On April 23, William Shakespeare will have been dead for exactly four full centuries. “This is so exciting,” says Leslie McCauley, director of Santa Rosa Junior College’s upcoming presentation of Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night.’ McCauley’s enthusiasm has less to do with 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death than the fact that her new Shakespearean production will be…
“The movie ‘Calendar Girls’ is about women who stepped out of their comfort zone,” says Jaime Love, executive artistic director of Sonoma Arts Live, “so we’re offering the women of Sonoma an opportunity to follow that example, by stepping out of their own comfort zones.” This, of course, means stepping out of their clothes. According…
Staging an original ballet is always a risky artistic gamble. Audiences are both hungry for new experiences, and wary of them. Still, when Patricia O’Reilly, of the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance, began to envision a new ballet based on the folktales of Mexico, the idea would not let go of her. Certainly a folk ballet could…
“It’s impossible to direct, or act, without using some of what you’ve experienced in your own life,” suggests actor-director Sheri Lee Miller, scooting her chair closer to the heater in the rehearsal room at Cinnabar Theater. As the sound of falling rain grows louder overhead, she takes a moment to mull that last thought over.…
Forget what you know about daylight savings time. Marin Theatre Company is springing back. Which may be a shrewd move forward. Beginning last January, all evening shows at Marin Theatre Company are starting at 7:30 p.m. (instead of 8:00, as has been the tradition since, well, forever). This makes MTC the first theater in Marin County to…
Please spell “serendipity.” As fate would have it, not one, but two productions of the engaging musical ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ are both opening in the North Bay this weekend, but the two shows – one in San Rafael, one in Sonoma – couldn’t be more different. While Marin Onstage opens its Belrose…
Sonoma County actor Chris Ginesi (co-founder of Narrow Way Stage Company), has just crossed one very big item off his theatrical bucket list. He’s just performed a play written by William Shakespeare, while standing on the stage of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Yeah, the one built to replace the original Globe, which is where…
Eve Ensler and William Shakespeare might not seem to have a lot in common as playwrights, but according to Leslie McCauley, chair of the theater department at Santa Rosa Junior College, the author of The Vagina Monologues and the creator of numerous cross-dressing Elizabethans are just two sides this year of a gender mirror that forces us…
“I was not at all familiar with ‘Emotional Creature,’ the play,” admits Siobahn O’Reilly of Sonoma, of Eve Ensler’s teen-oriented follow-up to the worldwide sensation “The Vagina Monologues.” “But I’m a little new to theater,” she laughs, “so that’s not much of a stretch, actually.” O’Reilly grew up in Sonoma, the daughter of Patricia O’Reilly,…
David Pokorny once traveled the highways of America, living out of hotel rooms and telling jokes every night in comedy clubs large and small. Today, the stories he tells about that time on the road are priceless and often feature memories of working with major stand-up comics from Robin Williams and Bill Maher to Paula…
North Bay Stage and Screen 