‘It started as a dream—literally,” says Sharon McNight, describing how her affection for the music of late vaudeville legend Sophie Tucker became the one-woman-show Red Hot Mama. A Tony-award nominee for her lead performance in the 1989 fantasy-musical Starmites, McNight will be bringing her acclaimed solo show to the Cinnabar Theater for a three-weekend run beginning Jan.…
BRIEF NOTE: I wrote this story in 2003, and it is still one of the favorite fictional pieces I ever put to paper. Originally, the ending was left slightly ambiguous, as I intended. Occasionally, near the Winter Solstice, I’ve found ways to offer the story back to the world, in reprints, radio plays, and…
Sonoma’s Abbey Lee has won the award for Outstanding Supporting Performance in a Musical by the Sonoma County-based Marquee Theater Journalists Association. A 2007 graduate of Sonoma Valley High School, Lee was honored by the MTJA for her work in 6th Street Playhouse’s recent production of the Marx Brothers’ musical “Animal Crackers.” “I’m really thrilled,”…
“Having so much archival material to draw on, that was such a blessing,” says Ruth Negga (Preacher, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who plays Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols’ beautifully crafted drama Loving, the story of Mildred and Richard Loving. It was their marriage, declared illegal in the state of Virginia in 1958, that led to the U.S. Supreme…
Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews debuted off Broadway in 2012. The popular play, now running at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre, potently throws together three very different Jewish family members, just after the burial of their grandfather. Daphna (Emily Kron) is intensely religious, but her two wealthy cousins, Jonah (Brady Morales-Woolery) and Liam (Dean Linnard), are less so.…
On Monday, November 14th, a gathering was held at the Local Barrel Tap Room in Santa Rosa to celebrate the outstanding work done by the local theatre community for the 2015 – 2016 season. Here is the full list of the 2016 nominees and recipients of the inaugural Marquee Theater Journalists Association Awards with winners…
There’s no doubt about it. Whenever Sonoma County residents talk about Alfred Hitchcock, and the extraordinary films he made here, the conversation almost always alights on “The Birds,” the classic shocker Hitchcock filmed in Bodega in 1963. That cinematic flight of horrific fancy is not the only movie Hitch helmed in the area, however. In…
It’s a strange conundrum. Theater audiences, when polled, frequently say they’ve grown weary of seeing the same shows trotted out every few years. What they want, they say firmly with convincing resolve, is something new. And yet time and time again, when companies do bring something fresh and original to the stage, audiences stay home. Just…
“This is so sad! I feel like I should take a picture—my very last time standing inside the Cinema theater!” So remarks Ben Burtt, standing near the massive screen at Corte Madera’s legendary Century Cinema theater (the “Cinema”), just moments before a Mill Valley Film Festival screening of Star Wars: A New Hope. As he looks…
Most stories that appear to be about death and dying prove to be all about life and living. They just use the inevitability of death to cast comparative light and shadow on the many joys and pitfalls of being alive. In Jane Anderson’s deliciously rich drama The Quality of Life, playing at Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater, four…
North Bay Stage and Screen 