The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a major restructuring at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center. An email sent out earlier today announced the departure of Artistic Director Yavé Guzmán and Front-of-House Manager Mary Dixon. “Unfortunately, due to the extreme financial toll of the pandemic, we are no longer able to pay any staff and have…
Perhaps the niche-iest of niches in modern literature is the bathroom reader. Usually a collection of essays, short stories, jokes, or comics that can be absorbed in a few minutes time, they are the dog-eared, soft-covered books you find on your neighbor’s bathroom counter that you pick up and thumb through when necessity requires you…
I spent the weekend catching up on two high-profile, gay-themed streaming productions – Netflix’s The Boys in the Band and The Prom. The former is a star-studded remount of Mart Crowley’s ground-breaking 1968 Off-Broadway production (and William Friedkin’s 1970 film adaptation) directed by Joe Mantello with the latter being a star-studded remounting of the 2018…
My phone-in guest on the Thursday, December 10 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon was the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Michael Gene Sullivan to preview their radio production of A Red Carol. Click below to listen: **********
If you come to David Fincher’s Mank seeking a definitive answer to the question of who really wrote Citizen Kane you are likely to find yourself disappointed. The question, first raised by film critic Pauline Kael in a 1971 essay, has hung out there in the cinema atmosphere for decades. Kael’s conclusion that it was…
My guest on the Thursday, December 3 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon was Transcendence Theatre Company’s Resident Artist Meggie Cansler Ness to preview this year’s Broadway Holiday at the Drive-in program. Click below to listen: **********
You’ve got to be of a certain age or a cinephile to understand the term “B” movie. Originally used to identify the second feature on a double-bill (the first being the “A” movie), some studios maintained “A” and “B” production units, while other studios – like Monogram and Republic – produced nothing but low-budget features…
When J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy was published in 2016, there was some controversy as to whether Vance’s take on Appalachian culture as embodied by his family was truly representative. Others latched on to Vance’s memoir as a guide to understanding red state politics and the rise of Trump. The Ron Howard-directed film adaptation,…
It’s been a while since a movie has ripped out my heart out and repeatedly stomped it into the ground while still giving me a sense of hope. Such a film is Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank, available now on Amazon Prime. Part family drama, part road-trip movie, part coming-of-age story, and part coming-out-late-in-life tale, it’s…
Guests on the Thursday, November 19 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were director John Shillington, composer Janis Dunson Wilson, and actor Alexx Valdez from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of It’s a Wonderful Life: the Musical. Click below to listen: **********
North Bay Stage and Screen 