In a city where a single Board of Supervisors meeting can drag on for six hours to rename a street, the SF Neo-Futurists are proving that you can fit 30 entire plays into a single hour. If only our city government operated with this kind of efficiency.
The Infinite Wrench is the Neo-Futurists' ongoing Friday and Saturday night show, and the concept is beautifully simple: the ensemble performs 30 short plays in 60 minutes, racing against the clock while the audience shouts out numbers to determine the order. It's chaotic, it's fast, and it's the most bang-for-your-buck live entertainment you'll find in San Francisco right now.
Each play is original, written by the performers themselves, and ranges from the deeply personal to the absurdly hilarious. Some last 30 seconds. Some push five minutes. None overstay their welcome — a quality we wish more San Francisco institutions would adopt.
The format is inherently anti-pretentious, which is refreshing in a city where you can pay $45 to watch someone silently arrange rocks on a stage and call it "immersive." The Neo-Futurists strip theater down to its essentials: real people, real stories, real time. No fourth wall. No elaborate sets. Just performers and an audience in the same room, actually engaging with each other.
For those of us who believe the best things in life come from scrappy, independent creators rather than bloated institutions with seven-figure budgets, The Infinite Wrench is a reminder that constraint breeds creativity. Give artists a ticking clock and a bare stage, and they'll deliver more genuine entertainment than most productions with ten times the funding.
Shows run every Friday and Saturday night. In a city that's perpetually "figuring out" how to make arts accessible, the Neo-Futurists just went ahead and did it. Show up, pick a number, and enjoy the ride.