7:00 PM
“Some Things You Should Know About My Mom" is a multimedia performance by Gabriel Diamond about his mom Sandy Diamond, a well-known and loved Port Townsend calligrapher, poet, performer, and playwright.
It’s full of Jewish Mom jokes, what it was like being a troublemaker teen growing up with a bipolar, hunchback, single artist mom, how he helped her die, burying her with his bare hands, all the regrets, and now, what it's like raising a teen of his own. And there’s dancing.
It started off as the eulogy Gabriel shared in 2016 at Sandy’s memorial, which was adapted into a play “Memorial” by Tamar Halpern. After 8 different actors played Gabriel in various productions, Gabriel was invited to perform himself with the Roots and Wings Project in Los Angeles in 2021 and just completed three sold out shows at the San Francisco Fringe Theater Festival. Now he’s coming back to Sandy’s home town Port Townsend for one performance only. All ticket sales go directly to support Key City Public Theater, Sandy’s favorite theater company.
The show is 70 minutes with no intermission.
At the end of the show, each audience member will be gifted a limited edition print of one of Sandy’s pieces of calligraphy.
WARNINGS: Talk of suicide and sex. For ages 11 and up.
Reviews:
"Totally engaging and captivating" -Front Mezz Junkies
“Gabriel embodies Sandy’s genius. His relaxed and emotion-filled storytelling fills every audience member with camaraderie and joy. Who could ask for more?” - Theatrius
"Performed with understated power by Gabriel Diamond, it's a movingly beautiful, heartbreaking tribute to not just Gabriel's mother, but all mothers who raise children with courage, love, humor, and self-sacrifice. Throughout the piece, Diamond moves from awkward son to powerful mourner. His grief chokes him at times; his performance is infinitely poetic." Erin Kahn - Stage Buddy
About Gabriel Diamond
Gabriel Diamond is an award-winning filmmaker and social artist. His work explores the intersection of vulnerability, street theater, dance, and social change. He co-created the Vulnerable Rally as a radical experiment to invite empathy between strangers—blending street theatre, shadow work, and community building with social/political commentary. As an in-demand movement facilitator, he’s known for Dance Roulette and Blindfolded Contact Dance—a practice that emerged from a desire to surrender into the unknown, discover freedom from judgment, and increase sensitivity and trust between dancers. He received his theatre training at Trinity Rep Conservatory and was a founding member of Cutting Ball Theatre. He lives in Oakland, CA with his daughter and partner Candice. Oh, and he loves his mom.
About Sandy Diamond
Sandy Diamond was a painter, calligrapher, playwright, and poet who spent her early years rubbing shoulders with Allan Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac. As a young artist, she battled manic depression and was in and out of mental institutions. Her early work was informed by her mental health struggles and her lived experience as a hunchback, which she got from a combination of scoliosis and breaking her back after falling off a roof. Sandy moved to California in the early 1970s in order to raise her son, Gabriel, as a single mother by choice. In her later years, she performed her poetry with a band under the stage name, Quasimodo and the Bell Ringers. While Sandy passed in 2016, her prolific calligraphy work lives on today in the homes of luminaries such as Alice Walker, Whoopi Goldberg, and Gloria Steinem. Sandy was the author of several stage plays, books of poetry and calligraphy. Her memoir, To An Insane Degree, was published posthumously.
