Santa Rosa Junior College to refurbish and upgrade Burbank Auditorium

January 6 — In a recently distributed message from Frank Chong, President of the Santa Rosa Junior College, it was announced that the school’s much-used Burbank Auditorium – home to SRJC’s Theater Arts program and the popular Summer Repertory Theatre program – will be getting a long-delayed upgrade and remodeling. Using grant money’s set aside for the improvement…

Kicking off 2016 with a buzz and a bang

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…

Changes Ahead at Sonoma Arts Live

Sonoma Arts Live is making a few New Year’s resolutions. Earlier show times… a higher number of performances spread more widely throughout the year… an immediate transition from the former alliance of different theater troupes into a single theater company… and a decided move toward more artistic and thematic consistency in its choices of plays…

The Age of Reason

[SPOILER ALERT: Anyone who believes in Santa Claus, still writes letters to and receives letters from Santa Claus, or would prefer not to hear stories about how other people came to believe that there was no Santa Claus, should be warned that, um, stuff is about to be said that might change the way they…

Object Lesson

“Oh my God! Look! It’s Han Solo. Frozen in carbonite!” I think it was 20 years ago. Maybe more. I honestly can’t remember the exact year, but the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium at the Marin Civic Center was hosting a massive exhibition of props, models, sketches, costumes and scenery pieces from the archives of Lucasfilm and…

Talking Pictures: Dennis Muren on making ‘Star Wars’ glow

“Everybody wants to know about the lightsabers,” says Dennis Muren, standing before a full house at the Century Cinema Theater in Corte Madera. Muren—a legendary special effects artist and veteran of Industrial Light & Magic, having worked on all of the original Star Wars films, and many other high-profile projects—is clearly still intensely enthused about the films…