By Amira Walker
The city of San Francisco is also known as the city of love for its people, architecture, nature and art. It’s never difficult to find exciting colours and noises in this small but beautifully chaotic city. Here are 5 interdisciplinary things to do in San Francisco in 2025.
San Francisco Bay bridge | PHOTO: Dllu
1. San Francisco International Arts Festival
First on our list of things to in San Francisco, the San Francisco International Arts Festival (SFIAF) is an annual collection of adventurous multidisciplinary performances and educational programs that happen in various venues in the Mission District, the most culturally diverse part of the city. The theme for the year of 2025 is ‘In Diaspora: I.D. for the New Majority,’ where artists communicate the idea of being disconnected from their roots and emphasize the changing demographics across America. Performances take place between April 30th – May 11th 2025.
https://www.sfiaf.org/in_diaspora_id_for_the_new_majority
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2. Playground Solo Performance Festival
One of the most authentic things to do in San Francisco: from January 24th – February 9th, Playground will be holding its 8th annual festival, showcasing the new work of 12 Californian artists. Among the offerings will be a one-person musical, comically dark dramas and stand-up discussing self-fulfillment in undignified activities and finding community in unexpected spaces. Each show delves into the daily struggles of regular people, with the aim of suggesting that all life is political and monumental even the most mundane activities of it.
https://tickets.playground-sf.org/TheatreManager/1/online?event=390
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3. Ragnar Kjartansson: The Visitors
Continuing our list of things to do in San Francisco: First displayed in 2012, The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson is an hour-long installation of work presented across nine screens, each featuring a musician playing alone or in a group in a different room of a mansion. The performers play the same song, but each adds their own nuance through their voice, instrument, and body movements. One musician plays the guitar in a bathtub, for example, while another plays in the backyard of the mansion. It all adds up to a layered portrait of the house and its inhabitants. The work will continue to be displayed at the SFMOMA until September 28th 2025.
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/ragnar-kjartansson-the-visitors/
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4. ODC/Dance presents: Dance Downtown
Founded in 1971 by Artistic Director Brenda Way, ODC was one of the first American companies to return, after a period of relative artistic conventionalism, to virtuosic technique in contemporary dance and to commit major resources to interdisciplinary collaboration and new musical commissions. The ODC/Dance returns from April 10-13 2025 to display their new and exciting programme, with a theme centred loosely around the movement of the San Francisco bay area. The programme features a score by Mary Halvorson and live performances by local Bay Area musicians.
https://odc.dance/dance-downtown
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5. PIVOT Festival
Wrapping up our list of things to do in San Francisco, the annual PIVOT festival, now in its ninth year, aims to push the boundaries of the traditional concert experience. This year, the guest curator is Gabriel Kahane – a musician and storyteller whose work exists at the intersection of art and social practice. He will be joined by the multi-disciplinary artist and composer Carla Kihlstedt and the Del Sol Quartet, Carla Kihlstedt and Del Sol Quartet, who will perform Kihlstedt’s 26 Little Deaths, inspired by Edward Gorey’s macabre alphabet book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies. Moving between art song, pop song, and cabaret, this hour-long song cycle captures the pathos, humor, and wit of Gorey’s iconic images. Elsewhere, Sandbox Percussion performs Andy Akiho’s GRAMMY-nominated Seven Pillars – an 11-movement suite for percussion that combines sensuous timbres, a wide range of international influences, and a strong sense of rhythm. The PIVOT festival runs at the end of January.
https://sfperformances.org/performances/2425/pivot.html