‘Pop-Up Magazine’ Returns to Oakland with Homegrown Talent

It’s been a minute since we’ve recommended a Pop-Up Magazine stage show. The live magazine pivoted to video early in the pandemic, then produced a food-themed “Issue in a Box” in late 2020. Last year, the team created a “Sidewalk Issue,” blending magazine, scavenger hunt and public art to create tangible (and by all accounts, delightful) experiences in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Brooklyn, before resuming in-person events for a fall 2021 tour.

On Tuesday, May 24, Pop-Up returns to its familiar spot on Oakland’s Paramount Theatre stage, bringing together a group of talented people for a night of multimedia nonfiction storytelling. If you haven’t experienced a Pop-Up show before, picture something akin to sitting down with your smartest friends and consuming a magazine, page by page and section by section, with the help of erudite narrators and live musical accompaniment (courtesy house band Magik*Magik Orchestra).

The “Spring 2022 Issue” includes podcaster (and one of my favorite Twitter presences) Tracy Clayton; author and illustrator Kristen Radtke; writers Chloé Cooper Jones, Brooke Jarvis and Elena Passarello; photographer Oscar Castillo; and Oakland-based filmmaker Adrian L. Burrell.

Pop-Up Magazine likes to keep things mysterious beforehand, but from the titles of various presenters’ pieces, I can tell you this: Clayton will be hosting a game show with the entire audience as participants, Castillo examines music and family in Venezuela’s “most notorious prison,” and Burrell is showing a film that chronicles his family’s journey from Jim Crow-era Louisiana to modern-day West Oakland. Your live event-starved senses will thank you.

‘Pop-Up Magazine’ takes place May 24, 7:30pm at Paramount Theatre. Tickets and details here.