‘A tiny little Fillmore’: SF’s oldest theater turned itself into a performance powerhouse

Flooded with purple light and blanketed with carpets spread out to muffle the echo, the scene at the Ruth Williams Bayview Opera House last Wednesday was unlike almost any other in the building’s 137-year history. Constructed by the Freemasons to make unamplified voices audible up to the rafters, the wooden, Victorian-style building was the site of a uniquely intimate event called SF Sounds, a jazz performance and professional studio recording — audio and video — at once. 

For those in attendance, the performance felt like the love child between a silent disco and a Tiny Desk Concert: Everyone had on headphones. The opener was none other than the St. John Coltrane Church, a 60-year-old San Francisco institution that reveres the late jazz saxophonist’s music as a direct connection to the divine; Bay Area songstress August Lee Stevens was the headliner.

As the engineers made their final adjustments, Theo Ellington, the opera house’s new executive director, welcomed the members of the church to the stage, where they launched into 45 minutes of prayerful, ecstatic jazz. The audience sat within a few dozen feet of the performers, as up close and personal as it gets. Without headphones, the only audible instrument would have been the drums — and they would have been almost deafening. But with headphones, every nuance was perceptible, like the pops and crackles on a beloved record at home.

With a capacity of only 300, the Bayview Opera House claims to be the oldest extant theater in San Francisco. Since 1888, it’s been home to performances and community gatherings, as well as the 1966 Hunters Point social uprising, when the fatal shooting of a teenager by police officers led to riots and — in an echo of the present day — the deployment of the National Guard. The San Francisco Arts Commission bought the building in the 1970s, and in 1995, it was renamed for playwright and actress Ruth Williams, who was instrumental in preventing its demolition.

“Earthquakes, pandemics, depressions — this place has always been a visual fixture and representation of the neighborhood,” said Ellington, 36. The opera house has been a part of his life since birth, too. A Bayview native, Ellington grew up across Third Street in an apartment above a liquor store and took African dance and ballet classes at the opera house before graduating from SF High School of the Arts. In his youth, Ellington performed with the American Conservatory Theater and had a stint on the WB network’s “Kids Club” in the ’90s. Now he is bringing that love of performance to his leadership of the Bayview Opera House, where he became executive director in 2023. 

As the founder of Black Citizen, an organization designed to cultivate new generations of African American leadership, Ellington revamped the opera house’s programming to merge art with activism — something, he said, the neighborhood hungered for.

“We were essentially a community center,” Ellington said, “and we pivoted to the performing arts.”

Under his direction, the Ruth Williams Bayview Opera House now has artists in residence. It stages workshops with the African American Shakespeare Company and hosts spoken-word poetry from Biko Eisen-Martin and immersive dance performances by Black choreographer Conni McKenzie. And, in partnership with the city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, it provides grants to local Black culture-makers. 

While the house will be dark on Juneteenth, it is offering no fewer than seven events in the two weeks that follow, from a sold-out carnival to a Lavender Ball for LGBTQ+ youth.

As with the 80-year-old but newly hip Cow Palace, the venue is entering a new phase — akin to a “tiny little Fillmore,” in the words of production manager David Saenz, referring to the beloved music hall across town. Nothing embodies this like SF Sounds. “All the content we’re creating, we’re giving to the performers,” Saenz said. “We’re producing it and doing the post-production: mastering, mixing, editing.”

Amid the intensifying reaction against all expressions of diversity in American cultural life, the opera house remains committed to boosting the careers and visibility of artists of color. This is likely to become more challenging amid impending budget cutbacks, which follow the collapse of the Dreamkeeper Initiative in scandal. Neither Ellington nor Ebon Sean Glenn, deputy director of the San Francisco Arts Commission — who was present for SF Sounds — would get into the specifics of any reduction in city support. But the opera house is doing its best to prepare, Ellington said, and will lean on the private sector as needed.

“What leaves me hopeful is the body of work we’ve produced over the past two and a half years,” he added. “We’ve been able to prove that culture brings commerce and dispel the myth that people don’t want to come to Bayview.”

At 79, His Eminence Archbishop Franzo W. King of the St. John Coltrane Church takes the long view. The opera house has long been a place where the community grappled with police violence, illegal foreclosures, and environmental injustice. Now, he said, it’s time to capitalize on that energy through performance. “The spirit is happening right here,” he said after SF Sounds. “This is African music. This is what it’s all about.”