Dede (left) doubts Ayamma’s acting abilities in Nollywood Dreams. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

First there was Hollywood, an innovative industry that taught Americans how to dream in the 1920s. Then — in the 1970s — came Bollywood, the Hindi cinema that taught Americans how to laugh with an entire cast in a big production song-and-dance number at film’s end.

And in the 1990s came Nollywood, the Nigerian spinoff that now puts out more than 1,000 films each year.

Now, in 2023, a new breezy play at San Francisco Playhouse, Nollywood Dreams, explores Nollywood’s early days — satirically. With overlays of a romance and madcap bits of this ‘n’ that (including but not limited to over-the-top gestures and inflections).

The main thrust of the comedy is to exaggerate the shallowness of both Hollywood and its echoes.

Ghanian American playwright Jocelyn Bioh centers her storyline on a pair of sisters, Ayamma Okafor, who dreams of becoming a movie star despite having zilch experience (“This is my calling”), and shallow Dede, whose main “talents” are is avoiding work, reading gossip mags, and viewing a soap opera.

Director Margo Hall, a Black omnipresence in Bay Area theatrical circles on and off stage who recently was named artistic director of the Lorraine Hansberry Theater, squeezes rapid-fire laughs out of Anel Adedokun’s performance as Ayamma and Brittany Nicole Sims’s as Dede.

They roll their eyes and roll their eyes, wiggle their hips, exaggerate facial expressions and shouts, spell out ellipses as “dot, dot, dot” when reading, and get their bodies twisted in a phone cord. Ayamma hides behind a tall plant; Dede becomes verbally paralyzed when coming in close contact with her idol.

Mostly standard stuff, maybe, but not in the hands of two actors with comic genius to spare.

Adenikeh wears her emotions on her colorful sleeves. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

More than adequately backing them up are four other gifted members of the all-black cast in Nollywood Dreams, Tre´vonne Bell as shady director Gbenga Ezie who’s casting his “The Comfort Zone” triangle love story; Tanika Baptiste as TV talk show host Adenikeh, an Oprah wannabe; Jordan Covington as Wale Owusu, a more than a little lecherous leading man; and Anna Marie Sharpe as serpent-tongued Fayola Ogunleye, Gbenga’s ex-lover, a faded star once known as “the Nigerian Halle Berry with Tina Turner Legs” whose deep southern accent is devilishly campy.

They all, of course, come across as caricatures. But funny ones. Hall and the actors succeed in making the play more hilarious than the words on a page.

Adding to the audience’s enjoyment of the show are Bill English’s tri-locale rotating set and the imaginative costume design by Jasmine Milan Williams (Adenikeh, for example, needn’t change garb, merely her flamboyant headwear).

It’s clear that the playwright wants to humanize Africans, especially West Africans, despite using a lens more than a little distorted by madcap sequences.

Ayamma (left) auditions for director Gbenga as fading diva Fayola waits her turn. Photo by Jessica Palopoli.

If you’re looking for reality, stay away; if, however, you’re looking for a good time, go see Nollywood Dreams even if it’ll take you a few minutes to discern what the players are saying because of their thick Nigerian accents.

Nollywood Dreams runs at SFPlayhouse, 450 Post St., San Francisco, through Nov. 4. Tickets: $30 to $125. Info: (415) 677-9596 or http://sfplayhouse.org.

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com.

Val Caniparoli’s “Tutto Eccetto Il Lavandino” is a highlight of Smuin’s “Dance Series 1” onstage in San Francisco through Oct. 7. (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

When you think of dance, you often think of feet, but Smuin Contemporary Ballet’s latest production, marking its 30^th anniversary, showcases many splendored hand and arm movements.

They come during the first of three pieces in the show: “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino” in Italian, or “(everything but the kitchen sink).”

The ballet, created by choreographer Val Caniparoli for Smuin in 2014 to Vivaldi’s sprightly music, takes what might ordinarily be perceived as jerky gestures, even arms that flap like chicken wings, and turns them into flawless, synchronized art.

The variety of lithe, smooth and magical movements in the presentation (as well as countless twists and turns) is equaled only by the variety of dancer combinations (from solos to duets, including man on man, to a cluster of seven, then a group of five couples).

Noteworthy, too, is the athleticism of all 16 dancers in the company.

The 11-part modern ballet is not all straight-ahead. There are more than a few moments of silliness, including a round of hand-covered open mouths spouting “oh” and an unexpected object that glides to center stage at the end of the piece.

Celia Fushille, the troupe’s artistic director who will retire at the end of the 2023-24 season after three decades with the company, says the piece “explores a range of emotions, while pushing the dancers’ technical strength, precision and artistry.”

In the program, she says that the ballet, which has been performed by other companies across the country, “reminds us of the place we hold as an incubator of new work.”

Smuin dancer Terez Dean Orr steps through (L-R) João Sampaio, Brandon Alexander and Ian Buchanan in James Kudelka’s Johnny Cash tribute, “The Man in Black.” (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

James Kudelka’s “The Man in Black,” the middle act of “Dance Series 1,” is based on Johnny Cash’s covers of tunes by the likes of Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen and John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Like “Tutto Eccetto il Lavandino,” it’s a revival; the debut was in 2010. One woman and three men, all clad in cowboy boots, jeans and phlegmatic facial expressions, stomp noisily and incorporate popular county-and-western styles such as step-dancing, square dancing and swing — with some extraordinary syncopation. The quartet works unbelievably hard. When the men forcefully shake their arms, torrents of sweat coat the stage.

Douglas Melini’s artwork is featured in the premiere of Darrell Grand Moultrie’s “Salsa ’til Dawn” in Smuin’s “Dance Series 1.” (Courtesy Chris Hardy)

The third dance, the six-part “Salsa ‘Til Dawn,” a world premiere with choreography by Darrell Grand Moultrie set to the Cuban jazz rhythms of Grammy-winner Charles Fox, doesn’t get fascinating (unless you’re thrilled by women dancing in heels rather than ballet shoes) until the finale, when the full company bounces and slithers in front of a backdrop of three huge pieces of colorful art by Douglas Melini.

During intermission, Fushille accurately suggested to an audience member in the front row that watching it would be like being at a salsa party. Moments earlier, she admitted to another dance enthusiast in that row that a first-time experiment in which narrated auditory devices aimed at helping sight-impaired patrons understand what was happening on stage didn’t work as well as expected.

Virtually everything else did, though.

Smuin’s “Dance Series 1” continues through Oct. 7 at Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, 2 Marina Blvd., San Francisco. Tickets are $25 to $89 at (415) 912-1899 or smuinballet.org 

This story was first published on LocalNewsMatters.org, a nonprofit site supported by Bay City News Foundation http://www.baycitynews.org/contact/. 

Woody Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitality press.com