KSRO Interview – “The Nether”

My guests on the Thursday, March 14 theatre segment on KSRO’s The Drive with Steve Jaxon were Leila Rosa and Chris Schloemp  from the Left Edge Theatre production of The Nether. Click below to listen: ********** *Note – this audio files cuts out before the actual end of the interview. It will be replaced by…

Review: “The Who & The What” in Mill Valley

Playwright Ayad Akhtar burst on the theatrical scene in 2013 with Disgraced, a searing drama about identity politics and Islamophobia which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. In 2016, Marin Theatre Company presented Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand, a play that took on capitalism and Islamic fanaticism. Gender issues in the Islamic community are the…

Review: “The Nether” in Santa Rosa

In a recent Letter to the Editor of the Bohemian, a theatre patron decried one North Bay company for its tendency to program shows with dark themes that portray men and women at their worst.  The patron then went on to suggest attending a then-running show at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre. That patron may…

Spreckels announces 2019/2020 season

On Saturday night, as part of Spreckels Performing Arts Center’s big party celebrating its 30th anniversary, Artistic Director Sheri Lee Miller announced Spreckels Theatre Company’s ambitious, premiere-filled 2019/2020 season. Anchored by a number of major North Bay debuts, the season – which will begin this August – will feature two plays and four musicals, a…

Review: “Spring Awakening” in Novato

Totally fucked. That, dear readers, sums up the teen angst expressed via song in Spring Awakening, Marin Musical Theatre Company’s latest offering. It runs at the NTC Playhouse in Novato through March 16. Based on German playwright Frank Wedekind’s controversial 1891 play that dealt frankly with teenage sexuality, playwright Steven Sater and musician Duncan Sheik…

Review: “Million Dollar Quartet” in Santa Rosa

On December 4, 1956, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Elvis Presley held a once-in-a-lifetime jam session at rock and roll pioneer Sam Phillips’ legendary Sun Records studio. They were labeled the “Million Dollar Quartet” by a local journalist and that moniker was affixed to the recordings of the session released decades later.…

Spreckels to announce new season at free celebration this weekend

Spreckels Performing Arts Center, in Rohnert Park, is celebrating its 30th Anniversary this weekend with a free onstage musical event on Saturday, March 9, at 7:00 p.m. The show will feature “concert-style songs” showcasing some of Spreckels’ most popular and fondly remembered musicals, and will include a bit of a “look forward” to what Artistic…

Cinnabar, MTC announce 2019/2020 seasons

For theater fans, theater writers and theater artists of all stripes, there are few times of year as exciting as that stretch of weeks in the late winter/early fall when theater companies take turns announcing the titles of the plays they will be producing in the following theatrical season. It’s a time for actors to…

Review: “Hello, Dolly!” in San Francisco

Anyone going to a performance of Hello, Dolly! – running now at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco through March 17 – with an appetite for an enlightened look at male/female relationships is likely to leave quite hungry. The current national tour of the 2017 revival of the 1964 Broadway smash based on…