The renovation and remodeling of Santa Rosa Junior College’s 80-year old Burbank Auditorium is now complete. The venerable 600-seat theatre has been reconfigured into two performance venues; a 400-seat proscenium arch space and a 200-seat 3/4 thrust studio theatre. The JC’s Theatre Arts Department, which has had to take their shows “on the road” for…
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM By William Shakespeare Directed by Joseph Haj REVIEWED BY DAVID TEMPLETON I have seen enough productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” over the course of my theatergoing life –- at least two dozen of them — that I literally cannot recall anything about the majority of them. That will not be…
My guests on the Thursday, March 5 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Leslie McCauley, Daniel Dow, Allyson Bray, and Samantha Bohlke-Slater from the Santa Rosa Junior College Theatre Arts production of The Cripple of Inishmaan. Click below to listen: **********
There’s irony to be found in the fact that a guy with the surname “Coffin” wrote one of the liveliest theatrical productions I’ve attended in a while. Five Course Love by playwright/composer Greg Coffin is the show and it runs through March 1 at the Lucky Penny Community Arts Center in Napa. The show consists…
If your taste in musicals runs to the light, bouncy, and life-affirming, you might want to take a pass on the Spreckels Theatre Company’s latest production. If, however, your taste runs more to the dark and twisted, then you won’t find Urinetown, the Musical too draining. It runs through March 1. Set in a dystopian…
Sonoma County’s contribution to the inaugural Bay Area Women’s Theatre Festival is a two-weekend mini-festival being presented by 6th Street Playhouse under the umbrella title Heroines, Harpies, and Harlots – A Woman Speaks. With performances from February 28 through March 8, this celebration of women’s place in history has been written, produced, and directed by…
My guest on the Thursday, February 6 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon was David Yen from the Spreckels Theatre Company production of Urinetown, the Musical. Click below to listen: **********
A vacant downtown San Rafael storefront is being haunted by the Ghosts of Bogotá. They are characters in playwright Diana Burbano’s darkly comic autobiographical look at a group of siblings dealing with some disturbing family history. It’s AlterTheater Ensemble’s latest “pop-up theatre” and runs through Feb. 23. Siblings Lola (Livia Gomes Demarchi), Sandy (Carla Pauli),…
The travails of women at the opposite ends of life are the focus of two very entertaining productions running now at opposite ends of the county. Healdsburg’s Raven Players presents Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves through Feb. 9 while Petaluma’s Cinnabar Theater is presenting David Lindsay-Abaire’s Ripcord through Feb. 16. The cavernous Raven Performing Arts Center…
My guests on the Thursday, January 29 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Elly Lichenstein. Kate Brickley, and Laura Jorgensen from the Cinnabar Theater production of Ripcord. Click below to listen: **********
