A Cute Couple

ONGOING 10/26-11/21

Maybe you've noticed the billboard suggesting Bonnie & Clyde as a Halloween costume idea? On it, the people dressed as the tommy-gun-totin' couple look stylish, fearless, and contemptuous -- in a word, hot.

This week, Intersection for the Arts and Campo Santo take the attractive criminal duo phenomenon in an interesting direction. Not quite 20 years ago, a young couple went on a crime spree, stealing money from Mission District bars and nightclubs. Their story is the inspiration for Octavio Solis' new play, The Ballad of Pancho & Lucy. For four years, Solis and a group of actors, musicians, and choreographers have been mulling the "Latino Bonnie and Clyde," collecting visual impressions and snatches of dialogue, and crafting characters by visiting the joints in question and putting it all through a rigorous workshop process. The result is a musical anchored by Beth Custer's original compositions and choreographed by Erika Chong Shuch. An accompanying bar crawl (the price of admission gets you a drink in several bars and a scene from the play at each one) is already selling out.

Ballad opens Wednesday at 8 p.m. (see Web site for bar crawl info) at Intersection for the Arts, 446 Valencia (at 15th Street), S.F. Admission is $9-15; call 626-3311 or visit www.theintersection.org.
-- Hiya Swanhuyser

Heaven Sent
Hunting Matt and Ben

ONGOING 10/27-12/3

How did the screenplay for Good Will Hunting come to be? Did Damon and Affleck really write it together, or did the two recent college grads kick around a few ideas that more seasoned scribes then spun into an award-winning endeavor? Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers explore this mystery in their New York International Fringe Festival hit comedy Matt & Ben, now opening locally courtesy of the Unidentified Theatre Company. Performed by two women, the play finds Matt and Ben struggling to adapt Catcher in the Rye into a film when the script for Good Will Hunting falls, literally, from the heavens above. The two are at odds about the ethics of selling a screenplay they didn't write, and they throw insults (and a few punches) as they comically claw their way to the top. Matt & Ben opens at 8 p.m. on Thursday (and continues through Dec. 3) at the Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission (at Fifth Street), S.F. Admission is $20-25; call 771-4806 or visit www.unidentifiedsf.org.
-- Karen Macklin

Peace Power!
Let's go to the homohop

FRI-SUN 10/28-30

International queer hip hop is on deck at PeaceOUT: The Fifth Annual World Homohop Festival, which features everything from smooth, soulful poetry to raucous new-wave shrieking. Hailing from locales such as Mexico City, Atlanta, and of course the "Yay Area," the performers represent a wide range of talent as well as a spectrum of genders and sexual preferences. Check out the boast from one rapper's Web site: "Deadlee has amassed a rabid following of gays, transsexuals, drag queens, cholos, b-boys and b-girls, punks, artists, and freaks of all varieties." Local favorites Deep Dickollective are also scheduled, natch.

Give PeaceOUT a chance starting at 8 p.m. on Friday (the fest continues through Sunday) at 21 Grand, 416 25th St. (at Broadway), Oakland. Admission is $10; call (510) 444-7263 or visit www.peaceoutfestival.com.
-- Hiya Swanhuyser

Johnny Belinda

THURS 10/27

Why is everyone cooking up cross-gendered tribute bands? What's next -- an all-girl Beck cover band called Becky? (Please note that this idea is already taken.) A manly Go-Go's gang called the Guy-Guysis the latest example of the trend to play around here; the Urgencies and the Pyroclastics join the guys at 9 p.m. at the Eagle Tavern, 398 12th St. (at Harrison), S.F. Admission is $6; call 626-0880 or visit www.sfeagle.com.
-- Hiya Swanhuyser