Podcast

Healdsburg Mayor Leah Gold has resigned – effective at the end of June. This was the result of a controversy over what some in the community saw as racial insensitivity. To

Laguna Docents Training
Laguna De Santa Rosa
Spring 2020

Learning Laguna

Learning to Love Aging
Wednesdays At Hospice
May 9th, 16th, 2018

Kay Mehl Miller, Ph.D, Psychotherapist, Teacher, and Author based on her book, ‘Living with the Stranger in Me: an Exploration

Season Showcase 2017
Left Edge Theater
Saturday, April 22nd, 2017 @ 7:00pm
Sunday, April 23rd, 2017 @ 6:00pm

Come see Left Edge Theatre’s Second Annual Season Showcase 2017 and participate in

Left Edge Theater
2018-2019 Season

The Naked Truth
By Dave Simpson
Directed by Argo Thompson
September 7th – 30th, 2018
The U.S. premiere of the British smash comedy hit.

With no date in sight for the resumption of live, in-house theatre, Left Edge Theatre becomes the first North Bay company to move forward with a full season of streaming productions beginning with Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Sweat. The show is available for streaming through September 27th.  

The play opens with a parole officer (played by Corey Jackson) interviewing two recent parolees – Jason (played by Skylar Bird), whose face sports a black eye and white supremacist tattoos, and Chris (played by Sam Ademolah), a young African-American who has found solace in religion. How these two are connected and what event precipitated their imprisonment will be revealed over the show’s time-shifting two-plus hours as it addresses issues of economic inequality, race, immigration, union-busting, and what despair can do to friends and family over the span of eight years. 

A Reading, PA blue-collar bar tended by Stan (played by Mike Pavone) and his barback Oscar (played by Anthony Martinez) is the favorite watering hole and home-away-from-home of good friends and factory line co-workers Tracie, Cynthia, and Jessie – played by Jill Zimmerman, Serena Elize Flores, and Lydia Revelos. Cynthia’s announcement that she’s applying for a management position seems to sit well with her friends until she gets the position and has to announce plant reductions and layoffs. Labor unrest grows, latent prejudices are exposed, friendships crumble, and soon the bar’s status as neutral territory is horribly revoked.

Director Argo Thompson has given this streaming production a more cinematic look, eschewing the infamous Zoom “Brady Bunch” boxes for single screenshots. Another improvement was replacing green screen background projections with individual set pieces that were constructed in the actors’ homes and on the Left Edge theater stage. Several scenes were pre-filmed including a fight scene which didn’t come off particularly well and raised some questions in my mind with regard to COVID-safe practices.

Technical challenges with live-streaming still exist. Camera focus issues, inconsistent audio, and ragged transitions continue to be the norm. The cast must double as crew and, despite the occasional blip, handles those duties with aplomb.

The performances delivered by the diverse cast are generally strong. Actors with significant film and television experience (like Pavone and Zimmerman) seem more comfortable with the medium, but each actor has their moment.

At its core, Sweat is an examination of how those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder tend to devour each other to survive when it would be better to direct their appetites to those on top. It’s powerful food for thought.

Left Edge Theatre’s Sweat is available for streaming through September 27.  For more information, go to leftedgetheatre.com

Legal Aid of Sonoma County
Fire Disaster Services Available
Ongoing

If you are a victim of the October wildfires, you can get assistance with insurance and FEMA claims, regardless of income

Lesley Brabyn of Salmon Creek Farm speaks publicly about the real reasons the Santa Rosa Original Certified Farmers Market has to
relocate after 40 years in the Veterans Building parking lot.

LGBTQI Oral History Project
Listening For A Change
Two day-long workshops

Listening for a Change received funding from the LGBTQI Giving Circle of the Community Foundation Sonoma County to implement a

Sometime after the Callahan family moved to thirty-four acres of bucolic Sonoma County near Petaluma, former nurse and bar certified lawyer Cindy Callahan realized that our pastoral region produces rich grasses, as high as an elephant’s eye. Her solution to a growing problem was sheep. Soon enough she became a passionate shepherd and then, logically, an award-winning cheesemaker.

Callahan passed away in early June of this year, leaving her longtime partner and son Liam, along with his wife Diana, to run what has become a beacon of fine cheese making. Liam joins host Clark Wolf to tell the family story and to honor the memory and hard work of a pioneer and a generous, warm and talented mother who has been an inspiration to many far and wide.

Black lives matter. Suzanne Lang explores the injustices of Jim Crow American and the valor of an all-Black battalion whose D-Day contributions have been largely ignored until now with author Linda

Lisa Lynne & Aryeh Frankfurter: Celtic Harps, Rare Instruments & Wondrous Stories!
Occidental Center for the Arts
Saturday, April 7th, 2018 @ 8:00 pm

Lisa Lynne and Aryeh Frankfurter are a