Laura Sheppard performs Harriet Lane Levy's memoir of early-1900s Paris — Picasso, Matisse, the Steins — with live piano, in SFMOMA's Wattis Theater on Aug. 27. Reserve free or pay up to $30.

What: Paris Portraits, a staged dramatic reading built from the memoir of San Francisco writer Harriet Lane Levy, performed by actress Laura Sheppard with live piano by Dale Tsang.

When: Thursday, Aug. 27, 6 p.m. (runs to about 8 p.m.).

Where: SFMOMA's Phyllis Wattis Theater (external source, opens in a new tab), Floor 1, 151 Third Street, San Francisco.

Cost: Sliding scale you set yourself. Reserving costs nothing, or you can kick in $10, $20 or $30 if you want to support the program. The free tier is a genuine RSVP, not a bait line — so book a seat and go.

Here's the pitch. Levy (1867–1950) was a San Francisco writer and theater critic who sailed to Paris in 1907 with Alice B. Toklas — her neighbor from back home, before Toklas became Gertrude Stein's partner — and landed straight in the Stein family's orbit: Gertrude and Leo, and Michael and Sarah, during the years Picasso and Matisse were circling each other like two cats over the future of painting. Sheppard performs Levy's account of that world: her initiation into Parisian life, the Picasso-Matisse rivalry, wild nights in Montmartre, and her own reckoning as a single woman abroad. Tsang, a Laney College faculty pianist with a doctorate from Rice, scores it live. Suzanne Stassevitch directs. It's co-presented with the Mechanics' Institute (external source, opens in a new tab), where Sheppard is senior producer, and it runs as part of SFMOMA's Thursday Night Live series.

Why this particular night: the reading is programmed alongside the museum's current Matisse show — the one built around Femme au chapeau, the 1905 portrait that got Matisse branded a "wild beast," and that the Stein circle bought. So the evening works less like a lecture and more like a way into the paintings a few floors up: hear the gossip, then go look at the canvas the gossip was about.

One scheduling note worth flagging, because it's the same building on the same evening: Aug. 27 is also the night novelist Zadie Smith appears at SFMOMA in the Wattis Theater. If you were shut out of that RSVP, Paris Portraits is another option on the same date — and if you weren't, don't try to stack both in one theater; check your ticket's exact start time before you plan the evening.

Getting there: SFMOMA sits a block from Montgomery Station on BART and Muni Metro, which is the move — the Third and Mission garages exist, but Thursday-evening SoMa parking is a gamble and a tax. The galleries stay open until 8 p.m. on Thursdays, so arrive by 5 and you can walk the Matisse show before the reading. Accessible seating is available, and ASL interpretation or assisted-listening devices can be arranged with ten business days' notice at publicengagement@sfmoma.org.

If you've got two hours: reserve the free seat, get there at 5, spend 45 minutes with Femme au chapeau and the rest of the modern galleries, then take your chair for the 6 o'clock salon.