Podcast

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

Let’s talk about Jukebox Musicals.

That’s a slangy term describing a stage show that is built around an assortment of pre-existing, usually well-known songs, stuff you might have heard on the

It has been said that there is nothing less dramatic or more lacking in entertainment value than watching a writer write. In the clever comedy-drama ‘Seminar,’ presented at Wells Fargo

For those who prefer not to travel far for their onstage entertainment, and like to avoid any excursions into foreign territory, there are, fortunately, a tremendous number of nearby theater

This week, “Shone Grown,” SRJC’s Holiday on the Farm celebration, taking place at Shone Farm, where there will be activities for the entire family, tastings of the farm’s olio nuovo, cured

Two plays based on real happenings from the first half of the twentieth century have recently opened in the North Bay. One is new, the work of an up-and-coming young playwright

Wednesdays at Hospice – “Songs at the Bedside”
Hospice of Petaluma
Wednesday, June 12th, 2019 @ 5:30pm- 7:30pm

Wednesdays at Hospice is a free Community Education series running January to June

“Step into Your Brilliance”
Wednesdays at Hospice House
January 8, 2019 – Santa Rosa
January 15, 2019 – Petaluma

Our inner brilliance, passion, and life force

Victorian England produced some spectacularly bloody and murderous literature.

Some was written and published, some began as the stuff of urban legend before being translated for the stage or to the

“Thanksgiving” Food Drive Day
Sonoma County Fair
Saturday, August 12th, 2017 @ 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

The Sonoma County Fair proudly presents the “Thanksgiving” Food Drive – Saturday, August 12.

I am, in a moment, going to talk about spelling, as in spelling bees, as in ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,’ a musical that is currently running in two

When is a play not a play?

When it’s a concert.

Because concerts have no plots, and plays have plots
That’s the argument some have made against the recent rise of

Stephanie Rosenbaum talks about her delightful new work “The Astrology Cookbook” and Frederique Lavoipierre discusses the upcoming Insecta-palooza. Evangeline, a beautiful stick bug, bobs and sways through the entire show and

Two appetizingly notable stage plays, both currently running in the North Bay, feature the unpredictable combustible power of people related to one another, or about to be, sitting down to eat

Change is part of life.

Some changes are easy, others much less so.

And when cultures collide, change is often dangerous, violent, and destructive. From the opening scenes

One of the cool things about the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the current season of which I have been reporting on lately, is the way it often programs shows that cleverly

1999 years ago, an unmarried teenage mother had a bad dream. The next morning, she decided to turn that dream into a short story. Over the next few months, that story

I saw an amazing performance last weekend, but I have no clue how to properly describe what I saw. I could start by talking about Wallace Shawn, the playwright of

Jack London.

One cannot grow up in Sonoma County, or even visit here for very long, without gaining at least some awareness of who Jack London was. Few local school-kids can’t

Money corrupts, as does Power, and they often work together, because of course, everywhere you go in this world, money is power.

In playwright Ayad Akhtar’s uneven but often gripping

A little emotion goes a long way. And music is one of the best communicators of emotion, as Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Billy Joel can tell you.

The richer the