Ultimately, despite the talent, craft, and ingenious artistic contributions of the cast and crew, and regardless of the boldness, beauty or flat-out genius of a show’s concept, whether or not the thing works is ultimately a matter of taste. What you think is brilliant I might find to be a well-intentioned mess, and what your neighbor…
Two North Bay Theater Companies announce details of next season March 10, 2016 —It’s a little like Christmas, this time of year, when one-by-one the majority of theater companies release details about their upcoming. And like Christmas, when lists of gifts become a focus of attention (whether it’s a child’s list of toys hoped for from…
In Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s boldly beautiful fantasy-drama ‘The River Bride,’ projections are used to dazzling effect, creating sunrises and sunsets, starry skies, and rain-soaked jungles. Projections play also a significant part in Christopher Liam Moore’s equally bold – but far less consistently satisfying — staging of Shakespeare’s gender-bendy Twelfth Night. Amongst Shakespeare’s most popular and…
“I don’t laugh because I’m happy,” says Michael Pritchard, recipient of this year’s Heroes of Marin Lifetime Achievement Award. “I’m happy,” he says, “because I laugh.” Pritchard, for the record, is actually laughing as he says this, wrapping up a story, this late February morning, in which he describes his day so far—a day that the rest…
“Love is for the bold! You have to be willing to risk everything!” So exults Belmira, an impetuous young bride-to-be, in an evocative early scene in Marisela Treviño Orta’s stunning The River Bride. It’s easily the best new show in a strong current batch of four that just opened the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in Ashland (where…
Eve Ensler and William Shakespeare might not seem to have a lot in common as playwrights, but according to Leslie McCauley, chair of the theater department at Santa Rosa Junior College, the author of The Vagina Monologues and the creator of numerous cross-dressing Elizabethans are just two sides this year of a gender mirror that forces us…
“I was not at all familiar with ‘Emotional Creature,’ the play,” admits Siobahn O’Reilly of Sonoma, of Eve Ensler’s teen-oriented follow-up to the worldwide sensation “The Vagina Monologues.” “But I’m a little new to theater,” she laughs, “so that’s not much of a stretch, actually.” O’Reilly grew up in Sonoma, the daughter of Patricia O’Reilly,…
“I get close to a hundred ‘screeners’ every year, and I religiously go through them all, watching every single film,” says Bill Jasper of Sonoma. As a retired CEO of Dolby Laboratories, Jasper has been an active voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1999. This year’s ceremony – which…
‘There is never an easy time to do something that has never been done before.” True enough. In author-playwright Mary Spletter’s world premiere, Arches, Balance and Light, those words are more than just encouraging advice offered to a determined young pioneer; they form a kind of philosophical spine to a play that, in its own right,…
David Pokorny once traveled the highways of America, living out of hotel rooms and telling jokes every night in comedy clubs large and small. Today, the stories he tells about that time on the road are priceless and often feature memories of working with major stand-up comics from Robin Williams and Bill Maher to Paula…
