The Last Supper Party Performance Series
The Last Supper Party is a spoken word and performance series inspired by Fe Bongolan’s landmark painting of the same name; a 200 sq. ft. canvas that defines our Sutter Street office and live arts venue.

The Last Supper Party presents the voices of diverse artists and writers who call out the myriad injustices and impacts of corruption, unchecked power and greed.

We invite our audience to share ideas and bread and find inspiration in the thoughts and words of artists whose perspectives are drawn from a kaleidoscope of cultures. But who are united by compassion and a common desire to seek justice, equity and truth.

The Story of The Last Supper Party Painting
“1985. Ronald Reagan was still President. The global movement to end apartheid and free Nelson Mandela from Robben Island Prison was underway. In San Francisco homelessness was ramping up. The AIDS pandemic was taking down swaths of our city’s population: friends, family, and co-workers. Yet a whole other world of class and wealth did nothing while the rest of our world was in trouble. Sitting in my studio in an Inverness cabin, I stayed with my paints and let something happen. It was there that I found my artist’s voice to not attack directly, but to let the exposure of that apathy – bred by a society that embraced greed over humanity—do the work.

Thirty six years later, with all that has changed and not changed, it is painfully unsurprising that this painting still shouts.”

~ Fe Bongolan

About the Artists

Karla Brundage
Karla Brundage is a poet, editor, essayist, teacher and beach lover.  A recipient of a Fulbright Teacher Exchange she spent a year teaching in Zimbabwe and three years in Cote d'Ivoire where she founded West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange. She is author of two books, Swallowing Watermelons and Mulatta- Not so Tragic co-authored with Allison Francis. She has performed her work onstage and online, both nationally and internationally. Her poetry, short stories and essays can be found in Essential Truths, Multi-America, Konch, Hip Mama, sPARKLE & bLINK, Bamboo Ridge, Vibe.  In 2020, her poem Alabama Dirt was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Natasha Dennerstein
Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Natasha Dennerstein is currently based in Oakland, California and has had poetry published in many journals internationally. Her collections “Anatomize” (2015), “Triptych Caliform” (2016) and her novella-in-verse “About a Girl” (2017) and her trans chapbook “Seahorse” (2017) were all published by Nomadic Press in Oakland. In 2018 she was a Fellow of the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat. Natasha works at St James Infirmary, a clinic for sex-workers in San Francisco. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University.

Clyde Leland
Clyde Leland, a native San Franciscan living in Berkeley, is a singer-songwriter who has performed throughout the Bay Area.  Like his songwriter hero, John Prine, Clyde writes songs that are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, often political, and usually in the key of C.  While singing with his granddaughter’s class ten years ago, he realized that singing with kids is more fun than teaching law students, so he retired from his positions teaching Legal Writing and Legal Ethics to launch Sing Along With Grampa Clyde. He sings for children in preschool and daycare centers daily and has produced a CD of kids’ music. Clyde has served on the Board of Directors of the Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in Berkeley, the oldest folk music venue west of the Mississippi, and is a member of the Chapter Council of Jewish Voice for Peace Bay Area.

Kimi Sugioka (Curator)
Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda, a post that includes creating platforms for the presentation of a diverse variety of poets and spoken-word artists. Kimi also performs her own work frequently throughout the Bay Area. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and raised in Berkeley, California, Kimi has worked in public education for decades, and earned her BA from San Francisco State University and MFA from the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Fe Bongolan (Creator of The Last Supper Party Painting)
Fe Bongolan is a Bay Area visual and performing artist. She is an alumnae of San Francisco State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Crafts and Design. She found theater arts in her last year at SFSU, and to this day it consumes her life. After working as an actress with Asian American Theater Company and Teatro Campesino, in 1992 she began work with the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women, immediately involved as an artist from the community working alongside Rhodessa Jones in helping women inmates from San Francisco County Jail write their stories for performance. In 28 years with the Medea Project, Fe developed as actor, writer, dramaturge and assistant director to Rhodessa, helping inmates and ex-offenders find their voice and develop their writing for performance in jail, the community and main stage.