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…
In the pantheon of great American plays, Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is surely in the upper tier. Perhaps the most personal of Williams’ works, its name recognition, small cast, simple setting, and straight-forward storytelling have made it a staple of community theatres. Its ease of staging, however, belies its complexity and the quality of…
Bring Down the House By Rosa Joshi and Kate Wisniewski Adapted from William Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy The Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland is drawing close to wrapping up its ten-year-long commitment to staging all of Shakespeare’s plays within a single decade. That’s 36 shows in ten seasons, with crowd-pleasers like “A Midsummer…
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: **********
The Hunchback of Notre Dame finally makes its North Bay debut with a production offered up by a local music education center. Cotati’s Music to My Ears is presenting the musical at the new Rancho Cotate High School Theatre Arts Auditorium in Rohnert Park through March 8. A blend of Victor Hugo’s gothic novel and…
The plight of British laborers dealing with the changing economic world in the 1980’s has been a major plot element in a number of successful musicals. From the redundant steel workers of The Full Monty to the striking coal miners of Billy Elliot, the issue of (mostly) men dealing with job elimination often took a…
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…
Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, running now at Santa Rosa’s 6th Street Playhouse through February 23, may not be his best play (that’s Death of a Salesman) or even close to his most produced work (probably The Crucible). What it is is a punch-to-the-gut look at of one man’s destructive obsession and the…
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…
North Bay Stage and Screen 