Tickets to Pop-Up Magazine, the world's first "live magazine," go on sale today, Tuesday October 4th, at noon sharp, via http://www.popupmagazine.com. The show will feature 20 acclaimed writers, documentary filmmakers, radio producers, and photographers, live on stage at Davies Symphony Hall, followed by drinks.
If you haven't been to the show yet, I know what you're thinking: A live magazine? What does that even mean?
A couple years ago, I met some writer and designer friends out at a bar in the Mission. It occurred to us that we'd go to readings, and they would be packed with writers. We'd check out an opening at a photography gallery, and everyone would be an artist. Documentary filmmakers had their film festivals. Radio people -- we weren't really sure what radio people did. We wondered why all this great stuff has to stay separate. Wouldn't it be fun, we thought, to go to something where writers told stories, and radio producers played sound, and documentary filmmakers showed film, and photographers projected images? Since it didn't exist, we decided to make it.
That's when we hit upon the idea of a live magazine. The show would draw inspiration from classic magazines, with a bunch of shorts at the beginning, followed by longer features. (The name came out of our design director's inspiration book, a clipped photograph of a kid's pop-up book, the stories and art leaping up and off the page.) We decided every show would be one night only, and we wouldn't record them. We love technology, but we also love the idea of making something ephemeral, something that encourages people to unplug for a night and come together around stories and ideas.
It turns out other people love the idea too.
In just four shows, we've been lucky to feature an amazingly talented group of contributors on stage: Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated filmmakers Alex Gibney, Steven Okazaki, Sam Green, Amanda Micheli, and Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman; writers Michael Pollan, Mary Roach, Yiyun Li, William Finnegan, Daniel Alarcón, Peggy Orenstein, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Jeff Chang, Rebecca Solnit, Jon Mooallem, and Elif Batuman; radio producers The Kitchen Sisters, This American Life's Starlee Kine, and Radio Diaries creator Joe Richman; photographers Larry Sultan, Todd Hido, Elena Dorfman, Cheryl Dunn, Trevor Paglen, and Jim Goldberg; and so many more.
It's funny, back when were were first sketching out our idea for a live magazine, we thought it might happen in a bar. Our last show, Issue 4, sold out 950-seat Herbst Theater in around 15 minutes.
Now we're headed to the Symphony Hall for Issue 5. It's going to be a special show, our biggest one yet, with a great party afterwards. We'd love to see you there.
Tickets available at www.popupmagazine.com.