Jeff DeMark gleaned sage insights from Zoe Nordstrom nearly every time they took the time to talk about her life, his life, and his contemporaneous San Francisco scuffle through 17 temp jobs in 22 months in the late 1980s, not to mention the ill-fated love affair that had brought him out from Wisconsin to San Francisco.

Famous to us and to community activists near and far as one of the Gum Tree Girls, who headed off plans for a freeway that would have wended its way up the canyon and over Twin Peaks for the convenience of hustling commuters, Zoe Nordstrom rented Jeff a space in her Glen Park house for a three-year stretch that included the period covered in his solo show. Her take on things colored his whole philosophy on how to proceed in a world full of hustling commuters.

In “Went to Lunch, Never Returned,” with Laura Black providing sound effects and additional music, he tells the tale

Jeff debuted “Went to Lunch, Never Returned” at Dell’Arte Theater’s Mad River Festival in Blue Lake, California.  The show toured widely to enthusiastic praise.  DeMark is a native of Racine, and the Wisconsin State Journal called “Went to Lunch” “The best show of the year in Madison, Wisconsin.” The Capital Times of Madison said “DeMark’s work provides side-splitting personal comedy. It’s accessible performance that is no less thought-provoking than Spalding Gray’s work.”

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