Podcast

“Carousel,” the second musical created by the legendary Rogers & Hammerstein, is noted today for two major things. One – it’s the show from which we gained the songs “June

One need not have ever seen Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun to appreciate the setup – or laugh at the jokes – in Bruce Norris’s brilliant

“Collecting Evolution,” Book Launch & Talk
Hosted by Matthew James
Museums of Sonoma County
Thursday, March 30th, 2017 @ 5:30pm

Join author Matthew James for a public reading and launch of

The issue of high ticket-prices is rarely discussed openly within the North Bay theater community, nor do many seem eager to talk about the arguable effect of prices on the widely

It’s a new year, and as the North Bay theater community prepares to launch its first shows of 2015, Cinnabar Theater, in Petaluma, has already unveiled its newest show, and

Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, and love is already in the air at some local theaters. Well, love and sex, and betrayal … and sex, and also mathematics

Powered by some pretty spectacular voices, Sonoma Arts Live’s clever, minimalized production of Webber-and-Rice’s iconic musical “Evita” scores major points for musicality, invention and sheer guts, emphasizing the politically ominous rags-to-riches

There’s no denying it. Music is a powerful force. Music can express the deepest of human emotions. And there are, obviously, many different styles and forms of music. One could

Short plays aren’t easy.

Like a haiku, you have to say a lot with a little.
Because of that, it’s easy for a short play to come off less like

The late August Wilson wrote ten plays as part of his celebrated Century Cycle, completing one play for each decade of the twentieth century, all but one of them set in

Oh, the glory of the human voice.
And the power of the human mind to hear one’s own voice, and somehow experience it as beautiful when to other’s it’s . .

As theatergoers, we occasionally attend plays we never previously liked, and end up changing our minds by the end. Maybe the acting and directing somehow assist the script in transcending its

I’m not sure what it is, but there’s just something appealing—if that’s the word—about watching a puppet – especially a cute puppet – talking dirty … dropping F-bombs, describing sex acts,

Well, the recent Supreme Court ruling affirming marriage equality to all couldn’t be better timed, ‘cause the big celebration’s already started up in Ashland, Oregon, and this dance party’s got

In Victorian England, the unhappy wife of a repressed doctor yearns to feel alive – and finally takes matters into her own hands. In an imaginary steam-punk version of Victorian

“Hope. Do we ever give up on hope? Even in the face of hard evidence?”

That the question at the heart of Si Kahn’s succinctly-titled new musical memory play Hope, running

Twelve years ago, journalist and playwright Doug Wright unveiled a new one-actor play with a curious name: “I Am My Own Wife.” As a member of the Tectonic Theater, which

Mouthful reaches back into its archives for a rebroadcast of “In a Cajun Kitchen,” a culinary exploration of a region that needs our attention, as it attempts to recover from catastrophic

Magic isn’t easy.

And sometimes, it takes a village to make something truly magical—and that even goes for fairy tale villages perched on the edge of a mysterious forest. With leads

I love puppets.

It’s a secret that only a certain number of people know about me, but in my late teens, I was a professional puppeteer. It’s true. I

Last year, Spreckels Theater Company staged an unconventional revival of Rogers and Hammerstein’s ‘Carousel,’ a play many have heard of but few have ever actually seen. Eschewing complex sets, shoreline scenery—and,

Describing a new Cirque du Soleil show is a little like describing a dream while still half asleep. Talking about ‘Luzia,’ appropriately subtitled “A Waking Dream of Mexico,” is roughly that

“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

One of Shakespeare’s scariest lines comes from what is easily his scariest play, ‘Macbeth,’ a show so frightening most theater

“Sometimes,” exhorts actress Sharon E. Scott, stirringly embodying the rich voice and sassy-sweet attitude of the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. “Sometimes, God turns your life upside down—so you can help

Theater is all about transformation, and transformation is never easy. But transforming one of the best-loved movies of all time into a stage musical? That’s a huge challenge, because the

Documentary filmmaker Bill Chayes wanted to make a filmabout autism from a perspective that is typically ignored in

It all began on a road-trip to Ashland, Oregon.

The acclaimed playwright Lauren Gunderson was taking a theater-going excursion with Margot Melcon, then the Director of New Play Development for Marin

Well, it’s spring, and the annual Oregon Shakespeare Festival has kicked off its 2017 season with four new shows – out of an eventual total of eleven —the majority of them

“Movies as Teaching Tools” is the focus on November’s Word By Word: Conversations With Writers on North Bay Public Media, KRCB-FM. Today’s guest is SRJC media studies instructor and interdisciplinary scholar

Romney Steele’s new book “My Nepenthe: Bohemian Tales of Food, Family
and Big Sur” offers a compelling view of a unique time and place, Big
Sur in the second half of

Beauty, one could argue, isn’t always very pretty.

Especially in the case of great literature.

Richard Wright’s 1940 masterpiece Native Son—considered one of the most important and powerful American novels ever

Let’s face it – it’s not always easy to look on the bright side of life. Laughter helps, but getting there often requires a helpful boost. If you are looking

“Not Alone” Film Event & Benefit for Suicide Prevention
Presented by Buckelew Programs
Finley Community Center, Santa Rosa
Tuesday, September 18th , 2018 @ 5:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Driven

There may be more-than-one theatrical franchise of musical plays that started out as a line of greeting cards showing nuns saying vaguely racy things, but if there is, it’s not

While technically not set in a courtroom, Tom Topor’s Nuts,running now at Santa Rosa’s Left Edge Theatre

Richard Charter has dedicated his life to expandingprotections for the Sonoma County coast. He reports progress on that front, buthe’s concerned about a major expansion of fracking in California.

Last

Lets talk about inspiration.

Inspiration is often likened to lightning striking, or an electric bulb popping on over our heads. Metaphorically, when light suddenly appears, when lightning suddenly strikes,

Four-and-a-half years ago, Richard Bean’s comedy play ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’ appeared out of nowhere, making a mad, merry pratfall onto the stage of public awareness—first in London on the West

Mouthful presents “Peanuts Cooks,” a very special hour with Jean Schulz. Joining in the discussion about “Peanuts Cooks,” an exhibit currently on view at the Charles M. Schulz Museum, will be

This month’s guests on the Word By Word: Conversations With Writers are from the upcoming “Pen to Published—Redwood Writers Conference,” which will be held at the Santa Rosa Flamingo Hotel on

This month’s guests on the Word By Word: Conversations With Writers are from the upcoming “Pen to Published—Redwood Writers Conference,” which will be held at the Santa Rosa Flamingo Hotel on

Book Launch: “Petaluma Slough” by Ken Nugent
Occidental Center for the Arts
Sunday, September 23rd 3 – 5 PM

This saga takes us from Frontera del Norte valleys of Alta California

No one’s ever done an official scientific study on this, but I have observed certain conspicuous distinctions between the way adults react to the story of Peter Pan, and how

Whatever else one says about “Point Break Live!,” you have to agree there aren’t many other live entertainments where the audience is doused with water, beaned by flying sandwiches, robbed

Many of our Christmas entertainment traditions are tales of tribulation from Jimmy Stewart contemplating suicide in It’s a Wonderful Life to Charlie Brown’s seasonal affective disorder which becomes a kind of

Mouthful welcomes Clark Smith, author of “Postmodern Winemaking” and a passionate advocate of wine and music pairings. Seriously. Don’t miss Smith and Mouthful host Michele Anna Jordan battle over what song

Have you ever noticed that most stories that appear, on the surface, to be all about death and dying, actually turn out to be all about life and living? It’s true.

It has been argued, effectively, that the person most qualified to talk about race and racism is the victim of that racism – not those who, consciously or unconsciously, are benefiting

Fictionalized history, like ‘free trade’ and ‘forgotten memories,’ is something of an oxymoron. The minute you introduce fiction to a story, its claim to being history loses strength. But unless a

The Nobel-prize winning novelist Edith Wharton once wrote, “There are two ways of spreading light—to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”

Mirrors—and candles, too—are both the set dressing