Address to Edinburgh

Annual tributes to Scottish poet Robert Burns take place everywhere there are Scots and their admirers. Burns Night often happens in august, wood-paneled halls full of leaded crystal, the finest Highland malts, dignified brogues intoning the old verse, and that sort of thing. Not here! In the Bay Area, Scotsman Alan Black leads audiences into murky poetic waters, luring us with booze, and ultimately engineering unholy (yet poetic) scenarios like last year's whisky-drinking yoga demonstration by Philip T. Nails. In addition to the infamous food and drink, including the finest as well as the least fine Highland malts and the sheep-stomach pudding known as haggis, many readings of and spoofs upon Burns' work are featured. Scottish Zen monk Jana holds forth on snot, Black reports, and "Bob Calhoun, Incredibly Strange Wrestler, does a patriotic piece Burns wrote about the American Revolution."
Sat., Jan. 26, 8 p.m., 2008