Benefit concert announced to send Mary Gannon Graham’s ‘Mother Jones in Heaven’ to the Dublin Fringe Festival this Fall January 30, 2016 — In two sold-out Sonoma County productions of Si Kahn’s award-winning musical ‘Mother Jones in Heaven,’ actress-singer Mary Gannon Graham knocked out crowds with her stellar voice and heartbreaking performance. No she’s planning on taking…
The shaky state of America’s education system gets a less-than-passing grade in a new drama, now playing at the Sonoma Community Center, “Gidion’s Knot,” by playwright Johnna Adams, was named by the American Theatre Critics Association as one of the top three new plays of 2012. Charged with urgent, ripped-from-the-headlines immediacy, the twisty two-actress drama…
“Happy New Year,” says Daedalus Howell, author and journalist, toasting with a glass of his favorite, delicious red wine. “I’ve really been looking forward to talking about Spotlight, ever since I first saw it in November.” Howell, a Petaluma native, has spent years in Hollywood (his IMDB profile is crammed with short films bearing unusual names), followed…
The late August Wilson’s penultimate play, the supremely lyrical and gorgeously written 2003 drama Gem of the Ocean, may be set in 1904, but its themes stretch purposefully back in time to the beginning of New World slavery and reach forward to the present, when African Americans are still fighting many of the same struggles. This…
Good cop. Bad cop. It’s a formula so mainstream that it was the basis of a character in the ‘The LEGO Movie,’ where Liam Neeson voiced the dual-personalities of a tiny plastic policeman, named Good Cop-Bad Cop, who was literally two-faced, depending on the situation. Even when kind of disturbing, he was kind of adorable.…
There’s one especially good thing about a short play, aside from the fact that it’s, you know, short—so if you’re watching one and it turns out to be bad, you don’t have to wait so long for the torture to end. No, the best thing about a short play is that it gives a beginning playwright…
Marin Theatre Company to offer free daycare for matinee show January 21, 2016 — Sooner or later, someone had to do it. For years (and years, and years) younger theater fans, those with families, have claimed that it was the complexity and cost of childcare that prevented them for attending live stage shows. It’s Marin Theatre Company that is…
It’s been just over four years since Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors made its mad, merry pratfall onto the stage of public awareness—first in London, then New York. In that short length of time, Bean’s preposterous 1960s-set update of Carlo Goldoni’s 18th-century farce A Servant of Two Masters has already become a modern comedy classic, scooping up awards…
Phil Straub is not a flashy guy. He’s quiet, which is why he’s good with horses. In director Tom Donahue’s powerful documentary ‘Thank You For Your Service,’ Straub is one of several U.S. veterans who appear to discuss the experience of being a warrior returning from war. For Straub, one of the ways he’s found to heal…
“Theater is storytelling,” says director Libby Oberlin, describing the conspicuously non-theatrical approach she’s taken to staging Sonoma Arts Live’s latest production, “Love, Loss and What I Wore.” “So the way we’re presenting it,” she says, “is a celebration of the art and tradition of on-stage storytelling.” Written by the sister-sister team of Norah Ephron (“When…
North Bay Stage and Screen 