers and its youth class participants a platform to continue discovering, developing, and producing art during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Today, The Marsh presents both in-person live performances and content on its MarshStream, continuing to expand its reach to audiences onsite and around the world. The Marsh believes in the power of people's storytelling and has several classes for the public to create their own works as well as through its developing work performance series: Monday Night Marsh, Tell It on Tuesday, and Marsh Risings. The theater company also collaborates with over 15 San Francisco public schools providing a year-round youth program serving students at its theater and in the classrooms.

Photo Courtesy of The Marsh