“This is not a TV show, this is not a theater show, this is … something else,” says Heather Christian in a trailer for “Animal Wisdom.” The pause she makes before saying “something else,” as she gazes about the stage, suggests she has given the matter considerable thought but really can’t decide what kind of show “Animal Wisdom” is.
Which is saying something, because it’s her show.
Suffice to say “Animal Wisdom” is probably unlike anything you’ve seen on stage before. Christian is a singer, songwriter, musician, actor and theater-maker who seems almost compelled by forces beyond her control to share the story about her family’s Southern swamp-country sense of mysticism, in which the dead — animal and human — play a major and active part.
“Animal Wisdom,” which Christian performs with her band, comes across as a blend of seance, mass, confessional, stage show and concert featuring Christian’s hard-charging blend of folk, gospel, rock and shards of other Americana.
The show debuted in 2017 at the Bushwick Starr theater in Brooklyn, N.Y., which has collaborated with San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., to create a movie version now available for streaming.
Details: Extended through June 27; $19-$49; accessible at www.act-sf.org.