The Butterfly Effect - An All-Star Gala Benefiting the Jeffrey Hartgraves Cancer Fund

Sunday, Apr 20, 2008 7:30 PM PDT
at Theatre Rhinoceros
in San Francisco, CA

SF Stage Favorites Unite To Aid One of Their Own Well-known Bay Area talents Veronica Klaus, Matthew Martin, Connie Champagne, Leigh Crow, Trauma Flintstone and many other familiar faces will gather on Theatre Rhinoceros? mainstage Sunday, April 20 at 7:30 p.m., for ?The Butterfly Effect: An All-Star Gala Benefiting the Jeffrey Hartgraves Cancer Fund.? Frequent Hartgraves collaborators Leon Acord and P.A. Cooley will host the evening, in collaboration with The Rhino. Jeffrey Hartgraves, ?a deeply valued veteran of Bay Area theater as a playwright, director, and actor? (Bay Area Guardian), was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2005. Following a year of remission -- during which he wrote and starred in his critically acclaimed ?very nearly solo show? Shark Bites at The Rhino and published a collection of essays entitled Bone Matters ? Hartgraves is now back on another round of painful chemotherapy, making it difficult to make ends meet. ?It takes a lot of cash to kick cancer?s ass,? says Acord, who is also co-producing the evening. Acord and Hartgraves co-produced and co-starred in 2002?s hit Carved in Stone at Eureka Theatre, among many other collaborations, before Acord moved to LA in 2004. ?Jeffrey has given me the greatest moments of my stage career. I?m really thrilled to repay him for his generosity, inspiration and friendship.? Hartgraves? long list of theatre successes at Theatre Rhino include: co-writing and directing the hit Family Jewels: The Making of Veronica Klaus; directing and acting in Single Spies and Worse Than Chocolate; acting in Amnesia and Medea: The Musical. He also portrayed Tennessee Williams in Carved in Stone, which he also wrote. He?s a frequent contributor to the BOA One-Act Festival and the San Francisco Fringe Festival, where he directed the multiple award-winning A Perfect Man; and the National Queer Arts Festival, for which he wrote Caught in the WWWeb.