Free writing workshop " This is the easiest writing has ever been for me." "I have met some incredible people who have led inspiring lives." "I feel so lucky to be held in and inspired by this community you've created." Do you want to write but... ...can't seem to get started? ...get distracted and give up? ...don't like the isolation? Make an appointment with yourself to write this Wednesday morning. W riting prompts. Or you can w ork on your own project. Conversation. Company in the creative process. All levels welcome. Get Up and Write! Led by Charlie Varon Every Wednesday - 8am Pacific Time Free & open to all Email me for the Zoom link

How Jane McAlevey Taught Me How to Phone Bank Thank you, Jane McAlevey! The great labor organizer (accidentally) taught me how to talk to voters Last month, The New Yorker ran a piece called "How Jane McAlevey Transformed the Labor Movement." She also transformed how I make phone calls to voters. Here's the unlikely story of how that happened. I am a phone banker. I call voters and try to get them to vote for Democrats. I do not like doing this. I do it because our democracy is in trouble. I used to hate phone banking even more than I do now. What changed? That I can tell you in two words. Jane McAlevey. It’s April 2020. I’m calling voters in Arizona on behalf of two Democratic candidates for the state legislature. I’ve hit a long string of no-answers, half an hour of nothing. I go out to the garden for a break. Then I hear my phone ringing, inside the house. I run in, pick up, and hear a voice. "You called me?" A voter I hadn't reached is calling me back. I’m a bit flustered, look at my laptop screen to remember the names of the candidates, launch into my spiel. I say the candidates want to know what issues were important to voters. "How do you mean?" he said. I hear myself say, "Like – If you were in charge, what are the first three things you would change?" Immediately he says: "We have to enforce speed limits." He talks, energetically, about that, for a few minutes. "What else?" I say. "Education.” He talks, I listen. What he says gives me the opening I need. I tell him funding education is a top issue for the candidates I’m calling for. I give him a bit more detail, then say: "I think these candidates would be a good match for you." The conversation stays alive and energized to the end, I of course repeat the candidates' names multiple times. I think I got his vote. That magic question — "If you were in charge…" — yielded such different results from the generic "What issues are of most concern to you?" ! Only afterward did I realize where I’d gotten that question. A couple weeks earlier I was listening to Ezra Klein’s podcast. He had Jane McAlevey on – the legendary labor organizer. Ezra Klein: Walk me through a typical interaction with a worker, specifically one who may disagree with you. Jane McAlevey: When I start a conversation with a worker, I’m going to start by telling them exactly why I’m there. There’s no bullshitting: I’m here because coworkers of yours called up and they’re in and figuring out how you can make things better in the workplace. That’s it. I’m being very honest about why I’m on your do or. The very next thing I’m going to do is ask them a question: If you could change three things at work tomorrow, what would they be? * That question had apparently lodged in my brain and, when that voter called me back, it flew out of my mouth! I continued using that question, with good results. I told the phone bank captain, who passed it on to the campaign, which incorporated it into their phone bank script. A couple other campaigns have also incorporated that question or some version of it. I sent Jane a message telling her all this, and she replied: What a GLORIOUS email! Go, fight, and keep on winning! We have so much work to do. Be healthy, safe and strong * It's July 2022. I'm once again calling Arizona. I reach a woman I'll call Kara who, according to the information on my screen, is 21 and lives in Scottsdale. I ask her what she would do if she were in charge. "Protect reproductive freedom." No pause, no hesitation. She is angry about Dobbs , and what it's going to do to abortion access in Arizona. S he loves her 3-year-old son more than anything in the world, but if she were to get pregnant now, she wouldn't want to have another child. From her voice, her manner, her self-confidence, I picture a young white woman, broad-shouldered, blond, with a ponytail. Kara has a friend who's studying to be a Catholic priest. She tells me about her conversations with him, challenging him. Now he's come around to accepting that a woman's choice shouldn't be up to him, or the Church. Okay, abortion rights, I say. What else would you change? Education. Arizona's schools aren't good enough. Kara didn't a get a great education, she tells me, but it was decent. But she has friends who got a lousy education, and some of them have become Trump supporters. She still talks to them, but it's hard. Mainly she wants a good education for her 3-year-old son, and for all the kids of his generation. What else? Voting rights. She's been circulating petitions to protect voting rights in Arizona. I realize I'm talking to a born organizer. She's passionate, direct, a great speaker, a natural storyteller. I tell Kara she needs to run for something. "That's the best compliment I've ever gotten," she says. We agree that now is probably not the time for her to run for office -- she's a single parent, working, going to school -- but I insist that she consider it in the future. I ask about her friends, the ones she's getting to sign the voting rights petition. Are they all registered to vote? We work out a plan - she's going to post on Facebook, and offer every friend a dollar if they register. Facebook's not enough, I say, and insist she follow up with phone calls. Kara and I talked for nearly half an hour. That conversation was, in one sense, waiting to happen. But without that opening question, it wouldn't have. * It's October 2023. I'm calling voters in Virginia on behalf of Phil Hernandez, a Democratic candidate for state legislature. I reach a voter I’ll call Jennifer. The information on the screen told me she’s 66 years old. From her voice, I was pretty sure she was Black. “If you could change one or two things...” “Inflation. The cost of food, gas, rent.” There was anger in her voice. Fifteen dollars is not a high enough minimum wage. Yes, women should have control of their bodies, but what good is that if you don’t have enough to eat? The woman in the house next door is in her eighties and doesn’t have enough money for food. Jennifer kept going. And it’s terrible what’s happening to people in these wars, but why are we sending them money when our people at home can’t make ends meet? I listened, reflected back what I was hearing, asked her if it would be okay if I shared what she was saying with Phil Hernandez. “It’s important to Phil to know what people in the district are thinking.” Yes, that would be okay, Jennifer said. I’ve found that some people, once they feel heard, are open to hearing from me. I gently tried to steer the conversation to Phil Hernandez. Jennifer told me she’d voted for Democrats in the past, but now she’s planning not to vote. “They promise a lot, but nothing changes.” I asked her to tell me more about that, and she hung up. * So what happened in that call? Was it a failure? A confession about that call: I didn’t use the phone bank script I’d been given. Here’s how that script started: Hi! This is _________ with Phil Hernandez's campaign. Can I speak with __________? Great! I'm a volunteer with Phil's campaign. He is running for the Virginia House so he can go to Richmond to represent you, your family and this community. Can Phil count on your vote in the November election? If I’d gone with that opening, Jennifer would have hung up on me right away. * Over the last couple years, my own, loose, improvisational phone banking “script” has evolved. No matter what issue someone is talking about, no matter what side of the issue they’re on, I take notes. I tell the person I'm taking notes. I ask them if it would be okay to pass them on to the candidate. They always say yes. And I always pass them on. Sometimes I type them up and put them in the “Notes” field on the screen in front of me. Sometimes I put them in an email to the candidate. Sometimes, as was the case with Jennifer, I suggest the candidate follow up with a phone call: She voted for Dems in the past, now is so frustrated she's planning not to vote. If you call, she might get the sense that Democrats do care. That might earn her vote. * Think of it this way: Every time you call a voter, you are setting in motion a little play. There are two actors. Most phone bank scripts cast you, the caller, as a Salesperson. And the person who picks up the phone: they’re the person you’re trying to sell. What Jane McAlevey taught me is that we can change the play. The person picking up the phone is not a customer. Not the means to our end. They are a Member of Society . They have information w e need. That makes them the expert, the protagonist. Which is how it should be in a democracy. Thank you, Jane. November 12, 2023 Find out about: My coaching & mentoring for writers My free online writing community

What drivers say after honking The Honking Report On some Saturdays my partner, Myra, and I spend an hour at the anti-Maga protest outside the Tesla dealership in San Francisco. What's evolved is quite magical. We stand on O'Farrell Street holding our signs that encourage honking. On any given cycle of the traffic light, two to ten drivers will honk. Some then have to stop at the red light. Myra and I have different approaches. She goes up to cars stopped at the light and offers the driver a "Make America Human" pin. I approach drivers and say, “Thanks for honking!" When they open their window, I say: "These are crazy times we’re living in. What keeps you sane?” Some highlights from this week's conversations with honkers... Black woman in her 40s. She points a finger up. “My Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He’s in charge.” She pauses, smiles. “And then, seeing you all out here – I know you’re angels he’s sent.” Shirtless Asian man, late 20s or early 30s. “Training.” What are you training for? “Soccer!” The light turns green and he’s gone. Filipino man in his 50s or 60s. He says: “This is too much. This has to end.” I say: “We are many. We are powerful. And we will eventually win. But what I want to know is, When is eventually? And will I live to see it?” “Oh, you will. We will.” White guy in his 40s. “Fuck that guy!” (Trump) “What keeps you going?” “My family and my passions.” Long-haired tattooed, white man late 30s, maybe 40s, unkempt, cheerful, scraggly beard. “I don’t know.” (Pause) “Marijuana!” Young woman in her 20s, bright eyed, Asian. “Reading the food section and the politics section.” I ask, “In what order?” “The politics section first. Then the food section as a reward!” White man driving a Mini Cooper. Early forties. Loud, fun, an extrovert. “Hair! Doing people’s hair! I’m a hairdresser. Making people look good! At least what I think is good.” We laugh. We high-five. A couple, white, in their 40s or 50s. The man says: “Ignoring the news. Don’t give him any more mind share.” A 40something white woman in a baseball cap. “Dancing. And my kids. And donating to Democrats.” White woman about 40. “Friends and family. Reading 1440.” She explains that “1440” is a news site. A white man, my age, doesn’t honk. Rolls his window all the way down. He is ruddy-faced and loud. “No Kings?” (He’s referring to my "Honk for No Kings" sign.) “What about the Democrats all clapping for King Charles when he spoke to Congress? Why did they clap for a king?” Hostility oozes out of him. Grievance. “I don’t know,” I say. “You tell me.” “You’re a traitor!” he informs me. A snake spitting his venom. “Have a blessed day!” I say. “ You have a blessed day!” he spits back. * I left the demonstration thinking about three of my interlocutors: The born-again Black woman. The loud gay hairdresser. The aggrieved Maga man with his gotcha talking point. If I were to put these characters onstage, or in a movie, I would be accused of stereotyping. Correctly accused. And yet there they were, each in their car, each playing their part. With complete commitment. Full embodiment. No self-consciousness. No self-doubt. Pitch perfect. But what if I put them onstage, not in their cars, but in the same room? What would they have to say to one other? * Other stuff I'm up to: Small group workshops My coaching & mentoring for writers My free online writing community

"The links that bind" Charlie Varon's Comic Bonbons #25: Poetry Unwound, "The links that bind" (in which I channel poet and podcaster Pádraig Ó Tuama) The Links that Bind 00:00 / 03:48 Written & performed by Charlie Varon Collaboration: David Ford, J.P. Tilleman Find out what else I'm up to (summer/fall 2026)

Charlie Varon's current doings What I'm Up to This Summer & Fall (2026) #1 I'm offering small group workshops , with personal coaching. Classes start in September. #2 I'm doing 1:1 coaching & mentoring for writers & performers. #3 I'm hosting a weekly Salon in San Francisco. Artistic community, a beautiful venue, a chance to write. And hear new work. Monday mornings at 10am #4 I'm leading Get Up and Write , my free workshop, now in its 6th year. Write, be inspired, find kindred spirits. Wednesday mornings, 8am PST, on Zoom. #5 You can hear my voice narrating the audio tour of the "Treasures of the Pharaohs" show at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. #6 Activism. I'm talking to voters in the Central Valley, so we can flip the House of Representatives blue. And having fun doing it! Interested in joining me? Email me

Free writing workshop Monday mornings in SF Start your week immersed in creativity and community Charlie's Monday Salon a welcoming space for writers and performers to connect, create, and share When: Mondays, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM Where: Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez St, San Francisco Upcoming Dates: Aug 3, 10, 24, 31 Salon Schedule 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM: Writing Session Work from Charlie's writing prompts or focus on your own project. Then, 10 minutes to share work with a fellow writer 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Community Sharing Listen to new works presented by writers and performers. Additional Information: Participation is flexible; drop in as your schedule allows. There is no admission fee; donations are welcome. All are welcome, regardless of experience level. Click here & I'll keep you posted Find out about my small group workshops

SECOND TIME AROUND A duet for cello and storyteller Charlie Varon, author and performer Joan Jeanrenaud, composer and cellist David Ford, director Tentative premiere: March 2016 at The Marsh San Francisco Second Time Around is the next in the series of Charlie Varon’s stories about old people – the same series that includes Feisty Old Jew. A high school student brings a video camera to the retirement home where 92-year-old Ben Rosenau lives. He’s come to interview Ben about his service as a bomber pilot in World War II. Charlie says: “Much of the story occurs inside Ben’s mind – his memories, his regrets, his yearnings. My quest to put all this onstage led me to the cello – the instrument which, like no other, can express the interior life of human beings. And that led me to Joan.” Joan Jeanrenaud was the cellist of the Kronos Quartet for 20 years. Her work with Kronos included more than 30 recordings and over 2000 performances that took her to virtually every major concert hall worldwide. During those years the group became – in the words of New York Times critic John Rockwell – “the world’s best known, most innovative contemporary-music quartet.” Joan has taken on the demanding task of composing an original score for the 70-minute story. In SECOND TIME AROUND Joan and Charlie will perform sometimes in tandem, sometimes solo. Joan is also composing an overture that will open the performance. E-mail Charlie to be notified of future SF area shows.

Playwright, comedian, director, mentor, coach.

Charlie Varon's satire and other mischief The Many Voices of Charlie Varon #4 Satire, Pranks and Other Comic Bonbons Comic Bonbon #4: "Mitch's Silence," featuring Studs Terkel & Dr. Oliver Sacks September 2023 I can't stop thinking about Sen. Mitch McConnell and that news conference, the one where he froze and went silent for 30 seconds. Then my friend Jim Rosenau sends me a link. It's to an old radio show . Studs Terkel, champion interviewer, is talking to beloved neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks. Both men are gone now, but Jim knows how much I love their voices. "A twofer," Jim says. I listen to the interview, then start doing their voices, just riffing to myself, which makes me exceedingly happy. Then the question poses itself: McConnell's silence + Studs Terkel + Oliver Sacks = ? I rough something out, call David Ford, and we get going. As is often the case, the best details come from David's fertile comic mind. Mitch's Silence 00:00 / 04:52 Keep the bonbons coming! Email me when the next one is ready! Email Subscribe

The Return of Pete Seeger Charlie Varon 's Comic Bonbons #10: "For Pete Seeger's Sake " Pete Seeger bonbon Feb 29 00:00 / 02:01 Written & performed by Charlie Varon Special thanks to J.P. Tilleman Keep the bonbons coming! Email me when the next one is ready! Email Subscribe Attention, writers and performers: I have openings for mentoring/coaching starting in mid-March.

Small, rigorous class for writers wanting to push a project forward "Thank you for your classes! They have enriched and expanded my world." I've been teaching writing and performance workshops since 1993. I love the creative process, and my goal is to help you take the next step in your work. Start the New Year WRITE Being a writer is about time. Here's what I've learned about time in my 40 years as a writer: (2 min video) The odds are against us as writers. The world is not set up for us to do our best work, or to go as far as we might. To change those odds, I'm offering Start the New Year WRITE But together, we can improve the odds. Make appointments to write. Commit to a month of working on a single project. And don't write alone. Write in community. Builds on the successful Wednesday morning writing community that has been going since 2020. 2-minute video tells you what I've learned about time in my 40 years as a writer: I designed Start the New Year WRITE to get you out of the artistic waiting room and into the writing room. Write at specific times Write in community give you appointments to write in community a schedule to write, a chance to a that gives you a schedule and a writing community. and writing community that Imagine this: It’s February 1, 2024. You've written 2500 to 10,000 words of your memoir/novel/monologue/play/standup routine. Not only that. You have a plan of how to keep going. "I have a lot of ideas, but I'm a champion procrastinator." " I want to write what I've learned in my life but I don't know where to start." "I can't tell if what I'm writing is any good. " Tw o scenarios 2. It’s February 1, 2024 and you are still stuck. The problem As writers we have dry periods or get stuc k. Or never start. Guilt/dread/procrastination sets in. We get further from what we want to do . Get time on your side Most writers do better when they have regular appointments to write. But that can still be lonely. This workshop gives you 10 appointments to write in January 2024, in the company of other writers. (On Zoom. For writers, Zoom can be a gift.) 1:1 sessions / goa l setting You'll have two 30-minute sessions with me to assess your project and set achievable goals. Genre You can write in any genre you like (except poetry). Entry By application - see below. Fee $550 by Venmo or check (note that there are no refunds for this class) To appl y: Send me an email with the following: (1) what project you plan to work on & what stage it's at now (2) goal: where you'd like to be at the end of the 8 weeks, and whom you'd like to share your work with at that point (3) a commitment to attend every class and be on time (4) a commitment to write at least 500 words per week and email me your new writing the day before class (so I can put it up on the screen during class)

A sample of Charlie Varon's "What am I doing alone onstage? Memoirs of an accidental solo performer" What am I doing alone onstage? Memoirs of an accidental solo performer Below is a sneak peek at the beginning of my solo performance memoirs. Enjoy! -- Charlie Prologue You may have seen me walking down Dolores Street talking to myself. It’s a wide street, with wide sidewalks, and the strip of grass running down the middle has tall palm trees reaching to the sky. In another country they might call it a boulevard. In San Francisco it’s just Dolores Street. It’s never crowded, and sometimes as I walk up and down its hills, I marvel at my solitude. How can a neighborhood so close to the center of a city be home to such a peaceful street? I’m from New York. It’s true the neighborhood I grew up in – Riverdale, in the northwest corner of the Bronx – has wooded areas that are good for walking, but midtown Manhattan is at least a half-hour away by subway. Dolores Street is where I’ve walked for more than a quarter of a century, running lines for my solo shows, or thinking through questions of plot and character in whatever I’m writing or directing, or scheming about where I’m going to get the money to produce it. If you saw me on Dolores Street in 1994, I was pushing a stroller and running lines for my solo show Rush Limbaugh in Night School . By 1997, my hands were free and you might have seen me gesticulating as I worked on my characters in Ralph Nader Is Missing! . If it was 1999, I was in the world of The People’s Violin ; if it was 2002 I was working out bits for Ten Day Soup ; in 2004 Visiting Professor of Pessimism . By 2009, I was doing some of my walking at Crissy Field, the long, flat promenade alongside San Francisco Bay, lost in the world of my magnum opus, Rabbi Sam , running my lines, preparing for the weekend’s performances. But now, in the 2020s, I’m back on Dolores Street, sometimes walking all the way from Dolores Park, near where I live, to Market Street, sometimes circumambulating the park, lost in something I’m writing or thinking of writing, or just hearing in my mind’s ear (and maybe speaking out loud) one of the voices that’s lodged in my head and that gives me pleasure. Introduction As I begin writing these memoirs, in the summer of 2021, the world is still in the grips of the COVID-19 Pandemic. So much has been upended, suspended, altered -- including theater. In the last 18 months, I’ve set foot in a theater only twice. What was once a warm and familiar setting has become scary and strange. Is the ventilation system good enough? What if the masks we wear slip below the nose, as masks do? And what of the unmasked person or persons onstage and their exhalations and saliva? Is this place a vector of disease? A few theaters in the Bay Area are beginning to reopen, with distanced seating and mask and vaccine requirements; others are being more cautious and remain closed. But the old Normal is gone. And no one really knows what comes next. So now, as I walk down Dolores Street, this uncertainty intrudes, and I hear myself thinking old-person thoughts, curmudgeon thoughts: What will become of theater? Of solo performance? All the work I’ve done in this art form over the last 30 years -- and all that I thought I was helping to build -- will it all be swept away? I hate thinking these thoughts. But the truth is that I was thinking thoughts like these long before the Pandemic. In the last decade, the seductive, ubiquitous Screen has disrupted our art form. Why leave home, why pay money, why have to look for parking or take public transit when there’s so much great free streaming content that you can watch in your pajamas -- and stop watching if you get bored? But while I was busy worrying about the future of theater, Donald Trump got elected. And we tumbled into the nightmare of his presidency, living in a constant state of political emergency, our nervous systems fried, the old Normals gone, the old assumptions shattered. Trump, the Pandemic, climate catastrophe, racial reckoning, the threat to American democracy: there’s nothing quite like a bunch of cascading existential crises to make your career as an artist feel indulgent. * After Trump was elected, I threw myself into political activism. I continued my work as a theater artist - but starting in 2017, my highest priority was politics: I canvassed for Democrats, phone banked, mobilized friends, fundraised. The two parts of my life did come together. In the fall of 2018, Brian Copeland and I created and performed The Great American Sh*t Show , which blended monologues and a call to political action. And in early 2019, I collaborated on and directed Dan Hoyle’s show Border People , about immigration in the Trump years. Even that seems ages ago now. * The idea of writing these memoirs was sparked by a conversation with my directing apprentice, Molly Rose-Williams. We were talking about solo performance, and I thought: I’ve known Molly for just a couple of years; she doesn’t know the long path that led me to think the way I do about theater and art. There’s a skeptical voice in me that looks at the state of the world and condemns this memoir project as irrelevant. The planet is on fire, why spend time writing about my art, about projects that now seem remote or dated or both? And yet this is the work I have loved, it’s what I have poured my life energies into. And I want Molly to know what I’ve learned.