I hate to admit it, being such a hardcore movie fan, but for the last ten years or so, I tend to see more shows on stage than in a movie theater. I still go to the movies. I still write a movie column, still attend film festivals when I can. But I just don’t…
‘Mahalia Jackson has been a part of my life as long as I can remember,” says singer and playwright Sharon E. Scott, speaking of the legendary New Orleans gospel singer and civil rights activist. “My grandmother was a pastor’s wife, and we could only listen to sacred music. She was a maid, cooking dinner every…
“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…
“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…
On New Year’s Eve in Canada, cities offer free public transportation. It’s a tradition. In certain parts of Mexico, when the clock strikes midnight, partiers eat 12 grapes and make a wish with each one. In Albania, at precisely midnight, people make perfectly timed phone calls to wish each other a prosperous new year. Here…
As ‘Polar Bears: A Story of Fatherhood, Funerals, and Santa Claus’ enters into its final week of shows (Thursday through Sunday at Main Stage West, in Sebastopol), the reviews are in, and the buzz is remarkably good, from critics and audience members alike. The show has been awarded a “Go See!” designation by the San…
At a small Middle School in Sonoma, California, the Force is with two faculty members who count themselves as lifelong ‘Star Wars’ fans. The Principal, William Deeths, has so many ‘Star Wars’ action figures on his walls at the school, kids actually want to be sent to the Prinicpal’s office, and English instructor Bridget Paul…
It was over a year-and-a-half ago that the script for ‘Polar Bears’ was completed, literally two hours before its first public reading at Main Stage West. That was in late July of 2014, less than a week before I left for Scotland to present my first one-man-show ‘Wretch Like Me’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.…
★★★★½ Spreckels Theater Company continues its hot streak with a cool musical adaptation of a classic novel. ‘Little Women: The Musical’ features a spectacular lead performance by Rebekah Pearson in the role of Jo March, the young woman who dreams of becoming a writer, but whose gory storytelling instincts threaten to undermine her dreams—until she…
★★★★½ ‘I wear the chains I forged in life!” This ghostly report from the doomed spirit of Jacob Marley is among the most famous supernatural utterances in English literature. It’s also a fair metaphor for the heavy weight of responsibility carried by any theater company brave enough to stage Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. This unstoppably popular…
