by Amy Crocker

It’s said you have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning the lottery. One man in history certainly found this to be true. Roy Sullivan never won the lottery, but he is in the Guinness Book of Records for having been struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977. This distinction inspired artist Catherine Galasso to wonder what that must have felt like. Her work, Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice, mixes film and live dance to delve into the psyche of this most unfortunate man.

Galasso originally made the piece while a film student at Cornell University. After graduation, Galasso took the show to Kosovo, where is won the 2006 Most Original Theater Piece at the Skena UP Festival of Theater and Film. Lightning Never Strikes the Same Place Twice will show Saturday and Sunday, Dec 12-13, at 8 p.m. at SOMArts Cultural Center as part of Kino-Tek, the ongoing San Francisco Film Society series that focuses on emerging media. The original cast of dancers will perform along with an upgraded version of the film. SFist spoke with Galasso about Sullivan’s terrible fate, mixing dance with film, and why San Francisco is like an artist’s retreat.

SFist: Besides the lightning, what part of Sullivan’s did you mine for material?
Catherine Galasso: After having survived seven lightning strikes he committed suicide, the [rumored] reason is because he was rejected in love. So I just kind of went with that. It’s a sad story but it’s really silly at the same time.
SF: So this piece is a love story?