King Fool and Night Walk this Friday

We Players invites our community to join us in a Night Walk through the Mission in advance of our final San Francisco showing of King Fool, this Friday. Our 9/26 event – including performance, conversation and festive closing reception, will begin at 8pm, in a private warehouse just south of Mission Bay. The address will be revealed upon placing your reservation.

One of the things that has come up in our post-performance conversations is the truth that we cannot know when we will die.

Many of us hope that we will be blessed with a full life and well cared for by those we most love as we age and approach death. In our adaptation, Lear is blessed in this way, and yet his story is still heartbreaking.

It is a far greater tragedy for young people to die from violent crime.

The faith communities in the Mission – with whom we shared our opening performance of King Fool, have been making a positive impact in their neighborhood by being present and peaceful.

Our creative team is inspired to connect the timeless themes of death and relationship with current realities and join these communities for this Friday’s Night Walk.

We welcome your participation.

More info below.


For over a year now, several faith communities have been regularly walking some of the more violent streets of the Mission with a simple three-fold message:

 We care
 Stop the violence
 What do you need?

At this next Night Walk we will also celebrate the re-emergence of an important street-intervention organization in our neighborhood. This organization, called CALLES (meaning “Streets”), has been one of the Mission’s most effective organizations reaching high-risk youth. It has been dormant for the last few years, but makes its comeback as part of our next Night Walk.

When: Friday, September 26, 6-7:30pm

Where: Starting with a short ceremony at Instituto Familiar De La Raza (IFR) // 2919 Mission St, SF, CA 94110 and walking to Centro del Pueblo // 474 Valencia St

King Fool Site Notes: San Anselmo

While our gracious site hosts don’t know much about the history of their land specifically, here is some interesting information they shared about the land now known as Sleepy Hollow:

The first recorded history of the Hollow is from 1839. A Mexican land grant was given to Domingo Sais, a soldier at the Presidio is San Francisco. His land consisted of 6,659 acres, including part of San Anselmo, Fairfax, and Sleepy Hollow. Domingo Sais died in 1853 leaving his land to his widow and six children. Sleepy Hollow went to his oldest son Pedro.  

Anson P. Hotaling bought the land in 1887. A wealthy San Franciscan, his son Richard developed a beautiful estate and called it Sleepy Hollow. He built a mansion at the end of Butterfield Road, which reflected his love for the theater. The living room had a stage complete with a Romeo and Juliet balcony. Many plays and Bohemian parties were held there.

It wasn’t always parties in the Hollow, however, in 1939 the golf course closed due to lack of water. For a time during World War II, the U.S. Army occupied part of the Hollow as a secret ammunition storage depot.  Barracks housed 30 men. There were two batteries composed of four-inch antiaircraft cannon manned by five soldiers on a 24 hour basis. One battery was on Stuyvesant Drive and the other on Oak Springs Hill. At war’s end, the Army departed.

Our land was undeveloped before we built our home.  The hills had been used as ranch land, but now lie open with oaks, coyote brush and wild flowers running up to Open Space maintained by Marin County.  The paths around the property were set by the deer.  The coyotes keep our deer population in check.  The turkey vultures clean up the remains.  Leaving us the stage upon which We Players sets King Fool.

Synopsis of Shakespeare's King Lear

The story opens in ancient Britain, where the elderly King Lear is dividing his realm amongst his three daughters: Cordelia, Regan and Goneril. Lear plans to give the largest piece to his favorite, Cordelia, and has devised a public ceremony to assure the loyalty of the various factions. Of the three, Cordelia refuses to engage in Lear’s game. Enraged, Lear disowns Cordelia completely and banishes his dear friend Kent when he intercedes on her behalf. The loyal Kent then disguises himself and returns as a servant who will follow Lear to the end.

Cordelia leaves the court to marry the King of France. Lear and his hundred knights, his beloved fool, and the disguised Kent, go to live with Goneril. This proves disastrous and in a rage Lear abandons Goneril and goes to Regan’s house. Meanwhile, Regan and her husband Cornwall have gone to stay with Gloucester to avoid hosting Lear. It is not long before the two sisters begin plotting to kill their father. Gloucester discovers the cruel plan and rushes to find the King and send him to Dover for protection. Gloucester’s kindness discovered, Regan and Cornwall gouge out Gloucester’s eyes in revenge, then throw him out of his own house to wander blind in the wilderness. Edgar, Gloucester’s son, now disguised as “poor mad Tom”, finds his father and protects him.

Meanwhile, Cordelia has raised an army of French troops to avenge her father and has landed at Dover. Regan and Goneril ready their troops and a battle ensues. Cordelia loses and she and the King are captured. They are sent to jail, but Edmund, Gloucester’s bastard son, has privately sent an order that they be murdered.

Goneril and Regan are both in love with the conniving Edmund. Ferociously jealous, Goneril poisons Regan. But when Goneril discovers that Edmund has been fatally wounded by Edgar, she kills herself as well. As Edmund takes his last breath he repents and the order to execute Cordelia is reversed. But the reversal comes too late and Cordelia is hanged. Lear appears, carrying the body of Cordelia in his arms. Lear’s great suffering is finally relieved, as he too takes his final breath. Kent declares that he will follow his master into the afterlife and Edgar reluctantly receives the crown and the weight of rule.