It used to be, not that long ago, that when a theater announced its upcoming season of shows, it did so with a simple press release and an update of its website. These days, there tends to be a certain amount of hoopla necessary, and that’s just fine with us. Theater, after all, is theater,…
Why? It’s a question we ask ourselves daily as we wake up to news of the latest national tragedy or act of incomprehensible behavior. That too-oft-asked question with the most elusive of answers is at the heart of Peter Shaffer’s Equus. Psychiatrist Martin Dysart (Craig Miller) is asked to take on the case of Alan Strang (Ryan…
North Bay Shakespeare fans – thousands of whom reportedly make the annual trek to Ashland between February and October – have long prepared themselves for the eventual departure of Artistic Director Bill Rauch, who’s held the post for the last 12 years. Since taking over for Libby Appel in 2007, he’s elevated the already renowned…
Ashe popped down to Novato to audition for the role of Linda Lohman in Arthur Miller’s iconic masterpiece “Death of a Salesman.” She knew she would be reading for the part with actor Joe Winkler, whose stage work, she now admits, she was unfamiliar with. To say the least, the audition went well. “I left…
World War II didn’t seem like ancient history in 1949 when South Pacific made its Broadway debut. Sadly, its warnings of the damage that bigotry and prejudice can do aren’t ancient history now as it bows at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center. Based on James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Tales of the South Pacific, Richard Rodgers,…
The choices in life that haunt you take center stage in two terrific productions running now in North Bay theatres. Sebastopol’s Main Stage West is presenting Sam Shepard’s Buried Child while Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater has David Lindsay-Abaire’s Good People. Shepard’s forty-year-old, Pulitzer-Prize-winning look at the implosion of the American nuclear family seems as fresh as…
“A lot of my writing process is thinking, and not typing,” admits playwright Lauren Gunderson, of San Francisco. “What that means is that I tend to work on several projects at once, crossing from one to the other, back-and-forth in my mind, comparing and considering how this one could go and what the possibilities are…
To Sonoma County film fans — including roughly 100 Santa Rosa Junior College cinema students per semester — there is no movie-going experience quite like the Petaluma Film Alliance’s year-long movie-and-lecture series at Petaluma’s Carole L. Ellis Auditorium. Open to the public as well as to students, taking place every Wednesday evening during school term,…
The San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle has announced the recipients of its four Special Awards for 2018. The Special Awards will be presented as part of its 42nd Annual Excellence in Theatre Awards Gala to be held on Monday, March 26, 2018 at San Francisco’s historic Victoria Theatre. The event will be hosted…
Ross Brown is washing dishes. Wine glasses, to be specific – props in the upcoming production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People,” opening this weekend at Cinnabar Theater. Brown, of Cotati, is the show’s stage manager, a role he often fills at Cinnabar, along with a number of other theaters and performance spaces around the North…
