“Laughter is a uniquely human thing,” said Brooke Tansley, founder of the Sonoma Laughfest comedy series and the upcoming Laughnights comedy show at Petaluma’s The Big Easy on Jan. 29. “Telling jokes,” she said, “finding the funny in not-so-funny things, turning a random remark into a gag — it’s what our species does and there’s…
On a rainy Friday afternoon, following a long week of after-school practices, the cast of Sonoma Valley High School’s “Bye Bye Birdie” has been given the day off from further rehearsal. But instead of going home, several of them have gathered in the still-damp courtyard of Peet’s Coffee, taking advantage of a short window of…
Love, sex, acting and mathematics. It’s all a messy business. Two new plays explore the sloppy intersection of sexual attraction and artistic (and/or scientific) pursuits. In Lauren Gunderson’s surreal 2010 drama Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight (Marin County’s Ross Valley Players), the real-life du Châtelet, an 18th-century physicist and sometime lover of French…
The “ghost light,” an enduring theatrical tradition, is about to be reclaimed, now as a powerful political statement. This Thursday, thousands of theater companies around the country—including a handful in the North Bay evening—plan to gather together in solidarity, just after sunset, all across the United States. “It’s important that we make it known to…
‘Good sex is like downhill skiing,” says Dr. Ruth Westheimer early on in Main Stage West’s engaging, surprise-packed solo-show Becoming Dr. Ruth. “Both require instinct, good movement and a willingness to take risks.” That description, apparently, applies to Westheimer herself. Throughout the unexpectedly rich script by playwright Mark St. Germain, the true details of Dr. Ruth’s…
“It’s never final,” the saying goes, “until it’s vinyl.” Sonoma songwriter and instrumentalist Cliff Goldmacher is certainly not the first working musician to utter those words, though his long career as a successful crafter of songs has definitely convinced him of its truth. Goldmacher estimates that, to date, he has written over 1,000 songs, some…
One year ago, on the eve of his annual tour to Northern California, singer-songwriter John McCutcheon was diagnosed with lung cancer. Fortunately, that diagnosis turned out to be wrong. What McCutcheon actually had was a severe lung infection. Still, his condition was serious enough to keep him off the road, and he was forced to…
Here we go. Again. Having viewed over a hundred plays in 2016, on stages all around the Bay Area and beyond, it’s now my yearly responsibility to name my 10 favorites. As 2016 turned out to be an especially strong year for theater—ironically marked by many theater companies struggling for audiences—my task was particularly difficult this time…
‘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…
