Magic Theatre and Campo Santo present Grateful Fridays in the theater in Building D, Third Floor and outdoors at Fort Mason Center For Arts and Culture (FMCAC). Grateful Fridays is a musical series culminating in Magic’s new Fall 2025 play, Jerry Garcia In The Lower Mission by Richard Montoya of Culture Clash. The series continues on Friday, May 30, 2025, at 6:00 p.m.

Musical guests include Rory McNamara and friends and the Sunshine Garcia Band. Be part of an evening that flows through FMCAC like a song. Celebrate with Magic Theatre Artistic Director Sean San José and the play’s directors and share a glimpse into the dream and design of the production — and what it means that Campo Santo, a theater rooted in radical love and cultural memory, has been entrusted with telling this story.

SCHEDULE:

6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Drinks and socializing in the Magic Theatre lobby

7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Venture outside to the Fort Mason Night Market for an electric set by the Sunshine Garcia Band

8:30 p.m. Return to Magic Theatre for an intimate acoustic set with Rory McNamara and friends, with scenes from the play performed by Dena Martinez and Brian Rivera.

Step into a new tradition with ongoing Grateful Fridays — a monthly celebration of the Grateful Dead’s enduring musical legacy, held the final Friday of every month at Magic Theatre in San Francisco. This inaugural evening kicks off a season of remembrance, resurrection, and radiant song in preparation for Jerry Garcia In The Lower Mission — coming to the Magic Theatre, October – November 2025.

Created by Culture Clash’s Richard Montoya, and co-directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka and Edris Cooper-Anifowoshe, Jerry Garcia In The Lower Mission is a visionary new musical chronicling Jerry’s childhood in San Francisco’s Excelsior District and imagining a celestial reunion with his parents — returning to the origin to reckon with the soul. With the heartfelt blessing of Trixie Garcia, Jerry’s daughter, this is not merely a tribute, but a calling: a chance to honor the boy behind the icon, and the mother and father who shaped him.

The soundtrack resurrects the beloved spirit songs of 1960s San Francisco – a lost, working-class era filled with union halls, dive bars, and Fillmore families – when music was sacrament and survival. At Grateful Fridays, Magic opens the doors to that time, not in nostalgia, but in a search for what still rings true.

This is not just a concert. It’s the lighting of a lamp in San Francisco’s mythic dark – a communion of song and spirit, shadow and shine.