“When I know a film has a good message, whether it’s a science message or an environmental message,” says Kristi Draluck, kindergarten teacher at Prestwood Elementary School, “I can use that movie as a teaching tool. Movies like the Pixar films do get through to kids. When the movie shows animals or fish, or talks…
Hard work is an essential part of any artistic or financial success. Actor-singer-producer Brad Surosky, of Transcendence Theater Company, has learned that from personal experience – but he’s also learned that hard work is often not enough. Success also requires an additional little thing called luck. “So many things have had to line up perfectly…
“I’ve seen every one of the Universal Frankenstein movies,” declares lifelong horror fan Ross Lockhart, publisher and editor-in-chief of the North Bay’s award-winning book publishing company, Word Horde. “And I’ve seen most of the Hammer Pictures Frankenstein movies. But I’ve deliberately skipped things like that recent one, the thing with Harry Potter as Igor.” “That would be Victor Frankenstein, with…
Blake Edwards’ “The Pink Panther,” released to an unsuspecting public in 1963, is best remembered as the film that gave the world Inspector Clouseau. Unstoppably clumsy, relentlessly persistent, the infuriatingly funny crime-stopper is arguably Peter Sellers most enduring and beloved character. But he was never intended to be a leading man. Initially, Clouseau was merely…
“I think a lot of what I watch or read ends up in the work of Kronos, one way or another,” says David Harrington, acclaimed violinist and founder of the San Francisco-based music ensemble Kronos Quartet. “And as it so happens,” Harrington adds, “I tend to watch a lot of documentaries.” For example, he recently…
“I know what it’s like to have a dream,” says actor-educator Jim Jarrett, of Sonoma. “I know what it’s like to struggle in pursuit of that dream – and I know what it’s like to start late in doing it.” Vincent van Gogh didn’t start painting until he was 27, points out Jarrett, who began…
“It’s challenging to play in the pit for three different musicals in a given week,” admits Sonoma-based drummer Quinten Cohen. “But it’s very rewarding.” A longtime company member and orchestra performer with the annual Summer Repertory Theater Company in Santa Rosa, Cohen says that he looks forward to his yearly participation in the program. It’s…
“Relationships matter,” the Rev. Jane Spahr once preached. “Relationships matter because relationships are what really change the world.” In the early 1980s, Spahr helped form a pair of San Rafael-based organizations dedicated to changing the world through building relationships between people in need and the wider community. Whether or not Spahr and the people she…
“As both a political ad guy, and a general ad guy,” says Sonoma’s Bob Gardner, “I always lean toward trying to do the kind of commercial that will draw people in, and make them think a little bit.” Adds Gardner: “As opposed to trying to hit them over the head with a sledgehammer.” A seasoned…
In West Side Story—Sondheim, Bernstein and Arthur Laurents’ beloved ’50s-era street-gang homage to Romeo and Juliet—two teenage New Yorkers meet by chance at a tense interracial community dance, and their forbidden love sets in motion a series of events hopeful and tragic. For this all-important first-act meet-up to work, the audience must feel the electrifying, fateful connection…
North Bay Stage and Screen 