The Mill Valley Film Festival – now getting ready to serve up year No. 42 in Mill Valley, San Rafael and Larkspur – is more than just a ten-day buffet of internationally curated cinematic gems. Since the acclaimed festival just happens to take place in early October, at the start of Academy Award season, the…
Jonathan Spector, the award-winning, Oakland-based playwright of ‘Eureka Day,’ playing through September 22 at Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Performing Arts Center, will be attending this Saturday evening’s performance of his award-winning comedy-drama. Spector has recently returned from New York City, where ‘Eureka Day’ – which premiered last year at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre – had its East…
Every holiday has its own traditions, and watching certain holiday-themed movies has long been part of many family’s annual observations of Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and others. Easter is no exception. As practiced in America (and many other Western countries), Easter has become an especially odd blend of sacred and secular, as some approach the…
By David Templeton Everyone’s heard that famous Shakespeare speech (or some of it, anyway) about how all the world is a stage, and how men and woman are just actors walking on and off. How each one of us gets to play a lot of different parts in their life, beginning with the role of…
At Monday night’s San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Awards Gala, a number of North Bay theater artists and companies walked away with crisp new personalized certificates in an array of categories. The big winner of the evening was Rohnert Park’s Spreckels Theatre Company, which took home a total of eight wins – all…
Written by David Templeton Among the many pleasures to be found in the writing of playwright Terrence McNally (“Love! Valour! Compassion!” “Master Class,” “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”) is the way he always allows his primary characters to have second chances. An opportunity to redress a past error, take one more creaky…
When is a free outdoor performance a thing of public service and culture and art, and when is it just noise? That’s the debate currently being battled in Mill Valley, where residents near Old Mill Park have petitioned the city to reduce the auditory impact of an annual Shakespeare festival that comes to the park’s…
Written by David Templeton “We’re not technically drinking, I want that to be absolutely clear,” Petaluma stage director-and-actor Larry Williams pointed out, on a recent St. Patrick’s Day Sunday, as a pair of tall, colorful, impossibly sweet-looking margaritas – one blended, one on the rocks – appeared at our table. “This isn’t alcohol consumption. It’s…
Written by David Templeton The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland, Oregon, is currently marking its 86th year of existence. That means that OSF has outlasted Betty Friedan, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lloyd Bridges, Agatha Christie, Roy Clark, Pope Pius XI, Carl Jung, Fritz Lang and Daniel Boone, all of whom successfully made it…
‘MOTHER ROAD’ (March 3-October 26) Rating (out of 5): ★★★★½ The idea of writing a theatrical sequel to John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” would seem shocking were it not that the playwright is Octavio Solis, one of the country’s most-celebrated living writers of the Mexican-American experience. There is definitely something Steinbeckian about Solis’ award-winning work.…
North Bay Stage and Screen 