A deeply reported community feature on Skywatchers, their mission, ensemble leadership, artistic legacy, and the upcoming A.C.T. presentation Calling Us In: An Invitation to Joy.
In a city that too often documents the Tenderloin without ever truly seeing it, the work of Skywatchers demands something different: not observation, but recognition. Not distance, but presence. What is happening inside this collective is not simply art—it is a sustained act of community truth-telling, built by the very people San Francisco has historically pushed to the margins.
An immersive Tenderloin-based arts collective transforms grief into joy, visibility into power, and community into a living act of resistance.
Promotional art for Calling Us In: An Invitation to Joy at The Rueff at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater, 1127 Market Street, San Francisco, with performances at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 9, 2026. Source: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/current—an-invitation-to-joy
There are some art collectives that perform. Then there are others that testify. And then, once in a rare and righteous while, there are those uncommon ensembles that do something even more dangerous than performance or testimony: they make the world look at people it has trained itself not to see. In San Francisco’s Tenderloin, Skywatchers has spent roughly a decade and a half doing exactly that—coaxing beauty out of abandonment, ceremony out of neglect, and public truth out of lives too often reduced to statistics, policy memos, police chatter, pity, or silence.
Skywatchers describes itself as a radical, cross-cultural, intergenerational, mixed-ability community arts collaboration rooted in the Tenderloin. That is not promotional fluff. It is a method, a survival ethic, and a declaration of belonging. Their mission is to create rigorous art drawn from the life stories, urgent concerns, and boldest dreams of Tenderloin artists—especially residents shaped by housing insecurity and long histories of disenfranchisement. Their vision is equally clear: a San Francisco where health, dignity, and civic participation are not luxury goods reserved for the already comfortable.
What makes Skywatchers singular is that it does not approach the Tenderloin as raw material to be interpreted from afar. It approaches the neighborhood as a living circle of authorship. The group’s own methodology is built around four values—relational, durational, conversational, and structural—which is another way of saying Skywatchers does not parachute into pain for an arts grant and a standing ovation. It stays. It listens. It returns. It builds trust slowly enough for truth to breathe.
That ethic reaches back to the ensemble’s origin story. The work grew from conversations in supportive housing spaces such as the historic Senator Hotel after Anne Bluethenthal, founder of ABD Productions, shifted from making work about vulnerable communities to making work with people directly impacted by the city’s inequalities. The group’s name came from Janice Detroit, a Tenderloin resident who looked out from her fifth-floor room and called herself a skywatcher. What began as a conversation became an enduring community ensemble.
Skywatchers has answered San Francisco’s architecture of exclusion with a counter-architecture of presence. Their films, performances, neighborhood tours, public interventions, portrait series, vigils, and operatic works do not ask permission to humanize the Tenderloin. They insist on it. They remind this city that the neighborhood is not an urban problem to be managed. It is a community full of memory, wit, discipline, invention, and moral intelligence.
If seduction, in its most elevated sense, is the art of invitation—an atmosphere charged with attention, magnetism, and emotional recognition—then Skywatchers has accomplished something far more honorable than manipulation: it has created a civic invitation toward conscience. The ensemble draws audiences close by making them feel the pulse of lives they have been conditioned to pass by. It does not overpower. It invites. And in that invitation, one of art’s oldest truths becomes plain: when people feel seen, they lean toward truth.
That magnetic power is all over The Opulence Project, one of Skywatchers’ most arresting bodies of work. Since 2018, the ensemble has invited Tenderloin residents and members to imagine the most opulent, heroic, lavish versions of themselves and then co-create photographic portraits that render those visions visible. Here, opulence is stripped of colonial excess and returned to a liberatory vocabulary: deity, witness, protector, elegist, healer, truth-teller. The question underneath the project is devastating and beautiful at once: why should monuments belong only to empire, capital, and conquest? Why not to tenderness, survival, and mutual aid?
Look at Joel Yates, rendered in the Opulence Project as ‘The Eternal Elegist.’ The portrait does more than frame a man. It frames an argument against disappearance. Yates, now a lead artist and director of programming, has become one of Skywatchers’ most eloquent public voices. His testimony about the Opulence Project is simple and seismic: ‘I’m still here.’ In four words, that is recovery language, resurrection language, neighborhood language.
He is joined by a remarkable circle of leaders. Shavonne Allen, a San Francisco native, former unhoused resident, recovering addict, activist, health worker, and now lead artist and director of community care, embodies what Skywatchers does at its best: turning survival into leadership without laundering out the truth of what survival costs. Shakiri, who unexpectedly joined the ancestors during a Skywatchers’ practice, was an award-winning choreographer and Bay Area cultural force. She brought movement, wisdom, and deep artistic lineage which is sorely missed by her fellow Thespians, comrades, and friends. Nazelah Jamison contributes the force of the poet-emcee. Deirdre Visser helps materialize the ensemble’s visual imagination. And Melanie DeMore—phenomenal, seasoned, soul-stirring. Melanie DeMore—has long served as one of the ensemble’s musical anchors, preserving African American folk tradition while wielding song as social medicine.
Anne Bluethenthal’s contribution remains profound not because she claimed authorship over community pain, but because she refused to. Mission Local reported her insistence that she would not take someone else’s story and turn it into her art, but help them perform their art. That is a rare and principled position in a nonprofit landscape too often built on extraction. It is also one reason Skywatchers has endured and evolved into a distributed, Tenderloin-rooted leadership model.
The archive proves that Skywatchers is not a one-show wonder but a disciplined body of work. From At the Table: Memory is Resistance, where Tenderloin residents led neighborhood tours rooted in lived memory, to From Containment to Expansion, which answered pandemic pressure with story, song, and Gullah stick pounding, to Reimagining the City as Our Own, a piercing examination of hostile anti-homeless architecture, the ensemble has consistently fused aesthetics with civic argument. Even its scholarly publications extend the same labor, linking community arts practice to public health, justice, and anti-extractive partnership.
Critics and journalists have recognized what the neighborhood already knew. A 2024 review of Towards Opulence, the Opera II called the work “magnificent,” praising its social vision, musical force, and inclusive leadership. Another review described the opera as a bold celebration of truth, community, and radical acceptance, with Tenderloin residents framed not as broken subjects of service but as Cassandras—truth-tellers speaking what the city does not want to hear.
Skywatchers does not perform as though grief were incidental. It names the dead. It keeps vigil. It waters the ancestral road. Mission Local documented how Bluethenthal was with longtime ensemble member Dino Smith when he took his last breath and later helped keep his ashes close to his chosen family. Midbrow reported that Towards Opulence was dedicated in memory to Calvin, The Bear. Skywatchers also helps steward the Annual Vigil for unhoused and unstably housed San Franciscans in Civic Center Plaza. This is not decorative sorrow. It is disciplined remembrance.
So let this article pause to honor the beloved departed – those publicly named in Skywatchers’ orbit and those carried in community memory beyond the reach of formal archives. In that spirit, it must also pause for Shakiri, whose presence clearly remains woven into the emotional and artistic life of the Skywatchers family. In the Tenderloin, grief is never only private. It is sung, poured, marched, and held.
Shavonne Allen, lead artist and director of community care, offered a remembrance that says as much about Shakiri’s spirit as it does about the culture Skywatchers has fought to build: “Shakiri was generous with her time, kindness, laughter, and her encouragement. She always reminded me that I could do it, and that I was good at it, whatever ‘It was,’ and I believed her. Her words of encouragement are why I continue to show up and do it. Shakiri showed me how to show up with enthusiasm and how to let go and be present….I am here…we are all here to let our light shine because we were all born great.” – Shavonne Allen
That testimony belongs here because it reveals what too many institutions fail to understand: some people leave behind more than memories. They leave behind permission. Permission to keep going. Permission to believe in your own gift. Permission to arrive fully, to shine without apology, and to meet the world with joy even after sorrow has done its work.
And now the community should know this plainly, prominently, and without delay: Skywatchers and A.C.T. Education and Community Programs will present Calling Us In: An Invitation to Joy on Saturday, May 9, 2026, at The Rueff at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater, 1127 Market Street, San Francisco, with performances at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. The new performance piece is co-created by Sarah Crowell and the Skywatchers Ensemble and will feature the incomparable Melanie DeMore. The work begins, fittingly, at a Tenderloin bus stop, where neighbors weighted down by the backpacks of living wait for passage toward healing, belonging, and transformation. Through song, movement, humor, and raw storytelling, the production imagines calling in instead of casting out, insisting that joy itself can be an act of collective liberation.
That phrase matters: joy as collective liberation. In this political moment, that is not a soft idea. It is a militant one. Skywatchers understand that joy is not denial. Joy is strategy. Joy is a refusal to let the state, the market, or the daily humiliations of poverty have the final word over a people’s inner life. If grief is one of Skywatchers’ native languages, joy is the other—sensual, communal, disarming, magnetic.
That truth is personal for me. If you look closely at the promotional flyers for the upcoming Skywatchers’ presentation, you will see me in the back of the group standing tall, my arms outstretched to the sky in my own exhibition of joy. I was invited to join Skywatchers four or five months ago. My schedule has been so hectic that I was not able to commit to participating in this specific show, but you never know what the future may hold. Skywatchers embodies just about everything I believe in: community, inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness, and action. Every time I join my fellow comrades and friends, I come away with a strong and positive therapeutic sense of healing. Slowly, I have been able to heal from trauma – the trauma of addiction, the trauma of lost love, and the trauma of being a Black man attempting to survive in the most expensive city in the United States. And while I am struggling to survive, and possibly even thrive here, I find myself constantly fighting for the rights of those who do not have a voice. I am their voice. I am a truth-teller. I am a love warrior. I am Malik Washington. I am a Skywatcher.
“I, MALIK WASHINGTON, AM A SKYWATCHER.”
Skywatchers has been showing San Francisco for years that the people most discounted by policy are often the people most fluent in interdependence, resilience, and truth. The Tenderloin deserves resources, stages, and sustained respect. But beyond that, the city itself is spiritually malnourished when it refuses the wisdom of those who live closest to the blade.
So when the lights rise on May 9, do not come expecting charity art. Do not come expecting trauma arranged for tasteful consumption. Come expecting testimony with rhythm. Come expecting choreography with teeth. Come expecting voices that have survived enough to know the difference between pity and solidarity. Come expecting Sarah Crowell, the Skywatchers’ Ensemble, and Melanie DeMore to do what this collective has done again and again: make room for a city’s conscience to catch up with its people.
And if you have any appetite left for beauty that tells the truth, meet them there: The Rueff at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater, 1127 Market Street, San Francisco, on Saturday, May 9, 2026, at 4 p.m. or 7 p.m. Because some invitations are entertainment. This one feels closer to a summons.
Event Details:
Calling Us In: An Invitation to Joy
Co-created by Sarah Crowell and the Skywatchers Ensemble
Featuring Melanie DeMore
Saturday, May 9, 2026
Performances at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.
The Rueff at A.C.T.’s Strand Theater
1127 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
Sources
Skywatchers homepage: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/
Mission, Vision + Values: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/mission-vision
Herstory / origin story: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/about-herstory
Current work: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/our-work-current
Calling Us In: An Invitation to Joy: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/current—an-invitation-to-joy
“We are all here to let our light shine because we were all born great.” — Shavonne Allen
Calling Us In project context: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/current-calling-us-in
Lead Artists: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/our-team-sla
Opulence Project / Portraits: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/current—portraits
Films: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/films
Publications: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/publications
Archives overview: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/our-archives
At the Table: Memory is Resistance: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/archives-performances/archives-at-the-table-memory-is-resistance
From Containment to Expansion: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/archives-performances/archives-from-containment-to-expansion
Towards Opulence, Part I: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/archives-performances/archives-toto-part-one
Annual Vigil / memorials: https://www.skywatcherssf.org/current—memorials
Mission Local feature on Skywatchers (2025): https://missionlocal.org/2025/07/skywatchers-tenderloin-artists-performers/
Mission Local on Dino Smith and the unclaimed dead (2024): https://missionlocal.org/2024/04/350-dead-go-unclaimed-in-sf-each-year-heres-what-happens-to-them/
SF Arts Commission on The Opulence Project: https://www.sfartscommission.org/our-role-impact/press-room/press-release/skywatchers%E2%80%99-opulence-project-invites-tenderloin-community
Jen Norris review of Towards Opulence, the Opera II: https://www.jen-norris-dance-rev.com/post/review-skywatchers-dance-mission-theater-present-towards-opulence-the-opera-ii-dance-mission-th
Midbrow review of Towards Opulence: https://midbrow.org/a-bold-celebration-of-truth-community-and-radical-acceptance/ Grand Reunion case study: https://grandreunion.net/case-in-point-skywatchers/
Here’s our song/video for this article:
DONNY HATHAWAY – A SONG FOR YOU (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)
