Impressively detailed and charmingly convincing, the magnificent bed-and-breakfast set for Sonoma Arts Live’s production of “Same Time, Next Year” features a prominently positioned king-size bed, adorned with fluffy pillows and a thick, gold comforter. Less than a week before its Feb. 12 opening night, members of the design crew scamper up and down ladders, adjusting…

“The whole idea of storytelling has always been very appealing to me,” says full-time winemaker and part-time storyteller Bill Reading. Reading, founder of Sonoma Portworks, smiles as he adds, “I think I’ve been interested in the power of stories even longer than I’ve been making wine.” It’s been 22 years since Sonoma-resident Reading founded his…

“Whenever I start telling someone I know about the play ‘Bad Dates,’ they almost always end up saying, ‘Wow! Did you write this yourself?’” director-actor Jennifer King said. “Because anyone who knows me, and my life, immediately thinks this story sound like something I would write.” “Bad Dates” — opening Feb. 5 at Cinnabar Theater…

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…

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…

“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…

“I watch a lot of football,” proclaimed Jessie Neilson, of San Francisco’s Opera on Tap, where her official title is “co-managing diva.” “So many of the commercials they play during football games use classical music, and a lot of those pieces are from operas,” she said. “Whenever a football commercial needs something dramatic, it’s almost…

Much in the way that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the most talked-about movie of 2015, the North Bay theater scene already has its share of shows that are receiving major advance buzz. Stephen Sondheim’s dark-tinged musical fairy tale Into the Woods is staged often but rarely well. The music is hard, the cast is large, and there is…

As a New Year’s Eve project, I decided to pull together a picture for each show I saw somewhere, within the North Bay or beyond, in 2015. It turned out NOT to be a short, simple project, and by the time 2015 turned into 2015, I was only a third of the way through. So…