After more than 6,700 performances over a 15-year run, local venue PianoFight announced in a press release that its locations in San Francisco and Oakland will be closing this year. The final shows at both theaters will be March 18.
PianoFight served as a vital gathering place for the Bay Area’s indie arts community, fronting a diverse array of adventurous productions. The San Francisco location hosted celebrated acts like SF Sketchfest, the SF Improv Festival, and Killing My Lobster, but it also provided a space for lesser-known performers to debut their work.
“We’ve hosted comedy, plays, music, dance, drag, magic, burlesque, circus, podcasts, films, video game tournaments, and game shows,” said executive director Dan Williams. “We said yes to everything because we could, we wanted to, and it was more fun than saying no.”
This inclusiveness, alongside steadfast community service, served as pillars of PianoFight’s mission. Since opening in 2014, the venue estimates that its San Francisco theater has generated $1.3 million for Bay Area artists and $25 million in overall local economic activity, in addition to partnering with local organizations to support community work in the Tenderloin. The Oakland location, which opened in May 2020, was a home base for students from the Oakland School for the Arts during the daytime, while evening programming included artists such as the Formerly Incarcerated People’s Performance Project.
“PianoFight started because we thought there could be a different and fun way of doing things,” said artistic director Rob Ready. “We wanted to lower the barrier to entry so more people could perform; provide infrastructure so artists could focus on art; program eclectically to cross-pollinate creative mediums; and sell burgers and beers so artists could build their communities over a meal.”
COVID-19 brought this work to a halt in March 2020. Despite multiple fundraising efforts and passionate support from the local community during the initial stages of the pandemic, the theater’s business never sufficiently recovered after it fully reopened in February 2022.
“Almost the entire community was scattered by COVID. In 2019 80% of our customers were returning. Now in 2022 80% of our customers are new,” said operations director Duncan Wold. “There’s been a massive restructuring of people’s lives: where they live, their habits, how often they go out, but those Bay Area expenses just keep going up.”
PianoFight’s closure marks the sad end of a storied chapter. Once the most active live performance venue on the West Coast, its shuttering is a loss for the community — but the theater’s legacy as a beacon of eclectic Bay Area art lives on.
“A generation of artists and audiences have made their way through our doors and woven their way into the cultural fabric of San Francisco,” said Ready. “We feel very fortunate. This has been the experience of a lifetime. Thank you!”
By Grace Orriss
